Page 29 of The Secret Keeper of Jaipur

I tighten my hold on Chullu. He squeals and wriggles, trying to get out of my arms. “I don’t know what you mean.”

She turns to face me. Her gaze is direct, but there is softness in her voice. “You could profit from the gold, couldn’t you?”

Does she think I’m doing this so I cansellthe gold? That all I care about isme? “You think I’d take advantage of my brother’s death to claim the gold for myself?”

She answers in a gentle tone. “Or for your children. I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

“Thosegoondaswould do to me what they’ve done to Vinay.” I glance at Vinay’s body sprawled a foot away. “My brother made a mistake. He must have been desperate. Our life is not easy. The work is hard and there’s no money in it. He wanted to send his sons to school, so they could have a different life, away from herding and shearing—” I have to stop myself from babbling. Tears have blurred my vision.

Lakshmi looks, again, at my brother’s body. “What about...” She pauses and lets her words hang in the air. Her expression tells me what she’s thinking.

“We burn our dead like all Hindus,” I say. “But...”

I look around me, at the rocky landscape. The proper thing to do would be to burn his body where he died. But there’s no way to make a platform, or to cut the wood. I have no tools with me. In this moment, I feel an intense longing for my tribe. If we were all together, we could have—would have—made it happen. It’s what we always do when someone dies on the trail. It’s what we did when Dev died.

If I were with my tribe, we’d have a proper funeral. The village elder would recite the prayers, and the women, all of them, including his wife, Selma, would bathe Vinay, and wrap him carefully, tenderly, in a freshly washed sheet. Tears again fill my eyes. Rekha reaches for my hand.

“Next to the hospital,” Lakshmi says, quietly. “There is a crematorium—where we burn those who have died.”

I feel as if I’ve walked a hundred miles. I don’t remember ever feeling this exhausted. I no longer try to hide my tears; they spill over my cheeks and down my chin. I’ve been holding Rekha’s hand to comfort myself as much as her. Now I let go and wipe my face with my free hand, pressing my knuckles into the sockets of my eyes until I see stars.

Why did you leave me, Dev? If you were still here, we’d be with our people, up in our summer home. None of this would be happening. And where are you, Malik? Why have you gone away? First Dev, then Malik, now Vinay. Must I lose everybody?

Lakshmi gently eases Chullu from my grasp. She combs his hair away from his forehead with her fingers and smiles at him. She holds her hand out to Rekha, who moves to take it. As if she knows what I’m thinking, Lakshmi says, so softly I think I might have imagined it, “It will be all right, Nimmi.”

I heave a sigh. After a moment, I remove the bedroll from my back and set it to one side of the clearing. Lakshmi flattens out the bedroll and sets Chullu down on it. I untie the bundle from my waist to take out a fewchapattiand an onion. I break off a piece of bread and give it to my son to gnaw on with his baby teeth. The rest I hand to Rekha.

“Sit with Chullu for a bit, okay?” I say to her. My daughter sits next to her brother and feeds him another piece ofchapatti.

I go over to my brother’s body. It hurts to look at him. I can’t stop thinking of the hours he was suffering before death relieved him. I start to undress him, thinking that he looks much younger in death than he did in life. Gone are the wrinkles around his eyes, the result of his habitual squinting. I see his cheeks are smoother now. I am embarrassed to look at him in his full nakedness. Our mother would be the one to bathe him if she were still alive, but, now, I’m the only family available to do this.

I untie my goatskin bag. I remove thechunnifrom my head and dampen it with water from the bag. I start with Vinay’s face, washing the blood from his nose, then I wipe the sweat from his arms and legs. Silently, I pray for the safety of his wife and sons. I am vaguely aware of Lakshmi, behind me, talking quietly to my children.

When I’ve finished cleaning Vinay’s body, I turn to Lakshmi and nod. She picks up Chullu and sets him to one side of the bedroll. Rekha follows, carrying the food. My children are quiet, watchful, as if they know something sacred is happening.

Lakshmi picks up the padded cloth we sleep on, shakes it off and lays it on the ground closer to Vinay’s body. When she grabs hold of my brother’s bare legs, I place my hands under his armpits.

“Ake, dho, theen,”she counts.

Together, we lift him. The men of our tribe are lean and stringy; they’ve spent their whole lives walking up and down these mountain trails. But they’re strong, and their muscles are surprisingly heavy. We struggle, at first, to balance Vinay’s body between us, and, then, to lay him on the bedroll. I should have a clean cotton sheet to wrap him in, but then I didn’t expect to be performing his last rites today. We wrap him in the bedroll as best as we can, then carry him to the horse, who prances and raises his head high, his eyes rimmed in white. He’s spooked by the dead body. Lakshmi motions to me to lay the body down again. She walks to the chestnut, strokes his muzzle, talking to him softly until he’s calm.

We try again to hoist Vinay’s body onto the saddle. It takes us several tries, but we manage. I watch as Lakshmi uses a coil of rope to secure the body to the saddle.

She has been quiet throughout this ordeal, leading me tenderly through every step. If she hadn’t come along, what would I have done? How could I have handled this—my brother’s dead body, my aloneness, my grief, my children—without her? Malik has told me about their time in Jaipur—when Lakshmi was such a sought-after henna artist. I can picture her—taking care of her clients, soothing them, comforting them, as she soothed and comforted me today.

Reluctantly, I pull the yellow matchbox from my skirt pocket and hold it up for her to see. “This has something to do with whatever Vinay was up to. I think that’s what he was trying to tell me before he...”

She takes the matchbox from me. “Canara Private Enterprises Limited, Shimla,” she reads aloud. She frowns and looks at me, a question in her eyes, but I can only shrug my shoulders in response.

She nods, understanding. “Mind if I keep this?” She puts it in the pocket of her coat, then turns and covers the Vinay’s shrouded body with a blanket she pulled out from her saddlebag.

I hoist Chullu into his sling again and position him on my back.

“What’s your horse’s name?” Much to my surprise, it’s Rekha, my quiet girl, talking to Lakshmi.

“Chandra,” Lakshmi says.

“Why did you name him that?”

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