The Truth

by Michael Palin

  The afternoon wore on and Farud continued his erudite and expansive explanations of the evolution of the Jagamohana, the Natir and Bhoga Mandirs and various other elements of Hindu architecture.

  ‘And the trident on top of the tower, sir, what does that signify?’

  ‘That we are near the coast?’

  Farud swung his head from side to side with delight.

  ‘No! It is the temple of Shiva, the creator. And if it were a temple of Vishnu, what would appear up there?’

  ‘An elephant?’

  ‘No! If it were Vishnu, the symbol would be a wheel!’

  ‘I think I should get back to the hotel, Farud. I must make a call to London before it gets too late,’ Mabbut lied, weary of being the foil.

  ‘It will be eleven o’clock in the night in the UK.’

  ‘Yes, and I must tell my wife I’ve arrived safely,’ he lied again.

  ‘Ah-ha!’ Farud winked conspiratorially. ‘The wife. Of course.’

  The next morning Mabbut slept off some of his jet-lag, and, having deferred Farud until late afternoon, he set to work on a plan of action. Matching all the information he’d gleaned in the last hectic week in London with the various leads he’d collected from Rex Naismith, everything seemed to point to a nondescript guest house that was said to be Melville’s base in the city. But when Mabbut showed Farud the address, the man’s face darkened and he shook his head.

  ‘This is not a good place, Mr Keith. This is far from the airport. Many poor people stay here.’

  ‘Well, I’d like to see it. A friend recommended it.’

  Farud nodded obligingly but the look in his eyes spoke volumes.

  They set off in the late afternoon. The shiny white Toyota 4x4 supplied by Farud’s company seemed increasingly out of place as they left the wide boulevards of the city and bounced across railway tracks into a labyrinth of narrow, twisting back streets. Bodies spilled around the car. Mabbut had never seen so many people on the street – the only comparison he could think of was the Holloway Road on a night when Arsenal were playing at home, except that these crowds were not on their way to anywhere else. This was where they lived. There was no elevated sense of excitement urging them on. If anything, the common emotion was resignation. Faces stared into the windows, their eyes unblinking and vacant.

  ‘Where are all these people coming from, Farud?’

  ‘They are always here, Mr Keith. Coming and going, you know. This is a very poor area.’

  They moved deeper into the old part of town, their driver, like all the other drivers, leaning on his horn, adding his contribution to the constant, discordant cacophony of the street. It was not a cacophony of complaint, or even of purpose, just an acknowledgement of a shared existence. Children squeezed between their parents, sitting two or three to a motorbike. Stooped old women moving at a snail’s pace. Boys with a dozen egg-boxes on their heads. Meandering cows, skin stretched tight across spiky haunches. All were given their space on the road. And, despite the noise of all the horns, no one seemed to get out of anyone else’s way.

  Nothing had quite prepared Mabbut for this. It was the India he had heard, and read, about, but now it was real, he found it exhilarating and alarming at the same time. For what seemed like hours the Toyota inched its way through endless narrow bazaars until Nirwan the driver – a large, broad-shouldered, endlessly patient man – pointed out an arched gateway set a little way back from the road, and quite incongruous among the shacks selling fruit, wicker baskets and gleaming piles of pots and pans. ‘Hotel Farhan, Foodings and Lodgings’ read the faded sign above the entrance. Beneath it had been painted, more recently, ‘P. Singh, Prop’. Nirwan swung the wheel, blasted his horn one last time and passed between cracked and mildewed pillars into a small courtyard. A black cockerel strutted irritably across their path.

  Farud was not at all comfortable. He registered his displeasure by being even more curt than usual with Nirwan, who could clearly have felled him with one blow had he so wished.

  ‘Stop here! Not here! There! By the door.’

  The building now occupied by the Hotel Farhan had clearly been around for a while. It was almost square, with a shallow pitched roof, stone walls trimmed with laterite and rooms on three floors. Indeed, its proportions were not unlike those of a Georgian rectory. The windows on the lower level were shuttered and barred. Between them was a doorway of surprisingly elegant design, with stuccoed columns on either side. From it emerged a tall man, light of colour, with a grey, military moustache, and a shiny bald head. He wore steel-rimmed glasses and was naked to the waist.

  He looked with some disdain at the car, its driver and its passengers. Mabbut felt embarrassed and wished he’d asked Farud to drop him outside in the street, where their approach would have seemed less invasive, but it was too late for that. Farud got out and talked to the man, wobbling his head a lot and glancing over at Mabbut. Then he climbed back into the car, shut the door and wound up the window.

  He looked serious and when he spoke it was in a strange and formal tone, like a policeman advising someone of their rights.

  ‘Sir Keith, if it is your wish to stay here, there is a room free. It will be two hundred rupees a night. There is water and a toilet close to the room. They do not have a cook. He is gone.’

  He nodded in the direction of the bony proprietor.

  ‘But he will make some food for you. He speaks a little English.’

  Mabbut was confused, and more than a little dubious. He rooted about in his notebook to check the address he’d been given.

  ‘This is 28 Awanati Road?’

  The driver nodded. Time seemed to stand still for a moment. The proprietor waited in the shade of the doorway, flicking away flies with a cotton towel. A dog appeared in the yard, barked fiercely then collapsed on the ground, panting with the effort. Mabbut knew they were all waiting for his decision. The sensible course of action would be to return to the Garden Hotel and start again, yet the name and the address matched what he’d been given. And he had to start somewhere. He looked again at the dingy yard, with the emaciated dog and the strutting black cockerel and the pile of paper and dust half swept into a corner.

  ‘Tell him I’ll take the room.’

  TWO

  Mabbut unpacked his things, and finding nowhere to put them, packed them away again. Apart from a low bed with slightly damp sheets, the furniture in his room was limited to a chair, a small table stabilised by wedges of tightly folded newspaper and a chest of drawers with no drawers in it. A bulky air-con unit above the door burst into action and shuddered to a halt at frequent intervals, as if it were trying to cough something up. After a while Mabbut turned it off and relied instead on a wooden-bladed ceiling fan that swirled silently, languidly and largely ineffectively. To combat the disorientation he felt, he took out his notebook and began to write down everything that had happened to him since his arrival in India.

  When he finally looked up from his work it was evening. Farud had returned to his office, so Mabbut decided to take a walk in the thronged street outside the hotel. The air smelt of spice and incense and dung. Scooters fizzed around him, motorised rickshaws snarled their way through, an occasional gaudily decorated truck pushed past, horn blasting, while cows emerged from side streets, wandering into the thick of it all with serene indifference. A bicycle bell clanged behind Mabbut and he quickly stepped aside to avoid being impaled on the six-foot lengths of steel piping slung across the handlebars. Once he’d accepted the confusion Mabbut began to feel oddly safe and comfortable. The rough and tumble of humanity offered its own sense of security.

  Then a sudden sharp cry from farther up the street cut through the ambient noise. Mabbut stood on tiptoe, craning his neck for a better view. A crowd was converging on a tilted autorickshaw. He could hear shouts, raised voices, people thumping the roof of the vehicle. He half walked, half ran to join the group of onlookers. Anger and argument filled the air as arms were raised and fists clenched. Apportioning bl
ame seemed to be more important than helping the injured. A woman lay moaning on the ground. Beside her, a young man in shirt and jeans was cowering from the blows and kicks that were raining down on his body. Some bystanders were making an attempt to pull away the assailants and Mabbut pushed forward to join them. As he did so he felt a tight pressure on his arm and heard a soft but authoritative voice.

  ‘Don’t get involved.’

  Mabbut wheeled round to find himself being gently, but firmly, led away from the scene by a tall, rangy white man wearing loose cotton trousers and a kurta. Though his face was partially obscured by a mane of lank grey hair, the jut of the jaw, the long straight nose and the deep-set eyes were unmistakable. Mabbut’s mouth went dry. It was, undoubtedly, the man he’d come to look for.

  They sat at a table farther up the street, away from the angry crowd. Beside them a boy with thick dark hair and almost jet-black skin pumped a pair of bellows to arouse the fire beneath his saucepan. Stirring the milk and tea together and adding a touch of fennel and cardamom, he brought the mixture to the boil then carefully deposited the contents into two small glasses which he set before them. Mabbut smiled his thanks. His companion picked up his glass without acknowledgement and took a careful sip.

  ‘They’re a volatile lot,’ he said, staring off into the street. ‘They get upset pretty quickly.’

  Melville spoke crisply, almost curtly, his tone softened by the merest hint of a Scottish burr.

  ‘No good at bottling it up.’

  He turned to Mabbut and paused just long enough to make him feel uncomfortable.

  ‘Unlike us.’

  Mabbut nodded appreciatively. His glass was almost too hot to hold so he took a sip swiftly, hoping Melville wouldn’t notice that his hand was shaking. Unsure what to say next, he looked back towards the scene of the accident, where arms and voices were still being raised. He sensed Melville’s eyes on him.

  ‘Here for long?’

  Mabbut shrugged unconvincingly.

  ‘Me? No, just a few days.’

  ‘Interesting choice of hotel.’

  Mabbut felt increasingly hot and flustered. He cleared his throat.

  ‘I like to get off the beaten track,’ he replied. ‘Meet the real people, you know.’

  ‘Ah, the real people. Yes.’

  Melville leant back and, gathering his long grey hair in both hands, he drew it into a bunch at the back of his head and held it there for a moment. It seemed an oddly careless gesture for a man of his age and made Mabbut feel a touch more comfortable. There was so much he wanted to ask, but he was aware that he must not rush things, must control any tendency to gabble. There would be plenty of time. But then, quite suddenly, Melville stood, dropped a twenty-rupee note on the table, spoke briefly in Hindi to the boy and hoisted a bag on to his shoulder. He smiled down at Mabbut, who rose too, rather more clumsily.

  Melville extended his hand.

  ‘Well, good luck,’ he said. ‘And be careful. This is a tough part of town.’

  And with that he nodded – not to Mabbut, but to someone behind him.

  As Mabbut turned, he saw a battered green jeep detach itself from the crowds and move towards them. There were two or three people inside, all locals by the look of it. Melville gave a faint smile.

  ‘The real people aren’t always what you want them to be.’

  Without a backward glance, Melville pulled open the passenger door, climbed in and with a salvo of horn blasts the jeep headed off up the street, turned a corner and was gone.

  Back at the Farhan, Mabbut sat at the rickety table in his room. He was both embarrassed and surprised to find that his hands were still shaking as he opened his notebook. The tip-off about the hotel had worked better than he’d had any right to expect. Thank God he’d not been put off taking the room. He had not only made contact with Melville on his second day in India, he had found him without any help from Latham. Less satisfactory had been his own reaction to his subject, more star-struck schoolboy than hard-nosed reporter.

  He had sort of assumed that subterfuge wouldn’t be necessary, that if you admired someone as much as he did Melville then you’d be bound to get on. He had never really entertained the thought that Melville might not like him, or might not want to talk to him. Which of course was highly likely. This was a man with a pathological dislike of media scrutiny. A man no journalist had been able to get near to. But at least he was in the right place, Mabbut reflected. What he needed to do now was to prepare himself a lot more carefully before their next encounter.

  From his window he looked down on a narrow, hard-earth alleyway on either side of which were low houses with long thatched roofs whose eaves provided a shady space in which women and children were preparing for the night. A beetle of some sort had crawled along the cracked plaster outside and was struggling to climb over the window frame. After several attempts it heaved itself up, ran along the sill and disappeared into a crack in the wall. Mabbut remained for some moments staring at the space. Then he took a deep breath, closed his notebook, pushed back his chair and stood up. He felt a welcome if uncharacteristic surge of self-belief, which he credited to the beetle. This was his Robert the Bruce moment. He would eat, wash, sleep off his jet-lag and by tomorrow would be refreshed and ready with a proper strategy for winning Melville’s confidence. He had been caught with his trousers down this afternoon, but it wouldn’t happen again.

  It was a moment or two before he realised that someone was knocking. The raps sounded again, more insistently this time. Mabbut moved swiftly across the room and pulled open the door. The tall, strangely aristocratic figure of Mr Singh, the half-naked proprietor, stood there, his eyes flashing quickly around the room before returning to Mabbut.

  ‘How is your room, sir?’

  ‘It’s fine, absolutely fine. Thank you.’

  ‘It is my best.’

  ‘Well, I appreciate that.’

  ‘And this you must light in the evening.’ He handed Mabbut a green coil on a black stand. ‘For the mosquitoes.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘There is a toilet and shower at the end of the passage. It is shared.’

  Mabbut nodded.

  ‘That’s fine with me. I see I’m not the only British guest,’ he added, rather pleased with himself.

  Parval Singh shook his head.

  ‘No. No British ever come here.’

  Mabbut faltered, then pressed on.

  ‘I . . . er . . . I was recommended this place by someone who said their friend Mr Melville sometimes stays here.’

  Mr Singh looked puzzled, and shook his head.

  ‘But I just met him in the street outside. A tall white man wearing Indian dress.’ Mabbut waved his hands around. ‘Lots of hair.’

  Singh’s frown lifted.

  ‘Ah, Mr Steiner. Yes. He’s from Belgium.’

  Mabbut risked a long hard look at Mr Singh. He returned Mabbut’s gaze evenly.

  ‘Well, he sounded English to me. Maybe when he comes back to the hotel we can ask him.’

  Mr Singh shook his head.

  ‘He is not coming back to the hotel, sir. He’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Mr Steiner has gone. Checked out. Left.’

  There was a noise from the floor below. A door squeaked then slammed shut. The sound of footsteps receded down a passageway. Mr Singh mopped his neck with his cotton towel.

  ‘Do you have your passport, please?’

  Mabbut went back inside his room, rooted about in his jacket, then handed it over.

  Mr Singh turned to go.

  ‘I make you dinner in one hour.’

  Mabbut followed him into the narrow passageway. It smelt of cinnamon.

  ‘Excuse me. The gentleman. The . . . the Belgian gentleman. Do you know where he’s gone?’

  Mr Singh shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Mr Steiner comes and goes.’

  Below them footsteps returned.

  ‘One hour. In the dining room?’
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br />   ‘Can I eat outside?’

  Parval Singh smiled firmly.

  ‘No.’

  Mabbut ate alone in the dining room, a gloomy space at the back in which the atmosphere was not enhanced by a strip-light which kept flickering every now and then as if it were about to expire. Mr Singh was nowhere to be seen. A plate of rice and dhal was brought in by a young boy Mabbut had spotted earlier, shooing dogs from the yard. Mabbut asked him for a beer, but none appeared. His plate was then removed and replaced, a moment or two later, with a white saucer on which there was a banana and a small, squashy orange. It was marginally cooler down here than in his room, so Mabbut lingered over his fruit, trying to decide what he should do next. Find out why Melville was calling himself Steiner for a start. Having finished both the banana and the disappointingly tasteless orange, he stood up and, instead of taking the stairs, crossed the empty reception area and headed towards the front door. The balmy heat of the night and the sound of the streets rose to meet him, as did a myriad of subtle but distinctive scents. In the little yard where Farud had dropped him earlier there was now a crowd of crouching figures. Despite the great heat some were shivering, pulling blankets around them. There were lights in the gloom and Mabbut caught glimpses of liquid and foil. Some figures turned towards him but their eyes were unfocused and they quickly turned away.

  The night was so hot when Mabbut returned to his room that he was forced to activate the air con, whose convulsive thumps and shudders brought him a semblance of cool air at the cost of some dreadful dreams. He was stumbling through a forest, falling to the ground and being dragged onwards by some unseen force when the grating cry of a cockerel plucked him from the nightmare. He groped for his travel clock on the floor by the bed. Indignation was added to discomfort when the clock told him that it was half-past three. The cock sounded again, just below the window, then a dog barked and another dog answered from farther away, a donkey shrieked, and soon a whole arrhythmic animal chorus filled the night. Mabbut lay staring at the barely revolving fan, unable to recapture any of the elation of the day before. His mind was full of negatives. Melville was gone and Mabbut was clearly being told, in as many words, not even to think of following him.