"Yes, Uncle."
"Let's hear it."
"Eight ones are eight."
"That's easy-what's next?"
"Eight twos are sixteen."
"Wait." I counted out on my fingers to make sure he had got it right. "All right. Go on."
"Order me a tea too, won't you?" Vitiligo-Lips sat down next to me. He smiled at Dharam.
"Order it yourself," I said.
He pouted. "Is that any way for you to be talking to me, working-class hero?"
Dharam was watching us keenly, so I said, "This boy is from my village. From my family. I'm talking to him now."
"Eight threes are twenty-four."
"I don't care who he is," Vitiligo-Lips said. "Order me a tea, working-class hero."
He flexed his palm near my face-five fingers. That meant, I want five hundred rupees.
"I've got nothing."
"Eight fours are thirty-two."
He drew a line across his neck and smiled. Your master will know everything.
"What's your name, boy?"
"Dharam."
"What a nice name. Do you know what it means?"
"Yes, sir."
"Does your uncle know what it means?"
"Shut up," I said.
It was the time of the day when the tea shop got cleaned. One of the human spiders dropped a wet rag on the floor and started to crawl with it, pushing a growing wavelet of stinking ink-black water ahead of him. Even the mice scampered out of the shop. The customers sitting at the tables were not spared-the black puddle splashed them as it passed. Bits of beedis, shiny plastic wrappers, punched bus tickets, snippets of onion, sprigs of fresh coriander floated on the black water; the reflection of a naked electric bulb shone out of the scum like a yellow gemstone.
As the black water went past, a voice inside me said, "But your heart has become even blacker than that, Munna."
That night Dharam woke up when he heard the shrieking. He came to the mosquito net.
"Uncle, what's going on?"
"Turn on the light, you fool! Turn on the light!"
He did so, and saw me paralyzed inside the net: I could not even point at the thing. A thick-bodied gray gecko had come down from the wall and was on my bed.
Dharam began to grin.
"I'm not joking, you moron-get it out of my bed!"
He stuck his hand into the net, grabbed the lizard, and smashed it under his foot.
"Throw it somewhere far, far away-outside the room, outside the apartment building."
I saw the bewildered look in his eyes: Afraid of a lizard-a grown man like my uncle!
Good, I thought, just as he was turning off the lights. He'll never suspect that I'm planning anything.
An instant later, my grin faded.
What was I planning?
I began to sweat. I stared at the anonymous palm prints that had been pressed into the white plaster of the wall.
A cane began tapping on concrete-the night watchman of Buckingham B was doing his rounds with his long cane. When the tapping of the cane died out there was no noise inside the room, except for the buzzing of the roaches as they chewed on the walls or flew about. It was another hot, humid night. Even the roaches must have been sweating-I could barely breathe.
Just when I thought I'd never go to sleep, I began reciting a couplet, over and over again.
* * *
I was looking for the key for years
But the door was always open.
* * *
And then I was asleep.
* * *
I should have noticed the stenciled signs on the walls in which a pair of hands smashed through shackles-I should have stopped and listened to the young men in red headbands shouting from the trucks-but I had been so wrapped up in my own troubles that I had paid no attention at all to something very important that was happening to my country.
Two days later, I was taking Mr. Ashok down to Lodi Gardens along with Ms. Uma; he was spending more and more time with her these days. The romance was blossoming. My nose was getting used to her perfume-I no longer sneezed when she moved.
"So you still haven't done it, Ashok? Is it going to be like last time all over again?"
"It's not so simple, Uma. Mukesh and I have had a fight over you already. I will put my foot down. But give me some time, I need to get over the divorce-Balram, why have you turned the music up so loud?"
"I like it loud. It's romantic. Maybe he's done it deliberately."
"Look, it'll happen. Trust me. It's just…Balram, why the hell haven't you turned the music down? Sometimes these people from the Darkness are so stupid."
"I told you that already, Ashok."
Her voice dropped.
I caught the words "replacement," "driver," and "local" in English.
Have you thought about getting a replacement driver-a local driver?
He mumbled his reply.
I could not hear a word. But I did not have to.
I looked at the rearview mirror: I wanted to confront him, eye to eye, man to man. But he wouldn't look at me in the mirror. Didn't dare face me.
I tell you, you could have heard the grinding of my teeth just then. I thought I was making plans for him? He'd been making plans for me! The rich are always one step ahead of us-aren't they?
Well, not this time. For every step he'd take, I'd take two.
Outside on the road, a streetside vendor was sitting next to a pyramid of motorbike helmets that were wrapped in plastic and looked like a pile of severed heads.
Just when we were about to reach the gardens, we saw that the road was blocked on all sides: a line of trucks had gathered in front of us, full of men who were shouting:
"Hail the Great Socialist! Hail the voice of the poor of India!"
"What the hell is going on?"
"Haven't you seen the news today, Ashok? They are announcing the results."
"Fuck," he said. "Balram, turn Enya off, and turn on the radio."
The voice of the Great Socialist came on. He was being interviewed by a radio reporter.
"The election shows that the poor will not be ignored. The Darkness will not be silent. There is no water in our taps, and what do you people in Delhi give us? You give us cell phones. Can a man drink a phone when he is thirsty? Women walk for miles every morning to find a bucket of clean-"
"Do you want to become prime minister of India?"
"Don't ask me such questions. I have no ambitions for myself. I am simply the voice of the poor and the disenfranchised."
"But surely, sir-"
"Let me say one last word, if I may. All I have ever wanted was an India where any boy in any village could dream of becoming the prime minister. Now, as I was saying, women walk for…"
According to the radio, the ruling party had been hammered at the polls. A new set of parties had come to power. The Great Socialist's party was one of them. He had taken the votes of a big part of the Darkness. As we drove back to Gurgaon, we saw hordes of his supporters pouring in from the Darkness. They drove where they wanted, did what they wanted, whistled at any woman they felt like whistling at. Delhi had been invaded.
Mr. Ashok did not call me the rest of the day; in the evening he came down and said he wanted to go to the Imperial Hotel. He was on the cell phone the whole time, punching buttons and making calls and screaming:
– "We're totally fucked, Uma. This is why I hate this business I'm in. We're at the mercy of these…"
– "Don't yell at me, Mukesh. You were the one who said the elections were a foregone conclusion. Yes, you! And now we'll never get out of our income-tax mess."
– "All right, I'm doing it, Father! I'm going to meet him right now at the Imperial!"
He was still on the phone when I dropped him off at the Imperial Hotel. Forty-two minutes passed, and then he came out with two men. Leaning down to the window, he said, "Do whatever they want, Balram. I'm taking a taxi back from here. When they're done bring the car back to Buckingham."
>
"Yes, sir."
The two men slapped him on the back; he bowed, and opened the doors for them himself. If he was kissing arse like this, they had to be politicians.
The two men got in. My heart began to pound. The man on the right was my childhood hero-Vijay, the pigherd's son turned bus conductor turned politician from Laxmangarh. He had changed uniforms again: now he was wearing the polished suit and tie of a modern Indian businessman.
He ordered me to drive toward Ashoka Road; he turned to his companion and said, "The sister-fucker finally gave me his car."
The other man grunted. He lowered the window and spat. "He knows he has to show us some respect now, doesn't he?"
Vijay chortled. He raised his voice. "Do you have anything to drink in the car, son?"
I turned around: fat nuggets of gold were studded into his rotting black molars.
"Yes, sir."
"Let's see it."
I opened the glove compartment and handed him the bottle.
"It's good stuff. Johnnie Walker Black. Son, do you have glasses too?"
"Yes, sir."
"Ice?"
"No, sir."
"It's all right. Let's drink it neat. Son, pour us a drink."
I did so, while keeping the Honda City going with my left hand. They took the glasses and drank the whiskey like it was lemon juice.
"If he doesn't have it ready, let me know. I'll send some boys over to have a word with him."
"No, don't worry. His father always paid up in the end. This kid has been to America and has his head full of shit. But he'll pay up too, in the end."
"How much?"
"Seven. I was going to settle for five, but the sister-fucker himself offered six-he's a bit soft in the head-and then I said seven, and he said okay. I told him if he didn't pay, we'd screw him and his father and his brother and the whole coal-pilfering and tax-evading racket they have. So he began to sweat, and I know he'll pay up."
"Are you sure? I'd love to send some boys over. I just love to see a rich man roughed up. It's better than an erection."
"There will be others. This one isn't worth the trouble. He said he'll bring it on Monday. We're going to do it at the Sheraton. There's a nice restaurant down in the basement. Quiet place."
"Good. He can buy us dinner as well."
"Goes without saying. They have lovely kebabs there."
One of the two men gargled the scotch in his mouth, gulped it in, burped, and sucked his teeth.
"You know what the best part of this election is?"
"What?"
"The way we've spread down south. We've got a foothold in Bangalore too. And you know that's where the future is."
"The south? Bullshit."
"Why not? One in every three new office buildings in India is being built in Bangalore. It is the future."
"Fuck all that. I don't believe a word. The south is full of Tamils. You know who the Tamils are? Negroes. We're the sons of the Aryans who came to India. We made them our slaves. And now they give us lectures. Negroes."
"Son"-Vijay leaned forward with his glass-"another drink for me."
I poured them out the rest of the bottle that night.
At around three in the morning, I drove the City back to the apartment block in Gurgaon. My heart was beating so fast, I didn't want to leave the car at once. I wiped it down and washed it three times over. The bottle was lying on the floor of the car. Johnnie Walker Black-even an empty one is worth money on the black market. I picked it up and went toward the servants' dormitory.
For a Johnnie Walker Black, Vitiligo-Lips wouldn't mind being woken up.
I walked rotating the bottle with my wrist, feeling its weight. Even empty, it wasn't so light.
I noticed that my feet were slowing down, and the bottle was rotating faster and faster.
I was looking for the key for years…
The smashing of the bottle echoed through the hollow of the parking lot-the sound must have reached the lobby and ricocheted through all the floors of the building, even to the thirteenth floor.
I waited for a few minutes, expecting someone to come running down.
No one. I was safe.
I held what was left of the bottle up to the light. Long and cruel and clawlike jags.
Perfect.
With my foot I gathered the broken pieces of the bottle, which lay all around me, into a pile. I wiped the blood off my hand, found a broom, and swept the area clean. Then I got down on my knees and looked around for any pieces I had failed to pick up; the parking lot echoed with the line of a poem that was being recited over and over:
But the door was always open.
Dharam was sleeping on the floor; cockroaches were crawling about his head. I shook him awake and said, "Lie inside the mosquito net." He got in sleepily; I lay on the floor, braving the cockroaches. There was still some blood on my palm: three small red drops had formed on my flesh, like a row of ladybirds on a leaf. Sucking my palm like a boy, I went to sleep.
Mr. Ashok did not want me to drive him anywhere on Sunday morning. I washed the dishes in the kitchen, wiped the fridge, and said, "I'd like to take the morning off, sir."
"Why?" he asked, lowering the newspaper. "You've never asked for a whole morning off before. Where are you off to?"
And you have never before asked me where I was going when I left the house. What has Ms. Uma done to you?
"I want to spend some time with the boy, sir. At the zoo. I thought he would like to see all those animals."
He smiled. "You're a good family man, Balram. Go, have fun with the boy." He went back to reading his newspaper-but I caught a gleam of cunning in his eye as he went over the English print of the newspaper.
As we walked out of Buckingham Towers B Block, I told Dharam to wait for me, then went back and watched the entrance to the building. Half an hour passed, and then Mr. Ashok was down at the lobby. A small dark man-of the servant class-had come to see him. Mr. Ashok and he talked for a while, and then the small man bowed and left. They looked like two men who had just concluded a deal.
I went back to where Dharam was waiting. "Let's go!"
He and I took the bus to the Old Fort, which is where the National Zoo is. I kept my hand on Dharam's head the whole time-he must have thought it was out of affection, but it was only to stop my hand from trembling-it had been shaking all morning like a lizard's tail that has fallen off.
The first strike would be mine. Everything was in place now, nothing could go wrong-but like I told you, I am not a brave man.
The bus was crowded, and the two of us had to stand for the entire journey. We both sweated like pigs. I had forgotten what a bus trip in summer was like. When we stopped at a red light, a Mercedes-Benz pulled up alongside the bus. Behind his upraised window, cool in his egg, the chauffeur grinned at us, exposing red teeth.
There was a long line at the ticket counter of the zoo. There were lots of families wanting to go into the zoo, and that I could understand. What puzzled me, though, was the sight of so many young men and women going into the zoo, hand in hand: giggling, pinching each other, and making eyes, as if the zoo were a romantic place. That made no sense to me.
Now, Mr. Premier, every day thousands of foreigners fly into my country for enlightenment. They go to the Himalayas, or to Benaras, or to Bodh Gaya. They get into weird poses of yoga, smoke hashish, shag a sadhu or two, and think they're getting enlightened.
Ha!
If it is enlightenment you have come to India for, you people, forget the Ganga-forget the ashrams-go straight to the National Zoo in the heart of New Delhi.
Dharam and I saw the golden-beaked storks sitting on palm trees in the middle of an artificial lake. They swooped down over the green water of the lake, and showed us traces of pink on their wings. In the background, you could see the broken walls of the Old Fort.
Iqbal, that great poet, was so right. The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave. To hell with the N
axals and their guns shipped from China. If you taught every poor boy how to paint, that would be the end of the rich in India.
I made sure Dharam appreciated the gorgeous rise and fall of the fort's outline-the way its loopholes filled up with blue sky-the way the old stones glittered in the light.
We walked for half an hour, from cage to cage. The lion and the lioness were apart from each other and not talking, like a true city couple. The hippo was lying in a giant pond full of mud; Dharam wanted to do what others were doing-throw a stone at the hippo to stir it up-but I told him that would be a cruel thing. Hippos lie in mud and do nothing-that's their nature.
Let animals live like animals; let humans live like humans. That's my whole philosophy in a sentence.
I told Dharam it was time to leave, but he made faces and pleaded. "Five minutes, Uncle."
"All right, five minutes."
We came to an enclosure with tall bamboo bars, and there-seen in the interstices of the bars, as it paced back and forth in a straight line-was a tiger.
Not any kind of tiger.
The creature that gets born only once every generation in the jungle.
I watched him walk behind the bamboo bars. Black stripes and sunlit white fur flashed through the slits in the dark bamboo; it was like watching the slowed-down reels of an old black-and-white film. He was walking in the same line, again and again-from one end of the bamboo bars to the other, then turning around and repeating it over, at exactly the same pace, like a thing under a spell.
He was hypnotizing himself by walking like this-that was the only way he could tolerate this cage.
Then the thing behind the bamboo bars stopped moving. It turned its face to my face. The tiger's eyes met my eyes, like my master's eyes have met mine so often in the mirror of the car.
All at once, the tiger vanished.
A tingling went from the base of my spine into my groin. My knees began to shake; I felt light. Someone near me shrieked. "His eyes are rolling! He's going to faint!" I tried to shout back at her: "It's not true: I'm not fainting!" I tried to show them all I was fine, but my feet were slipping. The ground beneath me was shaking. Something was digging its way toward me, and then claws tore out of mud and dug into my flesh and pulled me down into the dark earth.
The White Tiger Page 20
