Love and Longing in Bombay (18 page)

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Did you see something horrible in the photographs, Kshitij? Of course it was horrible. Your parents. Your mother.” Sartaj stopped, swallowed. Then he leaned in close. “Did you see your mother with some stranger? Sucking on him?” The light in the room was yellow, and outside the stillness of night, and small sounds from far away. Sartaj could see the outline of his own head, his turban, in Kshitij’s eyes, and he knew he had on his interrogation face with the opaque eyes, and in his body, in his arms and legs, there was the uncurling of a virulent hunger, an angry need to know. There was also somewhere sympathy and disgust and horror, but all that was faint and far away and battened down, safely subterranean.

“I don’t know,” Kshitij said. And then he stopped. There was no motion in his body, but a kind of rippling, like the surface of water in which no current can be seen. Through the night he grew more inert, like a stone sinking into the worn cloth of the chair, and yet somewhere in the sunken eyes, in the base of the throat, there was that agitation. At two in the morning it had begun to rain, and Sartaj left him to Katekar and walked outside, along the corridor that ran beside the offices. There was that usual late-night talk and movement at the front of the station, the drunks on their way into the lockup. Sartaj stretched, and reached with an open palm into the rain. His
kara
moved slowly on his wrist. There was the steady drip of water onto his skin. He and Katekar would keep the suspect up all night, taking turns, wearing at him with the repeated questions, beating at him with half-knowledge and insinuations, until in the early day he broke in exhaustion. It was likely. Many did.

He heard a shuffle behind him, the sound of feet. It was the head constable, bringing the night’s phone messages. The first was a ten-thirty message from Rahul, asking for a call back. The second the usual late-evening call from Sartaj’s mother, and the third was an intimation from Cooper Hospital. Ghorpade was dead. He had died at midnight after a day of discomfort and difficulty with breathing. Sartaj put the slips of paper in his pocket, scratched at his eyebrows, and then he walked back into his office. Katekar was leaning over the suspect, looming over him and letting him smell sweat and tobacco. But Kshitij had found from somewhere a small reserve of fortitude.

“If you are going to charge me with something, charge me,” he said. “File an F.I.R., get a warrant. Otherwise what is all this? You’re doing this because I’m a member of the
Rakshaks.
”

Sartaj sat behind his desk. He twisted his watch around his wrist, once, twice. His cheeks felt congested with rage. “Katekar, this
chutiya
thinks we’re idiots,” he said. “And he thinks he’s very smart. Take him down to the detection room and take some of his smartness out of him. Give him a good taste of what we do to smart
chutiyas
around here.”

Katekar had Kshitij by the scruff of his neck and out of his chair before the boy had time to react, even to open his mouth. As he turned Kshitij away, Sartaj forced himself to raise a hand: easy, no marks. Katekar slammed Kshitij through the swinging doors, and pushed him down the corridor. “
Chala
‚”
he shouted, and there was a terrible anger in his voice.

Sartaj squared the papers on his desk and tried to work. It was raining heavily now, and the water softened all sounds. After a minute or two he gave up, sat back, and put his hands over his face. When the phone rang, he let it ring six times before he picked it up.

“Sartaj Singh.”

“Did you take money?” It was Rahul, and his voice was feathery and high.

“What’s wrong, Rahul? Are you crying?”

“Ravinder Mama came for dinner today. They were talking about you. They asked if you had signed the papers yet.”

“Yes?”

“Megha said not yet. Then Ravinder Mama said you probably were waiting for money. He said you were all for sale. So I called him a name. Daddy told me to shut up. I threw a plate on the ground and left.”

Sartaj shut his eyes. “No, I don’t take money.” But Sartaj then remembered all the things he had been offered because of his uniform, that he had taken, suits at half-price from a tailor near Kala Ghoda, meals with Megha at a five-star restaurant, miraculous train reservations in the middle of summer. A smiling road contractor had once brought over a cannister of ghee to Sartaj’s grandfather’s house as a Diwali gift, and the old man had tipped the cannister over the contractor’s head. But life moved in jerky half-moments, in the empty spaces between big decisions, and Sartaj had been unable to resist the specially discounted shoes at Lucky’s. Italian style, the proprietor of the shop had said again and again, Italian style. That evening long ago Megha and Sartaj had taken Rahul out for a birthday dinner, the thirteenth, and Rahul had noticed the shoes, and Sartaj had promised him a pair, and then told him stories of detection. Sartaj sat in his chair, and his lips moved: And I arrested a man for a crime he didn’t commit, and that man is dead, and life is very long, and investigation is one way to get through it, but to call it justice is only half the truth. “No, I don’t take money,” he said into the mouthpiece.

“Did you talk to Megha?”

“Yes, I talked to her. Rahul, it’s, it’s not going to work.”

“Why?”

“We’re not suited to each other.”

“Like you couldn’t communicate?”

“Yes. That’s it,” Sartaj said, grateful for the phrase.

“You should’ve learned how to communicate.”

“Yes.”

“What was that?” Rahul said. There had been a sudden surprised yowl that echoed faintly down the corridor.

“A cat outside, I think.”

“A cat?”

“A cat.”

“Okay.” As always, Rahul believed him. Rahul had a whole and unadulterated faith that was beautiful in its clarity: he believed. Now Rahul was trying to help. “These things happen in life, you know. Between men and women. I’ll always be here, you know, to help or anything you need.”

“Thanks, Rahul,” Sartaj said, his voice thick. “I know that.”

*

Megha hadn’t believed. One morning at breakfast she had put down a newspaper crowded with angry headlines, and had asked, for the third time in a month, do you really hit people? Torture them? Her brow was heavy with doubt, and he knew that the easy answer would no longer service. Yes, he said, sometimes it’s necessary. It’s a tool, an instrument. That night and the next night she had slept on the very far edge of the bed. When he had touched the back of her neck at breakfast she said, without looking up, I hate the world you live in. He had wanted to say, it’s your world also, but I am thirty-one years old and I live in the parts you don’t want to see. I live there for you. But he had quietly picked up his briefcase from the table in the hall and had shut the door behind him without another word. That had been one of their many silences.

Now Sartaj walked down the corridor, towards a certain room in his world. As he walked he could see the curving pools of light from the bulbs, fading into darkness in the yard, and from beyond the shuffling sound of leaves under the fall of rain. He stepped through a door, and then another one. Katekar had Kshitij strapped face down on a bench. The bare feet hung over one end. The room was bare but for that bench and a chair, and had curving ceilings and a single ventilator high on the wall and, high up, higher than a man’s uplifted hands would stretch, a thick white metal pole that went from one wall to the other. In his hand Katekar had a
lathi
, with the wood shining a heavy brown in the yellow light.

Sartaj pulled the chair and sat in front of Kshitij, one leg crossed over another. Kshitij’s face was red.

“I’m sorry that you’re making me do this, Kshitij,” Sartaj said. “I hate to do this. Why don’t you just be sensible and tell me what you saw, what you did? Did you scrub down the car, Kshitij? Why? What was in it?”

Kshitij’s eyes were amazed, as if he were seeing something that he had never imagined. He seemed to be thinking, contemplating some new but essential truth he had just discovered. Sartaj tapped him gently on the cheek.

“You know, Kshitij,” Sartaj said. “I spoke to a lot of people about your father. Everybody loved him.” Now Kshitij looked up, straining his neck, his mouth working. “Everyone liked him, you know. His business colleagues said he was dependable, hard-working, dedicated. They thought he had come far and was to go far. In your building, they said he took his neighbour’s troubles on his shoulders like his own. Always he was willing to help, not only with advice but practically. At the weddings of other people’s sons and daughters how much work he did, they said. In times of grief a good friend. Generous and happy. Fun to be around, always singing, always playing his
ghazals
,
always ready for a movie or an outing. A good husband in a happy family they said.”

Kshitij’s eyes were watery and a trickle seeped from his left nostril. “He was
not
a good man.” His voice came out thick and anguished. In all his years Sartaj had never seen a face so full of pain as this one.

“What did he do, Kshitij?” Sartaj said, leaning over close. In his stomach there was a bubbling, nausea, but he had to go on. “What did he do? Tell me. I know he wasn’t good, he fooled them. What did he do?” It was the beginning of a confession and he felt it coming. But Kshitij teetered at the edge for a moment, found himself then, and with an appalling effort pulled himself back. Sartaj saw the struggle as the face settled, went from disarray to control.

“I have nothing to say,” Kshitij said.

Sartaj sat back, shrugged. “Then I can’t help you,” he said. “I’m very sorry for that.” He waited until Kshitij looked up, then nodded at Katekar. “Go ahead,” he said, and got up.

He was halfway across the room when he heard Kshitij’s voice, loud now. “What’s the matter, bastard? Can’t hit me yourself?”

Sartaj turned, then looked around the room. Next to the door there was a row of black metal hooks, and from one of the hooks hung a worn strap, a piece of a heavy industrial belt meant for machinery, four inches wide, attached to a wooden handle. Sartaj felt in his arms a painful pulsing of blood. He took the
patta
,
turned around, and with all the swing in his shoulder brought the strap up and around and onto Kshitij’s buttocks. And then again. The sound it made was like two flat pieces of wood dashing together. He had his arm back again when he heard, through the rushing in his ears, Kshitij’s voice. “What?” he said. He stopped, took a deep breath, and stepped up to the bench. Finally he could make out the words.

“You can’t hurt me,” Kshitij was saying.

“Oy, did you hear the noises you were making?” Katekar said.

“That was only the body,” Kshitij said, and Sartaj could see the drops of spittle darkening the dirty floor.

“I’ll hurt you,
bhenchod
,” Katekar said.

“You can’t hurt me,” Kshitij said. “Or kill me. Only my body.”

Sartaj could see the eyes, shining and focused, looking straight ahead, straight through the grimy wall, at something a thousand miles and a thousand years away. He dropped the
patta
,
stumbled to the door, which rattled under his shaking hand, and as he fled to the cooler outside air, he could hear Kshitij chanting, “
Jai
Hind
,
Jai
Hind
.”
But outside, in the corridor, the sound of the rain was loud, and the voice was lost in the water, and Sartaj leaned against a pillar, leaned lower and out above the bending hedges, and retched into the darkness.

When he was able to stand straight, he saw that Katekar was watching from the other side of the pillar.

“I’m all right,” Sartaj said.

Katekar nodded, then turned back to the doorway.

“Katekar,” Sartaj said. “No more. Just talk to him.”

“No? You don’t think he’ll talk if we give him a little more?”

“Not this one.”

Katekar nodded. “What could we do to him?” he said. “He’s already in hell.”

*

Sartaj sat on a bench in the corridor, one leg over the other, looking out at the greying sky. He watched Katekar walking up, stretching his right shoulder and then his left.

“This one’s not talking, sir,” Katekar said.

“Yes, I know,” Sartaj said.

“He’s one of those, sir,” Katekar said. “Gets stronger.”

“It’s all right,” Sartaj said. “Sit.”

“Sir?”

“Sit down, Katekar.”

A moment, and then Katekar sat, his legs apart, his hands on his knees.

“Did you always want to be a policeman, Katekar?”

“My father was, sir.”

“Mine also.”

“I know, sir.”

The rain had stopped. There was a silence like Sartaj had never heard before.

“My back is going to hurt,” Katekar said.

“Is going to hurt?”

“It doesn’t hurt now,” Katekar said. “But it will. Not this month perhaps, or the next. But then someday soon it will. It’ll start and get worse.”

“Is it the muscles? Or a disc?”

“The doctors say it’s nothing. They give me pills and tablets and it still hurts. Then my wife sends me on pilgrimage to Pandharpur. I walk with the
palkhi
of Dnyaneshwar. There are hundreds of pilgrims. I tell nobody I am a policeman. Nobody can tell one from another. We walk during the day and it is very hot. For the first day and the next and after that my legs hurt and squeeze and become tight. My feet swell and blister and it is difficult to get up the next morning to walk. The sun is very hot and it is all a plain, no trees and just a straight road. The walking is hard. We walk all together. The days pass and it seems like it will never end. Everything is forgotten but the walking. At night the pilgrims sing songs. There are discourses. But usually I fall asleep early on the hard ground and dream of walking. Then I wake up in the morning and walk. Of course I don’t believe in any of it. My wife sends me. But when it is over after fifteen days, I cannot remember when my back became better but always, it no longer hurts. I come back to the city, tired. But my back is all right. For a while. Then it starts to hurt again.”