A Bad Character (20 page)

He spends an unnecessary half hour talking me into bed with him, trying to impress me with self-deprecating humour, with innocuous joking barbs followed by earnest praise. Are you here alone? Did you drive here today? I bet you’re a terrible driver, aren’t you? I bet you crash all the time. No, really, I’m sure you’re far better than me on these roads.

This kind of thing.

Delivered in a German monotone.

It’s all very dull, very by the book. He tells me I have beautiful eyes. Finally he asks if I’m a guest here. No, I reply, I was just sitting, having a coffee on my way to see a friend.

It excites him that I’m from the city. He thinks he has to make a special effort with me, he thinks he has to tread carefully, he has a rare chance, and a thing for brown skin. He tells me he has a room here in the hotel and he has to go out later for this function, but he’s enjoyed talking to me, maybe I’d like to have a drink with him beforehand? I keep him waiting a moment, then smile and say, Why not? Encouraged, but not without trepidation, he asks if I’d also maybe like to come to his room.

We walk through the lobby and along the corridor side by side in a guillotine silence. As soon as we’re inside he’s fumbling at me, holding his hands to my waist, pressing his thin lips into mine, pushing me against the door, moving me towards the bed. Detached, out of my body, I let him do all this without a word. I begin to remove my clothes, and lie down on the bed. I let him do it to me and his breath is vile. When he’s finished he climbs off without a word, goes into the bathroom. He’s still there when I put on my clothes and walk out the door.

The next day he disappeared. I turned up at his apartment to find the door locked and the locks changed and his phone switched off. There was an air of finality about it.

Still I banged on the door and rang the bell, waited for an hour, calling his number over and over. I sat outside in my car another two hours before giving up and driving home.

Every day that he’s gone I turn up at his apartment, for ten days I call his phone and it’s the same, the apartment is locked, the phone dead. There’s no one to speak to, nowhere to go. I feel completely alone. I drive past his place every morning before I go to college, in limbo, undone.

On the tenth day he calls me, casual as anything, saying he’s home, asking to know where I am, why aren’t I coming over? No explanation, nothing. No acknowledgement he’s been away, been unreachable. Come over, he says. I tell him I can’t, it’s too late. I ask where he’s
been and he just murmurs. His voice has a strange, hollow edge.

When I turn up at his flat the next day there’s a Star of David hanging above the outer door, and inside a giant UV painting of Shiva on the wall. He has Ali with him now. Ali is the one who answers the door. Just like that. He appears, his new companion. Ali lets me in. He seems to know who I am.

Ali is a good man, he’s loyal to a fault, but he likes his drink as much as anyone else. He leads me into the living room, to where his master is. I point at Ali and say, Who’s this? And as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world he says, It’s Ali. No clarification, no smile.

We sit in silence for half an hour, the three of us, Ali embarrassed and ashamed in front of me. He pours himself drink after drink. I see him suddenly. I see that his face is bloated, unrecognizable to me. I get up to leave and he grabs my arm. I pull myself away.

I meet the Businessman in September in the bar of the Taj Mansingh. It seems I am drawn to this place. Half an hour later I’m in a suite taking off my clothes.

Seated at the bar, I know I’m being watched. I’ve taken to sitting in these hotel bars in the afternoons with a drink in my hand, perched on the bar stool, my face perfectly calm. It’s always peaceful at this hour, but then the men come over to me soon enough. Vulgar men, fat and rich men, drunk men, the sons of men. Delhi is rotten with the sons of men. I rarely even look at them. Sometimes they become angry and insult me.

But the Businessman is different. He’s watching with distance, trying to place me, to work out what I’m doing here. I watch his reflection in the mirror behind the bar, see myself there too. He’s in his late thirties. Handsome, well dressed, some grey forming on his temples, lines appearing on his once-smooth forehead. Wide eyes slightly downturned on a beautiful face, giving a melancholy look. A narrow nose, a pretty mouth, already
some stubble after shaving. A youth misspent, callow and privileged, but not without its own pain.

He’s been groomed for a life of power. But he has another power that is not the same as wealth and privilege, something inscrutable, a trick of genes or God, a power that exists parallel to the one that all these men have. He doesn’t rush it. There’s no threat anywhere. I see this in the way the barman brings him his drink with cautious respect, and the way he accepts it as if this is the most natural thing, without thanks or apology. He looks at me in the mirror.

I light a cigarette. The barman brings an ashtray for me. The Businessman lights one himself. I already know what will happen next. It’s something we can feel easy about. So I smile in the mirror. The room is dim and quite empty in the afternoon.

He walks over, asks very properly if I’m waiting for someone. No, I reply. No one.

In that case would I mind if he sits?

I say I don’t mind.

He raises his hand for the barman to bring him another drink.

But you’re not a guest. He says it as a statement instead of a question, as a fortune-teller might.

No.

He waits for me to go further and when I don’t he smiles and smells the whisky he’s been served, brings it to his lips. We look at one another in the mirror.

He’s a Delhi man, that’s for sure, though not the kind Aunty dreamed of. He sips his drink and looks at me. He says, What are you doing here?

Nothing, just sitting, killing time. There aren’t many places to sit in the city.

He asks where I’m from.

I say I’m from here.

Am I in college?

I’ve just finished. Now I’m looking for work.

In the suite we stand and look at one another for a long time. I go into the bathroom for a line. It’s nothing like love or desire. Just the urge to destroy.

I make sure he knows nothing of my life. I remain a mask to him, superior. He says he can’t understand where I’ve come from, that I’m a dream turned into flesh.

September 11. Everyone remembers what they were doing this day. I was with the Businessman in a hotel room, fucking, doing coke. He takes his shoes off and places them neatly at the side near the minibar. The lights are low, the plate-glass window shrouded with a curtain like the kind covering a stage. Lutyens’ Delhi is outside, cars forever going round the traffic circles. The TV is on, the sound turned down, and night is coming upon us. We come to this room and fuck for hours. We are doing this, he is trying to possess me, climb into me, open me up, but he can’t, however hard he tries. And then the towers are on TV, collapsing, and everything stops.

I meet him two or three times a week. In hushed hotels in the daylight I become his girl. He calls me to the room,
leaves it for me when we are done. Nothing attached to it, no demands, though he likes to bring me expensive clothes, diamond earrings, more cocaine. Cocaine that strips the world away. Pares it to a point, trims off all fat, increases pleasure, numbs my pain. No past, no future. All inwardness gone. And a thirst like no other to consume.

One night he takes me out to Gurgaon and shows me what he is building there. He says it is the future and he owns it all.

His wealth is immense. It weighs on him sometimes. He tells me things about the land he’s acquired, the real estate that he holds, the luxury apartment complexes, the miles and miles that are being built. His father is a failed man, a gambler, hot-headed and paranoid, he made rash deals in the past, almost lost everything the family owned. But he sent his son to study in Europe, and when his son returned he went to work building the business again, ruthlessly, brick by brick. Luck had played a part, the right place at the right time, but after
that it was skill, talent, willpower, hard work. A certain lack of morals. He talks about the things that have to be managed, police and politicians, how every party must be appeased, groomed, positioned on the board, how bribes must be paid, how rivals have to be disappeared or destroyed, how every day is harder than the last, how there’s never any peace, how life is war. I say nothing, I make no judgement at all.