‘I see him, too,’ I muttered. ‘I see his face, and I wasn’t even there in that hotel room. It’s not good.’
‘I should’ve hit her.’
‘Ulla?’
‘Yes, Ulla!’
‘Why?’
‘That … callous … bitch! She left him there, tied up in that room. She brought you trouble, and me trouble and … Maurizio … But when she told us about Modena, I just put my arm around her, and took her to the shower, and looked after her like she’d just told me she hadn’t fed her pet goldfish. I should’ve slapped her or socked her one on the jaw or kicked her ass or something. Now she’s gone, and I’m still freaking out about Modena.’
‘Some people do that,’ I said, smiling at the anger in her because I felt it myself. ‘Some people always manage to make us feel sorry for them, no matter how stupid and angry we feel about it after. They’re the canaries, kind of, in the coalmines of our hearts. If we stop feeling sorry for them, when they let us down, we’re in deep trouble. And anyway, I didn’t get involved to help her. I did it to help you.’
‘Oh, I know, I know,’ she sighed. ‘It’s not Ulla’s fault. Not really. The Palace messed her up. It messed with her head completely. Everyone who worked for Madame Zhou got messed up in some way. You should’ve seen Ulla, back then, when she started work there. She was gorgeous, I gotta tell ya. And kind of … innocent … in a way that the rest of us weren’t, if you know what I mean. I went there already crazy when I first started work there. But it fucked me up, too. We all … we had to … we did some weird shit there …’
‘You told me about it,’ I said gently.
‘I told you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I told you what?’
‘You told me … a lot of it. The night I came around to get my clothes from Karla’s. I went there with the kid, Tariq. You were very drunk, and very stoned.’
‘And I told you about that?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Jesus! I don’t remember that. I was starting to turkey. That was the first night, when I tried to get off the stuff—when I did get off the stuff. I remember the kid, though … and I remember you didn’t want to have sex with me.’
‘Oh, I wanted it, alright.’
She turned her head quickly and met my eye. Her expression smiled at the lips, but a tiny frown creased her forehead. She was wearing a red salwar kameez. The long, loose silk shirt clung to her breasts and the outline of her figure in the strong sea breeze. Her blue eyes glittered with courage and other mysteries. She was brave and fragile and tough in the same instant. She’d dragged herself from the life that was drowning her at Madame Zhou’s Palace, and she’d beaten heroin. In defence of her friend’s life, and her own, she’d helped to kill a man. She’d lost her lover, Abdullah, my friend, his body torn and mutilated by bullets. And it was all there, in her eyes and her thin face, thinner than it should’ve been. It was all there, if you knew what to look for, and if you knew where to look.
‘So, how did you end up at the Palace?’ I asked, and she flinched a little as I changed the subject.
‘I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘I ran away from home when I was a kid. I couldn’t stand it at home. I got outta there as soon as I could. In a couple years I was a teenage junkie, working the beat in L.A. and getting beat up by that month’s pimp. Then a guy came along, a nice, quiet, lonely, gentle guy, named Matt. I fell for him, hard. He was my first real love. He was a musician, and he’d been to India a couple times. He was sure we could make enough money for a new start, if we smuggled some shit from Bombay back home. He said that he’d pay for the tickets, if I agreed to carry the stuff. When we got here, he just took off with everything—all our money, and my passport, and everything. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if he got cold feet or found someone else to do the job or just decided to do it himself. I don’t know. The end of it was … that I got stuck in Bombay with a big, raging heroin habit, and no money, and no passport. I started working from a hotel room, turning tricks to keep going. After a couple months of that, a cop came into my room one day and told me I was busted. I was going to an Indian jail—unless I agreed to work for this friend of his.’
‘Madame Zhou.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Tell me, did you ever see her? Did you ever talk to her in person?’
‘Nah. Almost no-one ever talks to her or sees her, except for Rajan and his brother. Karla met her in person. Karla hates her. Karla hates her more than … I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Karla hates her so much that she’s a bit crazy with it, if you know what I mean. She thinks about Madame Zhou almost all the time, and she’ll get her, sooner or later.’
‘The thing with her friend Ahmed, and Christine,’ I murmured. ‘She thinks Madame Zhou had them killed, and she blames herself for it. She can’t let it go.’
‘That’s right!’ she answered wonderingly her face frowning and smiling in puzzlement. ‘Did she tell you about that?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s …’ she laughed, ‘that’s amazing! Karla never talks to anyone about that. I mean, anyone. But I guess it’s not really so amazing. You really got under her skin. You know that time when the cholera was in the slum and all? She talked about that for weeks after. She talked about it like it was some kind of holy experience, some kind of transcendental high. And she talked about you a lot. I’ve never seen her so … inspired, I guess.’
‘When Karla got me to rescue you from the Palace,’ I asked, not looking at her, ‘was that for you, or was it just a way to score points against Madame Zhou?’
‘You mean, were we just pawns in Karla’s game, you and me? Is that what you’re asking?’
‘Something like that.’
‘I think I’d have to say yes, we were.’ She pulled her long scarf from her neck and drew it across an open palm, staring at it intently. ‘Oh, you know, Karla likes me and all, I’m sure about that. She’s told me things that nobody knows—not even you. And I like her. And she lived in the States, you know. She grew up there, and she felt something about that. I think I was the only American girl who ever worked at the Palace. But the heart of it, deep down, was this war with Madame Zhou. I think we got used up, you and me. But it doesn’t matter, you know? She got me out of there —you got me out of there, with her, and I’m damn glad. Whatever her reasons were, I don’t hold it against her, and I don’t think you should either.’
‘I don’t,’ I sighed.
‘But?’
‘But … nothing. We didn’t work out, Karla and me, but I …’
‘You still love her?’
I turned my head to look at her, but when her blue eyes met mine I changed the subject.
‘Have you heard anything from Madame Zhou?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘Has she been asking questions about you? Anything at all?’
‘Nothing, thank God. It’s weird—I don’t hate Madame Zhou. I don’t feel anything for her, one way or the other, except that I never want to go anywhere near her again. But I do hate her servant, Rajan. If you worked at the Palace, he’s the one you had to deal with and answer to. His brother takes care of the kitchen, but Rajan looks after the girls. And that’s one spooky motherfucker, that Rajan. He gets around like a ghost. It’s like he’s got eyes in the back of his head. He’s the scariest thing in the whole world, let me tell ya. Madame Zhou, I never even saw. She talks to you through a metal grille. There’s at least one in every room, so she can watch what’s going on, and talk to the girls or the customers. It’s a fuckin’ creepy place, Lin. I’d rather die than go back to that.’
There was another silence. Waves pushed at the shoreline of rocks and pebbles at the base of the wall. Seagulls hovered, prowling the wind for signs of things that slithered and scuttled among the rocks.
‘How much money did he leave you?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I never counted it. It’s a lot. Seventy, eighty grand—a lot more, yo
u know, than Maurizio carved up Modena for, and got himself killed for. It’s crazy, isn’t it?’
‘You should take it, and get the fuck out of here.’
‘That’s funny—I thought we just signed a two-year contract with Mehta and his production company. You know, the let’s-get-on-with our-lives contract.’
‘Fuck the contract.’
‘Come on, Lin.’
‘Fuck the contract. You’ve gotta get out of this. We don’t know what the fuck’s going on. We don’t know why Abdullah’s dead. We don’t know what he did do, or what he didn’t do. If he wasn’t Sapna, then things are bad. If he was Sapna, things are much worse. You should take the money and just … go.’
‘And go where?’
‘Anywhere.’
‘Are you going?’
‘No. I’ve got unfinished business here. And I’m … I’m finished myself, in a way. But you should go.’
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ she demanded. ‘It’s not about the money. If I go back now, I’ll put the lot of it in my arm. I’ve gotta have something more than money. I’m trying to build something here with this business. And I can do it here. I’m something here. I’m somebody. The people look at me, when I just walk down the street, because I’m different.’
‘You’d be something, wherever you are,’ I said, grinning at her.
‘Don’t make fun of me, Lin.’
‘I’m not, Lisa. You’re a beautiful girl, and you’ve got heart—that’s why people stare at you.’
‘This can work,’ she insisted. ‘I can feel it in my bones. I don’t have any education, Lin, and I’m not smart like you. I’m not trained to do anything. But this … this could be big. I could, I don’t know … I could start producing movies, maybe, one day. I could … do something good.’
‘You are good. You’ll do good wherever you go.’
‘No. This is my chance. I’m not going back—I’m not going anywhere —until I’ve made it. If I don’t do that, if I don’t try, then the whole thing will be for nothing. Maurizio … and everything else that’s happened will be for nothing. If I leave here, I want to do it with my head on straight, and a pocket full of money that I earned myself.’
I looked into the wind, feeling the day alternately warm and cool and warm again on my face and arms as the breeze turned and returned across the bay. A small fleet of fishing canoes drifted past us on their way back to the fishermen’s sandy refuge near the slum. I suddenly remembered the day in the rain, sailing in a canoe across the flooded forecourt of the Taj Mahal Hotel and beneath the booming, resonant dome of the Gateway Monument. I remembered Vinod’s love song, and the rain that night as Karla came into my arms.
And staring, then, at the ceaseless, eternal waves, I remembered all that had been lost since that storming night: prison, torture, Karla gone, Ulla gone, Khaderbhai and his council gone, Anand gone, Maurizio dead, Modena probably dead, Rasheed dead, Abdullah dead, and Prabaker—it was impossible—Prabaker, also dead. And I was one of them: walking and talking and staring at the wilding waves, but as dead in my heart as all the rest.
‘And what about you?’ she asked. I could feel her eyes on me, and I could hear the emotions in her voice: sympathy, tenderness, maybe even love. ‘If I stay—and I’m definitely going to stay—what are you going to do?’
I looked at her for a while, reading the runes in her sky-blue eyes. Then I stood from the wall, held her in my arms, and kissed her. It was a long kiss. We lived out a life together in that kiss: we lived and loved and grew old together, and we died. Then our lips parted, and that life we might’ve had retreated, shrinking to a spark of light we would always recognise in one another’s eyes.
I could’ve loved her. Maybe I already did love her a little. But sometimes the worst thing you can do to a woman is to love her. And I still loved Karla. I loved Karla.
‘What am I going to do?’ I said, repeating her question. I held her shoulders in my hands, keeping her at the distance of my arms. I smiled. ‘I am going to get stoned.’
I rode away, and never looked back. I paid three months’ rent on my apartment, and paid substantial baksheesh to the watchman in the car park and the watchman in the building. I kept one good, forged passport in my pocket, put all my spare passports and a bundle of cash into a satchel, and left it with my Enfield Bullet bike in Didier’s care. Then I took a cab to Gupta-ji’s opium den near the Street of Ten Thousand Whores, Shoklaji Street. I climbed the worn wooden steps to the third floor and walked into the cage that junkies build for themselves, one shiny, sharp, steel bar at a time.
Gupta-ji provided a large room with twenty sleeping mats and wooden pillows for his opium smokers. For those with special needs he reserved other rooms behind that open den. Through a very small doorway, I entered the discreet corridor that led to those back rooms. It was so low that I had to stoop, almost to crawling. The room I chose had a cot with a kapok mattress, a weathered carpet, a small cabinet with wickerwork doors, a lamp with a silk lampshade, and a large clay matka filled with water. The walls on three sides were made from reed matting stretched upon wooden frames. The last wall, at the head of the bed, looked out over a busy street of Arab and local Muslim traders, but its windows were shuttered so that only a few bright stars of sunlight gleamed in the chinks and gaps. There was no ceiling. Instead, the view overhead was of heavy rafters crossing and joining one another in support of the clay tile roof. I got to know that view very well.
Gupta-ji took money and instructions, and left me alone. The room, so close to the roof, was very hot. I took my shirt off, and switched off the lamp. The dark little room was like a cell; a prison cell at night. I sat on the bed and, almost at once, the tears came. I’d cried before, in Bombay. I’d shed tears after I met Ranjit’s lepers, and when the stranger had washed my tortured body in Arthur Road Prison, and with Prabaker’s father at the hospital. But that sorrow and suffering had always been stifled: somehow, I’d managed to choke back the worst of it, the flood of it. Then, alone in that little opium cell with my ruined love for those dead friends, Abdullah and Prabaker, I let it go.
The tears, when they come to some men, are worse than beatings. They’re wounded worse by sobbing, men like that, than they are by boots and batons. Tears begin in the heart, but some of us deny the heart so often, and for so long, that when it speaks we hear not one but a hundred sorrows in the heartbreak. We know that crying is a good and natural thing. We know that crying isn’t a weakness, but a kind of strength. Still, the weeping rips us root by tangled root from the earth, and we crash like fallen trees when we cry.
Gupta-ji gave me time. When at last I heard the sliding, scuffing sound of his chappals as he approached the door I smeared the sorrow from my face, and switched on the lamp. He’d brought what I’d asked for—a steel spoon, distilled water, disposable syringes, heroin, and a carton of cigarettes—and he set the items out on the little dresser. There was a girl with him. He told me that her name was Shilpa, and that he’d assigned her to me as a servant. She was young, years less than twenty, but already scarred with the glum expression of the working professional. Hope, ready to snarl or grovel like a beaten cur, cowered in her eyes. I sent her and Gupta-ji away, and cooked up a taste of heroin.
The dose sat in the syringe for almost an hour. I picked it up and put the needle against a fat, strong, healthy vein in my arm five times, only to put it down again unused. And for the whole of that sweating hour I stared at the liquid in the syringe. That was it. The damnation drug. That was the big one, the drug that had driven me to commit stupid, violent crimes; that had put me in prison; that had cost me my family, and lost my loved ones. The everything-and-nothing drug: it takes everything, and gives you nothing in return. But the nothing that it gives you, the unfeeling emptiness it gives you, is sometimes all and everything you want.
I pushed the needle into the vein, pulled back the rose of blood that confirmed the clean puncture of the vein, and pressed the plunger all the way to the stop.
Before I could pull the needle from my arm, the drug made my mind Sahara. Warm, dry, shining, and featureless, the dunes of the drug smothered all thought, and buried the forgotten civilisation of my mind. The warmth filled my body as well, killing off the thousand little aches, twinges, and discomforts that we endure and ignore in every sober day. There was no pain. There was nothing.
And then, with the desert still in my mind, I felt my body drowning, and I broke the surface of a suffocating lake. Was it a week after that first taste? Was it a month? I crawled onto the raft and floated there on the lethal lake in the spoon, carrying the Sahara in my blood. And those rafters overhead: there was a kind of message in them, a message about how and why we all intersected, Khader and Karla and Abdullah and I. Our lives, all of us, in the link to Abdullah’s death, intersected in some uniquely profound way. It was there, in the rafters, a key to the code.
But I closed my eyes. I remembered Prabaker. I remembered that he was working so hard and so late on the night he died because he owned the taxi, and was working for himself. I’d bought the taxi for him. He’d be alive if I hadn’t bought that taxi for him. He was the little mouse that I’d trained and fed with crumbs in my prison cell; the mouse that was crucified. And sometimes the breeze of a clear, unstoned hour gave me an image of Abdullah in the minute before he died, alone in the killing circle. Alone. I should’ve been there. I was with him every day. I should’ve been with him then. Friends don’t let friends die like that—alone with death and fate. And where was his body? And what if he was Sapna? Could my friend, my friend I loved, really have been that ruthless, insane mutilator? What did Ghani say? Pieces of Madjid’s slaughtered body were found all over his house … Could I have loved the man who did that? What did it mean, that some small, insistent part of me feared that he was Sapna, and loved him anyway?