Oranges

Bump. Bump.Bump.

Screeeeeeeee...bump, bump, bump.

I wonder if my bones will ever be free of this shudder.

If this is a road, then I am a beautiful blonde, the Helen of Troy variety.

Although, Helen was probably a brunette.

Except in that stupid movie.

Bump, bump, bump.

Poor Christine.

Yes, I do call her Christine.

No, she’s not homicidal.

Neither am I.

Although, that might change, if this goes on for long.

Yes, I am lost. And no, my car doesn’t have GPS.

And yes, it’s the classic horror movie setting: a dark, moonless night, a luckless 20 year old in a battered blue sedan, a dirt road leading nowhere at the moment.

Oh great.

The dirt road ends and now my headlights pick out the roads ahead.

Yes, roads, in plural. And real, honest to goodness, tar and cement roads.

Only: no signboards.

There’s only the comforting purr of Christine’s insides.

Sigh.

I turn off the engine, leaving the lights on.

The silence, to use a cliché, is deafening.

Which way?

Does it matter?

The luminous dial of my watch shows: 10.30pm.

The most I can hope for is to find a place for the night.

If there was a cat, I would follow it.

There is a cat.

It stares at me with golden eyes, unblinking, still, in that cat way.

Cat stares at me, and then takes the road to the left.

I’m crazy enough to think this is a sign.

Of what, I would prefer not to speculate.

The road is smooth, silk, even, and Christine glides along.

It’s just trees on both sides, tall, really tall. And really wide.

Wow, how big is that tree?

I should be scared. A little, at least.

But I’m not.

Fear requires imagination.

I’m damnably prosaic, most of the time.

There’s the earth, the sky, the water, the trees.

People, who are shitheads, most of the time.

These are facts.

I look at the moon and think of the cold hard rock.

Millenia passing in a lonely orbit around life, trying to have a conversation with water.

I feel tired, all of a sudden.

There’s no sign of life anywhere.

I curse the cat.

And here, the road ends.

A wrought iron gate, slightly ajar.

Further up, I can see the silhouette of a building.

No, it’s not a castle with spires.

The gate opens without a noise.

See?

Somebody lives here.

Hallelujah.

As I drive in, my nose is assaulted by a most unexpected smell.

It’s distinct, and completely unmistakable.

Oranges.

Maybe there’s an orchard somewhere here.

Although, it is June, and don’t oranges come later? Or earlier?

In the headlights, I can barely make out a hedgerow. As I pull up in front of the house, I can feel the gravel crunch beneath Christine.

I stare at my find.

It’s a two storey house; probably dating back to the early twentieth. There’s something very colonial about it- the latticed windows, the stone façade, the tiled roof.

There’s no light from within.

For all I know, this is a deserted property.

Great.

If I was lucky the door would open and-

The door opened.

I won’t deny that I’m..startled.

Oh, alright, I nearly jump out my skin.

A figure with a lamp, the old fashioned kerosene type.

I’m in the middle of a Ruskin Bond story.

She-for now I can make out it’s a woman-raises the lamp a little higher.

An old woman.

‘Who’s there?’ she calls out in a quavering voice.

It talks! In a quavering voice!

Ghosts do not quaver; that’s left to mortals.

Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch under my feet.

I put on my best lost boy look.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, but I’m lost and was looking for a place to spend the night. Your gate was open, so..”

In the lamplight, I can see her face, a brown wrinkled raisin. She looks me over, and then over my shoulder,

‘Oh’, she nods.

Good old Christine.

The woman stepped back and indicates that I should follow her, which I do, down a short passage. I see that there are two arches that probably open out into a drawing room and a dining room, but she’s heading toward a flight of stairs.

“There’s no electricity’ she says, ‘Been gone for days. Unreliable.”

‘Yes, that happens where I live too.”

‘Where?”

“Uh..Bangalore?”

‘Oh, the city.”

‘Yes”

“Are you hungry?”

I am, but it seems rude to take advantage of an old woman’s hospitality.

“No.”

“Alright, I will show you to your room then.”

Up, up, up creaky wooden stairs.

She shuffles, I step with care.

There are three doors on the landing, two to the right and one to the left.

She opens the door to the left. It’s a big room, bare except for a single bed and a chest of drawers pushed against the wall on the left. The room smells musty. There’s a window in the wall facing the door, so I walk across to open it. The hinges squeak, and I can feel the dust on my fingers. I breathe in the night air and turn back to her.

‘Do you have an orchard here somewhere? The oranges smell so sweet.”

Something flickers in her face, or it may be a trick of the lamplight.

“There’s an orange tree in the garden.”

She turns around and shuffles away, leaving me in-well, almost darkness.

The moon is up, I realize, probably the trees were obscuring it on my drive; but now the moonlight gathers in a puddle on the floor. The aroma of the oranges wafts in and swirls.

I’m tired.

The bed looks hard and uninviting, but you know what they say about beggars not being choosers. As long as there aren’t any bed bugs, I’m going to be fine.

I fall asleep as soon as my head touches the mattress.

I don’t know what it is that wakes me up, but suddenly, I’m wide awake. The ceiling is high and a patchy cream. Where on earth am I? There’s a half light in the room- dawn. I squint at my watch, 6.30 a.m.

Swinging my feet off the bed, I survey the room- wallpaper- peeling and faded, but faintly recognizable pattern of fading bunches of primroses; my feet are on a dusty, but fairly lovely wooden floor. Outside the window, there’s a light mist, fading even as I stick my head out. A straggly lawn; the grass grown wild, and few broken pots to the side; a brick wall borders the far end; and at one end, a really magnificent orange tree. Even at this distance, I can see the bright oranges; the smell of them had never entirely gone.

My stomach rumbles.

I should get going. But first, I’m going to pluck me some of those oranges.

I pause for a minute at the landing. Silence. Perhaps she hasn’t woken up.

Old women are allowed to sleep in.

But it wouldn’t be nice to just disappear without saying thank you, at least.

I knock on first one door, and then the next.

I don’t know her name- she never asked me mine either, I realize now- so I try calling ‘Ma’am?’, softly first and then louder. Maybe she was deaf. Although, it hadn’t seemed like it last night. Maybe she is a heavy sleeper. All this knocking on hard wood doors is making my knuckles sore.

5 minutes more and I give up.

Downstairs, the drawing room- floral wallpaper again, this time daisies, more dusty wooden furniture- looks like it hasn’t been used in decades. Maybe the old lady doesn’t get many visitors, and god knows, domestic help must be hard to come by in this place.

Through the dining room- huge solid oak table, six chairs- and into the kitchen, which turns out to be really large, with an honest to goodness fireplace and all that. There are shelves, but I don’t open them. There’s a tap over the cracked porcelain sink. I open it. Muddy water spurts and then trickles. If I didn’t know better I’d say nobody had lived in this place for years.

I’m not sure what to do, but I’m going to settle for leaving some money on the table. Impersonal, I know, but I don’t have a paper or a pen or a pencil, and I’m sure as hell not going to find any writing implement in this place! So I leave 300 bucks on the dining table- what? It’s quite enough for a mattress and a dusty room- and let myself out of the front door.

Christine is there, dew drenched, the first rays of the sun dappling her roof.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

I make my way around the side of the house. Across the lawn, the orange tree stands, its branches extending on one side over the brick wall. The grass is still wet, although the sun grows bolder by the minute. The smell of the oranges is strong enough to almost knock me out, this close.

I reach out a hand to pluck the nearest one.

‘Did you ask permission?’ asked an accusing voice from mid air.

I freeze.

A rustle of leaves and something lands in front of me.

A girl, about eleven, I would guess. Dressed in a nightgown, turn of century-that would be 19^th-all ruffles and lace around the collars. She’s staring at me reproachfully with hazel eyes set underneath straight black brows. Her black hair is tied back neatly in a plait, the blackness in startling contrast to her pale skin. She looks like Orphan Annie.

“Er..I didn’t know whom to ask. There wasn’t anyone…” I gesture toward the house.

“Grandma’s a heavy sleeper”, she agrees.

Aha. Grandmother.

Thank God, I was beginning to wonder if I’d imagined her.

“You live here?”

She gives me a look as though to say ‘duh’.

Ok, peachy.

‘So, may I?”

She gives me a considering look.

“Only if you help me.”

She was kind of sweet, the way she was acting like a twenty one year old, instead of ten.

“What kind of help?”

“I can’t reach my cat”, she pointed upward. “I climbed after him but he kept going higher and higher.”

I tilted my head up following her pointing finger. From this angle, the tree seemed taller than it seemed. And up in a branch, around midway up the trees, sat the cat.

Damn me, but it’s the cat from last night.

The same baleful golden glare.

Alright, it might not be the same cat from last night; it was way too high up for me to know whether it had golden eyes; but-it was black, and hey, I thought it was the same cat, and that my friends, sent a shiver down my spine.

A cold hand tugged at mine.

‘Well?”

And damn me again, if she didn’t give me the sweetest smile, the kind that Bella gave when she’s pleading with me to join in some childish game that involves dolls and rabbits.

Bella, bellisima, Dad would croon to her.

Bella, bellisima, cold and white.

And so I haul myself up to the lowest branch. It creaks under my weight as I nudge toward the trunk. It isn’t a hard tree to climb, thank the Lord. Nevertheless, the bark scrapes my hands raw, as I haul myself up two more branches.

Meanwhile, Bella-well, not Bella-the girl says “Just a little higher” and “ Don’t scare him!”

The cat hasn’t moved.

He lets me get two branches higher.

Hey kitty, kitty. Here, kitty, kitty.

It isn’t the same cat. This one has green eyes. Quite a beautiful creature, really.

I have to admit, I’m relieved.

I reach out a hand, tentatively.

He leaps, a lithe ballet dancer, onto the branch above.

I sigh, look down below.

I’ve come up much higher than I’d thought. Really, are oranges trees this tall? It hadn’t looked this tall.

She stood, a face upturned, a tiny figure, anxiety in her stance though I couldn’t see her expression.

Lifting my eyes, I look around. Here, in the heart of the tree, all I can see are little strips of sunshine through the green of leaves. I can’t see the house. It’s so quiet here. The stillness of a mountain, of a desert afternoon, an empty heart.

Meanwhile: the cat.

It was looking at me, slightly supercilious.

Cats.

I go for authoritative this time.

‘Cat! Get down here at once!”

No movement.

So that’s the way it’s going to be, huh?

I scramble onto the branch where the infernal cat has decided to perch. Surprisingly, this time, he doesn’t climb higher, but moves to the edge.

I go back to cajoling.

Hey kitty, nice kitty, give you a dead mouse, kitty.

Kitty isn’t having any of it.

Smart kitty.

You don’t have to be a cat to know humans are an untrustworthy species.

I try to slide along the branch a little.

Kitty doesn’t move, a good sign.

“You’re almost there, mister”, Bella’s-the girl’s voice- comes floating up.

A final lunge.

I think I grab a bit of fur as I fall.

My life, as they say, flashes before my eyes.

I blink a couple of times as the light strikes my eyes.

Close them again.

“Are you awake?” says a voice, slightly unearthly.

I move my head a little.

Bella is sitting there, eating an orange.

I’m not dead.

Dead couldn’t possibly hurt this much.

Gingerly, I flex first my fingers and then my toes.

Then I raise my hand to my head, which feels like an elephant was sitting on it.

No bumps on the forehead. But maybe a cut or two. There’s a little wetness somewhere.

Alright.

We can get up now.

I raise myself on my elbows and the world swims a bit.

Close eyes and try again.

This time, I think I’m sitting up.

I open my eyes and move my head toward Bella.

She’s looking at me interestedly.

‘That was quite a fall.’

‘It was.’

‘Does it hurt?’

One would expect even a child to know that if you fell, like, twenty feet and were not dead, yes, it would hurt.

What do they teach the kids these days?

‘Yes’.

A thought occurred.

‘Where’s the cat?’

‘Oh, he wandered off.’

Oh.

What?

She offered me another orange, fully peeled.

‘I peeled it for you.’

‘Thank you, I guess.’

‘Are you going now?’

‘Should I?’

‘Yes, I think it would be better.’

‘Why?’

She hesitated.

‘You’re nice.’

Heck, yeah, but that didn’t make sense.

‘So?’

‘Well, um. Things happen.’

Yes. Like I wander into a loony bin, complete with mysteriously disappearing grandmother and a troublesome cat.

Also:

‘It’s not the season for oranges.’

There’s something slightly sad in her eyes now.

‘But I like them.’

‘They grow now because you like them?’

‘Something like that.’

Oh.

She looks a little forlorn now.

I eat one.

They’re incredibly sweet.

I’m either incredibly brave, or incredibly stupid.

Perhaps neither, perhaps both.

‘You should go.’

There’s an urgency to her voice now, and she suddenly gets up and yanks at my arm.

It’s surprisingly strong, that pull, and I’m up on my feet.

‘Go!’

So, I go.

I turn back to look at her as I reach the end of the lawn, but she’s gone.

Bella, bellisima.

The air is still, and the sunlight warm, but now I’m running to Christine, my feet thump, thump on the gravel. Slamming the door, I rev up the engine and reverse out of the drive. Don’t even bother to turn. The gate is open, but I’m convinced it’s going to close any minute. I know it’s going to close.

I’m barely out of it, when it clangs shut.

I’m so stupid that for about two minutes, I just sit there staring.

Nothing happens.

And then: it’s all gone.

All of it.

The gate, the house.

No sound, no whirl, not even a slow fading.

It was there, and then not.

There’s just me, sitting in the car, gaping, my heart feeling like it’s going to burst out of my chest.

After ten minutes, I get out.

Where the house stood is just weeds, wild flowers.

I look toward the side, where the garden was.

Just more weeds, no wall, no tree, nothing.

So I get back in my car, turn it around and drive down the road, and in ten minutes I’m back at the crossroads.

In the light of day, I see a small signboard, practically in a ditch that points down the road to the right. In faded, half eaten black letters on yellow: Kodagu, 35kms.

I draw down the window, and turn on the radio. Static, but a couple of twists to the dial lands me at a farmer’s education programme.

The dial on my watch says 8.45 am.

The funeral’s at four.

There’s time.

A light breeze follows me down the road, bringing with it a faint whiff of oranges.