My last thought, before everything went dark, was that now I understood those pinches and raptures-now I understood why lovers come to the zoo.
That evening, Dharam and I sat on the floor in my room, and I spread a blue letter before him. I put a pen in his hands.
"I'm going to see how good a letter-writer you are, Dharam. I want you to write to Granny and tell her what happened today at the zoo."
He wrote it down in his slow, beautiful hand. He told her about the hippos, and the chimpanzees, and the swamp deer.
"Tell her about the tiger."
He hesitated, then wrote: We saw a white tiger in a cage.
"Tell her everything."
He looked at me, and wrote: Uncle Balram fainted in front of the white tiger in the cage.
"Better still-I'll dictate; write it down."
He wrote it all down for ten minutes, writing so fast that his pen got black and oozy with overflowing ink-he stopped to wipe the nib against his hair, and went back to the writing. In the end he read out what he had written:
I called out to the people around me, and we carried Uncle to a banyan tree. Someone poured water on his face. The good people slapped Uncle hard and made him wake up. They turned to me and said, "Your uncle is raving-he's saying goodbye to his grandmother. He must think he's going to die." Uncle's eyes were open now. "Are you all right, Uncle?" I asked. He took my hand and he said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." I asked, "Sorry for what?" And he said, "I can't live the rest of my life in a cage, Granny. I'm so sorry." We took the bus back to Gurgaon and had lunch at the tea shop. It was very hot, and we sweated a lot. And that was all that happened today.
"Write whatever you want after that to her, and post it tomorrow, as soon as I leave in the car-but not before. Understand?"
* * *
It was raining all morning, a light, persistent kind of rain. I heard the rain, though I could not see it. I went to the Honda City, placed the incense stick inside, wiped the seats, wiped the stickers, and punched the ogre in the mouth. I threw a bundle near the driver's seat. I shut all the doors and locked them.
Then, taking two steps back from the Honda City, I bowed low to it with folded palms.
I went to see what Dharam was doing. He was looking lonely, so I made a paper boat for him, and we sailed it in the gutter outside the apartment block.
After lunch, I called Dharam into my room.
I put my hands on his shoulders; slowly I turned him around so he faced away from me. I dropped a rupee coin on the ground.
"Bend down and pick that up."
He did so, and I watched. Dharam combed his hair just like Mr. Ashok did-with a part down the middle; when you stood up over him, there was a clear white line down his scalp, leading up to the spot on the crown where the strands of a man's hairline radiate from.
"Stand up straight."
I turned him around a full circle. I dropped the rupee again.
"Pick it up one more time."
I watched the spot.
Telling him to sit in a corner of the room and keep watch over me, I went inside my mosquito net, folded my legs, closed my eyes, touched my palms to my knees, and breathed in.
I don't know how long I sat like the Buddha, but it lasted until one of the servants shouted out that I was wanted at the front door. I opened my eyes-Dharam was sitting in a corner of the room, watching me.
"Come here," I said-I gave him a hug, and put ten rupees into his pocket. He'd need that.
"Balram, you're late! The bell is ringing like crazy!"
I walked to the car, inserted the key, and turned the engine on. Mr. Ashok was standing at the entrance with an umbrella and a cell phone. He was talking on the phone as he got into the car and slammed the door.
"I still can't believe it. The people of this country had a chance to put an efficient ruling party back in power, and instead they have voted in the most outrageous bunch of thugs. We don't deserve-" He put the phone aside for a moment and said, "First to the city, Balram-I'll tell you where"-and then resumed the phone talk.
The roads were greasy with mud and water. I drove slowly.
"…parliamentary democracy, Father. We will never catch up with China for this single reason."
First stop was in the city-at one of the usual banks. He took the red bag and went in, and I saw him inside the glass booth, pressing the buttons of the cash machine. When he came back, I could feel that the weight of the bag on the backseat had increased. We went from bank to bank, and the weight of the red bag grew. I felt its pressure increase on my lower back-as if I were taking Mr. Ashok and his bag not in a car, but the way my father would take a customer and his bag-in a rickshaw.
Seven hundred thousand rupees.
It was enough for a house. A motorbike. And a small shop. A new life.
My seven hundred thousand rupees.
"Now to the Sheraton, Balram."
"Yes, sir."
I turned the key-started the car, changed gear. We moved.
"Play some Sting, Balram. Not too loud."
"Yes, sir."
I put the CD on. The voice of Sting came on. The car picked up speed. In a little while, we passed the famous bronze statue of Gandhi leading his followers from darkness to the light.
Now the road emptied. The rain was coming down lightly. If we kept going this way, we would come to the hotel-the grandest of all in the capital of my country, the place where visiting heads of state, like yourself, always stay. But Delhi is a city where civilization can appear and disappear within five minutes. On either side of us right now there was just wilderness and rubbish.
In the rearview mirror I saw him paying attention to nothing but his cell phone. A blue glow from the phone lit up his face. Without looking up, he asked me, "What's wrong, Balram? Why has the car stopped?"
I touched the magnetic stickers of the goddess Kali for luck, then opened the glove compartment. There it was-the broken bottle, with its claws of glass.
"There's something off with the wheel, sir. Just give me a couple of minutes."
Before I could even touch it, I swear, the door of the car opened. I was out in the drizzle.
There was soggy black mud everywhere. Picking my way over mud and rainwater, I squatted near the left rear wheel, which was hidden from the road by the body of the car. There was a large clump of bushes to one side-and a stretch of wasteland beyond.
You've never seen the road this empty. You'd swear it's been arranged just for you.
The only light inside the car was the blue glow from his cell phone. I rapped against his glass with a finger. He turned to me without lowering the window.
I mouthed out the words, "There's a problem, sir."
He did not lower the window; he did not step out. He was playing with his cell phone: punching the buttons and grinning. He must be sending a message to Ms. Uma.
Pressed to the wet glass, my lips made a grin.
He released the phone. I made a fist and thumped on his glass. He lowered the window with a look of displeasure. Sting's soft voice came through the window.
"What is it, Balram?"
"Sir, will you step out, there is a problem."
"What problem?"
His body just wouldn't budge! It knew-the body knew-though the mind was too stupid to figure it out.
"The wheel, sir. I'll need your help. It's stuck in the mud."
Just then headlights flashed on me: a car was coming down the road. My heart skipped a beat. But it just drove right past us, splashing muddy water at my feet.
He put a hand on the door and was about to step out, but some instinct of self-preservation still held him back.
"It's raining, Balram. Do you think we should call for help?"
He wriggled and moved away from the door.
"Oh, no, sir. Trust me. Come out."
He was still wriggling-his body was moving as far from me as it could. I'm losing him, I thought, and this forced me to do something I knew I would hate mysel
f for, even years later. I really didn't want to do this-I really didn't want him to think, even in the two or three minutes he had left to live, that I was that kind of driver-the one that resorts to blackmailing his master-but he had left me no option:
"It's been giving problems ever since that night we went to the hotel in Jangpura."
He looked up from the cell phone at once.
"The one with the big T sign on it. You remember it, don't you, sir? Ever since that night, sir, nothing has been the same with this car."
His lips parted, then closed. He's thinking: Blackmail? Or an innocent reference to the past? Don't give him time to settle.
"Come out of the car, sir. Trust me."
Putting the cell phone on the seat, he obeyed me. The blue light of the cell phone filled the inside of the dark car for a second-then went out.
He opened the door farthest from me and got out near the road. I got down on my knees and hid behind the car.
"Come over this side, sir. The bad tire is on this side."
He came, picking his way through the mud.
"It's this one, sir-and be careful, there's a broken bottle lying on the ground." There was so much garbage by the roadside that it lay there looking perfectly natural.
"Here, let me throw it away. This is the tire, sir. Please take a look."
He got down on his knees. I rose up over him, holding the bottle held behind my back with a bent arm.
Down below me, his head was just a black ball-and in the blackness, I saw a thin white line of scalp between the neatly parted hair, leading like a painted line on a highway to the spot on the crown of his skull-the spot from which a man's hair radiates out.
The black ball moved; grimacing to protect his eyes against the drizzle, he looked up at me.
"It seems fine."
I stood still, like a schoolboy caught out by his teacher. I thought: That landlord's brain of his has figured it out. He's going to stand up and hit me in the face.
But what is the use of winning a battle when you don't even know that there is a war going on?
"Well, you know more about this car than I do, Balram. Let me take another look."
And he peered again at the tire. The black highway appeared before me once more, with the white paint marks leading to the crown spot.
"There is a problem, sir. You should have got a replacement a long time ago."
"All right, Balram." He touched the tire. "But I really think we-"
I rammed the bottle down. The glass ate his bone. I rammed it three times into the crown of his skull, smashing through to his brains. It's a good, strong bottle, Johnnie Walker Black-well worth its resale value.
The stunned body fell into the mud. A hissing sound came out of its lips, like wind escaping from a tire.
I fell to the ground-my hand was trembling, the bottle slipped out, and I had to pick it up with my left hand. The thing with the hissing lips got up onto its hands and knees; it began crawling around in a circle, as if looking for someone who was meant to protect it.
Why didn't I gag him and leave him in the bushes, stunned and unconscious, where he wouldn't be able to do a thing for hours, while I escaped? Good question-and I've thought about it many a night, as I sit at my desk, looking at the chandelier.
The first possible reply is that he could always recover, break out of his gag, and call the police. So I had to kill him.
The second possible reply is that his family was going to do such terrible things to my family: I was just getting my revenge in advance.
I like the second reply better.
Putting my foot on the back of the crawling thing, I flattened it to the ground. Down on my knees I went, to be at the right height for what would come next. I turned the body around, so it would face me. I stamped my knee on its chest. I undid the collar button and rubbed my hand over its clavicles to mark out the spot.
When I was a boy in Laxmangarh, and I used to play with my father's body, the junction of the neck and the chest, the place where all the tendons and veins stick out in high relief, was my favorite spot. When I touched this spot, the pit of my father's neck, I controlled him-I could make him stop breathing with the pressure of a finger.
The Stork's son opened his eyes-just as I pierced his neck-and his lifeblood spurted into my eyes.
I was blind. I was a free man.
When I got the blood out of my eyes, it was all over for Mr. Ashok. The blood was draining from the neck quite fast-I believe that is the way the Muslims kill their chickens.
But then tuberculosis is a worse way to go than this, I assure you.
After dragging the body into the bushes, I plunged my hands and face into the rainwater and muck. I picked up the bundle near my feet-the white cotton T-shirt, the one with lots of white space and just one word in English-and changed into it. Reaching for the gilded box of tissues, I wiped my face and hands clean. I pulled out all the stickers of the goddess, and threw them on Mr. Ashok's body-just in case they'd help his soul go to heaven.
And then, getting into the car, turning the ignition key, putting my foot on the accelerator, I took the Honda City, finest of cars, most faithful of accomplices, on one final trip. Since there was no one else in the car, my left hand reached out to turn Sting off-then stopped and relaxed.
From now on I could play the music as long as I wanted.
In the railway station, thirty-three minutes later, the colored wheels in the fortune machines were coruscating. I stood in front of them, staring at the glowing and the whirling, and wondering, Should I go back to get Dharam?
If I left him there now, the police would certainly arrest him as an accomplice. They would throw him into jail with a bunch of wild men-and you know what happens to little boys when they get put into dens like that, sir.
On the other hand, if I went back now all the way to Gurgaon, someone might discover the body…and then all this (I tightened my grip on the bag) would have been a waste.
I squatted on the floor of the station, pressed down by indecision. There was a squealing noise to my left. A plastic bucket was tumbling about, as if it were alive: then a grinning black face popped out of the bucket. A little creature, a baby boy. A homeless man and woman, covered in filth, sat on either side of the bucket, gazing blankly into the distance. Between his fatigued parents, this little thing was having the time of his life, playing with the water and splashing it on passersby. "Don't do it, little boy," I said. He splashed more water, squealing with pleasure each time he hit me. I raised my hand. He ducked into his bucket and kept thrashing from the inside.
I reached into my pockets, searched for a rupee coin, checked to make sure it wasn't a two-rupee coin, and rolled it toward the bucket.
Then I sighed, and got up, and cursed myself, and walked out of the station.
Your lucky day, Dharam.
The Seventh Night
Can you hear that, Mr. Jiabao? I'll turn it up for you.
The health minister today announced a plan to eliminate malaria in Bangalore by the end of the year. He has instructed all city officials to work without holiday until malaria is a thing of the past. Forty-five million rupees will be allocated to malaria eradication.
In other news, the chief minister of the state today announced a plan to eliminate malnutrition in Bangalore in six months. He declared that there would be not one hungry child in the city by the end of the year. All officials are to work single-mindedly toward this goal, he declared. Five hundred million rupees will be allocated for malnutrition eradication.
In other news, the finance minister declared that this year's budget will include special incentives to turn our villages into high-technology paradises…
This is the kind of news they feed us on All India Radio, night after night: and tomorrow at dawn it'll be in the papers too. People just swallow this crap. Night after night, morning after morning. Amazing, isn't it?
But enough of the radio. It's turned off. Now let me look up to my chandelier for inspi
ration.
Wen!
Old friend!
Tonight we bring this glorious tale to a conclusion. As I was doing my yoga this morning-that's right, I wake up at eleven in the morning every day and go straight into an hour of yoga-I began reflecting on the progress of my story, and realized that I'm almost done. All that remains to be told is how I changed from a hunted criminal into a solid pillar of Bangalorean society.
Incidentally, sir, while we're on the topic of yoga-may I just say that an hour of deep breathing, yoga, and meditation in the morning constitutes the perfect start to the entrepreneur's day. How I would handle the stresses of this fucking business without yoga, I have no idea. Make yoga a must in all Chinese schools-that's my suggestion.
But back to the story, now.
First, I want to explain one thing about a fugitive's life. Being a man on the run isn't all about fear-a fugitive is entitled to his share of fun too.
That evening as I was sweeping up the pieces of the Johnnie Walker bottle in the parking lot, I worked out a plan for how I would get to Bangalore. It wouldn't be on a direct train-no. Someone might see me, and then the police would know where I had gone. Instead, I would transfer myself from train to train, zigzagging my way down to Bangalore.
Although my schedule was shot to pieces when I went to get Dharam-he was sleeping in the net, and I woke him up and said we were going on a holiday to the South, and dragged him out-and it was hard to keep my red bag in one hand and Dharam in the other hand (for the train station is a dangerous place for a little boy, you know-lots of shady characters around), still I began to move in this zigzag way south from Delhi.
On the third day of traveling like this, red bag in hand, I was at Hyderabad, waiting in line at the station tea shop to buy a cup of tea before my train left. (Dharam was guarding the seat in the compartment.) There was a gecko just above the tea shop, and I was looking at it with concern, hoping it would move before it was my turn to get tea.
The gecko turned to the left-it ran over a large piece of paper posted on the wall-it stood still for a moment, like that, then darted to the side.
The White Tiger Page 21
