Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

Instantaneous death. Sartaj wondered if she had seen it coming, the raised barrel and Gaitonde's reddened eye above. 'No distinguishing marks besides the scar?'

'None.'

'All right,' Sartaj said. Sometimes the body of the deceased taught you things that you didn't know before, but this had been a short history. She was unmarked by life, mainly.

'And Gaitonde?' Dr Chopra said, turning.

'Gaitonde. Yes.'

Sartaj followed Dr Chopra down the room, in the small lane between the bodies. There were flows of liquids across the floor, light albumen runs and thick blackish discharges. Sartaj carefully placed one foot, then the other. Gaitonde lay in the middle of a row, indistinguishable from the others but for the ruin of his head. The exposed inner flesh had turned black. 'Five foot six, 151 pounds, he's survived two bullet wounds.' Dr Chopra pointed. 'Interestingly enough, one was in his buttocks. The great Gaitonde must have been running when he got that one. The other wound was in his left shoulder, here.'

Sartaj bent over Gaitonde, and saw that he had a fine profile, with a noble brow. He was born to be a king, Sartaj thought, or maybe a sage. He must have looked in the mirror and wondered what he would become.

Dr Chopra was stroking the hair on the back of his right hand. An air-conditioner kicked itself on with a low rumble, and the fetid smell surged up from Gaitonde and the rest of them. 'Thanks, doctor saab,' Sartaj said, and he had had enough. He straightened and went, going fast. He turned sideways to go past the attendants, who were lifting the female deceased back through the cabin door. He went by them. Light seeped through the angles of the main doorway, and in the brightness Sartaj saw on the floor a tattered rind of black flesh, a small piece of jaw attached to three teeth. He stepped over it and fled into the sunlight.

'Are you all right?' Dr Chopra said.

Sartaj was standing by the banyan tree, one hand on its grainy bark, breathing. 'Why can't you keep that gaandu place cold? Why?'

'The air-conditioners break down, the wiring is old and the fuses blow, and the population is too large. The morgue is too small.'

Yes, it was unfair to blame the good Dr Chopra. It was in no way his fault, that there wasn't enough money, too little electricity, too small a space and far too many dead. 'Sorry, Doc,' Sartaj said. He made a large gesture in the air, an awkward movement that took in everything. Dr Chopra nodded and smiled. 'Thanks,' Sartaj said.

'I hope seeing them was useful.'

'Yes, yes. Very useful.' Sartaj said this, but as he was walking to the jeep he wasn't sure. Now the desire to see the bodies, which only a little while ago had seemed so coherent, seemed bizarre. What had he learnt? Sartaj had no idea. It had all been a waste of time. He was eager to be away, back at the station, but at the jeep he found himself unable to get in. He stepped over a border made of painted half-bricks into what was left of a garden, found a patch of dead brown grass and wiped the bottom of his shoes, rubbed them back and forth on the grass until the stalks broke with small clicking sounds and his grinding heart settled and calmed.

* * *

Shalini was cooking by the time Katekar got home. She cleaned at a doctor's house in Saat Bungla, but at only one house, unlike some others who had three jhadoo-katka jobs, or four. It was good to have the money from the doctor, but they had decided that she needed to be home when the boys came in, at home in the afternoons and early evenings so they could feel her presence and she could keep an eye out. But the money was very welcome. And it was good to know a doctor with a clinic, for times of special need. Katekar put down his mat and pillow. Shalini was cooking, and he liked the stir of her motions, they lulled him, the tinkle of the spoons, the flurrying back-and-forth rush of the knife, the fast bubbling of the flames on the stove, the leaping sizzle when she flung in a fistful of goda masala. He was comfortable, with the quiet stirring of air from the table-fan set on 'Low'. He napped easily in the day, stored sleep like a camel hoarded water. In the life of a constable, this was necessary. He took a long breath.

When he awoke it was dark inside the kholi, and there was the bustle of evening in the lane outside. He turned his wrist, and it was six-thirty. 'Where are the boys?' he said. He didn't need to turn his head to know Shalini was sitting in the doorway.

'Playing,' she said.

He sat up, rubbed his eyes. The stove rattled as she pumped it, and then he saw her face, suddenly bronzed out of the shade. 'They're fighting,' he said, and he didn't need to say that he didn't mean the boys.

'Yes.' Amritrao Pawar and his wife Arpana lived two kholis down, and they had been fighting continuously, as nearly as their neighbours could tell, for eleven years. Four years after their marriage, Pawar had acquired another woman. Arpana had left, gone back to her parents, and had been reassured that it was merely a passing thing, that Pawar had quit the other woman, and that it was all over. She had come back, but then the other woman had had a child, and now Pawar maintained two establishments. He and Arpana refused to part, refused to come closer or divide, they fought and fought. For Arpana's neighbours, the other woman was still the other woman, Arpana had not called her by name in eleven years, and Pawar never spoke about her.

Katekar and Shalini drank their tea seated across from each other. She had the kaande pohe he liked on a plate between them. 'I spoke to Bharti yesterday.'

Bharti was her younger sister, who was married to a scrap-metal dealer in Kurla. There was apparently much money in scrap metal, because Bharti always came to visit in a new sari. Last year, she had come the day before Gudi-Padwa, wearing new gold bangles of a conspicuous thickness and glow, and bearing not only batasha garlands but also large, fragrant boxes of puranpoli and chirote for the boys. Katekar had watched his sons lick their glistening, sweet fingers, and he had watched his wife's face as she had put away the boxes and the new sari for herself, and he had marvelled at how generosity can be the subtlest of all weapons, and especially between sisters. So now he took a long sip of his tea. 'Yes?' he said.

'They're buying the next kholi also,' Shalini said.

'In the chawl?'

'Where else?'

The retort had come quick and sharp, and she was not backing down from his quizzical look. So now her sister and brother-in-law would tear down walls, combine rooms, have a home that was expansive enough to contain their sense of themselves. 'They have three children,' Katekar said. 'They need the space.'

Shalini snorted and picked up the plate of biscuits. 'What, those little taporis need a palace to live in?' She got up and began to gather spoons, rattle the bowl about. 'Bharti has been a wastrel since she was this high. Those two never think about the future. Their children will turn out bad, you wait and see.'

She loved her nieces and nephew, smothered them with hugs and unbent more with them than with her own sons, and Katekar knew this well. So he put on his shirt, drew on his pants. She had the pot scoured and hung up already. Katekar grinned at her. 'I heard a joke yesterday,' he said.

'What?'

'Once Laloo Prasad Yadav met some Japanese businessmen who had come to Bihar. The Japanese businessmen said to him, "Chief-minister-ji, your state has great resources. Give us a free hand for three years and we'll turn Bihar into the next Japan." Laloo looked very surprised. He said, "And you Japanese are supposed to be efficient! Three years? Give me a free hand for three days and I'll turn Japan into the next Bihar.'''

'Not very funny.' But she was smiling.

'Arre,' Katekar said, 'your family just never had a sense of humour.'