Cut.
They had not walked more than a few steps along Apollo Bunder in the direction of the Gateway before Ubah stopped and drew Apu’s attention to the quartet of almost comically visible men perspiring in black hats and suits, white shirts with narrow black ties, and sunglasses, two walking behind them and two across the street.
Looks like we have some reservoir dogs for company, she said. Or blues brothers, whichever.
When confronted the quartet responded respectfully. Sirji we are associates of some business associates of your great father, said the one who looked most like Quentin Tarantino as “Mr. Brown.” We are tasked precisely with your personal security and instructed to proceed with maximum subtlety and discretion.
Tasked by whom? Apu asked, annoyed, suspicious, still grouchy.
Sirji by your esteemed fatherji, via channels. Your esteemed father was unaware of your decision to return and having learned that you have returned he is concerned for your well-being and wishes all to be well.
Then please inform my esteemed father, via those same channels, that I am not in need of babysitting, and once that is done you gentlemen can kindly take your leave.
Mr. Brown looked more mournful than ever. It is not for us to instruct, he said. It is for us only to obey.
This was an impasse. Finally Apu shrugged and turned away. Just stay back, he said. Keep your distance. I don’t want you in my field of vision. If I turn my head, jump back. Stay out of my eyeline. The same goes for my lady friend. Jump back.
Mr. Brown bowed his head with a kind of gentle grief. Okay, sirji, he said. We will make our effort.
They stood and looked at the boats in the harbor. It’s ridiculous, Apu said. I understand that he had Petya followed on his long walk, because that’s Petya, but he needs to start treating me like an adult.
Ubah began in her unflappable manner to giggle. On the way here, she said, I thought, India, I’m going to be shocked by the poverty, it’s maybe even worse than back home, or as bad but different, anyway it’s going to take an adjustment. I didn’t realize we would be walking into a Bollywood movie the moment we hit town.
Cut.
When they got back to the hotel after dinner there was a gentleman waiting for them in the lobby, silver-haired, aquiline of profile, dressed in a cream suit and cricket club tie, holding a Borsalino hat in his hands. He spoke the English of the English gentleman class though he was not an Englishman.
Excuse me, I’m so sorry. Would you mind awfully if I, I hope you will not think it an intrusion if I make so bold as to request a very few minutes of your time.
What is this about?
Might we, could we possibly, in a more discreet setting, could I make so bold as to request, perhaps? Away from eyes and ears?
Ubah Tuur actually applauded. I think you set all this up, she said to Apu. To entertain me and fool me into thinking that it’s like this all the time. Of course, sir, she said to the man in the cream suit. It will be our pleasure to welcome you into our suite.
Wipe.
In the suite. The man stood awkwardly next to the glass case containing Ravi Shankar’s sitar, fiddling with the brim of his hat and refusing offers to be seated.
I am sure you will not recognize my name, he said. Mastan. I am Mr. Mastan.
No, sorry, don’t know that name, Apu said.
I am not a young man, Mr. Mastan replied. God has granted me over seventy years. But almost half a century ago when I was a young police officer in the CID, I had one might say a relationship with an associate of your father’s.
Another associate of an associate, Apu said. Quite a day for them.
Forgive me for asking, said Mr. Mastan. Did your esteemed father ever tell you about his associate, the man he referred to jokingly as Don Corleone?
Now Apu was very silent, so profoundly silent that the silence was a form of speech. Mr. Mastan nodded deferentially. I have often wondered, he said, how much your father’s sons knew about their father’s business dealings.
I’m an artist, said the artist. I did not concern myself with finances.
Of course, of course. This is only natural. The artist lives on a higher plane and is unimpressed by filthy lucre. I myself have always admired the bohemian spirit though, alas, it is not in my nature.
Ubah noticed that, having digested the words “police officer” and “Don Corleone,” Apu was listening very intently.
May I tell you about my own connection to your father’s associate, the don? Mr. Mastan asked.
Please.
In a phrase, sir, he ruined my life. I was pursuing him, sir, for his various serious crimes and misdemeanors. If I may say so, I was hot on his trail. Also, being young, I had not yet acquired the wisdom of the city. I was unbribable, sir, and incorruptible. No doubt many great men would have described me as a hindrance, an obstacle preventing the wheels of society from being well oiled and running smoothly. And perhaps that is so, but that then is who I was. Incorruptible, unbribable, an obstacle. Your father’s associate spoke to less intransigent persons in the upper echelons and I was removed from the case and banished. You are familiar with the poet Ovid, sir? He displeased Augustus Caesar and was exiled to the Black Sea and never returned to Rome. This also was my fate, to languish for years without hope of preferment in a small town in the mountains, in Himachal Pradesh, known for the mass production of mushrooms and of red gold, which is tomatoes, and for the fact that in mythological times it was the exile place of the Pandavas. I too was a little Pandava in my mushroom and tomato exile. After many years my luck turned. As fate would have it a local gentleman whose name I will not introduce here saw in me an honest man and so I left the police force and began to oversee the mushroom and tomato crop to prevent loss through smuggling. In time, sir, I departed the mountains and became successful in the field of security and investigation. I give thanks to God that I did well. Now I am a retired individual, with sons working in my stead, but I keep my ear to the ground, sir, that I do.
Why have you come here to tell me this story, Apu asked.
No, no, sir, you are mistaken, and it is I who am to blame because I have spoken too much and prolonged what should have been a briefer encounter. I came to tell you two things. The first thing is that although I am no longer a policeman and Don Corleone who ruined my life is no more, I am still one who quests for justice.
What does this have to do with me?
Regarding your great father, sir. He is high, so much higher than I could ever dream of being, but even in my old age, with God’s help and the force of the law I will bring him down. He was the associate of my nemesis the don and complicit in his actions and he is the one who remains and therefore.
You came to threaten me and my family. I think you have outstayed your welcome.
No, sir, again I have said too much and strayed from the point. I did not come to threaten. I came to warn.
Of what?
A family that has been too much involved with the dons, Mr. Mastan said, and then without so much as a word of farewell it ups sticks and departs. Such a family may have left behind, in this town, persons with hurt feelings. With hurt feelings and business that is incomplete. With, perhaps, thoughts of having been left in a bad place owing in part to your esteemed parent’s actions. These persons with hurt feelings are not big men like your father. Or perhaps a little big in their own area but, in the world at large, small. They are not without some force in the locality but it is a local force. He is maybe beyond them now. But you, innocently or foolishly or arrogantly or foolhardily, you have returned.
I think you should go, Ubah Tuur said. And once Mr. Mastan had bowed and taken his leave, she said to Apu, I think we should go too. As soon as we can.
It’s garbage, he said. He’s just a bitter man trying to get his own back. It’s an empty threat. No content.
I want to go anyway. The movie’s over.
And all of a sudden he stopped arguing. Yes, he said. Agreed. Let’s go.
/> Cut.
George Harrison played sitar on “Within You Without You,” “Tomorrow Never Knows,” “Norwegian Wood,” and “Love You To.” The flights all left in the middle of the night so when they were packed and ready it was dark and they sat in the darkness and imagined George and Ravi Shankar sitting where they were sitting, making music. For a while they didn’t speak to each other but then they did.
I’ll tell you something my father told me when I was a young man, Apu said. My son, he said, the greatest force in the life of this country is not government or religion or the entrepreneurial instinct. It is briberyandcorruption. He said it like one word, like electromagnetism. Without briberyandcorruption nothing would happen. It is briberyandcorruption that oils the wheels of the nation, and it is also the solution to our nation’s problems. If there is terrorism? Sit down across the table with the terrorist boss and sign a blank check and push it across the table and say, put as many zeros as you like. Once he has pocketed the check the problem is over because in our country we understand that there is honor in briberyandcorruption. Once a man has been bought, he stays bought. My father was a realist. When one works at his level then some don or other will inevitably knock on your door, either offering a bribe or requesting one. There is no way of keeping your hands clean. In America it’s not so different, my father told me after the move across the oceans. Here also we have our Chicken Little, our Little Archie, our Crazy Fred, our Fat Frankie. They also believe in honor. So maybe the worlds are less different than we pretend.
He talked to you about this.
Not often, Apu said. But once or twice he made his briberyandcorruption speech. We all heard it a few times and knew it well. Beyond that I did not interfere.
How do you feel now that we’re leaving, so quickly. We met, what, two people. You never showed me where you went to school. We haven’t bought a pirate video. We haven’t been here yet.
I feel relieved.
Why relieved?
I don’t need to be here anymore.
And how do you feel about feeling relieved? That you’re pleased to be leaving? Isn’t that a strange feeling?
Not really.
Why?
Because I’ve come to believe in the total mutability of the self. That under the pressures of one’s life one can simply cease to be who one was and be just the person that one has become.
I don’t agree.
Our whole bodies change all the time. Our hair, our skin, everything. During the course of seven-year cycles every cell that makes us up is replaced by another cell. Every seven years we are one hundred percent not who we were. Why should this not also be the case with the self. It’s pretty much seven years since I left this place. I’m different now.
I’m not sure about the science on that.
I’m not talking about science. I’m talking about the soul. The soul that is not made of cells. The ghost in the machine. I’m saying that in time the old ghost moves out and a new ghost moves in.
So seven years from now I won’t know who you are.
And I won’t know who you are. Maybe we have to start over. Maybe we are inconstant. That’s just how it is.
Maybe.
Cut.
The night was humid. Even the crows were asleep. Sad-faced Mr. Brown and the other reservoir dogs were waiting out front, wearing shades in spite of the darkness.
We dismissed your taxi, Mr. Brown said. It is our duty to bring you to Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, formerly Sahar.
That is annoying of you, Apu said. We don’t need you.
It will be our honor, Mr. Brown said. See, three Mercedes-Benz sedans are waiting. Lead car, your car and backup car. Please. Only the best for you, sirji. S-class Maybach, like a private jet for the road. This is written in the literature. I myself will accompany you in this primo vehicle.
The night city concealed its nature from him as he left it, turned its back on him as he had turned his back on it. The faces of the buildings were grim and closed. They crossed Mahim Bay on the Sea Link but then left the Western Express Highway too early, before the airport exit.
Why are you going this way, Apu Golden asked and then Mr. Brown turned around and took off his sunglasses and no answer was necessary.
It is a business matter, Mr. Brown said. It is not personal. It is a question of one client outbidding another. One client from whom there is no work since a long time versus another, regular customer. Sir, it is to send a message to your esteemed fatherji. He will understand the message, I am certain of it.
I don’t understand, Ubah cried. What message?
Mr. Brown replied gravely: The message says, your actions, sir, made things difficult for us, after we warned you not to act. But after you acted you put continents and oceans between us and we did not have the means or will to follow. But now you have unwisely allowed your son to come. That approximately is the communication. I offer my apologies, madam, you are an innocent bystander, isn’t it, you are collateral damage. It is my great regret.
The cars drove along an unimportant bridge across the Mithi River near the edges of the great Dharavi slum, and in the glistening silver Maybach the music was turned up very loud. Rich people enjoying themselves. What else. Why not. No question of any gunshots being heard. Anyway, the silencer was on.
Funerals happen quickly in the tropics, but murder investigations inevitably force delays. I was at the Golden house every day after the news broke and it seemed that the calamity had stopped time. Nothing and nobody seemed to move except in the room where Ms. Blather and Ms. Fuss were making arrangements for the return of the bodies and even their office seemed to be draped in a cloth of silence. Petya had come home to be near his father, but was mostly closeted with the Australian therapist in the room of blue light. D Golden spent most days in the house too, lost in a corner dressed in black with Riya holding his hand. Nobody spoke. Outside the house, for a moment, the story roared. Frankie Sottovoce was everywhere mourning the death of his star sculptor. The dead woman’s family, tall and graceful, carrying themselves as nobly as royal sentinels, stood behind Sottovoce on television in dry-eyed sorrow. Nero Golden did not appear in public but it was plain to those of us inside the house that something had broken in him, that the message he had received was not one from which he would easily recover. On the other side of the world also there was both noise and silence. There were policemen and autopsies and journalists and all the siren sounds that follow a violent death but those who had known the family before its departure for New York remained invisible, no word from any of them, as if the silence had fallen over the Goldens’ lost world too, like a shroud. The unidentified woman who had greeted Apu in the hotel lobby with cries of “Groucho!”—she was not to be seen. The other women he had spoken of, his three former loves, the circling exes, did not appear to mourn him. It seemed that the city had turned its back on the departed, both the expatriates and the deceased. If Mr. Brown and his associates were arrested we did not hear of it. The news fell out of the headlines. Groucho was dead. Life went on.
The two dragon ladies at the Golden house, as expected, proved more than equal to the task of bringing the bodies home speedily once they had been released by the Mumbai authorities. A reputable firm, cumbersomely named IFSPFP—International Funeral Shipping Program Funeral Providers—was engaged and quickly made all the correct preparations for transportation, including sealer caskets and USA-approved shipping containers. They did the paperwork, acquiring certified English translations of the death certificates and written authorization from the local authorities to remove the bodies, and found an early shipping window so that Apu and Ubah could return to New York City as promptly as possible. On the tarmac of JFK a sad parting occurred. Frankie Sottovoce and the Somali artist’s family took possession of Ubah’s body and carried it away to be buried according to their practice. Apu came back to Macdougal Street.
It was a strange and broken farewell. The sealer casket was not opened. The body h
ad not been embalmed and so state law did not permit open-casket viewing. When Nero refused to permit any form of religious ceremony to be carried out and specified cremation rather than burial, the IFSPFP funeral director bowed his head and suggested he leave the family for an hour and then return. Later he would bring back the cremains. Or he would dispose of them if that was what was preferred. “No,” Nero said. “Bring him back.” The funeral director inclined his head once more. “If I may,” he said softly. “There is no law in this state that says where you may keep or scatter ashes. You may keep them in a crypt, niche, grave, or in a container at home, as you think best. If you choose to scatter them, do so as you please, but refrain from placing them where they are obvious to others. Cremation renders ashes harmless, so there is no public health risk involved. Scattering on private land requires the landowner’s consent, and it is wise to check local ordinance zoning if you wish to scatter on public lands. If you wish to scatter off the coast or out of New York Harbor you need to bear in mind Environmental Protection Agency regulations regarding burial at sea—”
“Stop,” said Nero Golden. “Stop at once, and go away immediately.”
During the hour that followed no word was spoken. Vasilisa took the child Vespasian upstairs and the rest of us stood or sat in the company of the casket, each of us alone with our own thoughts. During this awful hour I realized that Apu in death had finally persuaded me of something which I had resisted through our friendship: that the human ineffable invariably coexisted with the properly knowable, and that there were mysteries in men which explanations could not explain. No matter how I tried I could not understand the ease with which he, of all the Goldens, had agreed to shed his Indian skin and head west from his city to the Village. The old man had enough dark doings in his past, and Petya had enough real and present damage, and Dionysus enough secret longings for his future, to explain their choices, but Apu had been deeply involved in the life of his hometown, loving and being loved, and heartbreak seemed an insufficient explanation for his willingness to go. The voice of reason in me proposed that of all Nero’s sons he had seen most clearly into his father’s shadows and had been scared by what he saw there, and maybe that was a part of the truth. Maybe what he said, about being raised in the old ways, so that his father’s decision was simply the law which had to be followed, had something to do with it also. But another voice, the voice he had instilled in me and which I had resisted, now conjured up a different scene, in which he sat, cross-legged perhaps and meditating on the wide marble terrace of the old family house on the hill, his eyes closed, looking inward or wherever he looked for guidance, and heard another voice, not the voice that was murmuring to me, or maybe it was the same voice, or maybe it was his own voice or a voice he made up, or maybe, as he would put it, he tapped into the thing he always believed was there, the universe-sound, the wisdom of all that there was, the voice he trusted; and that voice said Go. And so, like Joan of Arc, like Saint John the Divine, like the “Apu Golden” he invented, on whom his old self’s ghosts came calling in New York—like the mystic he was, listening to his voices, or on impulse as we skeptics might say, he went.