My Brother

“What about your tea?” I said stupidly.

“Some other time.” Chandra gri

“Cheer up, Lionel. Responsibilities sometimes have their compensations. The ladies of India are not without their charms. Do not forget that.”

He left.

Fourteen, I kept thinking. Fourteen.

As Chandra left I wondered about the Indian penalties for statutory rape.

Chandra had left the package of papers on the chair. I picked it up and was sorting through it when Ameera came back with a young boy in tow. As he poured tea and then left, she came to sit on the arm of my chair.

“Your friend has gone,” she said happily. (How did she know?) “Why did he ask for tea and then leave without drinking it? That is very impolite.”

“He is a very busy man. His work called. I should not have asked for his help.”

“But I am glad he has gone,” she went on illogically. “I prefer to be alone.” She snuggled closer to me on the chair arm.

I cleared my throat and wriggled on the leather cushion. “Ameera, I really need your help. Did Leo ever talk to you about his business — about his work?”

Ameera’s look of satisfaction and pleasure was replaced by a wary expression.

“Sometimes. Sometimes we talked. But he did not want his work here — he said this was his — ‘hideway’?”

“Hideaway. A place where he could feel safe.”

“Hideaway. Where we could be close.” She reached out and ran her fingers softly over my cheek and forehead. “He was safe here. He said that he could keep us all safe if he did not talk about his work. But sometimes, when he was tired or sad, he would talk.”

“That’s good. I’m going to look through the papers that Chandra brought from the bank, and perhaps I’m going to ask you about things I find there. Not about the money — Chandra can tell me about that. Damnation!”

Ameera smiled. “You sound the same as Leo-yo — he would say that. What is wrong?”

“I might need to ask Chandra questions, and there’s no telephone here.”

“But there is! There is a special one, down in the pantry. Lee-yo used it only two times. But you can use it when you want to.”

A hidden phone, used only in emergencies. When we were still in our early twenties, Leo and I had talked about setting up our own secret hideouts, places where we could say and do whatever we liked without anyone bothering us. To me that had been just dreaming, building our castles in Spain . But my brother had done it, from foundations to battlements.

And what else had he done? I took the sheet of names and places from the packet of papers.

Ameera snuggled closer, her breath warm against my cheek. “What does it say there, Lee-yo-nel?”

I saw what Chandra’s problem had been with the list. Leo had created a jumble of names, places and descriptions. But I believed I could see more than anyone else — Leo and I always thought the same way, and now we were in some sense one person. I ran my eye over them quickly. Promising. For example, there was a line about halfway down the first page. It stood out to my eye like a beacon. “B.P. Get from Cut. 026411, take with 0433 to Ri., contact 277 + double bl.”

It was the sort of entry that I expected from him. Leo would not keep elaborate notes — why should he, when we shared the same accurate memory? He would only bother with numbers and addresses, and maybe a couple of names when he wasn’t sure of them. It was a reasonable bet that B.P. would be the Belur Package. But what about the rest of it? I needed help.

“Ameera, did Leo mention somebody or somewhere that began with C-U-T? It is something in his notes here.”

“Yes.” Was the expression in her voice relief? It certainly sounded like it. “I think he went to Cuttack , he had to do something there. I am sure of it. When he was last here in Calcutta , he went to Cuttack .”

“Where is that? Do you know how to get there?”

“You can go there by the new railway. It is not far — two hours from here, on the coast in Orissa.”

“Do you know who he went to see there? Maybe a man called Belur?”

“I do not know. Maybe.”

“How about something that begins with R-I? A place or a person.”

“I do not know.” It seemed to me that there was now an evasiveness in her answer. “It could be Riang, or Riga in Assam . They are far away from here.”

I realized that I was being irrational, asking a blind fourteen-year-old girl for details of Indian geography. Ameera could help only if she recalled something particular that Leo had said or done.

“Ameera, did Leo ever tell you about his work in America ? Who he worked for, or what he was doing in India ?”

There were tears welling from the dark eyes. I felt ashamed at what I was doing to her.

“No, Leo-yo-nel. If he told anyone, would it not be his own brother, when the brother was from one egg? Did he not tell you?”

“No. He did not tell me.”

And that was the curse of it. Leo hadn’t told me, and he was having trouble telling me now.

“Ameera, I will go tomorrow to Cuttack . Do you know where the man lives that Leo went to see?”

“Some company. A company that makes — what is the word? — computings? Things that are used for calculations.” It seemed to me that there was definite relief in her voice. “Lee-yo-nel, if you go there, to Cuttack , can I come with you? I can speak the language — it is Oriya spoken there — and I want to help you. I ca

It seemed to me that I could easily find somebody there to act as an interpreter — but even if I couldn’t, I didn’t want Ameera with me. I had no idea what we’d be finding.

“No!” I spoke more loudly than I had intended. “I do not know what might happen there. Definitely not.”

Ameera did not speak; but the tears that welled silently from those dark eyes were more persuasive than any words. I swore under my breath, and most of it was directed at the right half of my brain. But some of it went to the prurient fantasies that were conjured as I put an arm around Ameera to comfort her.

“Hello? Operator, what in God’s name is happening on this line? I can hear four other people speaking.”

“One moment more, sir, you will be co

I stood in the dark of the pantry, sweating and swearing. For twenty minutes I had been struggling to get a co

“Hello?”

“Hello, hello?” I felt like a character in a P.G. Wodehouse short story. “Hello, hello, hello.”

“No need to shout like that — I’m not deaf. What do you want?”

Thank God. It was the familiar grumbling voice. “Sir Westcott, this is Lionel Salkind. I’m calling because I’m having trouble — trouble inside my head.”

“What do you expect, if you go piddling off all over the globe? You ought to be back here, where we can keep an eye on you.”

He didn’t seem at all worried. It was a huge relief just to hear that gruff complaint.

“So what’s your symptoms? Something new?”

The line had that built-in quarter-second delay that indicated it was being sent via satellite transmission.

“I think so. I’ve been getting bad headaches, and sometimes I don’t seem to have the proper control over the things I’m doing.”

“Join the club. Look, is that all? ’Course you’re getting bad headaches — didn’t you read that stuff I gave you when you left? You’re gettin’ atrophy of the Schwa