Skinner (21 page)

“Map them?”

He takes the computer from her hands, closes it, and slips the machine inside her pack, zip.

“I know where it is.”

She takes the pack from him, shoulders it.

“Where?”

Skinner takes his stick from where it leans against the rail, thinks, and puts it back.

“Paris. The cimetière Montmartre.”

The ferry has docked, gangway down, people are streaming off. Most of the passengers are commuters forced to improvise in the face of the day’s challenges.

Jae tucks her thumbs under her pack straps.

“Why there?”

Skinner flips up the collar of his jacket, shrugs, dips his forehead toward the gangway, and they start to walk.

“It’s where they tried to kill me.”

She thinks about sleep, how much she’d like some.

“So Paris.”

He’s looking ahead, down the gangway, the flow of people.

“I think so.”

Her head is humming, bubbling really. Terrence. Trails of crumbs. She’s been thinking configurations, webs of causality. The treasure map. X marks the spot.

Fuck sleep.

“Paris. Yes. And to hell with Cross. We already know what’s in Stockholm.”

Down the gangway, Skinner’s eyes still on the crowd.

“Yes, we do.”

Onto steady ground, more cobbles, that crisp sun unwilling to drop the final few degrees from the sky. Energy in the press of bodies around them. Eventful day, people want to talk about it.
Have you heard? What happened? How far away? Share a taxi? Let’s get drinks and wait it out.
She doesn’t understand anything other than a few bursts of English, but she can translate the mood. The excitement of living through interesting times. And coming clear of the crowd, terra-cotta face of the Grand Hotel beside them, green copper roof, another of Stockholm’s many park squares just ahead, she touches the soft red scarf knotted at her throat, how deftly he tied it, she stops in her tracks, turns toward him, a handful of his sleeve, and leans her body into his, pulling down on his arm until she finds the kiss right where it has been waiting for her, yes, shaped just so, everything else cleared away, just the kiss.

Skinner takes his lips from hers, one hand is in the small of her back, the other is in his pocket, she knows because her hand is in there with it, holding the Russian’s gun.

He leans his forehead against hers.

“The man that was with Haven at Heathrow. He was on the ferry, following us.”

He kisses her, another good one.

It might be ten seconds later that Jae starts to realize how many times she’s heard the word
volcano
spoken since they first stood in line for the ferry, throughout their ride, and after they disembarked. And another word, more often, Swedish,
vulkan
.
No translation necessary. Even now, still kissing, she hears it again,
vulkan.
A trending topic of general conversation. And her brain finally connects it with Cross asking if the airport was still open in Kiev,
The winds are blowing south
, and with the CNN helicopter shot that she’d thought was of the protest outside the Riksdag, that plume of smoke.

Volcano
.

Iceland boiling over again. She wonders how much time they have before its particulates fill the air, grounding everything. Can they get a flight to Paris? Is it too late? She needs to stop kissing Skinner. That’s very important. But she doesn’t. Hand on his hand, holding the gun, traffic dividing around them, mad little city of islands, volcano erupting.

Vulkan.

She kisses him, fearless.

RAJ’S FATHER WANTS
him to learn how to shoot the gun.

It came from one of the water goons that the Naxalites killed last night. They killed four of them. The rest have done as he said and stopped charging people for water. The taps are open now. Everyone thought guards would be posted, Sudhir’s men, but there are no guards. At most taps an old woman sits, telling off anyone who tries to take more than five liters at once. Five liters and then to the back of the line. There has been cheating in the hours since the taps were opened, graft from some of the old women, but still, the water goons are gone. Four are dead. And Raj’s father has the pistol that one of them kept tucked inside his shirt.

“With no bullets.”

His father holds the OFB .32 automatic on the spread palms of both hands. It is an ugly gun. Stubby, pinched at the end of the barrel. Not at all like the ones from TV and the movies. Maybe from an old movie. Black and white, that old. Guns in new movies, even in Bollywood, look like they are computerized, with many moving parts. They look like pieces of Japanese robots. This gun in his father’s hand looks pitiful. Still, he wants Raj to learn how to shoot it.

Cool.

“Watch.”

His father’s hands turn the gun, pistol, this is a pistol, his thumb finds a catch, presses it, and the clip drops a few millimeters from the handle with a slight click. It is the first sound the gun has made. Raj expected it to make constant noise, as if it were filled with latches and bits of machinery. The sounds of guns in movies. But this gun is solid. Just the one little click of the magazine coming loose. His father pulls it free, slight effort.

He hands it to Raj.

“How many bullets?”

Raj looks at the slot that runs down the side of the clip, counts bullets.

“Seven.”

His father points the pistol at the floor, pulls back the slide, revealing an eighth bullet in the chamber. It pops out and lands on the floor of the shanty and Raj chases it, getting down on his knees to scoop it from under the cot and bringing it back to the table.

His father releases the slide and it snaps into place with one of those movie noises Raj has been waiting for, though not nearly as loud.

“Cocked.”

He turns the gun over, presses a tiny stud behind the trigger.

“Safety off.”

He stands, extends his arm, body at an angle to the direction the pistol is pointing, aims, and pulls the trigger.

Click.

“The expanding gases released by the explosion in the chamber force the slide back, allowing the empty shell to eject, cocking the hammer, and the return spring brings the slide forward, scooping the next round from the clip and into the chamber, and ready to fire again.”

He lowers his arm and places the gun on the table.

“An efficient machine.”

He looks at Raj.

“Show me.”

Raj puts the clip next to the single bullet on the table and picks up the pistol. The grips are made of plastic. Cheap. They might well have been manufactured from plastics recycled here in the slum. The word Ashani is stamped into the plastic. He turns the gun over. Small in his father’s hands, it feels big in his own, heavier than he’d thought it would be. The safety is still off. He pinches the slide between his thumb and forefinger, starts to pull it back, but it slips loose, snaps forward; the spring is very strong.

He looks at his father, waits for the lesson. There is always a lesson. You try to do things by yourself, always, and whether you do it correctly or incorrectly there is also always a lesson to be learned. In the universe of his father you can never stop learning.

“Try it like this.”

His father takes the pistol from him, places his left hand on top of the slide, heel on the forward sight, thumb and three fingers on the grooved surface of the slide, pushing it back instead of pulling. He shows it to Raj, waits until the boy nods, then points the pistol at the floor, thumb on the hammer, pulls the trigger and lowers the hammer gently.

“Try it that way, your hand covers the slide, more friction, more energy from your muscles going directly into the action.”

The lesson.

He hands the gun to Raj.

“Mind the barrel.”

Raj doesn’t understand until he places his left hand on top of the pistol, then realizes that as he pushes, it wants to turn, aim at his belly. He stops, looks at his father, and his father nods. No need to explain this lesson. Raj points the gun at the floor, hand atop the slide, pushes it back, still harder than seems possible, hears the click of the hammer locking into place, and releases the slide, shocked at the force with which it snaps back down the length of the barrel, dragging the gun forward, almost out of his hand.

His father moves behind him, places his hands on his shoulders, steering him, until Raj stands with his feet planted at the same angle he’d adopted. Body turned away from the target of a calendar on the wall, English garden flowers. His mother likes them. Now, arm up, straight from shoulder, sighting with his right eye through the V of the rear sight, the blade at the end of the barrel caught in the middle of that angle, the heart of a purple flower waiting. He pulls the trigger.

Click.

He looks at his father, receives the nod that means this lesson is well begun. There will be practice. Nothing is perfected, his father says. Nothing, ever. Only in science is perfection. And even then, well, his father has doubts.

He takes the gun from Raj, puts it on the table, sits. He works always since the truck came. He closes his eyes sometimes, but they open shortly after. Not even a nap. Food when it is put in front of him. There is no one else to do what he does. There are machinists and welders, mechanics, men who know how to smelt iron, men with acid burns up and down their arms who can strip corrosion, peel old chrome, burnish copper. And there are potters, Dharavi is thick with potters. The primary and historical industry of the slum. There are the Naxalites for security. There are the ship breakers, with their secret language, tireless. But no other electrical engineer. No other man with his father’s knowledge. No man of his father’s education chooses to live in Dharavi. For it must be a choice. In ever growing, ever modernizing Bombay, aspiring always to be
worl -class,
they must import electrical engineers to fill the need. But, still,
they
live here. Why has he been raised in a slum? Why must his mother live here? His sister? They could be living across the river, Bandra East. In an apartment. It must make sense, he knows. His father’s work is here. But often it feels like his father cares only for himself and his work and not for his family at all.

His father taps a second chair.

“I have to go back.”

He looks at his watch.

“Now.”

But he doesn’t move, waiting until Raj also sits. On the table are the remains of their lunch. A few grains of rice, samosa crumbs, empty glasses with chai dregs. Raj’s mother left it for them, refusing, and not weakening her resolve, to bring food to #1 Shed. Food at home, now,
go eat it.
She herself at work with two of Sudhir’s men, showing them where the border has been drawn. A place, shanties, the corridors between them, the open drains, which shops are inside the border, which ones not. They have seen the lines on maps, but Sudhir said they needed to go along the border, know where they will patrol. Soon they will live along that line, spread too thin. Three more policemen have been killed. Two of them worked for the water goons. The other refused the bribe offered him to look another way, insisted he should have more. Word is leaving the slum. Something is happening here. There are guns here.

There will be more police.

Raj’s father licks the tip of his finger and presses it down on a grain of rice, brings it to his lips, and chews it delicately between his front teeth, swallows.

“Some people say we should wait for the redevelopment.
This is foolish, to do this with the DRP coming. We will all have housing. Very modern. There will be tourists. Why this? Madness.
”

Raj knows about these people. David’s father believes in the Dharavi Redevelopment Project. He has a brochure pinned to the wall in their shanty. Glossy computer renderings of what the slum will look like after redevelopment. An architect, Mukesh Mehta, his renderings. His plan. But after over a decade of plans for the DRP, even David’s father is ready for something else. Others say this new DRP plan
will
happen. Because Bombay is booming, and the land is too valuable for slummies to keep. Each resident with a voter card and an established legal residence that predates January 1, 2000, will get a new tenement. Twenty-one square meters. Water, electricity. Very modern. Why not wait? Stay in the transit tenements that will be provided while all this shit is torn down and new and modern housing is built. Slummies on the ground floor, wealthy on top of them, top-story apartments, views and luxury. Why not?

Raj doesn’t say anything. His father isn’t asking a question, he’s explaining something. Something he thinks Raj needs to understand. Lesson.

His father touches the gun next to his plate, fingertip on the plastic grip, tracing the letters. Ashani.

“Your mother believes that it is simple. The DRP is all thieves. Some with hearts of gold, but thieves. Believing that they will make life better for the slummies, clean water, electricity, dignity, all these things. Believing they will bring these things to the slum cleans their conscience for anything else that happens. There will be injustices, they know, people will lose homes, livelihoods, and never reclaim them. They know. Realists, these people. But to be modern is its own end. Yes. To improve. And to make money. For everyone, money. So out of one million slummies some tens of thousands will not have a home, others will lose their businesses. But there will be progress. So this is the price to pay. They are thieves, but they believe they are in the right. This is what your mother believes.”

Raj knows very well what his mother believes. She mutters it all the day long. Her beliefs are a chant that pours out of her mouth every minute of every day. She believes that everything must be the cleanest possible. She believes that the bus you need is never the one coming next until you have given up and decided to walk five kilometers. She believes that Raj should spend less time watching soccer games at the cafés on the 90 Feet Road and more time studying the books she rides the bus to the library to get for him. She believes that her husband is more than slightly crazy. She believes that not getting enough sleep is worse than not having enough to eat. She believes that they will never get enough sleep. She believes that life is the most difficult thing. She believes that life should be a little easier and she is often very mad because it is not. She believes that she must live at least until she sees both of her children married and with children of their own. She believes that the world must be a better place for her daughter to grow into a woman than it was for her. She believes that as if she has no choice in the matter.

Yes, Raj nods, he knows what his mother believes.

His father also nods.

“I would like a modern home. We have water, electricity, a stove. Our home is well built. Our neighbors are not too loud. But I would like a modern home. Yes. Bombay will be a modern city.
World class.
But what that means, Rajiv,
world class
,
is something we do not yet know. Do you know that most people in the world live in cities? Yes. It happened in two-thousand-eight. More than half the world lives in cities now. And most of those people live in slums.
World class
city. Why do we not get to decide what that is? This land was mangrove swamp. It was filled in by slummies, built by slummies, made prosperous by slummies, and now that it is worth something to the rich neighbors, they will decide how it should look. And who will own it.”

He waves a hand at the door.

“This is what I hear in the street. Why so many are helping us. What they believe. This is their home and they want it this way, as it is. They will decide how modern. How
world class
. Is
world class
New York? London? Paris? Places where greatness is an old thing that is passing. Or is it Baghdad? Tripoli? Kabul? Places where no one knows what will come next.”

He looks at his watch again, rubs its face with his thumb.

“What I believe. Rajiv. What I believe.”

He rubs his own face, knuckles his eyes, looks at his son.

“The world does not want us. The earth. It does not want us. Too many. We are too many. And men, women, they do not need to be thieves or murderers. When the earth turns against them, they need only to care for themselves more than others, and that is enough to let the others die. And all men, all women, Rajiv, care more for themselves than for others. The few who are different, they are not enough to change anything.”

He picks up the box clip and the loose bullet and hands them to his son.

“Show me.”

Raj takes them, looks at the shape of the bullet and the shape of the opening at the top of the clip, how the top bullet is pressing itself upward to be released. He holds the clip in his left hand, pushes the loose bullet into the top slot, forces that top bullet down. It takes a great deal of pressure, and the two curved surfaces of the casings want to slip off one another, but he gets it in, seats the round in the clip.

Click.

His father hands him the .32. Raj looks at the underside, the hole in the pistol’s butt, turns the clip so that the bullets point in the same direction as the barrel, fits it in, pushes, again it is harder than it looks in the movies where clips jump into guns by themselves, but he sets it with extra force from the heel of his hand.

Click.

His father nods, takes the gun, pushes the safety button, and holds it.

“They will let us die. Simply by looking to their own needs. They will contract into a ball and refuse to look out and they will leave us to die. Unless we take care of those needs ourselves. Force our place. Make room. We will not die for others to live. We were not born for that. But it is what they are counting on, Raj. Our willingness to quietly die.”