Chapter twenty-nine

Eyes curved like the sword of Perseus, like the wings of hawks in flight, like the rolled lips of seashells, like eucalyptus leaves in summer-Indian eyes, dancers' eyes, the most beautiful eyes in the world stared with honest, unbeguiling concentration into mirrors held for them by their servants. The dancers I'd hired to perform at the wedding ceremonies for Johnny and Prabaker were already in costume beneath the modest covering of their shawls.

In a chai shop near the entrance to the slum, emptied of customers for the purpose, they made the final adjustments to their hair and make-up, professionally swift amid excited chattering. A cotton sheet strung across the doorway was just sheer enough in the golden lamplight to reveal thrillingly indistinct shadows, inflaming fierce desires in many of those who crowded outside, where I stood guard and kept the curious at bay.

At last they were ready, and I threw the cotton screen back. The ten dancers from Film City's chorus lines emerged. They wore traditional tight choli blouses and wrap-around saris. The costumes were lemon yellow, ruby, peacock blue, emerald, sunset pink, gold, royal purple, silver, cream, and tangerine. Their jewels-hair clusters, plait tassels, ear rings, nose rings, necklaces, midriff chains, bangles, and anklets-struck such sparks of light from lanterns and electric bulbs that people blinked and flinched to look at them. Each heavy anklet carried hundreds of tiny bells and, as the dancers began their slow, swaying walk through the hushed and adoring slum, the sizzling clash of those silver bells was the only sound that marked their steps. Then they began to sing:

Aaja Sajan, Aaja Aaja Sajan, Aaja Come to me, my lover, come to me Come to me, my lover, come to me The crowds that preceded and surrounded them roared their approval. A platoon of small boys scrambled along the rough path ahead of the girls, removing stones or twigs, and sweeping the way clear with palm-leaf brooms. Other young men walked beside the dancers, cooling them with large pear-shaped fans of fine, woven cane. Further ahead along the path, the band of musicians I'd hired with the dancers approached the wedding stage silently in their red and white uniforms. Prabaker and Parvati sat to one side, and Johnny Cigar sat with Sita on the other side.

Prabaker's parents, Kishan and Rukhmabai, had travelled from Sunder for the event. They planned to spend a full month in the city, staying in a slum hut beside Prabaker's own. They sat at the front of the stage with Kumar and Nandita Patak. A huge painting of a lotus flower filled the space behind them, and coloured lights formed glowing vines overhead.

When the dancers slowly entered the space, singing love, they stopped as one and stamped their feet. They twirled in place, turning clockwise in perfect unison. Their arms moved with the grace of a swan's neck. Their hands and fingers rolled and swirled like silk scarves sailing the wind. Then suddenly they stamped their feet three times, and the musicians struck up a wild, enravishing rendition of that month's most popular movie song. And with the cheering in every throat around them, the girls danced into a million dreams.

Not a few of those dreams were my own. I'd hired the girls and the musicians, not knowing what kind of show they'd planned to put on for Prabaker's wedding. Chandra Mehta had recommended them to me, and he'd assured me that they always devised their own program. That first black-market money deal Mehta had asked me to transact-the ten thousand American dollars he'd wanted-had borne black fruit. Through him I'd met others in the film world who wanted gold, dollars, and documents. In the previous few months, my visits to the film studios had grown more frequent, and the profit for Khaderbhai accumulated steadily. There was a certain reciprocal cachet in the connection: the filmi types, as they were known in Bollywood, found it exhilarating to be associated, at a safe distance, with the notorious mafia don, and the Khan himself wasn't indifferent to the glamour that laminated the movie world. When I approached Chandra Mehta for help in organising the dancers, two weeks before Prabaker's wedding, he'd assumed that the Prabaker in question was an important goonda working for Khaderbhai. He put time and special care into the arrangements, selecting each girl from personal knowledge of her skills, and teaming them with a band of the best studio musicians. The show, when we finally saw it, would've satisfied the manager of the raunchiest nightclub in the city. The band played a long top ten of the season's most popular songs. The girls sang and danced to every one of them, giving seductive and erotic emphasis to the sub-text of each phrase. Some of the thousands of neighbours and guests at the slum wedding were pleasantly scandalised, but most were delighted by the wickedness-Prabaker and Johnny first among them. And I, seeing for the first time how lubricious the uncensored versions of the dances were, gained a new appreciation of the subtler gestures I'd seen so often in the Hindi films.

I gave Johnny Cigar five thousand American dollars as a wedding present. It was enough money for him to buy the little hut that he wanted in the Navy Nagar slum, near the spot where he'd been conceived. The Nagar was a legal slum, and purchasing the hut there meant the end of eviction fears. He would have a secure home from which to continue his work as unofficial accountant and tax consultant to the many hundreds of workers and small businesses in the surrounding slums.

My present to Prabaker was the deed to his taxi. The owner of the small fleet of taxis sold the deed to me in a vicious bout of bare tooth-and-knuckle haggling. I paid too much for the vehicle and its licence, but the money meant nothing to me. It was black money, and black money runs through the fingers faster than legal, hard-earned money. If we can't respect the way we earn it, money has no value. If we can't use it to make life better for our families and loved ones, money has no purpose. Nevertheless, out of respect for the formalities of tradition, I damned the taxi fleet owner, at the conclusion of our deal, with that most polite and hideous of Indian business curses-__May you have ten daughters, and may they all marry _welll!-a string of dowry commitments sure to exhaust all but the sturdiest fortunes.

Prabaker was so pleased and excited with the gift that the gravity he'd assumed in the role of the sober groom exploded in a whooping cheer. He leapt to his feet and danced a few pumps of his hip-thrusting sexy dance before the solemnity of the occasion overwhelmed him once more, and he sat down with his bride. I joined the thick, gyrating jungle of men in front of the stage, and danced until my thin shirt clung to me like seaweed in a shallow wave.

Returning to my apartment that night, I smiled to think how different Vikram's wedding had been. Two days before Prabaker and Johnny wed their sister-brides, Vikram was married to Lettie.

Against the passionate and occasionally violent opposition of his family, Vikram had opted for a registry office ceremony. He'd responded to the tears and pleading of his loved ones with one formulaic phrase: This is the modern India, yaar. Few of his family members could bring themselves to face the agony of that public repudiation of the ancient, gorgeously elaborate Hindu wedding they'd long planned for him. In the end, it was only his sister and his mother who joined the little circle of Lettie's friends, and watched as the bride and groom promised to love and honour one another for the rest of their days. There was no music, no colour, and no dancing. Lettie wore a burnt-gold suit, with a broad, gold straw hat bearing organdie roses. Vikram wore a three-quarter-length black coat, a black-and-white brocade vest, black gaucho pants with silver piping, and his beloved hat.

The ceremony was over in minutes and then Vikram and I half carried his grief-stricken mother to her waiting car.

On the day after their wedding, I drove Vikram and Lettie to the airport. Their plan was to repeat the ceremony in London with Lettie's family. While Lettie phoned her mother to confirm their arrival time, Vikram seized the opportunity for a heart-to-heart with me.

"Thanks for the work you did on my passport, man," he grinned.

"That fuckin' drug conviction in Denmark-it's only a little thing, but it could've given me a big headache, yaar."

"No problem."

"And the dollars. That was a fuckin' good rate you got for us. I know you did a special deal on that, yaar, and I'll return the favour, somehow, when we get back."

"It's cool."

"You know, Lin, you really ought to settle down, man. I don't mean to jinx up your scene or anything. I'm only saying it as a friend, as a friend who loves you like a brother. You're heading for a big fall, man. I got a bad feeling. I... I think you should settle down, like." "Settle down..."

"Yeah, man. That's the whole point of it, yaar."

"The whole point of... what?"

"That's what the whole fuckin' game is all about. You're a man.

That's what a man has to do. I don't mean to get into your personal shit, but it's kind of sad that you don't know that already."

I laughed, but he held the serious frown.

"Lin, a man has to find a good woman, and when he finds her he has to win her love. Then he has to earn her respect. Then he has to cherish her trust. And then he has to, like, go on doing that for as long as they live. Until they both die. That's what it's all about. That's the most important thing in the world. That's what a man is, yaar. A man is truly a man when he wins the love of a good woman, earns her respect, and keeps her trust. Until you can do that, you're not a man."

"Tell that to Didier."

"No, man, you're not getting it. It's just the same for Didier, but with him it's a good guy he has to find and love. It's the same for all of us. What I'm trying to tell you is that you found a good woman. You found her already. Karla is a good woman, man.

And you earned her fuckin' respect. She told me a couple of times, man-about the cholera and all that in the zhopadpatti.

You knocked her out with all that Red Cross shit, man. She respects you! But you don't cherish her trust. You don't trust her, Lin, because you don't trust yourself. And I'm afraid for you, man. Without a good woman, a man like you-men like you and me-we're just asking for trouble, yaar."

Lettie approached us. The grim purpose dimmed in his eyes, washed away by the look of love he turned on her.

"They're calling our flight, Lin, me darlin'," she said. Her smile was sadder than I'd expected, and wounding, somehow, because of it. "We better go. Here, I want you to have this, as a present from both of us."

She handed me a folded strip of black cloth, about a metre long and a hand-span wide. When I opened it out I found a small card in the centre.

"It's the blindfold," she said. "You know, from the train, on the roof, the day Vikram proposed. We want you to have it-as a souvenir, you know. And on the card, that's Karla's address. She wrote to us. She's still in Goa, but in a different part. Just, you know, if you're interested. Goodbye, darlin'. Take care." I watched them leave, happy for them, but too busy with Khader's work and the preparations for Prabaker's wedding to give much thought to Vikram's advice. Then the visit to Anand, the last visit, had pushed Vikram's voice even deeper into the choir of competing speeches, warnings, and opinions. But as I sat alone in my apartment on the night of Prabaker's wedding, and took the note and the black strip of the blindfold from my pocket, I remembered every word he'd said to me. I sipped at a drink and smoked cigarettes in a silence so profound that I could hear the susurrus of the blindfold's soft fabric rustle and slip between my fingers. The seductive, bell-bejewelled dancers had been escorted to their bus, and paid a respectful bonus. Prabaker and Johnny had led their brides away to taxis that waited to take them to a simple but comfortable hotel on the outskirts of the city. For two nights they would know the joys of private love before their public loves in the crowded slums resumed. Vikram and Lettie were already in London, preparing to repeat the vows that meant everything to my cowboy-obsessed friend. And I was sitting in the armchair, fully dressed and alone, not trusting her, as Vikram said, because I didn't trust myself. Then at last, when I drifted to sleep, the note and the strip of blindfold slipped from my fingers.

And for three weeks, after that night, I tried to lose the loneliness that their three happy marriages had pulled from my heart by taking every job I was offered, and cutting every deal I could devise. I flew one passport run to Kinshasa staying, as instructed, at the Lapierre Hotel. It was a nearly squalid three storey building in a laneway parallel to Kinshasa's long main street. The mattress was clean, but the floor and the walls seemed to be made from recycled coffin-wood. The grave-like smell was overpowering, and a sweating damp filled my mouth with gloomy, unidentifiable tastes. I chain-smoked Gitanes and gargled Belgian whisky to kill them. Rat-catchers patrolled the corridors, dragging conspicuous hessian sacks that bulged with writhing, fat animals. Cockroach colonies had claimed the drawers of the dresser, so I hung my clothing and toiletries and other personal items from hooks and thick, crooked nails conveniently hammered into every surface that would endure them.

On my first night I was ripped from a light sleep by gunshots in the corridor beyond my door. I heard a crumpling thump, as of a body falling, and then shuffling footsteps pulling something heavy, backwards, along the bare wooden floor of the hallway. I clamped a fist around my knife and opened the door. Men were standing at three other doors in the corridor, drawn as I was by the sounds. They were all Europeans. Two of them held pistols in their hands, and one held a knife similar to my own. We all looked at one another, and then at the trail of blood that smeared its way down the corridor out of sight. As if in response to a secret signal, we all closed our doors again without a word.

When I followed the Kinshasa run with a mission to Mauritius, my hotel on the island-nation provided a welcome and agreeable contrast. It was called the Mandarin, and it was in Curepipe. The original structure was built as a small-scale reproduction of a Scottish castle. The turreted resemblance was clear enough, on the winding approach through a neat English garden. Inside the building, however, the guest entered a kingdom of Chinese baroque designed by the Chinese family who were the new owners of the hotel. I sat beneath huge, fire-breathing dragons and ate Chinese broccoli with snow peas, garlic spinach, fried bean curd, and mushrooms in black bean sauce by the light of paper lanterns, while the windows gave a view of castellated battlements, gothic arches, and rose-studded topiary.

My contacts, two Indians from Bombay who lived in Mauritius, arrived in a yellow BMW as had been arranged. I got into the back of the car and had barely spoken a greeting when they took off at such tyre-torching speed that I was hurled backwards into a corner of the seat. We screamed along back roads at four times the speed limit for fifteen knuckle-whitening minutes and then they pulled into a silent, deserted grove. The overheated car cooled down with little clinks and clunks of sound. There was a strong smell of rum on both men.

"Okay, let's have the books," one of the two contacts said, leaning around from the driver's seat.

"I haven't got them," I snarled at him through clenched teeth.

The contacts looked at one another and then back at me. The driver raised his mercury-lens glasses, revealing eyes that looked as though he kept them in a glass of brown vinegar beside his bed at night.

"You don't got the books?"

"No. I was trying to tell you that on the way here-wherever the fuck we are-but you kept saying, Keep cool! Keep cool! And not listening to me. Well, are we cool enough now? Huh?"

"I'm not cool, man," the passenger said. I saw myself in the lenses of his glasses. I didn't look happy.

"You idiots!" I growled, switching to Hindi. "You nearly killed us all for nothing! Driving like a speed-freak-arsehole-Bombay taxi-driver with the cops up his arse! The passports are back at the sister-fucking hotel. I stashed them because I wanted to be sure of you two motherfuckers first. Now the only thing I'm sure of is that you guys haven't got the brains of two fleas on a pariah dog's balls."

The passenger lifted his glasses, and they both smiled as widely as their hangovers would allow.

"Where the fuck did you learn to speak Hindi like that?" the driver asked. "It's fuckin' great, yaar. You're speaking like a regular Bombay sister-fucker. It's fantastic, yaar!"

"Damn impressive, man!" his friend added, wagging his head admiringly.

"Let me see the money," I snapped.

They laughed.

"The money," I insisted. "Let me see it."

The passenger lifted a bag from between his feet and opened it to reveal many bundles of cash.

"What's that shit?"

"It's the money, brother," the driver replied.

"That's not money," I said. "Money is green. Money says, In God We Trust. Money has the picture of a dead American on it because money comes from America. That's not money."

"It's Mauritian rupees, brother," the passenger sniffed, wounded by the insult to his currency.

"You can't spend that shit anywhere but in Mauritius," I scoffed, recalling what I'd learned about restricted and open currencies while working with Khaled Ansari. "It's a restricted currency."

"I know, of course, baba," the driver smiled. "We arranged it with Abdul. We don't have the dollars just now, man. All fuckin' tied up in other deals. So we're paying in Mauritian rupees. You can change them back to dollars on your way home, yaar."

I sighed, breathing slowly and forcing calm into the little whirlwind that my mood was making out of my mind. I looked out the window. We were parked in what seemed to be a green forest fire. Tall plants as green as Karla's eyes whirled and shuddered in the wind all around us. There was no-one and nothing else in sight. "Let's just see what we got here. Ten passports at seven thousand bucks apiece. That's seventy thousand bucks. At the exchange rate of, say, thirty Mauritian roops to the dollar, that gives me no less than two million, one hundred thousand rupees. That's why you got such a big bag. Now, forgive me for seeming obtuse, gentlemen, but just where the fuck am I going to change two million rupees into dollars without a fuckin' currency certificate?"

"No problem," the driver responded quickly. "We've got a moneychanger, yaar. A first-class guy. He'll do the deal for you.

It's all set up."

"Okay," I smiled. "Let's go and see him."

"You'll have to go there alone, man," the passenger said, laughing happily. "He's in Singapore."

"Singa-fkckin'-pore!" I shouted, as that little whirlwind flared in my mind.

"Don't be all upset, yaar," the driver replied gently. "It's all arranged. Abdul Ghani is cool about it. He'll call you at the hotel today. Here, take this card. You go to Singapore, on your way home-okay, okay, Singapore is not exactly on the way home to Bombay, but if you fly there first, then it will be on the way, isn't it? So when you get down in Singapore, you go and see this guy on the card. He's a licensed moneychanger. He's Khader's man.

He'll change all the roops into dollars, and you'll be cool. No problem. There's even a bonus in it for you. You'll see."

"Okay," I sighed. "Let's go back to the hotel. If this checks out with Abdul, we'll do the deal."

"The hotel," the driver said, sliding his glasses down over the dartboards of his eyes.

"The hotel!" the passenger repeated, and the yellow Exocet hurtled back along the winding roads once more.

The trip through Singapore passed off without a hitch, and the Mauritian currency fiasco provided a few unexpected benefits. I made a valuable, new contact in the Singapore moneychanger-an Indian from Madras named Shekky Ratnam-and I took my first look at the profitable smuggling run of duty free cameras and electrical goods from Singapore to Bombay.

When I rode out to the Oberoi Hotel to meet Lisa Carter, after handing the dollars to Abdul Ghani and collecting my fee, I felt positive and hopeful for the first time in far too long. I began to think that I might've thrown off the dark moods that had settled on me after Prabaker's wedding night. I'd travelled to Zaire, Mauritius, and Singapore on forged passports without raising the vaguest suspicion. In the slum, I'd survived from day to day on the small commissions I made from tourists, and I had only my compromised New Zealand passport. Just a year later I lived in a modern apartment, my pockets were bulging with freshly ill-gotten gains, and I had five passports in five different names and nationalities, with my photograph on every one of them. The world of possibility was opening up for me.

The Oberoi Hotel stood at Nariman Point, on the handle of Marine Drive's golden sickle. Churchgate Station and Flora Fountain were a five-minute walk away. Ten minutes more in one direction led to Victoria Terminus and Crawford Market. Ten minutes in the other direction from Flora Fountain led to Colaba and the Gateway Monument. The Oberoi lacked the postcard recognition that the Taj Hotel inspired, but it compensated for that with character and flair. Its piano bar, for example, was a small masterpiece of light and cleverly private spaces, and its brasserie vied determinedly for the title of the best restaurant in Bombay.

Walking into the dark, richly textured brasserie from the brilliant day, I paused and blinked until my eyes found Lisa and her group. She and two other young women were sitting with Cliff De Souza and Chandra Mehta.

"Hope I'm not late," I said, shaking hands all round.

"No, I think _we're all early," Chandra Mehta joked, his voice booming out across the room.

The girls laughed hysterically. Their names were Reeta and Geeta.

They were aspiring actresses on the first rung-a lunch date with key second-tier players-and they gushed it up with a bug-eyed enthusiasm that wasn't far from panic.

I sat down in the vacant chair between Lisa and Geeta. Lisa wore a thin, lava-red pullover beneath a black silk jacket, and a skirt. Geeta's silver spandex top and white jeans were tight enough to be anatomically explicit. She was a pretty girl, maybe twenty years old, with her long hair pulled into a high ponytail.

Her hands fretted at the table napkin, folding and unfolding a corner of the cloth. Reeta had a neat short hairstyle that suited her small face and gamine features. She wore a yellow blouse with a deep, confrontation neckline, and blue jeans. Cliff and Chandra both wore suits, and it seemed that they were coming from or going to an appointment of some significance. "I'm starved," Lisa said happily. Her voice was light and confident, but she squeezed my hand under the table so hard that her fingernails pinched their way into my skin. It was an important meeting for her. She knew that Mehta planned to offer us a formal partnership in the casting business we'd been running unofficially. Lisa wanted that contractual agreement. She wanted the approval that only a contract could provide. She wanted her future in writing. "Let's eat!"

"How about-what do you all think-if I make the order for all of us?" Chandra suggested.

"Since you're paying for it, I don't mind," Cliff said, laughing and winking at the girls.

"Sure," I agreed. "Go ahead."

He summoned the waiter with a glance and waved the menu aside, launching straight into his list of preferences. It began with a white soup entree made with lamb cooked in blanched-almond milk, worked its way through grilled chicken in a cayenne, cumin, and mango marinade, and ended, after many other side platters, with fruit salad, honey kachori balls, and kulfi ice cream.

Listening to Mehta's lengthy and precise list of dishes, we all knew that it would be a long lunch. I relaxed, and let myself drift in the flow of fine foods and conversation.

"So, you still haven't told me what you think," Mehta prodded.

"You're giving it more attention than it's worth," Cliff De Souza declared, fluttering a hand dismissively.

"No, man," Mehta insisted. "It happened right outside my damn office, yaar. If ten thousand people are shouting about killing you, outside your own damn office window, it's hard not to give it some attention."

"They weren't shouting about you personally, Chandrababu."

"Not me personally. But it's me, and everyone like me, they want to get. Come on, it's not so bad for you, and you should admit it. Your family is from Goa. You're Konkani speakers. Konkani and Marathi are very close. You speak Marathi as well as you speak English. But I don't speak a damn word of it. Still I'm born here, yaar, and my daddy was born here before me. He has his business here in Bombay. We pay taxes here. My kids all go to school here. My whole life is here in Bombay, man. But they're shouting Maharashtra for the Marathis, and they want to kick us out of the only home we have." "You have to see it from their point of view as well," Cliff added softly.

"See my eviction from their point of view," Mehta retorted, with such vehemence that several heads turned toward him from other tables. He continued more quietly but with just as much passion.

"I should see my murder from their point of view, is that it?"

"I love you, my friend, like I love my own third brother-in-law,"

Cliff replied, grinning widely. Mehta laughed with him and the girls joined in, clearly relieved to have the tension at the table diluted with the little joke. "I don't want to see anyone hurt, least of all you, Chandrabhai. All I'm saying is, you have to see it from their side if you want to understand why they're feeling all this. They're native Marathi speakers. They're born here in Maharashtra. Their grandfathers, all the way back to... who knows, three thousand years or more, they were all born here.

And then they look around in Bombay, and they see all the best jobs, all the businesses, all the companies owned by people from other places in India. It drives them crazy. And I think they have a point."

"What about the reserve jobs?" Mehta protested. "The post office, the police, the schools, the state bank, and lots of others, like the transport authority, they all reserve jobs for Marathi speakers. But that's not enough for these crazy fuckers. They want to kick us all out of Bombay and Maharashtra. But I tell you, if they get their way, if they kick us out, they'll lose most of the money and the talent and the brains that make this place what it is."

Cliff De Souza shrugged.

"Maybe that's a price they're prepared to pay-not that I agree with them. I just think that people like your grand-dad, who came here from U.P. with nothing, and built a successful business, owe something to the state. The ones who have it all have to share some of it with the ones who have nothing. The people you call fanatics can only get others to listen because there's a grain of truth in what they say. People are angry. The ones who came here from outside and made their fortunes are getting the blame. It's going to get worse, my dear third brother-in-law, and I hate to think where it's going to end."

"What do you think, Lin?" Chandra Mehta asked me, appealing for support. "You speak Marathi. You live here. But you're an outsider. What do you think?"

"I learned to speak Marathi in a little village called Sunder," I said in answer. "The people there are native Marathi speakers. They don't speak Hindi well, and they don't speak English at all. They're pure, shudha Marathi speakers, and Maharashtra has been their home for at least two thousand years. Fifty generations have farmed the land there."

I paused to give someone else a chance to comment or query what I'd said. They were all eating, and listening intently. I continued.

"When I came back to Bombay with my guide, Prabaker, I went to live in the slum, where he and twenty-five thousand other people live. There were a lot of people like Prabaker there in that slum. They were Maharashtrians, from villages just like Sunder.

They lived in the kind of poverty where every meal cost them a crown of thorns in worry, and slaving work. I think it must break their hearts to see people from other parts of India living in fine homes while they wash in the gutters of their own capital city."

I took a few mouthfuls of food, waiting for a response from Mehta. After a few moments, he obliged.

"But, hey, Lin, come on, that's not all of it," he said. "There's a lot more to it than that."

"No, you're right. That's not all of it," I agreed. "They're not just Maharashtrians in that slum. They're Punjabis and Tamils and Karnatakans and Bengalis and Assamese and Kashmiris. And they're not just Hindus. They're Sikhs and Muslims and Christians and Buddhists and Parsis and Jains. The problems here are not just Maharashtrian problems. The poor, like the rich, are from every part of India. But the poor are far too many, and the rich are far too few."

"Arrey baap!" Chandra Mehta puffed. Holy father! "You sound like Cliff. He's a fuckin' communist. That's one of his raves, yaar."

"I'm not a communist, or a capitalist," I said, smiling. "I'm more of a leave-me-the-hell-alone-ist. "

"Don't believe him," Lisa interjected. "When you're in trouble, he's the right man to call."

I looked at her. Our eyes held just long enough to feel good and guilty at the same time.

"Fanaticism is the opposite of love," I said, recalling one of Khaderbhai's lectures. "A wise man once told me-he's a Muslim, by the way-that he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Jew than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. He has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Christian or Buddhist or Hindu than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. In fact, he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded atheist than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. I agree with him, and I feel the same way. I also agree with Winston Churchill, who once defined a fanatic as someone who won't change his mind and can't change the subject."

"And on that note," Lisa laughed, "let's change the subject. Come on, Cliff, I'm relying on you to give me all the gossip about the romance on the set of Kanoon. What's really going on there?"

"Yes! Yes!" Reeta cried out excitedly. "And all about the new girl. There's so much of scandal about her that I can't even say her name out loud, yaar. And everything, anything at all about Anil Kapoor! I just love him to pieces!"

"And Sanjay Dutt!" Geeta added, trembling dramatically at the mention of his name. "Is it true that you actually went to his party in Versova? Oh, my God! How I would love to be there! Tell us all about it!"

Encouraged by that febrile curiosity, Cliff De Souza spun out yarns about the Bollywood stars, and Chandra Mehta added titillating ruffles of gossip throughout. It became clear during the lunch that Cliff had an eye for Reeta, and Chandra Mehta directed much of his attention to Geeta. The long lunch was the beginning of a long day and night they'd planned to spend together. Warming to their themes, and with half their minds on the pleasures of the night to come, the movie men gradually shifted their gossip and anecdotes into the area of sex and sexual scandals. They were funny stories, sometimes straying into the bizarre. We were all laughing hard when Kavita Singh entered the restaurant. The laughter was still rippling through us as I introduced Kavita around the table.

"Excuse me," she said, with the kind of frown that climbs out of deep trouble and refuses to leave. "I have to speak to you, Lin."

"You can talk about the case here, Kavita," I offered, still bright with the laughter of a minute before. "They'll find it interesting."

"It's not about the case," she insisted firmly. "It's about Abdullah Taheri."

I stood at once and excused myself, nodding to Lisa that she should stay and wait for me to return. Kavita and I walked to the foyer of the restaurant. When we were alone, she spoke.

"Your friend Taheri is in deep shit." "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I heard a whisper from the crime staffer at the Times. He said that Abdullah is on a police hit list. Shoot on sight, he said."

"What?"

"The cops' orders are to take him alive, if they can, but to take no chances with him. They're sure he's armed, and they're sure he'll shoot, if they try to arrest him. At the slightest hesitation from him, they're ordered to shoot him down like a dog."

"Why? What's it all about?"

"They think he's this Sapna guy. They've had a solid tip-off, with solid evidence. They're sure it's him, and they're going to get him. Today. It might have happened already. You can't fuck with the cops in Bombay-not with something this serious. I've been looking for you for two hours."

"Sapna? It doesn't make sense," I said. But it did make sense. It made perfect sense, somehow, and I couldn't understand why. There were too many pieces missing; too many questions that I hadn't asked, and should've asked, long before.

"Sensible or not, it's now a reality," she said, her voice trembling in the shudder of a resigned and pitying shrug. "I've been looking for you everywhere. Didier told me you were here. I know Taheri's a good friend of yours."

"Yeah. He's a friend," I said, suddenly remembering that I was talking to a journalist. I stared at the dark carpet, and tried to find sense or direction in the sandstorm of my thoughts. Then I looked up and met her eyes. "Thanks, Kavita. I really appreciate it. Thanks a lot. I'll have to go."

"Listen," she said more softly. "I filed the story. I phoned it in as soon as I heard it. If it makes the evening news, it might make the cops a little more careful. For the record, I don't think he did it. I can't believe it. I always liked him. I had a little crush on him for a while, right after you brought him to Leopold's the first time. Maybe I've still got a crush on him, yaar. Anyway, I don't think he's Sapna, and I don't think he did those... terrible things."

She left, smiling for me and crying for him at the same time. At the table, I apologised for breaking up the lunch and offered a vague excuse for leaving. Without asking her if she wanted to come, I pulled back Lisa's chair for her and lifted her handbag from the chair's high back.

"Oh, Lin, do you really have to go?" Chandra complained. "We haven't even talked about the casting-agency deal."

"Do you really know Abdullah Taheri?" Cliff asked, the faintest hint of accusation in his curiosity.

I glared at him.

"Yes."

"And you're taking the lovely Lisa with you," Chandra pouted.

"That's a double disappointment."

"I've heard so much about him, yaar," Cliff persisted. "How did you meet him?"

"He saved my life, Cliff," I said, a little more harshly than I'd intended. "The first time I met him, he saved my life, at the hash den run by the Standing Babas."

I held open the door of the brasserie for Lisa, and looked back at the table. Cliff and Chandra had their heads close together, their whispers excluding the bewildered girls.

On the bike, outside the hotel, I told Lisa everything that I knew. Her healthy tan faded suddenly and her face was pale, but she pulled herself together quickly. She agreed with me that a trip to Leopold's was logical, as a first step. Abdullah might be there, or he might've left a message with someone. She was afraid, and I felt that fear twisting in the muscles of her arms as she clung to my back. We hurtled through the ponderously slow traffic, riding on luck and instinct just as Abdullah might've done. At Leopold's we found Didier drinking himself into the liquid abyss.

"It's over," he slurred, pouring himself another whisky from a large bottle. "It's all over. They shot him dead almost an hour ago. Everyone is talking about it. The mosques in Dongri are calling the prayers for the dead."

"How do you know?" I demanded. "Who told you?"

"The prayers for the dead," he mumbled, his head lolling forward.

"What a ridiculous and redundant phrase! There are no other kinds of prayers. Every prayer is a prayer for the dead."

I grabbed the front of his shirt and shook him. The waiters, who all liked Didier as much as I did, watched me and calculated how far they would let me go.

"Didier! Listen to me! How do you know? Who told you about it?

Where did it happen?"

"The police were here," he said, suddenly lucid. His pale blue eyes looked into mine as if he was looking for something at the bottom of a pond. "They were boasting about it to Mehmet, one of the owners.

You know Mehmet. He's also Iranian, like Abdullah. Some of the police from the Colaba station, across the road, were in the ambush. They said that he was surrounded in a little street near Crawford Market. They called on him to surrender himself to them.

They said he stood perfectly still. They said his long hair was streaming behind him in the wind, and his black clothes. They talked about that for quite some time. It is strange, don't you think, Lin, that they were talking about his clothes... and his hair? What does it mean? Then they... they said he took two guns from his jacket, and began to shoot at them. They all returned the fire at once. He was shot so many times that his body was mutilated, they said. It was torn apart by the fusillade."

Lisa began to cry. She sat down next to Didier, and he wrapped an arm around her in the automatism of grief and shock. He didn't look at her or acknowledge her. He patted at her shoulder and rocked from side to side, but his sorrow-struck expression would've been the same if he were alone and wrapping his arms about himself.

"There was a big crowd," he continued. "They were very upset. The police were nervous. They wanted to take his body to the hospital in one of their vans, but the people in the crowd attacked the van, and forced it off the road. The police took the body to the Crawford Market police station. The crowd followed them there, shouting and screaming abuse. They are still there, I think."

Crawford Market police station. I had to go there. I had to see the body. I had to see him. Maybe he was alive...

"Wait here," I told Lisa. "Wait with Didier, or get a cab home.

I'll be back."

A spear rammed into my side, up beside my heart, and out through the top of my chest. The spear of Abdullah's death, the spear of thinking about his dead, dead body. I rode to Crawford Market, and every breath pushed the rough spear up against my heart.

Near the market police station I was forced to abandon the bike because a milling crowd mobbed the road. Striking out on foot, I soon found myself in a wild, aimlessly rambling frenzy of people.

Most of them were Muslims. What I could make out from the many chants and shouted slogans indicated that they weren't simply mourners. Abdullah's death had touched off a prairie fire of discontent and long-nursed grievances in the neglected acres of the poor around the market area. Men were shouting a confusing collection of complaints, and clamouring for their own causes. I could hear prayers ringing out from several places.

Inside the legions of screaming men it was chaos, and every step toward the police station was won with a wrestling, shoving effort of force and will. Men came in waves that swept me sideways and then forward and then back. They pushed and punched and kicked out with their legs. More than once I almost went under those trampling feet, reaching out at the last moment to save myself by grappling my fingers into a shirt or a beard or a shawl. I finally caught sight of the police station and the police. Wearing helmets and carrying shields, they were three or four deep across the whole width of the building.

A man beside me in the crowd seized my shirt and began to punch me about the head and face. I had no idea why he'd attacked me- maybe he didn't understand it himself-but it didn't matter. The blows were struck, and I was in it. I covered myself with my hands and tried to wrench myself free. His hand was locked onto the shirt, and I couldn't shake him off. I stepped in closer, jabbed my fingers into his eyes, and crashed my fist into his head just ahead of the ear. His hand released me and he fell back, but others began to punch at me. The crowd opened out around me and I shaped up, punching out at random and hitting anything within range.

It was a bad situation. I knew that sooner or later I would lose the energy and the surprise that kept the posse of men at bay.

Men rushed at me, but only one at a time and with no technique.

They took solid hits and drew back. I danced around, hammering anyone who came near me, but I was surrounded and I couldn't win.

It was only the crowd's fascination with the fighting that kept them from surging forward in a strangling crush of bodies.

A determined phalanx of eight or ten men broke through the circle, and I was face to face with Khaled Ansari. I was running on instinct, and I almost punched him. He held out both hands, waving for me to stop. His men ploughed their way back into the crowd, and Khaled pushed me in behind them. Someone punched my head from behind, and I turned and ran at the mob again, wanting to fight every man in the city; wanting to fight until they punched me numb; until I couldn't feel that spear, dead Abdullah's spear, in my chest. Khaled and two of his friends wrapped their arms around me and dragged me out of the writhing, lunatic hell that the street had become. "His body's not there," Khaled told me when we found my bike. He wiped the blood from my face with a handkerchief. My eye was swelling up quickly, and blood dripped from my nose and a cut on my lower lip. I hadn't felt the blows at all. There was no pain.

The pain was all in my chest, right next to my heart, and I breathed it in, and out, and in.

"The crowd stormed the place. Hundreds of them. That was before we got here. When the cops pushed them out again, they went to the cell where they'd put his body, and it was empty. The crowd let all the prisoners out, and they got his body."

"Ah, Jesus," I moaned. "Ah, fuck. Ah, God."

"We'll get people on it," Khaled said, quiet and confident.

"We'll find out what happened. We'll find... it... him. We'll find his body."

I rode back to Leopold's, and found Johnny Cigar sitting at Didier's table. Didier and Lisa were gone. I collapsed in a chair beside Johnny, much as Lisa had done beside Didier a few hours before. Leaning my elbows on the table, I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands.

"A terrible thing," Johnny said.

"Yeah."

"It shouldn't have happened."

"No."

"And it didn't need to happen. Not like this."

"Yeah."

"He didn't need to take that fare. It was the last one for the night, but he didn't need it. He made plenty yesterday."

"What?" I asked, looking at him with a frown that was angry in its bewilderment.

"Prabaker's accident," he said.

"What?"

"The accident," he repeated.

"What... accident?"

"Oh, my God, Lin, I thought you knew about it," he said, the blood in his face an ebb tide that receded to his tightening throat. His voice cracked, and his eyes filled with tears. "I thought you knew. When I saw your face just now, the way you look, I thought you knew about it. I've been waiting for you nearly for one hour. I came to find you as soon as I left the hospital."

"Hospital..." I repeated stupidly. "St. George Hospital. He's in the intensive care. The operation- "

"What operation?"

"He was hurt-very badly hurt, Lin. The operation was... he's still alive, but..."

"But what?"

Johnny broke down and wept, bringing himself under control only with deep breaths and a clench-jawed effort of will.

"He took two passengers, very late last night. Actually, it was about three o'clock this morning. A man and his daughter, wanting to go to the airport. There was a handcart on the highway road.

You know how these fellows take some short-cuts at night, on the main road. It's forbidden, but still they do it, yaar, to save miles of pushing those heavy carts. This cart was full of steel for building. Long steel pieces. They lost the control of that cart on a hill. It slipped from their hands, and it rolled backwards. Prabaker came around the corner in his taxi, and the whole thing went into the front of the car. Some of the steel went through the window. The man and the woman in the back were killed. Their heads came off. Completely off. Prabaker was hit in the face."

He wept again, and I reached out to comfort him. Tourists and patrons at other tables glanced at us, but quickly looked away.

When he recovered, I ordered a whisky for him. He gulped it in one tip of the glass, as Prabaker had done on the first day that I met him.

"How bad is he?"

"The doctor said it's sure he will die, Lin," Johnny sobbed. "His jaw is gone. The steel took it away completely. Everything is gone. All his teeth. There is a big hole, just a big hole, where his mouth and his jaw used to be. His neck is open. They haven't even put bandages on his face, because there are so many tubes and pipes going into that hole. To keep him alive. How he survived it, in that car like that, nobody can say. He was trapped in there for two hours. The doctors think that he will die tonight. That's why I tried to find you. He got bad wounds in the chest and stomach and head. He's going to die, Lin. He's going to die. We have to go there."

We walked into the critical-care ward, and found Kishan and Rukhmabai sitting at the side of his bed and weeping in one another's arms. Parvati, Sita, Jeetendra, and Qasim Ali were all standing in solemn silence at the foot of the bed. Prabaker was unconscious. A bank of machines monitored his vital signs. Tubes and metal pipes were taped to his face-what was left of his face. That great smile, that gorgeous, solar smile, had been ripped from his face. It was simply... gone.

In a duty room on the ground floor, I found the doctor in charge of his care. I pulled a bundle of American hundred-dollar bills from my belt and offered it to him, asking him to forward any further accounts to me. He wouldn't take it. There was no hope, he said. Prabaker had hours, perhaps only minutes, to live. That was why he'd allowed the family and friends to remain at the bedside. There was nothing to do, he said, but wait with him, and watch him die. I returned to Prabaker's room and gave Parvati the money, together with everything I'd earned on my most recent courier run.

I found a toilet in the hospital and then washed my face and neck. The cuts and wounds on my face filled my aching head with thoughts of Abdullah. I couldn't bear to think those thoughts. I couldn't hold the image of my wild, Iranian friend surrounded by cops and shooting it out until his body was torn and bloodied. I stared into the mirror, feeling the acid burn of tears. I slapped myself hard awake, and returned to Prabaker's floor.

I stood with the others, at the foot of his bed, for three hours.

Exhausted, I began to nod off, and I had to admit that I couldn't stay awake. In a relatively quiet corner, I put two chairs against the wall and went to sleep. A dream swallowed me whole, almost at once. It carried me to Sunder. I was floating on the murmuring tide of voices on that first night in the village when Prabaker's father put his hand on my shoulder, and I clenched my teeth against the stars. When I woke from the dream, Kishan was sitting there beside me with his hand on my shoulder, and when I met his eyes we both sobbed helplessly.

In the end, when it was sure that Prabaker would die, and we all knew it, and we all accepted the fact that he had to die, we went through four days and nights of watching his brave little body suffer, what was left of him, the almost-Prabaker with the amputated smile. In the end, after days and nights of watching him suffer that pain and bewilderment, I began to hope that he would die, and to wish for it with all my heart. I loved him so much that in the end I found an empty corner in a cleaner's room, where a tap dripped constantly into a concrete trough, and I fell to my knees on a place marked by two wet footprints, and I begged God to let him die. And then he did die. In the hut he'd once shared with Parvati, Prabaker's mother, Rukhmabai, unfurled her thigh-length hair. She was sitting in the doorway with her back to the world. Her black hair was night's waterfall. She cut across thickly, close to her head, with sharp shears, and the long hair fell like a shadow dying.

At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread, of course, is that we won't stop loving them, even after they're dead and gone. For I still love you with the whole of my heart, Prabaker. I still love you. And sometimes, my friend, the love that I have, and can't give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep.

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Дата добавления: 2015-10-26