Chapter seventeen

"The world is run by one million evil men, ten million stupid men, and a hundred million cowards," Abdul Ghani pronounced in his best Oxford English accent, licking the sweet honey cake from his short, thick fingers. "The evil men are the power-the rich men, and the politicians, and the fanatics of religion-whose decisions rule the world, and set it on its course of greed and destruction."

He paused, looking toward the whispering fountain in Abdel Khader Khan's rain-splashed courtyard as if he was receiving inspiration from the wetness and the shimmering stone. He reached out with his right hand and took another honey cake, popping it whole into his mouth. The little beseeching smile he gave me as he chewed and swallowed seemed to say, I know I shouldn't, but I really can't help it.

"There are only one million of them, the truly evil men, in the whole world. The very rich and the very powerful, whose decisions really count-they only number one million. The stupid men, who number ten million, are the soldiers and policemen who enforce the rule of the evil men. They are the standing armies of twelve key countries, and the police forces of those and twenty more. In total, there are only ten million of them with any real power or consequence. They are often brave, I'm sure, but they are stupid, too, because they give their lives for governments and causes that use their flesh and blood as mere chess pieces. Those governments always betray them or let them down or abandon them, in the long run. Nations neglect no men more shamefully than the heroes of their wars."

The circular courtyard garden at the heart of Khaderbhai's house was open to the sky at its centre. Monsoon rain fell upon the fountain and surrounding tiles: rain so dense and constant that the sky was a river, and our part of the world was its waterfall.

Despite the rain, the fountain was still running, sending its frail plumes of water upward against the cascade from above. We sat under cover of the surrounding veranda roof, dry and warm in the humid air as we watched the downpour and sipped sweet tea.

"And the hundred million cowards," Abdul Ghani continued, pinching the handle of the teacup between his plump fingers, "they are the bureaucrats and paper shufflers and pen-pushers who permit the rule of the evil men, and look the other way. They are the head of this department, and the secretary of that committee, and the president of the other association. They are managers, and officials, and mayors, and officers of the court. They always defend themselves by saying that they are just following orders, or just doing their job, and it's nothing personal, and if they don't do it, someone else surely will. They are the hundred million cowards who know what is going on, but say nothing, while they sign the paper that puts one man before a firing squad, or condemns one million men to the slower death of a famine."

He fell silent, staring into the mandala of veins on the back of his hand. A few moments later, he shook himself from his reverie and looked at me, his eyes gleaming in a gentle, affectionate smile.

"So, that's it," he concluded. "The world is run by one million evil men, ten million stupid men, and a hundred million cowards.

The rest of us, all six billion of us, do pretty much what we are told!"

He laughed, and slapped at his thigh. It was a good laugh, the kind of laugh that won't rest until it shares the joke, and I found myself laughing with him.

"Do you know what this means, my boy?" he asked, when his face was serious enough to frame the question.

"Tell me."

"This formula-the one million, the ten million, the hundred million-this is the real truth of all politics. Marx was wrong.

It is not a question of classes, you see, because all the classes are in the hands of this tiny few. This set of numbers is the cause of empire and rebellion. This is the formula that has generated our civilisations for the last ten thousand years. This built the pyramids. This launched your Crusades. This put the world at war, and this formula has the power to impose the peace."

"They're not my Crusades," I corrected him, "but I get your point."

"Do you love him?" he asked, changing the subject so swiftly that he took me by surprise. He did that so often, shifting the ground of his discourses from theme to theme, that it was one of the hallmarks of his conversation. His skill at performing the trick was such that even when I came to know him well, even when I came to expect those sudden deviations and deflections, he still managed to catch me off guard. "Do you love Khaderbhai?"

"I... what sort of question is that?" I demanded, still laughing.

"He has great affection for you, Lin. He speaks of you often."

I frowned, and looked away from his penetrating gaze. It gave me a rush of intense pleasure to hear that Khaderbhai liked me and spoke of me. Still, I didn't want to admit, even to myself, how much his approval meant to me. The play of conflicting emotions- love and suspicion, admiration and resentment-confused me, as it usually did when I thought of Khader Khan, or spent time with him. The confusion emerged as irritation, in my eyes and in my voice.

"How long do you think we'll have to wait?" I asked, looking around at the closed doors that led to the private rooms of Khaderbhai's house. "I have to meet with some German tourists this afternoon."

Abdul ignored the question and leaned across the little table separating our two chairs.

"You must love him," he said in an almost seductive whisper. "Do you want to know why I love Abdel Khader with my life?"

We were sitting with our faces close enough for me to see the fine red veins in the whites of his eyes. The embroidery of those red fibres converged on the auburn iris of his eyes like so many fingers raised to support the golden, red-brown discs. Beneath the eyes were thick, heavy pouches, which gave his face its persistent expression of an inwardness filled with grieving and sorrow. Despite his many jokes and easy laughter, the pouches beneath his eyes were swollen, always, with a reservoir of unshed tears.

We'd been waiting half an hour for Khaderbhai to return. When I'd arrived with Tariq, Khader had greeted me warmly and then retired with the boy to pray, leaving me in the company of Abdul Ghani.

The house was utterly silent, save for the splash of falling rain in the courtyard and the bubble of the fountain's over-burdened pump. A pair of doves huddled together on the far side of the courtyard.

Abdul and I stared at one another in the silence, but I didn't speak, I didn't answer his question. Do you want to know why I love this man? Of course I wanted to know. I was a writer. I wanted to know everything. But I wasn't so happy to play Ghani's question-and answer game. I couldn't read him, and I couldn't guess where it was going.

"I love him, my boy, because he is a mooring post in this city.

Thousands of people find safety by tying their lives to his. I love him because he has the task, where other men do not even have the dream, of changing the whole world. I worry that he puts too much time and effort and money into that cause, and I have disagreed with him many times about it, but I love him for his devotion to it. And most of all, I love him because he is the only man I ever met-he is the only man you will ever meet-who can answer the three big questions."

"There are only three big questions?" I asked, unable to keep the sarcasm from my voice.

"Yes," he answered equably. "Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? Those are the three big questions. And if you love him, Lin, my young friend, if you love him, he will tell you these secrets, as well. He will tell you the meaning of life. And when you hear him speak, when you listen to him, you will know that what he says is true. And no-one else you will ever meet will answer these three questions for you. I know. I have travelled the Earth many times over. I have asked all the great teachers. Before I met Abdel Khader Khan, and joined my life to his, as his brother, I spent a fortune-several fortunes - seeking out the famous seers and mystics and renowned scientists. None of them ever answered the three big questions.

Then I met Khaderbhai. He answered the questions for me. And I have loved him, as my brother, my soul's brother, ever since that day. I have served him from that day until the little minute that we share. He will tell you. The meaning of life! He will solve the mystery for you."

Ghani's voice was a new current in the wide, strong river that carried me: the river of the city and its fifteen million lives.

His thick, brown hair was streaked with grey, and smudged completely white at the temples. His moustache, more grey than brown, rested on finely sculptured, almost feminine lips. A heavy gold chain gleamed at his neck in the afternoon light, and matched the gold that flashed in his eyes. And as we stared at one another in that yearning silence, tears began to fill the red-rimmed cups of his eyes. I couldn't doubt the real depth of his feeling, but I couldn't fully understand it, either. Then a door opened behind us, and Ghani's round face dissolved into its usual mask of facetious affability. We both turned to see Khaderbhai enter with Tariq.

"Lin!" he said, with his hands resting on the boy's shoulders.

"Tariq has been telling us how much he learned with you in the last three months."

Three months. At first I'd thought it impossible to endure the boy's company for three days. Yet three months had passed too swiftly; and when the time came to bring him home, I'd returned him to his uncle against the wishes of my heart. I knew that I would miss him. He was a good boy. He would be a fine man-the kind of man I once had tried, and failed, to be.

"He'd still be with us, if you hadn't sent for him," I replied.

There was a hint of reproach in my tone. It seemed to me a cruel arbitrariness that, without warning, had put the boy with me for months and had taken him away just as suddenly.

"Tariq completed his training at our Koranic school during the last two years, and now he has improved his English, with you. It is time for him to take his place at college, and I think he is very well prepared."

Khaderbhai's tone was gentle and patient. The affectionate and slightly amused smile in his eyes held me as firmly as his strong hands held the shoulders of the solemn, unsmiling boy standing in front of him.

"You know, Lin," he said softly, "we have a saying, in the Pashto language, and the meaning of it is that you are not a man until you give your love, truly and freely, to a child. And you are not a good man until you earn the love, truly and freely, of a child in return."

"Tariq's okay," I said, standing to shake hands and take my leave. "He's a good kid, and I'll miss him."

I wasn't the only one who would miss him. He was a favourite with Qasim Ali Hussein. The head man had visited the boy often, and had taken him on his rounds of the slum. Jeetendra and Radha had spoiled him with their affection. Johnny Cigar and Prabaker had teased him good-naturedly, and they'd included him in their weekly cricket game. Even Abdullah had developed an emotional regard for the child. After the Night of the Wild Dogs, he'd visited Tariq twice every week to teach him the arts of fighting with sticks, scarves, and bare hands. I saw them often, during those months, their silhouettes carved on the horizon like figures from a shadow-play as they practised on the one small strip of sandy beach near the slum.

I shook hands with Tariq last, and looked into his earnest, truthful, black eyes. Memories from the last three months skipped across the fluid surface of the moment. I recalled his first fight with one of the slum boys. A much bigger boy had knocked him down, but Tariq drove him back with the power of his eyes alone, forcing shame into the boy with his stare. The other boy broke down and wept. Tariq embraced him in a solicitous hug, and their close friendship was sealed. I remembered Tariq's enthusiasm in the English classes that I'd set up for him, and how he soon became my assistant, helping the other children who joined in to learn. I saw him struggling against the first monsoon flood with us, digging a drainage channel out of the rocky earth with sticks and our bare hands. I remembered his face peeping around the flimsy door of my hut one afternoon when I was trying to write. Yes! What is it, Tariq! I'd asked him irritably.

Oh, I'm sorry, he'd replied. Do you want to be lonely?

I left Abdel Khader Khan's house, and began the long walk back to the slum, alone and diminished by the absence of the boy. I was less important, somehow, or suddenly less valuable in the different world that closed in on me without him. I kept my appointment with the German tourists, at their hotel, quite near Khaderbhai's mosque. They were a young couple, on their first trip to the sub-continent. They wanted to save money by changing their Deutschmarks on the black market, and then buy some hashish for their journey around India. They were a decent, happy couple - innocent, generous-hearted, and motivated by a spiritual notion of India. I changed their money for them, on a commission, and arranged the purchase of the charras. They were very grateful, and tried to pay me more than we'd agreed. I refused the extra money-a deal is a deal, after all-and then accepted their invitation to smoke with them. The chillum I prepared was average strength for those of us who lived and worked on the streets of Bombay, but much stronger than they were accustomed to smoking.

They were both stoned to sleep when I pulled the door of their hotel room closed, and walked on through dozy afternoon streets.

I made my way along Mohammed Ali Road to Mahatma Gandhi Road and the Colaba Causeway. I could've taken a bus, or one of the many prowling taxis, but I loved the walk. I loved those kilometres from Chor bazaar, past Crawford Market, V.T. Station, Flora Fountain, the Fort area, Regal Circle, and on through Colaba to Sassoon Dock, the World Trade Centre, and the Back Bay. I walked them a thousand times in those years, and they were always new, always exciting, and always inspiring. As I rounded Regal Circle and paused momentarily to check the Coming Attractions posters outside Regal Cinema, I heard a voice calling my name.

"Linbaba! Hey! Oh, Lin!"

I turned to see Prabaker leaning from the passenger window of a black-and-yellow taxi. I walked over to shake his hand and greet the driver, Prabaker's cousin, Shantu.

"We're going back to home. Jump yourself inside, and we'll give you a lifts."

"Thanks, Prabu," I smiled. "I'll keep walking. I've got a couple of stops to make on the way."

"Okay, Lin!" Prabaker grinned. "But you don't take too much time, like sometimes too much time you're taking, if you don't mind that I'm telling your face. Today is a special day, isn't it?"

I waved until his smile disappeared in the thicket of traffic, and then I jumped in fright as a car slammed to a screeching smash beside me. An Ambassador had tried to overtake a slower car and had crashed into a wooden hand-cart, forcing the heavy cart into the side of a taxi, only two metres away from me.

It was a bad accident. The hand-cart puller was seriously injured. I could see that the ropes attached to his neck and shoulders-the reins and harness-had trapped him in the yoke of the cart. His body, constrained by the ropes, had somersaulted, and he'd hit his head hard on the unyielding surface of the road.

One arm was twisted backward at a sickeningly unnatural angle. A piece of shinbone on one leg protruded below the knee. And those ropes, the very ropes he used every day to drag his cart through the city, were tangled about his neck and chest, and dragging him toward choking death.

I rushed forward with others, pulling my knife from its scabbard in the belt at the back of my trousers. Working fast, but as carefully as possible, I cut through the ropes and freed the man from the wreckage of his cart. He was an older man, perhaps sixty years old, but he was fit and lean and healthy. His fast heartbeat was regular and strong: a powerful current with which to charge his recovery. His airways were clear, and he was breathing easily. When I opened his eyes gently with my fingers, his pupils reacted to the light. He was dazed and shocked, rather than unconscious.

With three other men, I lifted him from the road to the footpath.

His left arm hung limply from its shoulder, and I eased it into a curve at the elbow. Onlookers donated their handkerchiefs when I called for them. Using four of the handkerchiefs, attached at the corners, I confined the arm to his chest in a makeshift sling. I was examining the break in his leg when a frenzy of screaming and shouts near the damaged cars forced me to my feet.

Ten or more men were trying to seize the driver of the Ambassador. He was a huge man, well over six feet, half again as heavy as I was, and twice as broad across the chest. He planted his thick legs against the floor of the vehicle, braced one arm against the roof, and gripped the steering wheel with the other.

The furious crowd gave up after a minute of fruitless, desperate struggle, and turned their attention to the man in the back seat.

He was a stocky man with strong shoulders, but he was much slighter and leaner. The mob dragged him from the back seat, and thrust him against the side of the car. He covered his face with his arms but the crowd began beating him with their fists and tearing at him with their fingers.

The two men were Africans. I guessed them to be Nigerians.

Watching from the footpath, I remembered the shock and shame I'd felt when I'd seen mob rage like that for the first time, almost eighteen months before, on the first day of Prabaker's dark tour of the city. I remembered how helpless and cowardly I'd felt when the crowd had carried the man's broken body away. I'd told myself then that it wasn't my culture, it wasn't my city, it wasn't my fight. Eighteen months later, the Indian culture was mine, and that part of the city was my own. It was a black-market beat. My beat. I worked there every day. I even knew some of the people in the murderous crowd. I couldn't let it happen again without trying to help.

Shouting louder than the rest, I ran into the screaming crowd and began dragging men away from the tight press of bodies.

"Brothers! Brothers! Don't hit! Don't kill! Don't hit!" I shouted in Hindi.

It was a messy business. For the most part, they allowed me to drag them away from the mob. My arms were strong. The men felt the power that shoved them aside. But their killing rage soon hurled them back into the uproar, and I felt their fists and fingers pounding and gouging at me from everywhere at once. At last I succeeded in clearing a path to the passenger and then separating him from the leaders of the pack. With his back pressed defensively against the side of the car, the man raised his fists as if ready to fight on. His face was bloody. His shirt was torn and smeared with vivid, crimson blood. His eyes were wide and white with fear, and he breathed hard through clenched teeth. Yet there was determined courage in the set of his jaw and the scowl that bared his teeth. He was a fighter, and he would fight to the very end.

I took that in with a second's glance, and then turned my back to stand beside him and face the crowd. Holding my open hands in front of me, pleading and placating, I shouted for the violence to stop.

As I'd run forward and started the attempt to save the man I'd had a fantasy that the crowd would part and listen to my voice.

Stones would fall from the limp hands of mortified men. The mob, swayed by my eloquent courage, would wander away from the scene with shamed and downcast eyes. Even now, in my recollections of that moment and that danger, I sometimes surrender to a wish that my voice and my eyes had changed their hearts that day, and that the circle of hate, humiliated and disgraced, had widened and dispersed. Instead, the crowd hesitated for only an instant and then pressed in upon us again in a brawling, hissing, screaming, boiling rage, and we were forced to fight for our lives.

Ironically, the very numbers of the crowd attacking us worked to our advantage. We were trapped in an awkward L-shape made by the tangle of vehicles. The crowd surrounded us, and there was no escape. But the crush of their numbers inhibited their movements.

Fewer blows struck us than might've been the case had fewer men opposed us, and the thrashing crowd actually struck at themselves quite often in their fury.

And perhaps there really was some softening of their fury, some reluctance to _kill us, despite their urgent desire to cause us pain. I know that reluctance. I've seen it many times, in many violent worlds. I can't fully explain it. It's as if there's a collective conscience within the group-mind of a mob, and the right appeal, at exactly the right moment, can turn murderous hate aside from its intended victim. It's as if the mob, in just that critical moment, want to be stopped, want to be prevented from the worst of their own violence. And in that one doubting moment, a single voice or fist raised against the gathering evil can be enough to avert it. I've seen it in prison, where men bent on the pack-rape of another prisoner can be stopped by one voice that stirs their shame. I've seen it in war, where one strong voice can weaken and wither the hate-filled cruelty that torments a captured prisoner. And perhaps I saw it on that day, as the Nigerian and I struggled with the mob. Perhaps the strangeness of the situation-a white man, a gora, pleading in Hindi for the lives of two black men- held them back from murder.

The car behind us suddenly roared to life. The heavy-set driver had managed to start the car. He gunned the engine, and began to gently reverse away from the wreckage. The passenger and I slowly shuffled and slithered along beside the car as it backed up into the crowd. We struck out, shoving men away from us and wrenching their hands from our clothes. When the driver reached backward over his seat and opened the rear passenger door, we both jumped into the car. The press of the crowd slammed the door. Twenty, fifty hands drummed, beat, slapped, and pounded on the outside of the car. The driver pulled away, heading at a crawl along the Causeway Road. A collection of missiles-tea glasses, food containers, dozens of shoes-rained on the car. Then we were free, speeding along the busy road and watching through the rear window to make sure we weren't followed.

"Hassaan Obikwa," the passenger beside me said, offering his hand.

"Lin Ford," I replied, shaking his hand and noticing for the first time how much gold he wore. There were rings on every finger. Some of them closed around blue-white, glittering diamonds. There was also a diamond-encrusted gold Rolex hanging loosely at his wrist.

"This is Raheem," he said, nodding to the driver. The huge man in the front seat glanced over his shoulder to offer me a broad grin. He rolled his eyes in a survivor's happy prayer, and turned to face the road.

"I owe you my life," Hassaan Obikwa said with a grim smile. "We both do. They wanted to kill us, back there, that's for sure."

"We were lucky," I answered, looking into his round, healthy, handsome face and beginning to like him.

His eyes and his lips defined his face. The eyes were unusually wide-set and large, giving him a slightly reptilian stare, and the marvellous lips were so full and sumptuously shaped that they seemed to be designed for a much larger head. His teeth were white and even at the front, but all the teeth on either side were capped with gold. Rococo curves at the corners of his wide nose gave his nostrils a delicate flare, as if he was constantly inhaling a pleasantly intoxicating scent. A wide, gold earring, conspicuous beneath his short black hair and against the blue black skin of his thick neck, pierced his left ear.

I glanced at his torn, bloody shirt, and at the cuts and bruises that were swelling on his face and every exposed centimetre of flesh. When I met his eyes again they were glittering with excited good humour. He wasn't too shaken by the violence of the mob, and neither was I. We were both men who'd seen worse, and had been through worse, and we recognised that in each other immediately. In fact, neither of us ever mentioned the incident directly after that day of our meeting. I looked into his glittering eyes, and I felt my smile stretching to match his.

"We were damn lucky!"

"Fuck yes! Yes, we were!" he agreed, laughing hard and slipping the Rolex watch from his wrist. He held it to his ear to make sure it was still ticking. Satisfied, he snapped the watch back on his wrist, and gave his full attention to me. "But the debt is there, and the debt is still important, even if we were very lucky. A debt like this-it is the most important of all a man's obligations. You must allow me to repay you."

"It'll take money," I said. The driver glanced in the rear-vision mirror and exchanged a look with Hassaan.

"But... this debt cannot be repaid with money," Hassaan answered.

"I'm talking about the cart-puller-the one you hit with your car. And the taxi you damaged. If you give me some money, I'll see that it gets to them. It'll go a long way to calming things down at Regal Circle. That's in my beat-I have to work there, every day, and people are going to be pissed off for a while yet.

Do that, and we'll call it square."

Hassaan laughed, and slapped his hand on my knee. It was a good laugh-honest but wicked, and generous but shrewd.

"Please don't worry," he said, still smiling broadly. "This is not my area, it is true, but I am not without influence, even here. I will make sure that the injured man receives all the money he needs."

"And the other one," I added.

"The other one?"

"Yes, the other one."

"The other... what?" he asked, perplexed.

"The taxi driver."

"Yes, yes, the taxi driver also." There was a little silence, humming with puzzles and questions. I glanced out the window of the cab, but I could still feel his enquiring eyes on me. I turned to face him again.

"I... like... taxi drivers," I said.

"Yes..."

"I... I know a lot of taxi drivers."

"Yes..."

"And that cab being smashed up-it'll cause a lot of grief for the driver and his family."

"Of course."

"So, when will you do it?" I asked.

"Do what?"

"When will you put the money up, for the cart-puller and the cab driver?"

"Oh," Hassaan Obikwa grinned, looking up again into the rear vision mirror to exchange a look with Raheem. The big man shrugged, and grinned back into the mirror. "Tomorrow. Is tomorrow okay?"

"Yeah," I frowned, not sure what all the grinning was about. "I just want to know, so that I can talk to them about it. It's not a question of the money. I can put the money up myself. I was planning to do it anyway. I've gotta mend some fences back there.

Some of them are... acquaintances of mine. So... that's why it's important. If you're not going to do it, I need to know, so that I can take care of it myself. That's all."

The whole thing seemed to be getting very complicated. I wished I'd never raised the matter with him. I began to feel angry at him, without really understanding why. Then he offered me his open palm in a handshake.

"I give you my word," he said solemnly, and we shook hands.

We were silent again, and after a few moments I reached over to tap the driver on the shoulder.

"Just here is fine," I said, perhaps a little more harshly than I'd intended. "I'll get out here."

The car pulled into the kerb, a few blocks from the slum. I opened the door to leave, but Hassaan gripped my wrist. It was a very strong grip. For a second, I calculated all the long way upward to the much greater strength I knew must be in Raheem's grip.

"Please, remember my name-Hassaan Obikwa. You can find me at the African ghetto, in Andheri. Everyone knows me there. Whatever I can do for you, please tell me. I want to clear my debt, Lin Ford.

This is my telephone number. You can reach me, from here, at any time of the day or the night."

I took the card-it bore only his name and number-and shook his hand. Nodding to Raheem, I left the car.

"Thank you, Lin," Hassaan called out through the open window.

"Inshallah, we'll meet again soon."

The car drove off, and I turned toward the slum, staring at the gold-lettered business card for a full block before I put it in my pocket. A few minutes later, I passed the World Trade Centre and entered the compound of the slum, remembering, as I always did, the first time I entered those blest and tormented acres.

As I passed Kumar's chai shop, Prabaker came out to greet me. He was wearing a yellow silk shirt, black pants, and red-and-black patent leather high-heeled platform shoes. There was a crimson silk scarf tied at his throat.

"Oh, Lin!" he called out, hobbling across the broken ground on his platform shoes. He clung to me, as much for balance as in friendly greeting. "There is someone, a fellow you know, he is waiting for you, in your house. But one minute please, what happened on your face? And your shirts? Have you been having it some fights, with some bad fellow? Arrey! Some fellow gave you a solid pasting. If you want me, I will go with you, and tell that fellow he is a bahinchudh."

"It's nothing, Prabu. It's okay," I muttered, striding toward the hut. "Do you know who it is?"

"Who it... is? You mean, who it is, who was hitting your face?"

"No, no, of course not! I mean, the man who's waiting in my hut.

Do you know who it is?"

"Yes, Lin," he said, stumbling along beside me and clutching my sleeve for support.

We walked on for a few more seconds in silence. People greeted us on every side, calling out invitations to share chai, food, or a smoke.

"Well?" I asked, after a while.

"Well? What well?"

"Well, who _is it? Who's in my hut?"

"Oh!" he laughed. "Sorry, Lin. I thought you want some surprises, so I didn't tell you." "It's hardly a surprise, Prabu, because you told me there was someone waiting for me in my hut."

"No, no!" he insisted. "You don't know it his name yet, so still you get the surprise. And that is a good things. If I don't tell you there is somebody, then you go to your hut, and you get the shocks. And that is a bad things. A shocks is like a surprise, when you are not ready."

"Thank you, Prabu," I replied, my sarcasm evaporating as it was uttered.

He needn't have concerned himself with sparing me the shock. The closer I came to my hut, the more often I was informed that a foreigner was waiting to see me. Hello, Lin baba! There's a gora in your house, waiting for you!

We arrived at my hut to find Didier sitting in the shade of the doorway on a stool, and fanning himself with a magazine.

"It's Didier," Prabaker informed me, grinning happily.

"Yes. Thank you, Prabu," I turned to Didier, who rose to shake hands. "This is a surprise. It's good to see you."

"And good to see you, my dear friend," Didier replied, smiling despite the distressing heat. "But, I must be honest, you look a little worse for wear, as Lettie would say."

"It's nothing. A misunderstanding, that's all. Give me a minute to wash up."

I stripped off my torn, bloody shirt, and poured a third of a bucket of clean water from the clay matka. Standing on the flattened pile of stones beside my hut, I washed my face, arms, and chest. Neighbours passed me as I washed, smiling when they caught my eye. There was an art to washing in that way, with no wasted drop of water and no excess of mess. I'd mastered that art, and it was one of the hundred little ways my life imitated theirs, and folded into the lotus of their loving, hoping struggle with fate.

"Would you like a chai?" I asked Didier as I slipped on a clean, white shirt in the doorway of my hut. "We can go to Kumar's."

"I just had one full cup," Prabaker interjected before Didier could reply. "But one more chai will be okay, for the friendship sake, I think so."

He sat down with us in the rickety chai shop. Five huts had been cleared to make space for a single, large room. There was a counter made from an old bedroom dresser, a patchwork plastic roof, and benches for the customers made from planks resting precariously on piles of bricks. All the materials had been looted from the building site beside the slum. Kumar, the chai shop owner, fought a running guerrilla war with his customers, who tried to pilfer his bricks and planks for their own houses.

Kumar came to take our order himself. True to the general rule of slum life that the more money one made, the more poverty-stricken one had to look, Kumar's appearance was more dishevelled and ragged than the meanest of his customers. He dragged up a stained wooden crate for us to use as a table. Appraising it with a suspicious squint, he slapped at the crate with a filthy rag and then tucked the cloth into his singlet.

"Didier, you look terrible," I observed, when Kumar left to prepare our tea. "It must be love."

He grinned back at me, shaking his head of dark curls and raising the palms of his hands.

"I am very fatigued, it is true," he said, managing a shrug of elaborate self-pity. "People do not understand the truly fantastic effort required in the corruption of a simple man. And the more simple the man, the more effort it requires. They do not realise what it takes out of me to put so much decadence into a man who is not born to it."

"You might be making a rod for your own back," I mocked.

"Each thing in its own time," he replied, smiling thoughtfully.

"But you, my friend, you look very well. Only a little, how shall I say it, lonely for information. And to that end, Didier is here. I have all the latest news and gossip for you. You know the difference between news and gossip, don't you? News tells you what people did. Gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it."

We both laughed, and Prabaker joined in, laughing so loudly that everyone in the chai shop turned to look at him.

"Well then," Didier continued, "where to start? Oh yes, Vikram's pursuit of Letitia proceeds with a certain bizarre inevitability.

She began by loathing him-"

"I think loathing is bit strong," I argued.

"Ah, yes, perhaps you're right. If she loathes me-and it is completely certain that she does, the dear and sweet English Rose - then her feeling for Vikram was indeed something less. Shall we say detest?"

"I think detest would cover it," I agreed.

"Et bien, she began by detesting him but, through the persistence of his devoted romantic attentions, he has managed to arouse in her what I can only describe as an amiable revulsion."

We laughed again, and Prabaker slapped at his thigh, hooting with such hilarity that every head turned toward him. Didier and I inspected him with quizzical looks of our own. He responded with an impish smile, but I noticed that his eyes darted away quickly to his left. Following the glance, I saw his new love, Parvati, preparing food in Kumar's kitchen. Her thick, black plait of hair was the rope by which a man might climb to heaven. Her petite figure-she was tiny, shorter even than Prabaker-was the perfect shape of his desire. Her eyes, when she turned in profile to look at us, were black fire.

Looking over Parvati's shoulder, however, was her mother, Nandita. She was a formidable woman, three times the combined width and weight of her petite daughters, Parvati and Sita, and she glowered at us, her expression managing to combine greed for our custom with contempt for our male sex. I smiled at her, and wagged my head. Her smile, in return, was remarkably similar to the fierce grimace that Maori warriors affect to intimidate their enemies.

"In his last episode," Didier continued, "the good Vikram hired a horse from the handlers on Chowpatty Beach, and rode it to Letitia's apartment on Marine Drive to serenade her outside her window."

"Did it work?"

"Unfortunately non. The horse left a package of merde on the front pathway-during an especially moving part of the song, no doubt-and the many other residents of the apartment building expressed their outrage by pelting the poor Vikram with rotting food. Letitia, it was noticed, threw more offensive missiles, and with a more deadly aim, than any of the neighbours."

"C'est l'amour," I sighed.

"Exactly-merde and bad food, c'est l'amour," Didier agreed quickly. "I do think that I must involve myself in this romance, if it is to succeed. The poor Vikram-he is a fool for love, and Lettie despises a fool above all else. But things are much more successful for Maurizio in the last time. He had some business venture with Modena, Ulla's paramour, and he is in the chips, as our dear Lettie would say. He is now a significant dealer, in Colaba."

I forced my face to remain impassive while jealous thoughts of hand- some Maurizio, flushed with success, spiked their way into my mind. The rain started again, and I glanced outside to see people running, hitching up their pants and their saris to avoid the many puddles.

"Just yesterday," Didier went on, carefully tipping his tea from the cup into the saucer, and sipping it from the saucer as most of the slum-dwellers did, "Modena arrived in a chauffeured car, at Leopold's, and Maurizio is wearing a ten-thousand-dollar Rolex watch. But..."

"But?" I prompted, when he paused to drink.

"Well, there is terrible risk in their business. Maurizio is not always... honourable... in his business dealings. If he should upset the wrong people, there will be great violence."

"And what about you?" I asked, changing the subject because I didn't want Didier to see the serpent of spite rising in me when he spoke of the trouble that might be finding its way to Maurizio. "Aren't you flirting with danger yourself? Your new... interest... is one string short of the full marionette, or so I'm told. He's got a very bad temper, Lettie says, and a hair trigger controlling it."

"Oh, him?" he sniffed dismissively, turning down the corners of his expressive mouth. "Not at all. He is not dangerous. Although he is annoying, and annoying is worse than dangerous, n'est-ce pas? It is easier to live with a dangerous man than an annoying one."

Prabaker went to buy three beedie cigarettes from Kumar's shop counter, and lit them with the same match, holding them in one hand and burning the ends with the other. He passed one each to Didier and me, and sat down again, smoking contentedly.

"Ah, yes, there is another piece of news-Kavita has taken a new job at a newspaper, The Noonday. She is a features writer. It is a job with much prestige, I understand, and a fast track to a sub-editor's position. She won it in a field of many talented candidates, and she is very happy."

"I like Kavita," I felt moved to say.

"You know," Didier offered, staring at the glowing end of his beedie and then looking up at me, genuinely surprised, "so do I."

We laughed again, and I deliberately included Prabaker in the joke. Parvati watched us from the corners of her smouldering eyes.

"Listen," I asked, seizing the momentary pause in our conversation, "does the name Hassaan Obikwa mean anything to you?"

Didier's mention of Maurizio's new, ten-thousand-dollar Rolex had reminded me of the Nigerian. I fished the gold-and-white business card from my shirt pocket, and handed it over.

"But, of course!" Didier replied. "This is a famous Borsalino.

They call him The Body Snatcher, in the African ghetto."

"Well, that's a good start," I muttered, a wry smile twisting my lips. Prabaker slapped at his thigh, and doubled over with near hysterical laughter. I put a hand on his shoulder to calm him down.

"They say that when Hassaan Obikwa snatches a body away, not even the devil himself can find it. They are never again seen by living men. Jamais! How do you come to know him? How did you get his card?"

"I sort of, bumped into him, earlier today," I answered, retrieving the card and slipping it into my pocket.

"Well, be careful, my dear friend," Didier sniffed, clearly hurt that I hadn't provided the details of my encounter with Hassaan.

"This Obikwa is like a king, a black king, in his own kingdom.

And you know the old saying-a king is a bad enemy, a worse friend, and a fatal family relation."

Just then a group of young men approached us. They were labourers from the construction site, and most of them lived on the legal side of the slum. They'd all passed through my small clinic during the last year, most of them wanting me to patch up wounds they'd received in work accidents. It was payday at the site, and they were flushed with the excited optimism that a full pay packet puts into young, hard-working hearts. They shook hands with me, each in turn, and paused long enough to see the new round of chai and sweet cakes they'd bought for us delivered to our table. When they left, I was grinning as widely as they were.

"This social work seems to suit you," Didier commented through an arch smile. "You look so well and so fit-underneath the bruises and scratches, that is. I think you must be a very bad man, in your heart of hearts, Lin. Only a wicked man would derive such benefit from good works. A good man, on the other hand, would simply be worn out and bad tempered."

"I'm sure you're right, Didier," I said, still grinning. "Karla said you're usually right, about the wrong you find in people."

"Please, my friend!" he protested, "You will turn my head!"

The sudden crash of many drums exploded, thumping music directly outside the chai shop. Flutes and trumpets joined the drums, and a wild, raucous music began. I knew the music and the musicians well. It was one of the jangling popular tunes that the slum musicians played whenever there was a festival or a celebration. We all went to the open front of the shop. Prabaker stood on a bench beside us to peer over the shoulders of the crowd.

"What is it? A parade?" Didier asked as we watched a large troupe slowly walk past the shop.

"It's Joseph!" Prabaker cried, pointing along the lane. "Joseph and Maria! They're coming!"

Some distance away, we could see Joseph and his wife, surrounded by relatives and friends, and approaching us with ceremonially slow steps. In front of them was a pack of capering children, dancing out their unself-conscious and near-hysterical enthusiasm. Some of them adopted poses from their favourite movie dance scenes, and copied the steps of the stars. Others leapt about like acrobats, or invented jerky, exuberant dances of their own.

Listening to the band, watching the children, and thinking of Tariq-missing the boy already-I remembered an incident from the prison. In that other world-within-a-world, back then, I moved into a new prison cell and discovered a tiny mouse there. The creature entered through a cracked air vent, and crept into the cell every night. Patience and obsessional focus are the gems we mine in the tunnels of prison solitude. Using them, and tiny morsels of food, I bribed the little mouse, over several weeks, and eventually trained it to eat from the edge of my hand. When the prison guards moved me from that cell, in a routine rotation, I told the new tenant-a prisoner I thought I knew well-about the trained mouse. On the morning after the move, he invited me to see the mouse. He'd captured the trusting creature, and crucified it, face down, on a cross made from a broken ruler. He laughed as he told me how the mouse had struggled when he'd tied it by its neck to the cross with cotton thread. He marvelled at how long it had taken to drive thumbtacks into its wriggling paws.

Are we ever justified in what we do? That question ruined my sleep for a long time after I saw the tortured little mouse. When we act, even with the best of intentions, when we interfere with the world, we always risk a new disaster that mightn't be of our making, but that wouldn't occur without our action. Some of the worst wrongs, Karla once said, were caused by people who tried to change things. I looked at the slum children dancing like a movie chorus and capering like temple monkeys. I was teaching some of those children to speak, read, and write English. Already, with just the little they'd learned in three months, a few of them were winning work from foreign tourists. Were those children, I wondered, the mice that fed from my hand? Would their trusting innocence be seized by a fate that wouldn't and couldn't have been theirs without me, without my intervention in their lives?

What wounds and torments awaited Tariq simply because I'd befriended and taught him?

"Joseph beat his wife," Prabaker explained as the couple drew near. "Now the people are a big celebration."

"If they parade like this when a man beats his wife, what parties they must throw when one is killed," Didier commented, his eyebrows arched in surprise.

"He was drunk, and he beat her terribly," I said, shouting above the din. "And a punishment was imposed on him by her family and the whole community."

"I gave to him a few good whacks with the stick my own self!"

Prabaker added, his face aglow with happy excitement.

"Over the last few months, he worked hard, stayed sober, and did a lot of jobs in the community," I continued. "It was part of his punishment, and a way of earning the respect of his neighbours again. His wife forgave him a couple of months ago. They've been working and saving money together. They've got enough, now, and they're leaving today on a holiday."

"Well, there are worse things for people to celebrate," Didier decided, permitting himself a little shoulder and hip roll in time to the throbbing drums and snake-flutes. "Oh, I almost forgot. There is a superstition, a famous superstition attached to that Hassaan Obikwa. You should know about it."

"I'm not superstitious, Didier," I called back over the thump and wail of the music.

"Don't be ridiculous!" he scoffed. "Everyone in the whole world is superstitious."

"That's one of Karla's lines," I retorted.

He frowned, pursing his lips as he strained his memory to recall.

"It is?" "Absolutely. It's a Karla line, Didier."

"Incredible," he muttered. "I thought it was one of mine. Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Well, no matter. The superstition, about him, is that everyone who meets Hassaan Obikwa, and exchanges names with him in a greeting, will one day find himself a client of his-either a living client or a dead one. To avoid this fate, you don't tell him your name when you meet him the first time. No-one ever does.

You didn't tell him your name, did you?"

A roar went up from the crowd surrounding us. Joseph and Maria were close. As they approached, I saw her radiant, hopeful, brave smile and his competing expressions of shame and determination.

She was beautiful, with her thick hair trimmed short and styled to match the modern cut of her best dress. He'd lost weight, and looked fit, healthy, and handsome. He wore a blue shirt and new trousers. Husband and wife pressed against one another tightly, step for step, all four hands balled into a bouquet of clenched fingers. Family members followed them, holding a blue shawl to catch notes and coins thrown by the crowd.

Prabaker couldn't resist the call to dance. He leapt off the bench and joined the thick tangle of jerking, writhing bodies that preceded Joseph and Maria on the track. Stumbling and tottering on his platform shoes, he skipped to the centre of the dancers. His arms were outstretched for balance as if he was crossing a shallow river on a path of stones. His yellow shirt flashed as he whirled and lurched and laughed in the dance.

Didier, too, was drawn into the avalanche of revelry that ploughed through the long lane to the street. I watched him glide and sway gracefully into the party, swept along in the rhythmic dance until only his hands were visible above his dark, curly hair.

Girls threw showers of flower petals plucked from chrysanthemums.

They burst in brilliant white clusters, and settled on all of us in the converging crowd. Just before the couple passed me, Joseph turned to look into my eyes. His face was fixed between a smile and a frown. His eyes were burning, glistening beneath the tight brows of his frown, while his lips held a happy smile. He nodded twice before looking away.

He couldn't know it, of course; but with that simple nod of his head, Joseph had answered the question that had remained with me, as a dull ache of doubt, since the prison. Joseph was saved. That was the look simmering in his eyes as he nodded his head. It was the fever of salvation. That look, that frowning smile, combined shame and exultation because both are essential-shame gives exultation its purpose, and exultation gives shame its reward. We'd saved him as much by joining in his exultation as we had by witnessing his shame. And all of it depended upon our action, our interference in his life, because no man is saved without love.

What characterises the human race more, Karla once asked me, cruelty, or the capacity to feel shame for it? I thought the question acutely clever then, when I first heard it, but I'm lonelier and wiser now, and I know it isn't cruelty or shame that characterises the human race. It's forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would've annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.

The drums staggered toward the distant street. Moving away from us, the dancers romped and rolled on the rhythm, their swaying heads like a field of wildflowers weaving back and forth on waves of wind. As the music dwindled to an echo in our minds, the day to-day and minute-to-minute of slum life slowly reclaimed the lanes. We gave ourselves to our routines, our needs, and our harmless, hopeful scheming. And for a while, a little while, ours was a better world because the hearts and smiles that ruled it were almost as pure and clean as the flower petals fluttering from our hair, and clinging to our faces like still, white tears.

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Дата добавления: 2015-10-26