‘Oh, Lin!’ he moaned happily, grinning up at the ceiling. ‘I knew it. I knew she was a full-of-experience woman.’
I stared at him in bewilderment.
‘Ah, yes!’ he gushed, sitting up and letting his short legs swing from the bed. ‘She gave me a big money’s worth. And I gave it to her a very, very good sex also. And now! Let’s go out! We will be having some foods, and some drinks, and a party!’
‘If you’re sure you’ve got the strength,’ I muttered.
‘Oh, no need for strength in this place, baba. This place I’m taking you is such a fine place that very often you can even sit down while you are drinking.’
As good as his word, Prabaker directed us to a hovel, about an hour’s walk past the last bus stop on the outskirts of the town. With a round of drinks for the house, we insinuated ourselves into the crush of dusty, determined drinkers who occupied the bar’s one narrow stone bench. The place was what Australians call a sly grog shop: an unlicensed bar, where men buy over-proof alcohol at under-the-counter prices.
The men we joined in the bar were workers, farmers, and a routine assortment of lawbreakers. They all wore sullen, persecuted expressions. They said little, or nothing at all. Fierce grimaces disfigured them as they drank the foul-tasting, homemade alcohol, and they followed each glass with a miscellany of grunts, groans, and gagging sounds. When we joined them, Prabaker and I consumed the drinks at a gulp, pinching our noses with one hand and hurling the noxious, chemurgic liquid down our open throats. By means of a fierce determination, we summoned the will to keep the poison in our bellies. And when sufficiently recovered we launched ourselves, with no little reluctance, into the next venomous round.
It was a grim and pleasureless business. The strain showed on every face. Some found the going too hard and slunk away, defeated. Some faltered, but were pressed on by the anguished encouragements of fellow sufferers. Prabaker lingered long over his fifth glass of the volatile fluid. I thought he was about to admit defeat, but at last he gasped and spluttered his way through to empty the glass. Then one man threw his glass aside, stood up, and moved to the centre of the shabby little room. He began to sing in a roaring, off-key voice, and because every man of us cheered our passionate and peremptory approval, we all knew that we were drunk.
One by one, we sang a song in turn. A weeping rendition of the Indian national anthem was followed by religious devotionals. Hindi love songs jingled beside heart-breaking gazals. The two burly waiters recognised the new stage of inebriation, and abandoned their drinks trays and glasses for a while. They took up their positions, sitting on stools on either side of the entrance door. They smiled broadly, nodded, wagged their heads, and cradled long, thick, wooden clubs in the tender embrace of their meaty arms. We all clapped and cheered, with every song. When it was my turn, I sang—I don’t know why—the old Kinks’ song, ‘You Really Got Me’:
Girl, you really got me goin’
You got me so I can’t sleep at night …
I was drunk enough to coach Prabaker, and he was drunk enough to learn the chorus.
Oh, yes, by God, you are a girl!
And you really, really got me, isn’t it going?
We were still singing on the dark, deserted stretch of road, leading back to town. We were still singing when the white Ambassador car cruised past us slowly, and turned. And we were still singing when the car cruised past us again, and then turned one more time to block our path on the shoulder of the road. Four men got out of the car, and one stayed behind the wheel. The tallest of the men grabbed at my shirt and barked a command at me in Marathi.
‘What is this?’ I slurred back at him, in Marathi.
Another man stepped in from the side and hit me with a short right hand that snapped my head back sharply. Two more quick punches crunched into my mouth and nose. I stumbled back, and felt one leg go out from under me. Falling, I saw Prabaker hurl himself at the four men with his arms wide, trying to hold them back from me. I roused myself, and rallied enough to make a charge. My left hook and overhand right elbow, the best hard punches in any street fight, were lucky, and both made tough contact. Beside me, Prabaker went down once, leapt to his feet, and collected a wild haymaker that sent him dazed and sprawling. I tried to stand near him and protect him with my legs, but I tripped and fell clumsily. Kicks and punches rained, and I covered up, hearing a quiet voice in my head that said, I know this … I know this …
The men held me down while one of them went through my pockets with practised thoroughness. Drunk and damaged, I was only dimly aware of the dark shapes looming over me. Then I heard another voice, Prabaker’s voice, and I understood some of the words in his pleading, and his defiant abuse of them. He castigated the men for shaming their own country and their own people by beating and robbing a foreigner, a visitor to their country who’d done them no harm. It was a wild speech that called them cowards and invoked Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha, the god Krishna, Mother Theresa, and the Bollywood film star Amitabh Bachchan in the same sentence. It had an effect. The leader of the group came to squat near me. I tried through my drunken haze to stand and fight again, but the others pushed me down and held me on the ground. I know this … I know this …
The man leaned over to look into my eyes. His face was hard, impassive, and very much like my own. He opened my torn shirt and shoved something inside. It was my passport and my watch.
They stood, gave Prabaker a last scowl of incomprehensible hatred, and then climbed into the car. Doors slammed as the car sped away, scattering us with dust and small stones.
Prabaker’s wretchedness, when he was sure that I wasn’t badly hurt, and he found time to wail and whine, was inconsolable. He blamed himself, loudly and often, for leading us to the remote bar and for allowing us to drink too much. He said with perfect honesty that he would happily take my bruises on his body, if it were possible. His pride in himself, as Bombay’s best street guide, was a tattered banner. And his passionate, unqualified love for his country, Bharat Mataji, Mother India, suffered blows more grievous than any the body might endure.
‘There’s only one good thing for doing, Lin,’ he concluded, as I washed my face at a hand-basin in the huge white-tiled bathroom of our hotel. ‘When we get back to Bombay, you must be sending a telegram to your family and your friends for more monies, and you must go to your New Zealand embassy for making a complain of emergencies.’
I dried my face, and leaned on the basin to look into the mirror. The injuries weren’t bad. A black eye was forming. My nose was swollen, but not broken. Both lips were cut and thickened, and there were some sweeping grazes on my cheeks and jaw, where kicks had scraped away the skin. It could’ve been a lot worse, and I knew it. I’d grown up in a tough neighbourhood, where working-class gangs preyed on one another and were merciless to loners, like me, who refused to join any of them. And then there was the prison. No beatings I’d ever suffered were as savage as those inflicted by the uniformed men who were paid to keep the peace, the prison guards. That was what the voice, my own voice, had recalled … I know this … That was the memory: being held down by three or four officers in the punishment unit while two or three others worked me over with fists, batons, and boots. It’s always worse getting a beating from them, of course, because they’re supposed to be the good guys. You understand and accept it when the bad guys work you over. But when the good guys use handcuffs to chain you to a wall, and then take turns to stomp and kick you, it’s the whole system, it’s the whole world, that’s breaking your bones. And then there was the screaming. The other men, the other prisoners, screaming. Every night.
I looked into my own eyes in the mirror, and thought about Prabaker’s suggestion. It was impossible to contact the New Zealand embassy—or any embassy. I couldn’t contact family or friends because the police would be watching them, and waiting for a connection to be made. There was no-one. No help. No money. The thieves had taken every cent I had in the world. The irony of it wasn’t lost on me: the escaped
armed robber, robbed of everything he owned. What was it Karla had said, before I’d left for the village? Don’t drink any alcohol on the trip …
‘There’s no money in New Zealand, Prabu,’ I told him as we walked back to our hotel room. ‘There’s no family who can help, no friends, and no help at the embassy.’
‘No money?’
‘None.’
‘And you can’t get any more? Not from any place?’
‘No,’ I answered, packing my few belongings into my backpack.
‘This is a very serious trouble, Lin, if you don’t mind I’m telling your bruise and scratchy face.’
‘I know. Do you think we can sell my watch to the hotel manager?’
‘Yes, Lin, I think so sure. It is a very nice watches. But I don’t think so he will give us a big fair price. In such matters, the Indian businessman is putting his religion in his back pocket only, and he is driving very hard bargains on you.’
‘Never mind,’ I replied, clipping shut the catches on my backpack. ‘So long as it’s enough to pay the bill, and catch that night train you were talking about, back to Bombay. Come on, pack your things, and let’s go.’
‘It is a very, very, very serious trouble,’ he said as we closed the door to the room for the last time, and walked down the corridor. ‘No money is no funny in India, Lin, I’m telling you.’
The frown that compressed his lips and consumed his features remained with us all the way back to Bombay. The sale of my watch covered the hotel bill in Aurangabad, with enough left for two or three days at the India Guest House in Bombay. With my gear stowed in my favourite room, I walked Prabaker back to the small entrance foyer of the hotel, trying in vain to revive the little miracle of his wondrous smile.
‘You will leave all those unhappy things in my caring,’ he said, earnest and solemn. ‘You will see, Lin. I will make a happy result on you.’
I watched him walk down the stairs, and then heard the manager, Anand, address me in friendly Marathi.
I turned with a smile, and we began to talk in Marathi. Six months in the village had given me the simple, everyday conversational phrases, questions, and sentences. It was a modest achievement, but Anand was obviously very pleased and surprised. After a few minutes of conversation, he called all the co-managers and room boys to hear me speak in their language. They all reacted with similarly delighted astonishment. They’d known foreigners who spoke a little Hindi, or even spoke it well, but none of them had ever met a foreigner who could converse with them in their own beloved Marathi language.
They asked me about the village of Sunder—they’d never heard of it—and we talked about the daily life that they all knew well from their own villages, and tended to idyllise in recollection. When the conversation ended, I returned to my room, and had barely shut the door when a tentative knock sounded at it.
‘Excuse me, please. I am sorry to disturb.’ The voice belonged to a tall, thin foreigner—German, or Swiss, perhaps—with a wispy beard attached to the point of his long face, and fair hair pulled back into a thick plait. ‘I heard you speaking to the manager, and the room boys, before, and … well, it is sure that you have been here in India very long … and … na ja, we just arrived today, my girlfriend and me, and we want to buy some hashish. Do you … do you maybe know where we can get for ourselves some hashish, without somebody cheating us, and without trouble from the police?’
I did know, of course. Before the night was out, I also helped them to change money on the black market without being cheated. The bearded German and his girlfriend were happy with the deal and they paid me a commission. The black marketeers, who were Prabaker’s friends and contacts on the street, were happy that I’d brought new customers to them, and they paid me commissions as well. I knew there would be other foreigners, on every street in Colaba, who wanted to score. That casual conversation in Marathi with Anand and the room boys of the hotel, overheard by the German couple, had given me a way to survive in the city.
A more pressing problem, however, was my tourist visa. When Anand had signed me in to the hotel, he’d warned me that my visa had expired. Every hotel in Bombay had to supply a register of foreign guests, with a valid visa entry for each foreign name and passport number. The register was known as the C-Form, and the police were vigilant in its supervision. Overstaying on a visa was a serious offence in India. Prison terms of up to two years were sometimes imposed, and the police levied heavy fines on hotel operators who permitted C-Form irregularities.
Anand had explained all that to me, gravely, before he fudged the figures in his register and signed me in. He liked me. He was Maharashtrian, and I was the first foreigner he’d ever met who spoke the Marathi language with him. He was happy to break the rules for me, once, but he warned me to visit the Foreigner Registration Branch, at police head-quarters, immediately, to see about an extension on my visa.
I sat in my room, and weighed the options. There weren’t many. I had very little money. True, I’d inadvertently discovered a way to earn money as a middleman, a go-between, helping wary foreigners to deal with black marketeers. However, I wasn’t sure if it would provide me with enough money to live in hotels and eat in restaurants. It certainly wouldn’t pay for a plane ticket out of India. Moreover, I was already an overstayer on my visa, and technically guilty of a criminal offence. Anand assured me that the cops would see the lapsed visa as a mere oversight, and extend it without enquiry, but I couldn’t risk my freedom on that chance. I couldn’t visit the Foreigner Registration Branch. So, I couldn’t alter my visa status, and I couldn’t stay at a hotel in Bombay without a valid visa. I was caught between the rock of regulations and the hard place of the fugitive life.
I lay back on the bed, in the dark, listening to the sounds of the street that rose to my open window: the paanwalla, calling customers to the delights of his aromatic morsels; the watermelon man, piercing the warm, humid night with his plangent cry; a street acrobat, shouting through his sweaty exertions for a crowd of tourists; and music, always music. Did ever a people love music, I wondered, more than the Indians?
Thoughts of the village, thoughts I’d avoided and resisted until that music began, danced into my mind. On the day that Prabaker and I had left the village, the people had invited me to live with them. They’d offered me a house and a job. In the last three months of my stay I’d been helping the teacher at the local school with special lessons in spoken English. I gave him clear pronunciations of English words, helping him to correct the heavily accented versions of the language that he’d been teaching to the children. The teacher and the village council had urged me to stay. There was a place for me—a place and a purpose.
But it wasn’t possible for me to return to Sunder village. Not then. A man can make his way in the city with his heart and his soul crushed within a clenched fist; but to live in a village, he has to unfurl his heart and his soul in his eyes. I carried crime and punishment with me in every hour of my life. The same fate that helped me to escape from prison had clamped its claws on my future. Sooner or later, if they looked hard enough and long enough, the people would see those claws in my eyes. Sooner or later, there would be a reckoning. I’d passed myself off as a free man, a peaceful man, and for a little while I’d known real happiness in the village, but my soul wasn’t clean. What would I do to prevent my recapture? What wouldn’t I do? Would I kill to save myself from prison?
I knew the answers to those questions, and I knew that my presence in Sunder defiled the village. I knew that every smile I took from them was swindled. Life on the run puts a lie in the echo of every laugh, and at least a little larceny in every act of love.
There was a knock at the door. I called out that it was open. Anand stepped into my room and announced with distaste that Prabaker had come to see me, with two of his friends. I clapped Anand on the back, smiling at his concern for me, and we walked to the hotel foyer.
‘Oh, Lin!’ Prabaker beamed, when our eyes met. ‘I have the very good news f
or you! This is my friend, Johnny Cigar. He is a very important friend in the zhopadpatti, the slum where we live. And this is Raju. He helps Mr. Qasim Ali Hussein, who is the head man in the slum.’
I shook hands with the two men. Johnny Cigar was almost exactly my height and build, which made him taller and heavier than the Indian average. I judged him to be about thirty years old. His long face was candid and alert. The sand-coloured eyes fixed me with a steady, confident gaze. His thin moustache was trimmed to a precise line over an expressive mouth and determined jaw. The other man, Raju, was only a little taller than Prabaker, and of an even slighter build. His gentle face was stamped with a sadness that invited sympathy. It was the kind of sadness that’s a companion, all too often, to scrupulous and uncompromising honesty. Thick brows hooded his intelligent, dark eyes. They stared at me, those knowing, mindful eyes, from a tired, sagging face that seemed much older than the thirty-five years I guessed him to be. I liked both men on sight.
We talked for a while, the new men asking me questions about Prabaker’s village and my impressions of life there. They asked me about the city, as well, wanting to know my favourite places in Bombay, and the things that I liked to do most. When the conversation seemed likely to continue, I invited them to join me at one of the nearby restaurants for chai.
‘No, no, Lin,’ Prabaker declined, waggling his head. ‘We must be leaving now. Only I wanted you to meet the Johnny and the Raju, and them to be meeting your good self, also. I think that Johnny Cigar has some things to tell you now, isn’t it?’