Gillian Anderson - A Vision of Fire

“I understand.”

“All right. I’m just going to ask you for a favor, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Maanik, do you know that you’ve been having trouble lately? You’ve been very disturbed sometimes?”

“Yes, I know I’ve been screaming. I can feel it in my throat and my sides hurt. My arms hurt, too. Not hurt, actually—ache.”

“Well, I’m going to ask you to respond to a cue in the future, a signal. The cue will be when someone says the word ‘blackberries’ and touches your ear.”

“Which ear?” Maanik asked.

At least her cognitive functions were clear and focused—sharper than Caitlin’s. “Either ear. Does that cue sound all right to you?”

“Yes.”

“So when anyone says ‘blackberries’ and touches your ear, you will respond by calming down, just like when I’m talking to you about the television screen and counting backward. Any other time you hear the word ‘blackberries’ it just means ‘blackberries.’ Is that clear?”

“Okay, fine,” Maanik agreed. Then she cooed to whatever was not Jack London.

Caitlin knew that a posthypnotic suggestion of this caliber was a much bigger step than the one she had discussed with the ambassador, but she felt sure she could convince him of the necessity. They needed a kill switch for all of the behavior, not just the scratching.

“Thank you, Maanik. Now tell me a little about your home.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What are you seeing? Who is your baby?”

“That’s my little guy,” she cooed, smiling. “He’s licking my hands. And”—her eyes moved under her closed eyelids—“there are the trees next to the door, I’m coming back from the hot pool, it’s nighttime, there’s some thokang down by us but high up the stars are out—”

“There’s some what down by you?”

“Wow, the stars are so beautiful tonight. There are so many of them!” The smile became almost blissful. “ Khasaa .”

Caitlin decided that keeping the flow going was more important than backtracking for every detail. “Your little guy, he met you outside of your house?”

“Yes, he slithered up from the water as he always does.”

“What does your little guy look like?”

“Like thyodularasi ,” Maanik burbled in a duh tone. She was speaking so quickly now that Caitlin couldn’t follow. It took a moment for her to realize that speed wasn’t the problem.

“Maanik, can you use English words for me?”

But the girl kept pattering in gibberish. She had begun to move her arms again, not frantically this time but in wide motions that didn’t seem to resemble anything. Caitlin thought of Jacob waggling his arms like a squid. Was Maanik just being playful?

Suddenly the girl sat up and her eyes snapped open as she craned to look up at the ceiling. Her speech sped up, as did her arm movements, except that her right hand was drifting toward the left, as if she wanted to scratch.

Caitlin put her hands on her shoulders. “Maanik, tell me what you see in the sky.”

The patter came faster now. Caitlin glanced questioningly at Mrs. Pawar, who looked like the sins of the world were written on her daughter’s face. Mrs. Pawar understood Caitlin’s glance but shook her head—the words weren’t Hindi. But there’s something Asiatic about them , Caitlin thought, yet not. If only Ben were here… And then Maanik was shouting at the sky, pushing up at it, and slapping her arms, trying to scratch through the gauze.

“Maanik, English, please! Tell me what’s happening!” she yelled as she tried unsuccessfully to prevent the girl’s hands from making contact.

Maanik started to scream again. Her whole body slammed down onto the floor as she bucked and thrashed, and suddenly from nowhere Caitlin felt like she was grabbed and thrown across the room.

Caitlin was thrown back into a wall, and the breath was knocked from her. Her arms felt weak as water as she tried to prop herself up.

If this is a personality split , she thought, please let increased strength not be part of it!

Caitlin jerked herself onto her knees and reached out through Maanik’s flailing arms to touch her left ear. “Blackberries,” she said.

The girl’s hands dropped. She took a violent, deep breath, as if she might scream to the heavens, and then exhaled slowly, until the in-breath came and a natural quiet rhythm took hold. Within seconds, Caitlin heard the soft deep breaths of sleep.

After lifting Maanik onto her bed, Caitlin and Mrs. Pawar left the girl to rest and retired to the living room, where Kamala had made tea.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to wait a few more minutes, make sure everything is all right,” Caitlin said.

“Of course,” said Mrs. Pawar as she sat in an armchair. “I am sorry to take you from your work.”

“This is my work,” Caitlin said.

Mrs. Pawar smiled, but only briefly. “What’s wrong with my daughter?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Caitlin admitted. “But we’re going to find out.”

“We did the right thing? Just now?”

“Absolutely.”

The older woman sipped her tea. “Nothing like this has ever happened in our family.”

“I was about to ask, Mrs. Pawar—were there ever rumors or whispers, about an aunt, a grandparent, a cousin?”

“Whispers?”

“Their mind, their behavior, habits—anything. I understand there would have been a reticence to discuss it.”

The woman shook her head and looked down. “We do not speak of such things, but one knows. There was nothing.”

Caitlin believed her.

“Mrs. Pawar, I understand that you must keep this matter quiet. But if your daughter continues to have episodes you’re going to have to get her to a clinic for tests. She might have hit her head during the assassination attempt—”

“The school nurse checked her, said there was nothing.”

“There are conditions an MRI or CT scan can explore that a doctor cannot. I already mentioned this to Dr. Deshpande, and you may need to be a little more aggressive…”

“I see,” the woman said helplessly.

“Surely your husband won’t object if it’s necessary.”

Mrs. Pawar regarded her. It was a look that told Caitlin: Yes. At this moment, given the Kashmir situation, he might resist .

Jack London, released from his crate by the housekeeper, made the rounds, sniffing at their feet.

“She seems so vulnerable, so fragile,” said Mrs. Pawar, “so unlike herself.”

“She’s stronger than you think, and she’s not alone in this,” Caitlin said. “Whatever’s going on, if she shows any unusual signs of unrest, remember what to do: you touch her ear…”

The woman nodded, more to reassure herself than anything, but Caitlin left the Pawars’ apartment with a knot in her stomach.

During the cab ride back, she called her office to tell her receptionist that she would keep her eleven thirty. Then she texted Ben: Some progress today, I’ll call u tonight. Send me ur most secure email address.

There was no immediate response, but she wasn’t expecting one. He would be at the talks. She watched the news crawl on the TV monitor in the backseat of the cab. The tensions between India and Pakistan were being described as “volatile,” with more troops being moved to the borders. The United States ambassador’s proposal for a demilitarized zone between the nations had been met with derision in India, whose pundits pointed out that Pakistan could not even establish a de-terrorized zone within its own borders. Meanwhile the local news reported that in Queens, fistfights were erupting among Indian and Pakistani neighbors. Police presence in the subways had tripled, and the emergency management department had been quietly checking on the state of the city’s old fallout shelters as potential neighborhood command centers. Nor was New York alone in its anxiety; across the nation survivalist and prepper groups had replenished their stocks of ammunition, causing a shortage, and disappeared off the grid. An Internet questionnaire called “If This Is the End, I Will…” had gone viral.