Narcopolis (5 page)

The khana was full, but Dimple wasn’t there and neither was Xavier. I ordered a pyali and smoked it slowly, at Dimple’s station, where Pagal Kutta was tending the pipe. He was the most incompetent pipeman in the khana. His pipes burned too fast and too strong. Worse, he was in a rush for you to finish so he could smoke the dregs. But it was the way he sucked at the pipe that had earned him his nickname, because he huffed and snorted like a mad dog. I endured the smoke he made me and I endured Rashid’s stories while I waited for Dimple. Rashid was talking about the Pathar Maar’s latest killing. He had struck late the night before and the newspapers hadn’t gotten around to reporting it. He’d picked off a mother and baby who were sleeping under the Grant Road Bridge. He’d crushed the woman’s head with a stone from the pavement and taken the baby by his ankles and smashed him against a wall. Others had been sleeping nearby but nobody heard a cry. It wasn’t until someone woke to use the toilet that the murders were discovered.

‘The Pathar Maar is a Congress stooge,’ said Rashid. ‘This is the culmination of the Garibi Hatao campaign. What do you say, Bengali?’

When he laughed, the others joined in, pipemen, customers, even Bengali laughed, though it was clear not everybody understood the joke: some among that group of career criminals and addicts didn’t know if it was 1978 or 1975, much less the minutiae of government policy. Dimple came in an hour or so later and Rashid said something that made her duck her head and go straight to work. And when I asked Bengali about the man in the kurta who’d come to the khana the previous night, he looked at me blankly, as if he had no idea who I was, much less what I was talking about.

The following day I resolved to stay home, but that evening I was back at the khana; I arrived to find, on the floor, smoking a pipe with Pagal Kutta, the painter Xavier. His white kurta had turned the colour of sawdust but his beard was trimmed and he’d had a haircut. In fact, he was looking fresher than he had any right to. Dimple was nowhere to be seen. I told him that Iskai had been to see me, that people were worried about him. Where had he been?

‘Sampling the wares of Shuklaji Street. No reason for Akash to upset himself. My show opens tomorrow. I’ll be there in a suit, charming the press. Tell him to stay calm.’

I asked again where he’d disappeared to. He said, May I buy you a pyali of Mr Rashid’s excellent product? If Baudelaire had extended his survey of paradise to opium, and this opium in particular, I think it would have won hands down. And I am making no idle speculation. As you may have gathered, I am a wino, and it is as a wino that I aver, this opium is superior, uniformly consistently superior. Xavier was drunk, but not so drunk he needed a wheelchair. He thanked me for my help, paid for my pyalis and left the khana in a respectable fashion.

A day or so later I asked Dimple if she knew where Xavier had been. She said he’d been with her at the hijra’s brothel. But she didn’t want to talk about him. In our language the word for evil and chaos is the same, she said. To speak of evil is to invite it into your life. She never mentioned Xavier again, not even to me.

Dimple kept her word when she said she would not speak of what happened. But she did not forget the man with the pop eyes whose bloody gums and whisky sweat gave her the superstitious feeling that a devil had entered the room. After I left and Bengali went out to buy food, they were alone in the khana for about half an hour. She busied herself setting out a pyali, but he prepared the opium himself. He did it expertly, tapping the pipe when it was ready, offering her the first smoke. She felt as if she were the customer and he the pipewallah. She would have enjoyed it, too, if she hadn’t felt so controlled by him. While she was still smoking, he took the pipe from her and put the mouthpiece, still wet from her lips, to his, his eyes locked on her belly. Then, looking her in the eyes, he sucked slowly at the pipe and she felt as if he was penetrating her through her clothes, or as if she had fallen asleep in an unfamiliar town and had been slapped awake by a stranger, a man whose face she could not see, who fucked her without mercy and paid no heed to her pleas for lubrication. She had never felt so naked, not even in the brothel.

As soon as Bengali returned, she went home. She walked quickly to the corner and turned into Hijde ki Gully where she walked past 007 and stopped as if to buy paan and checked to see if she was being followed. Only then did she go into the building. She ate dinner and washed herself. She exchanged her salvaar for a sari and was touching up her lipstick and face powder when Xavier entered. He chose the most uncomfortable chair in the house, a pink plastic armchair built for a child. Lakshmi brought him a beer and before he’d taken a sip he ordered another. He asked the tai how much it would cost to spend the night in one of the cubicles. With or without a girl? the tai asked. Without, he said, and the tai gave him the first figure that came into her head: three hundred for the night. How much with a girl? he asked. The tai said six hundred. So a room costs the same as a girl? The tai laughed at him. He pointed at Dimple and said, I’ll take that one. But ask her to put on a burkha for me. You should make them all wear burkhas, you’ll make more money. The tai laughed again. Xavier told her, Put half the girls in burkhas and half in saris and see what the customers prefer. Not once in his exchange with the tai did he look at Dimple.

The tai told her to get a cubicle ready. Dimple chose the least private one, the one nearest the entrance, next to the tai’s own room. She put a fresh sheet on the cot and cleared the bucket of used condoms and cigarette butts. Then she changed while Xavier and the tai continued to talk business in the hall, a strange conversation that filled her with dismay because of the way he said the English word ‘eunuch’, as if to disparage her and women like her: he never used the word ‘hijra’. Take a eunuch with a penis and no testicles, he said, which operation, as the tai knew, was accomplished at little cost, could in fact be accomplished with a minimum of expenditure; take him, and this was the important point, augment the basic armature of penis, no testicles, with a pair of good-quality breasts, the larger the better. He said the tai should invest in a new surgical procedure called silly cone, with which she could fashion a new breed of randi with big breasts and a show penis. For such a randi she could double the regular price, or even triple it. She would recoup her investment in the space of two months if not less and from then on it would be pure profit. The tai was no longer laughing, or she was laughing too softly to be heard. More likely, she was listening very carefully and would probably repeat the whole story to the seth, owner of the brothel and the randis. Dimple lay on the cot, taking as little space as possible and trying not to fall asleep, but it was late and she was tired.

She was in a corridor that stretched and curved like a road in the country. The only light came from the thin strips of blue glowing under the doors she passed. On her left was a wall and on the right were the doors, an endless succession of them, each with a strip of blue below it. Sometimes she heard voices, but mostly she heard the sound of splashing, or the hum of a large body of water, and she knew without being told that she had to keep walking, that it would be her error to stop and see what lay behind the doors, which were set at irregular intervals though they were all of the same size and shape. It doesn’t matter, she heard herself say, nothing worse can happen to me. All those who loved me have died and I too am dead. She felt such unbearable loneliness at the thought that she stopped and opened a door at random. The room was enormous, taken up in its entirety by a pool filled with blue water. She knew the water was very cold, because no condensation had formed on the tiles and the air was frigid. Around the pool was a ledge, but it was too narrow to walk on. The room had walls that went so high that the ceiling was invisible to her. On the far side of the room she made out a figure sitting with his legs in the water. She couldn’t see his face but she saw the lighted end of the cigarette he was smoking and she thought she smelled clove tobacco. She closed the door and walked on and her own footsteps sounded strange to her. She thought: I am losing myself one step at a time. And she opened the door to an identical room with a pool in which someone had recently been swimming. There was a thin mist on the surface of the water and bits of algae. It was cold and someone laughed. But when she looked into the darkness at the other end of the room there was no one. Then she noticed the shapes in the water and she went to take a closer look. Fat round shapes with long tails slept on the floor of the pool, and, as she watched, one detached itself from the mass of its
brothers
and torpedoed up towards her. She stepped back as an old man’s head broke the surface.

Mr Lee? she said.

And she woke beside Xavier, who was still asleep. She bathed, changed, ate breakfast and was at Rashid’s by noon. When Xavier came in around two, her station was busy and he went to Pagal Kutta’s. He acted like he didn’t know her. He smoked a pyali and ate lunch in the khana and then he went out for a haircut and a beard trim. The barber pointed out a hamam, a couple of cubicles set up by the side of the road, where they gave him a sliver of soap, a bucket of lukewarm water and a thin cotton towel. The bath cost him forty paisa and he emerged feeling clean despite the dirty clothes he was wearing. He felt good enough to take a little stroll. He thought of picking up a T-shirt and a pair of slacks in one of the shops on Grant Road and he turned right at the end of Shuklaji Street. Then, walking past Delhi Darbar, he smelled food and forgot about buying clothes: he wanted a drink. In a shop window he saw the reflection of a raggedy man in a dirty kurta and he stumbled lightly. He saw biryani cookpots and flies and piles of horse dung. A man approached with a double cross on which plastic sunglasses and hair-clips were arranged in the vague shape of a crucifix. He saw a man driving fast with his windows up and in the back of the car a little girl leaned her forehead against the glass. He saw men walking towards him with their hands around each other’s shoulders, and a man had collapsed on the street, his pockets turned inside out, and a group of boys panted in unison with a radio song in which the singer imitated a dog. A woman in a yellow blouse and petticoat made up her face in a splinter of glass. She held the jagged splinter like a knife. When he walked past her cage their eyes met in the mirror. She nodded to him and he went to the cage. She reached through the bars and grabbed his dick. Her hand was small, the grip very firm, and the bottle green bangles on her wrist chimed like small bells when she massaged him. He asked her where he might find a wine shop and she let go of him. ‘No wine. This is a Muslim locality, babuji, what do you expect?’ When he walked away she made a fist and grabbed herself by the elbow, gesturing to his dick with her lips. A man standing near her cage laughed. Xavier passed a movie theatre, its front wall streaked with piss. He bought a ticket and went in just as a song sequence began. A man in a matador’s costume gyrated in a giant birdcage. It was the tune he’d heard minutes earlier, in which a man panted like a dog. The matador took off his jacket and shouted: Monica! Xavier thought of saints and felt a powerful emotion, elation or fear, he wasn’t sure. A woman slid down a ramp to a dance floor. There was an artful shot of her figure framed between two bottles. She held the bottles up to her face and Xavier got up and went out into the sunlight and took a cab to Chowpatty. He found a permit room where a waitress served him whisky and poured him a beer. There were many tables and all the drinkers were men. On a tiny stage a woman in a chiffon sari danced to muddy music. He couldn’t tell if it was jazz or Hindustani classical. The woman moved her hips but not her feet. She held up her hands and gazed at the floor as if she was being robbed. Her expression said she was trying to remember something very important, something that could save her life. The drinkers gave her money but it wasn’t enough because she was still unable to remember the important thing. When the song ended she dropped her hands and walked offstage. Somebody clapped.

Late in the evening Xavier went back to 007, getting there before Dimple. He told the tai to send him the same girl dressed the same way and then he took a beer with him into the cubicle in which he’d spent the previous night. When Dimple came in, changed and washed, he fucked her standing up with her arms propped on the cot and her clothes pushed up around her waist. Later, he fucked her again and yelled something in a language no one could identify, French maybe, or Italian, some European language other than English, shouting the same two words again and again,
Sa Crenaam
. The cubicles next to theirs were occupied, the tai on one side and Lakshmi on the other. Lakshmi clapped her hands in the chakka salute when Xavier came, because it took him so long. She shouted her congratulations, to Dimple for her stamina and to Xavier for his technique.

She woke instantly, with the sensation that she’d forgotten something. She knew it was late because the nightlight had been turned on in the main room. She was alone on the cot. Then she became aware of a figure sitting motionless on the floor. She put the lamp on and saw Xavier, fully dressed, with his back against the door. The nightlight made red slashes in his face when he spoke. She thought: He looks like a lunatic. Find yourself a patron saint, he told her in a dog’s hoarse voice. Everybody needs at least one and some of us need two or more. I’m not saying the saint will protect you, he might, but there’s the question of companionship, not to mention peace of mind, which you need. I need protection too, Dimple said. Then listen carefully. I suggest that you think seriously about the patron saints of amputees, Anthony of Padua and Anthony the Abbot, who are also the patron saints of animals. The Anthonys of animals and amputees, now there’s a pairing that goes beyond the merely alphabetical and alliterative, wouldn’t you say? I suggest too the services of Agnes of Rome and Thomas Aquinas, who, among lesser or greater achievements, depending on your point of view, are the patron saints of chastity. Which isn’t of much concern to you though perhaps it should be, if you see what I mean. Between the two your best bet is Agnes, who is also the patron saint of orphans and virgins. It might interest you to know that the patron saints against sexual temptation are all women, the Marys of Edessa and Egypt, Mary Magdalen and Mary Magdalen of Pazzi, Angela of Foligno, Margaret of Cortona, Catherine of Siena and Pelagia of Antioch, who martyred herself at fifteen with the help of a
ladder
, a house and a small battalion of Roman soldiers. Then there’s Maximilian Kolbe, the patron saint of drug addicts and journalists, which, if you ask me, is an inevitable pairing. Most important of them all, in your case, is Dismas, who will be of particular service to you and those around you: he is the patron saint of criminals and whores. And of course the twins, Damian and Cosmas, Arab physicians who practised together and were martyred together and became the patron saints of medicine and pharmacy, a useful bit of information for drug fiends. My own preference is Martin of Tours and Monica, two of the patron saints against alcoholism, and between the two I choose Monica every time. Of course Martin is also the patron saint of recovering alcoholics, which facet of his personality I am willing to overlook on some days. Teresa of Avila is praised for her poetry, though it’s slightly too florid for my taste. But she is also the patron saint of aches, head and body, and someone you would do well to petition. I recommend too my namesake, Francis Xavier, the patron saint of Goa and Japan and of navigators and aimless travellers. There are twenty-five patron saints of unhappy marriages, including Hedwig of Andechs, Margaret the Barefooted and Thomas More, but only one patron saint of happy marriages, Valentine. Memorize the patron saints of the poor, for they are plentiful yet in short supply, Philomena, Giles, Martin de Porres, Nicholas of Myra, Lawrence, Anthony of Padua, Ferdinand of Castile and Zoticus of Constantinople. And eventually you will need the services of Ezekiel Moreno, the patron saint of the ailment smokers are susceptible to, and of course Ulric, the patron saint of a happy death, which is the least I wish for you.