Garden of Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page A

dreamy-eyed, wearing brown cotton trousers too short for him and a black Metallica T-shirt, with a coiled, hissing snake on the front. Not his son Eli’s style exactly, but evidence of the same rebellious streak. ‘Where’d you get that T-shirt?’ he asked.
    ‘Storm gave it to me.’
    ‘Storm?’
    ‘His commander with the Maoists,’ said Kumar’s father. ‘That was his name in the war.’
    ‘
Nom de guerre
,’ said De Villiers. ‘In French.’
    ‘He doesn’t stop talking about him,’ Pande said. ‘Storm this and that, Storm day and night …’
    ‘And how is school going, Kumar?’ Sikriti again, sounding earnest and a bit exasperated.
    ‘He often doesn’t go,’ said his father. ‘I am thinking of pulling him out and training him to be a mason, like me. What is wrong with that?’
    ‘Oh, no, that would be unwise!’ Sikriti looked as though she might stand to make her point, but stayed seated, shifting slightly. ‘I mean, he is a clever boy and has always done well in school, has he not?’
    De Villiers was beginning to feel badly for Sikriti – it was not playing out as she’d planned. This boy was meant to be her poster child for the child soldier rehabilitation effort, and here he was still under the spell, it seemed, of a former commander. A Maoist. And though the Maoists were now represented in Parliament, some, maybe this one, were still hiding out in the jungle. Still holding on to some of the children, in spite of a negotiated agreement for the children’s return to their families. But when, or if, they did in fact return, what then? What was there for them?
    ‘Tell me about Storm,’ De Villiers said to the boy.
    Kumar’s face brightened, though he looked off into space, addressing no one present. ‘He was cool,’ he said. ‘He taught me everything. He taught me to shoot a rifle, to make socket bombs, to disguise myself in the bush. I cooked for him and the others, and he loved my food. He taught me that us Dalits are as good as anyone else – that the revolution was about making sure everyone believed that.’
    ‘You fought, in combat?’ De Villiers asked.
    ‘Yes, I fought. I fought very well …’
    De Villiers waited before asking the logical next question, looking at Sikriti who seemed increasingly uncomfortable. He hoped the boy would tell him without his having to ask.
    ‘I killed plenty, I don’t know how many.’
    It felt like bravado; maybe it was untrue. Either way, it was troubling that the boy seemed to take such pride in it. The air in the room, already thick with smoke and the smell of the earth, grew even heavier.
    De Villiers had one final question. ‘Are you not sorry for what you did?’
    ‘Why?’ Kumar was now looking at him. ‘I did my duty with the Maoists. When the army captured me, I stayed loyal to them, to Storm. The armyput me at a checkpoint to make me identify my comrades, but I never did. So they sent me home after a few months.’
    Kumar’s father, sitting against the wall of the house, in the shadows, said nothing. In his silence was resignation, the sad acceptance that the boy was in many ways no longer his, that he had switched allegiances, that his notion of ‘father’ had shifted. What was a mason, after all, in the eyes of a young boy, compared to a guerrilla fighting for freedom? What was a trowel compared to a gun?
    Sikriti seemed at a loss. De Villiers thought that if she could have hidden her face completely in her pink veil, she would have. She remained composed, though, and addressed both father and son. ‘It will, of course, take time for you, Kumar, to find your place here again. To remember your friends, to make new ones, to readjust to school. You must stay in school, please! Please, Mr Pande, make sure he does. You of all people know the value of education. Be patient with him. We are here to help, as we can. We have had much success in other villages …’
    Before she could finish there was a knock at the door. It was a