by Jeet Thayil
“A few months. I’m not counting the days, if you see what I mean.”
“And you don’t get urges?”
“I don’t know if I can call them urges, more like a false flu, some strange viral refraction. I wait until it passes.”
“How come you don’t take a drink?”
“Fear. If I take one I’ll take a dozen and the next thing I know, three days have passed, and I’m in a town I don’t recognise with someone I’ve never seen before in my life.”
The two men looked at him seriously and the American nodded in a solemn way. Perhaps they had quit humour when they quit drinking and a joke was seen as some kind of gateway drug back into the big ooze?
Now Vincent joined them.
“Excuse me, Xavier, why you bother coming if you’re against the fellowship?”
“That’s a fair question. I don’t know.”
“You’re the painter, right? Sit. Let’s talk.”
There was a bus stop and a bench and the men sat down.
Vincent said, “My mother named me for a painter.”
“Oh, yes, yes,” said Xavier. The man was named for one of the high ones and that had to count for something. He remembered his last visit to Starry Night on a Friday afternoon not long before the museum moved to its new location, the rooms full of crowds, locals, tourists, regulars, and he’d looked at the canvas of drowned stars, each glowing like an underwater moon, while people and workmen milled about, and he’d thought, yes, Vincent would have preferred a thoroughfare to a cathedral.
“I always wished my mother named me for someone different. Someone who wasn’t famous for cutting off his ear and giving it to a hoor.”
“That is not what he’s famous for.”
“Yes it is, trust me. The first thing people remember is exactly that, not his paintings, his life. And the first thing they remember about his life is his earlessness. I always wondered how he managed to wear his glasses.”
Somebody laughed.
“Perhaps you should stop talking,” Xavier suggested.
“I’m thinking of legally changing it, mate, my name. What happened to your nose?”
Then he said something that Xavier heard and immediately forgot, or he didn’t hear because the nasal grating of the man’s voice was too loud in his ear. With a firm two-handed grasp he grabbed Vincent by the neck. Why did he not stop talking, why? He’d asked the fellow to stop, asked politely, and now there was nothing for it but to get a little forceful with the fucker. There’d been too much talk in any case and words hurt his head. It was important that the man stop speaking, absolutely vital that he shut his lying mouth. If he said another word Xavier would have to crush his useless shit-clogged windpipe. But the others were crowding him now, giving him no space to move, grabbing his wrists.
And then Vincent said, I think you should let me up.
3.
There was no gentle build-up, two glasses of wine one evening, four the next and so on, exponentially into the dark. He went all out from moment one, bought a quarter bottle of whisky, a nip bottle, the professional’s measure, and put a slug in his coffee first thing in the morning and got to work. He went from teetotal to alcoholic in one sip. It was possible that if he kept at the ooze he would stop working but this morning, whisky taken, he was high in the visionary company. He banged out two self-portraits before lunch. Mixing the paint may have taken more time than the actual work of brush on canvas. The portraits were variations on a theme painted on pages of ghetto porn. He gave himself an egg-shaped head and leaden eyelids and put bits of white paint around the eyes and mouth, the only white on the canvas, as it turned out. He used blocks of burnt umber and sienna for the body and head and left only one area unpainted, the heart, and – this was when he knew he was in the presence of God and all his angels – it so happened that the unpainted heart occurred on a high-res image of an ebony vagina, slippery and liver-coloured. All he had to do was pencil in a few quick lines to suggest the heart’s rubbery tubing. No viewer would make out the background image unless he mentioned it, which he would to get a little buzz going in the right places and push the price up by a digit or two. The second portrait was faster and stranger, a humanoid blob of multicoloured oil spatters, and the two finished pictures put him in such a good mood that he took Goody to Koshy’s for lunch. Before leaving he went to the bathroom and killed the rest of the quarter and brushed his teeth again.
They took a table by the window.
Xavier said, “Remember the waiter in the café on Greek Street who refused to serve you because he said you were too young? And we had to show him your passport? We drank all day and they gave us buy-back shots and I left the keys on the bar and had to climb in through the window to get into the apartment?” He looked around him at the photos on the wall, shots of old Bangalore when you could walk the length of the promenade in a leisurely half-hour and there was no traffic except the occasional Model-T import; sepia full frontals of the Town Hall, the Parade Ground, and the Victoria Hotel; royals and other notables, and the inescapable picture of the Mysore Maharaja unresplendent in his crooked turban. “Climbed in the living-room window and opened the door for you and we fell asleep fully dressed. I woke in the middle of the night because you had me in a chokehold and all I’d done was snore.”
“It was a snore heard around the world, you were so drunk. I had a nightmare that you were trying to kill me.”
“So you thought you’d kill me?”
“It was either you or me and I went with the devil I knew.”
“Be that as it may, in New York the first time you left me I went back to London and tried to find that bar. I went up and down Greek Street. Honestly, I thought if I got drunk enough you’d come around and save me.”
“You’re a silly man.”
“Went all over Soho and never did find it. But I sent you emails and a postcard and I didn’t paint. I wrote sorrowful separation poems and felt drunkenly sorry for myself. I hoped you might turn up, you know, and surprise me.”
“You surprised me. I had no idea you were so ardent.”
“I was and I am.”
There was a figure beside them, a squat toad-like man in starched white kurta-pyjamas, a gold ballpoint prominent in his breast pocket, who smiled at Goody and folded his hands in namaste. Xavier had no idea who he was until Goody said, Mr Cherian, how nice to see you. Newton, you remember Mr Cherian from the party the other day? Xavier remembered: it was the Hindu Christian Lipton man.
“Please call me Cherry. May I join you?”
Xavier said, “My pleasure. What are you drinking?”
Cherian called for a waiter and demanded beer.
“For everyone,” he said. “Beeru.”
Even Goody was agreeably smiling. And why not? A smallish glass of frothy lager, what possible harm could issue from so blameless a beverage? When it came, and was poured, glorious honey-bright refreshment, Xavier emptied his prettily sweating tankard and poured another and only then did Goody’s face register some – what? – not coldness exactly but discomfort. Then more people came to the table, Keith and Vincent and the AA boys.
“I can see it’s working for you,” Keith said, “not going to meetings, I mean. Helping you stay clean and sober.”
Vincent said, “Watch out, mister, keep talking that way and the man’s liable to go for your throat.”
Xavier said, “I’m sorry. As I said before and say again, I’m sorry and I’m sorry. I’m a sorry-faced sorry-mouthed bit of sorry business.”
Goody said, “Did you attack him? My god.”
And the swadeshi Cherian said, “Are you fellows from AA? You don’t look like it, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“We should go.”
“Maybe I’ll go with you,” said Cherian, but he didn’t get up. And it was Xavier who went with them to the door, to shake hands and make a last apology to Vincent.
“I mean it, forgive me, my mind’s not well.”
“I hope I�
��m never so desperate I have to resort to violence.”
“You’re right, you’re right, there’s no doubt in my mind that you’re right.”
“Yeah, well, looks like you got other problems, bro. Looks like the fat man’s got his eye on your girlfriend.”
Cherian was kissing her hand.
“And she doesn’t mind, does she?”
Goody was smiling, and, dear god, did she just bat her eyelashes? Xavier hadn’t seen that move in years. He went back to the table. She said, I mean, I enjoy beer, though really it doesn’t have much effect on me, Cherry – other than to make me affectionate, that is. And she laughed. The smarmy swadeshi still had her hand in his and she made no effort to take it away. Of course it was entirely possible that she had a thing for ugly men: Xavier was no prize in the prettiness department. Maybe she had a thing for ugliness in all forms, human, divine, artistic, and maybe it was time to give in and confront the ghost who walks everyfuckingwhere. If nothing else it called for urgent measures, of whisky, beeru, winu, rumma. Xavier summoned the waiter and ordered a double Black & White with ice.
“Tu mettrais l’univers entier dans ta ruelle, femme impure!” he said.
“If that’s French for I’m a complete fucking alcoholic and I can’t wait to flush my life down the loo, you can say it again,” said Goody.
“L’ennui rend ton âme cruelle.”
“I say,” said Cherian. “Who needs the French anyway? India is standing on her own two feet, mon ami.”
“Two feet, do you really think so?” said Xavier.
“If you haven’t noticed,” Cherian said, “incredible new India, shining at last.”
Xavier looked coldly at the man. When he spoke it was in a voice Goody did not recognise.
“What new India? This is the same old India, poor, poorer, poorest, as fucked up as she ever was and slathered with whore make-up to cover boils, moles, and warts, at least for the night.”
Their voices had risen above the general Koshy’s din, no small feat considering the level of noise in the restaurant. But Xavier was beyond caring and bad behaviour seemed to have its rewards. Cherian, being the oily Malayali that he was, decided it was a bad idea to be caught in the middle of a public marital spat and he scurried off, mumbling something about being late for a lunch appointment.
With his two hands Xavier held his whisky to the dim electric light. The liquid had turned the colour of smudge. Thank you, oh Lord, for your small mercy, he thought, and swallowed the drink and ordered another.
I am glowing in the flowing, high in the visionary company.
“Right, Newton, I think this needs to be said,” said Goody. “You have a talent for forgetting, especially when it comes to those things deemed inconvenient. Thing is, I do not have this talent. I remember the New York opening and your insane suicidal binge. You disappeared for two days and I thought you were dead. They found you asleep in a doorway at Saint Mark’s Church. I still remember the address, East Tenth Street. I’ll remember it all my life. I’m not going through that kind of torture again.”
“I have the solution. Drink with me and we shall together sail into the wine dark sea.”
Goody left without another word, though she took her time gathering her things. Was she expecting mollification and coddlement? He was not in the market for Molly or Coddle; he was in for the conspicuous consumption of Choice Old Scotch Whisky from the twin barrels of the inestimable Dr James Buchanan and his company of knighted highland terriers. But there was a balance to be struck, a window of chance and opportunity before the ooze reinstated its depressive temperament. He needed to be at work because he had had an idea, a real idea, a flash of lightning type IDEA, and he lifted up the new whisky and said to the deserted table, Emperor Buchanan, to your incomparable malts and grains. Then he paid the bill and left a good tip and walked home, stopping at Noon Wines to buy cheap red plonk for a cheap red day. It’s our honour to serve you, sir, said the shop owner’s daughter. I saw your picture in the newspaper. You can pay later if you don’t have money. She gave him change and a calendar on the house. She said, sir, we also have free home delivery. He said, good, good, now stop calling me sir. What’s your name? Dharini, she said. Dharini, he replied, it’s a pleasure indeed to make your acquaintance.
He hung the calendar on a bare wall near his easel. It was the usual devotional scene, a trio of gods in fleshy human poses. He poured himself a short glass of red and noted the absence of the Goody and tossed off the monumental mixed media nude that had been flashing in his head all day, hips so big they were a landscape of their own, boulder breasts, tree trunk legs, small delicate lovely head. He used a marker to draw a faint outline and filled the canvas with paint, two colours, no more, and then he used the marker again. In a closet he found a piece of heavy gold fabric inlaid with cheap gemstones that he shaped into a necklace and placed on the nude’s neck and she acquired the unmistakable contours of the giantess of his youth, an image from a poem he’d once read that had filled his erotic life for weeks – the idea of living in the valleys and crevices of a big brown woman devoid of speech but flowing with tenderness. He was blazing. And there was time for one last drink before Koshy’s closed for the day. They’d still be serving dinner, the waiters in a hurry to count their tips and be gone. The giantess was done. Anyone could see that he hadn’t put much into it, the necklace awry, the colour flat, unfinished skin tones against pale yellow, but it didn’t matter because the power was in the line, the Palaeolithic curves and the serenity of the lips and eyes. The giantess was done and so was he; time for a drop of red and into the night.
He took a rickshaw and told the man to wait. At Koshy’s candles had been lit and there was music. Was it jazz, opera, heavy metal? Impossible to tell because the sound was so muddy; or the mud was in his head. John, eradu whisky kodu, he told the old waiter, who replied in English. Sir, we are closing, do you want food? Closing time. Dread words calculated to put The Fear into any man. He called for two whiskies, then made it three and told John to line them up on the table. Where was Goody? Where was the Goods and her odd singularity of eyebrow, the one on the left sharper, more angular? He should have checked her closets to see if she had decamped permanently, but no, it would take a day or two to move everything out, art, books, toiletries, the pots and pans. Where were Keith and Vincent and his AA chums? Where were all his friends?
Let the night be solitary and let no joyful voice come therein.
He went to a table by the window where a couple of middle-aged men worked on their rum and Thums Up.
“I say, do you think I could possibly” – Why did he get so plummy and English when he had a drop or two taken? He’d lived in Paris almost as long as London, but when he was drunk, or even just drinking, it was always the English who won – “possibly borrow a cigarette?”
One of them held out a damp pack of Classic Milds and he took one and thanked the man and went back to his table, suddenly reluctant to reach for the waiting whisky. He took a deep drag of the cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs and felt the nicotine kick in and still the drinks stood on the table and still he didn’t want them. He had smoked too quickly and it had put a pint of nausea in his head.
Where are all my friends, my best mates, my bros? Ah, here they are, all three of them, waiting.
He drank two whiskies one after the other and someone joined him.
“Mr Kurien himself. How good to see you, dear boy.”
“Mr Xavier, how are you? Looking a little the worse for wear, I’m sorry to say.”
“I’d offer you a drink but I know you’d refuse. Am I correct?”
“With pleasure.”
“Here’s to you and your odd sobriety.”
Xavier downed his third and last whisky and he felt the spirit percolate downward into his kundalini, felt the serpent goddess begin her ascent up his spine and just as quickly die; suddenly bereft, he raised his hand for the waiter.
“We’re closed, at least to you. Go
home, Newton, for god’s sake. Do yourself a favour. Go home. Make up to your lovely lady.”
“I think I’ve just seen everything, a merchant refusing to sell his merchandise. This is marvellously noble and all, but aren’t you shooting yourself in the foot, old boy?”
“You have the trembles, did you know that?”
“Give me a drink, merchant, or give me the bill.”
“Your money’s no good here. Go home. And change the dressing on your nose.”
But he didn’t go home. He left Koshy’s and found the rickshaw still waiting and took it to Dewar’s, a bar hidden under flyover construction in one of the city’s oldest cantonments. There they let him buy a half-bottle and sit at a table for as long as he liked. A boy put a menu and a bowl of peanuts in front of him and pulled the shutters and lit a candle in a saucer. Police, said the boy as he put off the lights.
What a toy town. After eleven you drank with the lights off because the guardians of the law preferred to shake down drinkers rather than do some honest work.
“How do you tell the difference between a cop and a crook?” he said to the boy.
“Ji?”
“Cigarette kodu,” Xavier said.
The menu was a collage of old Hindi movie posters and there was the old Dev Anand–Zeenat Aman hit Haré Krishna, Haré Rama showing bell-bottomed lovers among hippies and the Himalayas. Goody, he thought, I miss you, come home. There was already so much to tell her, the three paintings of the day and the fact that he was feeling better, almost Normal, the drink had calmed him down and cured the hypomania. Was she gone with the oily Cherian to his sprawling bungalow where she would sip daytime cocktails with the city’s VIP set? The boy put a pack of cigarettes on the table. Eyevathu rupiah, he said. When had he become a smoker and drinker? Already it seemed as if he had been in this life for ever, his days measured in whisky and nicotine; and he was dreading the hangover that would surely come. But he was afraid to stop because there was the possibility that the work would stop too and the craziness would return. He’d learned to see the patterns in his own behaviour, which he could no more control than he could control the wind or the rain. When he was working and drinking he was one with the world, otherwise he was nothing, barely conscious, with the sensibility of lichen or a piece of coral. When there was about an inch of whisky left in the bottle he put it in his pocket and checked his wristwatch, ten past three, time for a working man to get some sleep. He blew out the candle and in the sudden darkness the words came to him unbidden. Lift your face to the sky and unbefuddle yourself, Commander Xavier. A great and complex task awaits you. Lift your face free of its infirmity and find her, for she is rescue from the disaster that awaits. Lift up, Saint Xavier, son of Forgottem, lift up.
