"Do you know the Borsalino hat test?"
"The what?"
"The Borsalino hat test. It is the test that reveals whether a hat is a genuine Borsalino, or an inferior imitator. You know about the Borsalino, non?"
"No, I can't say I do."
"Aaaaah," Didier smiled. The smile was composed of one part surprise, one part mischief, and one part contempt. Somehow, those elements combined in an effect that was disarmingly charming. He leaned slightly forward and inclined his head to one side, his black curly hair shaking as if to emphasise the points in his explanation. "The Borsalino is a garment of the first and finest quality. It is believed by many, and myself included, to be the most outstanding gentleman's head covering ever made."
His hands shaped an imaginary hat on his head.
"It is wide-brimmed, in black or white, and made from the furs of the lapin."
"So, it's just a hat," I added, in what I thought to be an agreeable tone. "We're talking about a rabbit-fur hat."
Didier was outraged.
"Just a hat? Oh, no, my friend! The Borsalino is more than just a hat. The Borsalino is a work of art! It is brushed ten thousand times, by hand, before it is sold. It was the style expression of first choice by discerning French and Italian gangsters in Milan and Marseilles for many decades. The very name of Borsalino became a synonyme for gangsters. The wild young men of the underworld of Milano and Marseilles were called Borsalinos. Those were the days when gangsters had some style. They understood that if you were to live as an outlaw and steal and shoot people for a living, you had a responsibility to dress with some elegance.
Isn't it so?" "It's the least they could do," I agreed, smiling.
"But of course! Now, sadly, there is all attitude and no style.
It is the mark of the age in which we live that the style becomes the attitude, instead of the attitude becoming the style."
He paused, permitting me a moment to acknowledge the turn of phrase.
"And so," he continued, "the test of a real Borsalino hat is to roll it into a cylinder, roll it up into a very tight tube, and pass it through a wedding ring. If it emerges from this test without permanent creases, and if it springs back to its original shape, and if it is not damaged in the experience, it is a genuine Borsalino."
"And you're saying..."
"Just so!" Didier shouted, slamming a fist down on the table.
We were sitting in Leopold's, near the square arch of the Causeway doors, at eight o'clock. Some foreigners at the next table turned their heads at the noisy outburst, but the staff and the regulars ignored the Frenchman. Didier had been eating and drinking and expostulating at Leopold's for nine years. They all knew there was a line you could cross with him, a limit to his tolerance, and he was a dangerous man if you crossed it. They also knew that the line wasn't drawn in the soft sand of his own life or beliefs or feelings. Didier's line was drawn through the hearts of the people he loved. If you hurt them, in any way, you roused him to a cold and deadly rage. But nothing anyone said or did to him, short of actual bodily harm, ever really offended or angered him.
"Comme %ca! That is my point! Your little friend, Prabaker, has put you through the hat test. He rolled you into a tube, and dragged you through the wedding ring, to see if you are a real Borsalino or not. That was his purpose in taking you on the tour of the bad sights and sounds of the city. It was a Borsalino test."
I sipped my coffee in silence, knowing that he was right-
Prabaker's dark tour had been a kind of test-but not willing to give Didier the trophy of conceding the point.
The evening crowd of tourists from Germany, Switzerland, France, England, Norway, America, Japan, and a dozen other countries thinned out, giving way to the night crowd of Indians and expatriates who called Bombay home. The locals reclaimed places like Leopold's, the Mocambo, Cafe Mondegar, and the Light of Asia every night, when the tourists sought the safety of their hotels.
"If it was a test," I did at last concede, "he must've given me a pass. He invited me to go with him to visit his family, in his village in the north of the state."
Didier raised his eyebrows in theatrical surprise.
"For how long?"
"I don't know. A couple of months, I think. Maybe more."
"Ah, then it is so," he concluded. "Your little friend is beginning to love you."
"I think that's putting it a bit strong," I objected, frowning.
"No, no, you do not understand. You must be careful, here, with the real affection of those you meet. This is not like any other place. This is India. Everyone who comes here falls in love-most of us fall in love many times over. And the Indians, they love most of all. Your little friend may be beginning to love you.
There is nothing strange in this. I say it from a long experience of this country, and especially of this city. It happens often, and easily, for the Indians. That is how they manage to live together, a billion of them, in reasonable peace. They are not perfect, of course. They know how to fight and lie and cheat each other, and all the things that all of us do. But more than any other people in the world, the Indians know how to love one another."
He paused to light a cigarette, and then waved it like a little flagpole until the waiter noticed him and nodded to his request for another glass of vodka.
"India is about six times the size of France," he went on, as the glass of alcohol and a bowl of curried snacks arrived at our table. "But it has almost twenty times the population. Twenty times! Believe me, if there were a billion Frenchmen living in such a crowded space, there would be rivers of blood. Rivers of blood! And, as everyone knows, we French are the most civilised people in Europe. Indeed, in the whole world. No, no, without love, India would be impossible."
Letitia joined us at our table, sitting to my left.
"What are you on about now, Didier, you bastard?" she asked compan-ionably, her South London accent giving the first syllable of the last word an explosive ring.
"He was just telling me that the French are the most civilised people in the world." "As all the world knows," he added.
"When you produce a Shakespeare, out of your villes and vineyards, mate, I might just agree with you," Lettie murmured through a smile that seemed to be warm and condescending in equal parts.
"My dear, please do not think that I disrespect your Shakespeare," Didier countered, laughing happily. "I love the English language, because so much of it is French."
"Touche," I grinned, "as we say in English."
Ulla and Modena arrived at that moment, and sat down. Ulla was dressed for work in a small, tight, black, halter-neck dress, fishnet stockings, and stiletto-heel shoes. She wore eye-dazzling fake diamonds at her throat and ears. The contrast between her clothing and Lettie's was stark. Lettie wore a fine, bone- coloured brocade jacket over loose, dark-brown satin culottes, and boots. Yet the faces of the two women produced the strongest and most unexpected contrast. Lettie's gaze was seductive, direct, self-assured, and sparkling with ironies and secrets, while Ulla's wide blue eyes, for all the make-up and clothing of her professional sexuality, showed nothing but innocence-honest, vacuous innocence.
"You are forbidden to speak to me, Didier," Ulla said at once, pouting inconsolably. "I have had a very disagreeable time with Federico-three hours-and it is all your fault."
"Bah!" Didier spat out. "Federico!"
"Oh," Lettie joined in, making three long sounds out of one.
"Something's happened to the beautiful young Federico, has it?
Come on, Ulla me darlin', let's have all the gossip."
"_Na _ja, Federico has got a religion, and he is driving me crazy about it, and it is all Didier's fault."
"Yes!" Didier added, clearly disgusted. "Federico has found religion. It is a tragedy. He no longer drinks or smokes or takes drugs. And of course he will not have sex with anyone-not even with himself! It is an appalling waste of talent. The man was a genius of the corruptions, my finest student, my masterwork. It is maddening. He is now a good man, in the very worst sense of the word."
"Well, you win a few, you lose a few," Lettie sighed with mock sympathy. "You mustn't let it get you down, Didier. There'll be other fish for you to fry and gobble up."
"Your sympathy should be for me," Ulla chided. "Federico came from Didier in such a bad mood yesterday, he was at my door today in tears. Scheisse! Wirklich! For three hours he cried and he raved at me about being born again. In the end I felt so sorry for him.
It was only with a great suffering that I let Modena throw him and his bible books onto the street. It's all your fault, Didier, and I will take the longest time to forgive you for it."
"Fanatics," Didier mused, ignoring the rebuke, "always seem to have the same scrubbed and staring look about them. They have the look of people who do not masturbate, but who think about it almost all the time."
"I really do love you, you know, Didier," Lettie stuttered, through her bubbling laughter. "Even if you are a despicable toad of a man."
"No, you love him because he is a despicable toe of a man," Ulla declared.
"That's toad, love, not toe," Lettie corrected patiently, still laughing. "He's a toad of a man, not a toe of a man. A despicable toe wouldn't make any sense at all, now would it? We wouldn't love him or hate him just for being a toe of a man, would we, darlin'-even if we knew what it meant?"
"I'm not so good with the English jokes, you know that, Lettie,"
Ulla persisted. "But I think he _is a big, ugly, hairy toe of a man."
"I assure you," Didier protested, "that my toes-and my feet, for that matter-are exceptionally beautiful."
Karla, Maurizio, and an Indian man in his early thirties walked in from the busy night street. Maurizio and Modena joined a second table to ours, and then the eight of us ordered drinks and food.
"Lin, Lettie, this is my friend, Vikram Patel," Karla announced, when there was a moment of relative quiet. "He came back a couple of weeks ago, after a long holiday in Denmark, and I think you're the only two who haven't met him."
Lettie and I introduced ourselves to the newcomer, but my real attention was on Maurizio and Karla. He sat beside her, opposite me, and rested his hand on the back of her chair. He leaned in close to her, and their heads almost touched when they spoke.
There's a dark feeling-less than hatred, but more than loathing - that ugly men feel for handsome men. It's unreasonable and unjustified, of course, but it's always there, hiding in the long shadow thrown by envy. It creeps out, into the light of your eyes, when you're falling in love with a beautiful woman. I looked at Maurizio, and a little of that dark feeling began in my heart. His straight, white teeth, smooth complexion, and thick, dark hair turned me against him more swiftly and surely than flaws in his character mightVe done.
And Karla was beautiful: her hair, in a French roll, was shining like water running over black river stones, and her green eyes were radiant with purpose and pleasure. She wore a long-sleeved Indian salwar top that reached to below her knees, where it met loose trousers in the same olive silk fabric.
"I had a great time, yaar," the newcomer, Vikram, was saying when my thoughts returned to the moment. "Denmark is very hip, very cool. The people are very sophisticated. They're so fucking controlled, I couldn't believe it. I went to a sauna, in Copenhagen. It was a fucking huge place, yaar, with a mixed set- up-with men and women, together, walking around stark naked.
Absolutely, totally naked. And nobody reacted at all. Not even a flickering eye, yaar. Indian guys couldn't handle that. They'd be boiling, I tell you."
"Were you boiling, Vikram dear?" Lettie asked, sweetly.
"Are you fucking kidding? I was the only guy in the place wearing a towel, and the only guy with a hard-on."
"I don't understand," Ulla said, when we stopped laughing. It was a flat statement-neither a complaint, nor a plea for further explanation.
"Hey, I went there every day for three weeks, yaar," Vikram continued. "I thought that if I just spent enough time there, I'd get used to it, like all the super-cool Danes."
"Get used to what?" Ulla asked.
Vikram frowned at her, bewildered, and then turned to Lettie.
"It was no good. It was useless. After three weeks, I still had to wear the towel. No matter how often I went there, when I saw those bouncy bits going up and down, and side-to-side, I stiffened up. What can I say? I'm too Indian for a place like that."
"It is the same for Indian women," Maurizio observed. "Even when they are making love, it is not possible to be naked."
"Well, that's not always true," Vikram went on, "And anyway, it's the guys who are the problem here. Indian women are ready to change. Young Indian chicks from middle-class families are wild about change, yaar. They're educated, and they're ready for short hair, short dresses, and short love affairs. They're ready for it, but the guys are holding them back. The average Indian guy has a sexual maturity of about fourteen."
"Tell me about it," Lettie muttered.
Kavita Singh had approached our table moments before, and stood behind Vikram while he made his observations about Indian women.
With short, styled hair, and wearing jeans and a white sweatshirt bearing the emblem of New York University, she was the living woman, the physical representation of what Vikram had been saying. She was the real thing.
"You're such a chudd, Vikkie," she said, taking a place opposite him and on my right side. "You say all this, but you're just as bad as all the rest. Look at how you treat your own sister, yaar, if she dares to wear jeans and a tight sweater."
"Hey, I bought her that tight sweater, in London, last year!"
Vikram protested.
"But you still gave her buckets of grief when she wore it to the jazz yatra, na?"
"Well, how was I to know that she would want to wear it outside the apartment?" he countered lamely, provoking laughter and derision from the whole group. None laughed harder than Vikram himself.
Vikram Patel was of average height and build, but average stopped just there, with those characteristics. His thick, curly, black hair framed a handsome, intelligent face. The bright and animated light brown eyes stared out confidently above a long, hawk-like nose and a sharp, immaculately trimmed Zapata moustache. His clothes were black-cowboy boots, jeans, shirt, and leather vest - and he wore a flat, black Spanish flamenco hat on his back, hanging from a leather thong at his throat. His bolo tie, dollar- coin belt, and hatband were all in silver. He looked like a hero in a spaghetti western movie, and that was, in fact, the inspiration for his style. Vikram had an obsession with Sergio Leone's films, Once Upon A Time In The West, and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Later, when I knew him better, when I watched him win the heart of the woman he loved, and when we stood together to face and fight enemies who wanted to kill me, I learned that he was a hero, and that he would've held his own with any of the gunslingers he adored.
Sitting opposite him on that first meeting, I was struck by the ease with which he assumed his black cowboy dream, and the stylish assurance that carried it off. Vikram is the kind of man who wears his sleeve on his heart, Karla once said. It was an affectionate joke, and one that we all understood, but there was a brittle filament of scorn in it, as well. I didn't laugh with the others when she said it.
People like Vikram, people who can wear an obsession with panache, always win me over because their honesty speaks directly to my heart.
"No, it's true!" he persisted. "In Copenhagen there was this club. It's what they call a telephone club. There's all these tables, yaar, and every table has a number that's lit up in red lights. If you see someone interesting, someone really hot, sitting at table twelve, you just dial up number twelve, and speak to them. Fucking deadly system, man. Half the time you don't know who's calling you, or they don't know who you are.
Sometimes you talk for an hour, trying to guess who's talking to you, because everybody is talking at the same time. And then you tell each other what table you're at. I had a real nice party there, I can tell you. But if they tried to do it here, it wouldn't last five minutes, because the guys couldn't handle it.
So many Indian guys are chutias, yaar. They'd be swearing, and saying all sorts of indecent shit, the childish motherfuckers.
That's all I'm saying. In Copenhagen, the people were a lot cooler, and we've still got a damn long way to go, here, before India catches up to them on the cool scale."
"I think that things are getting better," Ulla volunteered. "I get the feeling the future of India is a good future. I am sure things will be good, you know, like better than now, and there will be a lot of better living, for a lot of the people."
We all turned to stare at her. The table was silent. We were stunned to hear such sentiments expressed by a young woman who made her living as the sexual plaything of those Indians who were rich enough to exploit her. She was used and abused, and I, for one, would've expected her to be more cynical. Optimism is the first cousin of love, and it's exactly like love in three ways: it's pushy, it has no real sense of humour, and it turns up where you least expect it.
"Really, my dear foolish Ulla, nothing changes at all," Didier said, curling his lip in disgust. "If you want to curdle the milk of your human kindness, or turn your compassion into contempt, get a job as a waitress or a cleaner. The two fastest ways to develop a healthy loathing for the human race and its destiny is to serve it food, or clean up after it, on the minimum wage. I have done both jobs, in those terrible days when I was forced to work for a living. It was horrible. I shudder now in thinking about it. That's where I learned that nothing ever really changes. And to speak the truth, I am glad of it. In a better world, or a worse one, I would make no money at all."
"Bullshit," Lettie declared. "Things can get better, and things can get a lot worse. Ask the people in the slum. They're experts in how much worse things can get. Isn't that right, Karla?"
We all turned our attention to Karla. She toyed with her cup for an instant, turning it slowly in the saucer with her long index finger.
"I think that we all, each one of us, we all have to _earn our future," she said slowly. "I think the future is like anything else that's important. It has to be earned. If we don't earn it, we don't have a future at all. And if we don't earn it, if we don't deserve it, we have to live in the present, more or less forever. Or worse, we have to live in the past. I think that's probably what love is-a way of earning the future."
"Well, I agree with Didier," Maurizio stated, finishing his meal with a glass of iced water. "I like things just as they are, and I am content if they do not change."
"How about you?" Karla asked, turning to face me.
"What about me?" I smiled.
"If you could be happy, really happy, for just a while, but you knew from the start that it would end in sadness, and bring pain afterwards, would you choose to have that happiness or would you avoid it?"
The attention and the question unsettled me, and I felt momentarily uncomfortable in the expectant silence that awaited my reply. I had the feeling that she'd asked the question before, and that it was a kind of test. Maybe she'd already asked the others at the table. Maybe they'd given their answers, and were waiting to hear mine. I wasn't sure what she wanted me to say, but the fact was that my life had already answered the question.
I'd made my choice when I escaped from prison.
"I'd choose the happiness," I replied, and was rewarded with a half-smile of recognition or amusement-perhaps it was both-from Karla.
"I wouldn't do it," Ulla said, frowning. "I hate sadness. I can't bear it. I would rather have nothing at all than even a little sadness. I think that's why I love to sleep so much, na? It's impossible to be really sad when you're asleep. You can be happy and afraid and angry in your dreams, but you have to be wide awake to be sad, don't you think?"
"I'm with you, Ulla," Vikram agreed. "There's too much fucking sadness in the world, yaar. That's why everybody is getting so stoned all the time. I know that's why I'm getting so stoned all the time."
"Mmmmm-no, I agree with you, Lin," Kavita put in, although I couldn't be sure how much was agreement with me, and how much merely the reflex of opposing Vikram. "If you have a chance at real happiness, whatever the cost, you have to take it."
Didier grew restless, irritated with the turn the conversation had taken.
"You are being much too serious, all of you."
"I'm not!" Vikram objected, stung by the suggestion.
Didier fixed him with one raised eyebrow.
"I mean that you are making things to be more difficult than they are, or need to be. The facts of life are very simple. In the beginning we feared everything-animals, the weather, the trees, the night sky-everything except each other. Now we fear each other, and almost nothing else. No-one knows why anyone does anything. No-one tells the truth. No-one is happy. No-one is safe. In the face of all that is so wrong with the world, the very worst thing you can do is survive. And yet you must survive.
It is this dilemma that makes us believe and cling to the lie that we have a soul, and that there is a God who cares about its fate. And now you have it."
He sat back in his chair, and twirled the points of his D'Artagnan moustache with both hands.
"I'm not sure what he just said," Vikram muttered, after a pause, "but somehow I agree with him, and feel insulted, at the same time."
Maurizio rose from his seat to leave. He placed a hand on Karla's shoulder, and turned to the rest of us with a brilliant smile of affability and charm. I had to admire that smile, even as I was working myself up to hate him for it.
"Don't be confused, Vikram," he said pleasantly. "Didier only has one subject-himself."
"And his curse," Karla added quickly, "is that it is a fascinating subject."
"Merci, Karla, darling," Didier murmured, presenting her with a little bow.
"Allom, Modena, let's go. We may see you all later, at the President, si? Ciao."
He kissed Karla on the cheek, put on his Ray-Ban sunglasses, and stalked out into the crowded night with Modena at his side. The Spaniard hadn't spoken once all evening, or even smiled. As their shapes were lost in the shifting, shuffling figures on the street, however, I saw that he spoke to Maurizio passionately, waving his clenched fist. I watched them until they were gone, and was startled and a little ashamed to hear Lettie speak aloud the smallest, meanest corner of my thoughts.
"He's not as cool as he looks," she snarled.
"No man is as cool as he looks," Karla said, smiling and reaching out to cover Lettie's hand with her own.
"You don't like Maurizio any more?" Ulla asked.
"I hate him. No, I don't hate him. But I despise him. It makes me sick to look at him."
"My dear Letitia-" Didier began, but Karla cut him off.
"Not now, Didier. Give it a rest."
"I don't know how I could've been so stupid," Lettie growled, clenching her teeth.
"_Na _ja..." Ulla said slowly. "I don't want to say __I told you _so, but..."
"Oh, why not?" Kavita asked. "I love to say I told you so. I tell Vikram I told you so at least once a week. I'd rather say I told you so than eat chocolate."
"I like the guy," Vikram put in. "Did you all know he's a fantastic horseman? He can ride like Clint Eastwood, yaar. I saw him at Chowpatty last week, riding on the beach with this gorgeous, blonde, Swedish chick. He rode just like Clint, in High Plains Drifter, I'm telling you. Fucking deadly."
"Oh, well, he rides a horse," Lettie said. "How could I have been so wrong about him? I take it all back then."
"He's got a cool hi-fi in his apartment, too," Vikram added, apparently oblivious to Lettie's mood. "And some damn fine original Italian movie scores."
"That's it! I'm off!" Lettie declared, standing and grabbing her handbag and the book she'd brought with her. Her red hair, falling in gentle curls that framed her face, trembled with her irritation. Her pale skin stretched so flawlessly over the soft curves of her heart-shaped face that for a moment, in the bright white light, she was a furious, marble Madonna, and I recalled what Karla had said of her: I think Lettie's the most spiritual of all of _us...
Vikram jumped to his feet with her. "I'll walk you to your hotel. I'm going your way."
"Is that right?" Lettie asked, rounding on him so swiftly that he flinched. "Which way would that be then?"
"I... I... I'm going, kind of, everywhere, yaar. I'm taking a very long walk, like. So... so... wherever you're going, I'll be going your way."
"Oh, all right, if you must," she murmured, her teeth clenched and her eyes flashing blue sparks. "Karla me love, see you at the Taj, tomorrow, for coffee. I promise not to be late this time."
"I'll be there," Karla agreed.
"Well, bye all!" Lettie said, waving.
"Yeah, me too!" Vikram added, rushing after her.
"You know, the thing I like most about Letitia," Didier mused, "is that no little bit of her is French. Our culture, the French culture, is so pervasive and influential that almost everyone, in the whole world, is at least a little bit French. This is especially so for women. Almost every woman in the world is French, in some way. But Letitia, she is the most un-French woman I have ever known."
"You're full of it, Didier," Kavita remarked. "Tonight more than most nights. What is it-did you fall in love, or out of love?"
He sighed, and stared at his hands, folded one on top the other.
"A little of both, I think. I am feeling very blue. Federico-you know him-has found religion. It is a terrible business, and it has wounded me, I confess. In truth, his saintliness has broken my heart. But enough of that. Imtiaz Dharker has a new exhibition at the Jehangir. Her work is always sensuous, and a little bit wild, and it brings me to myself again. Kavita, would you like to see it with me?"
"Sure," Kavita smiled. "I'd be happy to."
"I'll walk to the Regal Junction with you," Ulla sighed. "I have to meet Modena."
They rose and said goodbye, and walked through the Causeway arch, but then Didier returned and stood beside me at the table.
Resting a hand on my shoulder as if to steady himself, he smiled down at me with an expression of surprisingly tender affection.
"Go with him, Lin," he said. "Go with Prabaker, to the village.
Every city in the world has a village in its heart. You will never understand the city, unless you first understand the village. Go there. When you return, I will see what India has made of you. Bonne chance!" He hurried off, leaving me alone with Karla. When Didier and the others were at the table, the restaurant had been noisy.
Suddenly, all was quiet, or it seemed to be, and I had the impression that every word I spoke would be echoed, from table to table, in the large room.
"Are you leaving us?" Karla asked, mercifully speaking first.
"Well, Prabaker invited me to go with him on a trip to his parents' village. His native-place, he calls it."
"And you're going?"
"Yes, yes, I think I will. It's something of an honour to be asked, I take it. He told me he goes back to his village, to visit his parents, once every six months or so. He's done that for the last nine years, since he's been working the tourist beat in Bombay. But I'm the first foreigner he ever invited to go there with him."
She winked at me, the start of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
"You may not be the first one he asked. You may be the first one of his tourists crazy enough to actually say yes, but it amounts to the same thing."
"Do you think I'm crazy to accept the invitation?"
"Not at all! Or at least, crazy in the right way, like the rest of us. Where is the village?"
"I don't know, exactly. It's in the north of the state. He told me it takes a train and two bus rides to get there."
"Didier's right. You have to go. If you want to stay here, in Bombay, as you say then you should spend some time in the village. The village is the key."
A passing waiter took our last order, and moments later brought a banana lassi for Karla and a chai for me.
"How long did it take you to feel comfortable here, Karla? I mean, you always seem so relaxed and at home. It's like you've always been here."
"Oh, I don't know. It's the right place for me, if you understand what I mean, and I knew that on the first day, in the first hour that I came here. So, in a sense, I was comfortable from the beginning."
"It's funny you say that. I felt a bit like that myself. Within an hour of landing at the airport, I had this incredibly strong feeling that this was the right place for me."
"And I suppose that the real breakthrough came with the language.
When I started to dream in Hindi, I knew that I was at home here.
Everything has fallen into place since then."
"Is that it now? Are you going to stay here forever?"
"There's no such thing as forever," she answered in her slow, deliberate way. "I don't know why we use the word."
"You know what I mean."
"Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll stay until I get what I want. And then, maybe, I'll go somewhere else."
"What do you want, Karla?"
She frowned in concentration, and shifted her gaze to stare directly into my eyes. It was an expression I came to know well, and it seemed to say, If you have to ask the question, you have no right to the answer.
"I want everything," she replied with a faint, wry smile. "You know, I said that once, to a friend of mine, and he told me that the real trick in life is to want nothing, and to succeed in getting it."
Later, after we'd negotiated the crowds on the Causeway and the Strand, and walked the leafy arches of the empty streets behind the night-silent Colaba Market, we stopped at a bench beneath a towering elm near her apartment.
"It's really a paradigm shift," I said, trying to explain a point I'd been making as we'd walked. "A completely different way of looking at things, and thinking about things."
"You're right. That's exactly what it is."
"Prabaker took me to a kind of hospice, an old apartment building, near the St George Hospital. It was full of sick and dying people who'd been given a piece of floor-space to lie down and die on. And the owner of the place, who has this reputation as a kind of saint, was walking around, tagging the people, with signs that told how many useful organs they had. It was a huge organ-bank, full of living people who pay for the privilege of a quiet, clean place to die, off the street, by providing organs whenever this guy needs them. And the people were pathetically grateful to the guy for it. They revered him. They looked at him as if they loved him."
"He put you through it in the last two weeks, your friend, Prabaker, didn't he?"
"Well, there was much worse than that. But the real problem is that you can't do anything. You see kids who... well, they're in a lot of trouble, and you see people in the slums-he took me to the slum, where he lives, and the stink of the open latrine, and the hopeless mess of the place, and the people staring at you from the doorways of their hovels and... and you can't change anything. You can't do anything about it. You have to accept that things could be worse, and they'll never be much better, and you're completely helpless in the face of it."
"It's good to know what's wrong with the world," Karla said, after a while. "But it's just as important to know that sometimes, no matter how wrong it is, you can't change it. A lot of the bad stuff in the world wasn't really that bad until someone tried to change it."
"I'm not sure I want to believe that. I know you're right. I know we make things worse, sometimes, the more we try to make them better. But I want to believe that if we do it right, everything and everyone can change for the better."
"You know, I actually ran into Prabaker today. He told me to ask you about the water, whatever that means."
"Oh, yeah," I laughed. "Just yesterday, I went down from my hotel to meet Prabaker on the street. But on the stairwell, there were these Indian guys, one after the other, carrying big pots of water on their heads, and climbing the stairs. I had to stand against the wall to let them pass. When I made it to the bottom, I saw this big wooden barrel with iron-rimmed wheels attached to it. It was a kind of water wagon. Another guy was using a bucket, and he was dipping it into the barrel and filling the big carry- pots with water.
"I watched this for ages, and the men made a lot of trips, up and down the stairs. When Prabaker came along, I asked him what they were doing. He told me that that was the water for my shower.
That the shower came from a tank on the roof, and that these men filled the tank with their pots."
"Of course."
"Yeah, you know that, and I know that now, but yesterday was the first I heard of it. In this heat, I've been in the habit of taking three showers a day. I never realised that men had to climb six flights of stairs, to fill a damn tank, so that I could take those showers. I felt horrible about it, you know? I told Prabaker I'd never take another shower in that hotel again. Not ever."
"What did he say?"
"He said, No, no you don't understand. He called it a _people-
_job. It's only because of tourists like me, he explained, that those men have a job. And he told me that each man is supporting a family of his own from his wages. You should have three showers, four showers, even five showers every day, he told me."
She nodded in agreement.
"Then he told me to watch the men while they got themselves ready to run through the city again, pushing their water wagon. And I think I knew what he meant, what he wanted me to see. They were strong, those guys. They were strong and proud and healthy. They weren't begging or stealing. They were working hard to earn their way, and they were proud of it. When they ran off into the traffic, with their strong muscles, and getting a few sly looks from some of the young Indian girls, I saw that their heads were up and their eyes straight ahead."
"And you still take a shower in the hotel?"
"Three a day," I laughed. "Tell me, why was Lettie so upset with Maurizio?"
She looked at me, staring hard into my eyes for the second time that evening.
"Lettie has a pretty good contact at the Foreigner Registration Branch. He's a senior police official who has an obsession with sapphire gems, and Lettie supplies them to him at the wholesale rate, or a little below. Sometimes, in exchange for this... favour... she can arrange to have a visa renewed, almost indefinitely. Maurizio wanted to extend his visa for another year. He allowed Lettie to think he was in love with her-well, you can say he seduced her-and when he got what he wanted, he dumped her."
"Lettie's your friend..."
"I warned her. Maurizio is not a man to love. You can do everything else with him, but not love him. She didn't listen to me."
"You still like Maurizio? Even after he did that to your friend?"
"Maurizio did exactly what I knew he would do. In his own mind, he made a trade of his affection for the visa, and it was a fair trade. He would never try anything like that with me."
"Is he afraid of you?" I asked, smiling.
"Yes. I think he is, a little bit. That's one of the reasons I like him. I could never respect a man who didn't have the good sense to be at least a little bit afraid of me." She stood up, and I rose with her. Under the street lamp her green eyes were jewels of desire, wet with light. Her lips widened in a half-smile that was mine-a moment that was mine alone-and the beggar, my heart, began to hope and plead.
"Tomorrow," she said, "when you go to Prabaker's village, try to relax completely, and go with the experience. Just... let yourself go. Sometimes, in India, you have to surrender before you win."
"You've always got some wise advice, haven't you?" I said, laughing gently.
"That's not wise, Lin. I think wisdom is very over-rated. Wisdom is just cleverness, with all the guts kicked out of it. I'd rather be clever than wise, any day. Most of the wise people I know give me a headache, but I never met a clever man or woman I didn't like. If I was giving wise advice-which I'm not-I'd say don't get drunk, don't spend all your money, and don't fall in love with a pretty village girl. That would be wise. That's the difference between clever and wise. I prefer to be clever, and that's why I told you to surrender, when you get to the village, no matter what you find when you get there. Okay. I'm going. Come and see me when you get back. I look forward to it. I really do."
She kissed my cheek, and turned away. I couldn't obey the impulse to hold her in my arms and kiss her lips. I watched her walk, her dark silhouette a part of the night itself. Then she moved into the warm, yellow light near the door of her apartment, and it was as if my watching eyes had made her shadow come to life, as if my heart alone had painted her from darkness with the light and colours of love. She turned once to see that I was watching her, before she softly closed and locked the door.
That last hour with her was a Borsalino test, I was sure, and all the walking way back to the hotel I asked myself if I'd passed it, or if I'd failed. I still think about it, all these years later. I still don't know.