The Pathless Sky

Europa Editions

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2014 by Chaitali Sen

First publication 2015 by Europa Editions

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco

www.mekkanografici.com

Cover photo © Alan Lagadu/iStock

ISBN 9781609453015

Chaitali Sen

THE PATHLESS SKY

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.

Tempest roams in the pathless sky,

ships are wrecked in the trackless water,

death is abroad and children play.

On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.

—RABINDRANATH TAGORE, Gitanjali

MORNING

It mattered to him that he woke up alone. After stumbling around the apartment in the angled morning light he found his wife Mariam asleep on the floor of the nursery. Instead of carrying her to bed he shook her awake, telling her it was time to get ready for work. Only when she picked herself up off the floor, looking as ragged as a cloth doll, did he begin to soften his approach. He asked her if she needed to stay home. She shook her head and dragged her feet to the bathroom.

They were both sullen during the short drive to the university, unable to talk about anything but their plans to meet back at the car at six, at the end of their workday. He watched her walk into the library, aware that at a certain point over the past twenty-four hours something had shifted, something that had led her to sneak out of their bed and lie in that empty room on the hard floor. He wondered if she’d felt an urge to nurse in the middle of the night, at an hour when their daughter might have cried from hunger. She might have responded to such a cry in a semiconscious state, so that her departure from their bedroom was not deliberate at all but an involuntary maternal response. But it had been months since she last complained about pain in her breasts. After the labor it was all she could talk about, the mysteries of her body. She leaked milk. She stuffed cabbage leaves under her bra to stop the leaking, and she seemed to carry this scent, a revolting, lingering odor of blood, milk and cabbage. But her body was healed now, the swelling of her breasts shed with the weight through weeks of mourning.

He went to his office feeling unsettled. Looking out the window as he always did before sitting at his desk, he realized how angry it made him to find her on the floor of the nursery. He was angry at her for grieving again. He felt betrayed by it, and because he was distracted by these feelings he did not pay close attention to what was happening outside. There were a few students, a dozen or so gathered on the lawn outside the library. He couldn’t figure out if they were waiting to get in or if they had just come out. It surprised him to see so many students at once. For most of the year, the campus had been pulsing with activity, the lawn filled with students shouting and making speeches, but since the riots, they were outnumbered by the militia, enforcing laws against political gatherings by breaking up groups of three or more students. The students who decided to return after the riots moved about the campus cautiously now, avoiding each other. Many of the students had not returned, to honor the ones who had been killed, or defy the military regime that was claiming to restore order. His colleagues were waiting to hear if the college would remain open after the end of the spring term, if their positions and salaries were secure, but John was waiting for something else. Both he and Mariam were waiting for something else.

It looked as if the students had been expelled from the library. Two militia guards stood at either end of the crowd. A few students argued with them, but most wanted to avoid a confrontation and walked away.

The phone rang. He stepped back, without moving his eyes from the window, and picked up the receiver. The woman didn’t wait for him to say hello. It was Misha, Mariam’s supervisor. Her friend. Something’s happening. You have to come here.

Of course something was happening. He had been watching it, but hadn’t seen it. All he saw was Mariam on the floor of the nursery.

You won’t be able to get through the front entrance, Misha said. Come around to the east wing.

He left his office, slipped past his colleagues gathered at another window and ran down the hall, down the stairwell of the science building and out across the lawn. He reached the secluded east wing of the library and heard a tap on a window. Misha pointed toward the wall and then disappeared. A moment later a cellar door opened. Come down here, she said.

He went down a ladder, into the cellar of the library. There was a faint, salty smell, a smell not unlike sea air—the smell of limestone. She led him to a stairwell. Take these all the way up to the fourth floor.

Why is the militia here? he asked.

Misha didn’t answer. I think Mariam is in shock. She wouldn’t even tell them her name. I tried to get them to let her go home. I explained everything to them, what she’d been through.

Clearly Misha would give him no answers. He started up the stairs. By the time he reached the fourth floor his lungs burned and he stayed hidden on the landing while he caught his breath. When he opened the door a young woman stepped back, startled. He walked past her toward the reference desk and she followed him, her heels brushing the carpet. Straight ahead, a round-faced militia guard blocked the door of Mariam’s office.

The guard stopped him. Who are you?

That’s my wife in there. I’d like to speak to her.

How did you get in here?

Through the front door, he said, lying, and the young guard looked appropriately confused. He stepped aside and let John look through the narrow glass panel of the door to the storage room where Mariam had a desk—a makeshift office. The room was dark except for a ray of gray sunlight shining down like a spotlight from a high window. Mariam sat motionless in a chair in front of her desk, her profile exaggerated against the light, her eyelashes longer, her cheekbones higher, her jaw line sharper, her dark hair parted around a jutting ear. When he tapped on the door she turned to him, perfectly calm.

A man in a well-tailored suit came into view, a man who was alone with Mariam, standing behind her. He came to the door and opened it. John recognized in him the weighted confidence, the lack of humor and self-doubt required of men in their thirties, years off from middle age, yet no longer youthful. At the moment, Mariam was his captive, and John saw him as nothing less than a rival.

That’s my wife, John announced. What do you want with her?

The suited man questioned the guard. Where did he come from?

I don’t know, sir. He said someone let him in.

Who let you in? he asked John.

One of the guards at the front.

The front entrance?

Yes, John said with conviction. It was a gamble, since he had not taken a good look at the front entrance. He had only seen the guards outside, dealing with the crowd of students. He assumed there had to be guards inside, and with the militia there was always the possibility of some kind of communication breakdown, of someone not following orders. The militia guards were young and inexperienced, living out their ten months of mandatory service with varying degrees of enthusiasm. John had been one of them, many years ago, and since then the system that bred them had not changed.

I’d like a moment alone with my wife, John said.

The man thought, and conceded. Perhaps he wanted to check the front entrance to corroborate John’s story. It didn’t matter. A few minutes with Mariam was all he needed. After he saw her he would have a better idea of what to do.

The guard held the door open for him. John stepped over the threshold and waited for the door to close, but the door remained open with the guard standing there, watching them. Mariam held her hand out and he knelt in front of her, forgetting for a moment the guard at the door and the man in the suit, regretting only his foul mood that morning. She had been so unreachable and he had panicked. Her fingers were cold. He put his forehead against hers.

How did you get in? she whispered.

He spoke into her ear. Misha called me. What do they want?

She said she didn’t know.

It might have looked like they were plotting something, but they were only undoing some of their silent parting that morning. John pulled back and looked at her eyes. He couldn’t read them. Are they interviewing everyone?

Yes, I think so.

He shook his head. I don’t understand what this is all about. He wanted to ask her why the morning had started so strangely. Did you know they were coming?

I didn’t know, she insisted.

He brought her ear close to his lips again. Mariam, just answer their questions. Misha said you refused to answer them.

I don’t want to talk to them.

But you have to. Just answer their questions so they’ll move on.

It was possible Misha was right, that Mariam was in shock. She seemed listless and unafraid.

You have to go, John.

I’ll wait for you by the car. Answer their questions and get out of here. Leave the building and come to the car. Get it over with.

I will, she promised, and he kissed her dry lips. She sank into him, giving him some comfort before the guard told him to get up. The man in the suit was in the room again, standing next to them. John stood up and faced him. Who are you? he asked.

I’m from the Inspector’s Office, the man said.

But who are you? John wanted to know if he was police or military. He had never heard of an Inspector’s Office.

We’re just finishing up here. The guards will see you out.

Can I speak to you alone for a minute? John had decided to tell him that Mariam was in a delicate state, that if her behavior seemed odd it was because she was grieving. It was for no other reason than her grief.

The guards will see you out.

There were two guards by the door now. He looked at Mariam once more. She nodded, and he was confident she would be more cooperative now, that she would be out soon, but as the door slammed behind him he wondered if he’d made a mistake. Mariam was alone again, locked inside.

I’ll wait here, he said.

We have to take you outside, sir. They were polite enough as they pulled him along to the elevator. When he was let out of a back door he could see that he’d been expunged. He made his way slowly to the car, reeling, shaking, disturbed by the unnatural quiet outside. He went to the car and sat on the hood, waiting. He watched a black car drive up to the library exit.

A fear that had been gathering in John’s mind finally took form; he and that car were waiting for the same thing. He headed toward the car when the exit door flew open and four militia guards came tumbling out, off balance, ill-postured, struggling with a load. In their midst there was a patch of blue fabric, the blue of Mariam’s dress. He ran and shouted at them, ordering them to hand her over as if the chain of command ended with him. Her hands and legs were shackled but it took three of them to hold her while the other opened the back door. The one who held her legs entered the car first. He pulled her in as she cried out, the same wailing cry he’d heard when she was in labor. She cried in a way that would make them want to shut her up. John ran fast but she was sealed up before he could reach her. He heard her crying still, though it might only have been an echo.

He ran back to his car and followed the black car out to the road. Within a few minutes it covered a considerable distance, weaving expertly in and out of traffic. John struggled to keep it in view. He caught up with it near Government Square, where the road was congested with military jeeps and police cars. As the car wove through the gridlock John almost lost them again, but once they were clear of the Governor’s Palace, the car slowed and stopped beside a tall iron gate in front of the courthouse plaza.

John stopped behind it and got out of the car. He ran forward in a rage, ready to pound on the black car and make a scene here in Government Square. At least Mariam would know he hadn’t left her.

They waited until John was close enough. One of the guards came out of the car and stood ready with his baton. John stopped too late. He caught it in the head, the swing of the baton, and fell back into a black, bottomless well.

He was kicked awake by a police officer in a crowded jail cell. When he tried to sit up a splintering pain radiated from his left ear, shooting across his eyes, his jaw, and over the top of his head. John couldn’t get past the pain and the high-pitched ringing in his ear in order to get a good look at any of his companions. He only had some shadowy sense of their movements and their smell. He touched his ear and felt the swelling around it, and the thickened texture of his blood-soaked hair. The officer kicked him again. Get up, he said. He got halfway up before the officer grabbed his elbow and pulled him out of the cell, down a labyrinth of corridors to a large populated room lit with flickering fluorescent lamps. There were many rows of desks and lines of people down the aisles. The room reeked of cigarette smoke and perspiration, of fear and stress and exhaustion. John was taken to a desk in the corner and pushed into a seat. Under the ringing in his ear the sounds of the room were a low, constant hum, punctuated every now and then by someone shouting.

Is my wife here? John asked. The man behind the desk ignored him, his fat fingers laboriously writing tiny words into the tiny rectangles of a long form. The man looked weary, the skin under his eyes swollen high with fatigue.

Sign this, the man said, sliding a form across the desk. Someone is here for you. His voice was faint and warbled.

What is this? John asked.

It’s a report of your arrest, for trespassing.

I’m not signing this. I wasn’t aware that I was arrested. I was attacked with a baton. He looked around for the man in the tailored suit, or the guard that hit him, but the room was too full to see anyone.

You can’t leave unless you sign it, he said. He made a show of picking up the telephone. Someone is waiting for you. We can tell him to go.

John grabbed the pen and signed. What about my wife?

Your wife isn’t here.

How do you know that?

Your name is John Merchant. No woman named Merchant was brought in today. Unless your wife is one of those modern ladies who refuse to take their husbands’ names.

Maybe they didn’t record her name. I followed her here.

And then what?

And then I was hit with a baton in the head.

The man shrugged. We need to make some room. Take this to the window on your way out. He handed John the form and called over an old man whose son was missing. The old man gripped the back of John’s seat, waiting for him to vacate it.

John gave the release form to someone at the window and was handed a paper bag containing his wallet and car keys. We did you the courtesy of parking your car. If you hurry you can get it out of the courthouse lot before the gate closes.

John had to make his way through a long waiting room before he could get to the exit. Somewhere in the middle of the room he heard his name. He looked up and saw the top of Vic’s head, his curly hair and his sharp black eyes and his hand up in the air, waving him forward. John reached him and Vic pulled him toward the door.

When he got outside he gasped and coughed.

Vic waited for him to recover. My car is on the street, he said.

My car is in the courthouse lot, John said.

We’ll go in my car. We’ll get your car tomorrow.

He was too tired to argue. It was dark already and it occurred to him Mariam might be at home, waiting for him. How else would Vic have known to find him here?

We should take you to a hospital. Your head looks bad.

No, John said.

We should take a picture at least.

How did you know I was here?

It was the first place we looked. You should have told someone where you were going.

They reached Vic’s car, but John looked back at the courthouse, wondering if he should return and wait like all the others. There must have been some reason to wait, he thought. Vic opened the passenger door and nudged John into the seat. Vic got in the car and drove out cautiously through the vacant streets.

There were a lot of people in there, John said.

It’s been that way since the rebellion, Vic said. He never called them riots, which suggested nihilism, anarchy, not an organized upsurge, and he would never use the same term the military used to justify their arbitrary actions. It was all the same to John. No matter what they called it, the consequences were dire.

What about Mariam? John asked.

She isn’t here, John, but we’ll find her.

They took her from the library.

I know. I went there to look for you.

Vic parked along a row of brick townhouses across from the canal. This was the street on which they lived, in the same townhouse, in identical apartments down the hall from each other.

John went ahead of Vic. They entered the shabby vestibule of their building, where the fleur-de-lis pattern of the wallpaper, barely visible under layers of dust and smoke stains, suggested a more stylish past. He pulled his keys out of the paper bag before he reached the top of the stairs. At his door, he fumbled around the keyhole until Vic took hold of the keys and let him in. John turned to him. Thank you, he said. He was grateful Vic had come to get him, but he couldn’t talk to him now. I’ll come and find you later. He let the door slam shut and locked it behind him.

He stood still in the foyer, listening. He didn’t hear a sound beyond the blood rushing in his ears. He switched on a light and walked carefully through the apartment. The bedroom door was ajar. They always left it that way, but he stopped before reaching it, called out to Mariam, and waited for the silence to settle. He looked inside and saw the bed exactly as they had left it that morning. During the riots they had locked themselves in this room, grieving the loss they’d suffered together, their grief seeping into the sheets, the mattress, the floor. When they came out of it, the air was still thick with smoke and the canal wall was shattered. They were under martial law, but the only thing he cared about was Mariam.

He closed the door and went to the kitchen, switching the light on, finding a glass, filling it with water, drinking. Then he took the glass to the liquor cabinet and filled it with whiskey. He drank it in a long swallow that burned his throat and made his body feel like it was overheating from its core. He put an ice pack on his head and wandered into the dining room. It was still cluttered from a small gathering they’d had only a few days earlier, just the two of them and their neighbors, to celebrate the arrival of a book he was going to publish in England. He only had one review copy, sent by parcel post, and Mariam had swooned over it. She kept repeating how proud she was, how proud she was. Let’s celebrate, she insisted. It only occurred to him now how strange that was, how it must have appeared to their neighbors as a kind of mental breakdown when she showed up at their door asking them to come and toast a book they didn’t even know had been written. What was there to celebrate when their world was falling apart, and why didn’t Mariam share their dread?

On Saturday she made hors d’oeuvres and opened a bottle of cheap champagne. She displayed the book on the table, and eight people stood around it choking their champagne flutes and staring at the book, waiting for it to do something extraordinary. John was afraid to look at anyone. He felt foolish, presenting people with a book that was going to be published overseas and read by no one. And the arrival of the book had shaken him, as if contained within it was not a geological history but a chronicle of his mistakes, layers of them, page upon page.

Not when it was in pieces, when it was nothing but a mess of papers and notebooks filled with scribbles and drafts and ideas he had endless chances to articulate in the isolation of their cabin, not when work and sex were of the same continuum, when their whole existence was a perfect darkness, filled with a profound connection to each other and everything around them, but in this bound form, which came about after, after he brought her here. A confluence of factors made it necessary for them to leave that life behind. That was what he told himself but a small part of him had wanted a reprieve, some possibility for escape. Sometimes the escape was all he could think of. He imagined it so fully that when he finally did get away, all of the things he’d imagined simply happened, as if they’d been pre-arranged. At the International Geological Congress his confidence was infallible, his future suddenly opening up before him. On his last evening, he spoke to an American woman at the hotel bar, and he spent the rest of the night fucking her in her room. To plunge into her unfamiliar body seemed like a fitting end to his trip, the only thing left to do, but on the flight home he wished he could die, that every strange grinding noise could be the last breath of the engines. He came home late, exhausted, feeling ashamed and transparent. He saw Mariam at the top of the stairs, saw her take in and shake off the look of him. By the time he met her on the stairs and took her into his arms she had recovered, remembering her news. She was pregnant again. She’d been afraid to say anything before he left, but she was already at fifteen weeks, and there was a heartbeat and a fetus that was the right size. Did you suspect anything? she asked. He must have, but he couldn’t remember. He could not remember anything about her body before he left, but he was grateful, so grateful for the distraction.

At her strange party someone commented on the cover. It featured a stark black-and-white aerial photograph of the Belet River Valley, all of its gorges obscured by a thick cover of foliage except for the largest one, the one that cut through the campus of Mount Belet College. That great earthly gash was pictured at the bottom right corner, just below his name. Mariam had found the photograph in the college archives. They had met on a bridge above that gorge.

There was no question of authorship. It was a book about the geology of their country, written by a geologist, but he knew it was more than that, more than what it would have been if he had tried it alone. The book needed something other than land features and rock records. It needed something to connect the geography and the geology of the country, to populate and inhabit the land and give the account some warmth. Because it wasn’t his area of study Mariam was the one who provided all that research. They discussed it often, struggling together to understand the link between geology and humanity. It was miraculous to her that these mechanistic forces inside the earth had created civilizations that bound people for generations to one place, those generations consuming elements of the land, putting the land in their blood, and returning their blood to the land. It was beautiful to her in a way he couldn’t quite understand, and sometimes he felt he lacked something when he saw her moved so deeply. She was obsessed with earth as a place, but place only has meaning for people, for humans and their consciousness. For him it was an interesting puzzle for the earth and all its compulsions and humanity and all of its compulsions to exist together. They were opposing forces advancing toward each other in a long, quiet, bloodless war, and the earth would win—there was no doubting that. Only the earth that supported human life would die, but the planet itself, the sphere of rock and fire, would go on until it was consumed by something more powerful. He knew she understood that, perhaps too personally, and the book to her was like a still life painting in a museum, capturing something before it was lost forever. But all of it would be lost. The book, the painting, the museum itself.

She wrote whole passages that were left untouched throughout the book. In essence they had written it together. He had this realization only now, as he stared at the book and the sad remnants of their celebration. He swore the truth of it hadn’t struck him before. He remembered how much he struggled to find a way to explain her contribution, and how the dedication alone had crippled him. He’d wanted something poetic, but in the end all he could settle on was the simplest, for Mariam, having deleted all the clauses he had attached previously, my love, my savior, my paradise, my home.

When he did dare a glance in her direction during their belabored celebration, he recognized a glint in her eyes. Rage. Stifled, but unmistakable.

PART ONE

Mount Belet

ONE

Asilky fog had fallen over the hilltop. At four in the morning, after finishing his chemistry lab, John