The Unknown Errors of Our Lives by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Page B

of her mind she seldom visits. Can it be classified as an accident, an accident she did to herself? She remembers the magnetic red gleam of the round pills in the hollow of her palm, how unexpectedly solid they had felt, like metal pellets. The shriek of the ambulance outside her window. The old man who lived across the hall peering from a crack in his door, grim and unsurprised. The acidic ache in her throat when they pumped her stomach. Leela had kept her eyes on the wall of the emergency room afterward, too ashamed to look at the paramedic who was telling her something. Something cautionary and crucial which might help her now, as she steps warily along this beautiful glacial trail, watching for crevasses. But for her life she cannot recall what it was.
    EACH NIGHT THE pilgrims are assigned to different tents by the head guide, according to some complicated logic Leela has failed to decipher. But tonight, when she finds herself in Mrs. Das’s tent, her bedroll set down next to the older woman’s makeshift one, she wonders if it is destiny that has brought her here.
    All her life, like her parents, Leela has been a believer in individual responsibility. But lately she finds herself wondering. When she asked Aunt Seema yesterday, she touched Leela’s cheek in a gesture of amused affection. “Ah, my dear—to believe that you control everything in your life! How absurdly American!”
    Destiny is a seductive concept. Ruminating on it, Leela feels the events of her life turn weightless and pass through her like clouds. The simplistic, sublunary words she assigned to them—
pride, shame, guilt, folly
—no longer seem to apply.
    “Please,” Mrs. Das whispers in Bengali, startling Leela from thought. She sits on the tarpaulin floor of the tent, propped against her bedroll, her legs splayed out crookedly from under her sari. “Could you ask one of the attendants to bring some warm water? My feet hurt a lot.”
    “Of course,” Leela says, jumping up. An odd gladness fills her as she performs this small service. Aunt, who was less than happy about Leela’s tent assignment tonight, had whispered to her to be sure to stay away from Mrs. Das. But Aunt is at the other end of the camp, while destiny has placed Leela here.
    When the water comes in a bucket, Mrs. Das surreptitiously removes her shoes. They are made of rough leather, cheap and unlovely. They make Leela feel guilty about her fleece-lined American boots, even though the fleece is fake. Then she sucks in a horrified breath.
    Freed of shoes and socks, Mrs. Das’s feet are in bad shape, swollen all the way to the calves. The toes are blistered and bluish with frostbite. The heels weep yellowish pus. Mrs. Das looks concerned but not surprised—this has obviously been going on for a couple of days. She grits her teeth, lurches to her feet, and tries to lift the bucket. Leela takes it from her and follows her to the opening of the tent, and when Mrs. Das has difficulty bending over to wash her feet, she kneels and does it for her. She feels no disgust as she cleans off the odorous pus. This intrigues her. Usually she doesn’t like touching people. Even with her parents, she seldom went beyond the light press of lips to cheek, the hurried pat on the shoulder. In her Dexter days, if he put his arm around her, she’d find an excuse to move away after a few minutes. Yet here she is, tearing strips from an old sari and bandaging Mrs. Das’s feet, her fingers moving with a deft intelligence she did not suspect they possessed, brown against the matching brown of Mrs. Das’s skin. This is the first time, she thinks, that she has known such intimacy. How amazing that it should be a stranger who has opened her like a dictionary and brought to light this word whose definition had escaped her until now.
    SOMEONE IN THE tent must have talked, for here through the night comes the party’s doctor, his flashlight making a ragged circle of brightness on the tent floor as he enters.