The Folded Earth: A Novel by Anuradha Roy Read Free Book Online Page B

been to the Dhobi Ghat once. You need to be agile: the descent to it is through pine forest and for feet not used to them the needles that cover the ground below the trees can be treacherous. I had to calculate every step so that I did not lose my footing and hurtle down the hillside. Around me the forest stretched for quiet miles, uphill toward Aspen Lodge, which was quite close, though hidden by trees, and on the other side it descended to a valley, which could be crossed for a shortcut to the town’s bazaar. At the heart of the forest, I felt as if nothing and nobody existed apart from my own panting breath and aching knees. I kept going, having decided I must. When I reached ramparts of thorny bushes and slippery, mossy rock I hesitated, but at the thought of the steep ascent that was the only way back, I beat down the bushes with my walking stick and pressed on.
    Near the end of the steepness, I heard the low gurgle of rushing water. Where the path met the stream there was a flattening, a stretch of soft grass, an opening fringed by trees. There were boulders to sit on, over pools of clear water into which feet could be dangled. Time passed idly down the stream, as I daydreamed, watching insects slide and swoop at the edges and dead leaves flow by.
    Because it was so inaccessible, Charu never came across anyone at the Dhobi Ghat when she went down with her goats. This became their most frequent meeting place, though there were others. She told the boy the names of all her goats. She told him of her five cows, especially of the black and white Jersey cow whom she called Gouri Joshi. Gouri had come as a large-eyed, timid, sweet-faced calf when Charu was a girl and whenever she was troubled or scolded by her grandmother she still ran to Gouri and buried her face in the cow’s warm flanks, breathing in its comforting scent of dung and straw and milk. Gouri’s eyes were dark pools of patience and had lashes that were a mile long. She never kicked, however long Charu held her. The only difficulty was that she was inclined to wander far off and then had to be searched for throughout the forest, and begged to come back home.
    “Like you,” he said. “A wild thing.”
    He was half-Nepalese, as she was, a child of the hills as well, but from a low-lying small town, so the sounds of the forest did not speak a language he understood. Over the next months she showed him which of the yellow berries that studded the bushes were edible and which ones were poisonous. She showed him how to find the best kafal trees and blackberry bushes, and which persimmon trees could be raided without fear of watchmen. She pulled sprigs of wild oregano from the forest floor and crushed the leaves between her palms and made him breathe in the fragrance. Martens should be chased away, Charu told him, they raided birds’ nests and hen coops. Foxes could be ignored, but you had to protect your goats from jackals.
    He listened faithfully to her lectures, but when it came to a thorn deep in Bijli’s paw, it was he who pulled it out with no fear of the dog’s low growls, and Charu thought she had never known anyone so brave. And once at dusk they saw a leopard slink through the trees into the gorge below. They clutched each other’s hands for reassurance and did not let go long after the leopard had vanished. Charu thought it a kind of magic how neatly her hand fitted within his and how, when she was with him, her shyness left her and she became a chatterbox—as if all the words inside her had been readying and ripening for him.
    One day, about a month later, when he was not at the stream, she waited and waited, growing annoyed, then anxious. She was so angry she told herself she would never see him again. The next minute, she was clawed by the worry that his city feet had slipped on the way down and he had fallen somewhere, bones broken, not able to cry loud enough for help. She clambered up the hill, leaving her goats unwatched. Where the slope met