Narcopolis

by Jeet Thayil

  Mr Lee? she said.

  *

  And she woke beside Xavier, who was still asleep. She bathed, changed, ate breakfast and was at Rashid’s by noon. When Xavier came in around two, her station was busy and he went to Pagal Kutta’s. He acted like he didn’t know her. He smoked a pyali and ate lunch in the khana and then he went out for a haircut and a beard trim. The barber pointed out a hamam, a couple of cubicles set up by the side of the road, where they gave him a sliver of soap, a bucket of lukewarm water and a thin cotton towel. The bath cost him forty paisa and he emerged feeling clean despite the dirty clothes he was wearing. He felt good enough to take a little stroll. He thought of picking up a T-shirt and a pair of slacks in one of the shops on Grant Road and he turned right at the end of Shuklaji Street. Then, walking past Delhi Darbar, he smelled food and forgot about buying clothes: he wanted a drink. In a shop window he saw the reflection of a raggedy man in a dirty kurta and he stumbled lightly. He saw biryani cookpots and flies and piles of horse dung. A man approached with a double cross on which plastic sunglasses and hair-clips were arranged in the vague shape of a crucifix. He saw a man driving fast with his windows up and in the back of the car a little girl leaned her forehead against the glass. He saw men walking towards him with their hands around each other’s shoulders, and a man had collapsed on the street, his pockets turned inside out, and a group of boys panted in unison with a radio song in which the singer imitated a dog. A woman in a yellow blouse and petticoat made up her face in a splinter of glass. She held the jagged splinter like a knife. When he walked past her cage their eyes met in the mirror. She nodded to him and he went to the cage. She reached through the bars and grabbed his dick. Her hand was small, the grip very firm, and the bottle green bangles on her wrist chimed like small bells when she massaged him. He asked her where he might find a wine shop and she let go of him. ‘No wine. This is a Muslim locality, babuji, what do you expect?’ When he walked away she made a fist and grabbed herself by the elbow, gesturing to his dick with her lips. A man standing near her cage laughed. Xavier passed a movie theatre, its front wall streaked with piss. He bought a ticket and went in just as a song sequence began. A man in a matador’s costume gyrated in a giant birdcage. It was the tune he’d heard minutes earlier, in which a man panted like a dog. The matador took off his jacket and shouted: Monica! Xavier thought of saints and felt a powerful emotion, elation or fear, he wasn’t sure. A woman slid down a ramp to a dance floor. There was an artful shot of her figure framed between two bottles. She held the bottles up to her face and Xavier got up and went out into the sunlight and took a cab to Chowpatty. He found a permit room where a waitress served him whisky and poured him a beer. There were many tables and all the drinkers were men. On a tiny stage a woman in a chiffon sari danced to muddy music. He couldn’t tell if it was jazz or Hindustani classical. The woman moved her hips but not her feet. She held up her hands and gazed at the floor as if she was being robbed. Her expression said she was trying to remember something very important, something that could save her life. The drinkers gave her money but it wasn’t enough because she was still unable to remember the important thing. When the song ended she dropped her hands and walked offstage. Somebody clapped.

  Late in the evening Xavier went back to 007, getting there before Dimple. He told the tai to send him the same girl dressed the same way and then he took a beer with him into the cubicle in which he’d spent the previous night. When Dimple came in, changed and washed, he fucked her standing up with her arms propped on the cot and her clothes pushed up around her waist. Later, he fucked her again and yelled something in a language no one could identify, French maybe, or Italian, some European language other than English, shouting the same two words again and again, Sa Crenaam. The cubicles next to theirs were occupied, the tai on one side and Lakshmi on the other. Lakshmi clapped her hands in the chakka salute when Xavier came, because it took him so long. She shouted her congratulations, to Dimple for her stamina and to Xavier for his technique.

  *

  She woke instantly, with the sensation that she’d forgotten something. She knew it was late because the nightlight had been turned on in the main room. She was alone on the cot. Then she became aware of a figure sitting motionless on the floor. She put the lamp on and saw Xavier, fully dressed, with his back against the door. The nightlight made red slashes in his face when he spoke. She thought: He looks like a lunatic. Find yourself a patron saint, he told her in a dog’s hoarse voice. Everybody needs at least one and some of us need two or more. I’m not saying the saint will protect you, he might, but there’s the question of companionship, not to mention peace of mind, which you need. I need protection too, Dimple said. Then listen carefully. I suggest that you think seriously about the patron saints of amputees, Anthony of Padua and Anthony the Abbot, who are also the patron saints of animals. The Anthonys of animals and amputees, now there’s a pairing that goes beyond the merely alphabetical and alliterative, wouldn’t you say? I suggest too the services of Agnes of Rome and Thomas Aquinas, who, among lesser or greater achievements, depending on your point of view, are the patron saints of chastity. Which isn’t of much concern to you though perhaps it should be, if you see what I mean. Between the two your best bet is Agnes, who is also the patron saint of orphans and virgins. It might interest you to know that the patron saints against sexual temptation are all women, the Marys of Edessa and Egypt, Mary Magdalen and Mary Magdalen of Pazzi, Angela of Foligno, Margaret of Cortona, Catherine of Siena and Pelagia of Antioch, who martyred herself at fifteen with the help of a ladder, a house and a small battalion of Roman soldiers. Then there’s Maximilian Kolbe, the patron saint of drug addicts and journalists, which, if you ask me, is an inevitable pairing. Most important of them all, in your case, is Dismas, who will be of particular service to you and those around you: he is the patron saint of criminals and whores. And of course the twins, Damian and Cosmas, Arab physicians who practised together and were martyred together and became the patron saints of medicine and pharmacy, a useful bit of information for drug fiends. My own preference is Martin of Tours and Monica, two of the patron saints against alcoholism, and between the two I choose Monica every time. Of course Martin is also the patron saint of recovering alcoholics, which facet of his personality I am willing to overlook on some days. Teresa of Avila is praised for her poetry, though it’s slightly too florid for my taste. But she is also the patron saint of aches, head and body, and someone you would do well to petition. I recommend too my namesake, Francis Xavier, the patron saint of Goa and Japan and of navigators and aimless travellers. There are twenty-five patron saints of unhappy marriages, including Hedwig of Andechs, Margaret the Barefooted and Thomas More, but only one patron saint of happy marriages, Valentine. Memorize the patron saints of the poor, for they are plentiful yet in short supply, Philomena, Giles, Martin de Porres, Nicholas of Myra, Lawrence, Anthony of Padua, Ferdinand of Castile and Zoticus of Constantinople. And eventually you will need the services of Ezekiel Moreno, the patron saint of the ailment smokers are susceptible to, and of course Ulric, the patron saint of a happy death, which is the least I wish for you.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mr Lee’s Lessons in Living

  She was getting aches in her shoulders and her back and she woke up sometimes with the pain, woke too early, and the tai gave her an oil massage, told her to eat moong, told her she was smoking too much. Mr Lee said, Exercise, take a walk on Chowpatty Beach, good to get out, take a look at the sea, because that’s all you can do, you’d be crazy to swim, it’s so dirty. He went with her sometimes. He dressed up, put on a hat, socks, tan English loafers – for a walk on the beach. And he carried a walking stick, the most elegant thing she’d seen, dark polished wood with a jade handle in the shape of a leaping dog. They walked for some of the way and he received steady attention on the street. They both did. He was a foreigner, a refugee from mainland China, but they could have been father and daughter, they looked so similar.

  He
wanted to stop at Rajasthan Lassi for a chikku milkshake. They sat on the steps of Brilliant Typing & Shorthand Institute and looked at the life on the streets. She was content to watch and listen and Mr Lee, understanding this, said little. The milkshakes came in tall glasses with a pink napkin stuck to the side and she drank half in one go, then realized she was expected to take the napkin off, hold it in one hand and sip at a straw like the other women. She copied them, she took small sips and dabbed her mouth. She watched the people walking home from work or to evening classes at Wilson College, the parents and grandparents and children, the extended joint families who came to the beach from who knew where and never got out of their cars. They ordered meals from the windows of new Ambassadors and Fiats and ate quickly and ordered more. She watched them as if she too were in class, a student of the college carrying out field studies for a course on the Mores and Practices of India’s Middle Class. Or a course in Parental Love, she thought, as the milkshake curdled in her mouth and the image of a woman flashed in her head and was gone. She had very few memories of her mother, but they were vivid and she would carry them with her for the rest of her life. She remembered a tall woman praying in a temple, her sari the exact shade of red as the kumkum in her black hair. But the woman also prayed in a secret church she had made at home. The woman prayed in Hindi and English. The Hindi prayers were said aloud, recited in public, but the English was hidden from the world, whispered to her kitchen cupboard, where her church was. The woman was very poor but she wore starched salvaars and saris, and, every morning, strings of fresh jasmine appeared in her hair. Dimple remembered that the woman’s hair was thick and very long. She loved the woman’s smell, like woodsmoke and milk and old wool, and she remembered that her skin was the colour of milk. But then she remembered the sound of bells, death bells, and the woman’s wails. Afterwards, the woman stopped wearing red; she wore only white and she covered her face with her sari. She stopped speaking, even to Dimple, and then she gave her away. This was the clearest memory of all, her mother’s crushed, fearful face as she handed Dimple to the priest.

  They walked towards the beach and passed a beer bar and heard a tinny insistent beat. Men exited the bar at all hours of day and night and stopped at the adjacent paanwallah, whose Bedbreaker Special with its secret hit of uncut cocaine would keep a man going all night, or so some of Dimple’s clients said. Do palang tod, she told the paanwallah, who handed over two Bedbreakers wrapped in newspaper. Then they walked past the wrought-iron railing of Wilson College to the beach, where crowds of men strolled on the sand or lingered in the darkness under the trees. They stood by the water and ate the paan and spat the juice on the sand and laughed or chewed their teeth. The paan was astringent and sweet and it numbed her mouth and put a happy jitter in her eyes. The men looked at her the way they did, their eyes lingering on the freshness of her, her white skin and black eyes and the red leaves of henna that trailed from index finger to wrist. Her hair would come loose and she’d stop to gather it into a bun and her admirers would stop too, watching every move. They saw health and good nature in her roundness, and something more, a calculation, a professional distance in the eyes, a kind of premeditated shine on her teeth and skin. And some heightened awareness, a ripple of interest skimmed above the heads of the strollers on the beach and returned to her from the men.

  *

  Her breasts were fuller and the space between her legs had healed long ago into a scar, but the ache in her back and elbows was something new. She was always aware of it, a dormant ache even when there was no pain. The tai gave her massages, an hour with the curtains drawn first thing in the morning before the giraks arrived. If anything, the aches got worse. She’d get up stiff, so numb she felt nothing in the tips of her toes. A ghost ache would stay in her bones all through the day. She’d be irritable and preoccupied and the customers would go to someone else. Some of her regulars continued to see her but they did it as if they were duty-bound and paying a conjugal visit.

  This is how she met Mr Lee. Her income dropped and the tai took her to see him. First thing in the morning, the tai said, meaning sometime around noon. They had to get there early or he wouldn’t answer the door. He’s a Chini, she said, as if that explained everything, every oddity in Mr Lee’s personality. Dimple washed her hair and put on lipstick. She’d taken to wearing trousers because it allowed her to walk with a little strut in her step, or lounge on the couch with her legs spread, or slouch like a pimp, or climb a tree if she felt like it. It allowed her to act like a man when she wanted to. But that day she wore a starched salvaar with the pallu wide on her chest. She put on slippers with small heels and placed a pair of silver hoops in her ears. It was a conservative look: Nargis, offscreen, circa Raj Kapoor: a good Indian girl going to meet her elders. Dressed this way she almost believed it. She thought: Clothes are costumes or disguises. The image has nothing to do with the truth. And what is the truth? Whatever you want it to be. Men are women and women are men. Everybody is everything. She thought: Who do I look like? Do I look like my mother? Do I look like my mother or someone else? She had no idea and for that she was grateful. Forgetfulness was a gift, a talent to be nurtured.

  *

  The tree was a peepul, very old, with shreds of fabric caught on its branches, shiny bits of silk and crêpe. It was a common Indian tree, but the ribboned fabric made it look like some rare import. There was a shrine under it, incense bunched around a porcelain plate of oranges, and a box in which squares of coloured paper had been burned. They were in a side lane off Shuklaji Street, a place for refugee families from China and Burma, two or three generations living in small rooms facing a courtyard. They went directly to a room on the far side, the only room with a locked front door. The tai made her stand in front of the peephole so he’d see her easily and then she knocked. Dimple heard a shout on the street, a man’s voice saying an English word. Paper. Or: papa. The tai knocked again and Dimple’s first thought when he opened the door was not a thought exactly but a word, old. He ignored the tai and spoke only to her. ‘Nee ho ah?’ And then a longer sentence she couldn’t follow.

  She said, ‘Can you please speak English please?’

  ‘You not Chinese?’

  ‘No, my family is from north-east of India.’

  ‘Okay, north-east, I understand. Very close to China, VERY close.’

  ‘I don’t know from exactly where. I grew up in Bombay, here, on Shuklaji Street.’

  The tai said, ‘Leeji, we have come for your help. She is having pain. Can you give her afeem?’

  Inside, they sat on a low bed covered with bamboo matting. He gave them tea without milk or sugar, a rust-coloured liquid with a taste she couldn’t identify, a dusty earth tang like dried flowers or herbs. The room was dim and tidy, all the windows closed except for a skylight set low on the tiled roof. When her eyes adjusted she saw two men, asleep, one to a bunk on adjoining beds, or not asleep exactly; they didn’t move or speak but their eyes were open, seeing nothing. They were all eyes, as if their faces had caved in around their mouths. Mr Lee sat on the floor on a woven bamboo seat and sipped his tea. She’d never seen such a room. Everything in it was floor-level and old and beautiful. She loved the desk’s polished wood, set on a stand made of darker wood. It had a hinged top and no legs. The closet was horizontal with a usable surface. It was a toy room filled with toy furniture. Mr Lee screwed a cigarette into a holder and tapped the ash into a saucer that said CINZANO, his eyelids heavy; for a moment he seemed to forget that she and the tai were in the room.

  He said: Heat is very much. Drink tea is best thing, better than cold drink if you thirsty. He held the cigarette holder like a paintbrush and waved it around when he asked questions. Had she taken opium before? Did she know the taste was very bitter, strong enough to make her sick? Was it her own idea or did the tai want her to take it? What was her name? Yes, she replied, when she was cut at the age of nine; she knew it tasted bad but the pain was worse; she wanted it, the tai had nothing to do with
how much she wanted it; Dimple, like the actress of the hit movie Bobby, who was younger and prettier than she.

  *

  Mr Lee was on the floor with his legs stretched in front of him. A single lamp burned in the room and its yellow light shone on his bald head and clean undershirt. His actions were slow, economical, planned ahead so there was no wasted movement. He boiled more water on a pump stove and poured it into their cups, reusing the leaves he’d measured out from a tin. In another pan he heated milk. From a tin trunk he drew tiny scales and a bowl. He put a sticky black ball on the scale, weighed it, broke off a bit, weighed it again, and put the ball into her palm. He gave her the warmed milk in a steel glass and told her to place the pellet on the back of her tongue and swallow quickly. She did exactly as he said. The pellet was unbearably bitter and it stuck to her tongue. She panicked and swallowed too much milk, but the pain disappeared in fifteen minutes, to be replaced by its opposite, something enveloping that told her she was loved, no, beloved: she was beloved and not alone.