Ian McDonald - River of Gods

“Well,” Tal said. “I think I’m in love.”

Mama Bharat rocked back on her seat, swaying her head in understanding. “Then you must tell me everything about it.”

So Tal began yts tale, from stepping out of Mama Bharai’s front door to the card on the pillow in the numb morning.

“Show me this card,” Mama Bharat said. She turned it over in her leathery, monkey hand. She pursed her lips.

“I am not convinced about a man who leaves a card with a club address rather than a home address.”

“Yt’s not a man.”

Mama Bharat closed her eyes.

“Of course. Forgive me. But he is acting like a man.” Dust motes rose in the hot light slanting through the slatted wooden blind. “What is it you feel about him?”

“I feel I’m in love.”

“That is not what I asked. What do you feel about him? Yt.”

“I feel. I think I feel. I want to be with yt, I want to go where yt goes and see what yt sees and do what yt does, just to be able to know all those little, little things. Does that make any kind of sense?”

“Every kind of sense,” Mama Bharat said. “What do you think I should do?”

“What else can you do?” Tal stood up abruptly, hands clutched. “I will, then, I will.”

Mama Bharat rescued Tal’s discarded tea-glass from the rug before yt could flood it with hot, sweet chai in yts excited determination. Siva Nataraja, Lord of the Dance, watched from his place on the tallboy, annihilating foot eternally raised.

Tal spent the remains of the afternoon in the ritual of going out. It was a formal and elaborate process that began with laying down a mix. STRANGE CLUB was yts mental title for yts venture to Tranh. DJ aeai sourced an assortment of late-chill grooves and Vier/Burmese/Assamesse sounds. Tal stripped off yts street clothes and stood in front of the mirror, raising yts arms over yts head, relishing yts round shoulders, child-slim torso, full, parted thighs free of any sexual organ. Yt held yts wrists up, studied in reflection the goose flesh of the subdermal control studs. Yt contemplated yts beautiful scars.

“Okay, play it.”

The music kicked in at floor-shaking volume. Almost immediately Paswan next door began banging on the wall and shouting about the noise and his shifts and his poor wife and children driven demented by freaks perverts deviates. Tal namasted ytself in the mirror, then danced to the wardrobe cubby and swept back the curtain in a balletic twirl. Swaying to the rhythm, Tal surveyed yts costumes, weaving permutations, implications, signs and signals. Mr. Paswan was beating on the door now, vowing he would burn yt out, see if he did not. Tal laid out yts combo on the bed, danced to the mirror, opened yts makeup boxes in strict right to left order and prepared to compose.

By the time the sun set in glorious polluted carmines and blood, Tal was dressed, made up and geared-in. The Paswans had given up hammering an hour ago and were now treating Tal to half-heard sobbing. Tal ejected the chip from yts player, slipped it into yts bag and was out into the wild wild night.

“Take me, here.”

The phatphat driver looked at the card and nodded. Tal hooked up yts mix and slumped back on to the seat in ecstasy.

The club was off an unprepossessing alley. In Tal’s experience, the best clubs usually were. The door was carved wood, grey and fibrous from years of heat and pollution. Tal guessed it had been there even before the British. A discreet camera bindi blinked. The door swung open to the touch. Tal unhooked yts mix to listen. Traditional dhol and bansuri.

Tal took a breath and walked in.

A great haveli had once lived here. Balconies in the same weathered grey wood rose five floors around the central courtyard garden now glassed over. Vines and climbing pharm bananas had been let run and ramble up the carved wooden pillars to spread across the ribs of the glass dome. Clusters of biolume lamps hung from the centre of the roof like strange fetid fruit; terracotta oil lanterns were arranged across the tiled floor. All was flicker and folded shadow. From the recesses of the wooden cloisters came low conversation and the musical burble of nute laughter. The musicians sat facing each other on a mat by the central pool, a shallow rectangle dappled with lilies, intent on their rhythms.

“Welcome to my home.”

The small, birdlike woman had appeared like a god in a film. She wore a crimson sari and a brahmin’s bindi and carried her head cocked to one side. Tal guessed her at sixty-five, seventy. The woman’s gaze darted over yts face.

“Please, make yourself at home. I have guests from every walk of society, from Varanasi and beyond.” She pulled a thumb-sized banana from its broad-leafed vine, peeled it open, and offered it to Tal, “Go, eat eat. They grow wild.”

“I don’t want to appear rude, but.”

“You want to know what it does. It will get you into the we are here. One to start, that is the way we do it. There are many varieties, but the ones by the door are the ones to start with. The rest you will discover on your journey. Relax, my lovely. You are among friends.” She offered the banana once again. As yt took it, Tal noticed the curl of plastic behind the aged woman’s right ear. That tilt of the head, that dodge of the eyes, were explained now. A blindhoek. Tal took a bite from the banana. It tasted of banana. Then yt became aware of the details in the woodcarving, the pattern of the tiles, the colours and weave of the dhuris. The individual parts of the music became distinct, stalking and twining around each other. A sharpness of focus. A lifting of awareness. A glow in the back of the head like an inner smile. Tal ate the rest of the banana in two bites. The old blind woman took the skin and deposited it in a small wooden bin already half-full of blackening, fragrant peels.

“I’m looking for someone. Tranh.”

The old woman’s black eyes hunted over Tal’s face.

“Tranh. Lovely thing. No, Tranh is not here, yet. But Tranh will be, sometime.” The old woman clasped her hands together in joy. Then the banana kicked in and Tal felt a relaxed warmth spread down from yts agnya chakra and yt hooked up yts music and explored the strange club. The balconies held low divans and sofas, arranged intimately around conversation tables. For those who did not do bananas there were elegant brass hookahs. Tal drifted past a knot of nutes, slo-moed in smoke. They inclined their heads towards yt. There were a lot of gendered. In the corner alcove a Chinese woman in a beautiful black suit was kissing a nute. She had the nute down yts back on the divan. Her fingers played with the hormonal gooseflesh on yts forearm. Somewhere Tal reasoned yt should be leaving, really, but all yt felt was a warm dislocation. Another banana, yt thought, would be good.

The crop from the far left pillar gave a short, sharp rush of well-being. Tal stepped carefully to the edge of the pool to look up at the tiered balconies. The higher you went, the fewer clothes you needed, yt concluded. That was all right. Everything was all right. The blind woman had said.

“Tranh?” Tal asked of a knot of bodies gathered around a fragrant hookah. An achingly young and lovely nute with fine East Asian features peered out of a press of male bodies. “Sorry,” Tal said and drifted on. “Have you seen Tranh?” yt asked a nervous looking woman standing by a sofa of laughing nutes. They all turned to stare at yt, “Is Tranh here yet?” The man stood by the third magic banana vine. He was soberly dressed in a semiformal evening suit; Jayjay Valaya, Tal guessed from the cut. A smart man, thin, middle-aged but took care of his flesh. Fine, aesthetic features, thin-lipped, a look of intelligence in his darting eyes. The eyes, the face, were nervous. His hands, Tal observed through the marvellous power of the banana that put everything into significant focus, were well manicured, and shaking.