He said, ‘The DIG sahib?’
I said, ‘Yes. And what I saw and heard in the courtroom.’
He said, ‘You saw them? They look so innocent, don’t they?’
I said, ‘Sure, some of them.’
He said, ‘It’s how it always is. God is the best suspense filmmaker in the world. He always gives killers innocent faces, so that the audience has to keep guessing and the police has to work twice as hard.’
Jai was paying no attention. This rodent was too low in the food chain to hold his interest. He was punching away at a searing pace on his mobile. Probably sending the first bush alert to the margarita club about his latest adventures, wetting depilated ladies with tales of Kafka’s castle.
I said, ‘So it is true—this ISI thing?’
He licked the tip of his forefinger and carefully pulled out three sheets of white foolscap paper and two sheets of creased blue carbon from his drawer. Setting the carbon between the white sheets, he pinned them together neatly and pushed them towards me. ‘Please write an account of all you know and sign it.’
I said, ‘I told you. I know nothing.’
Dubeyji smiled happily and said, ‘Of course we know you know nothing. Just write that. It’s a formality. Paperwork. Just like a buffalo needs grass, the government needs paper.’
I looked at him blankly.
He said, grinning, ‘Like a buffalo it will chew and chew and chew the paper endlessly. And finally there will be milk!’
I pulled the paper towards me, and slanting it for ease of wrist, in a large scrawl wrote: ‘Apart from the information given to me by the police, I have no knowledge whatsoever of the five men who it is alleged had plotted to kill me. I do not know any of them, and have only seen them once in the courtroom at Patiala House.’ I signed with a flourish and put the date, my phone number and address, and pushed it across the table. He read it slowly, mouthing the words, once, twice, three times. Then with a grin he said, ‘You don’t want to write if you suspect someone?’ I said I suspected nobody.
The rodent removed the pin, separated the carbon sheets from the foolscap, and carefully put everything back in his drawer. Jai was still hammering away on his mobile. His eyes were squinting and his lips were bared in a rictus of a smile. The margarita girls were probably in a senseless froth by now. Was the rodent so despicable that he did not deserve even a fleeting oration on liberty, equality, fraternity?
Turning the key of his drawer, the happy officer said, ‘There is a girl. A very smart girl. She is helping these men. At least trying to. You know her?’
Jai looked up sharply—his fingers kept moving of their own accord. I thought of Sara and felt myself stir. It had been many days.
I said, ‘Who? No, I don’t.’
He said, ‘She’s a troublemaker, it seems. The kind who looks for rallies to go to. Lives in Vasant Kunj. She’s been visiting these men in Tihar jail. Has also got them a lawyer. She has friends in the press too.’
I thought, another few minutes and there’ll be photographs on the table—my hairy naked buttocks nailing Sara to the wall. The Crusader’s Crucifixion—a four-colour poster. Maybe even a video-tape—with both of us singing a bilingual duet of genitalia and abuse.
I knew Jai was looking at me. I stayed inside the mask and said, ‘This Pakistani thing—have these men confessed to it?’
Grinning till his bushy moustache quivered, the officer said, ‘Confessing means nothing. In lock-up we can make them confess to anything! Even the murder of Gandhiji! But it doesn’t have any value in court. We have to collect hard proof.’
I said, ‘And you have it?’
He said, ‘We have the truth. The proof will come.’
Behind the inspector’s head the wall was bare but for a lurid green poster. There was the image of a handsome man in a peak-cap, and he had spelt out an equation in bold letters.
Small minds: discuss people.
Average minds: discuss events.
Big minds: discuss ideas.
Great minds: work in silence.
We opened and shut many plywood doors before we made our way back to the cramped landing and groped our way down the dark stairs to the equally cramped eighth floor. Jai pressed the button for the lift, then we looked at each other, remembered the shuddering impact with which it had descended, and decided to walk. It was like a stroll through a slum. There was offal everywhere. Big dust balls, blackened banana peels, membrane-thin plastic bags, shiny chips and biscuit packets, stones of pickle, bits of bread, cigarette butts, matchboxes, rags, torn papers. In the weak light seeping in from the landings you could see the cobwebs festooning the corners, and every sooty wall had splashes of paan juice, layers upon layers, dulled with time. We walked in line—Jai before me, carefully staying away from the walls and the banisters. Every now and then the stench of rancid food and sour piss hit us like a fist stopping our breath.
The lift was a better idea. Plummeting down a shaft a safer option.
Down eight storeys and sixteen flights we did not exchange a single word, trying to descend quickly, focusing on where to put our feet, holding our breath much of the time. By the time we hit the ground floor and emerged out into the dark, we were totally winded.
My shadows peeled away from the wall they were leaning against, dropping their lit cigarettes and grinding them underfoot. The man on the stool looked up from his mobile phone and said, ‘What? It’s broken down again?’
Jai said, ‘Yes, it has. Not the lift, but your fucking government!’
The man said, ‘Not mine, sahib, yours. I am just a watchman outside the walls—you are the sahibs inside.’ The big parking lot was empty but for our cars and a few official white Ambassadors. High above, on the top floor of the shoebox building, a few lights glowed dimly through slim windows that only allowed suicidees below forty kilos to squeeze through. All night the man in the towel and the squirrel would track the enemies of the great Indian state.
With his car door open, Jai turned around and said, ‘Who’s this woman, boss? Sounds quite something.’
I said, ‘The government has an imagination no one gives them credit for. Hasn’t it worked out that Pakistan’s taken out a contract on me?’
Jai said, ‘You are such a desperately secretive bastard! Won’t let your balls know what your dick is doing!’
And you, maaderchod, are the messiah of the drawing-rooms, pissing margaritas and morality in a fine balance! Elvis Presley speaking in the voice of Mahatma Gandhi.
She opened the door and I wanted her. Her face wore a sullen resistance—her natural mien—that was immediately arousing. I had driven here directly from Kafka’s castle because I didn’t want to go home, and there was nowhere else to go. I had briefly contemplated heading to the sports club for a jog, but the thought of talking to Sara was more appealing. Then she opened the door wearing a thin white cotton slip, a red wrap with yellow flowers and a petulant look, and all I wanted to do was to pick her up and hang her on the wall.
The problem, of course, was that to hang Sara on the wall you needed first to argue with her. Or, more accurately, have her shout at you. Today I had fresh fuel for her rage. But my ardour cooled the moment I stepped in and saw she was drinking rum with water. The squat glass was less than half full, and I could see it was strong with the dark alcohol. I hated her rum mouth, the sourness of the flavour. A fat bottle of Old Monk sat on the dining-table, freshly opened, dipped to just below its neck. Next to it, cap-less, sat an empty bottle. The signs were bad. The rum assault meant she was in a roil about something serious. Not the kind that would lead to a shouting match and a nailing. This one seemed like a simmer: few words, the shutters down, a melancholy aloofness. Occasionally—very rarely—even self-doubt, though that was so alien to her condition.
Without asking me she went into her untidy kitchen—food stains on the burner, disorder in the cupboards, unwashed dishes in the sink—brewed me a big mug of tea, and walked into her bedroom. I followed. The heap of
newspapers, books, magazines, printed sheets and loosely strung brown files heaped on the bed had grown out of control. Adding to the mess were an open packet of potato chips, an open packet of glucose biscuits, and a steel ashtray studded with cigarette butts. One of these days we’d be lying on the floor. The bedside lamp, angled on to the pillows, had clearly been burning for a long time. It was pulsing a slow heat. Napoleon was silent, dead till next April.
She sat down against the pillows, and I had to find a perch near her feet. I could look up her wrap but did not dare do so. That kind of vulgarity she never forgave. Cheap, roadside stuff. Our symphony of abuse was different. It was intellectual. It was an art form. So I looked her in the eye, and she glowered back. Her frail shoulders—the bones cutting the air—were truly sensual. It was a pity I could never get past her full hips.
In as flat a voice as I could summon I slowly led her through our visit to the ninth floor. I omitted the allusions to the mysterious woman. There was no point in alarming her. Also, I did not want her storming up the stairs and pulling the plywood walls down. She didn’t interrupt me even once, alternately pulling on a cigarette and glugging the rum. When I finished, she tilted the last drops into her throat, got off the bed, and came back with a replenished glass. I hated it when she was like this.
I said, ‘Do you think they are telling the truth?’
About what, she asked with her eyebrows.
‘Pakistan,’ I said.
In a toneless voice she said, ‘Listen, you are a stupid schoolboy. They know it. They deal with fools like you every day. They know you are thrilled at having become so grand. Killers after you, policemen guarding you, judges studying your case. It’s your ultimate wet dream, isn’t it? Well, they are making it wetter for you, much grander—an international conspiracy, Pakistan commissioning assassins, fancy officers in multistoreyed buildings decoding complicated plots. You are finally starring in your own pulp novel. You are dying to believe them. So just do.’
I wanted to pick her up, slam her against the wall and twist her neck till all the smugness was squeezed out of her like coils of toothpaste. Guruji was right: too much reading, too many books, were a dangerous thing. No conversation could be simple; no response uncalibrated. Everything had to be fashioned into an elaborate construct: of motives and postures and neuroses and failings. I wish I could have told the crazy bitch that I wasn’t even interested in what she thought. I just wanted to feel her exquisite chocolate skin and perish with her voice ringing in my ears in that deep dark place that she kept so madly moist.
I said, ‘They seem to know about you too.’
She pulled on her cigarette—her third since I’d arrived—for so long that I could see the burn run and crackle. ‘And what do they know, mighty peashooter? That I drink rum with water and allow you sometimes to stick your toothpick into me?’
What did her parents do? Wean her on quinine?
‘It makes sense to be careful,’ I said. ‘Can’t trust these guys.’
For the first time a kind of smile cracked her face. It was the kind of smile that accompanies the final stab. ‘Oh, now you can’t trust these guys! For the last one year you’ve diligently listened to whatever they had to say—these are policemen to guard you, these are the killers, there’s Pakistan handing out the contracts! But now that you know they’re getting into the details of your adulterous poking, you begin to not trust them! What do you think they’ll do to me? Name me as an accomplice of the other five? Accuse me of dangerously draining your body fluids?’
The huge mug of tea had filled my bladder like a water balloon. I got up and went to her loo and poured myself into the sink in a splatter that lasted forever. When I came out, she had pulled on her jeans and was standing in the living-room, her house keys in her hand. Anger burst in me in a flash and I elbowed her aside and without a word was out the door. I was down the stairs when her voice came: ‘Time to go home and fill ms white’s pinkie-winkie. But when you are done, mr peashooter, look at the ceiling and think about yourself.’
So I did what she said. When Dolly/folly opened the door and asked if I’d like some dinner, I pushed her into our bedroom and onto our bed without saying a word. She was so thrilled at this rare assault that she immediately flung up her long legs—the cherubs on her nightie taking a dive—and mewled softly. The rage was still moving in me and I was deep in her with the first thrust. It was like being in a mug of warm water. She was a weeping mess. So like her; not a trace of subtlety.
I buried my face in her neck, away from her mouth, and began to swim. She locked her ankles around my back like a pair of handcuffs, and began to pant and moan my name. It was unbearable. The lights made it worse. I tried to shut out her voice, her body.
For some reason I found myself thinking of the grinning squirrel in the closet room on the ninth floor: great minds work in silence. Did he really know more, or was this how all these guys worked? Never letting on that they knew more, and always pretending they knew more than they actually did? And ought I to care? Wasn’t this a typically Indian situation, full of fevered fictions and forked tongues? As Guruji often said, ‘Most of the time we are like ghosts moving in the mist. We can barely find ourselves, leave alone others.’ I had always taken advantage of being a ghost in the mist, so why should I worry now? Just because a woman with an unequal body had ordered me to stare up at the ceiling and think about myself?
I suddenly realized that Dolly/folly was agitating under me. Probably because I was swimming poorly. It didn’t look like I had much stroke left in me. At this rate I would soon drown. Her heel was digging into my back. She was prodding me like a horse! What happened to the ideal of the demure Hindu wife? Her loud panting was mystifying too. The action did not support it. If I were Guruji now, I would have said, ‘Don’t mix up things. Never work out the ire against one woman on another.’
I noticed her earrings. They were tiny silver tennis racquets! We were really a country without hope. I closed my eyes tight and tried to conjure up a red wrap with yellow flowers. Without warning the woman below me gave a loud grunt. It was an animal sound. In disgust I bit hard into her shoulder. She read it wrong and began to buck even more, her heel banging me rhythmically. I tried to think of things that would help me finish this. I could dredge up nothing. For some reason, the grinning squirrel kept grabbing all the space: the bushy moustache; the no-suicide window; great minds working in silence.
Three muffled beeps sounded. I stretched my hand down to the floor and felt around in my peeled-off trousers for my mobile. I held it away from her head and opened the message and instantly felt a charge. It was nothing short of a book. Much too long to read and fuck at the same time. So I rolled off her and sat up against the backrest. She looked at me with an abject mix of self-pity and rebuke, as if I’d stripped her naked in the middle of the road. The flying cherubs bunched around her waist looked pretty forlorn too. Grimly, without looking her in the face, I said, ‘Police’, and began to scroll. Dolly/folly! She was foolish enough to believe the police was writing me novellas on sms in the middle of the night. The best thing I’d ever done in my life was to have never given her the right to ask questions. Two scrolls of the screen and I’d forgotten there was a half-naked woman with a mug of warm water inside her lying by my side.
Sara was distressed because the sparrow had finally flown from her side. For the last two months I knew Bhandariji, the tiny melodramatic lawyer of Patiala House, had been giving signs of waning interest in Sara’s case, or rather in Sara. I had not been told this, but had gathered it from the drift of her conversation. Today it seemed he had not taken her calls, and when she’d shown up at his office—in his residence—he had refused to meet her. Of course you did not stop Sara so easily. She had hollered so loud and long that all the doors had to be flung open. In the presence of his juniors, and with his sour, prematurely ageing wife hovering in the backdrop, Bhandariji had declared that there was no case. The five men were doomed. He had done his best. He cou
ld not give it any more time.
When Sara attacked him for being money-fixated, he said—and I could just see him, with a cinematic cock of his head, his fingertips priming his collar—‘Madam, who doesn’t like money? But here there is no case and there is no money! I have studied it and I know. We are both wasting our time. These men are like random stalks of sugarcane. Powerful men cut them, chew them, and spit them out. No one pays to kill them; no one pays to save them. You must spend your time on better things. Bride burning, child labour, witch-hunting, sati, dowry deaths, female foeticide, cholera, tuberculosis, polio, tree-felling, pollution …’
Yes, the whole fucking world waiting to be saved. From itself.
Sara was not one to take anything at face value. She was too full of grand education for that. The American university had taught her things like deconstruction and subtext. Instead of the cunning of the sub-literate she had the suspicion of the overeducated. And like most Indians, with two hundred years of colonial genuflections running in their veins, she was born bawling conspiracy theories. She said: clearly, the sparrow was either being leaned upon or had taken money from someone. She was going to find out and she was going to fix him. The sparrow’s strange about-face made her even more certain that the assassins were innocent.
I became aware of naked legs lying next to me, the cherubs congregating at the waist. How well she’d trimmed herself, as if she were about to star in a centrefold. She was doing what I had been ordered to do—stare up at the ceiling and think about oneself. Sensing my gaze, she turned to look at me. Her pleading cow eyes filled me with revulsion and I leapt off the bed, picked up my trousers, and went into the bathroom.
I pulled the car out of the lane, took two turns and parked under the old semul tree by the park.
The shadow had been sleeping on his fold-out bed inside the veranda’s overhang when I emerged from the house, and had poked his head out of the blanket. This was a new one, a young boy called Munna, only six months in the business. He was not made to be a cop. He had done a BSc and an MSc in physics from Rohtak (one degree more than me) and had a soft face that belonged to a bank clerk or a chemist. Someone—some frantic family member: in Indian families breeding insecurity is a favourite pastime—someone had pushed him into enlisting. His ambitions lay elsewhere. Often he could be seen reading thick blue-coloured tomes, preparing for the civil service exam that he hoped would give him a desk job and other cops to order around. The fool held his 9mm as if it would explode in his hands. I knew he never kept it loaded—the magazine was always in his right pocket. If I was ever attacked I would be killed, cremated and drifted down the Ganga before he got his pistol and ammunition aligned. I answered the question in his eyes by saying I was just going down the road for a paan and he could keep sleeping. He had slumped back gratefully.
The Story of My Assassins Page 37
