Neel Mukherjee - A Life Apart

‘A drink now?’ Zafar has moved to the bar.

‘No, thanks. Do the windows on the other end look out on to Park Lane?’

‘Yes. Do you want to have a look?’

‘Yes, please’.

Zafar draws the curtains. Hyde Park stretches outside like a landscaped parkland in an eighteenth-century print. The traffic below moves by in complete silence. Zafar stands beside him, taking in the sweep, tinkling the ice cubes in his tumbler of whisky.

Ritwik decides to make the first move. He bends down to untie his shoelaces. The business of unmentioned money is bothering him intensely: what if Zafar thinks this is just a casual pick-up and sends him away unpaid? Did he have any inkling in the first place?

‘Take your clothes off, everything, and then walk up and down. I want to see you.’ It is clearly a command from someone at ease with issuing them yet, at the same time as it is impossible not to recognize it as such and act accordingly, it lacks both urgency and firmness. Ritwik does as told.

‘Come into the bedroom.’

Ritwik follows. Zafar sits down on the four-poster bed and takes his shoes, socks and trousers off.

‘What about the rest?’ Ritwik asks. ‘I want to see all of you as well.’

‘Come here.’

Ritwik joins him in bed. Zafar pushes him down and pinches his nipples really hard. He winces in pain and tries to push the man’s hand away. His breath is hot on his face. Onions, overlaid with whisky. And then before he can move or touch Zafar, the man rises on his knees and pushes his crotch on to Ritwik’s head propped up on the oversize pillows. He does what is expected; in less than ten seconds Zafar comes in a bloom of hot, salty liquid in his mouth, rolls off him and subsides on the softly billowing mattress, his hairy legs splayed, his arms akimbo. Ritwik discreetly takes a tissue from the bedside table and silently spits into it, hoping Zafar doesn’t notice.

He lies staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, worrying about his next move. Zafar solves it by saying, ‘Stay for a bit. I’ll drive you home.’

Ritwik instantly relaxes. He turns on his side to face Zafar and tentatively puts an arm and a leg around him. He pushes Ritwik’s head on to his chest — the shirt is silk, he notices — and runs his fingers through his curls.

‘Even your hair is like my son’s,’ he says.

Determined not to let the words throw him, he asks in a high, bright voice, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you had a son. How old is he?’

‘Your age, or slightly younger. Seventeen.’

Ritwik leaves Zafar’s illusion about his age unpricked. ‘Only one son?’

‘No, three daughters. All younger.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Riyadh. Saudi Arabia.’

‘Is that where you’re from?’

‘Yes. But I spent many years in this country.’

‘I can tell from your English. Were you educated here?’

‘Partly. But tell me, where are you from?’

‘India.’

‘Ahhh. I was thinking Algeria, Turkey, Jordan, those areas.’ Pause. ‘So you’re. . . Hindi?’

Ritwik doesn’t correct the mistake. ‘Nothing, actually.’ He quickly fires off another question in order to avoid becoming the focus. ‘Are you an oil man?’

‘What do you mean, oil man?’

‘Well, you’re from Saudi Arabia’ — and you appear to be loaded — ‘so I thought you had something to do with oil.’

Zafar gives a dry laugh.

Ritwik is well into this familiarity game now. ‘Just tell me if you come from one of the Saudi oil families.’

He can feel Zafar smiling. ‘You’re asking the wrong questions. But, to use your terms, no, I don’t come from an “oil family”, but yes, I have some dealings with that industry.’

‘What do you do?’

‘Oh, just bits and bobs. Nothing very much.’

‘I would very much like to do the nothing very much that pays for such a lifestyle.’

Zafar laughs briefly again. Ritwik starts playing with himself and Zafar; he doesn’t want a single spare second in which to think of the easy link this man has made involving his teenage son. This time the sex is slightly more prolonged but Zafar remains resolutely locked in his own, limited needs. The taking type, rather than the giving, Ritwik thinks as he concentrates on timing and almost botches it up. He can’t push away from his head deep-etched prejudices about the unenlightened sexual habits and attitudes of the Arab male. Zafar plays into this conveniently.

The issue of money has now become enormous: because he has not mentioned it right at the outset, he doesn’t know how to broach the subject now and is consumed by thinking of moves and countermoves that would bring it up not too egregiously or offensively. He tries to play for more time. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘I’ll have a shower, then I need to get going.’

Zafar doesn’t reply. Ritwik looks at him and catches him on the verge of dozing off. He touches the man’s face and says, ‘Do you want to come and have a shower with me?’

The shower is an exercise in awkwardness and unsynchronized movements. Ritwik steps out of the black marble bath a few minutes before Zafar, who leans against the tiles and shuts his eyes with pleasure. Or exhaustion. As he dries himself with a red towel big enough to wrap all of himself in several times over, he tries not to look at Zafar’s extraordinarily hirsute body, his growing paunch, and his dangling testicles, which look like used teabags.

Then he notices a thin line of blood stretching along one side of his glans and cries out, ‘Oh my god, blood.’

Zafar turns off the taps and steps out onto the bathmat. He asks, ‘Really? Where?’, peering down, the fear just beginning to form, when Ritwik realizes it is just a stray red thread from his towel.

‘No, it’s all right, it’s just a piece of thread,’ he says, grinning in relief, and holds it up for Zafar to see.

‘Are you sure?’ His face still bears traces of the dissolving fear.

‘Yes, take a look.’

Instead of looking at the thread, Zafar inspects his cock, turning it around in order to leave no doubts hanging. He dries himself in silence then disappears into one of the rooms in the suite, presumably to dress. Ritwik has the sense of some unnamed reverie being broken. When Zafar emerges, in a silk dressing gown, it is obvious that he is not going to drive Ritwik home. Before he can ask, Zafar says, ‘Why don’t I call a taxi for you?’ He reaches into a pocket and adds, ‘Here, here’s some money for the taxi.’ He hands Ritwik four crisp fifty-pound notes. ‘Keep the rest.’

‘Thank you very much,’ he says lamely.

Zafar waves his hand dismissively. ‘It’s nothing. Let me call the people downstairs and let them know you’ll be down now.’

‘All right. Thank you. Bye.’ He brushes against a sudden melancholy: maybe it is just exhaustion. He reaches out his right hand towards Zafar who takes it, gives it a perfunctory, businesslike shake and says, ‘Give me a call. I’m here for the week. Take care. Will you be able to see yourself out? Just take the lift downstairs, it shouldn’t be too difficult. Turn left and then left again.’ The words have something of his handshake in them, too.

He accompanies Ritwik through the enormous living and dining rooms to the mahogany door. ‘By the way,’ he says, ‘was that enough? You can have some more. .’

By the time Ritwik has found an embarrassed stammer of ‘No, no, that’s more than enough’, the door has shut behind him.

That night he lies awake in his narrow bed, with his bedside light off for long periods so he can watch the rare London moonlight slant along the carpet in an elastic parallelogram, thinking of a small boy with unruly curls being flung up in the air by his father and then caught again in his sure arms amidst delighted squealing and laughter.