Deepti Kapoor - A Bad Character

But it’s the same old problem, the one we come back to every time. He says, Leave, move in with me, and I say I will … but I can’t. I ask him to wait awhile and he says, What for? He gets angry and stalks the apartment, calls me a liar, a coward, drinks some more, says I’m boring, just like everyone else. He wonders why he’s wasting his time. I’m a tease and a tourist. He becomes angry because I leave, because of the way I guard myself, the way I never let go, as if I’ve learned nothing from him. But it’s OK. He’ll show me if it kills him, he’ll carry me kicking and screaming through his world.

Driving home I feel everything that’s been lost, I feel the sudden fear of a life out of control, knowing it’s too late to go back and that I’ve already gone too far. Going home I think how I can escape, how I can get away from what we’ve done. And then I get inside Aunty’s static world and I can’t wait to run back to him.

Under the pretext of looking for jobs I drive around the city all the time, spend hours driving around in my car alone. Then go to his apartment and sit outside and look, waiting for something to happen.

Finally something does happen: a family appears, a smart-looking corporate type with his wife and small child. I watch them on the balcony and through the living room window from the dark of my car. I keep coming back for more. I watch the husband leave for work in the morning. I watch the wife standing on the balcony as he goes.

A few days later his voicemail dies.

In Nizamuddin I ring the bell of the apartment door. The maid answers and I ask to speak to sir or madam, knowing that sir has already left for work.

Madam comes to the door holding her young child, a curious look on her face. I act surprised to see her, as if expecting someone else. I ask her right away where they are, if the family is in or away. She tells me they don’t live here any more, they sold the apartment, it only happened two weeks ago, it was a very quick sale. Oh, I say, but I’ve come all the way from Chandigarh. I’d lost their number but I knew the house, I used to live just round the corner and now … Do you have a number for them? Do you know where they’ve gone?

She says she’ll get it for me, would I like to come in?

The woman offers me a seat in the living room while she goes to leave her child with the maid. The Japanese screen doors have been removed — now family photos cover the walls. It’s hard to believe it’s the same home.

She comes back and sits down opposite and asks me what I’m doing here in Delhi, besides coming to find old friends. I tell her I’m applying for my visa to the States, and also meeting a boy who I might be marrying, who’s from the U.S. himself. He’s only here for a few days, but we’ve met six times before and I think he might be the one. The lies fall out my mouth very easily. But it’s hard being here. Beneath the layers of new furniture and everyday life I can see where I’ve been ripped apart.

She sees my wandering eye and asks, It must look different to you. I heard their son did a lot of work on it in the last few years. Did you know him very well?

I say I knew him a long time ago when we were small, he was older than me, he used to tease me a lot, but when we moved to Chandigarh we lost touch.

She nods and says, So you really haven’t heard? Well, I hate to be giving such bad news, but he died, not so long ago at all. He fell in front of a truck on the highway. He was drunk. It was in the papers, they said it was suicide and a girl was involved, but then there usually is in these cases, no? She drove him to it, that’s what they say. It almost stopped us buying the place, but since he didn’t actually die here we thought that there’s really no bad luck involved.

The pain is suddenly very sharp, like a clockwork razor turning in my chest; I feel it tightening and cutting me to shreds. I want to run away from here as fast as I can. I ask if I may use the bathroom instead.

As soon as I shut the door my strength begins to fail. I have to cover my mouth with my hands to stop myself from crying out. When I look around me, I see that nothing in this room has changed. There’s the same chipped tiles, the cracking paint on the pipes, the plaster falling from the walls, the same shower, the frosted glass with the sunlight seeping in. I see my face in the mirror and I know that one day I will die. Slowly, with great effort, I pull my breathing back, take deep inhalations and in the warmth and the whiteness I close my eyes. I am alive.

He says, Open your eyes. Open your fucking eyes. Don’t be blind your whole life. Don’t be blind to it. Open them up. I open them and he’s looking down at me, flaring in the sun.

In October it finally began to come apart. The Israelis moved down to Delhi from the mountains, on their way back to Sinai, to Tel Aviv, on their way to the new season in Goa. This great pack of Israelis coming into Paharganj. They called him up from there. They needed him to fix some things.

I didn’t know it then but he was going out most nights. Going out to smoke, drink, shoot up. In rooms with strangers and friends. Waiting for me to come back to him in the day. But getting bored of me. In rooms with men just like Franklin John.

I learned all this from K.

K the fat Buddha man, one of the greatest dealers Delhi’s ever known. Dark like my love, but unlike him possessed of a beatific face, a face that catches the light, without malice, a face to put your faith into. Self-taught, home-grown, raised right out of the dirt of Orissa, unable to read or write, but he could speak seven languages, he learned Hebrew in three months. He knew everyone.

K sat in all of his hotel rooms and the models came, the designers came, the actors and actresses came, the sons of politicians came. They all shook his hand, venerated him. They came to talk, hang out, pick up what they needed, and he sat there like a maharaja with his cigar, the centre of the world. When his customers arrived he’d have a long chat, he’d reach into the bag by his side, take out the drug, give a little more from his own supply, give it on credit if required, always with a good word and a smile.

K was an acquaintance of his, not quite a friend, both part of the scene. We were introduced in a five-star hotel suite at the very start of things, in those glorious first three weeks. We’d gone to pick up some money he was owed. Downstairs in the hotel a fashion show was going on. K was keeping everyone high above.

When we went into the hotel suite that day K looked him up and down, gave a wry smile and shook his hand. He said he hadn’t seen him in a long time, but that he was looking well.

I was introduced but we didn’t stay long. We picked up the money and left. But K shook my hand then and quietly handed me his card as I walked out the door.

Outside the flat in Nizamuddin, with the woman watching me from the balcony above, I searched the glove box for K’s card. It was there, buried under papers, off-white and expensively made. I had no one else to talk to then, nowhere else to go any more. No voice to hear on the phone. I drove awhile until I was away from there, parked in a small street in Lodhi Colony and then called.