Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'Bhai,' he said. 'Not to question you or anything, but I am thinking of the boys. They are getting a little restless. Why are we searching so hard for this Guru-ji?'

'You are questioning,' I said.

'Not with any disrespect, bhai. But, you know, Bunty said you always told him that morale is important. And the boys…'

'Your morale is down also? You miss your wife that much?'

'I miss the children, bhai. And business…If we're here, we aren't concentrating on business.'

I had told them nothing, but now I could see that some explanation might be necessary. If Nikhil, who owed everything to me, was willing to say these things to my face, then a morale-boost was necessary. 'Okay,' I said. 'Listen to me carefully now. I'll only say this once.' On the truck passing below us now, there was a circle of some sort of tribals, dancing around a fire made out of a red spotlight and fluttering red ribbons. They were all wearing dark glasses. I said, 'I can't tell you much, but I can tell you this. We are searching for this Guru-ji because of business only. He fooled us. He ran a double-cross.'

'He owes us money?'

'Yes. He owes us lots of money. He betrayed us.'

'Bastard,' Nikhil said. He looked satisfied. I made sense to him now, and the world made sense to him. 'Then we must find him.'

'Tell the boys that for as long as we are here on this mission, wages are doubled. And there will be a bonus at the end.'

That cheered him up considerably. I left him on the balcony and went into my room. I turned up the air-conditioner to full and lay on the bed with the lights off. Nikhil would call his wife soon, and talk to his children. I thought of calling Jojo, but I was too shaky. I had been having trouble sleeping ever since I came back to India. At first I thought it was jet-lag, displacement, the barking of the dogs and the creaking of the crickets. But then a week passed and I slept only in snatches. Three nights running I knocked myself out with sleeping pills, and woke up feeling more tired each morning. Now weeks had passed and each night was a long, hard journey, and I walked weightlessly through the days like a ghost. Nikhil hadn't said it, but I knew he was also concerned about me. I sometimes fell asleep during the day, seated upright during a business conversation with Mumbai, or after lunch while waiting for the sweet. I woke always startled and terrorized by the same dream, the same horizon of ash and darkness. I had to work hard to be able to concentrate on sums of money, on problems of tactics and management.

I needed to sleep, but tonight there was certainly no sleep. Even over the roar of the air-conditioner, the music of the carnival crashed into my head. There were three songs, or maybe four, in different languages, all bouncing off each other and sometimes mingling into an unbearable throbbing loudness. Under this, there was the murmur of the crowd, which swelled up now and then into a cheery bellow. I cursed them, the over-populating bastards of India, milling about in their lakhs and crores. I wished then that they all had one head, so I could shoot them all dead at once. But no, no silence for me. How many men had I shot dead? Not as many as these. I could kill one every second for the rest of my life, and still there would be plenty left to drum on my skull with their bleating little voices, their mewling enjoyments. They were as many as the motes of silver dust in the yellow bar of light that crossed over my head from the glass of the window. They were inescapable.

Why did the room smell of mogra? That was the attar that Salim Kaka wore, that he had on that night when I killed him for his gold, that he sprayed over his beard and chest from a green glass bottle before he went off to one of his women. I remembered the way he would tilt his head back and shake the bottle over his neck, and then the thick oily smell of the attar. And his underarms, shaved clean, and the pink of his gums and his great white teeth.

The room was sealed shut, there were no flowers near by, I knew that. And yet, there was this fragrance, dense and inescapable. I propped myself up on an elbow, took a sip of water, lay down again. And there it was, at the back of my throat and deep in my head, this mogra. I opened my eyes.

But what was that in the corner, caught by the edge of the window's glow? A silky red sleeve, a shoulder. Yes. A beard. Long hair, down to the thick nape of the neck. It was Salim Kaka. I had shot the bastard in the back and he had come back. My hands were shaking, and a hum rose in my head higher than the din outside. It was Salim Kaka, it was him. I could see his eyes. Gaandu Pathan. 'You think I'm scared of you, bhenchod?' I said. He said nothing. But he wouldn't blink, and his contempt for me was bright and hard and unwavering.

Then he was gone, and there was only a window, and a red curtain. I got up and staggered over, I put out a hand and touched the wall with the tips of my fingers. I could see how the curtain, viewed from the bed and in this uncertain light, might have twisted and transformed into an arm. But I had seen his face, those paan-stained lips, and I had seen those deep collarbones. Those huge hands.

No, no, no. You are going crazy, Ganesh Gaitonde. It is lack of sleep and exhaustion that has made you weak, that has reduced you to madness. I pulled my shoulders back straight, and walked rapidly from one side of the room to the other. Breathe, I told myself. I sat cross-legged on the ground, at the foot of the bed, and practised the breathing that Guru-ji had taught me. I let the anxiety flow out with each exhalation, I took in energy. Slow, slow. It was only a hallucination. Yes. But I could still smell the mogra.

He had been here, in my room. It was lunacy to believe this, but I knew it was true. Salim Kaka had been a great believer in magic himself, and he had visited a malang baba in Aurangabad every two or three months. The malang baba had given him a red taveez to wear around his neck, and a blue one for his right arm, all to protect him from knife and gun. But Salim Kaka had fallen to my bullets, and I had stolen his gold, and now I was madder than Mathu. I knew myself to be deranged, and yet I knew Salim Kaka had visited me. Maybe the malang baba had sent him back, to make that doglike leer at me.

We left the next day, for Chennai. As the plane took off over the low green hills, the business-class cabin reeked sweetly of Salim Kaka. He was coming with me, wherever I went. Now that Guru-ji had abandoned me, the malang baba could work his spells on me. He could send Salim Kaka thousands of feet up into the air, and across the ocean. I tried to ignore the smell, and concentrate on my planning. For a while I had thought that our disruption of Guru-ji's ashrams and their functioning would bring him out of hiding, that he would emerge to punish me and protect his people. But now, in the air, looking down on the fields far below, it became clear to me that a man who saw into the past and future, who conceived of time in yugas, who saw how the centuries whirled according to some secret plan, who had detached himself from his own desires and ego, such a man would care nothing if a mere organization fell apart, if one or two men were killed. He didn't care what I did. Whatever gestures of affection he had made towards me, he did not care for me. I was nothing to him. He flew far above the highest flight of any jet, and looked down on us as if on ants. By the time we landed, I was sure that our strategy had been a failure. But I had no alternative scheme, and so I kept quiet. We went to our safe house, we waited for nightfall, we executed our break-in at an administrative office. But we found nothing, as I expected. And Salim Kaka stayed with me, back to the house and into the dawn. I gagged on my morning milk, which under its almonds had that syrupy stink of flowers.