The Death of Mr Love, page 45
She shifted herself up the bed until she was leaning over me.
‘Don’t be jealous, silly boy.’
She bent down and kissed me, and I could taste the brandy, or whatever it was, uncoiling on her tongue. She was quivering as if a thin current of electricity were running through her body.
‘Bhalu, can I stay with you tonight?’
‘Of course.’ She had not slept in my room for several days.
She reached behind her back with the contortionist ease that women seem to possess, buzzed down a zip, and lifted the dress over her head. The bra came off in almost the same movement and the scrap round her hips did not survive much longer. All this I had seen before, but she was behaving in a particularly voluptuous way. She passed her hands under her breasts, then slid her fingers down her abdomen (slight swell of middle-aged tummy) and scratched for an absent-minded moment at the top of her pubic tangle, as if alleviating some momentary itch. Usually she slept in the other bed, but tonight she climbed in alongside me, her body warm, still fluttering with that strange energy, like a myriad moth wingtips.
‘You too,’ she said. ‘Nothing between us.’
So I, beginning to be infected by whatever excitement possessed her, got out of bed and my pyjamas and, careless of my visibly engorged state, lay down beside her. But by then she was asleep.
Tousled dreams. Tango, tormaline, troubadour, turbine, terrine, dreams beginning with t, ending nonsensically. It must have been an hour later when the phone rang. I had fallen asleep again. Groggily I picked up the receiver. There was no one at the other end, only a sound like an animal’s harsh breathing. Perhaps I dreamed it. Maybe I dreamed also that there came again a faint tapping at the door. Next morning, Shankar, bringing breakfast, ostentatiously averting his eyes from the blonde curls on my pillow, told me that two men had been round earlier, asking about me. Which country’s passport did I hold? Who had been to visit me? What was my home address?
Phoebe was still sleeping when a call came from Dost. He had news to discuss. Not over the phone. Murad would collect us. I repeated to him Phoebe’s tale of her adventures with the good-looking Chief Inspector and Shankar’s report about the two men who had visited the hotel. Dost seemed agitated.
‘Your girlfriend is bad news. Make sure your wife is all right.’
So I called home again. Half-past four in the morning in Lewes. The earliest light blueing over the Downs. Katy was bound to be in bed. She must hear the phone downstairs. But as before, there was just the endless ring ring ring, until at last the hotel’s operator cut in and informed me what I already knew, that, ‘Party is not replying, try again later.’
Phoebe, woken by my phone calls, yawning, stretching, rubbing her eyes, refused to worry. She stepped into her dress, picked up her underwear, and departed to her room.
Murad said, through a mouthful of paan: ‘Bhalu, there’s a guy following. Do you see? About a hundred yards behind? Thin saalaa on the motorbike?’ He directed an expert stream of crimson juice through his window, narrowly missing a pedestrian, and spoke into a mobile phone. I glanced at Phoebe, who was lying back, her eyes hidden by a pair of very dark glasses – last night’s junketings must have left her with a sore head – but of course she had no idea what we were talking about.
A few minutes later we were crawling through a Dongri lane towards a narrow cross-roads. Out of a side turning appeared the blue and yellow nose of a venerable truck, engine cowling banging loose. I thought, We’re stuck now, we’ll never make it. Somehow we slid past. Murad laughed. Behind us the truck, inching across the junction, was completely blocking the road when it appeared to stall. The driver jumped down and stood looking at the bonnet, shaking his head. A couple of hundred yards and several turns later, Murad swung the car into a warehouse whose tall gates immediately closed behind us.
Phoebe gave a litle snort and woke up. ‘Where are we?’
I had no idea, but in any case did not answer, because as we passed through the gates I had had an unexpected, overwhelming jolt of homesickness. I could almost hear Katy’s voice, as I let myself in through the back door of our cottage, calling, ‘No need to ask where you’ve been.’ The huge, dim space reeked of furniture polish and sawdust. Pure Pigletry. All around us were stacked pieces of furniture, ornate carved Indian almirahs and four-poster beds, Chippendale chairs and tables, in various stages of completion.
‘We make antiques here,’ said Murad, with no sense of irony. ‘All for export.’
He led me and a faintly protesting Phoebe through a door at the back, into a chartless maze of passages, archways, balconies, chambers, antechambers, across courtyards, up stairways and over flat roofs. At one point we came out on a parapet and saw the old bazaar area with its red-tiled roofs spread out beneath. All around us, from coops, came the fluttering and cooing of caged birds. ‘Racing pigeons. They can fly from here to Delhi.’
Dost was sitting with a small man, who wore glasses perched on top of his head. He had a refined and somehow otherworldly air, as if he were a scholar rather than what he actually was, a tailor.
‘Bhalu, my friend,’ said Dost, ‘you must not go back to that hotel. In fact, it’s time for you to quit your British gentleman act and become an Indian again.’
The little tailor went to work with a tape-measure, taking my naap, which is to say, the measure of a man. With great delicacy, he performed the corresponding service for Phoebe, who, I noticed, was wearing yesterday’s sun dress, very likely still with nothing on underneath. I was experiencing the most contradictory feelings about her, finding it harder and harder to revive the memory of our old friendship and reconcile it with my constantly thwarted desire. She for her part, I was convinced, no longer saw her hero when she looked at me, only the weakness my mother had so despised. It was a relief when a woman appeared in the doorway and beckoned her away.
‘I went to see a man,’ Dost said. ‘You need not know who. A very old man, half blind and so fat he can hardly get out of bed. What a stench! Poor fellow suffers from some disgusting condition that makes the room stink of piss. Anyway, he gave me a name. I wrote it down . . .’
He passed me a slip of paper. The name written on it was not one I recognised. It meant nothing at all to me.
‘Are you sure this is the man?’
‘I am not sure about anything. Least of all that you should be pursuing this. If you want my sincerest advice, take Phoebe and go back to England.’
‘How can we get this man’s address?’
‘I can’t help you there.’ After a moment’s thought he said, ‘Mitra could help, if he wanted . . . His political friends.’
An hour later I was dressed like a native of Dongri. Pyjama trousers held up by drawstring. Long kameez in Afghani green. White lacy skullcap. A woman, veiled from head to toe in black burkha entered the room with a tray of tea. She set it carefully on a table, then made a little obeisance in my direction. ‘Thank you,’ I said, in Urdu. The woman emitted a giggle and said, ‘Bhalu, you look just like Ali Baba.’
CINNAMON DUST
The strangest thing was that, in the street, in the bazaar, I felt, for the first time in years, completely at home. Nobody looked at me twice, nor at the dark-robed Muslim woman by my side. We were going to Dost’s house, Murad, a few steps ahead, leading the way. The street no longer looked foreign, it was an everyday place where ordinary people were coming and going about their business. People entering a mosque to make their midday prayers. In every city between here and Tangiers there would be similar scenes. It struck me how odd it is that in England, people who live in neat, well-kept houses, catch trains into the City every morning and buy a new car every four years, honestly believe that they are leading normal lives.
Some hours went by. It was sweltering afternoon when Murad appeared carrying suitcases. ‘Your belongings. It was not easy to get them. The police have been there again, asking for you. I found a room boy who said he would pack your suitcases. I thought I’d have to bribe him, but he refused to take money.’
‘Did he have a red tikka on his forehead?’
‘He did,’ Murad agreed. ‘He said to tell you he was glad to help, because he would do anything for madame.’
Madame was resting, recovering from her long night. From the next-door room where she was asleep came the gentlest of snores. How typical that she should be oblivious to the worries seething like a knot of worms in my brain. Why were the police looking for us? Was it because of what she had done? Perhaps they were only responding to her complaint, wanting to tell her the result of their investigation. Perhaps not . . . Why did Katy never answer the phone? Amidst the guilt a pulse of terror. What if something had happened to her? I remembered the threats made to Maya. Should I ring Piglet? But how? He did not believe in telephones. Couldn’t afford them, he said, and did what calling was necessary from a phone box in the High Street. Perhaps I should ring the White Hart and leave a message with Charlotte. One part of me wanted to get the next plane home but then I thought, in a moment of tenderness, of the sleeping woman next door, and was surprised to discover that the majority of conflicting voices that constituted the democratic republic of Bhalu were urging me to see our strange mission through.
I stationed myself in a chair directly in front of the fan, and looked for some way to divert myself until Dost came home. Apart from a pile of filmi magazines, at which I could not bring myself to look, the house was devoid of reading material. How different from our cottage, where no nook was without its pile of books and the loo was a small library of things currently being studied. In my suitcase was Killy’s favourite work of fiction, the one which he was fond of quoting at dinner parties. India in 1983. As I turned its pages I was assailed by a familiar feeling of dismay. I had come to hate the author’s sneering tone. Yet the more of it I read, the less like fiction it seemed.
In the first place, a native board having unlimited control over funds was an institution, whose proceedings every native could thoroughly understand, whereas the notion of an unsympathetic and incorruptible Englishman had long been acknowledged to be quite incalculable. Here was an administrative body, which could be touched with the feeling of one’s infirmities – which could lend an ear to the uncle who wanted employment for his nephews, to the poor man with the large family, who had six brothers-in-law and thirty-six cousins all desiring appointments, – which could sympathise with the fraudulent contractor, the neccessitous builder – and in whose bosom the swindling overseer, who had been declared incapable of serving government again in any capacity, could find a congenial haven of rest not unaccompanied by profit. The souls of all these innocent and worthy men were rejoiced, the money was blandly divided, and if no improvements were carried out, it was probably because the Boards knew, what no Englishman had ever been able to grasp, that, as a rule, the inhabitants of Hindustan prefer going along a bad road to going along a good one, and discern charms in a tumbledown and filthy serai which a cleanly and well-kept building can never afford. The great thing was, you knew where you were with the Committees. Matters were arranged orientally, and at the bottom of the native character there is a profound sympathy with oriental methods of administration. It was perfectly certain that the larger part of the funds would stick to the palms of the members of the Committee, that their relatives and friends would compose the entire administrative staff, that no contract would be given unless a handsome commission had been paid to the President and Secretary, and that any works that were constructed would be exclusively adapted to the improvement of the President and members. All this was thoroughly understood, and the feeling it aroused was not one of indignation, but a simple desire to participate in the spoils.
I thought, this man’s prejudice is given the lie by the generosity of ordinary people, but the politicians and police chiefs of India are doing their utmost to prove him right.
Evening came, the time of pigeon flight. Outside, the heat was still growing. One of those stifling mid-monsoon lulls. An uncomfortable night lay ahead, unless a storm broke and cleared the air. In my wallet was the piece of paper with the name on it. When Dost returned, I would ask him to arrange another meeting with Mitra. Darkness fell, with bursts of filmi-music from the street below. Dost did not return.
It must have been about eleven when there was a knock on the door of the room. The young tea-boy came in, he who had flirted with Phoebe. He had a message from Dost. We were to leave the house immediately. ‘Go to the place you used to know many years ago. Dost-uncle will meet you there. He said don’t delay, don’t ask questions. Come with me now, I will show you the way.’
I went next door to wake Phoebe and found her long black robe lying discarded on the floor. She was curled up on the bed naked. Light filtering in from outside stroked her cheek and touched the hills and valleys of her body. She looked defenceless and utterly lovely. I shook her shoulder gently, then harder, till she stirred.
‘Phoebe,’ I whispered. ‘You must get up.’
‘I’m so tired,’ she said, still full of sleep.
‘We have to leave here straight away.’
‘But why?’ she protested ‘We’ve only just got here.’
‘Dost says we must go. The police are looking for us.’
She sat up and opened her eyes very wide, as if they could cast a light in the gloom. ‘The police? Why should that worry us?’
I thought about this, and admitted that I didn’t know.
‘They’re our friends now,’ she said. ‘They’re going to help us.’
Was she so utterly naive, so convinced of her allure, her ability to charm men, that she really believed this? This was one of the moments I recall best from that whole time, when it became clear to me that I would never understand her.
‘Come here,’ she said. ‘Lie down. I love going to sleep on your shoulder.’
She looked so appealing that despite the huge urgency of the moment, the boy waiting next door and heaven knows what on its way to Dost’s house, I felt a desire to take off my clothes and make love to her. It puzzled me that we had so often come so close but that always something happened to prevent it.
She held out her arms. ‘Come here,’ she repeated. ‘Let me cuddle you.’
Even as the reply formed in my mind, I thought it was a stupid thing that I was about to ask – insane, given the circumstances – but in a voice so coarsened by emotion that I hardly recognised it as my own, and through a violent drumming in my ears, I said, ‘Phoebe, don’t cuddle me. Fuck me.’
Slowly she lowered her arms. An expression almost like pleading came over her face. She smiled and said, ‘Bhalu . . .’
My heartbeat became a hammering coming from somewhere outside my ribcage. Commotion downstairs. The boy next door called, ‘Bhalu-ji! Men are here!’
What followed was so strange that I often doubt it actually happened. Perhaps it was not real at all, but a dream . . .
We were waiting in the darkness of what had once been Moosa’s doorway, our backs pressed to the wrought-iron gates that used to guard his kingdom. Inside was the courtyard I remembered, with its lime bush and frangipani tree, and stairs leading to a storeroom that Mitra, in another life, had told me was air-conditioned to keep the hashish fresh. Half an hour, at least, since the boy had led us here and left us, saying, ‘Stay hidden. Keep quiet. Don’t move till Dost-uncle comes.’ Phoebe pressed close to me. Under her black robe I could feel that she was naked. She had her veil pushed back. Light ran down her profile, kindled a strand of hair. Her head was cocked in that questioning manner of hers. Despite the mugginess of the night, she was shivering. Beyond, the alley was all angles of shadow, a solitary street-lamp caught in a whirling mist of flies.
Ever since I uttered those words, to which her reply had been cut short, she had behaved like a lamb. All the feistiness had gone out of her. She pulled the robe over her head and followed me, her hand clutching mine. She clung close at every step. At times, as we followed the boy, down a back stair, along a passage, out of one of the house’s myriad doors – the place was like a rabbit warren – I would catch her face turned up towards me. It was as if she had once again become the trusting child, content to place her safety in my hands.
Distantly, from somewhere deep in the bazaar, came a shout. She started, gave a little exclamation of fear. I placed a finger on her mouth. I was scared too, but the melodrama annoyed me. Nothing, surely, but a late-night roisterer. I forced myself to think of something other than fear. I stared at the familiar building across the road, its architecture, rotting frames, layers of flaking paint – and the charred sign that read CURRY YARNS.
It had been a spice warehouse. On still evenings, Dost had told me once, you could catch the tang of cinnamon dust. Or was it the scent of her hair? How could the loops of history, of story, have brought us back here, in danger, to this place where I had once sat on charpays, inferring the universe? Her trembling had grown worse, she was shuddering. I put my arms round the woman to quiet her and she buried her head in my shoulder. I bent and kissed her forehead and she lifted her face to me. In the faint light, I saw tracks of tears on her cheeks. I said, with a bravado I was far from feeling, ‘Don’t worry, Fever, I’ll look after you.’
Of what was the architect thinking when he designed those windows? The wooden shutters recalled the buildings of earlier ages. To me, remembering how it had looked when I was stoned, the street wore an ancient Indian air. It was an alley in the thousand-year metropolis of Pataliputra, capital of the Maurya and Gupta empires. Mitra and Dost and I were nagarikas, young men about town. The nagarika had certain daily duties, most of which involved his own amusement. Among his pleasures were amours with interesting ladies. The sage Vatsyayana wrote a book called Kamasutram which gave detailed instructions on how infallibly to seduce other men’s wives. From Sybil’s diaries we knew that Mister Love had kept a copy by his bed – Mister Love, whose murder hid a second, monstrous crime, which had remained undiscovered, its perpetrator unpunished. Wasn’t this the message Phoebe received at the séance – the second séance, which she attended alone after I had left for Bombay – from dead Maya and dead Sybil? My mother and hers, directing our destinies from beyond, respectively, the pyre and the grave. Be careful, they warned, the ‘threats’ are still alive. Mister Love is dead, but not at rest.
