Neha - Chapter III

Chapter II

NEHA

A shipment of lumber awaited James Carson in the Barisan Mountains. He had hired a herd of elephants and a guide. The appointment was in Padang, in the port. A girl approached. The elephants dozing among straw bales followed their steps with their eyes. When Carson saw her, everything was suspended: the noisy mestizo agitation of the market, the cries of the vendors in their stalls, the reflections of mother-of-pearl and bronze, everything except her eyes.

- I'm Neha. I will take you to the mountains.

- You alone? Aren't you afraid?

She shook her head. For an instant, a mocking reflection lit up his face. At a wave of his hand, a robust elephant stepped between them. Confident, firm, defiant.

It was Dwipa, the leader of the pack. Carson understood that Neha had nothing to fear. For several days, guided by Neha, Carson and the crew walked into the mountains. One afternoon, as the sun was setting, they stopped in a bamboo forest. It was a must stop for all caravans. For centuries, men had carved their names into the stems with knives.

- Are you going to write your name?

- Why leave memory? Carson asked, will you?

- It's written a long time ago.

Carson fell silent. I wouldn't know what to put… James Carson? The Irishman? Silver Palo?

Neither was completely himself. All together they were too much.

They reached the mountains, loaded the wood, returned to Padang. At the port, saying goodbye, Neha handed him an elephant bone amulet.

      - Here, that's all I know about you.

Carson picked it up and looked at the carvings on the small circular piece. A broken line, perhaps waves or the outline of a mountain range, a square, a cross, an arrowhead, a precise point sinking into the polished surface… he only recognized his tattoo.

A man surrounded by signs he doesn't understand, a foreign country, a girl who keeps quiet because she knows too much or it's too soon. Neha's expression was also an enigma.

-Will we see each other again?

- Come when you find out what it means.

Later, on deck, looking at the amulet, Carson thought that the haunting, fixed, incisive point was Neha's gaze. That from its dark background, as well as from the young woman's eyes, were born the questions that she would have to answer sooner or later.

Juan de Mengíbar cast the piece in silver. The sailors called it the Carson coin.