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.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE LONG, FLAT INTERSTATE PLATFORMS at Victoria Terminus train station stretched out to vanishing points beneath a metal heaven of rolling vaulted ceilings. The cherubs of that architectural sky were pigeons, so far overhead in their flutter from roost to roost that they were only faintly discernible; distant, celestial beings of flight, and white light. The great station—those who used it every day knew it as VT.—was justly famous for the splendour of its intricately detailed facades, towers, and exterior ornaments. But its most sublime beauty, it seemed to me, was found in its cathedral interiors. There, the limitations of function met the ambitions of art, as the timetable and the timeless commanded equal respect.
For a long hour I sat on and amid our pile of luggage at the street end of the northbound interstate platform. It was six o’clock in the evening, and the station was filled with people, luggage, bundles of goods, and an agricultural assortment of live and recently deceased animals.
Prabaker ran into the crowds milling between two stationary trains. It was the fifth time I’d watched him leave. And then, a few minutes later, for the fifth time, I watched him run back.
‘For God’s sake, sit down, Prabu.’
‘Can’t be sitting, Lin.’
‘Well, let’s get on the train, then.’
‘Can’t be getting on also, Lin. It is not now the time for the getting on the train.’
‘So … when will it be the time for the getting on the train?’
‘I think … a little bit almost quite very soon, and not long. Listen! Listen!’
There was an announcement. It might’ve been in English. It was the kind of sound an angry drunk makes, amplified through the unique distortions of many ancient, cone-shaped speakers. As he listened to it, Prabaker’s face moved from apprehension to anguish.
‘Now! Now, Lin! Quickly! We must hurry! You must hurry!’
‘Hang on, hang on. You’ve had me sitting here like a brass Buddha, for an hour. Now, all of a sudden, there’s a big rush, and I have to hurry?’
‘Yes, baba. No time for making Buddha—beg of pardons to the Holy One. You must make a big rush. He’s coming! You must be ready. He’s coming!’
‘Who’s coming?’
Prabaker turned to look along the platform. The announcement, whatever it was, had galvanised the crowds of people, and they rushed at two stationary trains, hurling themselves and their bundles into the doors and windows. From the broiling tangle of bodies, one man emerged and walked towards us. He was a huge man, one of the biggest men I’d ever seen. He was two metres tall, well muscled, and had a long, thick beard that settled on his burly chest. He wore the Bombay train porter’s uniform of cap, shirt, and shorts, in rough red-and-khaki linen.
‘Him!’ Prabaker said, staring at the giant with admiration and dread. ‘You go with this man now, Lin.’
Having long experience with foreigners, the porter took control of the situation. He reached out with both hands. I thought that he wanted to shake hands, so I extended my own in return. He brushed it aside with a look that left me in no doubt as to how repulsive he’d found the gesture. Then, putting his hands under my armpits, he lifted me up and dropped me out of the way to one side of the luggage.
It’s a disconcerting, albeit exhilarating, experience, when you weigh 90 kilos yourself, to be lifted up so effortlessly by another man. I determined, there and then, to co-operate with the porter in so far as it was decently possible.
While the big man lifted my heavy back-pack onto his head and gathered up the rest of the bags, Prabaker put me at his back, and seized a handful of the man’s red linen shirt.
‘Here, Lin, take it a hold on this shirts,’ he instructed me. ‘Hold it, and never let it go, this shirts. Tell me your deep and special promise. You will never let it go this shirts.’
His expression was so unusually grave and earnest that I nodded in agreement, and took hold of the porter’s shirt.
‘No, say it also, Lin! Say the words—I will never let it go this shirts. Quickly!’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. All right—I will never let it go this shirts. Are you satisfied?’
‘Goodbye, Lin,??
? Prabaker shouted, running off into the mill and tumble of the crowd.
‘What? What! Where are you going? Prabu! Prabu!’
‘Okay! We go now!’ the porter rumbled and roared in a voice that he’d found in a bear’s cave, and cured in the barrel of a rusted cannon.
He walked off into the crowd, dragging me behind him and kicking outwards by raising his thick knees high with every step. Men scattered before him. When they didn’t scatter, they were knocked aside.
Bellowing threats, insults, and curses, he thumped a path through the choking throng. Men fell and were pushed aside with every lift and thrust of his powerful legs. In the centre of the crowd, the din was so loud that I could feel it drumming on my skin. People shouted and screamed as if they were the victims of a terrible disaster. Garbled, indecipherable announcements blared from the loudspeakers over our heads. Sirens, bells, and whistles wailed constantly.
We reached a carriage that was, like all the others, filled to its capacity with a solid wall of bodies in the doorway. It was a seemingly impenetrable human barrier of legs and backs and heads. Astonished, and not a little ashamed, I clung to the porter as he hammered his way into the carriage with his indefatigable and irresistible knees.
His relentless forward progress stopped, at one point, in the centre of the carriage. I assumed that the density of the crowd had halted even that juggernaut of a man. I clung to the shirt, determined not to lose my grip on him when he started to move again. In all the furious noise of the cloying press of bodies, I became aware of one word, repeated in an insistent and tormented mantra: Sarr … Sarr … Sarr … Sarr … Sarr …
I realised, at last, that the voice was my own porter’s. The word he was repeating with such distress was unrecognisable to me because I wasn’t used to being addressed by it: Sir.
‘Sir! Sir! Sir! Sir!’ he shouted.
I let go of his shirt and looked around to find Prabaker stretched to his full length along an entire bench seat. He’d fought his way ahead of us into the carriage to reserve a seat, and he was guarding it with his body. His feet were wrapped around the aisle armrest. His hands clasped the armrest at the window end. Half a dozen men had crammed themselves into that part of the carriage, and each tried with unstinting vigour and violence to remove him from the seat. They pulled his hair, punched his body, kicked him, and slapped at his face. He was helpless under the onslaught; but, when his eyes met mine, a triumphant smile shone through his grimaces of pain.
Incensed, I shoved the men out of the way, grabbing them by shirt collars, and hurling them aside with the strength that swarms into the arms of righteous anger. Prabaker swung his feet to the floor, and I sat down beside him. A brawl started at once for the remaining space on the seat. The porter dumped the luggage at our feet. His face and hair and shirt were wet with sweat. He gave Prabaker a nod, communicating his respect. It was fully equal, his glaring eyes left no doubt, to the derision he felt for me. Then he shoved his way through the crowd, roaring insults all the way to the door.
‘How much did you pay that guy?’
‘Forty rupees, Lin.’
Forty rupees. The man had battled his way into the carriage, with all of our luggage, for two American dollars.
‘Forty rupees!’
‘Yes, Lin,’ Prabaker sighed. ‘It is very expensive. But such good knees are very expensive. He has famous knees, that fellow. A lot of guides were making competition for his two knees. But I convinced him to help us, because I told him you were—I’m not sure how to say it in English—I told him you were not completely right on your head.’
‘Mentally retarded. You told him I was mentally retarded?’
‘No, no,’ he frowned, considering the options. ‘I think that stupid is more of the correctly word.’
‘Let me get this straight—you told him I was stupid, and that’s why he agreed to help us.’
‘Yes,’ he grinned. ‘But not just a little of stupid. I told him you were very, very, very, very, very —’
‘All right. I get it.’
‘So the price was twenty rupees for each knees. And now we have it this good seat.’
‘Are you all right?’ I asked, angry that he’d allowed himself to be hurt for my sake.
‘Yes, baba. A few bruises I will have on all my bodies, but nothing is broken.’
‘Well, what the hell did you think you were doing? I gave you money for the tickets. We could’ve sat down in first or second class, like civilised people. What are we doing back here?’
He looked at me, reproach and disappointment brimming in his large, soft-brown eyes. He pulled a small bundle of notes from his pockets, and handed it to me.
‘This is the change from the tickets money. Anybody can buy first-class tickets, Lin. If you want to buy tickets in first class, you can be doing that all on yourself only. You don’t need it a Bombay guide, to buy tickets in comfortable, empty carriages. But you need a very excellent Bombay guide, like me, like Prabaker Kishan Kharre, to get into this carriage at V.T. Station, and get a good seats, isn’t it? This is my job.’
‘Of course it is,’ I softened, still angry with him because I still felt guilty. ‘But please, for the rest of this trip, don’t get yourself beaten up, just so that I can have a goddamn seat, okay?’
He reflected for a moment with a frown of concentration, and then brightened again, his familiar smile refulgent in the dimly lit carriage.
‘If it is absolutely must be a beating,’ he said, firmly and amiably negotiating the terms of his employment, ‘I will shout even more loudly, and you can rescue my bruises in the nicks of time. Are we a deal?’
‘We are,’ I sighed, and the train suddenly lurched forward and began to grind its way out of the terminus.
In the instant that the train started on its journey, the gouging, biting, and brawling ceased completely and were replaced by a studied and genteel courtesy that persisted throughout the entire journey.
A man opposite me shifted his feet, accidentally brushing his foot against mine. It was a gentle touch, barely noticeable, but the man immediately reached out to touch my knee and then his own chest with the fingertips of his right hand, in the Indian gesture of apology for an unintended offence. In the carriage and the corridor beyond, the other passengers were similarly respectful, sharing, and solicitous with one another.
At first, on that first journey out of the city into India, I found such sudden politeness infuriating after the violent scramble to board the train. It seemed hypocritical for them to show such deferential concern over a nudge with a foot when, minutes before, they’d all but pushed one another out of the windows.
Now, long years and many journeys after that first ride on a crowded rural train, I know that the scrambled fighting and courteous deference were both expressions of the one philosophy: the doctrine of necessity. The amount of force and violence necessary to board the train, for example, was no less and no more than the amount of politeness and consideration necessary to ensure that the cramped journey was as pleasant as possible afterwards. What is necessary? That was the unspoken but implied and unavoidable question everywhere in India. When I understood that, a great many of the characteristically perplexing aspects of public life became comprehensible: from the acceptance of sprawling slums by city authorities, to the freedom that cows had to roam at random in the midst of traffic; from the toleration of beggars on the streets, to the concatenate complexity of the bureaucracies; and from the gorgeous, unashamed escapism of Bollywood movies, to the accommodation of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Tibet, Iran, Afghanistan, Africa, and Bangladesh, in a country that was already too crowded with sorrows and needs of its own.
The real hypocrisy, I came to realise, was in the eyes and minds and criticisms of those who came from lands of plenty, where no-one had to fight for a seat on a train. Even on that first train ride, I knew in my heart that Didier had been right when he’d compared India and its billion souls to France. I had an intuition, echoing his thou
ght, that if there were a billion Frenchmen or Australians or Americans living in such a small space, the fighting to board the train would be much more, and the courtesy afterwards much less.
And in truth, the politeness and consideration shown by the peasant farmers, travelling salesmen, itinerant workers, and returning sons and fathers and husbands did make for an agreeable journey, despite the cramped conditions and relentlessly increasing heat. Every available centimetre of seating space was occupied, even to the sturdy metal luggage racks over our heads. The men in the corridor took turns to sit or squat on a section of floor that had been set aside and cleaned for the purpose. Every man felt the press of at least two other bodies against his own. Yet there wasn’t a single display of grouchiness or bad temper.
However, when I surrendered my seat, for four hours of the journey, to an elderly man with a shock of white hair and spectacles as thick as the lenses on an army scout’s binoculars, Prabaker was provoked to an indignant exasperation.
‘So hard I fought with nice peoples for your seat, Lin. Now you give it up, like a spit of paan juices, and stand up in the passage, and on your legs, also.’
‘Come on, Prabu. He’s an old guy. I can’t let him stand while I sit.’
‘That is easy—only you don’t look at that old fellow, Lin. If he is standing, don’t look at him standing. That is his business only, that standing, and nothing for your seat.’
‘It’s the way I am,’ I insisted, laughing self-consciously in the conversation he was directing across the whole carriage of interested fellow passengers.
‘Such scratches and bruises I have it on my bodies, Lin,’ he whined, talking to me, but appealing to the curious gallery. He lifted his shirt and singlet to display what was indeed a rough scratch and gathering bruise. ‘For this old fellow to put the left-side buttocks on the seat, I have these many scratches and bruises. For his right-side buttocks, I have more bruises, on my other side also. For him to put his two-sides buttocks on the seat, I am all bruising and scratching on my bodies. This is a very shame, Lin. That is all I’m telling you. It is a very shame.’