‘You don’t like her much, do you?’
‘It’s worse than that. I hate her, Lin. I hate her, and I wish she was dead.’
It was my turn to withdraw. I wrapped the silence around myself like a scarf, and stared past her softly sculptured profile to the haphazard beauty of the street. In truth, Madame Zhou’s mystery didn’t matter to me. I had no interest in her, then, beyond the mission Karla had given me. I was in love with the beautiful Swiss woman sitting beside me in the cab, and she was mysterious enough. I wanted to know about her. I wanted to know how she came to live in Bombay, and what her connection was to the weirdness of Madame Zhou, and why she never talked about herself. But no matter how badly I wanted to know … everything … everything about her, I couldn’t press it. I had no right to ask for more because I’d kept all of my secrets from her. I’d lied to her, saying that I came from New Zealand, and that I had no family. I hadn’t even told her my real name. And because I was in love with her, I felt trapped by those fictions. She’d kissed me, and it was good; honest and good. But I didn’t know if the truth in that kiss was the beginning for us or the end. My strongest hope was that the mission would bring us together. I hoped it would be enough to break through both our walls of secrets and lies.
I didn’t underestimate the task she’d set for me. I knew it might go wrong, and I might have to fight to bring Lisa out of the Palace. I was ready. There was a knife in a leather scabbard tucked into the waistband of my trousers under my shirt. It had a long, heavy, sharp blade. I knew that with a good knife I could handle two men. I’d fought men in knife fights before, in prison. A knife, in the hand of a man who knows how to use it and isn’t afraid to drive it into other human bodies, is still, despite its ancient origin, the most effective close-order weapon after the gun. Sitting there in the cab, silent and still, I prepared myself for the fight. A little movie, a preview of the bloodshed to come, played itself out in my mind. I would have to keep my left hand free, to lead or drag Lisa and Karla out of the Palace. My right hand would have to force a path through any resistance. I wasn’t afraid. I knew that if the fighting started, when the fighting started, I would slash and punch and stab without thinking.
The cab had bluffed its way through the strangle of traffic, and we picked up speed on the wider streets near a steep overpass. A blessing of fresh wind cooled us, and hair that had been lank and wet with sweat was dry in seconds. Karla fidgeted, tossed her beedie cigarette out of the open window, and rifled through the contents of her patent-leather shoulder bag. She took out a cigarette packet. It contained thick, ready-made joints with tapered, twisted ends. She lit one.
‘I need a kicker,’ she said, inhaling deeply. The flower-leaf scent of hashish blossomed in the cab. She took a few puffs, and then offered the joint to me.
‘Do you think it’ll help?’
‘Probably not.’
It was strong, Kashmiri hash. I felt the momentary loosening of stomach, neck, and shoulder muscles as the stone took hold. The driver sniffed loudly, theatrically, adjusting his mirror to see the back seat more clearly. I gave the joint back to Karla. She sucked at it a few more times, and then passed it to the driver.
‘Charras pitta?’ she asked. You smoke charras?
‘Ha, munta!’ he said, laughing and accepting it happily. Say yes! He smoked it halfway down, and passed it back. ‘Achaa charras! First number. I have it Am’rikan music, disco, very first number United States Am’rikan music disco. You like you hear.’
He snapped a cassette into his dashboard player and threw the volume to maximum. Seconds later, the song We Are Family, by Sister Sledge, thumped out of the speakers behind our heads with numbing plangency Karla whooped for joy. The driver switched the volume to zero, and asked if we liked it. Karla whooped again, and passed him the joint. He turned the music back to max. We smoked, and sang along, and drove past a thousand years of street, from barefoot peasant boys on bullock carts to businessmen buying computers.
Within sight of the Palace, the driver pulled over beside an open chai shop. He pointed to it, with a jerk of his thumb, and told Karla that he would wait for her there. I knew enough cab drivers, and had travelled enough in Bombay cabs, to know that the driver’s offer to wait was a decent gesture of concern for her, and not just hunger for work or tips or something else. He liked her. I’d seen it before, that quirky and spontaneous infatuation. Karla was young and attractive, sure, but most of the driver’s reaction was inspired by her fluency with his language, and the way she used it to deal with him. A German cab driver might be pleased that a foreigner had learned to speak German. He might even say that he was pleased. Or say nothing at all. The same might be true of a French cab driver, or an American, or an Australian. But an Indian will be so pleased that if he likes something else about you—your eyes, or your smile, or the way you react to a beggar at the window of his cab—he’ll feel bonded to you, instantly. He’ll be prepared to do things for you, go out of his way, put himself at risk, and even do dangerous or illegal things. If you’ve given him an address he doesn’t like, such as the Palace, he’ll be prepared to wait for you, just to be sure that you’re safe. You could come out an hour later, and ignore him completely, and he would smile and drive away, happy to know that no harm had come to you. It happened to me many times in Bombay, but never in any other city. It’s one of the five hundred things I love about Indians: if they like you, they do it quickly, and not by half. Karla paid his fare and the promised tip, and told him not to wait. We both knew that he would.
The Palace was a huge building, triple-fronted and three stories tall. The street windows were barred with wrought-iron curlicues beaten into the shape of acanthus leaves. It was older than many other buildings on the street, and restored, not renovated. Original detail had been carefully preserved. The heavy stone architraves over the door and windows had been chiselled into coronets of five-pointed stars. That meticulous craftsmanship, once common in the city, was all but a lost art. There was an alleyway on the right-hand side of the building, and the stonemasons had lavished their handiwork on the quoin—every second stone from the ground to below the eaves was faceted like a jewel. A glassed-in balcony ran the width of the third floor, the rooms within concealed by bamboo blinds. The walls of the building were grey, the door black. To my surprise, the door simply opened when Karla touched it, and we stepped inside.
We entered a long, cool corridor, darker than the sunlit street but softly illuminated by lily-shaped lamps of fluted glass. There was wallpaper—very unusual in humid Bombay—with the repetitive Compton pattern of William Morris in olive green and flesh pinks. A smell of incense and flowers permeated, and the eerie, padded silences of closed rooms surrounded us.
A man was standing in the hallway, facing us, with his hands loosely clasped in front of him. He was tall and thin. His fine, dark brown hair was pulled back severely and tied into a long plait that reached to his hips. He had no eyebrows, but very thick eyelashes, so thick that I thought they must be false. Some designs, in swirls and scrolls, were drawn on his pale face from his lips to his pointed chin. He was dressed in a black, silk kurtapyjama and clear plastic sandals.
‘Hello, Rajan,’ Karla greeted him, icily.
‘Ram Ram, Miss Karla,’ he replied, using the Hindu greeting. His voice was a sneering hiss. ‘Madame will see you immediately. You are to go straight up. I will bring cold drinks. You know the way,’
He stood to one side, and gestured towards the stairs at the end of the hall. The fingers of his outstretched hand were stained with henna stencils. They were the longest fingers I’d ever seen. As we walked past him, I saw that the scrolled designs on his lower lip and chin were actually tattoos.
‘Rajan is creepy enough,’ I muttered, as Karla and I climbed the stairs together.
‘He’s one of Madame Zhou’s two personal servants. He’s a eunuch, a castrato, and a lot creepier than he looks,’ she whispered enigmatically.
We climbed the wide stairs to th
e second floor, our footsteps swallowed by thick carpet and heavy teakwood newels and handrails. There were framed photographs and paintings on the walls, all of them portraits. As I passed those images, I had the sense that there were other living, breathing people in the closed rooms, all around us. But there was no sound. Nothing.
‘It’s damn quiet,’ I said as we stopped in front of one of the doors.
‘It’s siesta time. Every afternoon, from two to five. But it’s quieter than usual because she’s expecting you. Are you ready?’
‘I guess. Yes.’
‘Let’s do it.’
She knocked twice, turned the knob and we entered. There was nothing in the small, square space but the carpet on the floor, lace curtains drawn across the window, and two large, flat cushions. Karla took my arm and steered me toward the cushions. The half-light of late afternoon glowed through the cream-coloured lace. The walls were bare and painted tan-brown, and there was a metal grille, about a metre square, set into one of them just above the skirting board. We knelt on the cushions in front of the grille as if we’d come to make our confession.
‘I am not happy with you, Karla,’ a voice said from behind the grille. Startled, I peered into the lattice of metal, but the room beyond it was black and I could see nothing. Sitting there, in the gloom, she was invisible. Madame Zhou. ‘I do not like to be unhappy. You know that.’
‘Happiness is a myth,’ Karla snapped back angrily. ‘It was invented to make us buy things.’
Madame Zhou laughed. It was a gurgling, bronchial laugh. It was the kind of laugh that hunted down funny things, and killed them stone dead.
‘Ah, Karla, Karla, I miss you. But you neglect me. It really has been much too long since you visited me. I think you still blame me for what happened to Ahmed and Christina, even though you swear it is not so. How can I believe that you do not hold a grudge against me, when you neglect me so terribly? And now you want to take my favourite away from me.’
‘It’s her father who wants to take her, Madame,’ Karla replied, a little more gently.
‘Ah yes, the father …’
She said the word as if it was a despicable insult. Her voice rasped the word across our skin. It had taken a lot of cigarettes, smoked in a particularly spiteful manner, to make that voice.
‘Your drinks, Miss Karla,’ Rajan said, and I almost jumped. He’d come in behind me without making the slightest sound. He bent low to place a tray on the floor between us, and for a moment I stared into the lambent blackness of his eyes. His face was impassive, but there was no mistaking the emotion in those eyes. It was cold, naked, incomprehensible hatred. I was mesmerised by it, bewildered, and strangely ashamed.
‘This is your American,’ Madame Zhou said, breaking the spell.
‘Yes, Madame. His name is Parker, Gilbert Parker. He is attached to the embassy, but this is not an official visit, of course.’
‘Of course. Give Rajan your card, Mr. Parker.’
It was a command. I took one of the cards from my pocket and handed it to Rajan. He held it at the edges, as if he was afraid of contamination, and backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.
‘Karla did not tell me, when she telephoned, Mr. Parker—have you been in Bombay very long?’ Madame Zhou asked me, switching to Hindi.
‘Not so long, Madame.’
‘You speak Hindi quite well. My compliments.’
‘Hindi is a beautiful language,’ I replied, using one of the stock phrases that Prabaker had taught me to recite. ‘It is a language of music and poetry.’
‘It is also a language of love and money,’ she chuckled greedily. ‘Are you in love, Mr. Parker?’
I’d thought hard about what she might ask me, but I hadn’t anticipated that question. And just at that moment, there was probably no other subject that could’ve unsettled me more. I looked at Karla, but she was staring down at her hands, and she gave me no clue. I didn’t know what Madame Zhou meant by the question. She hadn’t asked me if I was married or single, engaged or involved.
‘In love?’ I mumbled, the words sounding like an incantation in Hindi.
‘Yes, yes, romantic love. Your heart lost in the dream of a woman’s face, your soul lost in the dream of her body. Love, Mr. Parker. Are you in it?’
‘Yes. Yes, I am.’
I don’t know why I said it. The impression that I was making an act of confession, there, on my knees before the metal grate, was even more pronounced.
‘How very sad for you, my dear Mr. Parker. You are in love with Karla, of course. That’s how she got you to do this little job of work for her.’
‘I assure you —’
‘No, Mr. Parker, I assure you. Oh, it may be true that my Lisa’s father is pining for his daughter, and that he has the power to pull some strings. But it was Karla who talked you into this—of that, I’m quite sure. I know my dear Karla, and I know her ways. Don’t think for a moment that she will ever love you in return, or keep any of her promises to you, or that anything but sorrow will come of the love you feel. She will never love you. I tell you this out of friendship, Mr. Parker. This is a little gift for you.’
‘With respect,’ I said, through clenched teeth, ‘we’re here to talk about Lisa Carter.’
‘Of course. If I let my Lisa go with you, where will she live?’
‘I … I’m not sure.’
‘You’re not sure?’
‘No, I …’
‘She will live at —’ Karla began.
‘Shut up, Karla!’ Madame Zhou snapped. ‘I asked Parker.’
‘I don’t know where she will live,’ I answered, as firmly as I could. ‘I think that’s up to her.’
There was a lengthy pause. It was becoming an effort of concentration to listen and speak in Hindi. I felt lost, in over my head. It was going badly. She’d asked me three questions, and I’d stumbled badly on two of them. Karla was my guide in that strange world, but she seemed as confused and wrong-footed as I was. Madame Zhou had told her to shut up, and she’d swallowed it with a meekness I’d never seen or even imagined in her. I took a glass and drank some of the nimbu pani. The iced lime-juice was spiced with something hot to the taste like chilli powder. There was a shadowy movement and whisper in the darkness of the room behind the metal grate. I wondered if Rajan was in there with her. I couldn’t make out the shape.
She spoke.
‘You can take Lisa with you, Mr. Parker-in-love. But if she decides to come back here to me, I will not give her up. Do you understand me? She will stay here, if she comes back, and I will be unhappy if you trouble me about it again. You are, of course, free to enjoy our many delights, whenever you wish, as my guest. I would like to see you … relax. Perhaps, when Karla is finished with you, you will remember my invitation? In the meantime, remember—Lisa is mine if she returns to me. That matter is finished between us, today, here and now.’
‘Yes, yes, I understand. Thank you, Madame.’
The relief was enormous. I felt sapped with it. We’d won. It was done, and Karla’s friend was free to come with us.
Madame Zhou began to speak again, very quickly, and in another language. I guessed it to be German. It sounded harsh and threatening and angry, but I couldn’t speak German then, and the words might’ve been kinder than they sounded to me. Karla responded from time to time with Ja or Natürlich nicht, but little else. She was rocking from side to side, sitting back on her folded legs. Her hands were in her lap. Her eyes were closed. And as I watched her, she began to cry. The tears, when they came, slipped from her closed eyelids like so many beads on a prayer chain. Some women cry easily. The tears fall as gently as fragrant raindrops in a sun-shower, and leave the face clear and clean and almost radiant. Other women cry hard, and all the loveliness in them collapses in the agony of it. Karla was such a woman. There was terrible anguish written in the rivulets of those tears and the torment that creased her face.
From behind the grate, the smoky voice full of spitting sibilants
and crunching words continued. Karla swayed and sobbed in utter silence. Her mouth opened, and then closed soundlessly. A pearl of sweat trickled from her temple across the folded wing of her cheek. More sweat stippled her upper lip, dissolving in the tears. Then there was nothing from behind the metal grate: no sound or movement or even the sense of a human presence. And with an effort of will that clenched her jaws to white and set her body trembling, Karla swept her hands over her face, and her crying ceased.
She was very still. She reached out with one hand to touch me. The hand rested on my thigh, and then pressed downward with regular, gentle pressures. It was the tender, reassuring gesture she might’ve used to calm a frightened animal. She was staring into my eyes, but I wasn’t sure if she was asking me something or telling me something. She breathed deeply, quickly. Her green eyes were almost black in the shadowed room.
I didn’t understand any of it. I couldn’t understand the German chatter, and I had no idea what was going on between Karla and the voice behind the metal grille. I wanted to help her, but I didn’t know why she’d cried, and I knew that we were probably being watched. I stood up, and then helped her to stand. For a moment, she rested her face against my chest. I put my hands on her shoulders, steadying her and easing her away from me. Then the door opened, and Rajan came into the room.
‘She is ready,’ Rajan hissed.
Karla brushed at the knees of her loose trousers, picked up her bag, and stepped past me toward the door.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘The interview’s over.’