I headed north to what was then the relatively remote suburb of Khar. Bombay was growing so fast that South Bombay, which had been the creative heart of the city, was itself becoming a remote pulse of the action and activity beating in the bigger heart, the northern suburbs.
Vacant land was already cluttered with new housing and commercial developments. New fashion factories were starting up, designing fame on the debris of construction. Brash brand stores on main roads competed with brash brand-thieves in knock-off street stalls, reflected in the bright windows of the brand stores they copied.
I rode past houses and shopping complexes that were half-built and already sold, as if hope itself had finally found a price. And long lines of crawling traffic stitched those patches of aspiration to acres of ambition: streets of cars that ran like scars on the face and forehead of the thing we made of the Earth.
The Tuareg’s house was large and modern: a Moroccan palazzo. The dark man dressed in black, who opened the front door, looked like a bearded professor: a scholar, searching absent-mindedly for the spectacles propped on his head.
‘Salaam aleikum, Tuareg.’
‘Wa aleikum salaam, Shantaram,’ he replied, pulling at my sleeveless vest. ‘Did you have to come on your motorcycle? Come inside. You’re scaring my neighbours.’
He led me through his house, constructed with archways everywhere, as if the home was a hive, and we were the bees.
‘I hope you understand – I have to run you past my wife, first, to see if she approves of you being here.’
‘I . . . see.’
We walked through several archways to a space where the second floor of the house vanished in a high ceiling.
There was a woman in the centre of that room, standing on a platform three steps high. She was dressed in a glittering black burkha, studded with black jewels. There was a net of lace covering her face: her eyes could examine mine, but I couldn’t examine hers.
I didn’t know if I was supposed to say anything. The Tuareg had sent a message, and I’d responded. I had no idea what to expect, facing the woman covered in black stars.
From the tilt of her head I saw that she was looking me up and down a couple of times. I don’t think she liked what she saw. Her head cocked to the other side, considering the matter.
‘One hour,’ she said, her head still on the side as she twirled away through an archway, that led to an archway, that led to an archway.
The Tuareg led me through archways to a majlis room, with heavy carpets on the floor and soft cushions against the walls. Young men from his family served us with coconut juice and bitter lime hummus dip with asparagus spines, as we sat together on the floor.
By the time we’d eaten the snacks, the young men were ready with hot tea, served from a long-necked samovar. We washed our hands in spouts of warm, tangerine-scented water, poured by nephews and cousins, and then sipped at the tea through sugar cubes.
‘I’m honoured by your hospitality, Tuareg,’ I said, when we were alone, and sharing a hookah pipe of Turkish tobacco, Kerala grass and Himalayan hashish.
‘I am honoured,’ he said, ‘that you responded to my call.’
I knew what he meant: my quick response to his call wasn’t something he could expect from anyone else in the Company, or formerly in the Company. While he was a secret member of the Council, he was distantly respected: when he retired, he was shunned.
I didn’t understand it. They’d all benefited from his work, and could’ve pulled out at any time, but they didn’t. I worked in passports for the Company, and the Tuareg’s services were never required. But it was the same Company that protected me for years, in Bombay, so who was I to judge anyone else?
Did I like what he did? No. But what a man does isn’t always what a man is, and I’d learned that the hard way.
‘Do you know,’ he remarked, puffing contentedly, ‘you are one of only four men who shook my hand, in all the years that I worked with the Company. Do you want to know the other three?’
‘Khaderbhai, Mahmoud Melbaaf, and Abdullah Taheri,’ I suggested.
He laughed.
‘Correct. My father used to say, put a Viking in front as you go into battle, and a Persian behind you. If the Viking doesn’t win, you’ll never die alone, because the Persian won’t let you die without him.’
‘I think we’ve all got enough fight in us when we need it, Tuareg.’
‘Are you getting philosophical with me, Shantaram?’
Actually, I was getting pretty high. The bowl of the hookah pipe was as big as a sunflower, and I had a long ride home. I had to straighten up. From the few times I’d spoken to him, I’d learned that the Tuareg was always in character.
‘I mean, when something we love is at stake, we fight. It doesn’t matter who we are, or where we come from. Nobody has a franchise on that.’
He laughed again.
‘I wish we’d had more talks like this,’ he said, ‘and that it were possible to have them again. After this day, you will not return to my house unless your life or my own depends upon it. This is a special occasion, with special reasons. But I value my privacy very highly. Are we clear?’
The second hit of the hookah pipe was kicking in: Time yawned, and took a nap. The Tuareg’s face blurred, suddenly fierce, suddenly kind, but he wasn’t moving at all.
It’s okay, I calmed myself. It’s not the torturer you’ve gotta worry about, it’s the psychiatrist.
‘I see that,’ I said, hoping that my voice didn’t sound as squeaky in the room as it did in my head.
‘Good,’ he said, puffing the hookah alight once more. ‘The Irishman. You want him, and I know where he is.’
Concannon. For a second, the irony of finding my personal torturer through a professional torturer was too much. I was pretty high, and I laughed.
‘I’m sorry, Tuareg,’ I said, regaining control. ‘I’m glad to hear that you know where he is, and I’d also like to know. I’m not laughing at anything you said. It’s just that this Irishman has a way of making you laugh, no matter how much you want to hurt him.’
‘Like my cousin, Gulab,’ the Tuareg said. ‘It was not until three of us in the family wounded him that he mended his ways.’
‘How’s he mending now?’
‘Very well. He’s a living saint now.’
‘A saint, huh?’
‘Indeed. It was a miracle that he survived my shooting alone, let alone the other corrections. People believe he’s blessed. And he certainly is blessed with a new career, dispensing blessings, in fact, near a mosque in Dadar. My advice to you regarding the Irishman is to kill him, before you can’t.’
‘Look, Tuareg, I –’
‘Seriously,’ he said, leaning toward me seriously. ‘You have no idea about this man, do you?’
‘I’m always happy to learn more,’ I said, trying as hard to get straight as I’ve ever tried to get high.
‘He’s the truth.’
‘I’m not following you.’
‘He’s a truth-finder, like me.’
‘You mean he makes people tell him things, like you did.’
‘It’s not the truth that’s dangerous,’ he said, ‘it’s someone who always knows how to find it. This Irishman is such a man. I’ve seen files on him. He was very good at what he did. He’s a younger version of me, perhaps.’
He laughed again, and puffed on his hookah pipe.
‘You have no idea how much fear you can find inside yourself,’ he said after a while, ‘until someone helps you find it.’
It was a game, a psychological game, and I don’t play games. I didn’t answer. He’d called me to his house, and sooner or later I knew he’d get to the point. He gestured with his hookah pipe, urging me to smoke. I smoked.
‘In my time with Khaderbhai,’ he continued, ‘there was no-one more powerful in the
Company than I was, although I never appeared at meetings. Khaderbhai knew that I could make the truth spring from any desert, like sacred waters, even from his own lips. When he knew how good I was at my job, he had only two choices – to kill me, or to use me. There is a lesson for you in that.’
He looked at me intently for a moment.
‘No advice about killing, please,’ I said quickly.
He laughed again, and gestured with the hose of the hookah.
‘Smoke!’ he commanded.
I puffed until the coals in the lotus bowl glowed like a tiny sun, drew in a deep breath, closed off the pipe again, and blew out a stream of smoke that settled in curling waves on the wall of the arched room.
‘Excellent!’ he said. ‘Never trust a man who can’t hold his hashish.’
‘Too sane?’ I offered.
‘Because hashish talks,’ he laughed. ‘So let us continue talking.’
‘Okay. Go ahead.’
‘This Irishman, his hatred is not for you. It never was. His hatred is for Abdullah. He attacks you, because he knows how much it hurts Abdullah.’
‘What do you know about it?’
‘I know that is why the Irishman went to see your girlfriend, on the night that she died.’
I couldn’t hide the shock.
‘Yes, I know about the last night of your girlfriend’s life.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘Smoke again first,’ he said, gesturing at the bowl of the hookah pipe. ‘You do understand that some revelations require a trance state, to fully comprehend their import?’
Okay, I thought. Now I get it.
‘I understand, Tuareg, that you’re performing psychological experiments on me. I wish you’d include me, so we can get it over with.’
He liked to laugh, the psychoanalytic punitory, and he had a peculiar laugh, high and jagged, but it never varied in pitch or tone. No one thing was ever funnier than another, and the laugh never swelled or chuckled or changed.
The laugh, and the walk, tell you everything, Didier once said to me.
‘I do so wish that we could have at least one more interview,’ the Tuareg said. ‘You’re quite right. It was another little experiment. Forgive me.’
‘Stop with the tests, Tuareg.’
‘I will, I will,’ he laughed. ‘I have few visitors, you see, and I never leave this home, nowadays. I miss . . . the field experiments. Shall I continue, about the Irishman?’
‘Please do.’
‘He murdered a man, with Abdullah.’
‘He . . . what?’
‘More than one life was lost, in fact,’ the Tuareg said.
It couldn’t be. I didn’t want to believe it.
‘How do you know this, Tuareg?’
He frowned, hesitating on the shore of puzzlement, ready to laugh again.
‘People tell me things,’ he said.
‘Okay, you know what, Tuareg, don’t tell me any more. Abdullah will tell me the rest.’
‘Wait! Don’t be so impatient. This information was told to me, not elicited, and you need to know this about Abdullah.’
‘I won’t talk about Abdullah, if he’s not in the room. Sorry.’
‘Wonderful,’ he said softly. ‘It was just one more little test. I hope you will forgive me. I am deprived of subjects.’
‘What is this, Tuareg? You invite me into your home, and now I need a safe word just to talk to you?’
‘No, no, let me go on. There was a businessman who owed the Company protection money, and wouldn’t pay. He was making a case for extortion, in the court, and a lot of noise for Sanjay. Abdullah was with the Irishman, when they fixed the problem. It is for him to tell you what transpired there. What I can tell you, is that it was a very bad affair.’
‘What has this got to do with the girl?’
Lisa. Lisa. I couldn’t bring myself to speak her name, in the Tuareg’s hive.
‘That is something only one other knows.’
‘Something you don’t know?’
‘Something I don’t know . . . yet.’
He looked at me. I think he liked my company. I’m still not sure what that said about me.
‘You know what a secret is, Shantaram?’ he asked, the wriggle of his smile twitching his long grey beard.
‘Something you don’t tell me?’ I replied, hopefully.
‘A secret is a truth untold,’ he said. ‘And Abdullah has been keeping this a secret from you, and I know that, because I asked him, just yesterday.’
‘Why did you ask him?’
‘Nice question,’ he said. ‘What made you ask it?’
‘Stop it, Tuareg, please. Why did you ask him about me? Was it because this is connected to my girlfriend?’
‘This Irishman, Concannon, knows that Abdullah loves you. He thinks that Abdullah told you about the murder they committed together. That gives him two reasons to kill you. The twenty-four-hour contract on your life was not a joke. It was a serious attempt on your life. He meant to kill you, to make Abdullah suffer, and he means to kill Abdullah.’
‘I understand, Tuareg. And thanks. Where can I find him?’
He laughed again. I was hoping he’d explain the joke. I was sitting in an archway, among an infinite array of archways, and I was so levitationally stoned on the hookah pipe that my legs were jellyfish.
‘There are only two kinds of people in this world,’ he said, smiling easily for the first time, ‘those who use, and those who are used.’
I was thinking that there were probably lots of different kinds of people, and certainly more than two, but I figured that he was actually talking about something else: the reason why he’d called me to his house.
‘I’m guessing that this information is gonna cost me something,’ I said.
‘I want a favour in return, it is true,’ he said. ‘But it is one that you will be willing to grant, I believe.’
‘How willing?’
‘I want everything you know, and come to learn, about Ranjit Choudhry.’
‘Why?’
‘I want to take him into my custody, before anyone else does.’
‘Your custody?’
‘Yes, at a facility, not far away from here.’
Sometimes, Fate gives you a handful of sand, and promises that if you squeeze it hard enough, it’ll turn to gold.
‘You know, Tuareg,’ I said, preparing my jellyfish legs to stand, ‘thanks for the offer, but I’ll find the Irishman, and Ranjit, on my own.’
‘Wait,’ the Tuareg said. ‘I’m sorry. It was my last little test. I promise. I’m finished. Would you like to know the results of my study on you today?’
‘I told you. I didn’t come here as a subject.’
‘Of course,’ he laughed, pulling me down beside him again. ‘Please, stay, and have another cup of hot tea, before you leave.’
Cousins and nephews cleared the dishes, and brought a new samovar of hot tea.
‘You must forgive me,’ the Tuareg said. ‘If you don’t, it will have me in analysis for a year.’
I laughed.
‘No, seriously,’ he said, looking at me earnestly. ‘You must forgive me.’
‘You’re forgiven,’ I said.
‘I don’t feel forgiven,’ he said. ‘Are you really forgiving me?’
‘Come on, Tuareg, who the hell am I to forgive anyone?’
‘Close enough,’ he said. ‘And thank you. In a strictly commercial sense, no tests involved, I’m in a position to pay you a considerable sum for a . . . private interview with Ranjit Choudhry.’
‘Attractive and all as that sounds . . . ’ I began, but he cut me off.
‘There are two families, of aggrieved daughters, who will pay us handsomely if Ranjit is in my hands.’
‘No.
’
‘I understand,’ he said softly. ‘And that’s a test I didn’t even consider. Thank you. I have enjoyed this very much. Here is the address of the Irishman.’
He slipped a small sheet of paper from his cuff, and passed it to me.
‘Tonight, the Irishman will be in the company of only one or two men. He will be vulnerable. Tonight, at midnight, is the time to strike.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘But I’m not handing Ranjit over to you, Tuareg, if I find him.’
‘That’s clear. Do you need help, to kidnap the Irishman?’
‘I don’t want to kidnap him. I want to make him reconsider his options.’
‘Oh, I see. Then, may Allah be with you, and let us smoke one last bowl.’
‘You know, I really should be going.’
‘Oh, please! Stay, for one more pipe.’
Cousins and nephews replaced the old hookah pipe with a new one, filled with pure Himalayan water, they told me, and then filled the pipe with pure Himalayan herb.
‘I taught the mind,’ he said, lying back on silk cushions, the tray of tea and dates between us, ‘and I’ve tortured the mind. And you know what? There is no difference. It’s funny, isn’t it?’
‘Not for the patients.’
He laughed that mechanical laugh.
‘You know what the elephant in the room is, when it comes to psychiatry?’ he asked.
‘The success rate?’ I suggested.
‘No,’ he said. ‘The success rate only reveals those who can be helped by this, and those who can’t. The elephant in the room is that we can shape behaviour more fluently than we can understand it. When you know how to make anyone do anything, it makes you start to wonder what we really are.’
‘You can’t make anyone do anything, Tuareg. Not even you. Fact is, some of us are impossible to predict, and impossible to control, and I like it that way.’
‘You’ve been there,’ he said, sitting up again. ‘You know what it is.’
‘Been where?’
‘Torture,’ he said, his eyes gleaming.
‘So that’s what this last bowl is about, huh?’
‘You’ve been there,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you learned. Please, confide in me.’