The Book of Chocolate Saints

by Jeet Thayil

  Then he took a breath and forgot all about the Aztecs. He compared the Roma songlines of North India and Europe to the Dravidian lines of Australia. And on he went, talking non-stop, dazzling a table full of people; only Goody knew he was out of his mind.

  He was out of his mind and the days became unpredictable. She took to spending time on her own, walking around the neighbourhood or disappearing to a coffee shop. One Sunday there was no water in any of the taps and she discovered there was no water in the entire building. It happened, she was told by friends, it happened often and it would continue to happen until one day the water would stop for good. She went out, turned left past the shopping complex on the corner and walked along Commercial Street toward the old Russell Market. Here she found an elderly peepal tree where a man had set up a small shop. A rope was lit at one end and allowed to smoulder and it was used as a lighter by the men who bought single cigarettes or beedis and smoked them quickly, their eyes vacant. She took a beedi and lit it with the rope and smoked standing by the side of the road, away from the other smokers who stared because she was the only woman among them. The tobacco burned her throat and the leaf left a bitter taste on her lips. When she went to pay, the man who ran the shop asked her if she was unwell. She told him her throat was scratchy. The man said he also sold lemonade, cough drops, and paan, but it was the lemonade that would help her because he made it with black salt and soda water. He wore a khaki bus conductor’s tunic over a collared white shirt. Reading glasses hung on a cord around his neck. She nodded vaguely. The man used a metal lemon squeezer to make a fizzy drink.

  “This will make you feel better,” he said.

  *

  They hired a box on wheels that Goody was convinced would tip over in the lightest wind and the driver took them to a disused airfield two hours from the city. On the way they passed crowds of protestors, Hindus of all castes shouting slogans in Kannada and Hindi, united against a foreign evangelist who had dared to fish in local waters.

  “Bharat Mata ki Jai. Benny Time go home.”

  The driver stopped the car. A crowd of bare-chested swamis blocked the road, flanked by a wedge of photographers and journalists, the swamis wearing pressed orange robes and shampooed beards. When a photographer gave the signal their expressions changed, placards and fists waved in the air, the slogans began. It was craft and choreography, thought Goody, impressive to behold. She saw a fight between two photographers who wanted the same vantage spot.

  “Girish, Girish, calm down I say,” said a reporter to one of the men.

  Girish was beyond calming. He grabbed his opponent in a two-handed wrestler’s grip but was unable to gain the advantage and the altercation ended only when the other man pulled off the cell phone that dangled from a cord around Girish’s neck and flung it to the side of the road. Girish had to give up his spot to retrieve the phone.

  The car could not move in either direction: there was a crowd behind them and a crowd ahead. Xavier wound down his window and a blast of sound and heat entered.

  “Bharat Mata Ki, Hindu Dharam Ki Jai!”

  It took a good twenty minutes for the photographers to get their shots and for the road to clear, and when the photos were done the swamis climbed into an air-conditioned jeep and relaxed against the towelled seats and waited for the next call.

  In a vast lot jammed with cars and trucks the driver parked and said he would wait. They walked to the airfield, a fenced-in grid of giant screens and plastic chairs.

  “I want to surprise him. If there’s a chance, I want to avail,” Xavier said, stretching the last syllable and its suggestion of Old Testament rigour, of flail and vale and prevail.

  In the centre of the field was a stage awash in white lights and flowers. There were no stars in the sky. They made their way through makeshift aisles and found seats and then the wait began. Around them was a crowd of thousands or tens of thousands, people drawn from every class and caste, believers who’d waited all day squeezed two or three to a chair. An hour went by, two hours, then a helicopter landed into a dust storm and a tall figure stepped out and made for the stage, the spotlights reflecting the white dazzle of his suit.

  Now a choir of twenty singers led the crowd through a version of the national anthem. The names of the states were mispronounced but Goody had never heard the song sound so grand, all leisurely pauses and effortless harmonies. The music sounded like gospel from the American south, funky gospel in a rattlesnake church, and seductive too, because the female voices were orgasmic or pre-orgasmic. Two Pandits, Jasraj and Hari Prasad, vocalist and flautist, came up for a quick spot and applause swelled before they had made a note. Then the Pandits left the stage and here were two women in white saris, the sisters Mangeshkar, Asha and Lata, their lifelong rivalry set aside for the moment. And what must have been the cost of bringing them to Bangalore for a single duet, India’s most famous singers, movie industry mainstays whose private lives were gossiped and speculated about as much as the movie stars who lip-synced to their songs? Each sang a verse of the anthem, Lata’s shrillness a long way from the sweet aching timbre of her early years, and together in hushed accented voices the sisters introduced Time.

  “Bunny Tame,” they said, “welcome!”

  He bounded onto the stage in his white suit, holding the microphone with thumb and forefinger like a nightclub crooner and the floods picked up the shape of the multitude in its hundreds of thousands.

  “Hallelujah! The people of God said Hallelujah!”

  The answering roar put the crowd on its feet.

  “Are you ready to be loved?”

  Another roar.

  “India will be blessed, a great past and a great future.”

  He introduced the politicians and industrialists who waited in the wings, well-known names and faces with the hushed hypnotised look of men who had become as unto children.

  “We have so many VVIPs, more stars on the ground than in the sky.”

  A stocky white-haired man in billowing white cotton tottered into the spotlight, how frail and odd he looked, in a gold-bordered lungi and gym socks bisected by aged rubber slippers.

  “It’s the Prime Minister of Karnataka,” said a woman behind them as the spotlight slid off the elderly politician and went back to the man in white.

  “And we are honoured to have the Prime Minister of Holland because we’re all human and we’re all hungry. Aren’t we, Mr PM?”

  The man stepped forward, smiling shakily and showing no teeth. There was something hungry about him, Goody thought, a hollow-cheeked something that belied the beautiful grey suit and the pearly gleam of the pin in his tie.

  The woman behind them said, “Sthothram, sthothram.” It was the Malayalam for ‘praise’, Xavier whispered to Goody.

  A man behind them belched and said, “Halla, Hallelujah.”

  The Prime Minister of Holland said, “It is a pleasure to be in Bangalore with Benny Time.”

  “Sthothram,” repeated the woman.

  “Can’t you say it quietly?” someone said.

  “Bengaluru, Mr PM, that’s the new name,” said Time.

  “Soothram, soothram,” the woman said. It was the Malayalam for ‘secret’, according to Xavier, who prided himself on his language skills.

  “Bengalwoowoo,” said the Prime Minister of Holland.

  But Time had lost interest in the Dutchman and he turned to work his ministry, healing his way through a queue of several dozen sufferers, a two-finger touch on the neck and backwards they fell into the arms of a waiting minder, or they winced and swayed and stayed on their feet.

  “I bless you for the whole rest of your lives.”

  There were scattered Hallelujahs.

  “If you can hear me, let me know.”

  Time waited but there was nothing.

  “Let me know louder.”

  Now there was a roar from the crowd.

  “Is that the best you can do?”

  A girl was screaming, stopping only to draw breath.
How frightening to be a child among a crowd of the deranged and the worshipful, thought Goody, as another roar erupted. The child shrieked again, her cry lost in an ambient forest of dislocated yells and whispers, the restless fidgety lowing of a herd. Goody looked for her but all she could see were their immediate neighbours standing on chairs. Above them Time loomed on a giant screen.

  She felt Xavier’s agitation. There were too many bodies too closely packed together. She told him to tilt his face but the sight of the open sky did nothing to lessen the dread that was accumulating, he said, in the exact centre of his chest. Goody thought, this is what it means to be a mother, this helplessness and anguish in the face of another’s infirmity.

  She said, “If you want to start making your way to the stage, I’ll come with you.”

  “Nope, nope, let’s see how it goes.”

  A woman in a housecoat and headscarf nodded at Goody. Tears fell to her cheeks and her lips said a silent prayer and though she cried without cease otherwise she was composed, her eyes calm and intelligent.

  Behind them the now familiar voice said, “Gee suscom forts you. Heecom forts me too.”

  Time said, “I want to introduce a young man, shining Johnny Starr. Johnny, I got a Q for you. Is this your first time in Hindustan?”

  “Yes, sir, it certainly is.”

  “And how do you like it, Johnny?”

  “I love it, Mr Time.”

  “Believe me, guy, the people love you too.”

  The music changed, became faster, and Johnny waded into a cloud of smoke. There was a saxophonist and a big-haired man with a keyboard slung around his neck. The choir bobbed in the back.

  Jerusalem, Jerusalem.

  Hear the fearsome angels chime

  Hosannas to the King of Time.

  Johnny wore a white silk T-shirt with a flannel shirt and torn jeans. Goody admired the way he threw his hand in the air and cocked a hip and held the pose. Then, unexpectedly, he stuck out his tongue at the floating cameras and pogoed in place. It was mid-career Elvis via Kurt Cobain. It was rock & roll and Broadway.

  And it was a fundraiser.

  Time said, “I believe the Lord Almighty wants to bless your finances and not just your life.”

  “Here we go,” Goody told Xavier.

  “Cumshot,” Xavier said loudly.

  Time said, “We’ve spent a lot of dollars on this great event. Now we’ll pass the bags through the aisles. Let the people of God give. I’m asking you to give freely tonight. The angels of Jerusalem need you. John?”

  Now Johnny Starr took a solo, a cappella, his phrasing more Seattle than Las Vegas.

  Jerusalem, Jerusalem.

  Hear the chosen children cry

  Glory be to him on high.

  A camera crane passed over their heads, the operator pointing his lens at the billowing white gowns and shiny dark faces of the choir. Johnny waited until the camera had floated to a stop directly in front of him before starting his big-voiced finale, an eight-second rendition of a single word, Time.

  Jerusalem, Jerusalem.

  Earth will open, dead will live,

  Open up your purse and give.

  Jerusalem, Jerusalem.

  Jesus says we’ll all be fine

  If we follow Benny Time.

  Time reappeared just as Johnny’s last note belled into a hush. As a professional, Goody admired the technical finesse and for that reason alone she thought the Benn and Johnny show deserved six out of ten.

  “Give Johnny a big god-bless-ya. This is the largest meeting in the history of Christianity: 2.3 million people here tonight! A golden testament to the glory of God. Go on now, give the Lord a hand and show him you believe in history tonight. And the people said Amen.”

  “Amen.”

  Behind them the woman said, “Bliss a balathoost.”

  Goody took a quick look. It was a family, a man, his wife, three children, and several aunts, eyes closed and arms raised, absolutely ordinary except they spoke in tongues.

  “Holy species us, holy calebola velapana.”

  “Send your power maker, elapum elopum.”

  “Holy calaybalamalapum glory elabum.”

  A bespectacled boy of ten said, “Hiss, hiss.”

  The music stopped and for a moment only the woman could be heard in the silence, “Sthothram.” Other voices joined in, “Sthothram, sthothram.”

  Time had returned: “Oh people of India, I’ve not come to tell you about deliverance. I’ve come to tell you about a deliverer.”

  The man translating his speech into Kannada imitated Time’s tone and manner and at times Goody couldn’t tell where the English stopped and the Kannada began and this too seemed like a speaking in tongues.

  “People of India, I ask you, do you want a miracle from the hand of the maker?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then stand up and call his name. Stand up in the name of Jesus. You too will be healed tonight.”

  Three women appeared on stage. Time touched them and they fell together in a heap and he pointed at another, who cringed.

  He said, “This woman had a gynaecological problem for thirty years. Come here, gynac.” The woman fell without being touched.

  He said, “This boy was deaf and dumb for twenty-three years.” He clapped into each of the young man’s ears. “Hello, hallelujah,” he said. “Say Jesus! See the tears in his eyes!”

  There were tears in many eyes, but when Goody turned to check she found the verbal family dry-eyed, alert with appraisal, looking back at her.

  “This boy couldn’t see from his left eye. Yes, now follow me.”

  Time ran around the stage followed by a small boy in shorts and stopped at the spot where the main camera hovered above the stage.

  He said, “You in your homes, I speak to you.”

  He pointed at the crowd. “Who will be healed tonight?”

  Me, said Xavier to Goody as he waded into the throng. She called to him but he was already too far ahead. She had to use her hands to push and because she was small she made little headway. The crowd was thick, thickest near the stage, and she shouted his name knowing he wouldn’t hear.

  Benny Time said, “Hey, muscular dystrophy, come up here, baby, wave for me. Who believes in history tonight? Who will be healed? We give you the praise, Lord, we give you the honour.”

  He ushered a woman and small child to the front of the stage.

  “A mother and baby. Hello? Does anyone speak Hindi?”

  A man came up to speak to the woman and translate for Time who relayed to the audience.

  “This woman is a widow, her baby’s father is dead. It has been two years but her baby cannot walk. How old is your child?”

  “Two years old!”

  “Let this two-year-old baby stand and let her walk! Give the Lord a mighty hand of praise!”

  The baby tottered a few steps and was taken away by her mother.

  Then Goody saw an old man with a faint stumble, his skin transparent in a nimbus of light that adhered to the white stubble on his cheeks, Xavier, approaching with his hands extended.

  He said, “Benny, Benny, oh my fuck!”

  And because there were microphones and cables everywhere Xavier tripped and fell at Time’s feet. And because there were microphones everywhere his words echoed and rang in the silence that followed. Benny Time tried to help him up and Xavier grabbed Time’s lapels and Johnny Starr grabbed him. Time tried to intervene, but Xavier, panicking, flailed his arms and Johnny head-butted him and a warm red stream fell to his shirt.

  In photos of the event that travelled the world in an Internet second the blood gush was Aztec black, spectacular, full entertainment. It was how the poet slash painter Xavier acquired his famous broken nose.

  *

  In the green room with a bag of ice on his face and Goody in charge, Xavier was all forgiveness.

  “Not your fault,” he told Johnny Starr. “You were merely doing your job.”

  “I’m so sorry. I
thought you were an attacker. Forgive me.”

  “Let me get you a shot of Macallan,” Time said. “Settle you down.”

  “No, no,” said Goody.

  “I’m not drinking, if you must know,” said Xavier.

  “Never,” said Time, “did I think these lips would utter those words. Macallan. Not even a little bite to stop the bleeding?”

  He went to a minibar that opened to reveal a selection of champagne, beer, and whisky. On a table were more bottles, mixers, a stainless steel shaker, and an ice bucket that had supplied the bag resting on Xavier’s nose.

  “I thought you were a friend,” Goody said.

  “But, yes,” said Xavier, “that’s why he’s asking.”

  “Not that I want to be the cause of marital discord,” said Time.

  Xavier removed the ice from his face and stared at Time and neither man spoke. Then Xavier shook his head and put back the ice bag.

  He said, “As far as I remember you liked discord, sowed it even. If anything, marital status was a red rag.”

  Goody got up, pointedly, and went to find the facilities.

  “Listen, it’s good to see you, I didn’t know how to get in touch. You look, I don’t know, distinguished is the word. Back then you were only disreputable.”

  “Which I was and may be still.”

  Time’s voice dropped a rung. “I’ll tell you who I remember. Miss Henry. Are you in touch? Last I heard she was a cat burglar drifting around the British Isles in a tinker’s caravan and writing her memoirs. A whole chapter was devoted to you, or was it two chapters?”

  “Miss Henry is in no hurry to speak to me, you’ll be surprised to hear.”

  “Oh, true, true. You left her saying you were stepping out for cigarettes, a dramatic climactic point in the book, the moment she wins the reader’s sympathies despite the drugs and the jail time.”

  “Because of the drugs and the jail time, you mean.”

  “Why are you so cruel to the women in your life, Newton? You’ve always been nice to me.”

  “There’s nothing I expect from you other than this, Benny, a bit of conversation once in a midnight blue moon, an exchange of pleasantries, some inadvertent comedy or blood spill. But other than that, no expectation, no disappointment.”