Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

She slid her plate to the middle of the table. 'Whatever you want.'

'I know that,' I said. 'But I am asking what you would like.'

'I don't care. We can watch what you want to watch.'

'But you must have an opinion.'

'I told you, I don't care.'

She had her knees drawn up again, and her hair fell like a curtain, hiding her face from me. I reached out and turned her chair to me, but I could see only her jeans, and the tight clutch of one hand around the other. 'Arre, baba,' I said softly, 'of course you care. There's never been an upcoming film you haven't loved or hated in advance.'

She bayed at me, 'Maderchod, Gaitonde, I told you I don't care!' Her cheeks were dark with blood. 'Get whatever chutiya film you want!'

Nobody spoke to me like that. Nobody shouted at me. I wanted to hit her.

But I got up and walked away. Without looking at her, I told her, 'I'm going to rest. For a while.'

I lay down on the bed, curled my arm over my eyes. I could hear Jojo moving around in the other room. There was a click, plastic against plastic. Was she going to make a call? Who was she calling? Would she call my enemies? Or the police? Tell them where I was, so she could get out of here? No, she wouldn't do that. She couldn't. However upset she was, despite the nervousness that was moving through her body and making her tremble, she would never do that to me. She was Jojo, and I was Ganesh Gaitonde. We were together, we needed each other. She was going from one end of the room to the other. What was she doing? Wood ground against concrete. Was she moving a table? Why? Now she was quiet. Where was she? A narrow creak of metal. Ah, she was climbing the stairs. She wanted to get out. She was going to try. No matter. I had shut the steel trapdoor. You couldn't open it without pressing a nine-key combination, or – in case of electrical failure – you had to snap out a panel and then turn two wheels simultaneously. She must be pulling at the handle at the bottom of the door. Let her.

'Gaitonde,' she said. She was standing in the doorway. 'Gaitonde, do you want women?'

'What?'

She came out of the shadow. 'I have two new, fine items. Fresh from Delhi.' Her face and shoulders were shiny with sweat. 'I swear, they're better than anything you've had before. Once you have these, you'll think that Zoya was some third-class randi working behind Andheri station.'

'I don't want any items.'

'But, Gaitonde, they'll come down here and live with you. Both of them. Think about that. One is sixteen, and the other is seventeen, and you can have them both. They'll be happy to be here. Really. They'll stay with you as long as you like.'

'I don't want them.'

'Gaitonde, the sixteen-year-old, I'm going to have her hair dyed golden. She looks just like some foreign model, she's got skin like malai.'

'No.'

When she was trying to persuade you of something, she tilted her head down and looked up at you through her eyelashes, and her hair fell in smooth curves around her jaw, like a dark helmet. 'I don't want to be here.'

'Just try till morning…'

'Gaitonde, I'm telling you now, I don't want to be here.'

'Just try for a few hours at least.'

'I know now what I want. And I'm telling you, I need to get out of here.'

'Why?'

'Because it's driving me crazy. It won't get better, only worse.'

'We can change everything, bring in whatever you like.'

She screamed. Her whole body clenched towards its centre, she hunched over, and out of her came a long tearing squall that knocked me upright. 'Shut up,' I said. But her eyes were watery and blank, and she took a breath, and again made that haggard wail that fell against my face like a slap.

I took her by the shoulders and shook her. She fought me, turning inside my arms and jabbing sharp elbows into my ribs. Something burned against my chin, and I let go of her and touched my face with the tips of my fingers. They came away with a slick covering of pink. The bhenchod kutiya had claws.

She was circling her hands in the air, in front of her chest. 'Don't you understand? I can't stay like this. I can't. I have to go out. You can't keep me in this jail.'

'Don't you understand? Up there you'll die.'

'So what? I would rather die than stay in this hole.'

I turned away in disgust. 'That is complete nonsense. You're crazy right now. You know that's not the truth. You don't want to die.'

She came after me. 'Shall I tell you the truth, Gaitonde? You are a coward. You used to be something, you used to be a man, but now you are a trembling little madman hiding in a pit.' She was standing right behind me, and I could feel her sour breath on my shoulder, the smell of her panic.

I turned, and in the same motion I gave her the back of my hand. It landed hard, and I felt her teeth snap and she reeled back. 'Ah,' she said, 'ah.' Blood pumped from her nose.

'Randi.' I followed her around the room as she staggered back. 'You want to see what kind of man I am? Let me show you. No, come, come. Here, you want some more? Who's trembling, han? Who's shaking?'

Her teeth shone white through a mess of dark blood. 'You, you're not a man,' she said. She spat laughter at me, and stood her ground. 'You bought women, so you think you're a great hero. None of them even liked you, you bastard. Without your cash, you wouldn't even have been able to come near them.'

'Bas,' I warned her. 'Enough. Be quiet. Understand – I am trying to help you. I am trying to save your life.'

'They laughed at you, gaandu. They made jokes together, about what a pathetic, weak little rat you are. You think you're anything in front of a woman like Zoya? She told us that she never got one good night in bed out of you.'

'That's a lie. Zoya liked me.'

She threw her head back and howled. 'Zoya liked me,' she crowed. 'Zoya liked me.' She bent over and put her hands on her knees. 'Zoya liked me.' Blood slipped and dripped on to the ground, but she was only amused. 'Zoya liked me .'

'She did.' The voice coming out of my throat was strange to me, small and forlorn. 'The first night we were together, she told me that. She said I was amazing. She did. We did it all night. That's the truth.'

'Gaitonde, you idiot.' She was triumphant now. 'You fool. She made a chutiya out of you. It wasn't you, you simpleton. She gave you a glass of milk and badams. And in that she gave you one crushed-up Viagra, one full big blue tablet. She was going to give you two, but I was afraid we'd kill you. I told her, it's okay to want to get ahead, you want to go to the moon, I understand, but don't burst the rocket that's going to get you there. And it worked. It wasn't you, saala. It was the Viagra.'

A blue haze of rage came across my eyes. Through it I saw her, standing straight up, laughing. She was not afraid of me.

' Zoya liked me,' she said. 'Gaitonde, you fool, you think she was some virgin you impressed with your huge manliness. You chutiya. She had had a dozen men before you, and many afterwards, and you were the most pathetic. You were, you were smallest.'

'Liar. She was a virgin. You told me. She told me.'

'A virgin?'

'Yes.'

'You idiot. How do you think she survived in this city before she came to you? You bhenchod men always pay more for virgins, so she became a virgin for you.'

'No. I saw the blood.'

She laughed so hard she had to hold on to the side of a table. 'Gaitonde, of all the pompous, gaandu men in the world, you are the blindest. Arre, inside ten miles of here there are twenty doctors who will make any woman a virgin again. The operation takes half an hour, it costs twenty-five, thirty thousand rupees. And in three weeks the renewed virgin can be ready to spread her legs on a white sheet, so some tiny little Gaitonde can see all the blood and think he's big.'