‘I can’t, like, live the way that I do, you know, without the money I make. I live big, Lin, and I like it.’
‘Live smaller.’
‘But Rannveig –’
‘Rannveig will love it, so long as you bring the maid. She likes your maid.’
‘I’ll have to find her, first.’
‘You’ll find her. Or she’ll find you. She’s a smart girl. She’s stronger than she looks. She’ll be alright.’
‘Thanks, Lin,’ he said, standing to leave.
‘What for?’
‘For not thinking I’m stupid to care so much. To love her so much. The cops think I’m crazy.’
‘The cops think that anyone who walks into a police station voluntarily is crazy, and they’ve got a point.’
‘Do you really think she’ll come back to me?’
‘She might come back to you, but not to what you do.’
He walked down the stairs slowly, shaking his worried head.
Faith is unconditional love, and love is unconditional faith. Vinson, Naveen and I were men in love, without the women we loved, and faith was a tree without shade. I hoped Vinson was lucky, and that Rannveig wanted to be found. I hoped that Diva would give Naveen the shelter of certainty. And I hoped that Karla’s scheme, whatever it was, wouldn’t cost us what we almost had.
Chapter Sixty-Five
I almost had the door closed, but Didier pressed his hand against it from the other side, and pushed it open.
‘I have a problem,’ he said, throwing himself on the couch.
‘I should charge this couch by the hour,’ I said. ‘It’s busier than I am.’
‘There is a special party, tonight.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘A costume party.’
‘I’m closing the door, Didier.’
‘There were only two costumes left, at the best costumier, and I have put them both on hold, but I cannot choose.’
‘What did they have?’
‘A gladiator, and a ballerina.’
‘I don’t see the problem.’
‘The problem? You do not see the problem? Didier is perfect for both roles, quite obviously, so it is impossible to decide between them.’
‘I see.’
‘Lin, what shall I do?’
‘My advice,’ I said, channelling the energy of Oleg’s couch, ‘is to wear the gladiator to the waist, and the ballerina from the waist down. You’ll be a gladerina.’
‘A gladerina,’ he said, rushing to the door. ‘I must try it on, immediately.’
He shuffled down the steps, and I shuffled to the door, finally succeeding in closing it for a while. And I should’ve been happy, but I wasn’t. I didn’t like closed doors, pretty much anywhere. I didn’t like the closed doors in my dreams: the ones I pounded on, night after night.
I settled in my chair, but I couldn’t write. I stared at the locked door for a minute too long, and I was all the way back there in a cage.
Every blow struck against a chained man, every injection to pacify rebellion, every electrocution of will is an insult to what we’ll be, when we become what we’re destined to be. Time is a membrane, a connective tissue, and it can be bruised. Time can’t heal all wounds: Time is all wounds. Only love and forgiveness heal all wounds.
Hatred always leaves a stain on the veil. But sometimes the hatred isn’t your own. Sometimes you’re chained, and the hatred beaten into you is another man’s, grown in a different heart, and it takes longer than a fading bruise to forget.
Even if we find a way, some day, to weave the strands of love and faith we find along the way, a blemish always remains on the skin of what can’t be forgotten: the yesterday that stares back at you, when you look at a closed door.
For a while I was a lost son, drifting away from friends, drifting away from love, turning a key in memories of fear, anger, uprising, a prison riot, the chapel burning, guards in armour, men willing to die rather than put up with another day of it, just as I was ready to die, when I stood on the wall, and escaped.
Time, too, will die, just as we do, when the universe dies, and is born again. Time’s a living thing, just as we are, with birth, longevity, and extinction. Time has a heartbeat, but it isn’t ours, no matter how much of ourselves we sacrifice to it. We don’t need Time. Time needs us. Even Time loves company.
I looked away from the door, and ran instead into fields of Karla, lakes of Karla, shorelines and trees of Karla, clouds of Karla, storms of Karla tearing everything apart, and when I got there, I wrote verses about Karla and Time, fighting it out with love at stake.
It didn’t work. But I marked the page when I closed the journal, because some of the best writing comes from things that don’t work yet.
I went to the balcony, and smoked one of Didier’s joints.
The intersection below was relatively empty. The frantic insect cars had returned to their hives in hordes. It was time for my last round, and Naveen’s race with Benicia wasn’t long away, but I didn’t want to move.
Karla, Didier, Naveen, Diva, Vinson, the Zodiac Georges, Kavita: I couldn’t understand what was going on. There was so much change, so much uncertainty, so many times that I felt that I was on the wrong side of a wall I couldn’t see.
I was lost in the mess of it all. I’d spent the evening giving advice to others, and I couldn’t advise myself. I could only follow an instinct to make Karla choose, once and for all: life with me, somewhere else, or life in the Island City without me.
Whatever she was doing in Bombay, it didn’t include me, and I felt that it should. I was ready to ride away alone, and wait for her somewhere else, if she wouldn’t leave with me. I knew that she’d be at the race. I wanted to be there. I had to talk to her, even if it was just to say goodbye.
When your life has no plan but the straightest road out of town, and your heart has waited too long for the truth, or your soul has waited too long for a new song, Fate sometimes strikes the ground with a sacred staff, and fire stands in your way.
Cars rushed past me at killing speed. I saw Hussein men and Scorpion men, speeding in different directions. A rider was approaching me. His bike had very high handlebars. I recognised him from two blocks away. It was Ravi.
I put my bike on the side-stand, and waved him down.
‘What’s up?’
‘Fire, at Khaderbhai’s house,’ he said quickly, as he drew alongside.
‘The mansion?’
‘Yeah, man.’
‘Is Nazeer okay? And Tariq?’
‘Nobody knows. They’re trying to save the mosque. That’s all I heard. Only bikes can get through. They say it’s jammed up on Mohammed Ali Road. Stay off the streets tonight, Lin.’
Khaderbhai’s mansion, burning.
I saw the boy in the emperor chair, his head cocked to the side, his long fingers supporting his forehead. I saw my Afghan friend, Nazeer, his grizzled face lit by dawn prayers.
And something was pulled from my chest, some inner thing that wasn’t mine any more, and I felt the connection blur. I felt love slip away, draining from me, as if sorrow cut a vein. And I was afraid, for all of us.
Ravi rode off and I started my bike, swinging after him.
Sometimes, in those years, the call to die was as strong as the will to live. And sometimes I climbed the mast of fear on my heart, that boat on the sea, and opened my arms to the tempest, breaking the world.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Ravi was fast, but I was only a few beats behind him. We rode easily along the dragon spine of Mohammed Ali Road at first, but finally hit a wall of cars, trucks and buses, all of them with their engines turned off.
We had to use the footpaths, filled with people who couldn’t walk on the blocked road. I was glad that Ravi was in front, as he nudged people out of the way with the wheel of his motorc
ycle. He negotiated the legs and arms and children’s bobbing heads with fluid respect, harming no-one, but maintaining a walking pace. And he repeated only one word, as he rode.
Khaderbhai!
He shouted it again and again, as an incantation. And people moved out of the way each time they heard it.
The Company that Khaderbhai created had become the chrysalis of the Sanjay Company and the calyptra of the Vishnu Company, but when blood was in the fire, only Khaderbhai’s name had the colour of instinct, and the power to part waves of hurrying people.
I was so afraid of losing contact with Ravi, and having my own wave of people to negotiate, that I rode too close to him and bumped his fender several times.
He sounded his horn calmly, to tell me to calm down, and then he went back to shouting that unforgotten name.
Khaderbhai!
We reached a corner close the mosque, but a high wall of motorcycles, handcarts and bicycles blocked the way forward on the footpath. The tide of people surged away, branching off through gaps in the cars on the road.
Through the arches of the pavement awnings we could see smoke, flames and fire trucks. The road beside us was a solid building made of cars and buses.
We shoved our bikes into a doorway, used my chain to lock them together, and climbed the accidental wall of bicycles, baskets and carts, dodging under signs strung outside shops.
We tumbled down the steep metal fall, landing behind a police line, where the jam ended. There was a piece of rope, suspended by the police between the fender of an Ambassador car and the handle of a handcart. It was all that had stopped the flood of people. We lifted the rope and slipped around the shops at the base of the mosque, heading to Khaderbhai’s mansion.
Fire trucks were training powerful hoses on the walls of the mosque, trying to stop the fire from spreading. The mosque seemed to be intact, but when we threaded our way through the black snakes of leaking fire hoses, we saw that Khaderbhai’s mansion was finished.
A lone unit of firemen was trying to slow the fire, but most of the resources had been diverted to stopping the fire from taking the mosque, and becoming a wider catastrophe in the street.
Men from several mafia Companies were already there, standing across the narrow street, staring at the flames painting rage on their faces. They were Hussein Company men, mostly, but there were a few Vishnu men and gangsters from other Companies. There were about twenty of them. Abdullah was in the centre, his eyes savage with fire.
Firemen were holding the gangsters back, pleading with them to withdraw and let them do their job. Abdullah broke ranks. He brushed three firemen aside and knocked out another, who’d tried to stop him entering the building. He disappeared in the flames.
Company men looked at the firemen, wondering if they were going to fight. Firemen wear uniforms. As far as the Company men were concerned, anyone who wears a uniform works for the other side.
The firemen backed away, taking their colleagues with them. They were paid to save people, not fight them. The men who were paid to fight people, the police, rushed toward the retreating firemen.
Fighting the cops is a tricky business. Lots of cops like to fight, but they’re sticklers for rules. No disfigurements, and no weapons: just fair, square, kick the shit out of each other. That pretty much covers it, except for two things. First, they have very long memories: longer than most criminals I’ve met, who are considerably more forgive-and-forget. And second, if things get out of hand, they can shoot you and get away with it.
The Company men put their weapons away, or threw them away, and stood in front of the burning building. The cops kicked in with everything they had, and the gangsters kicked back.
There’s a moment of choice, of course, every second that you live. I watched the fight begin, with fairly even numbers, the Company men holding their own. I saw a new gang of cops running to help their friends. Ravi stepped away from me with another gangster, Tricky, and they broke into a run, throwing their lives at the fight. I could’ve stayed there. I could’ve watched it happen. I didn’t. I dropped my knives behind a handcart, and ran into the mess of what none of us should be.
It was a short run. A cop hit me before I reached the line. He was good. He was quick. I heard the bell, and I didn’t know which round. I followed instinct: duck and cover, then lead with a combination. I came out swinging, but the cop was already at my feet. Tall Tony, tall, skinny Tony, had floored him.
We reinforced the Company line. Cops came to help cops. People were grappling and stumbling. Cops were hitting cops. Company men were hitting friends.
I had a cop by the shirt, and I was twisting it close to me. I figured that if he couldn’t hit me, he couldn’t hit anyone else.
I was wrong, on both counts. He swung a fist over my elbows and connected with some part of my head that shut things down: the part that plays the Clash, in a room somewhere, with a Russian writer, a long way away.
I fell backwards, my hands knotting instinct in his shirt, and he came with me. Other cops came with him, pulling gangsters down into the maul. The front of the mansion had burned, and was starting to collapse. We fell into cindered wood and ashes.
I don’t know how many people were on top of the cop who was on top of me: a tree of humanity had fallen. Incense burned my eyes, as if already lit for the dead, and filled the air around us as pieces of sandalwood smouldered.
Scorched pages from sacred texts burned in the rubble. I smelled hair burning, and too much sweat, from too many bodies, piled too high on top of me.
Bullets started firing from inside the mansion. I was suddenly glad to be covered by bodies.
‘Bullets are exploding in the heat!’ an officer said, in Marathi. ‘They’re going off at random. Hold your fire.’
The cops and Company men on top of me weren’t taking any chances. They hunkered down, pressing into the only hunkering they had, which was me. I was rabbit-breathing, in tiny gasps. The bullets stopped, as the ghost magazines ran their course. Then the arch above our heads gave way, at last. The fallen mob hunkered down a little further.
Fragments of scripture broke from the false arch, and fell on us. I couldn’t lift my arms. My hands were still locked in the cop’s shirt. I couldn’t see. I was breathing ash, in air, but glad to have any air at all.
And then it stopped. The cops and gangsters staggered and stumbled back, one by one. The cop on top of me was the last. He tried to crawl away, but I had his shirt. He kept lurching on his knees, not looking back at me, until I let go.
I got up, wiped my eyes, and looked at the burning house, the house, burning, where Khaderbhai had given me hours of instruction, hours of his life, to argue philosophy.
The arched courtyard was a shivering silhouette, drawn in red-yellow flames. The partitions of the mansion dropped away in sheets. The burning frame, just a star of wooden beams, was ablaze. And it was all gone. Gone.
I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t accept it. The place I’d thought of as eternal, somehow, was gone in flame and ash.
I turned, and saw Abdullah. He was on one knee in the open space, near the mosque. He had the boy king, Tariq, in his arms. People were standing back, awed by their own reverence. Abdullah cradled the boy, but Tariq’s head had already fallen toward the grave, and his strong young arms were seaweed in the ocean of time.
The fighting stopped. The cops established a new barricade a respectful distance away. People rushed through it to touch the dead boy’s cloak.
‘Nazeer?’ I asked Abdullah, when I could push through the thorn of mourners. ‘Did you see him, inside?’
‘I took his body from this boy’s,’ Abdullah said, still kneeling, still crying. ‘He is no more. I could not save his body. He was dead and burning, as I took Tariq.’
Abdullah was also a dying man, and we both knew it. He’d promised his life to Khaderbhai as a shield for the boy, and
the boy was dead. The limp body was a tattered flag, draped on Abdullah’s knee. If it took his last breath, Abdullah would make the men who killed Tariq and Nazeer see the same flag in their eyes, before they died.
‘Are you sure he was dead?’
He looked at me, Iranian deserts drifting across his eyes.
‘Alright, alright,’ I said, too shocked to do anything but agree.
Nazeer was a pillar, a stone pillar: the man who tells you the story long after everyone else has died.
‘He was already dead, when you found him?’
‘Yes. His body was burned, on the back, but his sacrifice preserved the face and body of Tariq. They were shot, Lin. Both of them. And their guards are nowhere to be found.’
Mourners, mourning violently, shoved me aside to touch the fallen king. I scrambled through a quickly gathering crowd that no police rope could hold. People were coming from every stairway and narrow lane. I broke through to the main street and clambered over the collapsing wall of bicycles and handcarts to find Ravi, standing next to my bike.
‘Glad to see you, man,’ he said. ‘I need my bike. There’s gonna be hell tonight.’
If hell means fire and fury, he was right. Outrage breaks the dam of temper. The murder in the mansion, which also threatened a beloved mosque, would release waves of wolves, and we all knew it. The beautiful city, the tolerant Island City, wasn’t safe any more.
I wondered where Karla was, and if she was safe.
I unlocked my chain, set our bikes free, and we jammed our way back to Colaba. Ravi split away from me at Metro Junction to meet his brothers in arms. I ran up the stairs at the Amritsar hotel, checking to see if Karla was there.
‘You need a shower,’ Jaswant said. ‘And a change of clothes.’
My T-shirt was a mystery, ripped off in the fight. My vest was scorched and blackened. My bare arms and chest were covered in ash and scratches.