We sat in a revolving restaurant forming a plan. It creaked and wobbled as it rotated to show us brick walls, stone walls and a car park. Agra was disappointingly dusty and provincial. I had surrendered to Harry’s plans. It had been two days since I’d heard from Chris and I had no idea where he was. He hadn’t mentioned Agra, but it was on the way to Varanasi and he was just as likely to be here as anywhere else.
‘Is there anything worth seeing other than the Taj?’ I asked Harry.
‘There’s the Akbar’s tomb.’
‘Another tomb?’
He shrugged.
‘How’s your food?’ I asked.
‘I’m not sure I would call it food.’
‘I warned you,’ I said. ‘Actually, you warned yourself. You were the one with the rule against ordering non-Indian food.’
Harry jabbed it with his fork. ‘I just couldn’t handle another curry.’
I smiled sympathetically. Even though Western menu items were rarely what they claimed to be, there was usually some attempt at imitation. We’d checked into the hotel after 6 am and decided to have an early breakfast so we could beat the crowds to the Taj. Harry had ordered cornflakes but had been delivered a bowl of sloppy, cadmium yellow puree. The chef had added cupfuls of corn kernels. Harry glowered at it.
‘I just want something that’s not a curry,’ he hollered at the meal.
He ate it, but as he chewed I could see he was losing his patience. Afterwards he went to Pizza Hut and loaded up on slices of margarita.
‘Feel better?’ I said when he met me in the lobby. ‘You look a bit sweaty.’
His eyes bulged in panic. He covered his mouth and raced into the bathroom.
‘Indians don’t know how to make pizza,’ he said when he emerged ten minutes later.
We were collected by a minibus that took us behind the gates of the Taj compound. It felt like a world apart from Agra. The tranquil garden was sliced in two by a long, silvery reflecting pool. I snapped a shot of the Taj on my phone and sent it to Cass. The marble glowed. The detail looked like fine lace. Large black onyx letters were laid into the archway. I sat cross-legged beneath it, pulled out my travel diary and started to draw.
Harry sat next to me and angled his camera up. ‘The Taj was built by a Mughal emperor as a shrine to his wife,’ Harry told me. ‘Her body is entombed inside.’
‘I thought it was a palace?’
‘We can see her grave if you want.’
We had to remove our shoes. Our feet glided on the marble surface that was like ice. We stood below the entrance and looked up.
‘Come around the back with me.’ Harry took off his jacket and bundled it into a ball, placed it on the marble and lay down. I did the same. He pulled the camera to his face and looked through the view finder.
‘It’s hard to imagine it was all done by hand,’ he said. ‘No angle grinders in the seventeenth century.’
He twisted the lens to get a closer look at the carvings then handed it to me so I could see.
‘Imagine how much he must have loved her, to build all this just to house her corpse.’
Michael drifted into my thoughts. He had wanted to build something with me. Not a shrine perhaps, but a home. A place to keep and protect each other and our imagined children. I bit my lip.
Harry propped himself up on his arm and looked at me. ‘What is it?’
‘What’s what?’
‘You seem upset.’
‘It’s nothing. I was just thinking about Michael.’
‘That guy in Varanasi?’
‘No, no, Michael’s my … ex. It feels strange to call him that, like he’s no longer a current player in my life. He’s been shifted to a past realm.’
‘That is what happens when you break up with someone.’
‘We only just broke up. Around Christmas.’
Harry didn’t say anything.
‘Do you have a girlfriend?’
‘Nah. Not for a long time. Come on.’ He hopped up and started walking towards the entrance to the main building where we joined a tour group.
We wandered around for about half an hour and learned about the history of the Taj. The Mughal had planned to build a black Taj exactly the same as the one that stood now. We lingered for hours, discovering hidden corners and trying to catch the light with our cameras.
To the left of the complex was a mosque we weren’t allowed into, but we could climb to its entrance. It stood at the apex of stairs that rose as sharply as a cliff face.
I pulled my phone out to find a message from Cass, in reply to the picture I just sent.
I’m glad to see you’re getting out.
‘Look,’ I said to Harry, pointing up. The roof was covered in wasps’ nests.
‘Great shot.’ He aimed his camera and snapped. ‘I’ve got a treat for dinner,’ he said.
‘What is it?’
‘You’ll just have to wait and see.’ He grinned.
Following instructions he had written on a piece of paper, Harry led me to a doorway in a busy street not far from our hotel. Upstairs was a place dressed up like an American fast food joint. There were waitresses in pink smocks and boys behind the counter in pointed, white pillbox caps. Chrome stools faced the counter-tops where burgers and fries were served. The rest of the customers sat at red polished banquettes. There were smorgasbord-style serving stations and an all-you-can-eat dessert bar.
‘I still wouldn’t recommend the salads,’ Harry said. ‘But look.’ He held up a menu illustrated with pencilled sketches. ‘Milkshakes. Real milk.’
‘Contraband!’ I grinned. I ordered vanilla and he ordered strawberry.
‘How did you find out about this place?’ I asked as we slurped.
‘The tour guide at the Taj told me. He said people were always asking him where to go to get western food.’
‘Oh, that’s kind of sad,’ I said.
‘Says the girl whose wildest desire is a forkful of lettuce.’
‘You never finished telling me about your love life,’ I said, relishing the foamy milk.
Harry screwed up his face. ‘There was a girl, Leanne. She was a vet, an animal nut.’
‘Vegetarian?’
‘No. More of your kitten loving type of animal nut than moralistic crusader like you.’
‘Do you think I’m moralistic?’
‘Not in a bad, preachy way. In a thoughtful way.’
That satisfied me. ‘So what happened with Leanne?’
Harry shrugged. ‘We grew apart. She had a big heart. She was … kind.’ He went quiet.
We sat and looked out the window at life-threateningly frayed wires while sucking from straws like teens in an American soda ad. We ordered another round. Harry’s attention was focused on a couple chatting under a streetlight. His parenthetic dimples had melted into his skin, which still had its soft, freshly shaved look from this morning.
‘She was very beautiful,’ he said after a moment.
Suddenly I didn’t want to hear any more about Leanne and her perfect bone structure. ‘What else would you like to do in Agra before our train leaves tomorrow night?’
After ordering a plate of donut holes, Harry said he wanted to ride elephants.
‘Be careful,’ I said. ‘Some of them are treated very badly.’
We’d already seen the famous ‘dancing’ bears in chains along the roadside as the bus had driven towards Agra that morning. The bears’ owners, traditionally from nomadic groups known as the Kalandars, poach the bear cubs when they’re young and use hot irons to pierce their nose or palate. The wound never heals properly and the owners use it as a means to controlling the beasts, leading them around by a rope that is threaded through the raw piercing.
The waitress delivered a plate of donut balls rolled in cinnamon sugar. I put one in my mouth. They weren’t as good as the galab juman we’d been eating most days but they were warm.
‘How do you know about the elephants?’ Harry asked.
‘Animal cruelty sort of became a hobby of mine. Reading about it. Not doing it. I used to work with lab rats. Animal testing is absolutely necessary for the development of medicine, but I did the best I could for them. When I felt bad I’d go to the library or search online to find case studies of people who would be helped by the drugs. Whenever I come across animal cruelty I get really mad.’
‘Hence the vegetarianism,’ Harry said.
I nodded.
‘I see,’ he said.
Then he snatched the last donut hole from the plate. ‘I’m saving you. It was cooked in animal fats.’
He bit it in half and passed the rest to me.
After dinner we walked through the friendly street racket admiring shopfronts.
‘And they say New York is the city that never sleeps.’
‘I love the way nothing ever closes,’ I said as we passed store after store full of people chatting and laughing.
The area we had stumbled into was filled mostly with jewellery stores. There were two types – one that sold fake-looking yellow gold jewellery, and one that sold tarnished silver and chunky, coloured stones.
‘You should get yourself a souvenir,’ Harry said, bending over a window display.
‘What is that doing here?’ I pointed at a silver Swastika on a chain.
‘It’s an ancient Hindu symbol,’ he explained. ‘It’s a lucky charm. Or at least, it used to be.’
I selected a piece of coral on a chain instead. Harry hooked it around my neck. His fingers tickled the nape as he closed the clasp.
‘It suits you,’ he said. I blushed with pleasure and checked it in a handheld mirror.
‘I look awful,’ I said. My eyes were tired and my skin was pale.
‘Let me see.’ Harry took the mirror and peered into it. ‘I don’t see anything awful in here.’
I snatched it from him and gave him a shove. I retrieved a brown eye pencil from the pocket of my daypack and started to draw in some colour around my lashes.
‘You don’t need it,’ Harry plucked the pencil from my fingers.
We wandered back to the hotel in silence. In my room I lay on the bed, touching the silver links of the chain where it rested on my skin. It was a nice compliment, to say I didn’t need makeup. I thought about another time someone had said that. It was the end of school muck-up party and the boys had roared down the main road in a car, pelting us with eggs and water balloons. A water bomb had hit me in the face causing my first attempt at eye makeup to run down my cheek. I leaned down to the side mirror of the nearest parked car and tried to re-draw the cat-eye like Cass had shown me. After a minute or two of creating wobbly, blobby wings on my lash line I realised Chris Campbell as watching me. He dropped his water bomb in the dirt and came towards me. I lowered the eyeliner.
‘You don’t need it,’ he’d said, cupping my face.
I leapt up and ran downstairs to check my email. Still nothing. I bit my thumb and pulled my phone out to text Cass.
Taj was amazing. Have just had dinner and strolled streets. How’s everything? Any news? Say hi to Mum and Zachman.
I sat holding my phone. But there was no reply. She was probably studying, or in class.
When Cass had travelled overseas she had written long, detailed emails once every few weeks. I’d seized on each message like a hungry dog. Her being away had unsettled me. I’d felt disconnected, so I had turned to Michael to fill the void. Now I had no Cass and no Michael.
Harry and I took a bus to the Agra Fort, climbing a winding path to reach the top on foot, and passing several tour operators giving visitors rides on elephants. The red sandstone fortress looked particularly magnificent against the spotless blue sky. Inside its 2.5 kilometre perimeter was the Mughal rulers’ imperial city. I snapped a photo and sent it to Cass. She wrote back immediately.
Who’s that?
I looked at the picture I’d sent. The back of Harry’s head and shoulder were in the frame.
Harry. He’s travelling too.
Seconds later my pocket vibrated. He looks cute. Take a proper photo! Show me!
‘Harry,’ I called. ‘Hold still.’
‘Why?’
‘My sister wants to see what you look like.’
‘Have you been talking about me?’
‘Only so she can file an accurate police report.’
He laughed. ‘The lady doth protest too much.’
‘She just wants to make sure you’re not an axe murderer.’ He held still while I captured his face on my screen. ‘We’re twins. She believes in twin telepathy, so she has a vested interest in making sure I’m not hacked to death.’
‘Twin telepathy, really?’
I shrugged and told him the story Mum used to tell us to stop us fighting when we were little. She said we had a special bond and had to look out for each other.
‘It happened not long after we were born. Mum had put us down for a nap but after only half an hour Cass started to fuss. I was sound asleep and Mum didn’t want me to be disturbed so she picked up Cass and took her into the lounge room. She fed, burped, and changed her, and content, Cass fell asleep again. Moments later she jerked awake and burst into an intense, urgent cry.
‘She’d been burped so she wasn’t gassy. She was clean and fed and her temperature was normal. Still, she wouldn’t stop screaming.
‘As Mum walked her back and forth jiggling her and rubbing her back a thought struck her. She hurried to our room. She felt certain it was me that was in trouble and scooped me out of the crib. She was right, I was having a seizure. My face was blue and I was convulsing. Mum called an ambulance, and I was rushed to hospital.
‘To this day she swears she never would have gone into the room if it hadn’t been for Cass. I hadn’t made a sound and I could have died in my crib. Another unexplained cot death.’
‘That’s some story,’ said Harry.
‘Yeah. The idea buried itself in Cass’s brain and she’s been obsessed with it ever since. She’s always looking for other examples of twin telepathy.’
‘But you don’t believe it?’
I screwed up my nose. When we were kids I wanted to believe it. I’d test it by poking Cass after she’d gone to sleep. I’d stick her with my finger to see if I felt the jab. I’d pull her hair and drop water on her forehead from a cup to see if a cool sensation would spread over me. I once even stuck her arm with a sewing needle to see if it would draw blood from mine.
‘I can see why she wouldn’t want you getting hacked up.’
‘Exactly,’ I said, sending the photo.
Cass replied a few minutes later. Oh my God. He is HOT!!
I wrote back. What? No he’s not.
Um. Yes. He. IS. My eyeballs just ovulated.
I laughed.
‘She likes you,’ I told Harry. ‘See. More evidence that flies in the face of twin telepathy.’