JOHNNY GONE DOWN (26 page)

Why indeed, I thought, as I regained consciousness and stared at the white ceiling of the bare, neat hospital room that I shared with four others. A plethora of tubes were connected to my body, and I felt heavy. But my head felt clear - or about as clear as could be expected after coming out of a major psychotic episode. I could recall every detail of the madness that had seized me over the past few weeks - but I had no idea why it had happened.

‘The nurse told me you are awake now.’ Someone had entered the room. I recognized him at once as the kind, acne-scarred volunteer who had interrupted me once during my psychosis.

‘How long…’ I began, and started coughing incessantly. I felt my torso under the covers - skin and bones, but nowhere as bad as it had been in Cambodia. The one benefit of screwing up so many times, I thought detachedly, was that no matter what you did, you’d probably done worse before.

‘Take it easy, man,’ said the volunteer who I had mistaken for alfred82. ‘You are suffering from severe starvation, fatigue and pneumonia. I checked your in date. You hadn’t left that room in four weeks.’

An entire month, I thought with a sinking sensation; all the VC meetings must be long over. I hadn’t contacted Philip since the day I left. He had trusted me to the point of giving me his only computer and I had let him down. What would he be thinking? That I had run away and partnered with someone else so that I didn’t have to share the profits with him?

‘Jesus Christ! I don’t think I’ve seen a stranger thing,’ the volunteer said, shaking his head. ‘What was happening in that room? Were you working on that damn computer all the time? I’ve seen a crack addict saw off his little finger and a meth junkie give a blow job to sixteen men in a row for just one hit of a crack pipe, but I have never seen anything quite like this. What were you thinking?’

I drew a blank myself. What had made me lose my sanity until I could no longer tell the difference between the virtual and the physical world? Everything had blurred together - real, virtual; fact, fiction; day, night - yet it had made sense. I had wanted it to make sense so badly that I had abandoned all rationality. Unconsciously, I had recreated Lara in minute detail from her skin tone to her wardrobe, and someone had combined these
to create an image that I mistook for her. But I had wanted to make that mistake. I had become a pathetic addict of a game I had created myself. And what was worse, I had made Philip suffer - he must be shattered at the sabotage of his dream project. He would never trust anyone again.

‘The doctor says you are suffering from some kind of extreme post traumatic stress disorder because of severe psychological trauma in your past,’ said the volunteer. ‘But I don’t know all that fancy stuff. All I know is that you are lucky to be alive.’

It would be so easy, I thought. Marco had once told me that it was easiest to kill someone in a hospital - all it required was an air bubble to enter the veins. I looked up at the catheter. Just a little pressure at the valve, and a bubble would enter my blood stream and choke me. But I knew I was too yellow to get even that right.

‘Are you okay, man?’ the volunteer asked. ‘Do you need something?’

For what it was worth, Philip needed to know that despite my insanity, our idea had attracted hundreds of people. Maybe he could still do something with it.

‘Could you send this computer to an address, please?’ I managed to say between bouts of coughing that made me double up in agony.

‘Gladly.’

I wrote a brief note to Philip, explaining the
additions I had made to the website since he had last seen it. I didn’t write an apology, nor mention my psychosis. Words weren’t sufficient to express how I felt, and I didn’t try.

‘I have no money to pay for the hospital,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ the volunteer said kindly. ‘It’s covered by the Goodwill Army and other charity donations to the shelter. As you can imagine, coming here is a regular occurrence for us - if not exactly in these circumstances.’

What had I reduced myself to, I wondered. At forty, I was broke and homeless, addicted to a computer game like a five-year-old might be, feeding on the charity of good people born in far less privileged circumstances than I was. Would there be any end to my debasement? This time I couldn’t blame destiny, nor could I blame La Madrina or the Khmer Rouge. I had run out of people and situations to attribute my failures to.

‘Do you need anything else?’ he asked gently. ‘Otherwise I must hustle along. These days, I have to look out for guys with computers as much as guys with needles!’

I looked at his smiling face. A life spent helping others, I thought. All I’d done was think of myself, and what a thorough job I had done of that! I looked at the catheter valve longingly. Just one turn, I thought. But no, I would try to die with courage -if not with dignity.

‘Would you please get me a phone?’ I managed to say.

‘At your service, Mr President.’ He laughed.

He left the room while I stared blankly at the ceiling, and returned moments later with a phone.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I hope I get a chance to repay you in a different life.’

He touched my hand. ‘Take care, brother,’ he said gently. He paused. ‘Shit happens. What looks like a series of unravelled threads from close is actually a pattern from a distance. Just give it time.’

I had heard those words before but I was too distracted to remember where. All I could think about was the phone number Marco had forced me to commit to memory as a last resort. It was finally time to call him. I was left with nothing, and this time I had no desire to try and build anything. For everyone’s sake, I was better off dead than alive. I would gladly pay any price he demanded.

‘Yes,’ barked a thick, unrecognizable accent from the other end.

‘Marco told me…’ I began.

‘Call me from a pay phone,’ he said and disconnected.

I called him from a pay phone after a few hours. I had been discharged and was wearing the same
clothes I had worn when I’d first come to Minnesota a couple of years ago.

‘I called a few hours back…’ I began.

‘Yes,’ he said in his thick accent. ‘I’ve been thinking about it. Do you want to die more than you want to live?’

However surprising the question, I didn’t need to think about it for too long.

‘Yes,’ I said without hesitation.

‘Can you go to Asia in a couple of days? To India or Thailand or Vietnam?’ he asked.

I thought for a moment.

‘Only India,’ I said. A poetic end to an unpoetic life; from ashes to ashes, from dust to dust; back to the place where this whole miserable journey had begun.

‘I can do just one assignment,’ I added. ‘I have no will for more.’

‘I don’t deal in small stuff,’ he said. ‘It’s all or nothing.’

Click.

The sharp sound of the blank was followed by a sudden silence. Then there was clapping, hesitant at first, but soon it rose to a crescendo like the roll of funeral drums. Someone thumped my back, another shook my hand which still held the smoking gun, someone else banged on the table.

‘You did well. You won half a million rupees,’ said the handler. ‘Now hand him the gun.’

I passed the gun to Dayaram. He took it with trembling hands. I looked into his eyes. He seemed to have lost his fear and held the gun to his temple with an air of inevitability.

The crowd cheered wildly.

Finally, an end to a saga that couldn’t have been better scripted in a Hindi film: five bullets blank, the last bullet would draw blood. I watched dispassionately as Dayaram released the barrel and placed his finger on the trigger. He began to pull the trigger…

In one swift movement, I reached across the table and pulled the revolver from his hand.

Dayaram looked at me blankly, his empty hand still pointing towards his temple. The applauding crowd fell silent.

‘What the fuck?’ The tight muscles in the handler’s neck twitched as he reached for the gun.

I jumped up from my seat and pointed the gun between his eyes.

‘Don’t move,’ I said. ‘There is a bullet here and you know I won’t miss.’

A hush fell upon the crowd.

I looked around at the surprised faces. Bastards, I thought with sudden anger, they lived lives that people like us could only wish for; if drama was what they craved, I’d gladly exchange my life for theirs.
Now that the gun was pointed at them, however, their quest for a thrill seemed to have ended.

‘Come with me,’ I shouted at Dayaram.

He was still rooted to his spot with his hand on his temple.

‘Daya,’ I said sharply. He seemed to wake from a trance. ‘Follow me.’

I began to inch backwards towards the door with my gun still pointed at the handler. I didn’t care about the others. They could easily jump me if they wanted to, but I knew they wouldn’t. If they were so insulated from death that they paid money to seek it out, they wouldn’t have the guts to face it themselves. Violence was entertaining only as long as others were spilling blood.

‘You know we will find you,’ said the handler flatly.

I had no doubt that they would and I didn’t care. I had come here to die. Instead, I had almost killed another man. No, I couldn’t die with more blood on my hands.

‘I don’t want the money. You take it back,’ I said, gun still level. I pointed at Daya. ‘I just want him alive.’

‘You can’t do this for me…’ began Daya.

‘Shut up,’ I said, pointing the gun at him as we reached the door.

He followed me quietly.

We left the basement room and I locked the door
carefully behind me. Almost immediately, the men inside began pounding on the door.

‘We have five minutes before someone comes,’ I said. ‘He would have called already. Just follow me. Don’t ask questions.’

We ran up the stairs and rushed past the closed furniture showroom and onto the busy street.

There was still too much light for us to merge into the crowd. It would be dark soon, a long familiar ally; until then, we had to drop out of sight. I saw a lifeline and ran towards the main road.

‘My friend has an auto-rickshaw here, sahib,’ Daya panted behind me. For an old man with a cancer ridden body, he ran surprisingly well.

‘They will track him down,’ I said. ‘We need to take a bus.’

I looked down the street and saw a public bus rumble in our direction. ‘This one,’ I shouted. I managed to hold on to the railing with my arm and hopped on, closely followed by Dayaram.

I stood still in the middle of the crowded bus, sweat pouring down my face as the bus rolled forward, weaving through the crowded intersection in Mayapuri where Sam and I had once knocked down a cyclist while learning to ride a Lambretta, past the Rachna theatre in Patel Nagar where we often went after bunking school, the Moti Mahal in Karol Bagh, my mother’s favourite restaurant -Delhi was full of happy, uncomplicated memories
from the days before I began this Faustian journey of self-destruction. We passed my old school on Pusa Road. I’d been the head boy once, the captain of the basketball and football teams, everyone’s unanimous pick for the one who would be the most successful in life. Would my old teachers be alive? What would they say if I walked in right now in my torn clothes, sans an arm, broke and homeless, a man who had deserted his family and was wanted by drug barons and the police in multiple countries?

‘Where are we going, sahib?’ Daya asked timidly as we stood next to each other in the bus.

‘Haan?’ I said, shaking out of my reverie. ‘Where does this bus go?’

‘CP,’ he said.

Another blast from the past. ‘Connaught Place?’ I said. ‘I will go there.’ I paused. ‘You will be safe. You did nothing wrong, so they won’t come after you. You don’t need to run with me. Go back and die with grace.’

‘Why did you save me, sahib? Why didn’t you just take the money and go?’

‘Money doesn’t stick to my hands,’ I replied. ‘Why do you need it so much?’

‘I told you I’m dying of cancer, sahib. My life means nothing,’ he said. ‘My daughter is getting married tomorrow and the groom’s family will call it off if we don’t give them money.’

The same old story, I thought uncharitably. After
so many years, nothing seemed to have changed. Only I had changed. Twenty-five years ago, this story would have roused some pity in me, maybe even anger at society’s injustice. Now, I felt no sympathy, no anger, no sadness. Life is tough, get over it.