Shantaram (10 page)

"You remember that? Then, I guess I better tell you. Biarritz... how to explain it... I think it's the ocean. The Atlantic. I love Biarritz in the wintertime, when the tourists are gone, and the sea is so frightening that it turns people to stone. You see them standing on the deserted beaches, and staring at the sea- statues, scattered along the beach between the cliffs, frozen stiff by the terror they feel when they look at the ocean. It's not like other oceans-not like the warm Pacific or the Indian.

The Atlantic there, in winter, is really unforgiving, and ruthlessly cruel. You can feel it calling to you. You know it wants to drag you out and pull you under. It's so beautiful, I just burst into tears the first time I really looked at it. And I wanted to go to it. I wanted to let myself go out and under the big, angry waves. It's the scariest thing. But the people in Biarritz, they're the most tolerant and easy-going people in Europe, I think. Nothing freaks them out. Nothing is too over- the-top. It's kind of weird-in most holiday places, the people are angry and the sea is calm. In Biarritz, it's the other way around."

"Do you think you'll go back there one day-to stay, I mean?"

"No," she said quickly. "If I ever leave here, for good, it'll mean going back to the States. I grew up there, after my parents died. And I'd like to go back, some day. I think I love it there, most of all. There's something so confident and open-hearted and ... and brave about America, and the American people. I don't feel American-at least, I don't think I do-but I'm comfortable with them, if you know what I mean, more than I am with any other people, anywhere."

"Tell me about the others," I asked, wanting to keep her talking.

"The others?" she asked, frowning suddenly.

"The crew at Leopold's. Didier and the others. Tell me about Letitia, to start with. How do you know her?"

She relaxed, and let her eyes roam the shadows on the far side of the street. Still thinking, still considering, she lifted her gaze to the night sky. The blue-white light from a street lamp melted to liquid on her lips and in the spheres of her large eyes.

"Lettie lived in Goa for a while," she began, affection playing in her voice. "She came to India for the usual mix-parties and spiritual highs. She found the parties, and she enjoyed them, I think. Lettie loves a party. But she never had much luck with the spiritual side of things. She went back to London-twice in the same year-but then she came back to India for one last try at the soul thing. She's on a soul mission. She talks tough, but she's a very spiritual girl. I think she's the most spiritual of all of us, really."

"How does she live? I don't mean to pry-it's what I was saying before, I just want to learn how people make a living here. How foreigners get by, I mean."

"She's an expert with gems-gemstones and jewels. She works on a commission basis for some of the foreign buyers. It was Didier who got her the job. He has contacts everywhere in Bombay."

"Didier?" I smiled, genuinely surprised. "I thought that they hated each other-well, not hate exactly. I thought they couldn't stand each other."

"Oh, they annoy one another, sure. But there's a real friendship there. If anything bad happened to one of them, the other would be devastated."

"How about Maurizio?" I asked, trying to keep my tone even. The tall Italian was too handsome, too confident, and I envied him for what I saw as his deeper knowledge of Karla, and his friendship with her. "What's his story?"

"His story? I don't know what his story is," she replied, frowning again. "His parents died, leaving him a lot of money. He spent it, and I think he developed something of a talent for spending money."

"Other people's money?" I asked. I might've seemed too eager for that to be true, because she answered me with a question.

"Do you know the story of the scorpion and the frog? You know, the frog agrees to carry the scorpion across the river, because the scorpion promises not to sting him?"

"Yeah. And then the scorpion stings the frog, half way across the river. The drowning frog asks him why he did it, when they'll both drown, and the scorpion says that he's a scorpion, and it's his nature to sting."

"Yes," she sighed, nodding slowly until the frown left her brow.

"That's Maurizio. And if you know that, he's not a problem, because you just don't offer to carry him across the river. Do you know what I mean?"

I'd been in prison. I knew exactly what she meant. I nodded, and asked her about Ulla and Modena.

"I like Ulla," she answered quickly, turning that half-smile on me again. "She's crazy and unreliable, but I have a feeling for her. She was a rich girl, in Germany, and she played with heroin until she got a habit. Her family cut her off, so she came to India-she was with a bad guy, a German guy, a junkie like her, who put her to work in a very tough place. A horrible place. She loved the guy. She did it for him. She would've done anything for him. Some women are like that. Some loves are like that. Most loves are like that, from what I can see. Your heart starts to feel like an overcrowded lifeboat. You throw your pride out to keep it afloat, and your self-respect and your independence.

After a while you start throwing people out-your friends, everyone you used to know. And it's still not enough. The lifeboat is still sinking, and you know it's going to take you down with it. I've seen that happen to a lot of girls here. I think that's why I'm sick of love."

I couldn't tell if she was talking about herself, or pointing the words at me. Either way, they were sharp, and I didn't want to hear them.

"And how about Kavita? Where does she fit in?"

"Kavita's great! She's a freelancer-you know that-a freelance writer. She wants to be a journalist, and I think she'll get there. I hope she gets there. She's bright and honest and gutsy.

She's beautiful, too. Don't you think she's a gorgeous girl?"

"Sure," I agreed, recalling the honey-coloured eyes, the full and shapely lips, and the long, expressive fingers. "She's a pretty girl. But they're all good-looking people, I think. Even Didier, in his crumpled-up way, has got a touch of the Lord Byron about him. Lettie's a lovely girl. Her eyes are always laughing- they're a real _ice-blue, her eyes, aren't they? Ulla looks like a doll, with those big eyes and big lips on such a round face.

But it's a pretty doll's face. Maurizio's handsome, like a magazine model, and Modena's handsome in a different way, like a bullfighter or something. And you're... you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen with my own eyes."

There, I'd said it. And even in the shock of speaking the thought out loud, I wondered if she'd understood, if she'd pierced my words about their beauty, and hers, to find the misery that inspired them: the misery that an ugly man feels in every conscious minute of love.

She laughed-a good, deep, wide-mouthed laugh-and seized my arm impulsively, pulling me along the footpath. Just then, as if drawn from the shadows by her laughter, there was a clattering rattle of noise as a beggar, riding on a small wooden platform with metal ball-bearing wheels, rolled off the footpath on the opposite side of the street. He pushed himself forward with his hands until he reached the centre of the deserted road, wheeling to a stop with a dramatic pirouette. His piteously thin mantis- legs were folded and tucked beneath him on the platform, which was a piece of wood no bigger than a folded newspaper. He wore a boy's school uniform of khaki shorts and a powder-blue shirt.

Although he was a man in his twenties, the clothes were too big for him.

Karla called out, greeting him by name, and we stopped opposite him. They spoke for some time in Hindi. I stared across the ten metres that separated us, fascinated by the man's hands. They were huge hands, as wide across the back, from knuckle to knuckle, as his face. In the streetlight I could see that they were thickly padded on the fingers and palms like the paws of a bear.

"Good night!" he called out in English, after a minute. He lifted one hand, first to his forehead and then to his heart, in a delicate gesture of consummate gallantry. With another swift, show-off's pirouette, he propelled himself forward along the road, gaining speed as he rolled down the gentle slope to the Gateway Monument.

We watched him out of sight, and then Karla pulled at my arm, leading me along the path once more. I allowed myself to be led.

I allowed myself to be drawn by the soft pleading of the waves, and the roulade of her voice; by the black sky, and the darker night of her hair; by the sea-tree-stone smell of the sleeping street, and the perfume sublime on her warm skin. I allowed myself to be drawn into her life, and the life of the city. I walked her home. I said good night. And I was singing quietly to myself as I went back along the silent brood of streets to my hotel.

____________________

CHAPTER THREE

"What you're saying is that we're finally going to get down to the real deal."

"Real will be full, baba," Prabaker assured me, "and deal will be plenty also. Now you will see it the really city. Usually, I am never taking the tourists to these places. They are not liking it, and I am not liking their not liking. Or maybe sometimes they are liking it too much, in these places, and I am liking that even less, isn't it? You must have it a good heads, to like these things, and you must be having a good hearts, to not like them too much. Like you, Linbaba. You are my good friend. I knew it very well, on that first day, when we were drinking the whisky, in your room. Now my Bombay, with your good heads and your good hearts, you will see it all."

We were riding in a taxi along Mahatma Gandhi Road past Flora Fountain and towards Victoria Station. It was an hour before noon, and the swash of traffic that coursed through that stone canyon was swollen by large numbers of runners pushing tiffin carts. The runners collected lunches from homes and apartments, and placed them in tin cylinders called jalpaans, or tiffins.

They pushed huge trays of the tiffins on long wooden carts, six men and more to a cart. Through the heavy metal-traffic of buses, trucks, scooters, and cars, they made deliveries at offices and businesses all over the city. None but the men and women who operated the service knew exactly how it was done: how barely literate men evolved the bafflingly complex system of symbols, colours, and key numbers to mark and identify the cylinders; how, day after day, hundreds of thousands of those identical containers swept through the city on their wooden axles, oiled with sweat, and reached the right man or woman, among millions, every time; and how all that was achieved at a cost measured in cents rather than dollars. Magic, the trick that connects the ordinary to the impossible, was the invisible river that ran through every street and beating heart in Bombay in those years, and nothing, from the postal service to the pleading of beggars, worked without a measure of it.

"What number that bus, Linbaba? Quickly, tell it."

"Just a second." I hesitated, peering out of the half-open window of the taxi and trying to read the curlicue numbers on the front of a red, double-decker bus that had stopped opposite us momentarily. "It's, ah, it's a one-zero-four, isn't it?"

"Very very fine! You have learn your Hindi numbers so nicely. Now no problem for you, reading numbers for bus, and train, and menu card, and drugs purchase, and other good things. Now tell me, what is alu palak?"

"Alu palak is potato and spinach."

"Good. And nice eating also, you have not mention. I love to eat it, alu palak. What is _phul _gobhi and bhindi?"

"That's... oh yeah, cauliflower and... and okra."

"Correct. And also good eating, again you are not mention. What is baingan masala?"

"That's, ah, spiced eggplant."

"Again right! What is it, you're not enjoying eating baingan?"

"Yes, yes, all right! Baingan is good eating, too!"

"I don't like it baingan so much," he sneered, wrinkling up his short nose. "Tell me, what am I calling chehra, munh, and dill?"

"Okay... don't tell me... face, mouth, and heart. Is that right?"

"Very right, no problem. I have been watching it, how nicely you eat up your foods with the hand, like a good Indian style. And how you learn to ask for the things-how much this, how much that, give me two cups of tea, I want more hashish-speaking only Hindi to the people. I have seen this all. You are my best student, Linbaba. And I am your best teacher also, isn't it?"

"It is, Prabu," I laughed. "Hey! Watch out!"

My shout alerted the taxi driver, who swerved just in time to avoid an ox-cart that was attempting to make a turn in front of us. The taxi driver-a burly, dark-skinned man with a bristling moustache-seemed to be outraged at my impertinence in saving our lives. When we first took the taxi he'd adjusted his mirror until he saw nothing in it but my face. After the near miss he glared at me, snarling a growl of insults in Hindi. He drove the cab like a getaway car, slewing left and right to overtake slower vehicles. There was an angry, bullying pugnacity in his attitude to everyone else on the road. He rushed to within centimetres of every slower car in his path, sounding his horn, then all but nudging it out of the way. If the slower car moved a little to the left, in order to let him pass, our driver drew beside it, pacing it for a time and shouting insults. When he spied another slow vehicle ahead, he sped forward to repeat the procedure. From time to time he opened his door and leaned out over the road to spit paan juice, taking his eyes off the traffic ahead for long seconds as we hurtled along in the rattling cab.

"This guy's a nut-case!" I muttered to Prabaker.

"Driving is not so good," Prabaker replied, bracing himself with both arms against the back of the driver's seat. "But I have to say, the spitting and insulting is a first-class job."

"For Christ's sake, tell him to stop!" I shouted as the cab accelerated into a squall of traffic, lurching in the swerve left and right. "He's going to kill us!"

"Band karo!" Prabaker shouted. Stop!

He added a pithy curse, for good measure, but the driver only became more enraged. With the car hurtling along at top speed, he turned his head to snarl at us. His mouth was wide open, and his teeth were bared. His eyes were huge, their blackness streaked with rage.

"Arrey!" Prabaker shrieked, pointing past the driver.

It was too late. The man turned quickly. His arms stiffened at the wheel, and he hit the brakes hard. There was a skating, sliding second... two seconds... three seconds. I heard a guttural gasp of air from deep in his throat. It was a sucking sound, like the lifting of a flat stone from the moist clay on the edge of a riverbed. Then there was the whump and crash as we slammed into a car that had stopped in front of us to make a turn. We were thrown forward into the back of his seat, and heard two thumping explosions as two other cars rammed into us.

Shattered glass and chrome fragments rattled on the road like thin metallic applause in the sudden silence that followed the impacts. My head had hit the door in the tumble spill of the accident. I felt blood flowing from a cut above my eye, but I was otherwise unhurt. As I wriggled myself up from the floor, and onto the back seat once more, I felt Prabaker's hands on me. "Nothing broken you are, Lin? You are okay?"

"I'm okay, I'm okay."

"You are sure? Everything not broken?"

"Jesus, Prabu, I don't care how good this guy's spitting is," I said, laughing nervously, and ragged with relief, "he doesn't get a tip. Are you all right?"

"We must get out, Lin!" he answered, his voice rising to a hysterical whine. "Out! Out of here! Now!"

The door on his side was jammed shut, and he began to push at it with his shoulder. He couldn't budge it. He reached across me to try the door on my side, but saw at once that another car was jammed against it, pinning it shut. Our eyes met, and there was such fear in him, such terror in the white-rimmed bulge of his eyes, that I felt the coldness of it deep in my chest. He turned at once, and threw himself again at the door on his side.

My mind was muddy water, and one idea splashed up from it, clear and exclusive: FIRE. Is that what he's afraid of! Once I'd asked myself the question I couldn't stop thinking it. I looked at the terror that pulled at Prabaker's gasping mouth, and I was sure the taxi was going to catch fire. I knew we were trapped there.

The rear windows, in all the Bombay taxis I'd seen, didn't open beyond a few centimetres. The doors were jammed, and the windows wouldn't open, and the taxi was going to explode in fire, and we were trapped. Burned live... Is that why he's so scared?

I looked to the driver. He was slumped, awkwardly, between the steering wheel and the door. His body was still, but I heard him moaning. Beneath the thin shirt, the abacus ridge of his spine rose and fell with each slow and shallow breath.

Faces appeared at the windows of the cab, and I heard excited voices. Prabaker looked out at them, turning this way and that, his face cramped in an expression of terrible anguish. Suddenly, he clambered over the seat into the front of the car and wrestled the passenger door open. Turning swiftly and grabbing at my arms with surprising strength, he tried to drag me by main force over the seat that divided us.

"This way, Lin! Get out, now! Hurry! Hurry!"

I climbed up and over the seat. Prabaker got out of the car, pushing his way into a crowd of onlookers. I reached out to the driver, trying to prise him from the obstructing rim of the steering wheel, but Prabaker's hands were on me again, brutally rough. The fingernails of one hand tore into the skin of my back, and the other wrenched at the collar of my shirt.

"Don't touch him, Lin!" he almost screamed. "Don't touch him!

Leave him and get out. Get out now!"

He dragged me from the car and through the hedge of bodies pressing in on the accident. On a footpath nearby, we sat beneath a fringe of hawthorn leaves that overhung a fence of wrought-iron spears, and inspected one another for injuries. The cut on my forehead, above my right eye, wasn't as serious as I'd thought.

The bleeding had already stopped, and it began to weep a clear, plasmic fluid. I was sore in a few places, but it was no cause for concern. Prabaker cradled his arm-the same arm that had pulled me from the car with such irresistible power-and it was obvious that he was in pain. A large swelling had already formed near the elbow. I knew it would leave a nasty bruise, but nothing seemed to be broken.

"Looks like you were wrong, Prabu," I chided, smiling as I lit a cigarette for him.

"Wrong, baba?"

"Getting us out of the car in such a panic and all. You really had me going. I thought the damn thing was going to catch fire, but it looks okay."

"Oh," he replied softly, staring straight ahead. "You think I was frightening for fire? Not fire in the car, Lin, but fire in the people. Look, now. See the public, how they are."

We stood, stretching the ache from shoulders and whip-lashed necks, and looked toward the wreckage some ten metres away. About thirty people had gathered around the four crashed vehicles. A few of them were helping drivers and passengers from the damaged cars. The rest huddled together in groups, gesturing wildly and shouting. More people streamed toward the site from every direction. Drivers of other cars that had been blocked from travelling further, left their vehicles and joined the crowd. The thirty people became fifty, eighty, then a hundred as we watched.

One man was the centre of attention. It was his car that had been trying to turn right, his car we'd smashed into with the brakes on full lock. He stood beside the taxi, bellowing with rage. He was a round-shouldered man, in his middle forties, wearing a grey, cotton safari suit that had been tailored to accommodate the extravagant boast of his large paunch. His thinning hair was awry. The breast pocket of his suit had been torn, there was a rip in his trousers, and he'd lost one sandal. That dishevelment combined with his theatrical gestures and persistent shouting to present a spectacle that seemed to be more enthralling, for the crowd of onlookers, than the wreckage of the cars. His hand had been cut from the palm to the wrist. As the staring crowd grew more silent, subdued by the drama, he smeared blood from the wound on his face and beat the redness into the grey of his suit, shouting all the while.

Just then, some men carried a woman into the little clear space around the man, and placed her on a piece of cloth that was stretched out on the ground for her. They shouted instructions to the crowd, and in moments a wooden cart appeared, pushed by bare- chested men wearing only singlets and short lungis. The woman was lifted onto the cart, her red sari gathered up in folds and wrapped about her legs. She may have been the man's wife-I couldn't be sure-but his rage suddenly grew hysterical. He seized her roughly by the shoulders and shook her. He pulled at her hair. He appealed to the crowd with enormous, histrionic gestures, flinging his arms wide and then striking his own blood- streaked face. They were the gestures of pantomime, the exaggerated simulations of silent films, and I couldn't help thinking they were absurd and funny. But the injuries people had sustained were real, as were the rumbling threats that surged through the ever-increasing crowd.

As the semi-conscious woman was trundled away on the humble cart, the man hurled himself at the door of the taxi, wrenching it open. The crowd reacted as one. They dragged the dazed and injured taxi driver from his cab in an instant and flung him on the bonnet of the car. He raised his arms in feeble pleading, but a dozen, twenty, fifty hands punched and tore at him. Blows drummed on his face, chest, stomach, and groin. Fingernails scratched and ripped, tearing his mouth open on one side almost to the ear, and shredding his shirt to rags.

It happened in seconds. I told myself, as I watched the beating, that it was all too fast, that I was dazed, and there was no time to react. What we call cowardice is often just another name for being taken by surprise, and courage is seldom any better than simply being well prepared. And I might've done more, I might've done something, anything, if it had happened in Australia. It's not your country, I told myself, as I watched the beating. It's not your culture...

But there was another thought, dark and secret then, and all too clear to me now: the man was an idiot, an insulting and belligerent idiot, whose reckless stupidity had risked Prabaker's life and mine. A splinter of spite had pierced my heart when the crowd turned on him, and at least some small particle of their revenge-a blow or a shout or a shove-was my own. Helpless, craven, ashamed, I did nothing.

"We've got to do something..." I said lamely.

"Enough people are doing, baba," Prabaker replied.

"No, I mean, we've got to... can't we help him, somehow?"

"For this fellow is no helping," he sighed. "Now you see it, Lin.

Accidents is very bad business in Bombay. Better you get out of that car, or taxi, or what is it you are in, very, very quickly.