Ian McDonald - River of Gods

“Just tourists,” he lies. “They’ve probably got a photograph exactly the same. Should I?”

“I believe they may be my natural parents. It is them I am trying to find; it is because of them that I asked the gods to show me you, Professor Lull.”

Now Thomas Lull stops up short. A truck decorated with images of Siva and his wife and sons rolls past in a wave of dust and Chennai filmi music.

“How did you come by this photograph?”

“It was sent to me on my eighteenth birthday by a firm of lawyers in Varanasi, in Bharat.”

“And your adoptive parents?”

“They are from Bangalore. They know what I am doing. They gave me their blessing. I always knew I had been adopted.”

“Have you any photographs of them?”

She scrolls up an image of a coltish teen sitting on a verandah step, knees pressed chastely together, hands wrapped around shins, barricading virginity. She doesn’t wear the Vishnu tilak. Behind her stand a South Indian man and woman in their late forties, dressed in the Western style. They look like people who would be always open and honest and Western with their daughter and never try to interfere with her journey of self-discovery. He thumbs back to the temple photograph.

“And these you say are your natural parents?”

“I believe so.”

Impossible, Thomas Lull wants to say. He keeps silent, though silence binds him in lies. No, you bind yourself in lies wherever you turn, Thomas Lull. Your life is all lies.

“I have no recollection of them,” Aj says. Her voice is flat and neutral, like the shade she wears. She might be describing a tax return. “When I received the photograph, I felt nothing. But I do have one memory; so old it is almost like a dream. It is of a white horse galloping. It comes to me and then it rears up with its hooves in the air, as if it is dancing, just for me. Oh, I can see it. I love that horse very much. I think it is the only thing I have from that time.”

“No explanation from these lawyers?”

“That is correct. I had hoped that you could help me. But it seems you cannot, so I will go now to Varanasi and find these lawyers.”

“They’re about to start a war up there.”

Aj frowns. Her tilak creases. Thomas Lull feels his heart turn.

“Then I shall trust the gods to keep me safe from harm,” she declares. “They showed me where you were from this photograph, they will guide me in Varanasi.”

“These are mighty handy gods.”

“Oh yes, Professor Lull. They have never failed me yet. They are like an aura around people and things. Of course, it took some time before I realised that not everyone could see them. I just thought it was manners that they had all been taught not to say what they knew, and that I was a very rude and unmannerly girl, who blurted out everything she saw. Then I understood that they couldn’t see and didn’t know.”

As a ragged-assed seven-year-old William Blake had seen a London plane tree churning with angels. Only his mother’s intercession prevented a thrashing from his father. Presumptions and lies. A lifetime later the visionary had looked into the eye of the sun and seen an innumerable company of the Heavenly Host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty . Thomas Lull had squinted at the Kansas sun every morning of his working life and seen nothing but nuclear fusion and the uncertainties of quantum theory. Tension coils at the base of Thomas Lull’s stomach but it is not the old serpent of sexual anticipation he knows from the affairs and the sun-warmed backpacker girls. It is something other. Fascination. Fear.

“Any person or thing?” Aj cocks her head, a gesture between a Western nod and an Indian head-roll. “Who’s that, then?” Thomas Lull points to the tin toddy-stall where Mr. Sooppy sits waving away flies with a tattered copy of the Thiruvananthapuram Times.

“That is Sandeep Sooppy. He is a toddy-seller and he lives at number 1128 Joy of the People Road.”

Thomas Lull feels his scrotum slowly contract in fear. “And you’ve never met him before in your life.”

“I have never met him at all. I never met your friend Dr. Ghotse before, either.”

A green and yellow bus rolls past. Aj does the head-cock thing again, frowning at the hand-painted licence number. “And that bus belongs to Nalakath Mohanan, but it could be someone else driving. The bus is well past its service date. I would not recommend riding on it.”

“It’ll be Nalakath,” Thomas Lull says. His head is wheeling as if he had taken an eighth of the Nepali that Mr. Sooppy sells out the back of his toddy stand. “So, how come these gods of yours can tell the state of Nal’s brakes just by glancing at his licence-plate, but they can’t tell the first thing about these people you say are your natural parents?”

“I can’t see them,” Aj says. “They are like a blind spot in my vision, every time I look at them, everything closes up around them, and I can’t see them.”

“Whoa,” says Thomas Lull. Magic is spooky, but a hole in the magic; that’s scary. “What do you mean, you can’t see them?”

“I can see them as human beings but I can’t see the aura around them, the gods, the information about them and their lives.”

A rising wind rattles the palm blades, rattles Thomas Lull in his spirit. Forces are drawing around him, penning him inside a mandala of lives and coincidences. Blow on, away out of here, man. Don’t get involved in this woman and her mysteries. You’ve lied to her, what you could not bear is if she is not lying to you.

“I can’t help you,” Thomas Lull says. They are at the gate of the Palm Imperial. He can hear the satisfying crisp twang of a tennis rally. The wind confesses in the bamboo, the surf is high again. He will hate to leave this place. “I’m sorry your trip has been wasted.”

Lull leaves her in the lobby. When she has gone to her room he calls in a long-term favour from Achuthanandan the hotel manager and pulls her account details from the register. Ajmer Rao. 385 Valahanka Road, Silver Oak Development, Rajankunte, Bangalore. Eighteen years young. Paid for with an industrial-grade Bank of Bharat black card. A high-calibre financial weapon for a girl working the Kerala Bhati-club circuit. Bank of Bharat. Why not First Karnatic or Allied Southern? A small mystery among the hosts of luminous gods. He tries to spy them as he trails back the straight white road to his home, catch them out of the corner of his eye, fix them in his fleeting vision like floaters. The trees remain trees, the trucks obdurately trucks, and the Indian pond-heron stalks among the floating coir husks.

Aboard Salve Vagina Thomas Lull swiftly sets a stack of folded beach-shirts on top of Blake and closes the bag. Leave and don’t look back. The ones who look back are turned to salt. He leaves a note and some money for Dr. Ghotse to find a local woman and pack the rest into boxes. When he arrives where he’s meant to be he’ll send for his stuff.

On the road he flags down a phatphat and rides in to the bus station, bag clutched on his lap. Bus station is a generosity: the battered Tatas use a wide spot in the road as a turning circle, which they do without regard for buildings, pedestrians, or any other road user. The gaudily decorated buses lounge beside sewing repair stalls and hot snack vendors and the ubiquitous toddy-men. Marutis with interior fans rattling and open-back Mahindra pickups honk their way through the bustle. Five bus sound-systems compete with hits from the movies.

The bus for Nagercoil won’t leave for an hour so Thomas Lull buys himself a toddy and squats on the oily soil under the seller’s umbrella to watch the driver and conductor argue with their passengers and grudgingly wedge their luggage on to the roof rack. The Palm Imperial’s microbus arrives at its usual breakneck speed. The side door slams open and Aj steps out. She has a small, grey bag with her and wears shades and a wrap-round over her pants. Boys mob her, clutching at her bag; informal porters. Thomas Lull gets up from under his shady umbrella, strolls over to her, and lifts her bag.