Money stinks. A stack of new money smells of ink and acid and bleach like the fingerprinting room in a city police station. Old money, vexed with hope and coveting, smells stale like dead flowers kept too long between the pages of a cheap novel. When you put a lot of money, new and old, into one room-millions of rupees counted twice and snapped into bundles with rubber bands- it stinks. _I love money, Didier once said to me, but I hate the smell of it. The more happiness I get from it, the more thoroughly I have to wash my hands afterwards. I knew exactly what he meant. In the counting-room for the mafia money-change racket, an airless cavern in the Fort area where the hot lights were bright enough to search through the best counterfeit, and the overhead fans never turned fast enough to lift a stray note from the counting tables, the smell of money was like the sweat and the dirt on a gravedigger's boots.
Some weeks after the meeting with Modena, I pushed my way out through the door of Rajubhai's counting room, shoving the goondas aside with the kind of childish rough play we all enjoyed, and gasped at the fresher air in the stairway. A voice called my name, and I stopped on the third step, my hand on the wooden rail. I looked up to see Rajubhai leaning out of the doorway. The short, fat, bald currency-controller for Khader's-no, Salman's- mafia council was dressed, as always, in a dhoti and a white singlet. He leaned out of the doorway, I knew, because he never actually left the room until he sealed it, at close to midnight, every night. When he needed to relieve himself, he used a private facility that was fitted with a one-way mirror so that he could watch the room. He was a dedicated accountant-the mafia's best- but it wasn't just the duty of his profession that held Rajubhai to the activity on his counting tables. Away from the busy room he was a grumpy, suspicious, and strangely wizened man. In the counting room he was plumper, somehow, and expansively self-assured. It was as if the physical attachment linked him to a psychic force: so long as a part of his body was still in the room, he was still connected to the energy, the power, the money.
"Linbaba!" he shouted down at me, with the lower part of his body hidden by the door frame. "Don't forget the wedding! You are coming, isn't it?"
"Sure," I smiled back at him. "I'll be there!"
I did the quick walk-fall down three flights of the stairway, teasing and shoving the goondas on duty at every level, and bumped past the men at the street door. At the end of the street I acknowledged the smiles of two more men watching the door.
There were some exceptions, but for the most part the young mafia gangsters liked me. I wasn't the only foreigner working with the Bombay mafia-there was an Irish gangster in the Bandra council, an American freelancer making a name in major drug deals, a Dutchman working with a gang in Khar, and there were other men across the city-but I was the only gora in the Salman council. I was their foreigner. And those years, as Indian pride was rising like new green, white, and orange vines from the scorched post colonial earth, were the last years when being foreign, being British, or looking and sounding British was enough to win hearts and intrigue minds.
Rajubhai's invitation to his daughter's wedding was significant: it meant that I was accepted as one of them. For months I'd worked side by side with Salman, Sanjay, Farid, Rajubhai, and others on the council. My work in the passport section was bringing in almost as much money as the entire currency operation. My own contacts on the streets threw large sums into the gold, goods, and money-change pots. I worked out in the boxing gym with Salman Mustaan and Abdullah Taheri every other day. Using my friendship with Hassaan Obikwa, I'd forged a new alliance with his men in the black ghetto. It was a useful connection which had brought us new men, money, and markets. At Nazeer's request, I'd joined the delegation that had struck an arms agreement with Afghan exiles in the city-a deal that had ensured a steady supply of weapons to the Salman council from the semi-autonomous tribal regions on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. I had friendship and respect and more money than I cared to spend, but it wasn't until Rajubhai invited me to his daughter's wedding that I knew I was truly accepted. He was a senior man on the Salman council. His invitation was the endorsement that welcomed me into the inner circle of trust and affection. You can work with the mafia, and for the mafia, and do the kind of job that earns high esteem, but you're not really one of them until they invite you home to kiss the babies.
I walked out through the invisible boundaries of the Fort area and approached Flora Fountain. A roving taxi slowed beside me, the driver gesturing aggressively for my fare. I waved him away.
Not realising that I could speak Hindi, he drove up beside me at a crawling pace and leaned from the window to talk.
"Hey, white sisterfucker, can't you see the taxi's empty? What are you doing? Walking in the hot afternoon like somebody's lost white goat?"
"Kai paijey tum?" I asked in rude Marathi. Whaddaya want?
"Kai paijey?" he repeated, stunned to hear the Marathi phrase.
"What's your problem?" I asked, speaking in the rough Marathi dialect of Bombay's back streets. "You don't understand Marathi?
This is our Bombay, and Bombay is ours. If you can't speak Marathi, what are you doing in Bombay? Have you got a goat's brain inside your sisterfucking head?"
"Arrey!" he grinned, switching to English. "You speak Marathi, baba?"
"Gora chierra, kala maan," I said in answer, making circling gestures over my face and my heart. White face, black heart. I moved into Hindi, using the most polite form of the word you to put him at ease. "I'm white on the outside, brother, but full Hindustani on the inside. I'm just taking a walk, passing time.
Why don't you look for some real tourists, and leave poor Indian fuckers like me alone, na?"
He laughed aloud and passed his hand across the window of his cab to shake mine gently, and then sped away.
I walked on, avoiding the crowded footpaths to join the swifter lines on the road beside the passing cars. Deep breaths of the city finally drove the smell of the currency-room from my nostrils. I was heading back toward Colaba, to Leopold's, to meet Didier. I wanted to walk because I was glad to be back in the part of the city I loved most. Work for Salman's mafia council took me to every distant suburb of the great city, and there were many favoured places: from Mahalaxmi to Malad; from Cotton Green to Thana; from Santa Cruz and Andheri to the Lakes District on the Film City Road. But the real seat of his council's power was in the long peninsula that began in the sweeping curve of Marine Drive and followed the scimitar shore all the way to the World Trade Centre. And it was there in those thriving streets, never more than a few bus stops from the sea, that I'd lost my heart to the city and learned to love her.
It was hot on the street, hot enough to burn all but the deepest thoughts from troubled minds. Like every other Bombayite, every other Mumbaiker, I'd made that walk from Flora Fountain to the Causeway a thousand times, and like them I knew where to find the cool breezes and refreshing shades on the way. My scalp, my face, and my shirt were wet with sweat in any few seconds of bare sunlight-the baptism in every daylight walk-and then cooled all the way to dry again in a minute of shaded wind.
My thoughts, as I moved between the traffic and the browsing shoppers, were on the future. Paradoxically, even perversely, just as I was being accepted into the secret heart of Bombay, I also felt the strongest urge to leave. I understood the two forces, contradictory as they seemed. So much of what I'd loved about Bombay had been in the hearts and minds and words of human beings-Karla, Prabaker, Khaderbhai, and Khaled Ansari. They were all gone, in one way or another, yet there was a constant, melancholy sense of them in every street, shrine, and strip of sea-coast that I loved in the city. Still, there were new sources of love and inspiration-new beginnings rising from the fallow fields of loss and disillusion. My position with Salman's mafia council was secure. Business opportunities were opening up in the Bollywood film industry and the newer fields of television and multi-media: I received offers of work every other week. I had a good apartment, with a view of the Haji Ali Mosque, and plenty of money. And night by night I grew a little closer in loving affection for Lisa Carter.
A sadness that lingered in all my favourite places was pressing me to leave the city, just as new love and acceptance pulled me closer to her heart. And I couldn't decide, as I walked that long, baptismal stretch from Flora to the Causeway, which way to jump. No matter how often or deeply I thought about the struggled past or the sorrow and promise of the present, I couldn't make that leap of confidence or trust or faith into the future. There was something missing: some calculation, some piece of evidence or parallax view of my life that would make it all clear to me, I was sure, but I didn't know what it was. So I moved between the frantic flow of cars, bikes, buses, trucks, and push-carts, and the meandering progress of tourists and shoppers, and let my thoughts drift into the heat and the street.
"Lin!" Didier shouted as I stepped through the wide arch and up to his long raft of joined tables. "Direct from your training, non?"
"No, I've been walking. Thinking. More of a workout for the mind - and maybe the soul."
"Do not fear!" he commanded, signalling for the waiter. "I cure this sickness every day of every week. Or every night, at the least. Make a place for him, Arturo. Move down a little, and let him sit next to me."
Arturo, a young Italian hiding in Bombay from an undisclosed problem with the police in Naples, was Didier's new infatuation.
He was a short, slight man with a doll-like face that many a girl might've envied. He spoke very little English and reacted to every approach, no matter how friendly, with the same petulantly surly shudder of irritation. Consequently, Didier's many friends ignored him and set the alarms in their mental clocks to give the relationship from a few months, at most, to a few weeks, before it collapsed.
"You just missed Karla," Didier told me more quietly when I shook his hand. "She will be upset. She wanted to-"
"I know," I smiled. "She wanted to see me."
The drinks arrived, and Didier clattered his glass against mine.
I took a sip from it and put it down on the table next to him.
Several people from the movie crowd that worked with Lisa Carter were at the long table, joining in a party with some of Kavita Singh's press group. Sitting next to Didier were Vikram and Lettie. They were both happier and healthier than I'd ever known them to be. They'd bought the new apartment in the heart of Colaba near the market only months before. While the commitment had exhausted their savings and forced them to borrow from Vikram's parents, it was proof of their faith in one another and the future of their burgeoning movie business, and they were still excited with the change.
Vikram greeted me warmly, rising from his chair to give me a hug.
His gunslinger's clothes had disappeared, item by item, under Lettie's persuasion and his own maturing taste. All that remained of the Clint Eastwood costume were the silver belt and the black cowboy boots. His beloved hat, surrendered with no little reluctance when he'd found himself more frequently in the boardrooms of major companies than in the stuntmen's corral, was hanging from a hook in my apartment.
It was one of my most treasured possessions.
When I leaned over to kiss Lettie, she seized the shoulder of my shirt and pulled me closer to whisper in my ear.
"Keep your cool, lad," she murmured inscrutably. "Keep your cool."
Sitting next to Lettie were the movie producers Cliff De Souza and Chandra Mehta. As sometimes happens with close friends, Cliff and Chandra seemed to exchange the substance of their bodies between them over time, so that Cliff had become slightly thinner and more angular, while Chandra had gained weight in almost perfect proportion. The more they differed physically, however, the more they resembled one another in other ways. In fact, the close colleagues, who often worked and played together for forty hours at a stretch, used so many of the same gestures, facial expressions, and phrases that they were known on the sets of the movies they produced as Fat Uncle and Skinny Uncle.
They raised their arms in identically enthusiastic greeting when I approached them, although each was pleased to see me for his own reasons. Cliff De Souza had developed a passionate affection for Kavita Singh since I'd introduced them, and he'd hoped I might influence her in his favour. Having a far longer acquaintance with her, I knew that no power could influence Kavita toward anything not fully consonant with her will and her wish. Still, she seemed to like him well enough, and they had much in common. They were both almost thirty and unmarried-a status so unusual in the Indian upper middle class, in those years, that their families anguished over it at every feast and festival in the crowded calendar. They were both media professionals who prided themselves on their independence and artistic flair. They were also driven by the same instinctive tolerance to seek out, and fairly examine, each point of view in any apparent conflict of interests. And they were attractive people. Kavita's shapely figure and perilously seductive eye seemed the perfect complement to Cliff's rangy angularity and the boyishness of his artless, lopsided grin.
For my part, liking them both, I saw no reason to resist the matchmaker's urge to meddle. In public I made it clear that I liked Cliff De Souza, and in private I praised him discreetly to her whenever the natural opportunity arose. They had a chance-a good chance, it seemed to me-and my heart put a wishing star in my eyes for them.
Chandra Mehta, on the other hand, was pleased to see me because I was his closest link to the black money in Salman's mafia council, and the only link he could describe as amicable. Like Khader before him, Salman Mustaan saw great advantage in the access to Bombay's film world that Chandra Mehta provided. New regulations at federal and state levels had tightened restrictions on the flow of capital, making it ever more difficult to launder black money. For many reasons-not least because of the irresistible glamour attached to the industry- politicians had exempted the movie business from many of those monetary and investment controls. They were boom economy years, and Bollywood films were going through a renaissance in style and confidence. The films got bigger and better, and had begun to reach out to a wider world market. As the budgets for successful films soared, however, producers exhausted the traditional sources of revenue. That convergence of interests drove more than a few producers and production houses into strange syzygies with gangsters: films about mafia goondas were financed by the mafia, and the profits from hit movies about hit men went into new crimes and real hits on real people, which in turn became the subjects for screenplays and new films financed by more mafia money.
And I played my part, so to speak, by working as the connection between Chandra Mehta and Salman Mustaan. The relationship was a lucrative one. The Salman council had put crores, each crore being ten million rupees, through Mehta-De Souza Productions, and drew clean, untraceable profits from the bottom line. That first contact with Chandra Mehta, when he'd asked me to find a few thousand American dollars on the black market, had fattened into a nexus that the portly producer couldn't resist or refuse. He was rich, and getting richer. But the men who poured their wealth into his company frightened him, and every contact with them was menaced with the scent of their distrust. So Chandra Mehta smiled at me, and was glad to see me, and tried to pull me tighter into the tremulous clutch of his friendship whenever our paths crossed.
I didn't mind. I liked Chandra Mehta, and I liked Bollywood movies. I allowed him to drag me into the worried, wealthy world of his friendship.
Next to him at the table was Lisa Carter. Her thick, blonde hair had grown long enough, after the short cut, to fall beside the oval cameo of her face. Her blue eyes were clear and glittering with passionate intent. She was tanned and very healthy. She'd even gained a little extra weight-something she decried, but that I and every other man within her sight-horizon was bound to admire. And there was something new and very different in her manner: a warm, unhurried softness in her smile; a willing laugh that won the laughter of others; and a lightness of spirit that looked for and often found the best in those she met. For weeks, months, I'd watched those changes shift and settle in her, and at first I'd thought they'd grown from my affection. Although no formal relationship had been declared-she continued to live in her apartment, and I lived in mine-we were lovers, and we were far more than friends. After a time, I realised that the changes were not mine, but hers alone.
After a time, I began to see how deep the well of her loving was, and how much her happiness and confidence depended on drawing that love into the light, and sharing it. And love was beautiful in her. It was a clear sky she gave us with those eyes, and a summer morning with her smile.
She kissed my cheek when I greeted her. I returned the kiss, wondering, as I stepped back, why a small concerned frown rippled from her brow to her cornflower-blue eyes.
Sitting next around the long table were the print journalists Dilip and Anwar. They were young, only a few years out of college, and still learning their trade in the anonymous vaults of The Noonday, a Bombay daily. At night, with Didier and his little court, they discussed the big breaking stories of the day as if they'd played key parts in the scoops or had followed their own instincts to the investigation's end. Their excitement, enthusiasm, ambition, and limitless hope for the future so delighted everyone in the Leopold's crowd that Kavita and Didier felt obliged to respond, occasionally, with sardonic sniping.
Dilip and Anwar reacted well, laughing and often giving as good as they got until the whole group was shouting and pounding the table in delight.
Dilip was a tall, fair, almond-eyed Punjabi. Anwar, a third generation native of Bombay, was shorter, darker, and the more serious of the two. New blood, Lettie had said to me with a smile, a few days before that afternoon. It was a phrase she'd once used about me, soon after I'd arrived in Bombay. And as I made my way around the table and looked at the two young men talking with such passion and purpose, it occurred to me that once, before heroin and crime, my life had been like theirs. Once I'd been just as happy and healthy and hopeful as they were. And I was glad to know them, and to know they were a part of the pleasure and promise of the Leopold's crowd. It was right that they were there, just as it was right that Maurizio was gone, and Ulla and Modena were gone, and that I, too, would one day be gone.
Returning their warm handshakes, I moved past the young men to Kavita Singh sitting beside them. Kavita stood to give me a hug.
It was the tender, close hug that a woman gives a man when she knows she can trust him, or when she's sure his heart belongs to someone else. It was a rare enough embrace between foreigners.
Coming from an Indian woman, it was uniquely intimate in my experience. And it was important. I'd been in the city for years;
I could make myself understood in Marathi, Hindi, and Urdu; I could sit with gangsters, slum-dwellers, or Bollywood actors, claiming their goodwill and sometimes their respect; but few things made me feel as accepted, in all the Indian worlds of Bombay, as Kavita Singh's fond embrace.
I never told her that-what her affectionate and unconditional acceptance meant to me. So much, too much, of the good that I felt in those years of exile was locked in the prison cell of my heart: those tall walls of fear; that small, barred window of hope; that hard bed of shame. I do speak out now. I know now that when the loving, honest moment comes it should be seized, and spoken, because it may never come again. And unvoiced, unmoving, unlived in the things we declare from heart to heart, those true and real feelings wither and crumble in the remembering hand that tries too late to reach for them.
On that day, as the grey-pink veil of evening slowly enclosed the afternoon, I said nothing to Kavita. I let my smile, like a thing made of broken stones, fall and slide from the peak of her affection to the ground beneath her feet. She took my arm and steered me into an introduction to the man who sat beside her.
"Lin, I don't think you've met Ranjit," she said as he stood and we shook hands. "Ranjit is... Karla's friend. Ranjit Choudry meet Lin."
I suddenly knew what Lettie had meant with her cryptic comment, Keep your cool, lad, and why Lisa couldn't shift the frown that creased her brow.
"Call me Jeet," he offered. His smile was wide, natural, and confident.
"O-kay," I answered evenly, not really smiling. "Pleased to meet you, Jeet."
"And it's a pleasure to meet you," he countered, with the well rounded and musical inflection of Bombay's best private schools and universities: my favourite accent in all the beautiful ways to speak the English language. "I've heard so much about you."
"Achaa?" I responded without thinking, exactly as an Indian of my age might've done. The word, in its literal translation, means good. In that context and with that inflection it meant Oh, yeah?
"Yes," he laughed, releasing my hand. "Karla talks about you often. You're quite the hero to her, I'm sure you know."
"That's funny," I answered, not sure if he was as ingenuous as he seemed to be. "She once told me that heroes only come in three kinds: dead, damaged, or dubious."
He tipped his head back and roared with laughter, his mouth open wide enough to reveal a perfect set of perfect Indian teeth.
Still laughing, he met my eye and wagged his head in wonder.
So that's part of it, I thought. He gets her jokes. He likes her play with words. He understands her love of them and her cleverness. That's one of the reasons why she likes him. Okay.
The rest of it was more obvious. He had a lithe build, and was average tall, my height, with an open, handsome face. More than just the sum of good features-high cheekbones, a high, wide forehead, expressive topaz-coloured eyes, a strong nose, smiling mouth, and firm chin-it was the kind of face that once would've been called dashing: the lone yachtsman, the mountaineer, the jungle adventurer. He wore his hair short. The hairline was receding, but even that seemed to suit him, as if it was the preferred option for healthy, athletic men. And the clothes-I knew them well from the shopping expeditions that Sanjay, Andrew, Faisal, and the other mafiosi made to the most expensive stores in the city. There wasn't a self-respecting gangster in Bombay who wouldn't have pursed his lips and wagged his head in approval of Ranjit's clothes.
"Well," I said, shuffling my feet to move around him and greet Kalpana, the last friend sitting in the loop of the table. She was working as a first-assistant director for Mehta-De Souza productions, and in training to become a director in her own right. She looked up at me and winked.
"Wait," Ranjit requested, softly but quickly. "I wanted to tell you... about your stories... your short stories..."
I turned to flinch a frown at Kavita Singh, who hunched her shoulders and raised the palms of her hands as she looked away.
"Kavita let me read them, and I wanted to tell you how good they are. I mean, how good _I think they are."
"Well, thanks," I muttered, trying once again to move past him.
"Really. I read them all, and I think they're really great."
There are few things more discomfiting than a spontaneous outburst of genuine decency from someone you're determined to dislike for no good reason. I felt a little blush of shame beginning to spread across my cheeks.
"Thanks," I said, putting truth into my eyes and my voice for the first time. "It's damn nice to hear, even if Kavita wasn't supposed to show them to anyone."
"I know she wasn't," he said quickly. "But I think you should- show them to someone, I mean. They're not right for my paper.
It's not the right forum. But The Noonday, well, it would be the perfect forum for them. And I know they'd buy them for a very fair price. The editor of The Noonday, Anil, is a friend of mine.
I know what he likes, and I know he'll like your stories. I didn't show him your work, of course. Not without your permission. But I did tell him that I read them, and that I think they're good. He wants to meet you. If you take your stories to him, I'm sure you'll get on well with him. Anyway, I'll leave it at that. He's hoping to see you. But it's up to you. Whatever you decide, I wish you all the best."
He sat down, and I moved past him to greet Kalpana and then take my place beside Didier. I was so distracted by the exchange with Ranjit-Jeet-Choudry that I only half-listened to Didier's announcement of his planned trip to Italy with Arturo. Three months, I heard him say, and I remember thinking that three months in Italy could become three years, and that I might lose him. The thought was so strange that I wouldn't let myself consider it. Bombay without Didier was like... Bombay without Leopold's, or the Haji Ali Mosque, or the Gateway Monument. It was unthinkable.
Pushing the thought away, I looked around the laughing, drinking, talking table of friends, and filled the empty glass within me, pouring their successes and their hopes into my eyes. Then I returned my attention to Ranjit, Karla's boyfriend. I'd done my homework on him in recent months. I knew that he was the second eldest-some said the favourite-of four sons born to Ramprakash Choudry, a truck driver who'd made his fortune resupplying coastal towns in Bangladesh that had been hit by cyclones. The first government tenders had grown into major contracts, requiring fleets of trucks and, eventually, chartered aircraft and ships. Along the way, Choudry had acquired a small-circulation Bombay newspaper as part of a merger with a more diversified transport and communications firm.
He'd handed the paper to his son Ranjit, who'd just graduated with a business degree and was the first, on both sides of his family, to complete high school and to attend any kind of further-education college. Ranjit had been running the paper, re badged as The Daily Post, for eight years. His success with The Post, as it was known, had allowed Ranjit to segue into the incipient field of independent television production.
He was wealthy, influential, popular, and possessed of an entrepreneurial elan in print, movies, and television: a media baron in the making. There were rumours of resentments stirring in the heart of Ranjit's older brother Rahul, who'd joined his father in the transport business in his early teenage years, and had never enjoyed the private-school education lavished upon Ranjit and the younger siblings. There was gossip, also, about the two younger brothers, the wild parties they sometimes threw, and the large bribes required to keep them out of trouble. There was no criticism of Ranjit, however, in any connection; and apart from those few simmering concerns, his life seemed almost charmed.
He was, as Lettie had once said, quite a fat and shiny catch. And as I watched him with friends-listening more than he talked, smiling more than he frowned, self-deprecating and considerate, tactful and attentive-I had to admit to myself that he was a very likeable man. And, strangely, I felt sorry for him. A few years or even months before, I would've been jealous that he was such a likeable man-such a very nice guy, as more than a few people said to me when I'd asked them about him. I would've hated him. But I felt nothing like that for Ranjit Choudry. Instead, as I watched him, remembering too much of what I'd felt for Karla, and thinking about her clearly for the first time in... a long time, I felt sorry for the rich, handsome media baron, and I wished him luck.
For half an hour I talked across the table with Lisa and the others and then I looked up to see Johnny Cigar, standing in the wide doorway and gesturing to catch my eye. Delighted to have an excuse to leave, I turned to Didier and drew him around to face me. "Listen, if you're really serious about going to Italy for three months-"
"Certainly, I am-" he began, but I cut him off quickly.
"And if you're really serious about needing someone to look after your place for you while you're away, I think I've got just the guys for the job."
"Oh, yes? And who are they?"
"The Georges," I replied. "The Zodiac Georges. Gemini and Scorpio."
Didier was appalled.
"But these... these George people... they are, how can I say it?"
"Reliable?" I suggested. "Honest. Clean. Loyal. Brave. And, above all, the most important qualification for situations like this, they're absolutely not interested in staying in your apartment for a minute longer than you want them to. In fact, I'll have a damn hard job talking them into it in the first place. They like the street. They won't want to do it. But if I let them know they're doing me a favour, they might agree. They'll do a good job of looking after your place for you, and they'll get three months of safe living in a decent place."
"Decent?" Didier scoffed. "What do you mean, decent? My apartment is without parallel in Bombay, Lin. You know that. Excellent, I can understand. Superb, I can accept. But decent-non! It is like saying that I live in the fish market and, er, what do you say, whoosh it out every day with a water hose!"
"So what do you think? I've gotta go."
"Decent!" he sniffed.
"Come on, man, will you forget about that!"
"Well, yes, perhaps you are right. I have nothing against them.
The George from Canada, the Scorpio, he does speak some French.
That is true. Yes. Yes. Tell them I think it is a good idea. Tell them to see me, and I will speak to them-with very careful instructions."
Laughing as I said goodbye, I joined Johnny Cigar at the doorway of the restaurant. He pulled me close to him.
"Can you come with me? Now?" he asked.
"Sure. Walking or taxi?"
"I think taxi, Lin."
We pushed our way through the breaking waves of walkers to the road and found a taxi. I was smiling as we waved the taxi down and climbed inside. For months, I'd been trying to find a way to help Gemini and Scorpio George that was more meaningful than the money I gave them from time to time. Didier's holiday with Arturo provided the perfect opportunity. I knew that three months in Didier's apartment would add years to their lives: three months without the stress of street living and with the secure good health that only a home and home cooking can provide. And I also knew that, with the Zodiac Georges in his apartment while he was gone, Didier would worry just enough to make his return to Bombay a little more likely, and a little sooner.
"Where to?" I asked Johnny.
"World Trade Centre," he told the driver, smiling at me but clearly concerned about something.
"What's up?"
"There is a problem at the zhopadpatti," he answered me.
"Okay," I said, knowing that he wouldn't say anything else about the problem until he thought the moment was right. "How's the baby?"
"Fine, very fine," he laughed. "He has such a strong grab on my fingers. He will be big and strong-bigger than his father, sure.
And Prabaker's baby, from the sister of my Sita, Parvati, that baby is also very beautiful. He is very much like Prabaker... in his face and his smiling."
I didn't want to think about my dead, beloved friend.
"And how's Sita? And the girls?" I asked.
"They are fine, Lin, all fine."
"You'll have to watch out, Johnny," I warned him. "Three kids in less than three years-before you know it, you'll be a fat, old guy with nine kids climbing all around you."
"It is a fine dream," he sighed happily.
"How's work? How are you... how you doing for money?"
"Also fine, very fine, Lin. Everybody pays taxes, and nobody likes it. My business is good. Sita and me, we decided to buy the house next to ours, and make a bigger house for the family."
"That's fantastic! I can't wait to see it."
There was a little silence and then Johnny turned to me with an expression of worry, almost of torment.
"Lin, that time when you asked me to work for you, to work with you, and I refused-"
"It's okay, Johnny."
"No, it is not okay. I want to tell you, I should have said yes, and I should have worked beside you." "Are you in trouble?" I asked, not understanding him. "Is business not as good as you said it was? Do you need money?"
"No, no, everything is fine with me. But if I was with you that time, watching you, maybe you would not still be working for all these months at the black business, with those goondas."
"No, Johnny."
"I blame myself every day, Lin," he said, his lips pulled wide in an anguished grimace. "I think that you asked me to work with you, to be your friend, because you did need a friend at that time. I was a bad friend, Lin, and I blame myself. Every day I feel bad about it. I am so sorry that I refused you."
I put my hand on his shoulder, but he wouldn't meet my eye.
"Look, Johnny, you've got to understand. What I do, I don't feel good about it, but I don't feel bad about it, either. You do feel bad about it. And I respect that. I admire it. And you're a good friend."
"No," he murmured, his eyes still downcast.
"Yes," I insisted. "I love you, man."
"Lin!" he said, grabbing my arm with sudden, urgent concern.
"Please, please, be careful with these goondas. Please!"
I smiled, trying to put him at ease.
"Man," I protested, "are you ever gonna tell me what this damn trip is about?"
"Bears!" he said.
"Bears?"
"Well, actually, you know, only one bear is our problem. You know Kano? Kano the bear?"
"Sure I know him," I muttered. "Bahinchudh bear-what's happened?
Has he got himself put in jail again?"
"No, no, Lin. He is not in the jail."
"Good. At least he's not a recidivist."
"Actually, you know, he escaped from the jail."
"Shit..."
"And now he is a fugitive bear, with a reward price on his head, or his paws, or any part of him they can catch."
"Kano's on the run?"
"Yes. They even have a wanted poster."
"A what?" "A wanted poster," he explained patiently. "They took a photo of him, that Kano, with his two blue bear-wallahs, when they arrested them again. Now, they are using that photo for the wanted poster."
"Who's _they?"
"The state government, the Maharashtra police, the Border Security Force, and the Wildlife Protection Authority."
"Christ, what did Kano do? Who did he kill?"
"Not killed anyone, Lin. The story, what happened, the Wildlife Authority has a new policy, to stop cruelty to the dancing bears.
They don't know that Kano's bear-wallahs, they love him so much, like a big brother, and he loves them also, and they would never hurt him. But the policy is the policy. So, the Wildlife-wallahs, they captured Kano, and they took him to the animal jail. And he was crying and crying for his blue bear-wallahs. And the bear wallahs, they were outside the animal jail, and they were also crying and crying. And two of those Wildlife-wallahs, two watchmen on duty, they got very upset about all the crying, so they went outside, and they started beating Kano's blue men with lathis. They gave them a solid pasting. And Kano, he saw his two blue men getting that beating, and he just lost his control. He broke down that cage and made an escape. The two bear-wallahs got a big feeling of courage, and they beat up the Wildlife fellows and ran away with Kano. Now they are hiding in our zhopadpatti, in the same hut that you used to have as your house. And we have to try to get them out of the city without getting captured. Our problem is how to get that Kano from the zhopadpatti to Nariman Point. There is a truck waiting there, and the driver has agreed to take Kano away with his bear-wallahs."
"Not easy," I murmured. "And with a goddamn wanted poster for the blue guys and the bear. Jesus!"
"Will you help us, Lin? We feel very sorry for that bear. Love is a special thing in the world. When two men have so much love in their hearts, even so it is for a bear, it must be protected, isn't it?"
"Well..."
"Isn't it?"
"Sure it is," I smiled. "Sure it is. I'll be glad to help, if I can. And you can do me a favour as well."
"Anything."
"Try to get me one of those wanted posters with the picture of the bear and the blue guys. I gotta have one of those posters."
"The poster?"
"Yeah. It's a long story. Don't worry about it. Just, if you see one, grab it for me. Have you got a plan?"
The taxi pulled up outside the slum as the evening, emptied of its sunset and pale enough to unveil the first few stars, drew squealing, playing faronades of children back to their huts, where plumes of smoke from cooking fires fluttered into the cooling air.
"The plan," Johnny announced as we walked quickly through the familiar lanes, nodding and smiling to friends along the way, "is to dress up the bear in a disguise."
"I dunno," I said doubtfully. "He's real tall, as I remember, and kinda big."
"At first, we put a hat and a coat on him, and even an umbrella hanging from his coat, like an office-working fellow."
"How did he look?"
"Not so good," Johnny replied without a trace of irony or sarcasm. "He still looked quite a lot like a bear, but a bear with clothes."
"You don't say."
"Yes. So, now the plan is to get a big Muslim dress, you know the one? From Afghanistan? Covering all the whole body, with only a few holes to see out of it."
"A burkha."
"Exactly. The boys went to Mohammed Ali Road to buy the biggest one they could find. They should be-ah! Look! They are here already, and we can try it, to see how does it look."
We came upon a group of a dozen men and a similar number of women and children gathered near the hut where I'd lived and worked for almost two years. And although I'd left the zhopadpatti, convinced that I could never live there again, it always gave me a thrill of pleasure to see the humble little hut, and stand near it. The few foreigners I'd taken to the slum-and even the Indians, such as Kavita Singh and Vikram, who'd visited me there - had been horrified by the place and aghast to think that I'd chosen to stay there so long. They couldn't understand that every time I entered the slum I felt the urge to let go and surrender to a simpler, poorer life that was yet richer in respect, and love, and a vicinal connectedness to the surrounding sea of human hearts. They couldn't understand what I meant when I talked about the purity of the slum: they'd been there, and seen the wretchedness and filth for themselves. They saw no purity. But they hadn't lived in those miraculous acres, and they hadn't learned that to survive in such a writhe of hope and sorrow the people had to be scrupulously and heartbreakingly honest. That was the source of their purity: above all things, they were true to themselves.
So, with my dishonest heart thrilling at the nearness of my once and favourite home, I joined the group and then gasped as a huge, shrouded figure emerged from beside the hut and stood among us.
"Holy shit!" I said, gawking at the towering, immense form. The blue-grey burkha covered the standing bear from its head to the ground. I found myself wondering at the size of the woman that garment had been intended to cover, because the standing bear was a full head taller than the tallest man in our group. "Holy shit!"
As we watched, the shapeless form took a few lumbering steps, knocking over a stool and water pot as it swayed and lurched forward.
"Maybe," Jeetendra suggested helpfully, "she is a very tall, fat ... clumsy kind of a woman."
The bear suddenly stooped and then fell forward onto its four paws. We followed it with our eyes. The blue-grey, burkha-clad figure trundled forward, all the while emitting a low, grumbling moan.
"Maybe," Jeetendra amended, "she is a small, fat... growling woman."
"A growling woman?" Johnny Cigar protested. "What the hell is a growling woman?"
"I don't know," Jeetendra whined. "I am only trying to be helping."
"You're going to help this bear all the way back to jail," I muttered, "if you let it go out of here like that."
"We could try the hat and coat again," Joseph offered. "Maybe a bigger hat... and... and a more fashionable coat."
"I don't think fashion's your problem," I sighed. "From what Johnny tells me, you have to get Kano from here to Nariman Point without the cops spotting you, is that right?"
"Yes, Linbaba," Joseph answered. In the absence of Qasim Ali Hussein, who was enjoying a six-month holiday in his home village with most of his family, Joseph was the head man of the slum. The man who'd been beaten and disciplined by his neighbours for the brutal, drunken attack on his wife had become a leader. In the years since that day of the beat- ing, Joseph had given up drinking, regained his wife's love, and earned the respect of his neighbours. He'd joined every important council or committee, and worked harder than any other in the group. Such was the extent of his reform and his sober dedication to the well-being of his family and his community that, when Qasim Ali nominated Joseph as his temporary replacement, no other name was tendered for consideration. "There is a truck parked near to the Nariman Point. The driver says that he will take the Kano and carry him out of the municipality, out of the state, also. He will put him and the bear-wallahs back in their native place, back in U.P., all the way back to Gorakhpur side, near to the Nepal. But that truck driver, he is afraid to come near this place to collect the Kano. He wants that we take that bear to _him only. But how to do it, Linbaba? How to get such a big bears to that place? Sure thing a police patrol will see Kano and make an arrest of him. And they will be arresting us, also, for the help of escaping bears. And then? What then? How to do it, Linbaba? That is the problem. That is why we were thinking about the disguises."
"Kano-walleh kahan hey?" I asked. Where are Kano's handlers?
"Here, baba!" Jeetendra replied, pushing the two bear-handlers forward.
They'd washed themselves clean of the brilliant blue dye that usually covered their bodies, and they'd stripped away all of their silver ornaments. Their long dreadlocks and decorated plaits were concealed beneath turbans, and they wore plain white shirts and trousers. Unadorned and decolourised, the blue men seemed spiritless, and much smaller and slighter than the fantastic beings I'd first encountered in the slum.
"Tell me, will Kano sit on a platform?"
"Yes, baba!" they said with pride.
"For how long will he sit still?"
"For an hour, if we are with him, near him, talking to him. Maybe more than one hour, baba-unless he needs to make a wee. And if so, he is always telling first."
"Okay. Will he sit on a small, moving platform-one on wheels-if we push it?" I asked them.
There was some discussion while I tried to explain what kind of platform or table I had in mind: one mounted on wheels for carrying fruit, vegetables, and other goods around the slum and displaying them for sale. When it was clear, and such a hawker's cart was found and wheeled into the clearing, the bear-handlers waggled their heads excitedly that yes, yes, yes, Kano would sit on such a moving table. They added that it was possible to steady him on the table by using ropes, and that he wouldn't find that secure fastening objectionable if they first explained its necessity to him. But what, they wanted to know, did I have in mind?
"On my way in with Johnny just now, I passed old Rakeshbaba's workshop," I explained quickly. "The lamps were lit, and I saw a lot of pieces from his Ganesh sculptures. Some of them are pretty big. They're made from papier-mache, so they're not very heavy, and they're all hollow inside. They're big enough, I think, to fit right over the top of Kano's head, and to cover his body if he's sitting down. With a bit of silk for trimming, and a few garlands of flowers for decoration..."
"So... you think..." Jeetendra stammered.
"We should disguise Kano as Ganesh," Johnny Cigar concluded, "and push him on the trolley, like a Ganpatti devotion, all the way to Nariman Point, right down the middle of the street. It's a great idea, Lin!"
"But Ganesh Chaturthi finished last week," Joseph said, referring to the annual festival where hundreds of Ganesh figures-some small enough to hold in the hand, and others towering ten metres tall-were pushed through the city to Chowpatty Beach and then hurled into the sea amid a crowd of close to a million people. "I myself was in the mela at Chowpatty. The time for it has finished, Linbaba."
"I know. I was there, too. That's what gave me the idea. I don't think it'll matter that the festival is over. I wouldn't think twice if I saw a Ganpatti at any time of the year. Would any of you ask questions if you saw a Ganesha, on a trolley, being wheeled down the street?"
Ganesh, the elephant-headed God, was arguably the most popular in all the Hindu pantheon, and I was sure no-one would think to stop and search a little procession featuring a large sculpture of his form on a moving trolley.
"I think he is right," Jeetendra agreed. "Nobody will say anything about a Ganesha. After all, Lord Ganesha is the Lord of Obstacles, na?"
The elephant-headed god was known as the Lord of Obstacles and the Great Solver of Problems. People in trouble appealed to him with prayers in much the same way that some Christians appealed to their patron saints. He was also the divine ministrant of writers. "It will be not a problem to push a Ganesha to Nariman Point,"
Joseph's wife, Maria, pointed out. "But how to put that Kano bear into the disguise-that is a problem. Just putting him in the dress was a very difficult job."
"He did not like the dress," one of the bear-handlers declared reasonably. "He is a man bear, you know, and sensitive about such things."
"But he will not mind the Ganesha disguise," his friend added. "I know he will think it is very good fun. He is very greedy for attention, I have to say. That is one of his two bad habits: that, and flirtations with girls."
We were speaking in Hindi, and the last exchange was too swift for me to follow.
"What did he say?" I asked Johnny. "What was Kano's bad habit?"
"Flirtations," Johnny replied. "With girls."
"Flirtations? What the hell do they mean?"
"Well, I'm not exactly sure, but I think-"
"No, don't!" I interrupted him, disowning the question. "Please ... don't tell me what it means."
I looked around me at the press of expectant faces. For a moment I felt a thrill of wonder and envy that the little community of neighbours and friends worried so much about the problems of two itinerant bear-handlers-and the bear, of course. That unequivocal involvement, one with another, and its unquestioning support-stronger and more urgent than even the co-operation I'd seen in Prabaker's village-was something I'd lost when I'd left the slum to live in the comfortable, richer world. I'd never really found it anywhere else, except within the high-sierra of my mother's love. And because I knew it with them, once, in the sublime and wretched acres of those ragged huts, I never stopped wanting it and searching for it.
"Well, I really can't think of another way," I sighed again. "If we just cover him with rags or fruit or something and try to push him there, he'll move and make a noise. And if they see us, we'll get stopped. But if we make him look like Ganesh, we can chant and sing and crowd around him and make our own noise-as much noise as we want. And I don't think the cops would ever stop us.
What do you think, Johnny?"
"I like it," Johnny said, grinning happily in appreciation of the plan. "I think it's a fine plan, and I say we give it a try."
"Yes, also _I like it," Jeetendra said, his eyes wide with excitement. "But, you know, we must better hurry-the truck will only wait for one or two hours more, I think so." They all nodded or wagged their heads in agreement: Satish, Jeetendra's son; Maria; Faroukh and Raghuram, the two friends who'd fought and been tied at the ankle by Qasim Ali as a punishment; and Ayub and Siddhartha, the two young men who'd run the free clinic since I'd left the slum. Finally, Joseph smiled and gave his assent. With Kano trundling along on all fours beside us, we made our way through the darkening lanes to the large double-hut that was old Rakeshbaba's workshop.
The elderly sculptor raised his grizzled brows when we entered his hut, but affected to ignore us and continued with the work of sanding and polishing a newly moulded section of a fibreglass religious frieze almost two metres in length. He worked at a long table made from thick builder's planks, lashed together and resting on two carpenter's trestles. Wood and fibreglass shavings covered the table and lay in chips and whorls, along with rinds of papier-mache, at his bare feet. Sections of the sculpted and moulded forms-heads and limbs and bodies with gorgeously rounded bellies-rested on the floor of the hut amid a venerable profusion of plaques, reliefs, statues, and other pieces.
He took some convincing. The artist was notoriously cantankerous and he assumed, at first, that we were trying to mock the gods, and him, with a prank or a hoax. In the end, three elements persuaded him to help us. First was the bear-handlers' impassioned appeal to the problem-solving genius of Ganesha, the Lord of Obstacles. The elephant-headed one was, as it turned out, old Rakeshbaba's personal favourite from the abundant plane of the divine. Second, Johnny's subtle suggestion that perhaps the task was beyond the creative skill of the old sculptor proved a telling blow. Rakeshbaba shouted that he could disguise the Taj Mahal itself in a Ganesha sculpture, if he so desired, and the camouflage of a bear was a mere trifle to such a gifted artist, as the whole world knew and proclaimed him to be. Third, and perhaps most influential, was Kano himself. Apparently growing impatient in the lane outside, the burly creature forced its way into the hut and then lay down on its back beside Rakeshbaba, with all four paws in the air. The grouchy sculptor was transformed immediately into a giggling, cackling child as he bent to scratch the creature's belly and play with its gently whirling paws.
He stood at last to shove all of us but the bear-handlers and the bear from his workshop. The wooden cart was wheeled inside, and the wiry, grey-haired artist drew his reed curtains across the entrance.
Worried but excited, we waited outside, swapping stories and popping bubbles of news. The slum had survived the last monsoon with little real damage, Siddhartha told me, and no serious outbreaks of illness. Qasim Ali Hussein, celebrating the birth of his fourth grandson, had taken his extended family to his birth village in Karnataka State. He was well, and in good spirits, all of the voices confirmed. Jeetendra seemed to have recovered, inasmuch as such a thing is possible, from the death of his wife in the cholera epidemic. Although he'd vowed never to remarry, he worked and prayed and laughed enough to keep the soul bright within his eyes. His son Satish, who'd been sullen and quarrelsome for a time after his mother's death, had at last overcome the aloofness of grieving, and was engaged to a girl he'd known since his earliest memory in the slum. The promised pair was still too young to marry, but their betrothal gave them both joy, and was a commitment to the future that gladdened Jeetendra's heart. And one by one, each in his own way, everyone in the group that night praised Joseph, the redeemed one, the new leader who lowered his gaze shyly and only raised his eyes to share his embarrassed smile with Maria, standing at his side.
At last, Rakeshbaba pulled aside the reed curtains and beckoned us to enter his workshop. We crowded together and stepped into the golden lamplight. A gasp, some of us breathing in and some puffing out, rustled through our group as we looked at the completed sculpture. Kano was not simply disguised-he was transfigured into the form of the elephant-headed god. A huge head had been fitted over the bear's head, and rested on a pink, round-bellied body, with arms attached. Swathes of light blue silk surrounded the base of the figure where it rested on the trolley. Garlands of flowers were heaped on the flat table and around the neck of the god, concealing the join for the head.
"Is it really in there, that Kano-bear?" Jeetendra asked.
At the sound of his voice, the bear turned his head. What we saw was the living god, Ganesha, turn his elephant head to stare at us from his painted eyes. It was the movement of an animal, of course, and utterly unlike a human gesture. The whole group, myself included, flinched in surprise and fright. The children with us squealed, and pushed themselves backwards into the protective vines of adult legs and arms.
"Bhagwaaaaan," Jeetendra breathed. "Wow," Johnny Cigar agreed. "What do you think, Lin?"
"I'm... glad I'm not stoned," I muttered, staring as the god tilted his head and uttered a low, moaning sound. I forced myself to act. "Come on, let's do it!"
We rolled out of the slum with a knot of supporters. Once past the World Trade Centre and into the residential boulevard leading to the Back Bay area, we began a tentative chant. Those nearest to the cart put their hands on it and helped to push or pull it along. Those like Johnny and me, on the fringe, clung to the others and added our voices to the chant. As we gathered speed to a fast walk, the chanting grew more vigorous. In a while, many of the helpers seemed to forget that we were bear-smugglers, and hurled their voices into devoutly passionate chants and responses, no less inspired, I was sure, than they'd been a week before on the real pilgrimage.
As we walked, it occurred to me that the slum had been strangely devoid of pariah dogs. I noticed that there were none visible anywhere on the streets. Remembering how violently the dogs had reacted to Kano's first visit to the slum, I felt moved to mention it to Johnny.
"Arrey, kutta nahin," I said. Gee, there's no dogs here.
Johnny, Narayan, Ali, and the few other men who'd heard the comment turned their faces to me quickly and stared, wide-eyed with amazement and worry. Sure enough, seconds later a shrill, whining howl broke out from the footpath to our left. A dog rushed out from its cover and launched itself at us, barking furiously. It was a small, wizened, mangy cur of a thing, not much bigger than a fair-sized Bombay rat, yet the barking was loud enough to pierce the screen of sound in our chanting.
It took only seconds, of course, for more pariah dogs to join in the howling affray. They came from left and right, single animals and groups of them, yelping and yowling and growling hideously.
In an attempt to drown them out, we raised our chants to greater volume, all the while keeping our wary eyes on the snapping jaws of the dogs.
As we approached the Back Bay area we passed an open maidan, or field, where a party of wedding musicians dressed in bright red and-yellow uniforms, complete with tall, plumed hats, was rehearsing its songs. Seeing our little procession as an opportunity to practise their music on the march, they swung in behind us and struck up a rousing, if not particularly canorous, version of a popular devotional song. Incited by the spectacle that our smuggling mission had become, happy children and pious adults left the footpaths and streamed toward us, joining in the thunderous chants and swelling our numbers to more than a hundred souls.
Agitated, no doubt, by the wild throng and frenzied barking, Kano the bear swayed from side to side on the cart, turning his head to follow the peaks of sound. At one point we passed a group of strolling policemen, and I risked a glance to see them standing completely still, their mouths open and their heads turning as one, like a row of mouth-clown dummies at a carnival sideshow, as we passed.
After too many long minutes of that brawling and roistering, we were near enough to Nariman Point to see the tower of the Oberoi Hotel. Worried that we'd never rid ourselves of the wedding band, I ran back to press a bundle of notes into the hand of their bandmaster, with instructions that he should turn right, away from us, and march along Marine Drive. As we neared the sea, he led his men right when we moved left. Emboldened, perhaps, by their successful tour with our little parade, the musicians launched into a medley of dance hits as they marched away toward the brighter lights of the ocean drive. Most of the crowd jigged and danced away with them. Even the dogs, lured too far beyond their prowling domain, turned away from us and crept back into the mean shadows that had spawned them.
We pushed the cart further along the sea road toward the deserted spot where the truck was parked. Just then I heard a car horn sounding, close by. My heart sinking at the thought that it was the police, I slowly turned to look. Instead, I saw Abdullah, Salman, Sanjay, and Farid standing beside Salman's car. They'd stopped in a wide parking bay, surfaced with gravel stones, that was empty but for them.
"Are you all right, Johnny?" I asked. "Can you take it from here?"
"Sure, Lin," he replied. "The truck is just there, ahead of us, you see? We can do it."
"Okay, I'll peel off here, man. Let me know how it all goes. I'll see you tomorrow. And, hey, see if you can find me one of those wanted posters, brother!"
"No problem," he laughed, as I walked away.
I crossed the road to join Salman, Abdullah, and the others.
They'd been eating take-away food bought at one of the Nariman caravans parked near the sea wall. As I greeted them, Farid swept the rubble of containers and paper towels from the roof of the car onto the gravel park space. I felt the wince of guilt that litter-conscious westerners invariably experience, and reminded myself that the mess on the road would be collected by rag pickers who depended on the litter for their livelihood.
"What the fuck were you doing in that show?" Sanjay asked me when the greetings were made and received.
"It's a long story," I grinned.
"That's a damn scary Ganpatti you got there," he said. "I never saw anything like it. It looked so real. It was like it was moving. I got quite a religious feeling. I tell you, man, I'm going to pay a bahinchudh to light some incense when I get home."
"Come on, Lin," Salman prodded. "What's it all about, yaar?"
"Well," I groaned, knowing that no explanation would seem sensible. "We had to smuggle a bear out of the slum, and get him up to this spot, right here, because the cops had a warrant out on him and wanted to arrest him."
"Smuggle a what?" Farid asked politely.
"A bear."
"What... kind of a bear?"
"A dancing bear, of course," I said stiffly.
"You know, Lin," Sanjay pronounced, grimacing happily as he picked his teeth clean with a match, "you do some very weird shit."
"Are you talking about my bear?" Abdullah asked, suddenly interested.
"Yes, fuck you. It's really all your fault, if you want to go back far enough."
"Why do you say it was your bear?" Salman wanted to know.
"Because I arranged that bear," Abdullah replied. "I sent him to Lin brother, a long time ago."
"Why?"
"Well, it was all about the hugging," Abdullah began, laughing.
"Don't start," I said through pressed lips, warning him off the subject with my eyes.
"What _is all this with fuckin' bears?" Sanjay asked. "Are we still talking about bears?"
"Oh, shit!" Salman cut in, looking over Sanjay's shoulder.
"Faisal is in a big hurry. And he's got Nazeer with him. This looks like trouble." Another Ambassador gravelled to a stop near us. A second car followed, only two seconds behind it. Faisal and Amir leapt from the first car. Nazeer and Andrew rushed forward from the second.
I saw that another man got out of Faisal's car and waited there, watching the approach road. I recognised the fine features of my friend Mahmoud Melbaaf. One more man, a heavy-set gangster named Raj, waited with the boy Tariq in the second car.
"They're here!" Faisal announced breathlessly when he joined us.
"They're supposed to come tomorrow, I know, but they're already here. They just joined up with Chuha and his guys."
"Already? How many?" Salman asked.
"Just them," Faisal replied. "If we move now, we get all of them.
The rest of the gang is at a wedding in Thana. It's like a sign from heaven or something. It's the best chance we'll ever have.
But we've got to be damn quick!"
"I can't believe it," Salman muttered, as if to himself.
My stomach dropped and then set hard. I knew exactly what they were talking about, and what it meant for us. There'd been reports and rumours for days that Chuha and his gang within the Walidlalla council had made contact with the Sapna survivor and two of his family members, a brother and a brother-in-law. They were planning a strike against our group. The border war for new gang territory had flared, pitting Chuha's mafia council against ours, and Chuha was hungry.
The Sapna-Iran connection, all survivors from Abdul Ghani's treacherous attempted coup, had learned of the hostility between the councils, and had appeared at just the right moment to capitalise on Chuha's greed and ambition. They'd promised to bring weapons-new guns-and lucrative contacts in the Pakistani heroin trade. They were renegades: the Sapna killers were working without Abdul Ghani, and the Iranians had no official support from the Savak. It was hatred that had brought them together.
They wanted revenge for the deaths of their friends, and their hate had combined with Chuha's to put murder in their minds.
The situation had been so tense, for so long, that Salman had infiltrated the Chuha gang with his own man, Little Tony, a gangster from Goa who was unknown in Bombay. He'd provided information from the inside. They were his reports that had alerted Salman to the Sapna-Iran connection and the imminent attack. With Faisal's confirmation of their arrival at Chuha's house, we all knew there was only one option Salman would consider. Fight. Make war. Put an end to the Sapna killers and the Iranian spies, once and for all. Finish Chuha.
Absorb his territory. Seize his operations.
"Fuck, man! How lucky can we get?" Sanjay whooped, his eyes glittering in the grey-white streetlight.
"Are you sure?" Salman asked, fixing his friend Amir, an older man, with his sternest frown.
"I'm sure, Salman," Amir drawled, running his hand over the short, grey hair on his blunt head. He twirled the ends of his thick moustache with the same hand as he spoke. "I saw them myself. Abdullah's guys, from Iran, they came half an hour ago.
The Sapna fucks, you know, they've been there all day. They came in the morning. Little Tony, he told us as soon as he could.
We've been watching them for two hours at Chuha's place. The last time he talked to me, Little Tony said they were all getting together-Chuha and his closest guys, the Sapnas, and the guys from Iran. They were waiting for the Iran guys to get here and then they want to hit us. Soon. Maybe tomorrow night. The day after tomorrow, at the latest. Chuha sent word for a lot more guys. They're coming from Delhi and Calcutta. They're working out some kind of a plan where they hit us at about ten places at once, like, to stop us from coming back at them. I told Tony to go back and to let us know when the Iran guys got there. We were watching the place, like usual. Then we saw them walk in, a day early like, but we were pretty sure. Not long after, Little Tony came out and lit a cigarette. That was the signal. They're the ones-the ones who are after Abdullah. Now they're all in there together, and we're only two minutes away. I know it's early, but we have to go. We have to do it now, Salman, in the next five minutes."
"How many, all together?" Salman demanded.
"Chuha and his buddies," Amir answered in his lazy drawl. I think the slow, softly slurring style of the man gave everyone there new heart: he wasn't, or didn't seem to be, anywhere near as nervous as the rest of us. "That makes six. One of them, Manu, is a good man. You know him. He put the Harshan brothers down, all three of them, on his own. His cousin Bichchu is also a good fighter-they don't call him the Scorpion for nothing. The rest of them, including Chuha, that madachudh, are not much. Then there's the Sapnas. That makes three more. And from Iran, two more. That's eleven. Maybe one or two more, at the most. Hussein is watching the place. He'll tell us if any more arrived."
"Eleven," Salman murmured, avoiding the eyes of the men while he considered the situation. "And we are... eleven-twelve, counting Little Tony. But we have to lose two, on the street outside Chuha's house-one on each side, to slow up the cops if they come screaming on us while we're inside. I'll make a call before we go in, to keep the cops away, but we need to be sure.
Chuha might have more guys coming, as well, so we need at least two on the outside. I don't mind fighting my way in there, but I don't want to fight my way out again if I don't have to. Hussein is already there. Faisal, you're the number two on the street outside, okay? Nobody goes in, or out, but us."
"No problem," the young fighter agreed.
"Check the guns, now, with Raj. Get them ready."
"I'm on it," he said, collecting guns from a few of the men and then jogging over to the cars, where Raj and Mahmoud waited.
"And two will have to go back to Khader's house with Tariq,"
Salman continued.
"It was Nazeer's idea to bring him with us," Andrew put in. "He didn't want to leave him behind there when Faisal and Amir came to give us the news. I told him not to bring the kid, but you know how Nazeer is when he gets an idea in his head."
"Nazeer can take the boy to Sobhan Mahmoud's house in Versova, and watch over him," Salman declared. "And you'll go with him."
"Oh, come on, man!" Andrew complained. "Why do I have to do that?
Why do I have to miss all the action?"
"I need two men to watch over old Sobhan and the boy. Especially the boy-Nazeer was right not to leave him. Tariq is a target. As long as he's alive, the council is still Khader's council. If they kill him, Chuha will take a lot of power from it. The same goes for old Sobhan. Take the boy out of the city, and keep him and Sobhan Mahmoud safe."
"But why do I have to miss the action, man? Why does it have to be me? Send someone else, Salman. Let me go with you to Chuha's."
"Are you going to argue with me?" Salman said, his lip curling with anger.
"No, man," Andrew snarled petulantly. "I'll do it. I'll take the kid."
"That leaves eight of us," Salman concluded. "Sanjay and me, Abdullah and Amir, Raj and little Tony, Farid and Mahmoud-"
"Nine," I cut in. "There's nine of us."
"You should take off, Lin," Salman said quietly, raising his eyes to meet mine. "I was just now going to ask you to take a cab and pass the word to Rajubhai, and the boys at your passport shop."
"I'm not leaving Abdullah," I said flatly.
"Maybe you can go back with Nazeer," Amir, who was Andrew's close friend, suggested.
"I left Abdullah once," I declared. "I'm not doing it again. It's like fate or something. I've got a feeling, Salman. I've got a feeling not to leave Abdullah. I'm in it. I'm not leaving Mahmoud Melbaaf, either. I'm with them. I'm with you."
Salman held the stare, frowning pensively. It occurred to me, stupidly, that his slightly crooked face-one eye a little lower than the other, his nose bent from a bad break, his mouth scarred in the corner-found a handsome symmetry only then, when the burden of his thoughts creased his features into a determined frown.
"Okay." he agreed, at last.
"What the fuck!" Andrew exploded. "He gets to go, but I do the baby-sitting job?"
"Settle down, Andrew," Farid said soothingly.
"No, fuck him! I'm sick of this fuckin' gora, man. So Khader liked him, so he went to Afghanistan, so fuckin' what? Khader's dead, yaar. Khader's day is gone."
"Relax, man," Amir put in.
"What relax? Fuck Khader, and fuck his gora, too!"
"You should watch your mouth," I muttered through clenched teeth.
"I should?" he asked, thrusting his face forward pugnaciously.
"Well, fuck your sister! How's my mouth now? You like that?"
"I don't have a sister," I said evenly in Hindi. A few men laughed.
"Well, maybe I'll go fuck your mother," he snarled, "and make you a new sister!"
"That's good enough," I growled, shaping up to fight him. "Get 'em up! Get your fuckin' hands up! Let's go!"
It would've been messy. I wasn't a good fighter, but I knew the moves. I could hit hard. And if I got into real trouble in those years, I wasn't afraid to put the wet end of a knife into another man's body. Andrew was capa- ble. With a gun in his hand, he was deadly. As Amir moved around to support him, directly behind his right shoulder, Abdullah took up a similar position beside me. A fight would become a brawl. We all knew it. But the young Goan didn't raise his hands, and as one second became five, and ten, and fifteen, it seemed that he wasn't as willing with his fists as he was with his mouth.
Nazeer broke the stand-off. Pushing between us, he seized Andrew by the wrist and a scruff of shirtsleeve. I knew that grip well.
I knew that Andrew had to kill the burly Afghan if he wanted to break it. Nazeer paused only long enough to give me a bewilderingly cryptic look, part censure and part pride, part anger and part red-eyed affection, before he shoved the young Goan backwards through the circle of men. At the car, he pushed Andrew into the driver's seat and then climbed into the back with Tariq. Andrew started the car and sped away, spitting gravel and dust as he wheeled around and headed back toward Marine Drive. As the car swept past me I saw Tariq's face at the window. It was pale, with only the eyes, like wild paw prints in snow, betraying any hint of the mind or the mood within.
"_Mai _jata _hu," I repeated when the car had passed. I'm going.
Everyone laughed. I wasn't sure if it was at the vehemence of my tone or the blunt simplicity of the Hindi phrase.
"I think we got that, Lin," Salman said. "I think that's very clear, na? Okay, I'll put you with Abdullah, out the back.
There's a lane behind Chuha's house-Abdullah, you know it. It has two feeds from other lanes, one into the main street, and one around the corner to other houses in the block. At the back of Chuha's house there's a yard. I've seen it. There are two windows, both with heavy bars, and only one door to the house.
It's down two steps. You two hold that place. Nobody goes in when we start. If we do right, some of them will try to make a run for it out there. Don't let them get past you. Stop them right there, in the yard. The rest of us will go in through the front. What about the guns, Faisal?"
"Seven," he answered. "Two short shotgun, two automatic, three revolver."
"Give me one of the automatics," Salman ordered. "Abdullah, you take the other one. You'll have to share it, Lin. The shotguns are no good inside-it's gonna get very close in there, and we want to be real sure what we're shooting at. I want them on the street outside, for maximum coverage if we need it. Faisal, you take the shotguns, and give one to Hussein. When we're finished, we'll go out the back way, past Abdullah and Lin. We won't go out the front, so put holes in anything that tries to go in or out once we're in there. The three other guns are for Farid, Amir, and Mahmoud. Raj, you'll have to share with us. Okay?"
The men nodded, and wagged their heads in agreement.
"Listen, if we wait, we can get thirty more men and thirty guns to go in with us. You know that. But we might miss them. As it is, we've already talked for ten minutes too long. If we hit them now, quick and hard, before they know it, we can take them out, and none of them will get away. I want to finish them, and finish this business, right now, tonight. But I want to leave it up to you. I don't want to make you go in if you don't feel ready. Do you want to wait for more men, or go now?"
One by one the men spoke, quickly, most of them using the one word, Abi, meaning now. Salman nodded, then closed his eyes and muttered a prayer in Arabic. When he looked up again, he was committed, fully committed for the first time. His eyes were blazing with hatred and the fearsome killing rage he'd kept at bay.
"_Saatch... _aur _himmat," he said, looking each man in the eye.
_Truth... _and _courage.
"Saatch aur himmat," they replied.
Without another word, the men claimed their guns, climbed into the two cars, and drove the few short minutes to Chuha's home on fashionable Sardar Patel Road. Before I could order my thoughts and even consider, clearly, what I was doing, I found myself creeping along a narrow lane with Abdullah in a darkness deep enough for me to feel the widening of my straining eyes. Then we climbed over a sheer wooden fence and dropped down into the backyard of the enemy's house.
We stood together in the dark for a few moments, checking the luminous dials on our watches, and listening hard as we let our eyes adjust. Abdullah whispered beside me, and I almost jumped at the sound.
"Nothing," he breathed, his voice like the rustle of a woollen blanket. "There's no-one here, no-one near."
"Looks okay," I answered, aware that my whispering voice was raspy with hard-breathing fear. There were no lights at the windows or behind the blue door at the rear of the house.
"Well, I kept my promise," Abdullah whispered mysteriously. "What?"
"You made me promise to take you with me, when I kill Chuha.
Remember?"
"Yeah," I answered, my heart beating faster than a healthy heart should. "You gotta be careful, I guess."
"I will be careful, Lin brother."
"No-I mean, you gotta be careful what you wish for in life, na?"
"I will try to open that door," Abdullah breathed, close to my ear. "If it will open, I will go inside."
"What?"
"You wait here, and stay near the door."
"What?"
"You wait here, and-"
"We're both supposed to stay here!" I hissed.
"I know," he replied, creeping with leopard stealth toward the door.
In my clumsier way, looking more like a cat waking stiffly from a long sleep, I crept after him. As I reached the two wide steps leading down to the blue door, I saw him open it and slip inside the house like a shadow thrown by a swooping bird. He pushed the door shut soundlessly behind him.
Alone, in the dark, I took my knife from the sheath in the small of my back, and enclosed the hilt in my right fist, dagger-point down. Staring out into the darkness, I put all of my focus on the beating of my heart, trying by force of will to slow its too rapid pace. It worked, after a time. I felt the count reducing, calming me further in turn as the meditative loop closed around a single, still thought. That thought was of Khaderbhai, and the formula he'd made me repeat so often: The wrong thing, for the right reasons. And I knew, as I repeated the words in the fearing dark, that the fight with Chuha, the war, the struggle for power, was always the same, everywhere, and it was always wrong.
Salman and the others, no less than Chuha and the Sapna killers and all the rest of them, were pretending that their little kingdoms made them kings; that their power struggles made them powerful. And they didn't. They couldn't. I saw that then so clearly that it was like understanding a mathematical theorem for the first time. The only kingdom that makes any man a king is the kingdom of his own soul. The only power that has any real meaning is the power to better the world. And only men like Qasim Ali Hussein and Johnny Cigar were such kings and had such power.
Unnerved and afraid, I pressed my ear to the door and strained to hear anything of Abdullah or the others within. The fear that twisted in me wasn't the fear of death. I wasn't afraid to die. I was afraid of being so injured or wounded that I couldn't walk, or couldn't see or, for some other reason, couldn't run from capture. Above all things I was afraid of that-of being captured and caged again. As I pressed my ear to the door, I prayed that no wound would weaken me. Let it happen here, I prayed. Let me get through this, or let me die here...
I don't know where they came from. I felt the hands on me before I heard a single sound. Two men slammed me round and hard up against the door. Instinctively, I struck out with my right hand.
"Chaku! Chaku!" one of the men shouted. Knife! Knife!
I couldn't swing the knife up quickly enough to stop them. One man pinned me to the door by the throat. He was a big man, and very strong. The other man used two hands, trying to force me to drop the knife. He wasn't quite so strong, and he couldn't make me drop the weapon. Then a third man hopped down the steps from the darkness, and with those extra hands they twisted my grip and forced me to drop the knife.
"Gora kaun hai?" the new man asked. Who's the white guy?
"Bahinchudh! Malum nahi," the strong man replied. The sisterfucker! I don't know.
He stared at me, obviously bewildered to have stumbled on a foreigner who was listening at the door and armed with a knife.
"Kaun hai tum?" he asked in an almost friendly tone. Who are you?
I didn't reply. All I could think was that I had to warn Abdullah somehow. I couldn't understand how they'd reached that spot without making a sound. The back gate must've swung silently on its hinges. Their shoes or chappals must've been soled with soft rubber. Whatever. I'd let them sneak up on me, and I had to warn Abdullah.
I suddenly struggled as if I was trying to break free. The feint had its effect. The men all shouted at me, and three pairs of hands slammed me against the blue door. One of the smaller men scrambled to my left side, pinning my left arm to the door. The other short man held my right arm. In the wrestle, I managed to kick my boots hard against the door three times. Abdullah must've heard it, I thought. It's okay... I've warned him... He must know something's wrong...
"Kaun hai tum?" the big man asked again. He took one hand from my throat, and bunched it into a fist poised menacingly close to my head, just below the line of sight of my eyes. Who are you?
Again I refused to answer, staring at him. Their hands, as hard as shackles, held me to the door.
He slammed his fist into my face. I managed to move my head, just slightly, but I felt the blow on my jaw and cheek. He had rings on his fingers, or he was using a knuckleduster. I couldn't see it, but I could feel the hard metal chipping bone.
"What you are doing here?" he asked in English. "Who you are?"
I kept silent, and he struck me again, the fist ramming into my face three times. _I know this... I thought. _I know this... I was back in prison, in Australia, in the punishment unit-the fists and boots and batons... I know this...
He paused, waiting for me to speak. The two smaller men grinned at him, then at me. Aur, one of them said. More. Hit him again.
The big man drew back and punched at my body. They were slow, deliberate, professional punches. I felt the wind empty from my body, and it was as if my life itself was draining from me. He moved up the body to my chest and throat and face. I felt myself wading into that black water where beaten boxers stagger and fall. I was done. I was finished.
I wasn't angry with them. I'd fucked up. I'd let them sneak up on me-walk up on me, probably. I'd gone there to fight, and I should've been on guard. It was my fault. Somehow, I'd missed them, and messed up, and it was my own fault. All I wanted to do was warn Abdullah. I kicked back feebly at the door, hoping he would hear it and get away, get away, get away...
I fell through perfect darkness, and the weight of all the world fell with me. When I hit the floor I heard shouts, and I realised that Abdullah had wrenched open the door, letting us fall into him. In the dark, bloody-eyed and swollen, I heard a gun firing twice, and saw the flashes. Then light filled the world, and I blinked into the glare as another door opened somewhere, and I saw men rushing in on us. The gun fired again twice, three times, and I rolled out from under the big man to see my knife, close to my eyes, shining on the ground near the open blue door.
I grabbed for the knife just as one of the smaller men tried to crawl over me and out the door. Without thinking, I swept it backwards and into his hip. He screamed, and I scrambled up to him, slashing the knife across his face near the eyes.
It's amazing how a little of the other guy's blood, or a lot of it, if you can manage it, puts power in your arms and pain killing adrenaline in your aching wounds. Wild with rage, I swung round to see Abdullah locked in a struggle with two men. There were bodies on the floor of the room. I couldn't tell how many.
Gunshots cracked and drummed from all around and above us in the other rooms of the building. They seemed to come from several places in the house at the same time. There were shouts and screams. I could smell shit and piss and blood in the room.
Someone had a gut wound. I hoped that it wasn't me. My left hand slapped at my belly and searched, frisking myself for wounds.
Abdullah was punching it out with the two men. They were wrestling, gouging, biting. I began to crawl toward them, but I felt a hand on my leg pulling me backward. It was a strong hand.
A very strong hand. It was the big guy.
He'd been shot, I was sure, but I couldn't see any blood on his shirt or his pants. He dragged me in as if I was a turtle caught in a net. When I reached him, I raised the knife to stab him, but he beat me to it. He slammed his fist into the right side of my groin. He'd missed the killing blow, a direct hit, but it was still enough to make me curl and roll over in agonising pain. I felt him lurch past me, actually using my body for leverage as he pushed himself to his feet. I rolled back, retching bile, to see him stand and take a step toward Abdullah.
I couldn't let it happen. Too many times, my heart had withered on the thought of Abdullah's death: alone, in a circle of guns. I thrashed against the pain, and in a scrabble of bloody, slipping movements I sprang up and plunged my knife into the big guy's back. It was high, just under the scapula. I felt the bone shiver under the blade, diverting the point sideways toward the shoulder. He was strong. He took two more steps, dragging my body with him on the hook of the knife, before he crumpled and fell. I fell on top of him, looking up to see Abdullah. He had his fingers in a man's eyes. The man's head was bent backwards against Abdullah's knee. The man's jaw gave way, and his neck cracked like a piece of kindling.
Hands pulled at me, dragging me toward the back door. I struck out, but strong, gentle hands twisted the knife from my fingers.
Then I heard the voice, Mahmoud Melbaaf's voice, and I knew we were safe.
"Come on, Lin," the Iranian said, quickly and too quietly, it seemed, for the bloody violence that had just roared around us.
"I need a gun," I mumbled.
"No, Lin. It is over."
"Abdullah?" I asked, as Mahmoud dragged me into the yard.
"He's working," he replied. I heard the screams inside the house ending, one by one, like birds falling silent as night moves across the stillness of a lake. "Can you stand? Can you walk? We must leave now!"
"Fuck, yes! I can make it."
As we reached the back gate, a column of our men rushed past us.
Faisal and Hussein carried one man between them. Farid and Little Tony carried another. Sanjay had a man's body on his right shoulder. He was sobbing as he clutched the body to his chest and shoulder.
"We lost Salman," Mahmoud announced, following my gaze as we let the men rush past us. "And Raj, also. Amir is bad-alive, but hurt bad."
Salman. The last voice of reason in the Khader council. The last Khader man. I hurried down the lane to the waiting cars and I felt the life draining from me, just as it had when the big man was hitting me at the blue door. It was over. The old mafia council was gone with Salman. Everything had changed. I looked at the others in my car: Mahmoud, Farid, and the wounded Amir.
They'd won their war. The Sapna killers were gone at last. A chapter, a book of life and death that had opened with Sapna's name, was closed forever. Khader was avenged. Abdul Ghani's mutinous betrayal was finally defeated. And the Iranians, Abdullah's enemies, were no more: as silent as that bloody, unscreaming house where Abdullah was... working. And Chuha's gang was crushed. The border war was over. It was over. The wheel had turned through one full revolution, and nothing would ever be the same. They'd won, but they were all crying. All of them.
Crying.
I let my head fall back on the seat of the car. Night, that tunnel of lights joining promise to prayer, flew with us at the windows. Slowly, desolately, the fist of what we'd done unclenched the clawed palm of what we'd become. Anger softened into sorrow, as it always does, as it always must. And no part of what we'd wanted, just an hour's life before, was as rich in hope or meaning as a single teardrop's fall.
"What?" Mahmoud asked, his face close to mine. "What did you say?" "I hope that bear got away," I mumbled through broken, bleeding lips as the stricken spirit began to rise from my wounded body, and sleep, like fog in morning forests, moved through my sorrowing mind. "I hope that bear got away."