Turbulence

by David Szalay

  He inhaled slowly through his nostrils. He made a tiny adjustment to the position of his feet. Then another, which simply undid the first. Then he snapped into the swing, and the little white ball went.

  He knew immediately that he had hooked it, though he wasn’t sure exactly where it had ended up. The dazzle of the sun had snatched it away.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Abhijit said, smiling plumply under his Ping visor. ‘Let’s see if I can do any better.’

  The sun was out, shining down through a thin haze, and they sweated lightly as they stood over their shots. Abhijit had a maddening ability to make the ones that mattered and he was soon several strokes ahead. Abir was obviously out of sorts. He felt the match slipping away as he pathetically missed short putts, then missed them again, and finally sent several shots in quick succession into the weed-filled lake. When the fourth one found the water, he just dropped his iron onto the turf and walked away. ‘Hey!’ he heard Abhijit shouting from the green. ‘Hey, you need to play a shot. What are you doing? Where are you going? You need to play a shot!’ Abir ignored him. He had arrived at a path that led back to the hotel and without thinking he flagged down a resort employee at the wheel of a golf cart that was passing. It was only when he was sitting in the golf cart and it had moved off again under some trees that he was able to take in what he had just done. It seemed incredible that he had actually done it. He never did things like that. As the golf cart trundled along, he found himself thinking of the woman he had been seeing in Hong Kong, of the way she had spoken to him at their final meeting. When she told him her decision he had been silent for a while. Then he had smiled and said, ‘Well, I hope we’ll still see each other sometimes.’ And she had said, ‘No. No we won’t.’

  At the hotel Abir went up to his room and then wondered why he was there. The room had been made up since he was last in it. He sat provisionally on one of the French-style armchairs – perched on it, leaning forward – and stared at the wall. He sat there for some time. Then he went down to the bar, and he was there when Abhijit appeared, dripping from the exertion of finishing the Palm Course on his own. Abhijit sat down and asked the waiter to bring him a large watermelon juice. ‘What was that about?’ he asked, meaning the tantrum.

  ‘Nothing,’ Abir said.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Abhijit padded his face with a napkin.

  ‘When are you going to pay me that money?’ Abir asked.

  ‘Money?’

  ‘The five lakh rupees.’

  ‘Oh that.’

  ‘Yes, that. Were you hoping I’d just forget about it?’

  The tone was so hostile that Abhijit, perhaps taken aback, said nothing for a few seconds. Then he said, ‘Are you okay, Abir?’

  At that moment his huge watermelon juice arrived and he let the waiter place it on the table and thanked him, and then asked him for an ashtray.

  As soon as the waiter moved away, Abir said, ‘When are you going to pay me?’

  ‘I think you need to calm down,’ Abhijit said.

  ‘Don’t tell me to calm down. When are you going to pay me?’ Abir seemed in danger of losing his temper again.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Abhijit said.

  ‘When are you going to pay me?’

  ‘What’s your problem?’

  ‘When are you going to pay me?’

  ‘It’s only five lakh rupees …’

  ‘When are you going to pay me?’

  ‘I’m going to pay you,’ Abhijit said. ‘I am going to pay you. Okay? What the fuck is your problem?’

  8

  SGN – BKK – DEL

  THE FIRST THING Abhijit did, when he arrived back in Delhi on Monday afternoon, was look in on his father. He visited the old man every few days. It was important to him that he did that. The taxi stopped outside the house in Daryaganj. It was the house in which Abhijit had spent part of his childhood, and it was in a dilapidated state now. The turquoise tiles of the facade were falling off, leaving squares of rough cement. A broken window was patched up with plastic sheeting. The metal front door was openly rusting. The old man refused to spend money on maintenance, let alone renovation. Abhijit told the taxi driver to wait and walked through the sultry, particulate fug to the three steps, also shedding their tiles, that went up to the rusty door. He had his own key and he let himself in. Inside, he took off the surgical mask he was wearing. The walls of the narrow hall were lined with what seemed, in the dim light, to be school photos.

  Anita was preparing the old man’s tiffin in the kitchen. Anita was the day nurse, a young woman from Kerala. Panting from the stairs, and still in his sweaty travelling outfit, a dark blue Adidas tracksuit, Abhijit asked her how his father was. She said he was fine. Then she said she needed to ask Abhijit for a favour. ‘Oh yes?’ Abhijit said, looking pleased to hear that, smiling at her. He put his hand on her shoulder and said, ‘What? Tell me.’

  Her shoulder twitched and he withdrew his hand. He also more or less stopped smiling. She said, ‘I need to go away for a few days. If that’s possible.’

  ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Why?’

  Her sister’s house in Kochi, she told him, had been destroyed in a fire. She felt she was needed there.

  ‘I see,’ Abhijit said. ‘Well, let me think about it.’

  She started to say something about how it was important that she went as soon as possible.

  ‘Let me think about it,’ Abhijit said. ‘You’re needed here as well. Is there any mail?’ She said there was, and went to get it, while he waited.

  There were half a dozen letters, mostly about money in one way or another. Abhijit squeezed each of them with his fingers, as if feeling for something inside, and then put one of them in his pocket. The others he put in a drawer. Anita was still standing there. ‘Okay,’ Abhijit said. ‘I’ll see him now.’

  The old man spent his days in the large room on the east side of the house. He was dressed, as usual, in a shalwar kameez and European-style slippers lined with worn-out, discoloured, odorous sheepskin. With his white moustache, he still looked distinguished, and slightly fierce, though there was also something fearful, something almost like suppressed panic, about the way he stared up from the wheelchair at Abhijit as his son stood over him and said, ‘How are you, pitajee?’

  The old man made a shaky movement with his hands, the meaning of which was difficult to interpret.

  Music was playing. The jingle-jangle harpsichord stuff that the old man had always liked. Abhijit had always hated it. He went to the stereo and turned it down until it was almost inaudible.

  ‘I’ve been out of town,’ he explained. ‘For a few days. That’s why I haven’t been to see you. I told you about it. I was in Vietnam, playing golf with Abir.’

  ‘Abir?’

  ‘Yes.’ Abhijit smiled, perched on the Ottoman now.

  It wasn’t entirely clear whether the old man knew who ‘Abir’ was. He looked worried, like an actor who has forgotten his next line. It was true that he hadn’t seen Abir for some time. Abhijit tried to think of the last time his brother had been in Delhi. Their mother’s funeral probably, five years ago. He had had to turn up for that.

  ‘It’s dangerous there, isn’t it?’ the old man said.

  ‘Where, pitajee?’

  ‘Vietnam.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  There was an uneasy silence.

  Abhijit guessed what his father was thinking. He said, ‘The war finished long ago, pita. It’s not like that now. It’s a popular tourist destination. I was playing golf. With Abir.’

  ‘Abir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  As if passing judgement on an insignificant pupil at the school where he had been headmaster for nearly forty years, the old man said, ‘A pompous boy. I never liked him.’

  ‘Abir?’

  ‘I never liked him.’

  It was hard to know how to take that. After a few moments, Abhijit said, ‘Don’t be silly, pitajee. He’s so like you. He’s very smart.’

/>   The old man may have been thrown by the Americanism. He said, as if allowing something, and something quite important, ‘Yes, well. He was always well turned out.’

  ‘He still is,’ Abhijit said. ‘Very well turned out. He has impeccable taste. He inherited that from you as well, babu.’

  ‘He died?’ the old man asked.

  ‘Abir? No. No, he’s not dead. I just spent the weekend playing golf with him.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I won,’ Abhijit added, unable to stop himself. He felt like a kid, the way he said it, and immediately wished he hadn’t. At the same time he was disappointed when the old man didn’t seem to have heard him.

  The old man leaned in so that Abhijit was able to smell his sticky mouth, and said, ‘That nurse. She steals from me.’

  ‘Pita. I’m sure that isn’t true. She’s very nice.’

  ‘She steals from me,’ the old man insisted.

  ‘What does she steal?’

  ‘My French pen.’

  ‘The Mont Blanc?’

  ‘The French pen.’

  ‘Why do you think she stole it?’

  ‘It’s not here.’

  ‘It’s here somewhere.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m sure it is.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you look everywhere?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It’s not here!’

  ‘Please don’t make a kerfuffle about this, pitajee,’ Abhijit said. ‘The pen will turn up.’

  Still, he found Anita and said to her, ‘Have you seen my father’s pen? The Mont Blanc. He says it’s missing.’ The tone in which he said it more or less amounted to an accusation and she met his look with a palpable anxiety in her eyes – and also a sort of defiance, that might mean anything. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen it.’

  Abhijit was looking straight at her. ‘Do you know the one I mean?’ he asked. ‘It has an inscription on it. Something to do with the Minto Academy.’

  ‘I haven’t seen it,’ she said again.

  He told her that he had some things to do and would be back in an hour.

  In the hall downstairs, standing in the semi-darkness, he made sure he had what he needed. Then he went out. When he opened the metal door daylight fell into the hall for a few seconds, lighting up the framed school photos on the walls, the mass of young faces under the made-up escutcheon, and the fearsome, moustached headmaster in the middle of the front row. Outside, the taxi was still waiting, and Abhijit got in. He and Abir had both been pupils at the school, a neoclassical building in a mangrove swamp. One day, when Abir was about ten, he had been sent to the headmaster by his form teacher for some misdemeanour. The headmaster, of course, was Abir’s own father. If Abir had expected this to make any difference to the way he was treated he was soon disabused of the idea – the headmaster, after reading the note from the form teacher, and addressing his son by his surname even in the privacy of his study, simply asked ‘Bannerjee’ to put out his hands, palms up. What happened next was predictable enough. Then, with tears of pain in his eyes, ‘Bannerjee’ was enjoined to improve his discipline, and dismissed. It was possible that their father later regretted the way he had behaved that day – though no doubt his main concern had been that as headmaster he should not unfairly favour his own sons – because when, a few years later, Abhijit in turn was sent to see him, he had a different experience. The headmaster, addressing him by his first name, acknowledged that Abhijit was his son, and did not inflict physical pain, instead assigning him the more lenient and impersonal punishment of a week of ‘sanctions’ – early morning manual labour alongside the gardeners in the grounds.

  Abhijit sat in the back of the taxi as it bumped and honked its way through the streets, struggling to make progress. Vehicles of all kinds fought for their share of the filthy asphalt, shoving themselves forward, forcing other people to let them in. Abhijit swabbed his brow with a damp paper tissue, a Thai Airways napkin he had pocketed on the plane. He was sweating unpleasantly – the taxi had no air conditioning, or if it did the driver wasn’t using it to save petrol. Abhijit told him he would pay him extra if he put it on, and after a few seconds the milder air arrived, along with a mouldy smell. Abhijit felt the sweat start to dry on his forehead. He had put one of his father’s letters in his pocket. Now he took it out and opened it. Inside was a new debit card, stuck to a folded sheet of paper.

  The taxi pulled up outside an HSBC bank, and waited while Abhijit, wearing his surgical mask, went to the ATM under its red-and-white-striped plastic awning and withdrew the maximum daily amount. He pushed the wad of money into his wallet as he took his seat in the taxi again and told the driver, who was also wearing a surgical mask, to take him back to his father’s house.

  He wondered what to do about the Mont Blanc pen. He hadn’t expected the old man to notice that it was missing. He wasn’t sure what to do about it now. He could just quietly put it back. Or he could let his father think that Anita had taken it. It would give him some kind of hold over her, if she was suspected. Which might have its uses. She had been doing something on her smartphone when he had spoken to her earlier. She had been messaging someone. He wondered who it was, whether it was a man. He knew she wasn’t married. He still hadn’t decided what to do when he arrived at the house again and let himself in through the rusty door. He went past the school photos and up the stairs.

  He had put the debit card back in its envelope and was just putting the envelope in the drawer with the other papers when he heard a noise behind him.

  He shut the drawer and turned.

  It was Anita.

  ‘What is it?’ he said.

  For a few seconds she didn’t say anything, and he was about to ask her again what she wanted when she said, ‘I found this.’ She was holding something – a letter, that had been opened.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  Again she didn’t say anything, and there was something meaningful about her silence now.

  Abhijit took the letter from her and saw that it was from HSBC, addressed to his father. He pulled it partly out of the envelope. It was a statement, for the previous month. Apart from the usual automatic payment to the nursing agency, there were a number of other transactions. They were all the same. Withdrawals from ATMs, one or two a week, each for the maximum daily amount. ‘I need to go away for a few days,’ Anita said.

  9

  DEL – COK

  KOCHI AIRPORT DEPRESSED Anita. Everything about it depressed her. It was nearly ten years since she had moved to Delhi. She had been nineteen, and something had impelled her to leave. She hadn’t even been sure what that thing was at the time – she had experienced it only as an inarticulate need to get away – and now, as she always did when she came back, when she passed through the low-ceilinged airport, she experienced a feeling like dread, as if this place might somehow have the power to reclaim her. It was Wednesday afternoon. The sun shone down through glinting clouds. Fanning herself with the magazine she had been reading on the plane, she joined the queue at the autorickshaw stand in front of the terminal.

  Her sister’s house, it turned out, had not actually been destroyed. It didn’t even look seriously damaged. After what Nalini had told her on the phone, she had expected a smouldering wreck. So there was a shiver of irritation when she leaned out of the autorickshaw and saw that the house looked essentially fine. Part of her wasn’t entirely surprised – Nalini wanted her there, and had said what was necessary. As she took out her wallet and extracted a five-rupee note she was angry with her sister, and didn’t intend to hide it.

  Then she saw her face.

  She said, ‘What’s that? He didn’t hit you? Tell me he didn’t hit you. Please tell me he didn’t hit you.’

  They went inside – the interior of the house was a single room – and sat on chairs facing each other, their knees nearly touching. The chairs were made of bright orange moulded plastic, and had once furnish
ed a snack bar.

  ‘What happened?’ Anita said. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  The mark on Nalini’s face was under her left eye, and the way it swelled out looked painfully tender, as if even the draught from the open door might make it hurt.

  ‘Nothing,’ Nalini said. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘It’s not nothing. It’s not okay. What happened? When did he get here?’

  ‘Last night.’

  Nalini’s husband worked in Qatar, worked as a gardener for a white woman there, apparently.

  ‘His flight got here in the middle of the night,’ she said.

  She kept turning to look at the doorway as if expecting him to appear. Her daughter Sarah was standing there, in the doorway. She was fourteen and had a faint black moustache. She didn’t seem to be listening to what they were saying.

  Nalini said, ‘And when he saw the house wasn’t totally destroyed he got angry.’

  ‘You told him the house was totally destroyed?’

  ‘I told him there’d been a massive fire. You didn’t see it. It was terrifying.’

  ‘I’m sure it was, darling,’ Anita said. She looked again at the black scorch marks on the ceiling and the floor and tried to imagine the flames that had made them. Some furniture had been damaged too, and was piled up outside. The bedding was hanging up out there as well, to try and get the smell of smoke out of it. There wasn’t much left in the room. On one wall was a picture of Jesus, a European-looking man with long silky hair, his heart visible in his chest and emitting rosy light. Some flakes of soot were stuck damply to the picture.

  ‘It was terrifying,’ Nalini said again.

  ‘So he was angry?’ Anita asked. ‘When he saw the house.’

  ‘He started shouting at us,’ Nalini said. ‘It was the middle of the night and he was shouting at us, waking up the whole street.’

  Anita was able to imagine it. Nalini’s husband had trashed the house in the past. Anita had always been nervous around him. She thought of him, in fact, as a potential murderer, and feared for her sister’s safety when he was there, which was normally only once every two years. She nodded.