The Love Artist—7

00034:527:27

There’s a boy who lives outside a bun shop in Katmandu. His name is Ahmrit and he sleeps in the doorway with five other boys. They share everything—which isn’t much—begging turf, food scraps, the policeman’s boot, an occasional piece of candy. If someone doesn’t want to share, the others usually make him.

Each night after dark, after they’ve divvied up their take for the day—after they’ve stopped using the crazy death voice they save for tourists coming back from dinner and have burned all the garbage and thrown every rock they can find—they settle into their doorway to find some sleep.

Kicking and pushing like a human pillow trying to fluff itself, with heads on stomachs and knees, and hands under armpits, the boys get as comfortable as they can given the circumstances. Ahmrit is usually one of the last to fall asleep, but he pretends otherwise by breathing loudly and deeply, as he hears the others do. If there is any trouble—like a cop or a mean rickshaw driver, or a drunk cop or a drunk mean rickshaw driver—he’d rather get kicked and keep pretending he’s asleep than try to run away. Anything but be the only one awake.

One night—a night similar to this one—Ahmrit was giving his usual performance when he heard his name.

“am-Mhit. . . am-Mit!”

His heart filled with dread.

Behind his shut eyes a pale and gaunt head attached itself to his mispronounced name. He closed his eyes harder. And held his breath.

A long second passed and then the moan came again.

“Aaaa-mit, Aaaa-mit?” Surely he was dying and the spirit had come to take something back.

He felt some of his brothers come to life and heard them inquiring of the ghost and his apprehension mixed with pride—they would obviously tell the monster that he was still breathing quite loudly, thank you, and get rid of it, just like they would a shopkeeper or anyone else. They weren’t afraid.

“What? What? Yes, I’m Ahmrit.”

But why were they excited instead of scared? And why were they pretending to be him?

How much they must hate me, Ahmrit thought. His stomach churned. They could be mean but he never knew they hated him this much. His chin started to quiver and the bottom of his eyes filled with tears. He pulled his knees into his chest and waited for the horrible thing that always happened.

“Please spirit, please don’t hurt me!” Ahmrit invoked what he remembered of his mother’s face as protection.

And he listened again. Everything had gotten loud so quickly—his friends, the ghost—even the screaming auto-rickshaws seemed quiet to the turmoil that had engulfed his head.

“I’m Ahmrit, I’m Ahmrit. I’m Ahmrit, I’m Ahmrit!” his friends were promising the ghost—almost yelling now. They shrieked and climbed over each other in their apparent rush to see him gone. Someone stepped on Ahmrit’s head.

‘Where’s A-mit?’ The dream invader demanded again—this time revealing his accent—it was one of them, one of the people from the planes and hotels—the soft ones.

Ahmrit stopped crying and moved his blanket away from his face.

“Oh, there you are!”

The group became quiet.

“I brought these for you.” The man said, holding out something wrapped in black cloth. “I didn’t know you’d have company.”

Ahmrit was smiling now and reached across his traitorous friends’ heads to receive his parcel. The man resisted for a second, trying to emphasize with his elbows and head that it wasn’t stable, but regulation proved impossible and the contents of the loose package escaped over Ahmrit’s small hands.
“Shit!” the man blurted—grabbing at the air where things had just been—or, more accurately, what they had just become—a pear and two apples—partially obscured by the now floating black cloth —and bouncing off of curious foreheads and surprised knees—and then watched in amazement as the fruit was recovered and distributed without a word.

He laughed, and as the boys smacked their lips he picked up the forgotten piece of cloth and unfolded it to reveal the head of an enormous cat on a T-shirt. He meowed to animate the scene and the boys watching—the ones not engrossed in their chewing—laughed and made cat noises of their own.

Ahmrit palmed his half-eaten pear and put the new shirt on immediately. It fit like a dress and his hands were completely hidden until the sleeves were rolled into thick cuffs. On the back, repeating around the cat’s head and also on the left chest, which fell around his navel, were the mysterious words “Lib” and “Tech”.

Ahmrit grabbed his old sweater off the sidewalk to the elated cheers of his friends. The man looked on puzzled, as if he had expected the shirt to augment—rather than replace—the filthy garment, but Ahmrit and company let it be known that they had no such conflict and the sweater was flung into the street: “Yhaah!” “Noowooooh!” “Meooow!” “Rawr!” they yelled.

“No good!” Ahmrit snapped, noticing the stranger’s concern. The other boys pulled on his new shirt and messed up his hair.

After the stranger left and everyone had relaxed into the doorway again, Ahmrit revealed that he and Goat had eaten with the foreigner and his family earlier—lots of food, good food—and that they’d let him pick out his own bun, and insisted that he sit down and eat with them. The owner of the bun shop had gotten so mad he tried to kick Ahmrit out twice—but the man’s mother was tough—like a tiger, Ahmrit said—and she put him next to her and yelled at him—something in Hindi.

“He doesn’t mind if we buy his food but we can’t sit on his chairs—what a bastard!”

And Goat wouldn’t even go in—he stood stomping out front like a crazy person until Ahmrit brought him a bun—a cheese one —with meat too—and that’s when this one—the stranger—had asked where he lived. And who would’ve thought he’d come back? And now tomorrow too? What would he do tomorrow?

No one slept very well.

—Or found it very easy to believe the black shirt when they woke up—but eventually it was true, and as the ghost reappeared to collect Ahmrit he was humming.

The rest of the boys followed excitedly.

The man was taking Ahmrit to buy shoes.


It was December and cold but the group warmed as they walked through the smoke from the morning’s fires and the sun rose.

“No shoe, no shoe!” one of the boys insisted, pointing to his foot, “No shoe!” Their pace was excited and it took the boy almost a block to remove his sandal, catch back up, show the stranger that it was torn and held together only by staples, put it back on hopping, and catch up again. He looked desperately at the stranger for signs that his need had been properly conveyed.

The foreigner smiled uncomfortably—and responded with words that exceeded those the boys had learned to ply their trade. Maybe he’d expect something dirty, or make Ahmrit do something. There was much speculation.

And as they walked out of the empty main drag and into the narrow maze of shops and vendors, the group’s elaborate dance—of shoes being thrown into garbage cans and recovered, boys kneeling to enhance a rip in a pair of jeans or shirt, and everyone bouncing along in general—attracted much attention before eventually settling around a shoe seller.

Ahmrit was first and in just minutes he was wearing a pair of white sneakers with purple trim—shoes for a girl really—but no one cared, and the small crowd that had gathered was much more interested in the stranger, and what was going on, and, of course, how much the vendor would get.

After being so perfectly ignored, the boys could hardly contain such attention, and as it became apparent that not just Ahmrit but maybe two or three of the boys would get shoes, the others made it their duty to show even more pathetic feet. A few going so far as to develop a limp.

A second boy was fitted, and then a third, and then the second—the boy of stapled sandal fame—took off his new shoes and put the small plastic bags they had come in on as socks. He puffed out his chest and screwed up his face like a soldier, crinkling up and down beside the vendor’s blanket to test his invention.

Ahmrit was now transformed. He spun small circles inside the amoebic mass of his merry men like wind. His bright white shoes with pink stripes and purple socks poked out below his huge cat-shirt like slippers below a moo-moo in suburban Detroit. Had anyone ever jumped any higher, run any faster? —He looked great just standing still—like a new person as long as you ignored the matted hair and dirt on his face and hands.

Ahmrit took the man’s hand and started walking, looking up every few seconds to better believe his new life. His gaze cut through the crowd.

In the tailor shop, the boy who had had ripped jeans—and not the one who had ripped his—threw his old pants in the street and did a little dance in his underwear to the riotous approval of his friends outside. The offensive jeans were quickly shredded and put in the garbage, the new pair had embroidered writing on the back pocket—just like the autorickshaw drivers.

And now as they marched they were different. Instead of stray dogs they imagined themselves natty wolves, returning to their den with a new leader—proven not by his ability to hunt or kill but to provide—and to supercede the doubts of even the most crass among them.

Out front he marched—this leader—guiding the stranger by one hand out of the market and trying to brush off the new and fantastic demands of his pack:

“Buy him a bicycle. To go see his mom—1500 rupees so he can go home!” —The late arrival of a boy who could translate had strengthened the boys’ bargaining stance. And was working away at the heart of the stranger.

“He hasn’t seen his mom for two years! She couldn’t afford him.”

“She lives close. Go with him. Tomorrow! Buy him a bike.”

The stranger was becoming harried. In contrast, the boys—one on each hand and the rest close beside—seemed to be just coming alive. They skipped and stole bananas gleefully.

“You, me—friends!” the boys demanded of the stranger, fighting for the hand not occupied by Ahmrit and dreaming furiously about what would obviously happen next.

And then, for a few minutes, no one said anything. The bananas were finished and the peels tossed looping at garbage cans and fences and birds and through the thick crowd the group cut a wake of silent joy—through the dusty road of shops and spice vendors and bicycles loaded with hundred-pound bags of onions and rice—beautiful for the confusion it provoked. It appeared that Palace Road’s street urchins had kidnapped a tourist, one who instead of fighting or calling for help simply apologized sheepishly with his eyes.

“Come tomorrow!”

“Yes, take us. Come take us tomorrow!”

“Take him with you. Take him home!” The translator was doing triple duty now and almost hoarse—speaking for not only the boys present but also the two who had broken off to throw rocks at a dog.

“You’re his father now! Give him rupees! Give him 1500 rupees so he can go home.”

“Yes, yes, yes!!” The boys chanted.

They were approaching the man’s hotel and most of the boys scattered at the sight of an oncoming guard. He shouted and feigned with his baton toward the remaining two.

“You are his father now, take him with you.”

The stranger retrieved his hand and waved off the guard but he looked weak, as if the small arm had been propping him up.

“Take him home. You can go there tomorrow. It is not far.”

The stranger began to protest —and the translator to respond, and the guard motioned to the guardhouse for some help —and Ahmrit shut his eyes.

—And wished—as hard as he had the night before for the voice to go away—for everything to be quiet now —for the guard and the boy and the descending rickshaw drivers and the traffic and the dog yelping its way off the road... —Why couldn’t everything be quiet? For one minute—? Who knew what the stranger wanted to do? Maybe introduce him to the guards so they wouldn’t get hit —or let him live in the hotel —pay the bun shop owner to give them the old bread he gave the dogs —buy him a bike or find the bus that went to his village —to see his mother. It couldn’t be much—not as much as these clothes and lunch and staying in this hotel—just don’t bug him! He’s figuring out what to do— be quiet!

Ahmrit couldn’t hear the yelling now, he was thinking of the presents he would send from his new home. How he would bring food from what must be the stranger’s enormous farm. How he would have a hat and a book bag like the kids he saw on the back of their father’s bicycles every day—a red monkey hat with a visor and a hole for your face when there wasn’t any sun and how he would ride on the man’s handlebars and watch those thin fingers ring the bell—“Get out of the way! Get out of the way!”—and make sure he didn’t fall off at the same time.

And pencils, and pens—and a blanket that was only his, and a beautiful mom to pat him on the head when he went outside. He imagined what all his friends from the village were doing, and how he’d have to catch up with them in school and what games they knew. Or maybe he’d live far away, where the kids wouldn’t know where he’d been, and wouldn’t tease him because he wouldn’t ever tell. He’d say he had lived with his aunt and worked in the fields—by Nagacourt maybe—and played with goats and they swam in a river with a huge tree hanging over it and a rope you could jump in with.

They went there after school, he’d say—after their chores were done—and if their clothes got wet they got in trouble, which always happened if you really splashed around, or a lot of friends went with you and you got thrown in —and then swam until supper.

—Which was rice with dal. With some chicken during festivals. And on your birthday.

That’s what he’d tell the new kids he met—when his hair was clean and soft and his skin was pale like the man’s hands and he’d had time to figure things out. That’s where he’d tell them he’d been.