I have no blood left. No sweat. I haven’t pissed or shit in days. Maybe I too have died. Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe this is how it feels when the plane goes down or when you come in a flutter of flailing limbs into arms that do not know you.

He reached for his pocketknife and looped a finger through the ring. If I cut myself I would not hurt, he thought. I know this. As he laid the blade against his wrist a flock of birds curled into view, circling the house then flying away, chirping toward the horizon and the comfort of the sea. Can I come with you? he thought. Can you take me where you’re going? He bit his lip and clicked his teeth.

And Charlie Parker was riffing still.

Placing his feet on the banister, he took his time to count the wedge of birds … started from the left-hand side … worked his way across the crook. There were thirty-three of them. Thirty-three garlings.

Birds, he screamed inside his head, go around the world and sing my lament. Sing that I did not want this boy to die … that I wanted us to age and join the elders of our tribe. Birds, go around the world and sing my lament. Sing that I do not want him to take that trip alone. For who will instruct him in the ways of the life that he has chosen not to know? Who will beg and plead for him with the guards outside the village? Someone has to tell them that he is not a stranger, that he is still our brother even though his hair and nose are different. I do not want them to press their spears against his spleen and order him to go. For where would he find his resting place? In India he’s untouchable.

Miss Gita began to wail downstairs.

Ian, he thought, as he threw the knife on a stack of books, look what you do to your mother … you dutty, wutless coolie …

He began to moan. And Charlie Parker was riffing still.

chapter seventeen

The funeral procession began at a quarter to five on the Bailey bridge on the narrow road that wriggled down to Battery. The river, which was brown with silt, fizzed like a stream of spurted Coke, splashing over bright green ferns and leaping off protruding rocks to lick the fruit that dangled forth from overhanging trees, nobbly sweetsops and wedgy carambolas and round passion fruit. It had rained that morning, and the air was cool. The clouds in the washed-out sky were hard and gray like steel wool.

“I shoulda had something before I came,” Fire said to I-nelik. “Or brought a sandwich. I had no idea we’d run so late. Everybody’s in town already.”

They were seated in the cab of the Land Rover.

“Well … we couldn’t leave before Miss Gita calmed down,” said I-nelik. “And maybe it’s better that they went ahead. So many people on this little road could cause a lotta problems.”