Janine Armin - Toronto Noir

Durani had been making tea. He brought Aziz a cup, once again in the Kashmiri style. It was warm and sweet and made Aziz think of home, a place he likely had in common with this Durani. They sat cross-legged across from one another on the floor, teacups in their laps. Durani peered at Aziz, then set his teacup down and began digging through a stack of books. He produced a sheaf of typewritten papers stapled together, and passed it to Aziz.

The papers were galleys of an article written for a prominent Canadian newsmagazine, authored by a certain S.B. Meerza and annotated with a few edits in blue ink. Accompanying the text was a picture of the man sitting across from Aziz.

“Read,” said this man.

What Aziz read was a profile of a certain highly reputable Bollywood actress — an actress he knew well and whose films he had enjoyed before moving to Toronto. Now he didn’t go to the cinema. He woke up, went to his job at the bread factory, had a meal, and then headed to his job at the ice rink. He came home late and slept. Little by little, he was saving money to bring his brother to Canada.

This actress, the article explained, had recently achieved international prominence. She was a fixture now on TV entertainment programs otherwise specializing in Hollywood news, although she had yet to appear in an American movie. But she was on billboards and in magazine ads for perfumes and cosmetics in New York, London, Toronto, all heavy-lidded eyes and glistening lips. There was regular talk of her, even outside India, as “the most beautiful woman in the world.”

The first few paragraphs detailed this increasing global fascination with the girl from Malabar Hill. Aziz was familiar with her story. Everyone was. But he could feel the article moving toward something else. There was a subtle irony to how her career was being explained. And the urgency on the face of the man opposite, the author — his tea untouched and going cold — only added to these suspicions.

Sure enough, the article began to pose questions. How had it all happened so quickly? Why were international markets suddenly taking interest? India had been producing screen beauties for generations. There were countless other Bollywood starlets just as stunning, as talented, as charismatic. Why this one?

And then things turned. The actress, claimed the article, had enlisted Mob help: Producers had been threatened, politicians bribed, corporations extorted. A murder led to another, which led to another, which resulted in all-out gang warfare on the streets of Bombay. The article linked the previous year’s communal riots to the actress’s growing success. A bomb had derailed a commuter train while she presented an award at a film festival in Italy, killing dozens.

None of what the article discussed, Aziz knew, was anomalous in the Indian film industry. But glancing up occasionally at the man across from him — Durani, Meerza, whoever he was, huddled there on the floor in his empty apartment with his tea — he could see the consequences of trying to publish it in a North American publication, of smearing Bollywood’s great international hope. That it had never seen the newsstand spoke to the power of the Mob. All its author had left were a bed on the floor, a pile of books, and a galley copy of a piece that never was.

The article ended with a description of the actress making an appearance at the Toronto Film Festival on the arm of a celebrity music producer. The reader was left in a blinding array of flashbulbs and glamour. Aziz flipped the pages back into order and handed the article to Meerza.

“No,” the neighbor said, waving his hand. “You keep it.”

Aziz paused. He didn’t want this thing, and the responsibility it represented. He was doing fine. “Are there other copies?”

“No,” said Meerza. “They destroyed my computer and the magazine’s files were deleted. This is all that is left.”

“I can’t take it,” said Aziz.

“Please. They’ve found me.”

“You can’t run? Or tell the police?”

“These are goondas only. If I say anything about these, and even if police action is taken, more will come. Now that they have found me outside India I will be easy to track. Every move I make will be known.”

“So what will you do?”

“I will wait.”

“Here?”

“Where else? Perhaps they just want to talk to me, see how I am doing.” Meerza swept a hand around the apartment, sketching its emptiness with his fingers.

Outside on the street the snow had stopped. The sky was still and purple. Aziz walked west along Gerrard, snow crunching and squeaking under his boots. In one pocket was Meerza’s article, folded into thirds. In the other was the knife. As a streetcar rattled past, Aziz wrapped his gloved fingers tightly around the handle, careful not to pop the blade.

At the Gerrard Cinema he stopped. The marquee twinkled. It cast a dome of yellow light onto the street. Aziz bought a ticket to the early show, which had started nearly an hour ago. The woman working told him this but he waved his hand: no matter. He wanted to see this picture. There was an actress in it who was important to Aziz.

The cinema was dark save the band of light twirling out from the projector, silent save a sad violin and the rattle of the film threading from reel to reel. On screen, the famous Indian actress was praying silently before some sort of altar. It was night. The moonlight in the film was blue. Aziz stared at the screen for a moment, at the woman up there. Then he sat down at the end of an empty row near the door, looking around.

Less than half the seats were occupied. People were scattered around the theater, mostly in groups of two. Aziz glanced from one pair of heads to the next: a woman and her son, two elderly Sikhs, a young couple with their arms around one another. But then, there they were. Prem and Lal were only four rows up, against the wall on the left side of the theater. There was a seat separating the two men, but it was definitely them — the shorn heads gave them away. Aziz fingered the article in his pocket with one hand and the knife with the other.

The action in the film had moved to a battlefield. A handsome soldier was loading his gun while bombs exploded all around. Aziz watched as either Prem or Lal stood in the dark and shuffled his way up the aisle. He lowered his face as the hired thug walked by. The man had a mustache; it was Prem. Aziz waited until Prem had exited the theater, then slipped out of his seat.

In the bathroom there was one stall, a sink, and a single urinal. The door to the stall was closed. Between it and the floor were jeans hiked to reveal mismatched socks: one blue, one black. Aziz leaned against the sink and unfolded the article from his pocket.

“Last year’s communal violence that erupted on the streets of Bombay,” he read aloud, “can be directly attributed to the involvement of gangs in the film industry. The startling rise to the top of one actress, in particular, is irrevocably linked to an ongoing war between certain rival production studios and their respective Mob affiliations.”

From the stall there was no sound. The feet didn’t move.

Aziz continued: “North American audiences might be interested to know that the Indian actress whose ‘exotic’ look sells them cosmetics, soft drinks, and high fashion — the international face of Bollywood — has achieved prominence in her home country not by talent, or even looks, but by a methodically implemented strategy of extortion, blackmail, and even murder.”

More silence from behind the stall door. Aziz flipped the pages until he found the passage he was looking for.

“The efforts of Bombay’s police to curtail the rising violence have been compromised not only by organized crime syndicates, but also by the financial backers of the film industry, who pay off the city’s lawmakers to turn a blind eye to their activities. One officer who refused to be bribed was executed, as an example to his colleagues, in broad daylight on Jehu Beach, where he was walking with his wife and daughter.”