Love and Longing in Bombay (10 page)

“I don’t know,” Moitra said. “Moon phases. The time in Tokyo. Whatever shit people think they need to know.”

“We all want to know the time in Tokyo. Come on. Let’s see him.”

In the detection room Ghorpade groaned as he came through the door, hunched over and shuffling.

“Have you been third-degreeing him?” Sartaj said.

“For what?” Moitra said. “Why to waste energy? He’s a fucking
bewda
. By tonight, for a drink, he’ll confess to killing Rajiv Gandhi. And haven’t you received the memorandum from up high? No third degree, ask them questions with love and caring and tenderness.”

She laughed. It looked to Sartaj that the confession might actually come sooner than nightfall, judging from the trembling of Ghorpade’s hands. “Sit down,” he said flatly. It was his interrogation voice. He knew his head was leaning forward from his shoulders, and that his eyes had become opaque.

“Have fun,” Moitra said as she left. For a long moment afterwards Sartaj could hear her whistling down the corridor.

“We found the man, Ghorpade,” Sartaj said.

“What man?”

“The one you knifed.”

“I’m a
bewda
. I don’t kill anyone. I just wore his watch.”

Sartaj had to lean closer to him to hear the words in the voice full of phlegm. Ghorpade had a small, lined face, dry lips, and days of grey stubble on his cheeks. He stank of sweat and monsoon damp.

“Why did he let you take it?” Sartaj said.

“He was lying down.”

“On his back?”

“No. Face down. So I took it.”

“Did you know he was dead?”

Ghorpade looked up with yellowed eyes. He shrugged.

“Was he in the gutter?”

“Yes.”

“Was it full of water?”

“No. It was just starting to rain. There was just a trickle.”

“Was there any blood?”

“No.”

“None?”

“No.”

“What time was it?”

Again Ghorpade shrugged.

“Did you look for a wallet?”

“It wasn’t there.”

“Why didn’t you sell the watch?”

“I was going to. A little later.”

“Later till what?”

“I just wanted to wear it for a while.” Ghorpade wrapped his arms around himself. “It was a good gold watch.”

“Do I look like a fool to you?”

Ghorpade shook his head, slowly.

“But I must look like a fool to you. Otherwise why would you be telling me this fool’s story?”

Ghorpade was quiet. His ruin seemed complete.

“All right,” Sartaj said. “I’ll be back to talk to you more. You think about what you’ve done. About this children’s story you’re telling me.”

Ghorpade was absolutely still, with his head lowered.

“I’ll be back,” Sartaj said. He was almost at the door when Ghorpade spoke, and the words were indistinct, and his face was turned away. Sartaj took the three steps back and leaned forward, narrowing his eyes and blinking against the smell that hung over Ghorpade. “What did you say?”

Ghorpade turned his face close to Sartaj, and Sartaj saw that he was really not very old, young perhaps, in his thirties. “I’ll be dead,” Ghorpade said.

“Nobody’s going to kill you.”

“I’ll die,” Ghorpade said. There was no fear in his voice. It was a statement of fact, and it required no sympathy in response, or any other kind of emotion. Sartaj turned and walked away.

*

The door to Chetanbhai Ghanshyam Patel’s sixth-floor apartment was made of dark wood inlaid with criss-crossing copper bands and raised ivory studs, with Chetanbhai’s name in gold at the centre. It was a door that belonged in some last-century
haveli
, with an elephant parked outside and
durbans
in
safas.
Now a window opened at the middle of it and a young face peered out through the bars.

“Yes?”

“Police,” Sartaj said. The boy’s eyes took in Sartaj, and the bulk of Katekar’s shoulders behind him. Sartaj was watching him carefully. This was something that Parulkar had taught him: go to their homes, watch their fear, and you will learn everything.

The door opened and Sartaj stepped in. “Regarding the matter of one missing person Chetanbhai Patel … Your good name?”

“I’m his son. Kshitij Patel.” He was about nineteen, a little shaky.

“Who else is in the house?”

“My mother. She is sleeping, not well. She was very worried. The doctor has given her some medicine.”

Sartaj nodded and walked past him. The drawing room was large by Bombay standards, and cluttered with brass lamps and furniture and many-coloured hangings on the wall. The sofas were huge and an alarming red. On the wall to the left there was a long painting of a brilliant sunrise and another of a sad shepherd. Against the back wall there was an Apsara pouring water. Sartaj walked over to it and saw that she was almost life-size, with deep round breasts and huge eyes. She was all white, plaster, and quite startling to find in an apartment in the Narayan Housing Colony, far north and west of Andheri West.

Kshitij was watching him, and Sartaj felt the edge of his resentment without surprise. He used his ability to stalk into people’s lives as another tool. What they felt about him was usually instructive.

“Please come to the morgue with us,” Sartaj said.

In the long moment then he saw recognition, regret, the usual struggle for control, and then Kshitij said, “Yes.” But he did not move.

“Do you want to put on some shoes?” Sartaj said. He followed Kshitij into his room, which was shocking in its austerity after the gaudy brilliance of the rest of the house. There was a shelf stacked neatly with books, a desk, a bed, and a calendar with a goddess on it. There was a window that opened out onto an expanse of swampy vegetation. It had begun to drizzle again. “Is there somebody to take care of your mother?”

Kshitij looked up from his laces, startled. He blinked twice and then said, “I will tell my neighbour.” Sartaj noted his thick black Bata shoes, his well-worn white shirt and brown pants. When they came out of the bedroom Kshitij shut the door firmly behind him. “I’m ready,” he said.

“I need a photograph of your father,” Sartaj said.

Kshitij nodded, turned, walked away. The photograph he brought back was a picture of a happy family, Chetanbhai and his wife in front, stiff and square shouldered in a blue suit and green sari, and Kshitij behind, standing straight in a white shirt, his hand on his mother’s shoulder.

*

He was remarkably steady at the morgue. Sartaj was impressed by his self-possession in the face of the damp walls, the yellow light, and the searing smell of formaldehyde that brought tears to the eyes. Sartaj forgave him a little then for his drab owlishness, his youth entirely lacking in dash or energy or charm. There was a sort of blunt and unprepossessing iron in him. Sartaj had brought some there who had been broken down by the dark corridors even before the room with the rattling metal trolleys and the atmosphere of congestion, but Kshitij identified his father without a tremor. He stood with his arms folded over his thin chest and said, “Yes. Yes.” Outside, as they swayed in the police department Gypsy jeep, on the pitted roads, he asked, “Has the police found out anything about the murder?” When Sartaj told him he couldn’t talk about the investigation he nodded understandingly and lapsed into silence. But afterwards, at the station, he couldn’t stop talking. He drank cup after cup of tea and told Sartaj that he was premed at Pateker. He was an only son. He wanted to specialize in neurology. He had been second in the state in the H.Sc. exams, falling short by three marks mostly because of a bad mistake in Physics, which was his worst subject. It had been a sort of trick question in electricity. But other than that everything was moving according to plan.

When Sartaj asked about Chetanbhai Patel, Kshitij fell silent for a minute, a cup suspended halfway to his lips, his mouth open. Then, looking down into the cup of tea, he talked about his father. Chetanbhai was mostly a textile trader. He travelled often, to the interior sometimes, and they had thought he was late coming back from Nadiad this time, which is why they reported him missing two days after he was supposed to have returned. He did some export, mostly to the Middle East, but some to America and of course he wanted more. It was a long-established business, from before Kshitij’s birth. Like many businessmen he had sometimes been the victim of petty crime. Once a briefcase with cash in it had been stolen from a local train.

“Did he seem afraid?” Sartaj said. “Any enemies that you know of?”

“Enemies? No, of course not. Why would he have enemies?”

“Somebody in business that he had a quarrel with? Somebody in the locality?”

“No.”

“What about you?” Sartaj said. “Do you have any enemies?”

“What do I have to do with it?”

“Sometimes people die because they get caught in their children’s fights.”

Then there was again that flare of resentment in Kshitij, muted in the eyes but so strong in the shoulders and in the coil of his body that it was a kind of hatred.

“Do you have fights? Quarrels?” Sartaj said.

“No,” Kshitij said. “Why would I?”

“Everyone has enemies.”

“I haven’t done anything to make enemies.” He was now assured and confident and calm.

“Right,” Sartaj said. “I think now we will look around your house. And I would like to meet Mrs. Patel.”

*

In the jeep Sartaj considered his own vanity. He was sensitive to other people’s feelings about him, and had still not learnt to be indifferent to the fear he caused, to the anger of those he investigated. He hid this uneasiness carefully because there was no place for it in an investigator’s craft. To be hated was part of the job. But in college he had wanted to be loved by all, and Megha had teased him, you’re everyone’s hero. Then yours too, he had said. No, no, no, she said, and she shook her head, and kissed him. You have a terrible Panju accent, she said laughing, and your English is lousy, but you are just beautiful, and then she kissed him again. They had married out of vanity, their own and each other’s. He had been the Casanova of the college, with a
dada
’s reputation that her friends had warned her about. But she had been so very sure of herself, of her very good looks like a hawk and that shine she had of money, and they were so handsome together that people stopped in the streets to look at them. After they married they liked to make love sitting facing each other, his hair open about his shoulders so they were like mirror images, hardly moving, eyes locked together in an undulating competition towards and away from pleasurable collapse. The memory rose into his throat and Sartaj shook it away as the Gypsy rocked to a halt. A double line of young men in khaki shorts was plunging across the road.

“Bloody idiots,” Sartaj said. “Won’t even stay home in the rain.”

“They’re
Rakshaks
, sir,” Katekar said, grinning. “Tough boys. A little rain won’t stop them. After all they want to clean up the country.”

“They’ll all catch colds,” Sartaj said. The banner carried at the rear of the procession was soggy and limp, but Sartaj could see one of the crossed spears. “And their mothers will have to wipe their noses.”

Katekar grinned. He rattled the gearshift to and fro and the Gypsy jerked forward. “How is Mata-ji?” he said.

“She’s very well,” Sartaj said. “She remembers you often.” Katekar was a great devotee of Sartaj’s mother. Every time she stayed with Sartaj, Katekar made a special point of coming up to the flat, and touching her feet, not once but three times, bringing his hand up to his throat. Sartaj knew Katekar’s mother had died just after Katekar had joined the force.

“Please tell her I said
pranaam.
”

Sartaj nodded, and looked over his shoulder. Kshitij was staring dully at the window and crying. His hands were locked together in his lap and the tears were sliding down his face. Now Katekar cursed softly as the jeep growled through a long patch of flooded road, leaving a wake behind. Sartaj turned away from Kshitij and shifted in his seat. Katekar was leaning forward, peering through the regularly spaced waves of water that the wipers were making on the windshield. He was cursing the water, the streets, and the city. His hands around the black plastic of the steering wheel were thick, with huge bulky wrists. He looked at Sartaj and smiled, and Sartaj had to grin back at him. In the rearview mirror, Sartaj could see Kshitij’s shoulder, the line of his jaw, and he thought, it’s always hard on the serious ones, they were always tragic with their earnestness and their belief in seriousness. He remembered two boys who were the grandsons of farmers in his grandfather’s village near Patiala. He recalled them vaguely from a summer visit to the village, remembered them in blue pants and ties. There had been a celebration of their results in the seventh class exams, and he had tried to talk to them about the test match that everyone was listening to but had found them boring and uninformed. After that he had never seen them again and had not thought of them for years until his father had mentioned them during a Sunday phone call. They had been caught by a BSF patrol as they came over the border in the dunes near Jaisalmer laden with grenades and ammunition. They had tried to fire back but had been neatly outflanked and machine-gunned. The papers had reported the death of two Grade-A terrorists and had reported their names and their affiliations. There had been a grainy black-and-white photograph of sprawled, bloodied figures with open mouths. Sartaj had never heard of their organization but had no doubt it was a very serious one.

*

The Apsara stood among a crowd of mourners, holding her pot tipped forward. The door to the apartment was open and Kshitij was surrounded by young men as soon as they stepped from the lift. In the front room neighbours sat and talked in whispers, and an older man embraced Kshitij for a long moment. Then Kshitij stood facing the door to the bedroom at the back of the house, and the seconds passed, and in his shoulders there was a huge reluctance, as if the next step were from one world into another. Finally the old man took Kshitij by the elbow and led him forward. Sartaj and Katekar followed behind closely, and over many shoulders Sartaj saw a woman sitting on the ground, surrounded by other women. They were holding her by the shoulders and arms, and she had one leg curled under her and the other straight out in front. She looked up with a blank face and Kshitij stopped. Sartaj wanted very much to see the boy’s reaction, and he started to push gently past the old man but suddenly the woman started to keen, it was a long wailing sound that arched her back and the others strained to keep her still. It came again and Sartaj shivered, it was somehow quite expressionless, like a long blank wall stretching forever, and as stunning. Kshitij stood helplessly before it, and the room was very close, bodies pushed up to each other and the light broken up somehow into fragments of faces, and then Sartaj turned and walked out of the room. It was bad technique but he couldn’t bring himself to look at them any more. The rest of the house was also filled and stifling, and Sartaj jostled shoulders and pushed until he was out.