‘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.
‘Allora, 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.
‘Naja …’ 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 …
&n
bsp; 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 Ind
ian 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.’