Een had sweltered from the foothills to the hilltop. There were no buses at that time of day and life in the hills had stalled with the dragonish summer. He clambered up a pariah rubber tree, foreign to the mountains and its folks. Shade melted his skin as he dripped from the branches like an overripe fruit. It was a few miles yet before the mill and he wasn’t sure of the situation there. He would wait for a vehicle and hitch a ride. He had to get back home by twilight.
The silence of the hills humoured him. He wondered what the villagers here did as they waited for their tangelos to fatten. They cut the grass that clotted their plantations and weighed their chickens from time to time. They cried about their cows and smoked with obscenely long bamboo poles. That was what the valley people said when they drove up once every year to buy their harvest. But life in the mountains didn’t look simple. It was hard enough to draw water uphill and drive across the battered roads. It couldn’t be easy to make the harvest at the end of each year without a bucket of sorrow. Een sighed and scanned the slope, smoothening his muscular arms and wishing he had cut his hair.
A girl walked up from beyond the grass, out of a pile of obscured red homes. She stood on the other side of the road with a little aimless bag slung across her chest. Perhaps she was done with the day’s work and was heading out to town. People here seldom visited the valley, except when they needed to renew their documents or shop for jewels. She had long straight hair that hung like perfect parallel threads, falling with affection on her shoulders before they feathered down her back. The girl had a strong posture, there was little that could deter her – she was as much a fig tree, a primate, and a trout as she was a human being. The boy admired her taut skin and the fullness of her face, her eyes big enough to swallow him with a quiet blink.
It was clear that she was waiting for a ride too. Een twiddled his thumbs. He wondered whether the girl would understand his language, and if she was headed the same way. There had been no vehicles for a half hour and Een had considered walking further down. He would ask the girl if there were lorries that came up after lunch, if there was construction happening ahead.
He skipped down the slope and dusted his pants, damping himself with a handkerchief. The girl squatted with her elbows on her thighs, her palms hung over her head. She wore an archaic stone ring, it seemed to have shaped her finger over the years. He stood beside her, but didn’t speak. She acknowledged him but seemed distracted by the thickets of broom and rubber trees growing beyond the slope. It amused Een to see the irony of her self-possession, that she was oblivious to its intricate and alluring charm. She wore little brown earrings that were shaped like chestnuts and she smelt like a pond replenished by a molten rain. Her dress was almost comical, a cross between an indigenous and contemporary outfit, as though she were half-dressed for a play– a plain green dress with a thinly sewed black sash and a dark pant-like fabric that flowed out at the calves. She wore woody slippers and a beaded anklet.
Een steadied himself and waited for her to meet his eye, but the sun made the world feel like a beehive and forced them into silence till they had shuffled into some shade.
‘Waiting for the bus?’ he asked, using his language.
‘I am going to my school,’ she replied in hers. He understood well enough.
‘It’s Sunday.’
‘I know. I know. We have a dance programme today. I am waiting for the school van. The driver must have fallen sick.’
The girl’s enthusiasm stimulated him.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked, twisting her palm as though she were plucking a mango.
‘To the rice mill. They called for someone to come up from the valley.’
He paused to look at her as she licked her tongue.
‘Will there be any buses coming?’
‘No, no, not today. You will have to wait for the jeeps. They might come in an hour.’
Een frowned and looked past the girl’s shoulder while she caught glimpses of his robust jaws and bottleneck triceps. He had a band around his head and wore a sleeveless vest and a heavy pant. His clothes seemed to be his skin. She couldn’t fathom him in a different attire. His hair waved over his eyebrows and ears and made the girl smile at herself.
‘Why do you wear that around your head?’ she asked, drawing his attention back to her.
‘It was my grandmother’s. She used to say that it keeps your brain in your head.’
‘Where else can it be?’
‘I never understood actually.’
‘My grandmother tells me the story of our village in the evenings. Except for when it rains. Those days she just sits in the porch and watches the rain fall.’
‘My grandmother used to walk to the next town when she was a little girl. To buy things from the market. That was before the town grew.’
‘Our village was always known for its fruits. It’s because we live in the lower hill. It doesn’t get cold here and there’s enough rain. But that’s not entirely why. It is because of our soil. And my grandmother tells me that every day.’
Een listened to her like he had always known her. She squatted once again and tied her hair into a high ponytail. She clicked her tongue and studied a moth that had settled on her forearm. A flotilla of shadows swam about the still pool of day. Insects hidden in the plantation mocked each other and hunted for triangles of shade. Een admired the shape of the girl’s body when she squatted. He decided to sit so she wouldn’t stand up again.
‘My sister is becoming a teacher,’ she said. ‘She comes to our school to teach English.’
‘When will she become a teacher?’
‘In six months. But I don’t think I’ll become a teacher.’
‘You can try.’
‘The students in my class are so noisy. Sometimes I feel bad for the teachers.’
Een looked at her sideways and watched as a bunch of hair escaped her ponytail and tickled the tips of her nose. She had a round chin and round cheeks, unlike his sharp features. Despite their struggles, the hill people appeared largely untouched by the elements of civilization. Een wiped his forehead once again. The heat made them sweat and aware of everything living.
‘I don’t know why they need me at the mill. Maybe the boys drank too much yesterday.’
‘So your family runs a rice business?’
‘Not really. We connect the farmers of the hills to stores in the valley.’
The girl nodded. ‘Middlemen’ had become frequenters of the hills. The villagers often sold their harvest in the local markets, but they hardly broke even. The rising cost of fertilizer, school fees and fuel forced them to sell their produce to traders from the valley. The middlemen’s bilingual ability helped them sell in wider markets – the farmers made more than usual, but little of the total revenue. Over the years, the villagers had grown resentful of the traders. The girl smiled and hung her hands over her knees.
‘What’s your name boy?’
‘Een.’
She scowled and looked at her feet. She fished out a broad leaf and dabbed it with a white paint like substance, before rolling it under her tongue. She chewed it animatedly and took out a pouch of violet, rubbery fruits. She ate them one at a time, contemplating the boy’s name.
‘What’s yours,’ he asked aloud.
‘Soh Farnia Dahl,’ she said proudly.
‘Oh,’ the boy sounded surprised. They didn’t have names like that in the valley. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It’s…a tangy fruit. I don’t know how to explain. It’s only found in my mother’s village. It has a blue skin and it is light blue inside. And it’s extremely sour. They usually make juice out of it.’
She looked at Een, momentarily suspicious of him. Then she nodded, her ponytail swaying across her back, her gaze traveling to the end of the curve. There was nobody around, it was lunchtime and Soh Farnia had to be in school.
‘Maybe I’ll walk,’ she said. ‘It’s not that far, it’s just too hot.’
Een stood up and kicked his legs. They began to walk through the mixed plantation, the soil here confused by the myriad vegetation. Despite the farmers’ respect for their soil, they had little choice left to grow what they wished. The bushes concealed them like they were little creatures and shielded them from the giant sun. Soh Farnia had a way of eating her fruit. She first nibbled at the skin like she were a squirrel, then gnawed off one side with her front teeth before discarding the seed with her thumb. She then popped the rest of the fruit in her cheek and played with it till it was gone.
‘So are you going to become a businessman?’ she asked, half turning to Een.
‘I’m going to become a footballer.’
‘Oh,’ she said, swerving her head dramatically with her big eyes. ‘Then I’ll see you on TV.’
‘Yes, it shouldn’t be long. I play for my district now.’
The girl was silent for a few moments before she spoke again.
‘We hill people don’t have a lot of choices. We go to school, then college, and then back to our farms. Some of us become teachers, some go to the city and become nurses. My sister tells me that there aren’t a lot of jobs in the hills. But if people move out, there won’t be anyone left to take care of the land.’
‘So you’re going to stay here?’
‘I don’t want to become a teacher,’ she said again. ‘But I don’t know. She watched a vein in his neck thicken as she spoke. ‘You must know a lot of people then, if you play football.’
‘Well, I suppose.’
‘And you must travel to a lot of places too.’
Een shrugged. Soh Farnia did a little dance and skipped over a stone. She laughed and said,
‘I have never been beyond the village. I’ve been to the valley a few times to buy some clothes. But my sister usually goes to buy them for me. I haven’t seen anything beyond these hills.’
Een looked at the ground as he scrunched it with his sandals. He was no longer interested in the mill or finding a bus to get there. He wanted to go anywhere Soh Farnia went. He would think about returning home when he had to. For now, the world had turned into a photograph and they were the only parts in the picture that moved.
‘I always take this shortcut when my cycle gets punctured,’ she explained. ‘Then I have to patch it up in the evening after school.’
Een grew serious. They walked silently to the end of a mango plantation and reached a slope of paddy that descended to a drying pond. She turned and walked along the slope, leading Een into a path that ran between tall and slender timber trees. They resembled enormous pencils with florets of cauliflower attached to the treetops. It was cooler here and the trees seemed to whisper secrets amongst themselves as they passed. They slipped out of the shade and onto an old gravely patch. Een stopped to see what lay in front of him. A planet that had no semblance to anything they had crossed. It was a vast grassland scattered with ruins of old, crumbly stone structures. There was no plantation or village and all Een could see was the horizon and clouds leaping out of it like fish. The ground was agriculturally useless and stretched into a monumental plateau of wasteland. Nothing here seemed to have been touched in a few centuries. The trees were wild and the grass prickly, lacking in colour unlike the rest of the hills. The sky gathered the clouds over the boy and the girl, protecting their memory of the place from heated dismay. And on either side, where the timber trees ended, was a sandy path that ran along the length of the endless field.
‘I think football is a great career. You will see a lot of the world and learn so many things…’
She seemed to have been defeated by her knowledge of the subject, and thus her ability to express more of what she felt. She tilted her head and smiled.
‘I think it’s better than having a job,’ she managed.
‘What’s the difference between a job and a career?’
‘A career is something you have for life. A job is something you do.’
She studied his features with great care as she spoke. Een was impressed by her intellect.
‘So, what is your full name?’
‘Eentel Bronze.’
She pursed her lips and nodded in appreciation. She held out her hand – Een stuck his arm out awkwardly and she held it firm, surprising him with her strength. She looked into his eyes, her own eyes glistening with sincerity.
‘If you follow that path, you will reach the main road once again. There’s a depot there where jeeps usually hang around. I’m sure you’ll know how to talk to them.’
She was still holding his hand.
‘Eentel Bronze,’ she said, a moment of longing transpiring between them.
She shook her pouch of fruits and pressed a bunch into his palm. She then spun around and made her way along the opposite stretch of the path – the trees thick on her left and the barren, bizarre field on her right. Een watched her become smaller and smaller in the world’s space, an incurable pain making him want to faint. And when at last he turned around, he no longer felt like himself. Time had returned. He hunched his shoulders and stooped through the rising wind, as the first rain of the year made its way to earth.
Beautiful