Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'Bibi-ji, where will we go? How?'

'I don't know, Ram Pari. Just take this.'

Prabhjot Kaur could see the long shape of Mata-ji's arm, held out. Ram Pari was the dark lump at the end of the charpai.

'Take,' Mata-ji said.

The shapes stayed the same, tilted slightly away from each other, the same distance with the same reaching between them, and a breath forced itself down Prabhjot Kaur's chest, pierced it, and in that sudden rough pain she had the certain knowledge that the world would never be the same again. She wanted to say something but there was nothing to say.

'You will leave us, Bibi-ji,' Ram Pari said. 'We will die.'

'Vaheguru will look after all of us.' Mata-ji held the hand out further, and shook it assertively. Ram Pari sank further into the tight huddle she had made of herself. Prabhjot Kaur thought they might all sit there for ever, under that huge, still sky. Then Alok-veerji came out of his room, loomed out tall above them all.

'Take it,' he said, and he took the money from Mata-ji's hand and lifted Ram Pari by the shoulder and walked her past Prabhjot Kaur. 'There is a kafila leaving two days from now. There will be thousands of people walking. You can go with them.' Prabhjot Kaur slipped off the trunk and walked close behind Alok-veerji, and though she couldn't see him doing it, she knew that he had thrust the money into Ram Pari's hand. 'We can't do anything now. Go.' He pushed her through the door and turned and went back to his preparations. Ram Pari stood in the passageway between the courtyard and the outside, stood very close to the wall. Prabhjot Kaur took a step forward and put both her hands against Ram Pari's side, clutched at her, leaned on her, she could feel the cloth against her face, against her eyes, and there was the living exhalation of another person, sweaty and sharp, bitter, Prabhjot Kaur breathed it in. Then Ram Pari forced her hands open. Down the passage she went, a shadow close to the wall, and Prabhjot Kaur watched her go.

The tempo, when it came, an hour late, was not the truck they were expecting but a creaky black car. The driver was a tiny bald man, and he was accompanied by the policeman of the afternoon. 'Hurry,' the policeman said. 'Hurry.' Iqbal-veerji and Alok-veerji loaded up the boot of the car and tied it down with rope. Two trunks and various bundles went on the roof, and inside the car, on the floor around the seats, they had bundles. But then the car was full.

'Come,' Iqbal-veerji said. As they slipped past the baithak, Prabhjot Kaur saw the figures clustered by the corner to the left, she couldn't see any faces but knew it was Ram Pari and Nimmo and Natwar and the rest. All the way to the gate she stumbled against packages that were being left behind. The engine of the car was already thumping. Papa-ji sat on the right in the back seat, then Mata-ji, then Navneet-bhenji and Mani and then Iqbal-veerji. Prabhjot Kaur sat in the front between Alok-veerji and the bald driver. The policeman patted the bonnet of the car.

'Go,' he said. 'Go quickly.'

As they went, Prabhjot Kaur twisted on the seat, came up on her knees to look back. But all she saw was the policeman, standing quite erect in front of the gate, and Mata-ji and Navneet-bhenji and Mani curled up in the back seat, heads low, like little children settled in to sleep on a long journey. 'Get down,' Alok-veerji said, and caught Prabhjot Kaur by the neck and yanked her low. His voice shook and now Prabhjot Kaur was very afraid. Her face was against his side and against the seat, but her eyes were strained open and she could see past the driver's elbow and through the steering wheel and through the glass, she could see the shape of homes and shops, the white of signs and the sudden deeper black when a street opened out, they turned and turned again and the engine grunted and choked and Prabhjot Kaur was completely unable to tell where they were. Then a series of pops sounded into the sky that Prabhjot Kaur could see through the dirty glass, pops like phap, phap-phap-phap as if a child had burst a balloon, and then a series of others very quickly. It was a happy sound. But the car jogged and twisted and came to a halt, sliding Prabhjot Kaur forward. And now it went backwards. Backwards and backwards so fast that Prabhjot Kaur twisted her hands around Alok-veerji's shirt and was now crying. She could hear men's voices, shouting and echoing. And Iqbal-veerji: 'Take this left here and then the Ravi Road.' The car moved forward now, turning to the left and throwing Prabhjot Kaur again. They were moving fast now, she felt it in the vibrations jolting her body. Orange light filled the inside of the car, spiralling through the glass and brightening every corner, and she could see the round silver rupee dangling from the key-chain, every detail of the King-Emperor's face. With a sound like a huge threshing watermill the flames towered up, for a moment filling the windscreen and the window and she shut her eyes. Another turn, this time to the left, and glass broke somewhere and then a sound so loud and so close and so ugly that Prabhjot Kaur knew instantly that it was a gunshot. The car lurched violently from side to side, a screech filled Prabhjot Kaur's head, she flew forward, and felt the impact of metal against her forehead, and a flowering, tinny echo inside which swallowed her up. Then she was lying on her side listening to a babble of voices, a continuous scream not very far away, and she could not tell where she was until the dark bar above twisted and receded and became one of the spokes of the steering wheel, and again that barking explosion, right above her head, this time she saw a flash, and she twisted herself and thrust herself further into the shadowed space under the wheel, and then again a shot and she shut her eyes.

She could hear Mata-ji weeping. Other than that hoarse gargling noise, it was very quiet. Prabhjot Kaur tried to still the movement of her knees, a shaking which grew from the convulsing of her stomach. She was convinced that this would give her away. She held her right hand against her right thigh and pressed it down hard. Metal scraped, and she knew it was the door of the car, and there was nowhere to go, and she wanted to scream but she held it in, fought against it with her muscles. 'Nikki, Nikki.' It was Iqbal-veerji. He drew at her softly and she came out of her coil and held on to his arms and cried. He got her out of the car and she wrapped herself around him. 'It's all right,' he said. But Mata-ji was sitting on the road, and Mani was trying to comfort her. And Papa-ji leaning against the back of the car, his head low and his hands on his knees, and spittle hanging from his mouth. Alok-veerji a little down the road, his body twisted to one side as he tried to see around a corner. Just beyond him there was a shape on the ground, like a bundle of clothes had come apart and scattered its contents haphazardly. It was a man's body. There was the head, and there was a hand. It was the driver.

Alok-veerji turned. 'We have to get out of here.'

'I don't know how to drive,' Iqbal-veerji said mildly.

They both looked stunned, as if this one skill they had forgotten to add to their sporting repertoire had suddenly revealed its hidden importance, its secret meaning.

And then Mata-ji stopped crying and said, 'Kill them.'

Her weeping had been so constant and so loud that when it stopped Prabhjot Kaur felt keenly how quiet it had become all over again, after all the bedlam. It was rather nice. But who did she mean? Mata-ji looked at her husband, and at one son and then at another.

'Kill them,' she said. 'Before they take them too.'

Prabhjot Kaur turned her head towards the car, and then to the street. Navneet-bhenji was gone. Prabhjot Kaur had not noticed until now, but now it was impossible to escape this fact. Navneet-bhenji had been taken.