River Of Gods

by Ian McDonald

  Gas flames blaze from nozzles in the centres of the yoni tanks. Tal studies the twin temple guardian dvarapalas while the taxi driver runs yts card through his reader. The ruined arcade is dominated by the image of Ardhanarisvara; half male, half female. A single full breast, an erect penis sliced down the middle, a mono testicle, a curl of labius, a hint of a slit. The torso has a man’s broadness of shoulder, a woman’s fullness of hip, the hands sensitively held in ritual mudras but the features are generic, androgynous. The third eye of Siva is closed on the forehead. Inside, the music is banging. Invitation clutched in hand, Tal passes between the guardian deities, into the party of the season.

  Even when Tal showed them the invitation, the department told yt yt had faked it. It was an automatic supposition to make in a section designing visual wallpaper for the fake lives of the aeai actors of India’s favourite soapi. Tal hadn’t believed it ytself when yt found the thick, creamy wafer card resting in yts intray.

  FASHIONSTAR PROMOTIONS on behalf of

  MODE ASIA invites TAL,

  27 Corridor 30, 12th Floor, Indira Gandhi Apartments

  (as White Fort was known only to the post office,

  the tax department and the bailiffs) to a

  RECEPTION

  to welcome YULI to Varanasi for BHARAT FASHION

  WEEK.

  LOCATION: Ardhanarisvara Temple, Mirza Murad

  District

  CELEBRATION: 22 bells.

  NATION: NuTribe.

  RSVP.

  The card felt warm and soft as skin. Tal had shown it to Mama Bharat, the old widow woman whose front door shared his stair head. She was a soft soul incarcerated by her family in a silk prison. The modern way: an independent old age. Three months ago Tal had moved in and become Mama Bharat’s family. No one would talk to yt either. Tal accepted the daily chai and snack visits and twice weekly cleaning calls and never asked what kind of family yt was to her, daughter or son.

  The aged aged woman ran her fingers over the invitation, stroking and cooing softly, like a lover.

  ‘So soft,’ she said. ‘So soft. And will they all be like you?’

  ‘Nutes? Most. We’re a theme.’

  ‘Ah, a great great honour, the best in the city, and all the tivi people.’

  Yes, Tal had thought. But why this one?

  Tal walks through the shadowy temple mandapa lit by flambeaux held by four armed Kali avatars and feels a little gnaw of awe in yts nadi chakra. There is a Big Name Film Director talking rather uncomfortably to a Well Respected New Young Woman Writer underneath a startlingly pornographic statue. Here is an international circuit tennis star looking relieved to have found not just a Big Pro golfer, but an All-India League footballer and his radiant wife so they can all talk strokeplay and handicaps. And that’s Mr Interstellar Pop Promoter Man and he’s his latest piece of pop engineering with a debut song bound to go to Number One on pre-release bookings already while the girl in the too-short skirt clutching the cocktail a little too hard and laughing a little too loud has to be FASHIONSTAR PROMOTIONS PR. That’s not counting the three under-twenty-five wetware rajas, the two edgy games designers and the deeply shady Lord of the Sundarbans, the Cyberjungle entrepreneur of the Darwinware hot zone, all on his ownio, at ease and sleekly tigerish as only a man with his own pandava legion of aeai bodyguards can. Plus the overdressed overmouthed faces Tal doesn’t recognise but who advertise their fashion magazine origins, the fortysomething tivi commissioning editors looking sweaty and over-familiar with each other, the gossip journos with the very wide and active peripheral vision and the Varanasi society have-to-haves, ruffled and sullen at being outshone by a gaggle of nutes. There are even a couple of generals, gorgeous as parakeets in their full dress. Army is trés trés hip in this time of edge-play with Awadh. Not forgetting that clutch of sullen seeming-ten-year-olds looking daggers over the tops of their gyro-stabilised cocktail glasses: the Golden, the Brahmin sons and daughters.

  Tal’s been given a checklist by Neeta, boss Devgan’s PA . Most of the metasoap unit find Neeta’s perfect vacuity oppressive but Tal likes her. Her unfeigned banality throws up unexpected, Zen-like juxtapositions. She wanted to know what yt was wearing, what make-up yt was going to put on, where yt was going for pre-club drinks and the after-party bash. You have to make an effort for the biggest brashest celeby gotta-go bash of the season. Along the colonnade yt clicks thirty Big Names off Neeta’s list.

  Two rakshasas guard the entrance to the sanctuary and the free bar. The groove is Adani, Biblical Brothers remix. Scimitars swing down. The actors are flesh but the lower set of arms is robotic. Tal admires the full-body make-up. It really is seamless. They scan the invitation. The swords go up. Tal steps into wonderland. Every nute in the city has turned out. Tal notes that yts ankle-length shag-fibre optical shatter coat is still the thing, but since when have ski goggles pushed high on the forehead become the accessory? Tal hates missing a move. Heads turn as yt progresses to the bar, then bend together. Yt can feel the wave of gossip spread behind yt like a wake: Who’s that nute, yt’s new, where’s yt been hiding ytself, Stepped Away or stepped in?

  I disregard your regard, Tal declares to ytself. Tal is here for stardom. Yt stakes a pitch at the end of the curving luminous plastic bar and scans the talent. Four-armed barmen shake acrobatic cocktails. Tal admires the dexterity of their robotics. ‘What’s this?’ yt asks of the fluorescent cone of golden ice balanced on its point on the bar.

  ‘Non-Russian,’ says the barman as his lower arms lift another glass and scoop up ice. Tal sips cautiously. Vodka base, something vanilla-syrupy, a fistful of crush and a slash of German cinnamon schnapps, flakes of gold foil drifting down through the interstices in the ice. The thrum of the microgyros tickle Tal’s fingers.

  Then party dynamics opens a momentary corridor of clear eyeline and in pure white polar bear shag and gold-tinted ski goggles Tal glimpses the Star Ytself: YULI.

  Tal can’t speak. Yt is paralysed by the presence of celebrity. All media pretensions and sophistications fly. Even before yt Stepped Away, Tal idolised YULI: Superstar as a construct, a manipulation like the cast of Town and Country. Now yt’s here, in flesh and clothes and Tal’s awestruck. Yt has to be near Yuli. Yt has to hear yt breathe and laugh and feel yts warmth. There are only two real objects in the temple tonight. Guests, nutes, staff, music, all are indeterminate, in the domain of Ardhanarisvara. Tal is behind Yuli now, close enough to reach and touch and reify. The angle of the cheekbone shifts. Yuli turns. Tal smiles, big dumb grin. Oh Gods, I look like a drooling celebrity idiot, what am I going to say? Ardhanarisvara god of the dilemma, help me. Gods; do I smell, I only had a half bottle of water to wash in . . . Yuli’s gaze washes over yt, looks right through yt, annihilates yt, swings to focus on a figure behind yt. Yuli smiles, opens yts arms.

  ‘Darling!’

  Yt sweeps past, a warm wash of fur and gold tan and cheekbones like razors. The entourage follows. A hip jostles Tal, knocks the glass from yts hand. It falls to the floor, teeters wildly before coming to centre, spinning on its point. Tal stands stunned, stone as any of the temple’s alien sex statues.

  ‘Oh, you seem to have lost your drink.’ The voice that breaks through the wall of chatter is neither man’s nor woman’s. ‘Can’t have that dear, can we? Come on, they’re a pack of bloody bitches, sib, and we’re just wallpaper.’

  Yt’s a head shorter than Tal, dark skinned, a hint of epicanthine fold: Assam or Nepali genes down in the mix. Yt carries ytself with shy pride of those peoples. Yt’s dressed in simple, fashion-denying white, the shaved scalp dusted with gold-flecked mica the only concession to contemporary style. As with all yts kind, Tal can’t begin to guess yts age.

  ‘Tranh.’

  ‘Tal.’

  They curtsey and kiss in greeting. Yts fingers are long and elegant, French manicured, unlike Tal’s stubby, nail-bitten keypad-stabbers.

  ‘Bloody awful thing, isn’t it?’ Tranh says. ‘Drink, dear. Here!’ It rap
s the bar. ‘Enough of that Non-Russian piss. Give me gin. Chota peg, by two. Chin chin.’ After the cloying, theatrical house cocktail, the pure clear glass with the twist of lemon is very good and very pure and very cold and Tal can feel yt shooting up yts spinal column like cold fire straight to the brain.

  ‘Bloody marvellous drink,’ Tal says. ‘Built the Raj, it did. All that quinine. Here!’ This to the bar avatar. ‘Actor wallah! Two more of these.’

  ‘I really shouldn’t, I’ve got work in the morning and I’ve no idea how I’m even getting back,’ Tal says but the nute slides the dew-slick glass into yts hand and the music hits that perfect beat and a flaw of wind runs through the half ruined temple drawing flames and shadows in its wake and everyone looks up at its touch, wondering if it could be the first caress of the monsoon. It blows a touch of mad into the terrible party and in its wake Tal finds ytself dizzy and full of talk and life and wonder at finding ytself in a new town, in a new job, in the eye of the social vortex with a small and dark and beautiful nute.

  It all runs like calligraphy in the rain then. Tal finds yts dancing with no memory of how yt got out on the floor and there are a lot more people standing around watching than dancing, in fact no one is dancing, only Tal, alone dancing wonderfully, flawlessly, like all the wind that blew through the temple gathered into one place and one restlessness; like unaccustomed chota pegs, like light, like night, like temptation, like a laser focused on Tranh, illuminating yt alone, saying I want I need I will, come on, beckoning, come on, drawing Tranh out, step by step, yt smiling and shaking yts head, I don’t do this sort of bloody thing dear, but yts being pulled into the circle by this play of shakti and purusha until Tal sees Tranh shiver, as if something has come out of the night and passed into yt, some possessing, abandoned thing, and Tranh smiles a little, mad smile, and they come together in the circle of music a hunter and the thing yt hunts and every eye is on them and from the corner of one eye Tal sees YULI, brightest star in heaven, stalking away with yts entourage. Upstaged.

  The meeja all expect them to kiss and make the drama perfect, but, despite the cascade of erotic sculpture tumbling from every pillar and buttress, they are Indian nutes, and the time and place for the kiss is not here, not now.

  Then they’re in a taxi and Tal doesn’t know how or where but the dark is very big and yts ears are humming from the music and yts head is thudding from the chota pegs but things are gradually becoming more broken up and discrete. Tal knows what yt wants now. Yt knows what’s going to happen. The certainty is a dull, crimson throb at the base of yts belly.

  On the back seat of the jolting phatphat, Tal lets yts forearm fall, soft inner flesh upwards, on Tranh’s thigh. A moment’s hesitation, then Tranh’s fingers stroke yts sensitive, hairless flesh, seek out the buried studs of the hormone control system beneath the skin and delicately tap out the arousal codes. Almost immediately, Tal feels yts heart kick, yts breath catch, yts face flush. Sex strums yts body like a sitar, every cord and organ ringing in its harmonic. Tranh offers yts arm to Tal. Yt plays the sub-dermal inputs, tiny and sensitive as goose flesh. Yt feels Tranh stiffen as the hormone rush hits. They sit side by side in the back of the jolting taxi, not touching but shivering with lust, incapable of speech.

  The hotel is by the airport, comfortable, anonymous, internationally discreet. The bored receptionist hardly looks up from her romantic magazine. The night porter stirs, then identifies these guests and hides behind the cricket highlights on the television. A glass elevator takes them up the side of the hotel to their fifteenth floor room, the patterned airport lights spreading themselves ever wider around them, like jewelled skirts. The sky is mad with stars and the navigation lights of troopships, flying in to support the state of heightened vigilance. All in heaven and earth tonight is trembling.

  They fall into the room. Tranh reaches for yt, but Tal slips away, teasing. There is one thing necessary thing. Tal finds the room system and plugs in a chip. FUCK MIX. Nina Chandra plays and Tal sways and closes yts eyes and melts. Tranh comes towards yt, moving into the rhythm, stepping out of the shoes, slipping off the pure white coat, the linen suit, the Big Name Label mesh underwear. Yt offers yts arm. Tal runs yts fingers over the orgasm keys.

  Everything is soundtrack.

  The ghost of departing chota pegs wakes Tal and sends yt to the bathroom for water. Yt stares, still drunk, vertiginous with what has happened, at the never-ending stream from the mixer tap. There is a grey pre-dawn light in the room. Tranh looks so very small and breakable on the bed. The aircraft never stop. Something in this morning lights makes every surgical scar on Tranh’s body stand out. Tal shakes yts head, suddenly needing very much to cry, but slips in beside Tranh and shivers when yt feels the other nute move in yts sleep and fold an arm around yt. Tal dozes and only wakes to the chambermaid banging on the door wondering if she can service the room. It’s ten o’clock. Tal has a wretched hangover. Tranh is gone. Yts clothes, yts shoes, yts shredded underwear. Yts gloves. Gone. In yts place is a card, with a street name, an address and two words: non-scene.

  VISHRAM

  The compere has the audience really laughing now. Down in the green room, Vishram can feel it like waves on a shore. Deep laughter. Laughter you can’t help, you can’t stop even though it hurts you. Best sound in the world. Hold that laugh for me, people. You can tell an audience by the sound of its laugh. There are the thin laughs down south and the flat laughs from the Midlands and the resonant laughing that’s like church singing from way up in the islands, but that’s a good Glasgow laugh out there. A home crowd laugh. Vishram Ray taps his feet and puffs out his cheeks and reads the yellow reviews tacked to the green room wall. He’s within this of a cigarette.

  You know your stuff. You can do this material forwards and backwards, in English, in Hindi, on your head, dressed as a lettuce. You know the hook points and the builds, you’ve got your three topical referents, you know where you can improv and then on-ramp without shifting gear. You can take out a heckler with a single shot. They’d laugh at a cat up behind the mike tonight so why do you feel like there’s a fist up your ass slowly hauling your guts out? Home crowds are always hardest and tonight they have the power. Thumbs-up, thumbs down, vote with your throat in the Glasgow region heat of the Funny Ha-Ha contest. It’s the first hurdle to Edinburgh and a Perrier Award, but it’s the first one trips you up.

  Compere is doing the slow build up now. People on the right put your hands together. People on the left do the really penetrating two-finger whistles. People in the balcony start a titanic roar. For. Mr Vishram! Raaaaayyy! And he’s out of the blocks, running for the bright stage lights, the roar of the audience and his metal mistress, the slim steel torso of the lone microphone.

  With his party eye he glimpses her leave her coat at the club check and decides, I’ll have a crack at that. Meerkatting. Head up high, looking left right, all over. She heads for the bar clockwise around the room. He heads widdershins, tracking her through the jungle of bodies. She has the gang of friends, the scary professional one, the one who’s into her body but you try touching, the dumpy one who’ll go with anything. He can cut her out, round her up. Vishram times his run and gets to the bar that split second before she does. The bar girl does a double take, left, right.

  ‘Oh, sorry, go ahead there,’ Vishram yells.

  ‘No, you were here . . .’

  ‘No no, you go on . . .’

  Glasgow accent. Always good to go native. She wears a strap-back V-top and hipsters so low cut he sees the twin curves of her fit nates as she bends over the bar to roar an order at the bar girl.

  ‘Here, I’ll get this.’ To the bar girl: ‘Throw in a vodka black dog.’

  ‘We should be buying you . . .’ she shouts in his ear. He shakes his head, chancing a glance to round to see if his mates are looking. They are.

  ‘My shout. I’m feeling flush.’

  The bottles come. She hands them round to her mates, arrayed behind her, and clinks with him.
/>
  ‘Congratulations. So, is that you through?’

  ‘To the Edinburgh final, yes. After that, fame, fortune, my own sitcom . . .’ Time for manoeuvre one. ‘Listen, I can’t hear myself think, let alone attempt witty and scintillating conversation. Can we move away from the speakers?’

  The corner by the cigarette machine under the balcony is not significantly quieter than anywhere else at the party, but it’s away from her friends and dark.

  She says, ‘You got my vote.’

  ‘Thank you. I owe you that drink then. Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’

  ‘I didn’t throw it,’ she says. ‘Anye.’

  ‘Anye, good . . .’

  ‘Gallic.’

  ‘Yeah, Gallic name. Good Gallic solidity.’

  ‘Thank my parents for that. Good solid Galls, the pair of them. You know, I think Bharat and Scotland have a lot in common. New nations, all that.’

  ‘I still think we’ve got you beat when it come to good old-fashioned religious violence.’