Narcopolis (15 page)

When he started the car again he was feeling better, a miracle actually, the way his mood lifted, Rumi told Dimple. He drove towards Khar with ‘Machine Gun’ turned up loud, the smack kicking in like Buddy Miles’s big bass drum, never mind the shitty car’s shitty speakers; and the feedback and weird radio interference, some kind of helicopter noise, GIs in Vietnam maybe, then Jimi again, doing his voodoo shit, the spaces between notes liquefied into scratchy slow-mo sound grabs, the guitar loud, beyond loud, like a car crash in slow motion, metal and flesh fused: gave him the shivers every time, made him want to crash the car, or drink till he died, or tattoo a motto on his chest with a rusty nail and industrial dye,
Kill You Quick
. And that, said Rumi, was when he saw the woman. She was standing at the turn from Khar Dhanda to the main Juhu Road. She turned into the headlights when she heard the car slow. Her dark skin was scarred with old smallpox and her hair was held in place with pins and she carried one of those striped shopping bags, like a housewife. She was looking right at him. He stopped the car and she put her head at the window. He saw a bunch of keys on an ornate silver ring hooked to the waist of her sari. Maybe she really was a housewife, doing some quick freelance on the side to supplement the family income. Should I get in? she said. He fixed the price and drove until he found a street that was dark enough and then he parked between two cars, backed into the space and turned the engine off. He told her to move to the back seat and climbed in beside her, already conscious of her stink, what was it, garlic? Asafoetida? She’d been cooking recently and she had a powerful body odour, which excited him. She smelled of food and sweat and faintly of cologne and she was rubbing two fingers against her thumb. He dug into his jeans and gave her a hundred-rupee note, telling her to use her mouth on him. She gave him a look, like she didn’t do that, like she was out on the street selling sex but only on her terms. No water in my mouth, okay? she said, and her voice was pure business: she could have been a hooker on Shuklaji Street. And when she’d been at it for a while, head bouncing like a toy, a spray of bobby pins holding the hair in place above her ears, and he maybe nodded off a little, a tiny teeny little bit, she goes, You slept off or what? Then she muttered something in Bambayya Hindi that he didn’t catch and she started to gather her things. Finish, he told her, his voice loud in the small car. She put her shopping bag down and shot him a look and went back to work. He was half erect, when all of a sudden she stopped. Her jaws hurt, she said. She asked him to fuck her, which he did, reluctantly, because this was not part of the deal: fucking was work. He slapped her lightly and she moaned. She liked it; she fucked him back. Then he hit her again. She grabbed his hand and he punched her on the head, fucking her hard, and when he came, for the first time in weeks, he did what he always did, he screamed words he didn’t know and by now she was screaming too, in fear, and so, to shut her up, he hit her in the mouth, drawing blood, and the sight of it pushed him over and he came again. He pulled out, still dripping, and opened the door. She was moaning but unconscious. He put her on the ground by an abandoned handcart, small piles of shit nearby, human, by the smell of it, and as an afterthought, he put his hand into her blouse, realizing that he hadn’t touched her breasts until then, a pity, because they were swollen and wet at the nipples. He fondled her briefly and took the wad of notes folded into the whore’s bra and drove away as slowly as he could.

And this was when Dimple tried not to show her surprise. She said You should have asked me. I have a friend who would have given you much better service.

Rumi told her he drove home after his adventure with the housewife hooker, and walked in the door to a full-scale family celebration, his wife’s relatives, wandering around the house half naked. First thing they do, these people, walk in the door and take off their clothes because of the heat, which wasn’t any worse than usual. There were five of them, a man in shorts and no shirt, his wife, fully dressed, unfortunately, two small half-naked children, and an older woman, stopping by on their way home to Ahmedabad. Rumi sat on a couch in the front room, flipping through a magazine while the travellers repacked their bags and made phone calls. The older woman was bragging about her son’s new car. He caught the word Maruti, as he was meant to. And in case he didn’t, she repeated it for him in English. Darshan bought a new car, she said, Maruti, such a nice car. His partner bought a new model Ambassador, but Maruti’s mileage is better. At least Darshan had the sense to be embarrassed by his mother’s propaganda: he looked shamefaced. Just then the older child came in from the kitchen. He wore only underwear and he made a low whooo sound as he ran across the room. At the last moment, just as he was about to crash into the couch, he made a sharp turn into a new flight path
parallel
with the wall; his whoop became higher pitched. The other child staggered around the room like an old drunk, bumping into furniture and babbling with happiness. An instant later her face crumpled and there was a long exhalation. She stopped breathing. Her arms hung by her side and only her feet moved, in rhythm, walking in place. There was silence for a long excruciating moment, everyone waiting for the child to breathe. Then: a telescoping wail so loud it shook Rumi out of his half nod. Here, Rumi digressed for a moment. He told Dimple that childhood was a kind of affliction, certainly physical and
possibly
mental. Children were at a hopeless disadvantage; they were unsuited for the world. They were short and ungainly and stupid, half-people, dwarf bundles of ectoplasm and shit, stunted organisms incapable of finding food or keeping their asses clean. They needed constant attention and they couldn’t communicate their needs. All they could do was wait for it to pass, years of waiting until the blight was gone. It would make anybody bawl for no reason, he said. Soon, he heard his wife ask her cousin about his business. Her cousin and his partner had set up the company eight years earlier to provide technical support for office computer networks. It hadn’t begun well, had begun so badly in fact that they thought of packing it in. Then the economy opened up and they started to get orders from all over the place, and now there was so much business he’d bought his mother an apartment. Everybody, it seemed to Rumi, was making money except for him. After her relatives left, his wife went to sleep. Rumi thought of the time immediately after his return from LA, when he had a job in advertising and was earning better, and his wife was the one who had initiated sex. She’d been insatiable; it was all they did. He’d come home from work and she would pull him into the bedroom first thing. It was hard to believe this was the same woman. If he were bringing more money home, would it make a difference? Of course it would, he was sure of it. Her manner had changed almost to the month and day that he’d lost the job at the agency and taken up employment at her father’s brokerage. In that case, if money was the lubricant that made her agree to sex, what was the difference between her and the woman he’d paid earlier in the evening? If there was a difference, it was the prostitute who came out of it in a better light. At least she was true to her profession and her station in life. His wife was true to neither. If she were, she would understand that her duty was to serve him and make him happy. He was her pati, her husband and lord, and his happiness was her need. This is what he thought about as he lay beside his sleeping wife, Rumi told Dimple, and it gave him pleasure to remember the adventure with the prostitute, to relive it while his wife lay beside him and to smell again the street woman’s kitchen sweat. He sniffed his hands and smiled in the dark.

There was a Godrej padlock on the door. People came up the stairs and it was the first thing they saw. Then they saw the Customs and Excise notice tacked to the wall and understood that Rashid’s was shut indefinitely. They went elsewhere. That morning Rashid, Dimple and Bengali were in Gilass Palass, a teashop and falooda parlour near Grant Road Station. Only Bengali noticed the mirrors on the walls and ceiling, and, on smoked-glass shelving that ran the length of the premises, a
collection
of figurines in the likeness of swans and androgynous, possibly female angels. Rashid drank masala chai, and he held an unlit Triple Five in his hand.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said, ‘temporary, tell everybody we’ll be back very soon.’

‘How soon?’

‘Very soon.’

‘You already said that.’

‘Eat your khari biscuit.’

‘I told you something was wrong. The use.’

‘You didn’t.’

‘Noticing things, telling you. And then you forget. What’s the use?’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘Bilkul, I did, bhai, told you there was something wrong when that Customs and Excise came round asking for five lakhs instead of fifty thousand. He’s been taking money from you for years, same amount every time, like tax, and suddenly he adds a zero. Something was wrong.’

‘When did you tell me? You think I’d forget?’

‘Why not? You forget everything else.’

She was using the formal
aap
though her words were not formal at all. Bengali’s thoughts were in his face: look at this woman, until yesterday she was a prostitute in a hijra’s brothel and listen to her now, talking as if she’s Rashid’s equal. He was dismayed by her manner around his boss and by the way she said whatever came to her mind, whether respectful or not. She talks as if she is his wife and Rashid listens like a husband, he thought. But she’s more than a wife, more than both his wives put together: she’s his business partner and she’s better at it than he is. If she was in charge, we’d be rich and the competition would be mincemeat.

‘So that’s why you’re here, to remind me.’

‘And meanwhile.’

‘Meanwhile, we have a temporary shop and we keep going.’

‘Sounds like this meanwhile will be a long meanwhile. And you’ll do what?’

‘Something, I’m thinking.’

‘Bhai, the khana won’t reopen by itself.’

Rashid lit his cigarette and blew a ring and then he blew another through the first.

‘I know who’s behind it: the bhadwa. He came to see me, made an offer to buy my khana, such a low price I knew he was the one who put the C & E lock on the door.’

‘Khalid. He fixed it to put you out of business.’

‘Or take it over.’

They paid the bill and went to the new shop Rashid was renting in Arab Gully. It was in a side street off a side street. They’d settled in and set up a pipe (the place was so small there was room for only one) and Rashid was already comfortable, too comfortable, according to Dimple. She complained to Bengali that he had accepted the unacceptable. He was doing what he’d always done. He smoked the pipes she made. He drank his Black Label and chased garad. He got his meals delivered from Delhi Darbar. He didn’t seem worried by the loss of the khana, or by the fact that he’d been put out of business by a man like Khalid. Get it back, she told Rashid. Whatever it takes. Maro him if you have to, just get it back.

Bengali noticed that her hair had started to thin, and her body had lost its roundness. There were new lines around her mouth and her skin was darker. He wondered if this was why she’d taken to wearing a burkha. He wanted to tell her not to worry, that, dark or fair, she was a striking woman. Then, one night, on his way to get dinner for Rashid, he saw something that frightened him. He saw her standing under the street lamp outside Mr Lee’s, though the Chinaman’s khana was long gone by then. It was early, around eleven, but the street was dark and there were few pedestrians and he didn’t see Dimple until he was a few feet away. She was dressed all in black and in the darkness the only thing visible was her face. She stood frozen, her eyes turned up to the white light of the lamp, very still, except for her lips, which seemed to be moving, though he could not hear what she was saying. Her eyes were wide, as if she was begging for something, imploring someone implacable or merciless, someone who would never forgive or let her forget her errors. His first instinct was to apologize, for what he didn’t know. In the fluorescent light she seemed to be raw bone and skin wrapped in black fabric and she billowed like the sails of a ship. What kind of ship? An Arab ship, thought Bengali, a dhow, a ghost ship whose inhabitants rarely came on deck because they had to toil twice as hard as the living. Her skin had a bluish tint and her features were set in stone. She stared upwards without blinking and the thing he would remember later was the look in her eyes, there was no light in them, not even the reflected light of the street. He thought: This is a woman who understands death. She has tasted the meat of it and it pleases her. The thought frightened him and he walked past her without stopping.

Dimple fixed the Khalid problem herself, without meaning to or knowing she had. Salim found her in the room on Arab Gully, a space so tiny it could not be called a khana. It was a cupboard, smaller than the rooms at 007, and there was barely enough space to stretch out for a smoke. There was only one pipe, which Rashid was using. Salim had to wait with two other men, wait on the street with his O sickness building. Inside, he couldn’t speak freely to Dimple, because everything was overheard and there was only one topic of conversation that day. Salim listened without seeming to and he asked how they knew that it was Khalid who had shut down the khana. Was there a chance the customs people had done it for their own reasons? Rashid put his pipe down and took a deep breath, as if he was about to address a public gathering. Salim, I’m a businessman, it’s my skill. Yours is lifting wallets in such a way that a man will never know he has been robbed. Khalid has always wanted my business. I know this. I know it as surely as you know how much to charge for the Lala’s cocaine. Then Dimple said, Of course it’s Khalid. I’ve seen him with that bhadwa, the Customs and Excise, going bhai-bhai. He won’t be happy until he owns your business and he’ll charge twice the price and dilute the opium so it won’t do shit.

Later, they put together the details from sources on the street, reliable and not. Salim was seen arriving at Khalid’s with two friends, Kaanya the informer and Pasina the genius pocket-maar. They waited until Khalid was alone, then put him on the floor and tied his hands with twine. They force-fed him two pyalis of opium mixed with hot water. Khalid was not a smoker and the drink worked very quickly.

‘What we do, someone like you, we take a walk,’ Salim said.

‘Take a long walk, to Pydhonie or Dongri or even a make-it-fast walk to Grant Road Junction,’ said Kaanya.

‘We leave you on the pavement,’ said Pasina, laughing with his mouth open, his gums and lips bright red against the dark grain of his skin.

‘This is late at night, right, nobody around,’ Salim said.

‘Late at night, yes. We let you lie there for a while, look up, enjoy the stars, examine the cloud formations, see if it’s going to rain. Isn’t that right?’ said Pasina.

‘Bilkul. Cent per cent correct,’ said Kaanya.

‘Then, when you’re nice and comfortable, we pick up a stone, lots of them under the Grant Road Bridge, and put it on your head,’ Salim said.

‘Don’t worry, miya, it’s halal,’ said Pasina.

‘More merciful than halal, my yaar, this is quicker,’ said Kaanya.

‘And the patrakars will make some smart headlines about the Pathar Maar, stone killer this and stone killer that,’ said Salim.

‘Everybody’s happy, even the patharwallah,’ said Pasina.

Then, laughing redly, he added, ‘I think this fellow is nice and relaxed now. You should get high more often, miya, it suits you.’

They left him tied up, retching dry when there was nothing left to vomit. They left him on the floor with the door open and they went to Shuklaji Street, stopping for jalebis, which they wolfed from newspapers, the jalebis unusually yellow today, egg-yellow and very sweet, hot from the deep fry. They stood in the crowd, three happy men working their jaws, saying nothing while they ate. Salim ate his from the outside in, saving for the end the knotted bits at the centre, where the sugar syrup was thickest. After the jalebis, they had a glass each of masala tea, and they were ready. They borrowed a cab from Kaanya’s brother and drove to Khalid’s house. They waited until his son came home in his blue shorts and shirt, his big school bag full of books. They picked him up and put him in the car and – this was Pasina’s idea – they left the school bag on the sidewalk in front of the house.

Salim’s friends drove the boy, nine years old, asthmatic, too well behaved to be frightened, to Pune, about six or seven hours away on the national highway. They checked into a guest house on MG Road and for the next few days they went to the movies, two, sometimes three screenings a day. They saw
Star
with Kumar Gaurav, music by Biddu. No good, Pasina told Salim on the phone. Budhu should stick to what he knows, Tina Charles and disco. He’s useless when it comes to Hindi. The songs are pure dinchak, no heart, yaar. Even the bachcha was bored.

‘Biddu.’

‘Arre, yaar, Sallu, I know his name. Budhu, Biddu, he’s still a fool.’

They saw
Desh
Premee
, with Kaanya’s favourite actor, and Salim’s: Amitabh Bachchan. Amitji with a meesha and what a meesha, said Pasina, like a skinny dead caterpillar on his upper lip, even Kaanya was disappointed. Pasina’s one-line review was categorical: Believe it, total flop it will be because of the choothiya moustache. They saw
Namak Halal
and
Shakti
, both starring Amitabh with Smita Patil, whom Pasina called a ‘dusky up-and-comer’, a phrase he’d found in a film magazine. The two movies received good reviews from the kidnappers. Even the bachcha liked, Pasina said. Still a kid, can’t stand up straight and piss, but you should have seen him looking at Smitaji: his eyes were like headlights.

Salim called Khalid a day or two after his son had been taken, called him a few times a day, at strange hours, with updates about the boy. ‘Bachcha has asthma, poor fellow, he needs constant care.’ ‘Looks like your boy takes after you, stubborn as hell.’ ‘Eats a lot, too much, you ask me.’ Khalid said in reply: ‘Please.’ It was all he had time for before Salim ended the call. So when, five days after the boy was taken, the kidnappers gave him a chance to talk, Khalid had a lot to say, and it took a little less than a week for Rashid to reopen his shop.