Shantaram (31 page)

No more talking. Eat now, and sleep."

Qasim stood, turned, and walked away. Joseph's friends helped him to his feet, and half-carried him to his hut. The hut had been cleaned, and all of Maria's clothes and personal articles had been removed. Joseph was given rice and dhal. He ate a little of it, and then lay back on his thin mattress. Two friends sat near him, and fanned his unconscious body with green paper fans. A cord was tied around one end of the bloody stick, and Johnny Cigar suspended it from a post outside Joseph's hut for all to see. It would remain there for the two months of Joseph's further punishment.

Someone turned a radio on in a hut not far away, and a Hindi love song wailed through the lanes and gullies of the busy slum. A child was crying somewhere. Chickens scratched and pecked at the place where Joseph's circle of torment had been. Somewhere else, a woman was laughing, children played, the bangle-seller sang out his enticement-call in Marathi. A bangle is beauty, and beauty is a bangle!

As the pulse and push of normal life returned to the slum, I walked back to my hut, through the winding lanes. Fishermen and fisherwomen were coming home from Sassoon Dock, bringing baskets of sea-smell with them. In one of those balancing contrasts of slum life, it was also the hour chosen by the incense-sellers to move through the lanes, burning their samples of sandalwood, jasmine, rose, and patchouli.

I thought about what I'd seen that day, what the people did for themselves in their tiny city of twenty-five thousand souls, without policemen, judges, courts, and prisons. I thought about something Qasim Ali had said, weeks before, when the two boys, Faroukh and Raghuram, had presented themselves for punishment, having spent a day tied together in work at the latrine. After they'd scrubbed themselves clean with a hot bucket-bath, and dressed in new lungis and clean, white singlets, the two boys stood before an assembly of their families, friends, and neighbours. Lamplights fluttered in the breeze, passing the golden gleam from eye to eye, as shadows chased one another across the reed-mat walls of the huts. Qasim Ali pronounced the punishment that had been decided upon by a council of Hindu and Muslim friends and neighbours. Their punishment, for fighting about religion, was that each had to learn one complete prayer from the religious observances of the other.

"In this way is justice done," Qasim Ali said that night, his bark-coloured eyes softening on the two young men, "because justice is a judgement that is both fair and forgiving. Justice is not done until everyone is satisfied, even those who offend us and must be punished by us. You can see, by what we have done with these two boys, that justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them."

I knew those words by heart. I'd written them down in my work journal, not long after Qasim Ali had spoken them. And when I returned to my hut on that day of Maria's agonies, that day of Joseph's shame, I lit a lamp, and opened the black journal, and stared at the words on the page. Somewhere close to me, sisters and friends comforted Maria, and fanned her bruised and beaten body. In Joseph's hut, Prabaker and Johnny Cigar took the first shift to watch over their neighbour as he slept. It was hot, then, as evening's long shadows became the night. I breathed a stillness of air, dusty and fragrant with scents from cooking fires. And it was quiet, in those dark, thinking moments: quiet enough to hear sweat droplets from my sorrowed face fall upon the page, one after another, each wet circle weeping outward into the words fair... forgiving... punish... and save...

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CHAPTER TWELVE

One week became three weeks, and one month became five. From time to time, as I worked the streets of Colaba with my tourist clients, I ran into Didier, or Vikram, or some of the others from Leopold's. Sometimes I saw Karla, but I never spoke to her. I didn't want to meet her eyes while I was poor, and living in the slum. Poverty and pride are devoted blood brothers until one, always and inevitably, kills the other.

I didn't see Abdullah at all during that fifth month, but a succession of strange and occasionally bizarre messengers came to the slum with news of him. I was sitting alone at the table in my hut one morning, writing, when the ghetto dogs roused me from my work with a fury of barking more frenzied than anything I'd ever heard. There was rage and terror in it. I put down my pen, but didn't open my door or even move from my chair. The dogs were often vicious at night, but that was the first time I'd ever heard such ferocity in the daylight hours. The sound was fascinating and alarming. As I perceived that the pack was coming nearer and slowly nearer to my hut, my heart began to thump.

Shafts of golden morning stabbed through rents and gaps in the fragile reed walls of my hut. Those mote-filled rays stuttered and strobed as people rushed past in the lane outside. Shouts and screams joined the howling. I looked around me. The only weapon of any kind in my small house was a thick bamboo stick. I picked it up. The riot of barking and voices concentrated outside my hut, and seemed to be centred on my door.

I pulled open the thin piece of plywood I used as a door, and dropped the stick at once. There, half a metre away, was a huge, brown bear. The animal towered over me, filling the doorway with awesome, muscled fur. It stood easily on its hind legs, with its enormous paws raised to the height of my shoulders. The presence of the beast provoked the ghetto dogs to madness.

Not daring to come within reach, they turned on one another in their fierce rage. Ignoring them and the excited crowd of people, the bear stooped and leaned in toward the doorway to stare into my eyes. Its eyes were large, sentient, and topaz-coloured. It growled. Far from threatening, the bear's growl was a rumbling, tumbling, oddly soothing roll of sound, more eloquent than the prayer that muttered through my mind. My fear slipped away as I listened to it. Across that half-metre of air, I felt the reverberations of the feral noise throb against my chest. It leaned closer until its face and mine were centimetres apart.

Froth dissolved to liquid, and dripped from its wet, black jaws.

The bear meant me no harm. Somehow, I was sure of it. The eyes of the beast were speaking of something else. It was seconds only, but in that thudding stillness the communication of an animal sadness, undiluted by reason and complete in its passion, was so intense and pure, from eye to eye, that it seemed much longer, and I wanted it to go on.

The dogs slashed at one another, whining and howling an agony of hate and fear, wanting to rip at the bear, but more afraid than enraged. Children screamed, and people scrambled to avoid the thrashing dogs. The bear turned, ponderously slow, but then lashed out swiftly and swept a massive paw at the dogs. The dogs scattered, and a number of young men seized the opportunity to drive them further away with stones and sticks.

The bear swayed from side to side, scanning the crowd with those large, dolorous eyes. With a clear view of the animal, I noticed that it wore a leather collar studded with short spikes. Two chains were fastened to the collar, and they trailed away into the hands of two men. I hadn't seen them until then. They were bear-handlers, dressed in vests, turbans, and trousers, all of which were a startling electric blue colour. Even their chests and faces were painted blue, as were the metal chains and collar of the bear. The bear turned and stood to face me again.

Impossibly, one of the men who held its chains spoke my name.

"Mr. Lin? You are Mr. Lin, I am thinking so?" he asked.

The bear tilted its head as if it, too, was asking the question.

"Yes!" a few voices in the crowd called out. "Yes! This is Mr.

Lin! This is Linbaba!"

I was still standing in the doorway of my hut, too surprised to speak or move. People were laughing and cheering. A few of the more courageous children crept almost close enough to touch the bear with darting fingers. Their mothers shrieked and laughed and gathered them back into their arms.

"We are your friends," one of the blue-faced men said, in Hindi.

His teeth were dazzling white, against the blue. "We have come with a message for you."

The second man took a crumpled, yellow envelope from the pocket of his vest and held it up for me to see.

"A message?" I managed to ask.

"Yes, an important message for you, sir," the first man said.

"But first, you must do something. There is a promise for giving the message. A big promise. You will like it very much."

They were speaking in Hindi, and I was unfamiliar with the word vachan, meaning promise. I stepped from the hut, edging around the bear. There were more people than I'd imagined, and they crowded together, just out of range of the bear's paws. Several people were repeating the Hindi word vachan. A babble of other voices, in several languages, added to the shouts and stone throwing and barking dogs to produce the sound effects for a minor riot.

The dust on the stony paths rose up in puffs and swirls, and although we were in the centre of a modern city, that place of bamboo huts and gaping crowds might've been a village in a forgotten valley. The bear-handlers, when I saw them clearly, seemed fantastic beings. Their bare arms and chests were well muscled beneath the blue paint, and their trousers were decorated with silver bells and discs and tassels of red and yellow silk.

Both men had long hair, worn in dreadlocks as thick as two fingers, and tipped with coils of silver wire.

I felt a hand on my arm, and almost jumped. It was Prabaker. His usual smile was preternaturally wide and his dark eyes were happy.

"We are so lucky to have you live with us, Lin. You are always bringing it so many adventures of a fully not-boring kind!"

"I didn't bring this, Prabu. What the hell are they saying? What do they want?"

"They have it a message for you, Lin. But there is a vachan, a promise, before they will give it the message. There is a... you know... a catches."

"A catches?" "Yes, sure. This is English word, yes? Catches. It means like a little revenge for being nice," Prabaker grinned happily, seizing the opportunity to share one of his English definitions with me.

It was his habit or fortuity, always, to find the most irritating moments to offer them.

"Yes, I know what a catch is, Prabu. What I don't know is, who are these guys? Who's this message from?"

Prabaker rattled away in rapid Hindi, delighted to be the focus of attention in the exchange. The bear-handlers answered him in some detail, speaking just as swiftly. I couldn't understand much of what was said, but those in the crowd who were close enough to hear broke out in an explosion of laughter. The bear dropped down on all fours and sniffed at my feet.

"What did they say?"

"Lin, they won't tell who is sending it the messages," Prabaker said, suppressing his own laughter with some difficulty. "This is a big secret, and they are not telling it. They have some instructions, to give this message to you, with nothing explanations, and with the one catches for you, like a promise."

"What catch?"

"Well, you have to hug it the bear."

"I have to what?"

"Hug it the bear. You have to give him a big cuddles, like this."

He reached out and grabbed me in a tight hug, his head pressed against my chest. The crowd applauded wildly, the bear-handlers shrieked in a high-pitched keening, and even the bear was moved to stand and dance a thudding, stomp-footed jig. The bewilderment and obvious reluctance on my face drove the people to more and bigger laughter.

"No way," I said, shaking my head.

"Oh, yes," Prabaker laughed.

"Are you kidding? No way, man."

"Takleef nahin!" one of the bear-handlers called out. No problem!

"It is safe. Kano is very friendly. Kano is the friendliest bear in all India. Kano loves the people."

He moved closer to the bear, shouting commands in Hindi. When Kano the bear stood to his full height, the handler stepped in and embraced him. The bear closed its paws around him, and rocked backwards and forwards. After a few seconds, it released the man, and he turned to the tumultuous applause of the crowd with a beaming smile and a showman's bow.

"No way," I said again.

"Oh, come on, Lin. Hug it the bear," Prabaker pleaded, laughing harder.

"I'm not hugging it any bear, Prabu."

"Come on, Lin. Don't you want to know what is it, the messages?"

"No."

"It might be important."

"I don't care."

"You might like that hugging bear, Lin, isn't it?"

"No."

"You might."

"I won't."

"Well, maybe, would you like me to give you another big hugs, for practice?"

"No. Thanks, all the same."

"Then, just hug it the bear, Lin."

"Sorry."

"Oh, pleeeeeeese," Prabaker wheedled.

"No."

"Yes, Lin, please hug it the bear," Prabaker encouraged, asking for support from the crowd. There were hundreds of people crammed into the lanes near my house. Children had found precarious vantage points on top of some of the sturdier huts.

"Do
it, do it, do _it!" they wailed and shouted.

Looking around me, from face to laughing face, I realised that I didn't have any choice. I took the two steps, reached out tremulously, and slowly pressed myself against the shaggy fur of Kano the bear. He was surprisingly soft under the fur-almost pudgy. The thick forelegs were all muscle, however, and they closed around me at shoulder height with a massive power, a non human strength. I knew what it was to feel utterly helpless.

One fright-driven thought spun through my mind-Kano could snap my back as easily as I could snap a pencil. The bear's voice grumbled in his chest against my ear. A smell like wet moss filled my nostrils. Mixed with it was a smell like new leather shoes, and the smell of a child's woollen blanket. Beyond that, there was a piercing ammoniac smell, like bone being cut with a saw. The noise of the crowd faded. Kano was warm. Kano moved from side to side. The fur, in the grasp of my fingers, was soft, and attached to rolls of skin like that on the back of a dog's neck. I clung to the fur, and rocked with him. In its brawny grip, it seemed to me that I was floating, or perhaps falling, from some exalted place of inexpressible peace and promise.

Hands shook my shoulders, and I opened my eyes to see that I'd fallen to my knees. Kano the bear had released me from the hug, and was already at the end of the short lane, lumbering away with his slow, thumping tread in the company of his handlers and the retinue of people and maddened dogs.

"Linbaba, are you all right?"

"I'm fine, fine. Must have... I got dizzy, or something."

"Kano was giving you the pretty good squeezes, yes? Here, this is your message."

I went back to my hut and sat at the small table made from packing crates. Inside the crumpled envelope was a typed note on matching yellow paper. It was typed in English, and I suspected that it had been typed by one of the professional letter-writers on the Street of the Writers. It was from Abdullah.

My Dear Brother, Salaam aleikum. You told me that you are giving the bear hugs to the people. I think this is a custom in your country and even if I think it is very strange and even if I do not understand, I think you must be lonely for it here because in Bombay we have a shortage of bears. So I send you a bear for some hugging. Please enjoy. I hope he is like the hugging bears in your country. I am busy with business and I am healthy, thanks be to God. After my business I will return to Bombay soon, Inshallah. God bless you and your brother.

Abdullah Taheri Prabaker was standing at my left shoulder, reading the note out aloud, slowly.

"Aha, this is the Abdullah, who I am not supposed to be telling you that he is doing all the bad things, but really he is, even at the same time that I am not telling you... that he is."

"It's rude to read other people's mail, Prabu."

"Is rude, yes. Rude means that we like to do it, even when people tell us not to, yes?"

"Who are those bear guys?" I asked him. "Where are they staying?"

"They are making money with the dancing bear. They are original from UP., Uttar Pradesh, in the north of this, our Mother India, but travelling everywhere. Now they are staying at the zhopadpatti in Navy Nagar area. Do you want me to take you there?"

"No," I muttered, reading the note over again. "No, not now.

Maybe later."

Prabaker went to the open door of the hut and paused there, staring at me reflectively with his small, round head cocked to one side. I put the note in my pocket, and looked up at him. I thought he wanted to say something-there was a little struggle of concentration in his brow-but then he seemed to change his mind. He shrugged. He smiled.

"Some sick peoples are coming today?"

"A few. I think. Later."

"Well, I will be seeing you at the lunch party, yes?"

"Sure."

"Do you... do you want me, for to do anything?"

"No. Thanks."

"Do you want my neighbour, his wife, to wash it your shirt?"

"Wash my shirt?"

"Yes. It is smelling like bears. You are smelling like bears, Linbaba."

"It's okay," I laughed. "I kinda like it."

"Well, I'm going now. I'm going to drive my cousin Shantu's taxi."

"Okay then."

"All right. I'm going now."

He walked out, and when I was alone again the sounds of the slum swarmed around me: hawkers selling, children playing, women laughing, and love songs blaring from radios running on maximum distortion. There were also animal sounds, hundreds of them. With only days to go before the big rain, many itinerants and entertainers, like the two bear-handlers, had sought shelter in slums throughout the city. Ours was host to three groups of snake charmers, a team of monkey men, and numerous breeders of parrots and singing birds. The men who usually tethered horses in open ground near the Navy barracks brought their mounts to our makeshift stables. Goats and sheep and pigs, chickens and bullocks and water buffalo, even a camel and an elephant-the acres of the slum had become a kind of sprawling ark, providing sanctuary from the coming floods.