A Bad Character (22 page)

Waking with no memory. Fear from the belly up. Then remembering. Driving the car through red lights, speeding at dark through the fog, a brain overloaded with coke. These mornings alone are the worst. Wrapped up in a ball, trying not to remember myself.

But if there was anything left over in the packet I’d do it right away. And you can’t live without your shades. You can’t live without your blacked-out car. You can’t live without your driver and gun. You can’t live without the five-star rooms, without the guarded compounds. The houses of the rich are sealed compartments, and the houses of the poor are open to the world. Everything you want, anything at all. Delhi is the sound of construction, of vegetable vendors and car horns. Of crows bursting up out of the blackness and diving back down.

I am at his place, back from shopping for my jeans. It’s about midday. For a moment I waver, think to go home, to leave him there, but instead I go inside.

He is sitting in the living room waiting for me. Immediately I know something is wrong. The look on his face has changed, the look of the previous night has gone. Right away he sneers at me, he says, Do you know what I was thinking? That it should have been you who died. At least she had the courage to leave.

I stand looking at him for a while without words, then I walk to the bedroom. But he gets up and follows me, comes into the room, snatches the shopping bag from my hands and says, So what did you buy? He dumps the jeans out on to the bed and with a look of disdain he walks out of the room. Before I know what’s happening he comes back in holding a pair of scissors and he’s taking the jeans and slicing into them, jerking slits all down the legs, stabbing them in a frenzy until the jeans are in shreds.

But that doesn’t satisfy him, so when he’s finished with the jeans he goes to the wardrobe where my things are kept, the clothes he’s bought for me, my books, my keepsakes and souvenirs, and he’s taking the scissors to these, flailing without reason, slicing through anything that’s there, jabbing at them with such violent intent. I try to stop him, I run his way and pull him back, but he’s too strong for me, he turns and throws me to the floor. When he’s done cutting my things, he scoops the remains up into his arms and carries them to the balcony. I run after him in time to see him throw them over the edge. I’m screaming at him, I’m crying, shouting incoherent words, beating with my fists. He’s standing there
delighted with his work. Goading me, saying since I won’t leave, he’ll expose me, he’ll show everyone what I am, what I’ve done, he’ll send the photos to my family, he’ll paste them on the college walls.

He looks at me, panting, grinning, laughing out loud, laughing at our entire world, and the scissors are in his hand. He holds the blades up in the air and brings them down to his other hand to cut into his own flesh.

I don’t remember much of what happened next. I know I was trying to pull the scissors away and at the same time he was grabbing me by my wrist, spinning me around, shoving me to the ground. Then he was kicking me over and over in the stomach, the chest, in the legs, my head. Lifting me up by the throat, almost holding me in the air. I’m looking into his eyes and I can’t see anyone I know. The ball of a fist closes, springs forward from the hip. There’s an ocean of white spray, and a body is on the ground, and a hotness that tastes of metal blood.

Scrambling to the door, falling down the stairs, out on to the street, crawling around on my hands and knees, palming the concrete, he’s kicking me as I go. This is where Ali intervenes. He turns up from nowhere, pulls him away, enough for me to stagger to my feet. And Ali is shouting out, Run, madam. Please. Run.

Fumbling for my keys, climbing inside the car, getting the engine started, driving away from him. In the rear-view mirror he’s stripping off his clothes, howling at the sky, dancing naked in the road.

Open your eyes. Open your fucking eyes. He touches my face with his fingers. Kisses my cheek, kisses my temples, kisses my nose— Close your eyes, he says, kissing the lids.

She told the Businessman in the end that she had money trouble, that she needed a job. He said he could put her on the payroll, give her a salary and a position in one of
his companies. She didn’t have to turn up; she only had to take care of herself.

The fact of this job she relayed to Aunty and Uncle, and Aunty relayed it to everyone else, and soon everyone was placated when it came to the surface of things.

After he beat me the police came. Ali had run to the outpost and called them before returning to pull him away from me. When they turned up I had already gone, but he was still naked in the street, laughing, beating Ali in my place. He tried to beat them too when they came, he knocked one to the ground before they managed to overpower him. Then they beat him with their lathis until he fell unconscious.

It was Ali who also called his parents. It was his parents who used their money and influence to make the police disappear. His parents, living only a few miles away in south Delhi.

They committed him to a psychiatric ward the next day. He was inside that place for three months, February to April. Locked up and tied down.

I drove home to Aunty that afternoon and cried into her arms. I cried without restraint and she cleaned the wounds, put ice on my face, washed the blood off me, took the bloodied clothes away. The guards downstairs and some neighbours had seen me and come to the door, but Aunty curtly shooed them off. Later, when Uncle came home, she told him someone had tried to rob me near college, had tried to steal my car and I’d fought back stupidly but had escaped. Only the face had been touched, nothing more. She was at pains to point this out. A silly girl, that’s what she is. A foolish girl. She told me this would happen one day. She always hated that car. But never once did she ask what really went on.

Terrified, I waited the rest of that day for him to call, for him to turn up at the door. But nothing came that day. And the next day nothing came.

I sat in my room. My body stopped hurting, my bruises healed. Then I went with Aunty on visits, watching the street outside, smiling politely to the other women when we arrived, answering all their questions with a nervous smile. But bracing myself every time the phone rang at night, imagining Aunty’s face reacting to his voice, his words. I checked my own phone, held it in my hand as I slept. Waiting for the call. But there was no call, no knock on the door. Nothing came.

We live in luxury now. Unable to hold the pain of Delhi inside, it is better to orbit it from space. I sit in the back of the Businessman’s car, climate controlled, inoculated, floating beyond the city in a blacked-out throne. We glide through traffic, accelerate round corners, move past red lights as if they’re not there, through the charred streets of the tombs of my ancestors, the flaming oil drums and the ragged men, and all the places we have known. At night it’s as if we’re underwater, lights quivering in the haze of coke, glowering buses pulling across
the lanes. Ghosts drift by in rickshaws, women dangle babies from the edges of motorcycles. Drowning in light and fog and noise, men stream into the road. They look into the window when the traffic stops, but no one sees me at all.