Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'It's me,' I said. 'I'm in Room 1202. Come up. The door is open. Come in.'

'Yes,' she said. 'I'm coming.'

She was a good girl, she didn't need any more instructions than that. I had drawn the curtains, so that there was only a single sweep of light across the room. I sat in an armchair, backlit. It was a very dramatic shot, from her point of view. I wanted a full impression on her, a total high-impact moment that would stop her short. And then the revelation of my face.

It worked just as I had planned. She came in, paused, then shut the door. 'Saab?' she said. She was wearing a white skirt, very short, and a white blouse that tied high. There was that oppressive curve of her waist, that cutting jut of her hip. She knew just what I liked. Saali, she was smart. But today I had her. I switched on the lamp next to me, and she said quickly, 'Who are you? Who are you?' She was afraid.

I wanted to laugh, but I kept it in. The bafflement and the fright on her face were too delicious. She crossed her hands in front of the long slot of her belly button, and got as far as 'Where is he? Where is…?' before she stopped herself. She set her jaw, and said, in English, 'I am in the wrong room. Sorry.' I was proud of her. She had maintained security. I had taught her well. She turned and stepped smartly towards the door.

'Zoya,' I said.

She stopped, came around. 'Allah,' she said. That was the only time I ever heard her call on her god. 'Is it you?'

'It's me.'

'But how can it be?'

'What, only you can change?'

She came up to me, knelt at my feet. She reached out and touched my cheek with the very tips of her fingers. The wonder moving through her slack jaw slowly ebbed as she narrowed her eyes and calculated, considered. She turned my face gently towards the light. She whispered, 'Dr Langston Lee?'

'Yes.'

'Oh, he is a master. This is excellent work. It is very subtle, and very effective.'

'Do you really like it?'

'Dr Langston Lee is really too good.'

That was enough about Dr Lee. I grasped Zoya's wrist with my left hand, and took her chin with the other. 'Do you think it suits me? Do you think it is me?'

She lost that model's measuring look instantly, and smiled at me, her eyes instantly afire with admiration. 'You look very handsome, saab,' she said. 'Even better than before. You could be a star in a film, you know.'

'What, me?'

'Yes, yes. You should make one. With me as the heroine. International Dhamaka Part Two !'

'Sequels never work in India,' I said. 'And anyway the first one was a flop.'

'With the new Ganesh Gaitonde as hero,' she said, 'it would be a superhit.'

She leaned into me and kissed me then, and in that moment I really was a hero. I led her into the bedroom, and we came together in a true international dhamaka. This one was a hit, at any rate. There was no time to take off our clothes, even. She tugged up her skirt, and I grabbed the tiny stretch of cloth underneath and twitched it off, and then I climbed on to her, and into her. We were stretched diagonally across the bed, and behind her head the undraped windows gave me the city of Los Angeles. I was laughing like a madman, with my new face, and that was how I came to America.

We went to Universal Studios the next morning. I was reluctant, but Zoya insisted that with my new face nobody would know me, that there was no danger. 'And what about you?' I told her. The rides were sure to be full of maderchod Indian tourists, who now flocked about the world with their cameras and their kids and their new money. Her fans were everywhere. She assured me that she could look very different, that nobody would recognize her if she chose not to have them recognize her. She was quite certain, and she really wanted to go, so we went. And we had a fine time. For me, the pleasure came from watching Zoya's pleasure – she was like a child at her first village fair. She sped from one ride to another, and screamed louder than anyone else when the big shark lunged its open mouth towards us. I hadn't seen many of the films the rides were about, but Zoya knew them all, and she told me their stories. She was wearing spectacles – very plain, large ones – on the tip of her nose, a blue cap, a large white T-shirt with long sleeves, and black jeans. Her hair was in two long ponytails, and she wore no make-up at all. People stared at her, she couldn't hide her height, but nobody recognized her. Not even the teenagers from Delhi who sat in the next car on the Jurassic Park ride and called me 'Uncle'. So Zoya could transform herself into ordinariness as well. With her eyes and face and body, she was capable of anything. She was an actress.

She took me twice through the Terminator ride. 'Once is not enough,' she said. 'I just love Arnold.' I knew who Arnold was, one of the boys had brought a pirated DVD of one of his films on to the boat the last year. I liked the special effects, of course, but on the whole the film had bored me. Like many of these American films, it had one good idea and clung to it so hard that it seemed poor in emotion and range. The scenes seemed flat because even in the most dramatic moments the American actors spoke quietly to each other, as if they were discussing the price of onions. And there were no songs. Finally, ultimately, most American films were sparse and unrealistic, and didn't interest me very much. But here was Zoya, staring up at the shining steel skeleton of the Terminator, at his beady red eyes, in the same way she had looked at me the day before. Even through her glasses, I could see the fire in her eyes, matching his. She saw me looking, and kissed me on the cheek quickly. 'You know,' she said into my ear, 'I dream sometimes of winning an Oscar. Of standing up there. But best of all, maybe I'll get to meet Arnold.'

Arnold. She said the bastard's name as if she already knew him, as if she had shared pani-puri with him at Chowpatty. We went on with the rest of the rides and the exhibits, and she finished the day glowing and giggling. I was exhausted. We left Universal at five, and in the limousine she told me stories of more American films, and stories about their stars. I listened, and finally said, 'Saali, how many of these films do you watch?'

'Usually one a day. I have a little portable DVD player, you know. I can take it on shoots also. Sometimes I watch more than one movie, even on shooting days. It's a good way to improve my English. You should do it also. You know Suleiman Isa watches English films every day.'

I pinched her lower lip. 'How do you know that?'

'Arre, everyone knows that.'

This was true. Everyone who knew something about the underworld knew something about Suleiman Isa's film habits. 'And everyone is wrong,' I said. 'He doesn't watch movies. He watches just three films, again and again. Every evening, he sees one. Then the next, and the next. Then he starts again.'

'What?'

'It's true. We have good intelligence on this, from the inside. He watches The Godfather series again and again.'

'No! Really?'

'It's true.'

'Why?'

'Ask the bastard. He's crazy.'

She nodded. 'And have you seen the films, saab?'

'I saw the first one.'

'Didn't like it?'

'It was okay. I thought Dharmatma was better. Even Dayavan .'

She burst out laughing, and wrapped her arms around me. 'You travel all over the world, bhai, but you have such desi tastes. You are so chweet .' She kissed me then, and put a hand down the front of my jeans, and showed me how sweet I was, and I forgot about Suleiman Isa and his chutiya Godfather . But later that night, after she was asleep, I lay awake thinking about American films. My boys watched American action movies all the time. They said they liked the stunts, and the special effects. Why did Suleiman Isa watch the Godfather pictures all the time? I had never thought about this before, but now, lying in a bed under this alien sky, held up by the city's sprawling constellations of lights, it occurred to me that his reasons for watching were maybe the same reasons I had for making International Dhamaka . He wanted to understand what had happened to him, what he had become. And for the first time, I felt a kinship with him.