Jeet Thayil - Narcopolis

*

I heard the phone ringing when we got out of the elevator at my apartment. It was the airline calling to say my flight had at last been rescheduled and I would be leaving that day. I hung up and looked around the apartment and suddenly it seemed I was leaving too soon. In a suitcase I found a pair of jeans and a shirt and Dimple changed out of her sari. We sat on the floor and she talked of many things. She said garad no longer got her high, she smoked just to be okay, to be not sick. She’d been to a doctor who said she had a problem with her stomach and she might need an operation. The thing that gave her pleasure, perhaps the only thing, was reading and more than anything she liked to read about the sea. At the moment, she said, she was reading a book that had a hundred words for the sea, words she had never seen before and other words, better words, words that were more helpful because they were common. She said she liked the book because the men in it were as obsessed and insane as the people she knew; and though it was a big book the chapters were short, like poems, short and mystifying, and there were songs — sea shanties and lullabies and drinking songs and strange chants to make men brave. She looked at the stained walls of the empty apartment and asked if she could have some tea, but the kitchen had been dismantled and in a while I picked up her case and we took a rickshah to a stall where the tea was strong and served with bread and butter. I heard bells and realized it was Sunday. The rain had stopped. There was even a hint of sun. I took Dimple to Safer, the rehab centre where I’d taken my most recent unsuccessful cure. The centre operated out of a church on Chapel Road and was usually open by six in the morning, when the inmates took yoga classes before breakfast. They were making morning tea when we got there and in an hour she was processed and settled. When it was time for me to leave we shook hands like a couple of guys.

And though I’d been waiting a week, packed and ready to leave, I arrived at the airport with only minutes to spare. I rushed through immigration, down the flaking corridors and water-stained halls that were empty except for the security detail who watched as I ran past, my pupils tiny pinpoints filled with heaven’s white light. On the plane, I threw my carry-on into the overhead bin, but my suede jacket I handled very gently, holding it in my lap for the duration of the flight. In its inner pocket was a hole in which I’d hidden a bag of heroin. While the plane was still on the tarmac I made my first trip to the bathroom and cut a line on the back of my wallet. I returned to my seat and sat with my head tilted back and let the heroin dissolve into the back of my throat. I was nodding out when the plane lifted into the air and through half-closed eyes I thought I saw the rusted corrugated roofs of the Bandra slum where I bought drugs for so many years, the one-room dwellings that housed entire families, the broken-down shops selling cigarettes, batteries and light-bulbs, the open sewage-clogged drains and crowds of people walking in single file; and in a moment I saw the streets of Bombay Central and the staircase at the back of the Pilahouse Lodge, still flooded though the rain had stopped; and then, the faces of the people I knew blurred and reassembled into a face that seemed very familiar to me, though I couldn’t say why, the face of a sister I’d lost, or a son I’d never known, or the face of someone loved, who died.

Rumi was at Shakoor’s not Rashid’s, because Shakoor laid on complimentary lines of cocaine and his heroin was cheaper and stronger and anyway Rumi didn’t want opium so what would be the point of going to Rashid’s? He was in the inside room with a couple of guys, a dealer and a pimp, and the dealer was saying to the pimp: Listen to me, are you listening to me? Have I got your attention? The pimp was spot smoking with a short plastic straw. He took the straw out of his mouth and looked at the dealer. Well, said the dealer, if you’re sure you can spare a minute of your precious time, I’ll tell you something you want to hear. The pimp kept looking at the dealer, who was younger than him but similar in build and complexion. In fact, thought Rumi, they could be brothers, or cousins; even their moustaches are similar. Bring a woman with you, said the dealer. Haven’t you learned anything? Shakoor sees a woman, any woman, even one of your street whores, and he’ll lay on the lines like they’re free. The pimp said something inaudible, then his eyes closed and he dropped into a nod. The dealer looked at the pimp for a while and turned to Rumi and said in English: Fucking pimps, no ambition except for pussy. Rumi said, Say cunt, don’t say pussy. Only pussies say pussy. The dealer said, What? You think I don’t know the difference between cunt and pussy? Rumi said, I ever tell you about my days in LA? Yes, said the dealer, you did. You’re from a good family and you went to school in the States and you drove a limousine. You weren’t always a garaduli. I ever tell you about the singer? Rumi asked. Not sure, said the dealer. What singer? Well, listen, said Rumi, let me tell you about the singer.

*

I drove a limo, and not just any limo, a stretch custom job, Rumi told the coke dealer whose name he didn’t know though they’d had business dealings several times. Sometimes I took movie producers or music industry guys to the airport and they’d lay out cocaine and cognac and I’d think, yeah, these guys are living the life. Or I took party girls out for the night, strung-out chicks who’d crash in the car, so stoned they’d fuck anybody. Sometimes I’d be on the road for days, running on speed. Change of clothes in the trunk, drive around from fare to fare, sleep at the airport parking lot and stay high all the time. It was school, man. No, said the pimp, it was better than school, you got fucked and you got fucked up. You’re right, said Rumi, for once in your life you are a hundred per cent fucking correct: it was better than school. One time I picked up a fare from the airport, older woman, maybe thirty. We get to her place and she changes her mind. She says she doesn’t want to go home, she wants to drive around some more. She’d just flown in from a concert in New York and she was still wired. She wanted to wind down. Are you a performer? I ask. Yes, she says, I’m a soprano, a coloratura soprano. I sing opera. I drove some, thinking: opera. Then I say, Listen, I know this is asking a lot, but maybe you could sing something. I mean, I’ve never been to the opera. I could see her in the rearview and I saw the look on her face, pure pity, because she couldn’t believe there were people in the world who had never heard opera. She puts her drink down and does some breathing exercises and she says, no, she’s not going to do it because she can’t sing sitting down. So I say, no problem, and I open up the sunroof. But she needs a pick-me-up, that’s what she called it, a pick-me-up for her nose. I take her to this place I know in East Venice and we walk into a house with no furniture, one broke couch, pit bulls in the yard, the works, and the singer sits down and does everything that comes her way, smoke, toot, shots of malt. Late in the night she asks me, Do you believe in ghosts? She says she didn’t either, until recently, when she came to believe that ghosts are a source of comfort, perhaps the only source of comfort for the bereaved. And then she reaches for my dick and sucks me on the couch, with these kids crashed everywhere, sucks me like it’s the first time she’s sucked dick and she can’t believe how good it tastes. Or like she’s sucking someone who just died, someone who hasn’t fully departed, and she’s trying with all her might to keep him in the land of the living. Or like she’s sucking the future, sucking it down one day at a time, the days she never expected to see, the days that would vanish in a gust of wind if she didn’t suck with all her tenderness and talent and ambition. You ever been sucked like that? he asked the pimp. The pimp laughed. What about you? Rumi asked the dealer. You ever been sucked like that? The dealer said nothing and Rumi called for a Thums Up, in a glass, with lots of ice. He said, At dawn, she woke me up. We do a couple quick lines and get into the limousine. I’m driving past the beach and it’s still dark, the street all quiet and pretty before the freaks and the fuck-ups start their daily shit — right? — the ocean on my right, and that’s when she tells me to open the sunroof and she starts to sing, so loud you’d never believe that big voice was coming out of this small woman and all of a sudden I got it, you know? The words were in German, but I got it, the function of opera, I understood that it was the true expression of grief. I understood why she needed to stand and turn her face up as if she was expressing her sadness to God, who was the author of it. And for a moment I understood what it was to be God, to take someone’s life and ash it like a beedi. I thought of her life, her useful life, and I wanted to take it from her for no reason at all. And I drove that big car better than I ever had, the sky lightening, the clean water close by, and her voice carrying up to heaven. I wanted her to sing for ever. I thought, as long as she keeps singing, I’ll keep driving.