Shantaram (20 page)

"There's no money in New Zealand, Prabu," I told him as we walked back to our hotel room. "There's no family who can help, no friends, and no help at the embassy."

"No money?"

"None."

"And you can't get any more? Not from any place?"

"No," I answered, packing my few belongings into my backpack.

"This is a very serious trouble, Lin, if you don't mind I'm telling your bruise and scratchy face."

"I know. Do you think we can sell my watch to the hotel manager?"

"Yes, Lin, I think so sure. It is a very nice watches. But I don't think so he will give us a big fair price. In such matters, the Indian businessman is putting his religion in his back pocket only, and he is driving very hard bargains on you."

"Never mind," I replied, clipping shut the catches on my backpack. "So long as it's enough to pay the bill, and catch that night train you were talking about, back to Bombay. Come on, pack your things, and let's go."

"It is a very, very, very serious trouble," he said as we closed the door to the room for the last time, and walked down the corridor. "No money is no funny in India, Lin, I'm telling you."

The frown that compressed his lips and consumed his features remained with us all the way back to Bombay. The sale of my watch covered the hotel bill in Aurangabad, with enough left for two or three days at the India Guest House in Bombay. With my gear stowed in my favourite room, I walked Prabaker back to the small entrance foyer of the hotel, trying in vain to revive the little miracle of his wondrous smile.

"You will leave all those unhappy things in my caring," he said, earnest and solemn. "You will see, Lin. I will make a happy result on you."

I watched him walk down the stairs, and then heard the manager, Anand, address me in friendly Marathi.

I turned with a smile, and we began to talk in Marathi. Six months in the village had given me the simple, everyday conversational phrases, questions, and sentences. It was a modest achievement, but Anand was obviously very pleased and surprised.

After a few minutes of conversation, he called all the co- managers and room boys to hear me speak in their language. They all reacted with similarly delighted astonishment. They'd known foreigners who spoke a little Hindi, or even spoke it well, but none of them had ever met a foreigner who could converse with them in their own beloved Marathi language.

They asked me about the village of Sunder-they'd never heard of it-and we talked about the daily life that they all knew well from their own villages, and tended to idyllise in recollection.

When the conversation ended, I returned to my room, and had barely shut the door when a tentative knock sounded at it.

"Excuse me, please. I am sorry to disturb." The voice belonged to a tall, thin foreigner-German, or Swiss, perhaps-with a wispy beard attached to the point of his long face, and fair hair pulled back into a thick plait. "I heard you speaking to the manager, and the room boys, before, and... well, it is sure that you have been here in India very long... and... _na _ja, we just arrived today, my girlfriend and me, and we want to buy some hashish. Do you... do you maybe know where we can get for ourselves some hashish, without somebody cheating us, and without trouble from the police?"

I did know, of course. Before the night was out, I also helped them to change money on the black market without being cheated.

The bearded German and his girlfriend were happy with the deal and they paid me a commission. The black marketeers, who were Prabaker's friends and contacts on the street, were happy that I'd brought new customers to them, and they paid me commissions as well. I knew there would be other foreigners, on every street in Colaba, who wanted to score. That casual conversation in Marathi with Anand and the room boys of the hotel, overheard by the German couple, had given me a way to survive in the city.

A more pressing problem, however, was my tourist visa. When Anand had signed me in to the hotel, he'd warned me that my visa had expired. Every hotel in Bombay had to supply a register of foreign guests, with a valid visa entry for each foreign name and passport number. The register was known as the C-Form, and the police were vigilant in its supervision. Overstaying on a visa was a serious offence in India. Prison terms of up to two years were sometimes imposed, and the police levied heavy fines on hotel operators who permitted C-Form irregularities.

Anand had explained all that to me, gravely, before he fudged the figures in his register and signed me in. He liked me. He was Maharashtrian, and I was the first foreigner he'd ever met who spoke the Marathi language with him. He was happy to break the rules for me, once, but he warned me to visit the Foreigner Registration Branch, at police headquarters, immediately, to see about an extension on my visa.

I sat in my room, and weighed the options. There weren't many. I had very little money. True, I'd inadvertently discovered a way to earn money as a middleman, a go-between, helping wary foreigners to deal with black marketeers. However, I wasn't sure if it would provide me with enough money to live in hotels and eat in restaurants. It certainly wouldn't pay for a plane ticket out of India. Moreover, I was already an overstayer on my visa, and technically guilty of a criminal offence. Anand assured me that the cops would see the lapsed visa as a mere oversight, and extend it without enquiry, but I couldn't risk my freedom on that chance. I couldn't visit the Foreigner Registration Branch. So, I couldn't alter my visa status, and I couldn't stay at a hotel in Bombay without a valid visa. I was caught between the rock of regulations and the hard place of the fugitive life.

I lay back on the bed, in the dark, listening to the sounds of the street that rose to my open window: the paanwalla, calling customers to the delights of his aromatic morsels; the watermelon man, piercing the warm, humid night with his plangent cry; a street acrobat, shouting through his sweaty exertions for a crowd of tourists; and music, always music. Did ever a people love music, I wondered, more than the Indians?

Thoughts of the village, thoughts I'd avoided and resisted until that music began, danced into my mind. On the day that Prabaker and I had left the village, the people had invited me to live with them. They'd offered me a house and a job. In the last three months of my stay I'd been helping the teacher at the local school with special lessons in spoken English. I gave him clear pronunciations of English words, helping him to correct the heavily accented versions of the language that he'd been teaching to the children. The teacher and the village council had urged me to stay. There was a place for me-a place and a purpose.

But it wasn't possible for me to return to Sunder village. Not then. A man can make his way in the city with his heart and his soul crushed within a clenched fist; but to live in a village, he has to unfurl his heart and his soul in his eyes. I carried crime and punishment with me in every hour of my life. The same fate that helped me to escape from prison had clamped its claws on my future. Sooner or later, if they looked hard enough and long enough, the people would see those claws in my eyes. Sooner or later, there would be a reckoning. I'd passed myself off as a free man, a peaceful man, and for a little while I'd known real happiness in the village, but my soul wasn't clean. What would I do to prevent my recapture? What wouldn't I do? Would I kill to save myself from prison?

I knew the answers to those questions, and I knew that my presence in Sunder defiled the village. I knew that every smile I took from them was swindled. Life on the run puts a lie in the echo of every laugh, and at least a little larceny in every act of love.

There was a knock at the door. I called out that it was open.

Anand stepped into my room and announced with distaste that Prabaker had come to see me, with two of his friends. I clapped Anand on the back, smiling at his concern for me, and we walked to the hotel foyer.

"Oh, Lin!" Prabaker beamed, when our eyes met. "I have the very good news for you! This is my friend, Johnny Cigar. He is a very important friend in the zhopadpatti, the slum where we live. And this is Raju. He helps Mr. Qasim Ali Hussein, who is the head man in the slum."

I shook hands with the two men. Johnny Cigar was almost exactly my height and build, which made him taller and heavier than the Indian aver- age. I judged him to be about thirty years old. His long face was candid and alert. The sand-coloured eyes fixed me with a steady, confident gaze. His thin moustache was trimmed to a precise line over an expressive mouth and determined jaw. The other man, Raju, was only a little taller than Prabaker, and of an even slighter build. His gentle face was stamped with a sadness that invited sympathy. It was the kind of sadness that's a companion, all too often, to scrupulous and uncompromising honesty. Thick brows hooded his intelligent, dark eyes. They stared at me, those knowing, mindful eyes, from a tired, sagging face that seemed much older than the thirty-five years I guessed him to be. I liked both men on sight.

We talked for a while, the new men asking me questions about Prabaker's village and my impressions of life there. They asked me about the city, as well, wanting to know my favourite places in Bombay, and the things that I liked to do most. When the conversation seemed likely to continue, I invited them to join me at one of the nearby restaurants for chai.

"No, no, Lin," Prabaker declined, waggling his head. "We must be leaving now. Only I wanted you to meet the Johnny and the Raju, and them to be meeting your good self, also. I think that Johnny Cigar has some things to tell you now, isn't it?"

He looked at Johnny, his eyes and his mouth wide open, and his hands raised in expectation. Johnny glowered at him, but the frown quickly softened into a broad smile, and he turned his attention to me.

"We made a decision for you," Johnny Cigar declared. "You will live with us. You are Prabaker's good friend. There is a place for you."

"Yes, Lin!" Prabaker added quickly. "One family is leaving tomorrow. And then, the day after tomorrow, that house will be yours."

"But... but..." I stammered, flattered by the generous gesture, and yet horrified at the thought of life in the slum. I remembered my one visit to Prabaker's slum only too well. The smell of the open latrines, the heart-breaking poverty, the cramp and mill of people, thousands upon thousands of people-it was a kind of hell, in my memory, a new metaphor that stood for the worst, or almost the worst, that could happen.

"No problem, Lin," Prabaker laughed. "You will be too happy with us, you will see. And you know, you're looking like a different fellow now, it is true, but after a few months with us you will look exactly the same as everyone else there. People will think you are already living in the slum for years and years and years. You will see."

"It is a place for you," Raju said, reaching out slowly to touch my arm. "A safe place, until you can save your money. _Our hotel is free."

The others laughed at that, and I joined them, inspired by their optimism and enthusiasm. The slum was filthy and crowded beyond imagining, but it was free, and there were no C-Forms for the residents. It would give me time to think, I knew, and time to plan.

"I... well... thanks, Prabu. Thanks, Johnny. Thanks, Raju. I accept your offer. I'm very grateful. Thank you."

"No problem," Johnny Cigar replied, shaking my hand, and meeting my eye with a determined, penetrating stare.

I didn't know then that Johnny and Raju had been sent by the head man of the slum, Qasim Ali Hussein, to look me over. In my ignorance and self-centeredness, I'd recoiled at the thought of the terrible conditions of the slum, and accepted their offer reluctantly. I didn't know that the huts were in much demand, and that there was a long list of families waiting for a place. I couldn't know, then, that offering a place to me meant that a family in need had missed out on a home. As the last step in making that decision, Qasim Ali Hussein had sent Raju and Johnny to my hotel. Raju's task was to determine whether I could live with them. Johnny's task was to make sure that they could live with me. All I knew, on the first night of our meeting, was that Johnny's handshake was honest enough to build a friendship on, and Raju's sad smile had more acceptance and trust in it than I deserved.

"Okay, Lin," Prabaker grinned. "Day after tomorrow, we come to pick up your many things, and your good self also, in the late of afternoon."

"Thanks, Prabu. Okay. But wait! Day after tomorrow-won't that ... won't that mess up our appointment?"

"Appointment? What for an appointment, Linbaba?"

"The... the... Standing Babas," I replied lamely.

The Standing Babas, a legendary cloister of mad, inspired monks, ran a hashish den in suburban Byculla. Prabaker had taken me there as part of his dark tour of the city, months before. On the way back to Bombay from the village, I'd made him promise to take me there again, with Karla. I knew she'd never been to the den, and I knew she was fascinated by the stories she'd heard of it.

Raising the matter then, in the face of their hospitable offer, was ungrateful, but I didn't want to miss the chance to impress her with the visit.

"Oh yes, Lin, no problem. We can still make a visit to those Standing Babas, with the Miss Karla, and after that we will collect up all your things. I will see you here, day after tomorrow at three o'clock afternoon. I am so happy you are going to be a slum-living fellow with us, Lin! So happy!"

He walked out of the foyer and descended the stairwell. I watched him join the lights and traffic stirring on the noisy street, three floors below. Worries waned and receded. I had a way to make a little money. I had a safe place to stay. And then, as if that safety allowed them to, my thoughts wound and spiralled along the streets and alleys to Karla. I found myself thinking of her apartment, of her ground-floor windows, those tall French doors that looked out on the cobbled lane, not five minutes away from my hotel. But the doors I pictured in my mind stayed shut.

And as I tried, and failed, to form an image of her face, her eyes, I suddenly realised that if I became a slum-dweller, if I lived in those squalid, squirming acres, I might lose her; I probably would lose her. I knew that if I fell that far, as I saw it then, my shame would keep me from her as completely and mercilessly as a prison wall.