The Story of My Assassins (13 page)

I said, ‘So what’s the story? What have they said?’

Hathi Ram delicately smelt the pink cream on one half, then banged them together and said, ‘I have no idea. I am just speculating. Making them into great singers is not my work. My job is to only make sure you are safe. Song and dance is the department of gifted policemen. I am only Hathi Ram, a lowly and simple sub-inspector. Named to be an elephant but living like a mouse.’ He sounded like the director of a song-and-dance academy. The choreographer of a thousand weeping confessions.

I said, ‘So do you think it’s possible these men who’ve been arrested may not really be guilty?’

Suddenly he became even more still than he was, the cymbals frozen mid-clash. Fixing me with his expressionless eyes, he said, ‘That’s the biggest problem with this country—suspicion. Everyone suspects everyone. Brothers, brothers; husbands, wives; wives, sisters-in-law; sisters-in-law, mothers-in-law; sons, fathers; masters, servants; servants, servants; employers, employees; colleagues, colleagues; farmer, middlemen; middlemen, traders; traders, government; government, the people; the people, the police; the police, the people; the people, the people. We are born khabris. It is in our blood to be informers—for one thousand years we have been informers for kings and for seths and for white men. Now there are no kings and no white men, and seths we can all become, for seths have neither colour nor lineage. But suspicion has still not stopped coursing in our blood. We suspect those we love, we suspect those who love us, we suspect those we work for, we suspect those who
work for us. And we suspect those who save our lives, and suspect those who guard us. Be in no doubt ever, those men were paid to kill you, and given enough weapons to kill fifteen of you.’

Dolly/folly said, her eyes dilating, ‘Be careful, please.’

My fat mother-in-law said, ‘Who went with you to the court? I hope that Usman fellow was not there?’ She knew the names of the shadows better than I did.

My mother wailed, ‘Why did you have to go to court, my son? I hope those low-caste killers didn’t see you! Every curse be on them and their families! May worms eat them as they live! May their teeth rot, may their hair fall, may their skin shrivel! Tell me, did they see you, my son? Will they be able to recognize you now?’

My father said, from behind his curtain of newspapers, ‘Did they make you sign any papers?’

Dolly/folly’s father said, from behind his curtain of newspapers, ‘Did they make you sign any papers?’

Sippy said, his fly buttons unaligned, his eyeballs swimming in a soup of yellow and red, ‘Sirji, I believe you went to the court and saw the murderers. You should have taken me along. I too would have liked to see who these fannekhans are who think they can kill you. Don’t these chutiyas know that Kabir has said, Jaako raakhe saiyan, maar sake na koye!’

Kabir, not Wystan Hugh, is what Sara needed.

None can bring distress to he whom the lord protects.

The next time I was lying naked in front of Napoleon, I said, ‘They could actually be innocent, couldn’t they?’

Sara had finished sluicing me off her body and was pacing the room, photo arms crossed across her chest. Yet again, she had gone up the wall and come off it with minimum ardour, and it was clear to me that it was time to take Guruji’s advice.

Without breaking step, she said, ‘Of course not, fucker, why would they be. They kill just like you shoot peas! For money and pleasure!’

I said, ‘Do you think that Bhandariji will be able to get them off? He’s a sharp guy, but Hathi Ram says the police have a strong case.’

She said, without looking at me, pacing away, ‘Of course he won’t. Men like them die every day in this fucking country. It’s the peashooters who live on.’

I said, ‘I think we should help him.’ She said, ‘With what? Selecting the right rope or the right hangman?’

The hair in her crotch was dark and lush. She never trimmed it, it was long and shiningly shampooed, gathering in an even richer black line in the middle.

I said, ‘We can bank on the police screwing up. What we have to ensure is that Bhandariji does his best. Chances are he’ll get bored, the case will drag on, the cops will soften him up, and these five jokers will have no one around to chase him down. We know lawyers go to sleep if the client goes to sleep.’

She said, ‘So do you want to tell the cops that you want to now actually protect your murderers? And instead of protecting you from them, the police should now protect them from the police?’

No one, I thought, should ever trim their hair. American porn like American food undid all curiosity, all good taste. Everything standardized, everything cut from one mould, everything drained of subtlety. All of it served up like a smooth slab of meat.

I said, ‘You are doing the right thing by getting fully involved. I obviously can’t, but if they are being framed, we could save them yet.’

She said, ‘Don’t make me weep, mr peashooter! Your concern is twisting my heart!’

It was not just the way it looked, so full of mystery and seductive promise. It was also how it smelled, so sensually ripe. The aromas opened up slowly, as you burrowed deeper, and filled your head.

I said, ‘I am sure we could even talk to some friends about raising a small fund to support the case. This Bhandariji will lose interest
unless some decent money is put on the table. And except for that Tyagi guy, the rest don’t seem like they could have any.’

She broke step, looked at me, and said, ‘I think you should stop now, and go home. Miss Dolly might restore you to your good humour with her black-black eyes and white-white skin and little pink-pink you-know-what!’

Guruji was not the master for nothing.

The next time we met we didn’t go into the bedroom but sat in her living-room, on her second-hand cane sofa, streaked black where the cane was rotting, and we talked. She was wearing a turquoise wrap patterned with plump green fish—something she’d picked up on a beach in Goa—and a white sleeveless cotton slip. She sat opposite me with her legs crossed under her, using both her hands to rub her bare feet, which were flat and knobby, with none of the grace of her torso. Maybe it was her parents. A stout, fleshy father and a slim, delicate mother—nature’s cruel idea of affirmative action. And the genes had neatly claimed one half each. Mercifully, the division worked. The other way around would have been a disaster.

She was talking. Telling me what she thought, what Bhandariji thought, what might really be happening. Her tone was quiet, ruminative, the way I’d heard her one time when she’d spoken about her childhood growing up in the hills. Sara was for all purposes a fulltime dragon, scorching all who crossed her path. I knew that even her colleagues who worked with her in their small gender advocacy group wore asbestos around her. Everything set her off. You could almost never say the right thing. Those who befriended her did so for the scourging she handed out. Either punishment was their thing, or they were on some self-improvement trip. I was there for the pleasure that arose from some complex mind-body alchemy in her that I had not been able to unravel.

For the rest, I thought she was full of bullshit.

I didn’t care a damn what she thought of the brain-curry man and his four johnnies, and what she wished to do to save them. I just wanted to reignite the frenzy in her body. I had become addicted to her high-wire act. The music of abuse, the wantonness and denial, the electrified body, the exploding finale. I craved it with the desperation of the young wasted needle-men scavenging in the dark mouldering alleys of Chandni Chowk.

I also knew by now that I could not reignite her by labouring on her body. I had to open up the engine—her mind—and tinker with its peculiar valves and wiring.

Now she was talking. Her arms were no longer folded across her chest. We were drinking tea in her big heavy ceramic mugs—enough of it to wash your face and ass with. She drank from these mugs all day. If I had two back-to-back I could piss a hole into the ground. Maybe it was the gallons of tea that kept her so wired. At the moment I didn’t care. I was relieved. I was back inside the charmed circle, the tight small circle outside of which lay the vast universe she held in contempt. As ever, I wore an intensely attentive look while barely listening to what she was saying. I admired her sharp opinions and quirky mind, but hated her ceaseless droning. Many would not agree I suppose but this too was a kind of love—to work hard at practising deceit in order to find ardour.

It had to be a kind of love.

I certainly felt it so.

So while she dragged on about all the conversations she had had with Bhandariji, I struggled to look intense. I was actually thinking about the accelerating collapse of the magazine. Three weeks ago we had dropped to thirty-two pages, and now two months’ salaries were in arrears. The staff was steadily peeling away like passengers from a bus reaching its last stop. The empty rows grew more derelict by the day. Soon there would be no one, just the waiting depot, just the driver and conductor, just Mr Lincoln and me.

Kuchha King, Kuchha Singh and Frock Raja had literally
disappeared behind the high walls of their farmhouses, beyond all contact, beyond any appeals, presumably under their shining faux galaxy, by the shuffling horse hooves, reconciled to writing off their losses with a small mountain of Calvin Klein undies.

Jai had been scuttling around, working up his public school buddies, delivering orations on media, democracy and the social contract. How, after indulgence, after excess, after aggrandizement, money must start to produce the moral moment. Mr Lincoln was quite something—capable of stirring bricks and stones and worse than senseless things. But men with money are quite something too. So far he had turned up nothing but a few soft loans that were soaked up by the office like water by parched land.

A few prospectors had come visiting and had been effusively shepherded around by Jai. They had pumped hands with wide smiles and never returned. There were no cobwebs blocking the doorways yet, but the dereliction of the abandoned chairs, dead computers and unpeopled rooms was enough to strike terror in the heart of any investor. The armed policeman in the sandbagged post outside and an unbuttoned swaying Sippy inside, were enough to close out all remaining doubt.

We were contaminated by controversy and political scandal, married to commercial vagueness and a tarred balance sheet. In truth Mr Lincoln was casting for a virgin in a bordello. Money, mostly, has no interest in systems of equity, liberty, justice, democracy or any such fanciful notions. Money is only interested in systems that make more money. Jai would close the door behind him and try and talk it all up with me, in a maddening mix of rousing optimism and despondent alarm. To me, he seemed in some state of mounting delirium.

For my part, I sat in my room on my chair all day with my feet on the table and stared out the window at the dirty blue sky and the scraggly tree—whose great moment of beauty had vanished without a trace. Guruji said life was like the Brahmaputra, the grandest of
grand rivers, the very son of Brahma, the creator, ever moving, surging without a pause, unequally distributing joy and distress, seeking finally to merge into a receptacle that was even greater. You had to learn to flow with it. Sometimes you saw something on the banks that you really wanted, and then you beat your arms and kicked your legs and swam for it. At other times you just floated with the current, soaking it up, revelling in it, being one with it.

Guruji had said I was not to worry, the river would take me places, offer up new things. Too much frenzy, too much thrashing about, could be a big mistake. It could leave you in the same spot, struggling but not moving, robbed of the fantastic journeys the currents were going to take you on. Did I wish to tread water or savour the rich unknown? Guruji said, float freely and without fear but keep an eye on the shore. So I was looking out the window, counting the full-bellied planes coming in to land, watching the magpie robins in their shining black and white coats, and as far as I could see there was nothing on the shores for me for miles and miles and the river was flowing too sluggishly to open up fresh vistas.

I realized she had stopped talking and was waiting for me to respond. I had hardly registered a thought, just some stray words. Patiala House, Tyagi, Bhandariji, Tihar jail, and the names of two of the killers, Chaaku and Chini. She had also mentioned the names of some other lawyers she was considering for the defence team. A couple of names were outrageously famous—men who charged lakhs of rupees for a single appearance, men whose names and pictures filled the newspapers and TV channels, men who could strike fear into prime ministers, save mass murderers, turn evidence upside down so that judges hung by their legs from ceilings and gave out verdicts that had nothing to do with the truth. I also knew with her it wasn’t kite-flying: if she set herself to it she had the ability to reel them in pro bono.

My assassins could not have been safer than in my lover’s hands.

I said, ‘You are right. You are right about it all.’

She said, ‘So should we move on it then?’

I didn’t know what she was talking about. I said, looking at her intently, ‘Yes, but let’s sleep on it for a day or two. Maybe we can consult a few other people too.’

She put her forefinger sharp under my chin, and said in a hard voice, ‘Such a weak, indecisive bastard you are! I don’t know why I suffer you!’

Her nipples were stiff against the white slip.

I caught her finger and squeezed it till it hurt and she grimaced. Looking her in the eye, I said, ‘Bitch!’

She said, ‘I should stop seeing you. In fact, would you please leave this very moment?’

I said, ‘You whore! You have someone else coming in to make you happy?’

She said, her pupils dilating, ‘Yes, but why should it concern you, you limp bastard!’

I took her finger that I had caught in my hand and slowly pushed it between her thighs, parting the fat fish on her turquoise wrap. She resisted, hissing, ‘Stop it! Stop it, you bastard!’ Her finger was unbending in my hand and I guided it into her lushness, striking water on the surface and digging deeper. Her eyes were half-closed now. ‘Stop it, you dog,’ she hissed, more softly now. I said, ‘Saali randi! Always so open!’ She gave a loud moan and virtually squatted on my hand. I immediately unleashed a stream of Hindi invective. She spat back more. I picked her up and nailed her to the wall, and kept her there till her foul mouth had turned beautifully fruity, and she was whispering sweet love to me and beseeching me to stay buried in her for life, and beyond.