Journals found

My uncle, Dheeraj, once found a notebook. It was left on the train. He flipped through it, pocketing it for the lovely coloured pencil drawings of familiar places he found inside. He couldn’t read it, of course. The writing was in English and he barely reads any Hindi, but he took it to the headman in our village and found out that an American was traveling through the area and staying in a village nearby.

When Dheeraj found the American, the man was overjoyed to have his notebook back. This man had been traveling in our country for months and was so sad to have lost his journal. He sat under a tree with Dheeraj and read him stories from the journal. Dheeraj still tells the American’s stories. Stories of making music on the street with people he didn’t know and being chased by bats. Dheeraj said the American’s drawings were so real they were like photographs, but the American wrote all over them until the pages looked like they were competing with themselves for space.

The American put his arm around my uncle’s shoulders and walked him to the house. He was staying with a family with two children and they had a mat for him on the floor in the corner. He dug around in a satchel on the mat and gave Dheeraj 300 rupees. Dheeraj told him this was not necessary, but he told my uncle it was for making the journey. Then, the wife of the house gave Dheeraj a plate of sweets she had made. When they got outside, they saw that one of the cows had picked up the journal where Douglas had left it on the ground and was eating it.

“No! No!” The wife of the house ran after the cow and pulled what was left away from the cow but it was too late, the journal was nothing but torn parts of pages and a bit of binding.

The wife held the shredded journal out to the American and he threw back his head and laughed. Not a sorrowful little chuckle, but a full laugh from his belly. Dheeraj said he thought maybe the man was in shock but then the man clapped Dheeraj on the back and told him, “my friend, thank you for sharing the memories in my journal with me before it went into the next life. It was wonderful to have that chance.” Then, he waved at my uncle as he walked back toward our village, smiling the whole time.

When I found the little black notebook, I thought about Dheeraj and the American’s journal. I looked around to see if there were any Americans on the street who might have dropped it. But this was not the type of street Americans were usually on and definitely not in our little village. I wiped the dust off and opened it, looking for drawings, but there was nothing but strange writing. The writing looked like odd little pictures printed neatly in rows.

The cover was worn and curved, quite soft. The entire book curved like it was regularly curled into a pocket. The little ribbon that marked a page was frayed at the end to where only a wisp of string stuck out the bottom. Some of the pages looked like they had gotten damp and then dried with the edges wavy like lace, but the writing was crisp and hadn’t smeared.

That night, I turned the pages and made up stories from the little pictures. One letter or word looked almost like a pig and the pig had many adventures in my stories. When I reached the last page of writing, I turned through the blank pages. They called out for more stories of the little pig. When I turned back to the last page of writing, I was confused. The writing looked like it ended lower on the page than just a moment ago when I looked.

I snapped the book closed so quickly my mother looked over.

“Arjun? What is that book?”

I took the book over to her, but snuck a peek at the marked last page of writing. The writing seemed to end at the same point. I shook my head at myself as I handed her the book.

“I found it at the square today. I thought I could return it to a traveler like Dheeraj.”

She flipped through the book, clearly disappointed in the lack of pictures.

“Take it to Sanil.” She flapped it at me and I took it. Sanil was the same headman Dheeraj had taken the American’s journal to.

On my way to the square, I saw a sign. Actually, there were a lot of signs. They were stuck to the sides of buildings, even the houses, on lampposts, on the back of the delivery bikes’ cases, even one stuck to a woman’s shopping basket. I pulled it off for her and she said “Ooh!” and yanked the basket away until I showed her the sign had been stuck on it. She looked at her basket accusingly.

A colored pencil drawing of the little black book was at the top of the sign. Below that, two more pictures had been sketched. One was a drawing of a black hoodie with the hood up. The other was a picture of Sanjay’s tea stand two villages over. There was one more picture at the bottom. It was clearly money. There was nothing else on the sign.

I changed course, cutting through an alley to get out of the crowd a bit. I pulled the sign out of my satchel and tried to figure out what it might mean as I walked.

At the tea stand, I showed the sign to Sanjay, but I needn’t have bothered. There were signs everywhere. Sanjay even had one under the leg of his chair, pinned on the ground.

“What does this mean?” I pointed to the hoodie.

Sanjay shrugged. “The man has lost his book. He’s over there.”

He pointed with his elbow toward a low wall that ran along the nearest house. There were people sitting and leaning on the wall. The side of the wall closest to the house only had one person who was sitting on the wall somehow cross-legged. He was wearing some sort of robe with a hood that hid his face. I knew he wasn’t a beggar, though. His robe was a clean, solid black. The kind of black that swallows the light. A black that seemed to scare the dust away before it could land on the cloak.

The man in the cloak sat perfectly still holding his tea. I looked back at Sanjay.

“How long has he been there?”

Sanjay looked over his shoulder and back. “I don’t like it, you know. He buys tea over and over but never drinks it. He was here when I went home last night and still this morning. Give him his book and maybe he will go away.”

I took a breath and looked around for a moment.

“Are you scared of him too?” Sanjay loudly whispered.

“No. No look,” I waved him off. “Look. All the signs.”

Sanjay looked around with me.

“They’re gone.”

How could all of those signs disappear all at once? They were there and then they weren’t. The hairs on the back of my neck were already standing up, so it took me a minute to realize part of the creeping feeling in my spine was that someone was staring at me. I could feel the intensity of the gaze on my head and slowly turned around.

The person under the hood was staring at me. I looked again at the sign, but the effort to pull my eyes away from the cloak man left me a bit shaken. I looked at the hoodie on the sign and back up at the cloak and walked over to the wall.

I pulled the notebook out of my satchel without taking my eyes off the man in the cloak.

“Uh. Excuse me.” I pressed my palms together in greeting with the book between them.

“I SEE YOU HAVE FOUND MY BOOK. GOOD.” The voice rumbled in my skull.

There was a little clicking sound right before the stranger reached out and a set of long, fleshless fingers uncurled, reaching for the book.

My breath stopped in my throat. The hand of bones stayed right between us, beckoning.

I tried to swallow but there was a stone in my throat and I couldn’t get past it. My mind began to fizz. Finally, I looked down at the notebook in my hand and urged my hand to move. It finally did but didn’t feel part of me at that moment. It held the book out to the bony fingers and those bones grasped it.

Another hand with no flesh came out of the robe and cradled the book. He gently opened the pages and I heard a sigh in my own head. He laid the book on the wall open to the page with the ribbon. The book lay open, but bent at the curve. I was staring at the book, I realized, but I could not convince myself to look up at the man’s face.

“THANK YOU,” the voice boomed in my head. If I could have moved, I would have put my hands over my ears. But my hand stayed right where it was, holding out the book that had already been taken. I could feel his gaze go to my hand.

“OH RIGHT. THE REWARD.”

I felt his gaze release me as he started rummaging in the cloak. My hand dropped to my side, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from the book.

For as I stared, the book was writing itself.

As I watched, little ink pictures began printing themselves in little rows. They formed slowly, like someone was writing them with a pen, but there was no pen and no hand, just the pictures slowly printing. Then, there was nothing. It felt like I imagined it. Then, I saw it again. The words form themselves on the page.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to the stranger. I caught the outline of a smooth, sunken in cheek in the hood and reflexively looked down at my hands. The bony hand was holding out a stack of paper rupees.

“TAKE IT. THANK YOU FOR BRINGING MY BOOK.”

I took the money with the same feeling that my hand was not mine. Then, I turned around and walked back to Sanjay.

“Well?” Sanjay grabbed my arm. We both looked over to where the man had been sitting and there was nothing. We looked up and down the street. I looked down at my hands and the sign was gone too.

“I see you must have given him his book. I hope I never see that man again.”

I walked the rest of the way home in a daze. I pulled out the pile of rupees and put them on the block in front of my mother.

“Eeeeee!” she screeched. “Where did you get all this money? What have you done?”

She tried to push the money onto the floor. I grabbed up the rupees in my fists..

“Mama. No. I gave that man his notebook. The one I showed you. He gave me this money.” I held the fists of money out to her but she pushed them back.

“No man gave you this much money for a book.”

“Mama,” I looked at my knees. “I think the book is magic.”

“Pffth. There are no magic books. Did he really give you all this money?”

She finally took the rupees from my hands, straightened them into piles, and counted. One and a half million rupees. We just sat there stunned. One and a half million rupees for a notebook.

“Maybe this book is magic,” Mama said.