Between the Assassinations (26 page)

She closed the door; then he heard the sound of it being locked, and then double-locked.

He waited for his sister at the top of the road, and looked in the direction of the unfinished cathedral.

The Sultan’s Battery, a large black rectangular fort, appears high up to your left as you go from Kittur to Salt Market Village. The best way to explore the fort is to ask someone in Kittur to drive you up there; your host will have to park the car by the main road, and then the two of you will have to walk uphill for half an hour. When you pass through the arched doorway, you will find that the fort is in an advanced state of decay. Although a plaque from the Archaeological Survey of India declares this a protected site and speaks of its role in “enshrining the memory of the patriot Tippu Sultan, Tiger of Mysore,” there is no evidence of any attempt to preserve the ancient structure from the onslaught of creepers, wind, rain, erosion, and grazing animals. Giant banyan trees have germinated on the walls of the fort; their roots smash between the stones like gnarled fingers reaching into a mouse hole. Avoiding the thorns and piles of goat shit, you should walk to one of the holes in the walls of the fort; here, hold an imaginary gun in your hands, close an eye, and pretend that you are Tippu himself, firing down on the English army.

H
E WALKED QUICKLY
toward the white dome of the Dargah, a fold-up wooden stool under one arm, and in the other a red bag with his album of photographs and seven bottles full of white pills. When he reached the Dargah, he walked along the wall, not paying any attention to the long line of beggars: the lepers sitting on rags, the men with mutilated arms and legs, the men in wheelchairs, the men with bandages covering their eyes, and the creature with little brown stubs like a seal’s flippers where he should have had arms, a normal left leg, and a soft brown stump where he should have had the other leg, who lay on his left side, twitching his hip continuously, like an animal receiving galvanic shocks, and intoning, with blank, mesmerized eyes, “Al-lah! Al-laaaah! Al-lah! Al-laaah!”

He walked past this sorrowful parade of humanity, and went behind the Dargah.

Now he walked past the vendors squatting on the ground in a long line that extended for half a mile. He passed rows of baby shoes, bras, T-shirts bearing the words
NEW YORK FUCKING CITY
, fake Ray-Ban glasses, fake Nike shoes and fake Adidas shoes, and piles of Urdu and Malayalam magazines. He spotted an opening between a counterfeit-Nike seller and a counterfeit-Gucci seller, unfolded his stool there, and placed on it a glossy black sheet of paper with gold lettering.

The golden words read:

RATNAKARA SHETTY

SPECIAL INVITEE

FOURTH PAN-ASIAN CONFERENCE ON SEXOLOGY

HOTEL NEW HILLTOP PALACE NEW DELHI

12–14 APRIL 1987

The young men who had come to pray at the Dargah, or to eat lamb kebabs in one of the Muslim restaurants, or simply to watch the sea, began making a semicircle around Ratna, watching as he added to the display on the stool the photo album and the seven bottles of white pills. With grave ceremony, he then rearranged the bottles, as if their position had to be exactly right for his work to begin. In truth, he was waiting for more onlookers.

They came. Standing in pairs or alone, the crowd of young men had now taken on the appearance of a human Stonehenge; some stood with their hands folded on a friend’s shoulder, some stood alone, and a few crouched to the ground, like fallen boulders.

All at once, Ratna began to talk. Young men came quicker, and the crowd became so thick that it was two or three men deep at each point; and those at the back had to stand on their toes to get even a partial glimpse of the sexologist.

He opened the album and let the young men see the photos in plastic folders inside. The onlookers gasped.

Pointing at his photographs, Ratna spoke of abominations and perversions. He described the consequences of sin: he demonstrated the passage of venereal germs up the body, touching his nipples, his eyes, and then his nostrils, and then closing his eyes. The sun climbed the sky, and the white dome of the Dargah shone more brightly. The young men in the semicircle pressed against one another, straining to get closer to the photographs. Then Ratna went in for the kill: he shut the book and held up a bottle of white pills in each of his hands. He began shaking the pills.

“With each bottle of pills you will receive a certificate of authenticity from Hakim Bhagwandas of Daryaganj in Delhi. This man, a greatly experienced doctor, has studied the wise books of the pharaohs, and has used his scientific equipment to create these magnificent white pills that will cure all your ailments. Each bottle costs just four rupees and fifty paise! Yes, that is all you need to pay to atone for sin and earn a second chance in this life! Four rupees and fifty paise!”

In the evening, dead tired from the heat, he boarded the 34B bus with his red bag and fold-up stool. It was packed at this hour, so he held on to a strap and breathed in and out slowly. He counted to ten, to recover his strength, then dipped a hand into the red bag, taking out four green brochures, each of which bore the image of three large rats on the cover. He held the brochures up high in one hand, in the manner of a gambler holding up his cards, and spoke at the top of his voice:

“Ladies and gentlemen! All of you know that we live in a rat race, where there are few jobs and many job applicants. How will your children survive, how will they get the jobs you have? For life in this day and age is a veritable rat race. Only in this booklet will you find thousands of useful general knowledge data, arranged in question-and-answer form, that your sons and daughters need to pass the civil service entrance examination, the bank entrance examination, the police entrance examination, and many other exams which are needed to win the rat race. For instance”—he took a quick breath—“the Mughal Empire had two capitals; Delhi was one of them. Which was the other? Four capital cities of Europe are built on the banks of one river. Name that river. Who was the first king of Germany? What is the currency of Angola? One city in Europe has been the capital of three different empires. Which city? Two men were involved in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Nathuram Godse was one of them. Name the other man. What is the height of the Eiffel Tower in meters?”

Holding the pamphlets with his right hand, he staggered forward, bracing himself as the bus bumped over the potholes of the road. One passenger asked for a pamphlet and handed him a rupee. Ratna walked back, and waited near the exit door; when the bus slowed down, he dipped his head in silent thanks to the conductor and got off.

Seeing a man waiting at the bus stand, he tried to sell him a collection of six colored pens, first at a rupee a pen; then at two pens a rupee; finally offering three for a rupee. Although the man said he would not buy, Ratna could see the interest in his eyes; he took out a large spring that could give much amusement to children, and a geometrical set that could make wonderful designs on paper. The man bought one of the geometrical sets for three rupees.

Ratna headed away from the Sultan’s Battery, taking the road toward Salt Market Village.

Once he got to the village, he went to the main market, took out a handful of change, and sorted it out on the flat of his palm as he walked; he left the coins on the counter of a shop, taking in exchange a packet of Engineer beedis, which he put into his suitcase.

“What are you waiting for?” The boy in charge of the shop was new to the job. “You have your beedis.”

“I usually get two packets of lentils too, included in the price. That’s the way it’s done.”

Before entering his house, Ratna ripped open one of the packets with his teeth and poured its contents onto the ground near his door. Seven or eight of the neighborhood dogs came running, and he watched them crunch the lentils loudly. When they began digging at the earth, he tore open the second packet with his teeth and scattered its contents on the ground too.

He walked into his house without waiting to see the dogs devour this second lot of lentils. He knew they would still be hungry, but he could not afford to buy them a third packet every day.

He hung his shirt on a hook by the door, as he scratched his armpits and hairy chest. He sat down on a chair, exhaled, muttered, “O Krishna, O Krishna,” and stretched out his legs; even though they were in the kitchen, his daughters knew at once that he was there—a powerful odor of stale feet went through the house like a warning cannon shot. They dropped their women’s magazines and busied themselves with their work.

His wife emerged from the kitchen with a tumbler of water. He had begun smoking the beedis.

“Are they working in there—the maharanis?” he asked her.

“Yes,” the three girls, his daughters, shouted back from the kitchen. He did not trust them, so he went in to check.

The youngest, Aditi, crouched by the gas stove, wiping the leaves of the photo album with a corner of her sari. Rukmini, the oldest sister, sat beside a mound of white pills, which she was counting off and pouring into bottles; Ramnika, who would be married off after Rukmini, pasted a label on each bottle. The wife was making noise with plates and pots. After he had smoked his second beedi and his body had visibly relaxed, she built up the courage to approach him:

“The astrologer said he would come at nine.”

“Uhm.”

He burped, and then lifted a leg and waited for the fart. The radio was on; he placed the set on his thigh, and slapped his palm against his other leg to the beat of the music, humming all the while, and singing the words whenever he knew them.

“He’s here,” she whispered. He turned off the radio as the astrologer came into the room and folded his palms in a namaste.

Sitting down in a chair, he took off his shirt, which Ratna’s wife hung for him on the hook next to Ratna’s. While the women waited in the kitchen, the astrologer showed Ratna the choice of boys.

He opened an album of black-and-white photos; they gazed at the faces of one boy after another, who looked back at them out of tense, unsmiling portraits. Ratna scraped one with his thumb. The astrologer slid the photo out of the album.

“Boy looks okay,” Ratna said after a moment’s concentration. “The father does what for a living?”

“Owns a firecracker shop on Umbrella Street. A very good business. Boy inherits it.”

“His own business,” Ratna exclaimed with genuine satisfaction. “It’s the only way ahead in the rat race; being a salesman is a dead end.”

His wife dropped something in the kitchen; she coughed and dropped something else.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

A timid voice said something about horoscopes.

“Shut up!” Ratna shouted. He gestured at the kitchen with the photo—“I have three daughters to marry off, and this damn bitch thinks I can be choosy?”—and he tossed the photo into the astrologer’s lap.

The astrologer drew an X across the back of the photo.

“The boy’s parents will expect something,” he said. “A
token.
”

“Dowry.” Ratna gave the evil its proper name in a soft voice. “Fine. I’ve saved money for this girl.” He breathed out. “Where I’ll get dowry for the next two, though, God alone knows.”

Gritting his teeth in anger, he turned toward the kitchen and yelled.

The following Monday, the boy’s party came. The younger girls went around with a tray of lemon juice, while Ratna and his wife sat in the drawing room. Rukmini’s face was whitened by a thick layer of Johnson’s Baby Powder, and garlands of jasmine decorated her hair; she plucked the strings of a veena and sang a religious verse, while looking out the window at something far away.

The prospective groom’s father, the firecracker merchant, was sitting on a mattress directly opposite Rukmini; he was a huge man in a white shirt and a white cotton sarong, with thick tufts of glossy, silvery hair sticking out of his ears. He moved his head to the rhythm of the song, which Ratna took as an encouraging sign. The prospective mother-in-law, another enormous and fair-skinned creature, looked around the ceiling and the corners of the room. The groom-to-be had his father’s fair skin and features, but he was much smaller than either of his parents, and seemed more like the family’s domestic pet than the scion. Halfway through the song, he leaned over and whispered something into his father’s hairy ears.

The merchant nodded. The boy got up and left. The father held up his little finger and showed it to everyone in the room.

Everyone giggled.

The boy came back, and squirmed into place between his fat father and his fat mother. The two younger girls came with a second tray of lemon juice, and the fat firecracker merchant and his wife took glasses; as if only to follow them, the boy also took a glass and sipped. Almost as soon as the juice touched his lips, he tapped his father and whispered into his hairy ear again. This time the old man grimaced; but the boy ran out.

As if to distract attention from his son, the firecracker merchant asked Ratna, in a rasping voice, “Do you have a spare beedi, my good man?”

Searching in the kitchen for his packet of beedis, Ratna saw, through the grille in the window, the bridegroom-to-be, urinating copiously against the trunk of an Ashoka tree in the backyard.

Nervous fellow,
he thought, grinning.
But that’s only natural,
he thought, feeling already a touch of affection for this fellow, who was going to join his family soon.
All men are nervous before their weddings.
The boy appeared to be done; he shook his penis and stepped away from the tree. But then he stood as if frozen. After a moment he craned his head back and seemed to gasp for air, like a drowning man.

The matchmaker returned that evening to report that the firecracker merchant seemed satisfied with Rukmini’s singing.

“Fix the date soon,” he told Ratna. “In a month, the rental rates for wedding halls will start to…” He gestured upward with his palms.

Ratna nodded, but he seemed distracted.

The next morning, he took the bus to Umbrella Street, walking past furniture and fan shops until he found the firecracker merchant’s place. The fat man with the hairy ears sat on a high stool, in front of a wall of paper bombs and rockets, like an emissary of the God of Fire and War. The groom-to-be was also in the shop, sitting on the floor, licking his fingers as he turned the pages of a ledger.