Vikram Chandra - Love and Longing in Bombay

“Did you talk to Megha?”

“Yes, I talked to her. Rahul, it’s, it’s not going to work.”

“Why?”

“We’re not suited to each other.”

“Like you couldn’t communicate?”

“Yes. That’s it,” Sartaj said, grateful for the phrase.

“You should’ve learned how to communicate.”

“Yes.”

“What was that?” Rahul said. There had been a sudden surprised yowl that echoed faintly down the corridor.

“A cat outside, I think.”

“A cat?”

“A cat.”

“Okay.” As always, Rahul believed him. Rahul had a whole and unadulterated faith that was beautiful in its clarity: he believed. Now Rahul was trying to help. “These things happen in life, you know. Between men and women. I’ll always be here, you know, to help or anything you need.”

“Thanks, Rahul,” Sartaj said, his voice thick. “I know that.”

*

Megha hadn’t believed. One morning at breakfast she had put down a newspaper crowded with angry headlines, and had asked, for the third time in a month, do you really hit people? Torture them? Her brow was heavy with doubt, and he knew that the easy answer would no longer service. Yes, he said, sometimes it’s necessary. It’s a tool, an instrument. That night and the next night she had slept on the very far edge of the bed. When he had touched the back of her neck at breakfast she said, without looking up, I hate the world you live in. He had wanted to say, it’s your world also, but I am thirty-one years old and I live in the parts you don’t want to see. I live there for you. But he had quietly picked up his briefcase from the table in the hall and had shut the door behind him without another word. That had been one of their many silences.

Now Sartaj walked down the corridor, towards a certain room in his world. As he walked he could see the curving pools of light from the bulbs, fading into darkness in the yard, and from beyond the shuffling sound of leaves under the fall of rain. He stepped through a door, and then another one. Katekar had Kshitij strapped face down on a bench. The bare feet hung over one end. The room was bare but for that bench and a chair, and had curving ceilings and a single ventilator high on the wall and, high up, higher than a man’s uplifted hands would stretch, a thick white metal pole that went from one wall to the other. In his hand Katekar had a lathi , with the wood shining a heavy brown in the yellow light.

Sartaj pulled the chair and sat in front of Kshitij, one leg crossed over another. Kshitij’s face was red.

“I’m sorry that you’re making me do this, Kshitij,” Sartaj said. “I hate to do this. Why don’t you just be sensible and tell me what you saw, what you did? Did you scrub down the car, Kshitij? Why? What was in it?”

Kshitij’s eyes were amazed, as if he were seeing something that he had never imagined. He seemed to be thinking, contemplating some new but essential truth he had just discovered. Sartaj tapped him gently on the cheek.

“You know, Kshitij,” Sartaj said. “I spoke to a lot of people about your father. Everybody loved him.” Now Kshitij looked up, straining his neck, his mouth working. “Everyone liked him, you know. His business colleagues said he was dependable, hard-working, dedicated. They thought he had come far and was to go far. In your building, they said he took his neighbour’s troubles on his shoulders like his own. Always he was willing to help, not only with advice but practically. At the weddings of other people’s sons and daughters how much work he did, they said. In times of grief a good friend. Generous and happy. Fun to be around, always singing, always playing his ghazals , always ready for a movie or an outing. A good husband in a happy family they said.”

Kshitij’s eyes were watery and a trickle seeped from his left nostril. “He was not a good man.” His voice came out thick and anguished. In all his years Sartaj had never seen a face so full of pain as this one.

“What did he do, Kshitij?” Sartaj said, leaning over close. In his stomach there was a bubbling, nausea, but he had to go on. “What did he do? Tell me. I know he wasn’t good, he fooled them. What did he do?” It was the beginning of a confession and he felt it coming. But Kshitij teetered at the edge for a moment, found himself then, and with an appalling effort pulled himself back. Sartaj saw the struggle as the face settled, went from disarray to control.

“I have nothing to say,” Kshitij said.

Sartaj sat back, shrugged. “Then I can’t help you,” he said. “I’m very sorry for that.” He waited until Kshitij looked up, then nodded at Katekar. “Go ahead,” he said, and got up.

He was halfway across the room when he heard Kshitij’s voice, loud now. “What’s the matter, bastard? Can’t hit me yourself?”

Sartaj turned, then looked around the room. Next to the door there was a row of black metal hooks, and from one of the hooks hung a worn strap, a piece of a heavy industrial belt meant for machinery, four inches wide, attached to a wooden handle. Sartaj felt in his arms a painful pulsing of blood. He took the patta , turned around, and with all the swing in his shoulder brought the strap up and around and onto Kshitij’s buttocks. And then again. The sound it made was like two flat pieces of wood dashing together. He had his arm back again when he heard, through the rushing in his ears, Kshitij’s voice. “What?” he said. He stopped, took a deep breath, and stepped up to the bench. Finally he could make out the words.

“You can’t hurt me,” Kshitij was saying.

“Oy, did you hear the noises you were making?” Katekar said.

“That was only the body,” Kshitij said, and Sartaj could see the drops of spittle darkening the dirty floor.

“I’ll hurt you, bhenchod ,” Katekar said.

“You can’t hurt me,” Kshitij said. “Or kill me. Only my body.”

Sartaj could see the eyes, shining and focused, looking straight ahead, straight through the grimy wall, at something a thousand miles and a thousand years away. He dropped the patta , stumbled to the door, which rattled under his shaking hand, and as he fled to the cooler outside air, he could hear Kshitij chanting, “ Jai Hind, Jai Hind .” But outside, in the corridor, the sound of the rain was loud, and the voice was lost in the water, and Sartaj leaned against a pillar, leaned lower and out above the bending hedges, and retched into the darkness.

When he was able to stand straight, he saw that Katekar was watching from the other side of the pillar.

“I’m all right,” Sartaj said.

Katekar nodded, then turned back to the doorway.

“Katekar,” Sartaj said. “No more. Just talk to him.”

“No? You don’t think he’ll talk if we give him a little more?”

“Not this one.”

Katekar nodded. “What could we do to him?” he said. “He’s already in hell.”

*

Sartaj sat on a bench in the corridor, one leg over the other, looking out at the greying sky. He watched Katekar walking up, stretching his right shoulder and then his left.

“This one’s not talking, sir,” Katekar said.

“Yes, I know,” Sartaj said.

“He’s one of those, sir,” Katekar said. “Gets stronger.”

“It’s all right,” Sartaj said. “Sit.”

“Sir?”

“Sit down, Katekar.”

A moment, and then Katekar sat, his legs apart, his hands on his knees.

“Did you always want to be a policeman, Katekar?”

“My father was, sir.”

“Mine also.”

“I know, sir.”

The rain had stopped. There was a silence like Sartaj had never heard before.

“My back is going to hurt,” Katekar said.