Vikram Chandra - Love and Longing in Bombay

He put me in the back of the van, tapped on the black plastic partition, and the Matador jerked forward.

“Are you a policeman also?“ I said.

“No, I’m not a policeman,” he said. He had one arm along the back of the seat, and was sitting back, quite relaxed. “You were a good friend to this Rajesh Pawar. Very loyal. I like that. But take my advice. Go home and forget about it. Otherwise you’ll end up in a ditch. Tap-tap. Dead.”

Outside the van, separated from us by thin lightly tinted glass, a family drove past, three children laughing in the rear seat. And on the other side of the road, there were shops, brightly lit. Inside, I looked at this man, at his angular profile.

“ Tap-tap ‚” I said. “He did work for you, didn’t he? Did he kill?”

“What, Rajesh?” he said, smiling. “He was too big.”

“You know him then.”

“You boys, you watch too many movies. Size is what you think it’s all about. Silly. Now you, you would make a good shooter. You look like nobody. So you look like everybody. That’s what a shooter needs. Walk up in a crowd, behind your target, and tap-tap ‚ that’s all. Bas . Disappear into the crowd. The big fellows, all they’re good for is scaring people. Destroying houses and huts and slums. Clearing land. If anyone dies, they die — it’s incidental.”

“Is that what he did for you? For Ratnani?”

He was quiet then, and he looked straight ahead, and in the occasional flashes of light I could see his thoughtful face.

“Is Rajesh all right?” I said.

We were speeding along a stretch of empty road now. On every bump we swayed first in one direction and then the other, as if in time. He didn’t say a word, and then it occurred to me that I was going to die. I had heard that things like this happened, that people like this existed, that shattered bodies were found in the city parks, but it had been always far away, something for Rajesh to fantasize about. Now I was in a van in the middle of the night, alone with this man and the driver I hadn’t seen, and it was really happening. Here was my knee rattling against the side of the van. My hand on the rough cloth of the seat. And currents of pain along the side of my head. I tried to say something, I’m not sure what, and I whimpered. A small sound, but high and quite distinct and audible. He looked at me, then, and I was paralysed and the air rushed against the window behind him. His eyes were black and cool.

Finally he nodded and slapped his hand on the partition, once. The van skidded quickly to a halt. He pushed open the door, got out, and crooked a finger at me. I had to make a conscious effort to move myself the breadth of the seat, every inch of it. We were on a seafront, not a beach but just a wall, dropping sheer to rocks below. He bent forward, grabbed my arm, and pulled me out of the van. I took a step, and then sank to the ground. My legs were bent under me. I sat.

“Are you afraid?” he said.

I nodded. I was looking out at the dark sea, and I didn’t want to turn my head to look at him.

“Good,” he said. And then I felt his hand on the top of my head, his palm cupping the crown, his fingers holding gently. “I know who you are, Iqbal Akbar. By tomorrow I will know where you live. Who lives with you. Understand?”

I tried to nod but he held me.

“Don’t ask questions about Rajesh. Don’t make noise. You’ll get eaten and nobody will even notice you’re gone.”

Then I felt his hand leave me. I waited. There was a crunch of gravel, and with a great effort I turned my head. My neck hurt.

“Your friend named Iqbal,” I said. “What happened to him?”

He had his hand on the door, and he swung himself into the van. I couldn’t see him anymore. “He died,” he said. “It happens.”

The door clanked shut, and the van swung away. From where I sat there was only the sea in front of me, but still the glow from the city fell across the water, and I could see the rocks far below, and the waves.

*

On the afternoon of the party the house was full of the smell of food. Lalit made himself sick eating the bhajiyas the bai was cooking up, and then I had to keep him from feeding bhajiyas to the fishes. He didn’t believe that the bhajiyas would make the fish sick, but he did believe, with certainty, that they would make the fishes crazy and they would start eating each other. He helped me lay out paper napkins on the table in the drawing room, arranging them in a circular pattern exactly and with great care. At seven Sandhya came in, drying her hair with a towel.

“Crash,” she said.

“Bad one?” I said. I stood up, and the side of my head throbbed.

“Terminal freeze, but the server didn’t lock. I told them we would come over to the factory tomorrow morning to pick up the backup tapes.” She had them backing up every two hours, so that we could look at the data files immediately before and after a crash.

“I’ll go now,” I said.

“It’ll take you an hour and a half to get there, same to get back. It’s late, Iqbal.” She looked up at me, her head tilted to one side. I had told her my ear was swollen because I had stumbled in the crowd on a railway platform and had fallen against a pillar.

“No, really, I want to,” I said. “One day left only.” That Monday was when Das would pull our plug. To this there was no answer, and so I went. Really I wanted to get out of the house, to travel. I had felt sick all day, the smell of the frying had drifted into my clothes, I could feel it on my tongue. It was actually an hour that it took, and when I arrived the factory was dark. The gateman shone a torch into my face, and let me in with what I thought was a look of sympathy. I had a feeling that plugs had already been pulled.

I went around to the back, and the door to the raw material shed was ajar. I pushed it in, stepped into darkness lit only by the glow from the door of the accounting office. As I stepped up to the door Raunak-ji rose from his desk, his face alarmed.

“It’s me,” I said. “Just came to pick up the tapes.”

“Ah, my boy,” Raunak-ji said, a hand on his heart.

“He’s very nervous always,” Manishi-ji said, shrugging. “Go ahead, Iqbal.” He waved a hand at me.

“What’s wrong?” Raunak-ji said, pointing at my head as I turned.

“I fell,” I said.

“You young fellows. So careless.”

I smiled, and felt my way to the server closet. There was a light switch on the inside of the door that flared up a single bare bulb above my head. As the circles floated in front of my eyes I squinted at the machine and fumbled at the front of it for the tape, and in that dazzle of colour there was still the image of Raunak-ji and Manishi-ji, and their room, the rows and rows of ledgers and the safe. Then I froze, my fingers aching on the cold metal. Then I could make myself move and I went through the door and back to theirs. I leaned against the side of the door.

“Manishi-ji,” I said. “I have to run a backup, it’ll take a few minutes, but I was wondering … Some of that chai , perhaps? And something to eat?”

“Of course, of course,” he said.

“Yes, yes,” Raunak-ji said, getting up.

“Raju’s not here?”

“Never mind that,” Raunak-ji said. “You do your work, young fellow.”

“Thanks,” I said. I nodded, and then backed away from the door. I had looked at Raunak-ji and Manishi-ji, and I had tried not to look at the safe, but as I went back to the server room I carried an image of it, a slightly blurry painting in my head. There were the two of them, then the ledgers, the desks, an uncapped fountain pen, a long grey pad, the safe with its covering of gods and goddesses, and in the middle of it all, an empty space, a shape outlined by everything else, by all the others, something gone, an absence, a hole with a form, wings. I closed the door behind me, stood jammed up against the machines, which stood against the other locked door to the accounting office. I leaned over and looked at the front of the server, tried to look behind the computer, but it stood less than an inch away from the wall and I could see nothing. There was no question of moving it, because it stood, steady and firmly set, in the special exactly fitting table with half-inch flanges that we had ordered the factory mistri to build. I reached over to the top of the tower, tiptoeing, and ran my hand over the edge I couldn’t see, over the other side of the computer, between metal and wood. My fingers passed over something, roundly pointed and smooth. I traced back and felt the shape, hooked it between my middle finger and forefinger and pulled. It came slowly, sticking to the metal, pulling towards it, clinging to it. But finally it came away and I held it in my hand: silvery, its wings outstretched in hungry flight, nosing through my fingers, the big Jumbo from the safe, with the Air India maharaja bowing at me. I turned it over, and the dark strips of magnet on the belly of the plane, and on the wings, gathered up the light, dense as empty space against the white.