Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

But tonight Ma was not angry about old hurts, or bitter, she was just quiet. So Sartaj finally said, 'I don't know how you remember such old things. Exact paintings and things like that. I can't even remember the name of a dog.'

'What dog?'

So Sartaj told her the story: the husband, the wife, the dog thrown out of the window.

'What a horrible man!' Ma said. She liked dogs, and they liked her. 'Did you arrest him?'

'No.'

'Why?'

'The wife wouldn't file charges.'

'Arre, there was abuse of an innocent animal.'

'She wouldn't even say he had thrown it out of the window.'

'Maybe she was scared of him.'

'She's not so innocent either.'

'Why? You saw her again?' Ma had spent decades tussling with a policeman, two policemen, so she had developed her own skill at catching nuances and unvoiced truths. 'What's wrong with her?'

It was an ugly story to tell this late at night to his mother, but Sartaj told it. He made a quick little report on the wife, the pilot, the camera, the blackmail. He left out the bribe the wife had offered, and her tight little white top. Ma had severe opinions about shamelessness in any guise, and he didn't want to overly prejudice her against Kamala Pandey. The errant wife was surely condemned in any case. 'Of course I told her that I couldn't work on her case, without a complaint. She's a fool,' he said. 'A fool who thinks she can get whatever she wants, can do whatever she wants.'

'Yes,' Ma said. 'Her father must have done whatever his little daughter wanted, and given her no discipline. People spoil their children nowadays.'

Sartaj laughed out loud. This was why he called his mother in the middle of the night, for these sudden vaulting leaps of insight, these confirmations of his own hunches. She was quite amazing sometimes. 'Yes, she's a brat. Very irritating.' He sat up in bed, and drank a long draught of water. He was feeling better already, hearing her voice, listening to her breathing. 'Did you and Papa-ji talk much about his cases?'

'No, no. He didn't like to talk about work with me. He said a policeman's life meant that you couldn't escape from work until midnight anyway. Then to come home finally and keep thinking and talking about work, that would drive you mad. So we talked about other things, and he said that relaxed him. That's what he said anyway.' She sounded dryly amused. He could see the tilt of the chin, that downward glance. 'The truth is that he was old-fashioned. He thought that I would be scared by all the murder and the dirty things they had to investigate. He thought women shouldn't be exposed to that kind of thing.'

'And you went along with that?' She loved action movies, and in recent years had developed an inexplicable taste for all the really bad, blood-dripping, moonlight-and-screams horror series on television. She read the crime columns in the papers every morning with relish and offered commentary, and the repeated observation that the world was a bad place, and getting worse.

'Beta, you adjust. Adjust . He didn't want to talk about work, so I didn't. That's how you go along. That's what this new generation doesn't understand.'

She meant Sartaj's generation, and Megha's. She knew that Megha was married, finally and completely out of Sartaj's reach, but occasionally she would revisit what had happened, what should have happened, what Sartaj should have done. Sartaj had long given up arguing, or even responding with anything other than the occasional 'Yes'. He lay back and listened. She was his mother, and he adjusted.

'Achcha, go to sleep now,' she said, 'or you'll be tired for your shift.'

'Yes, Ma,' Sartaj said. They said their goodbyes, and he turned towards the window so he could feel the air on his face. He fell into sleep easily, and dreamed. He dreamt of an enormous plain, a cloudless sky, an endless line of walking figures. He woke abruptly. The phone was ringing.

It was before seven, he knew that without opening his eyes. There was that stillness, in which a single bird was chittering. He waited, but the phone was not going to stop. He reached for it.

'Sartaj,' his mother said, 'you must help that girl.'

'What?'

'That woman from last night, the one you told me about. You should help her.'

'Ma, have you slept?'

'Where is she going to go? What is she going to do? She's alone.'

'Ma, Ma, listen to me. Are you all right?'

'Of course I'm all right. What would be wrong with me?'

'Fine. But why all this about that stupid woman?'

'I was just thinking this morning. You should help her.'

Sartaj kneaded his eyes, and listened to the bird. Women were mysterious, and mothers were more mysterious. Ma was quiet now, but it was her strict silence. It was a calm that tolerated no back-talk, no resistance. He wanted very much to go back to sleep. 'Yes, all right. Okay.'

'Sartaj, I'm serious.'

'I am too. Really, I will.'

'She's all alone.'

So was everyone else in the world, Sartaj wanted to say. But he mustered up obedience. 'I understand, Ma. Promise I'll help her.'

'I'm going to the gurudwara now.'

He had no idea what that had to do with calling him out of a perfectly good slumber, but he whispered, 'Yes, Ma,' and hung up the phone. Sartaj's bed was moulded to his body, the bird was not too loud, the morning was cool under his silent fan, but sleep was gone. He cursed Kamala Pandey. Saali Kamala Pandey, she is a kutiya, he said to the bird, bloody raand, and he got up.

* * *

Sartaj spent the morning writing redundant reports on small burglaries which would be perfunctorily investigated and never solved. His afternoon trickled away in court, between two magistrates and three cases. At five he drank a cup of tea in the restaurant across the road, and ate a greasy omelette. The restaurant was called Shiraz, and was full of gossiping lawyers. Sartaj hid himself away at the rear of the first-floor air-conditioned annexe, and tried to avoid meeting the lawyers' eyes as they walked to the washbasin. He chugged down a tall glass of chaas, wiped his moustache and started to feel better. He managed to get through the annexe without having to talk to anyone, and all the way down the stairs. But half-way to the entrance a weedy, pock-face rose up to intercept him.

'You're Sartaj Singh?'

This wasn't a lawyer. His grey shirt was sweat-stained, and he had the mean, foxy deference of someone used to people stepping around him. But he had a voice that made up for his build, brassy and deep. 'Who are you?' Sartaj said.

'You don't remember. I met you at the funeral. And two-three times before that.'

Of course. This voice. 'You're Katekar's…Shalini's sister's husband.'

'Vishnu Ghodke, saab.'

'Vishnu Ghodke, yes. Yes.' Sartaj remembered him from the funeral, but not before that. At the funeral he had been busy bringing things, organizing the mourners, directing the priests. 'Everything all right, Vishnu?'

Vishnu Ghodke touched his breastbone. 'By your blessings, saab. Although…'

Sartaj nodded. 'Yes. Katekar was a good man.' He waited for Ghodke to step aside. 'We'll meet again some time.'

Ghodke wasn't ready to leave Sartaj quite yet. He turned sideways to let Sartaj pass, and then followed him out on to the pavement. 'Have you seen Dada's boys?' he said into Sartaj's shoulder.

Sartaj was abruptly aware that he didn't like Vishnu Ghodke very much. He wasn't quite sure why, but he wanted to put a hand over his face and back him fast into the wall. 'Yes, I saw them yesterday. In the evening yesterday. Are they all right?'

'Of course, of course, saab. No, nothing like that.'

'Then like what?'

'Was their Aai there?'

'No, she was out.'

Vishnu Ghodke turned his head to the side, to look across the evening swell of cars towards the court house. Above his head was the red 'Shiraz' sign, with the lettering delicately arranged in four languages. 'This is what, saab?' he said, coming back to Sartaj. 'What is it? A woman should be at home. A woman should be with her family.'