Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

He nodded. ‘It’s just, madam, I have a job and have only two more shifts this week. I won’t be paid if I don’t do them. Can I stay until the end of the week, please?’

Mrs Manapadhay counselled against this — ‘Students can be cruel’ — but Randeep said his family relied on him and Mrs Manapadhay said very well. As long as he stayed away from Jaytha, he could remain until the weekend.

It was a horrible week. He spent most of it in the library, avoiding everyone, entering his room only if Abhi was asleep. Word had spread. Students stared, some swore. One shoved him down the stairs.

He arranged his suitcase and bags into a pile by the door, topping it all off with his ceramic goose lamp, and left for work. It was his final shift. Tomorrow, he’d board the first bus home. He wondered how he was going to explain everything to his mother. He wondered whether to try and contact Jaytha. He wondered if he shouldn’t just run away to Africa and start again.

‘What’s in Africa?’ Michael said.

‘Nothing. Exactly.’

‘Better to face things out, young man. At least then you can see who’s hurling the shit at you.’

Randeep smiled for perhaps the first time that week. At the end of his shift, the night manager settled his wages and he walked out of the grey cement block with a small sense of being freed. The streetlights were still on. Maybe he could go to Delhi. Or Bombay. Or back to Bhubaneshwar like he’d always wanted?

He turned into a wide passage that by day acted as a parking station for cyclists. The moon hung at the end of it. He felt edgy and walked quickly, but wasn’t even halfway when three figures slid into the lane, coming towards him. Hands in pockets, faces in shifting moon shadow. Their footsteps made no sound. His heart pumped. They’ll walk past, he told himself. Don’t be scared. But they weren’t talking to one another, and this frightened him. As they crossed, the one in the middle stared sidelong. He had an Om stud in his ear. It looked familiar. Randeep carried on, agitated. Then he knew: it was the boy who’d shoved him down the stairs. He looked over his shoulder. All three had stopped, turned.

‘Kaiso ho?’ the one with the ear stud asked.

Randeep nodded. ‘I’m just going back to my room. I’m leaving in the morning.’

They didn’t reply. He started walking again. He closed his eyes and said please God no, but no sooner had he opened them than he heard steps pounding behind him. He ran, shouting for help. At the end of the lane they tripped him up and covered his mouth with huge clothy hands. An Om -knuckled fist came driving down on his face and he heard himself groan, and then nothing.

He felt thick-headed as he started to stir, as if a deep mist shrouded his brain. Voices, laughter, hands applied to his body. He heard, ‘Let’s see how much the high-caste fucker likes being shat on.’ He tried to speak, but clouded over again and the tiredness was too much.

When he next came round, he was so very thirsty. He swallowed, with difficulty, and realized there was something stringy blocking his mouth. He tried flexing his jaw but it didn’t budge. He wondered what he was doing on his side. He tried to sit but couldn’t. His ankles. Who’d tied them? And his wrists. Crossed and bound behind his back. He was deep in a well. His head throbbed. They’d left him to die. He twisted his neck in wild panic: there was a light, not far. A thin beam of light. A doorway, it looked like. He was naked. No, not quite. They’d let him keep his underwear, but it felt funny, wetly padded. He rolled onto his back and — one, two, three — straightened right up. As he did so his forehead hit his knees and he felt something strange and flaky come off his skin. He bent his head to his shoulder and smelled and retched. The bile came up the walls of his throat and trickled down his chin. He began to cry. Slowly, he moved onto his knees, his bound ankles beneath him, and wriggled to the door. There were voices. His eyes widened in fear. It was them. He listened some more. It was a teacher, teaching. Someone who would help. He wriggled closer, right up to the door. A class. Students. He looked about him, his mouth still gagged. Projectors, folders, boxes of pens. He’d been locked up in the stationery cupboard. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t have a choice. He banged his forehead to the door. Banging and banging. The teacher’s voice halted. Footsteps got louder. A key turned, the door opened — light! — and with a screeching mewl Randeep collapsed into the lecture hall.

Avtar and Lakhpreet sat side by side in the waiting room. She paged through a dental magazine, of all things. He was set forward, elbows on thighs, one hand closed around the wrist of the other as if choking a small animal. He looked down at the frayed hems of his black trousers. At the candle-wax stain on his blazer that had refused to come out. Again he observed his reflection in the window and again he ran his palm over the slick side parting. The receptionist smiled into her keyboard.

‘Stop that,’ Lakhpreet whispered.

‘It’s not used to being combed like this.’

‘Then you should’ve left it how it was.’

‘Are you even sure he’s coming?’

‘Oh? Do you have somewhere else to be?’

He frowned, stood up.

‘Sit down. Don’t be nervous.’

‘I’m not!’ and he sat back down, nearly missing the chair.

Another hour passed before the door opened and Vakeelji came forward, his big bearish arms outstretched.

‘Baby!’

‘Uncle!’ Lakhpreet said, rising.

They touched the lawyer’s feet, and he showed them into his office, apologizing for the wait. There was a time when he could walk to the club and back and not be stopped by every two-bit Ramu in the book.

‘But those days seem to have passed. Now even the criminals think they have a case!’

He moved around his impressive desk with its clever inlay, and his huge tan chair crackled to accommodate a fat man getting comfortable on hard leather. Avtar and Lakhpreet had to bring in their seats from the waiting room.

‘And how is my friend?’ Vakeelji asked.

‘Same, uncle. He still can’t leave his room.’

‘Well, tell him to hurry up and get better. We need to get our squash games back on. I’m starting to put on weight.’

Lakhpreet gave a sad little smile and Vakeelji patted his desk, as if it were a proxy for her head.

‘Give it time. And I’m here, aren’t I? Jhub hum hain tho kya ghum hai? And a few more months and I’ll have clean-fine licked that brother of yours into shape and onto a plane straight for America.’

Lakhpreet gestured towards Avtar, shifting in his chair, alert. ‘Uncle, you remember I spoke to you about. . If there’s something you can do.’

The lawyer gazed at him and for the first time seemed to acknowledge this other presence in his office.

‘It was at Lohri, uncle,’ Lakhpreet said. ‘You said he’d need to learn English.’

‘And have you?’

‘It’s all he’s done for the last six months.’

‘When I’m not working with my papa,’ Avtar said. He didn’t want the lawyer to expect too much. ‘But my younger brother helps me. He can speak it very well. And I went to an English medium school until plus two so I could speak it a bit already.’

‘I see. And where do you want to go? Where did you have in mind? The south of France? The Gold Coast? Monaco, perhaps?’

‘If that is where I can make the most money.’

Vakeelji seemed to allow himself a tiny smile and reached for a drawer down beside his knees. He presented Avtar with various dog-eared papers and used his gold fountain pen to point out specific clauses, options, fees. It felt as if he was going through the lawyerly motions, for Lakhpreet’s sake; as if he’d taken one look at Avtar and decided this was a waste of his time. There are several visas you can opt for, he said, dully. Ultimately, it came down to the concept of risk and reward.