Hari Kunzru - Gods Without Men

It was pathetic, him holding out his box of scribblings, like it was the Queen of England’s crown jewels.

“I’ll tell them you ain’t coming out.”

Ike left the old man standing there, holding his box. He climbed the ladder. At the top, Grice and Munro were waiting. “He won’t listen,” he said. “You should use the gas.”

One of Munro’s men doubled back to the truck and returned with a metal canister. Sheriff Grice shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. He don’t sound like he can breathe too well.”

Munro was trying to brush the dust off his suit. “Well, sadly for you, I don’t much care what you think. I haven’t got time to negotiate with some crazy old man.”

He gave the sign and a soldier sidled up to the hole, pulled the pin on the grenade and dropped it in. There was a hissing noise and smoke started billowing up. They stepped back, avoiding the plume, which streamed in the wind across the dry lake.

There was a noise like thunder.

The concussion knocked them all off their feet and they squirmed to take cover beneath the cars as a rain of rocks and small stones pelted down. Ike knew what had happened. He’d known it would probably happen when he told them to throw down the gas. As the rain of stones fell, he was laughing. Now he could go and live in the world. Be a good policeman, do his duty. The lid was closed on the past.

Of course, when they’d all picked themselves up and bandaged Munro’s head and driven the three wounded soldiers to the hospital and Grice was started on the long process of reporting and form-filling and sorting out who to blame, Ike ended up being the one to go down and scrape up the pieces. Splintered furniture, a lot of charred papers covered in Deighton’s cramped, tiny handwriting. Of the man, he couldn’t find anything much at all. Just a few fragments of bone.

Raj smiled up at his father, his deep brown eyes as alien and inscrutable as stars. “Look,” he said, pointing at a delivery van. Jaz gripped the little blue sneaker more tightly as his son hopped closer to the door, trying to get a better view. A miracle: That was the word Lisa used. God and Lisa were close these days.

“We’re going far,” he told him. They always went far. For several months, walking had been their main occupation; all through the winter, even when it was tough to push the stroller through the snow. Lisa would phone from the office and ask where they were. Out, Jaz would say. He’d make up fictitious errands, trips to Whole Foods, the dry cleaner. He’d tell these lies standing on corners in strange parts of the city, where bass blared from passing cars and men hung out in front of check cashers and bodegas.

He got Raj into his second shoe and carried the stroller down the steps. “You want to ride?” he asked. Raj shook his head. Hand in hand they set off down the hill, making toward the river. There was a bookstore in Chelsea he wanted to visit; no matter that there were a dozen closer places to buy a book. He and Raj would walk. Sooner or later they’d find their way across one of the bridges into Manhattan. They’d stop for a snack, sit on a bench in a park. The trip could use up most of the day.

At least it was warm. June had been wet and chilly; whole days of rain. They’d trudged the streets under twin yellow ponchos, Raj’s hair plastered against his face in wet black licks. Today the sky was gray and a humid pall lay over the street, cloaking the bodies of passersby in a sheen of sweat; the dog walkers, the neighbor carrying some kind of cake from her car to her house, its large pink box held ritually in front of her like a religious relic or an unexploded bomb. The neighbor nodded hello and grinned, campily widening her eyes in what was probably supposed to be an expression of fizzy excitement. Oh, that a day should have such cake in it! As she fished in her purse for her keys, she stole a quick, voracious glance at Raj. Jaz knew her. Carrie-Anne or Carol-Ann. Her husband was a urologist. So ingratiating now, but a few months before she’d ignored him whenever they passed on the street. Yeah, he thought. Eat shit, lady. Try and pretend you never thought what you thought about me.

They walked past the coffee shop next to the subway stop. It had once been his regular spot, but he hadn’t been in there since the previous August. One morning on the way to work, he’d been standing in line when a woman tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned to see what she wanted, she spat in his face. Murderer, she hissed. Pedophile. God hates you. He’d been too shocked to react. By the time he worked out what had happened, she was gone, out on the street, the glass door rattling in its frame behind her.

The guy behind him had seen everything. “She spat on me,” Jaz said, disbelieving. “Did you see that? She spat on me.” The guy shrugged and got interested in something on the floor. Jaz cleaned himself with wadded napkins. No one would catch his eye. Eventually, the girl behind the counter asked, in an odd sarcastic tone, if he wanted anything to drink. Then he realized: Everyone in the place knew who he was. It explained the peculiar atmosphere, the invisible bubble of indifference that seemed to be separating him from the other customers. He left immediately and didn’t go out of the house again for three days. During the months of Raj’s disappearance, he got used to how people reacted when they recognized him: the silent disgust; the animal recoil. He’d tell himself they didn’t know him, that their anger was directed at something else, some personal mental darkness his presence in the checkout line or subway car was forcing them to confront. It didn’t help. He was jostled on the street, found it hard to get service in stores. Once someone threw a soda can out of a car, which sent a great fizzy arc of orange onto the sidewalk in front of his feet.

They had been crushing, lonely months. Lisa had gone to stay with her parents in Phoenix. His old friends seemed distant, busy with their lives. One evening he walked halfway across the Williamsburg Bridge, judging the height of the mesh fence that separated him from the water. He was trying to remember what was supposed to happen. Didn’t you die on impact? You were unconscious as soon as you hit the water. Reasons to do it, reasons not to. After a while he turned and walked back.

The story running in his head had a sickening weight. He’d made it happen . He’d wanted Raj to disappear. It was all he’d been thinking about as they drove from L.A. to that awful place — how nice it would be to have his life back, the old times when he and Lisa ran around the city like latchkey kids. Then Lisa broke the string on Raj’s charm and his evil thoughts were set free to do their work. The lunatics on the Internet were telling the truth — he’d murdered his son. Through force of will, bad magic. A kind of spoon-bending.

He’d stopped speaking to his parents. At first they’d wanted him to pay for a guru to come from India; some Punjabi godman his mom had been sending money to. It will be guruji and three, four followers only. They will need hotel, meals. He’d lost his temper, told her she was pagal if she thought he’d pay to be exploited by some village swami. “But you can afford it,” she said. “You’re rich. It is for your son.” One evening she called to say his father wanted to speak to him. Papaji hadn’t been well. When he came on the line, his voice was shaky. “Beta, it is God’s will. That is all. If you will not go for the guru, try and give your wife another child, a son whose mind and body is sound. Do it quickly. Help her forget her pain. In the end it may be for the best.” All this, just two weeks after Raj had vanished. As if he were trash, genetic waste.