An Obedient Father (20 page)

"Hello," I murmured. I sat on the edge of the bed and leaned down into the phone, which I held in my lap.

"Ram Karan?" The man had a Haryanvi accent. I didn't answer. "Ram Karan?"

"What's your name?"

"Sisterfucker, you think you're in a toy store. Asking me questions." It was Congress, of course. Immediately I wanted to apologize and claim there had been a mistake, but I couldn't think of anything to say "We'll kill you. You return the money or they won't find your corpse."

I cut the line and immediately dialed Mr. Gupta at the office. I was so panicked, I started dialing my own number. Anita came and sat on one of the love seats and watched me. She kept her hands on her knees. Once the other end was ringing, I heard a click and the phone became airy. "Who are you calling?" asked the man with the Hariyanvi accent. I didn't answer and the phone stopped ringing. "Who are you calling? Roshan Gupta?"

"Yes."

"Okay. You can dial him now."

I dialed again. The other end rang for a while and then I hung up. I tried Mr. Gupta at home. "Who are you calling now?"

I thought about whether to answer. "I'm phoning his house."

"I have to write down everyone you call. That's why I ask." Now none of the menace that had been in his voice a moment ago was present.

A servant at Mr. Gupta's picked up. Mr. Gupta was out and Ajay was put on.

"Somebody is listening to this," I told him as soon as he spoke.

"Who are you?" Ajay demanded.

"A killer from Bihar," the man answered. "You think you can steal from us?"

"Steal what? From where?" Ajay said.

"Sisterfucker."

"You think this will scare us. Slap you twice and you'll start crying."

"Cut your throat twice. Make your whole family cry."

"I am home," I said softly, fear crushing my voice.

"Don't worry," Ajay said in English, as if his speaking a foreign language would make me more confident.

"Don't worry," the Haryanvi-accented man repeated in English, and laughed.

"This is illegal," Ajay said.

"lam the police."

"You're not the police. The BJP has the police."

When I hung up, Ajay and the man were still arguing.

Now that Congress had confronted me, I knew that Mr. Gupta

had to win or Congress would, if I was lucky, put me in jail for corruption. I couldn't imagine the man being Central Bureau of Investigation, because he would not have revealed himself I moved the phone from my lap to the stool beside the bed, where it usually sat.

I didn't want to look at Anita, but when I did, she was staring at me. "Mr. Gupta is running for Parliament," I said. My voice quavered. "He's taken the money we'd raised for Congress and is using that."

"Now this," Anita said. She sounded tired, and the fact that her cartoon voice could hold fatigue was surprising.

"I had no say in this."

"Of course you did. You could have said no. You could have said I am not doing any of this."

"It's not like that. I'm Mr. Gupta's man. Everything that happens to him happens to me also. If Mr. Gupta agreed to do this and I went to Congress to warn them, the BJP would come after me. Or he would."

"What's happening?" Asha asked from her bedroom. "Can I come in?" She moved into the doorway. Since neither of us said no, she entered the living room and sat on the love seat beside her mother.

"Mr. Gupta was going to do what he wanted," I said quietly.

"It's never your fault. You can never do anything. Your idiocy will never end." Because of the pride I had been taking in being Mr. Gupta's man her accusations felt deserved. Of course, God was punishing me. The wrinkles on Anita's forehead were ruler-straight. "I'm handcuffed to a crazy man."

"It was wrong," I said. "You were twelve," I started saying. Listening to myself, I wondered why the only response I had to Anita was admitting my crime. "I remember the newspapers under you so that if you bled ..."

"Go," Anita screamed at Asha, and shoved her off the love seat. Asha fell onto the floor. "This is not for you."

Asha sped from the room.

The shout had shocked me and I didn't know whether to continue. "Anything I could say wouldn't be enough," I said, trying to suggest I could add more if wanted. But I had already said all that needed to be confessed and there was no value in repeating it.

''Stop,' she said, and stood and put her hand over her mouth. The space between sofa and love seat was so narrow she was standing over me.

I stopped.

"Don't talk about that with Asha here. What would I do if she knew?'' I didn't understand her, and Anita must have seen this, for she said, *"'She'd be frightened all the time if she knew."

''I don't want to hurt Asha."

"I'm not angry about back then," Anita said. "This is about today." I did not know how to respond. "You think I can't tell the difference between the past and the present? I'm not crazv. You are bringing danger now."

Because I had no answer to this, my jumbled thoughts made me say, "You don't have to be unkind to Asha. I won't ever go near her."

"You want me to rely on your self-control?"

"Anita," I said, and then I had no more words.

''Even by chance, you should sometimes do the right thing."

I wondered if our bargain was going to be broken.

Mr. Maurya, of course, knew the dozen or so property developers with enough contacts to buy large pieces of school property Instead of phoning, I went to see him. This time I did not have to wait on the veranda with the tea-drinking supplicants.

I had been at a party once with a developer he recommended, Mr. Mittal. One night he and I rode to the school in his car. Other than asking directions, he did not talk. I was glad for this, because I was lost in worries.

We parked along the periphery of Kamla Xagar, a kilometer from the school, because I believed Congress might try to follow us. For extra caution, we climbed the Hill and approached the school from its back. The woods were dark and we had to light our wav with flashlights. Birds were scratching and twitching. We walked around a monkey sitting in the center of a path eating its own lice. Because it was out at night we were afraid it might be rabid and made a wide circle around it. We crossed a small pond spanned bv a wooden bridge. The air was light and the temperature a few degrees lower than it had been on the road. I wondered how anyone could not want property here.

I called for Mr. Gaur from the veranda. The school was lit with kerosene lanterns because they had no electricity. Mr. Gaur asked us in for tea, but we made excuses, and then he led us around the grounds. He had a hutch full of hares in one corner of the compound, which surprised me, because Mr. Gaur was Brahmin and a vegetarian. "I catch them m the Hill. I let the children play with them and I sell them," he explained. We walked all over the property, sometimes going along its edges and sometimes cutting through it at various angles so that Mr. Mittal could develop a feel for its dimensions. Though the sky above was a city sky, the mild air and the birds nearby made me feel as if I were far from Delhi. Mr. Mittal asked a few questions: where the nearest electrified building was, who had built the school.

We left the same way we had come. Only then did we begin discussing the price. Mr. Mittal was tall and thin, with round glasses. He, along with his brother, ran their family's property business. "I have to wait till I talk with my brother," Mr. Mittal said. He was ahead of me, climbing a series of dirt steps which was kept from turning into a slope by planks. ''I think we will offer six lakhs." I had begun liking the school so much that I found the offer rude. I kept following Mr. Mittal. "There is no running water and no electricity, so we have to pay the municipalitv for that, and for keeping things secret. And, of course, there is this BJP-Congress election."

"This is a fifty- or sixty-lakh property"

"If you were selling counterfeit monev, would I even pay a fifth of the face value?"

"This is not paper."

'Taper is easier to hide." He stopped and turned to me. I could not see his face. "I have to be paid for taking this much risk. Land Uke this is not an easy thing." We cHmbed the rest of the steps. "It will take at least a day to talk with my brother and get the money. See other developers."

I did not want to show the property to several developers for fear of rumors. All I could do was repeat, "You know how expensive land is here."

"It is," Mr. Mittal admitted. "But even if there were no election, I would still only pay eight, maybe ten lakhs. Jail time makes everything cheaper." We were crossing a grassy field and heard a peacock screech.

"We guarantee that if we win, we'll make sure the papers are done."

Mr. Mittal stopped. "If you didn't guarantee that, we wouldn't bid."

I was selling something that was not mine for enormous money, but I felt cheated. There was not another property like this in Delhi.

We came out of the Hill onto a road lined with tall, expensive houses. We started walking toward Kamla Nagar. Along the sidewalk was a line of parked taxis with their doors open and the legs of sleeping drivers stretching out of them.

"Shall I give the money to Mr. Gupta tomorrow night unless I get a message otherwise?" Mr. Mittal offered.

"If we accept, I'll come by." I knew Mr. Gupta would not want any witnesses to him directly receiving money.

We walked in silence till we neared his car. "This is a good price, Mr. Karan. I say this not to make you sell but because I don't want you to feel cheated." Mr. Mittal opened the Ambassador's trunk and took out a box with a ribbon around it. It was a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label. I had never seen this before. "Thank you for your help," he said, and handed me the present.

Once Mr. Mittal left, I crossed the road to the shops, looking for a place to eat. I felt ashamed for selling something so valuable for so little. The guilt I felt was not that of being corrupt but that of waste. There had always been a corruption discount in the loans and licenses I had arranged, but that had been more indirect than this and not as steep. This is what happens in elections, I told myself. I feel this way only because I already feel guilty about Anita. I found a Pizza King. At first as I ate I kept the Blue Label box standing upright like a trophy. But there was no taste to the food. I laid the bottle on its side.

The guilt only got more intense overnight. What can I do? I thought. God will decide everything. I imagined myself as one of the vandals who pried jewels out of ancient statues and sold them to the British.

In the morning, after avoiding talking to Anita, I went to see Mr. Gupta at his house.

The night before, I had left and returned through the squatter colony in case I was being watched. That day, since I assumed Mr. Gupta's home was under surveillance and I would be spotted anyway, I left through the compound's main door. I did not notice whether I was followed.

Mr. Gupta's house was crowded. There was a foreign woman with yellow hair talking to two men in their twenties. A young boy kept wandering around taking tea orders. I passed a heavy old man in a kurta pajama who was dictating something about India's gold reserves to a typist. Seeing this much energy being expended on things I did not know about made me think I could not be blamed for everything in the campaign.

I was led to a room on the second floor. The curtains were drawn, and on a shadowed sofa, speaking under an air conditioner's hum, were Mr. Bajwa, Mr. Gupta, and Ajay Mr. Gupta was in the middle, sitting straight, with Ajay draped backward and Mr. Bajwa leaning toward them, smiling. The way they sat made them appear gossipy I was not surprised at Mr. Bajwa's presence, because I felt that I deserved to lose whatever benefits being Mr. Gupta's moneyman brought.

"We were just talking about you," Ajay said.

I assumed nothing good had been uttered and so replied, "I made at least five lakhs for you last night."

"How is that?" Mr. Gupta asked.

I sat down on a sofa across from them and told him. He listened with attention, and I wondered if he knew how much the school should cost.

After I was done, Ajay asked Mr. Bajwa, "Is that a good price?"

Mr. Bajwa shrugged. This did not make me feel any less cheated. "The price is six, but I have to pay one lakh to Mr. and Mrs. Gaur, who live at the school."

"That's too much," Mr. Bajwa immediately said. "We're not their parents that we have to give them a roof over their heads."

"We needed the money quickly."

Mr. Bajwa glanced at Ajay as if to suggest he could not work with someone as recalcitrant as I was.

"Why is your phone tapped?" Ajay asked.

"Maybe all of ours are," I said.

"We have machines to stop that."

And though I knew nothing about these things, I said, "They have machines for your machines."

"Thank you, Mr. Karan," Mr. Gupta said. "Tell me what you think of this. This is a slogan for vans with loudspeakers. 'If you want to see a movie, go to the hall. If you want to accomplish something, go to the booth and pick Roshan Gupta.'"

"It's too long," Ajay said. "The van will be down the block by the time the slogan finishes." There were other slogans, some based on Rajesh Khanna's movies, such as My Companion, the Elephant. The fact that Mr. Gupta was involved in this level of detail made me think the campaign was not being run well, which led me to believe the money raised from the school would be wasted.

"The BJP's Roshan Gupta. God and Bread," Mr. Bajwa suggested.

"What about saying something good about me?" Mr. Gupta asked.

"My uncle is a kind man," Mr. Bajwa answered, "but would you vote for him if you didn't know anything about him except that he was kind?"

I thought surely I would be punished for all this. Then they began babbling about posters, something none of them knew anything about. I sank into the sofa.

Later Mr. Gupta invited me to a speech he was giving, but I told him I had to go see Mr. Mittal.

The flat was hot and still when I returned home that evening. I heard Asha's voice coming from the roof The kitchen counters were scrubbed clean, which meant that dinner had been cooked, eaten, and the dishes put away. The money Mr. Mittal had given me was in a gray plastic briefcase. Being paid had made me feel worse. I wondered whether I was so confused and unhappy because I was almost not eating. I hid the briefcase beneath some clothes in a trunk in my room and changed into a kurta pajama. After leaving Mr. Mittal, I had gone to Thirty Thousand, where my lawyer has his office, a school desk and two filing cabinets under a tarp next to a wall, and altered my will. Because I knew confession was no way to get Anita to honor her bargain, I had decided to try doing everything she wished.