Bharati Mukherjee - The Middleman and Other Stories

Sometime around three, I wake to a scooter’s thin roar. She has not been asleep. The rainy season must have started an hour or two before. It’s like steam out there. I kneel on the pillows to look out the small bedroom windows. The parking lot is a mudslide. Uprooted shrubs, snakes, crabs, turtles are washed down to the shore.

Maria, object of my wildest ecstasy, lies inches from me. She doesn’t ask what I see. The scooter’s lights weave in the rain.

“Andreas,” she says. “It’s working out.”

But it isn’t Andreas who forces the door to my room. It is a tall, thin Indian with a calamitous face. The scooter’s engine has been shut off, and rain slaps the patio in waves.

“ Americano. ” The Indian spits out the word. “Gringo.”

Maria calmly ties her halter tabs, slowly buttons up. She says something rapidly and the Indian steps outside while she finds her cutoffs.

“Quickly,” she says, and I reach for my pants. It’s already cold.

When the Indian returns, I hear her say “Jew” and “Israel.” He seems to lose interest. “ Americano? ” he asks again. “Gringo?”

Two more Indians invade my room. Maria runs out to the hall and I follow to the stairs. I point upwards and try out my Spanish. “Gringo is sleeping, drunk.”

The revolution has convened outside Clovis’s bedroom. Eduardo is there, Andreas, more Indians in Ted Turner caps, the one-armed man from Santa Simona. Andreas opens the door.

“Gringo,” he calls softly. “Wake up.”

I am surprised, truly astonished, at the recuperative powers of Clovis T. Ransome. Not only does he wake, but he sits, boots on the floor, ignoring the intrusion. His Spanish, the first time I’ve heard him use it, is excellent, even respectful.

“I believe, sir, you have me at a disadvantage,” he says. He scans the intruders, his eyes settling on me. “Button your fly, man,” he says to me. He stares at Maria, up and down, his jaw working. He says, “Well, sweets? What now?”

Andreas holds a pistol against his thigh.

“Take her,” Ransome says. “You want her? You got her. You want money, you got that too. Dollars, marks, Swiss francs. Just take her — and him—” he says, pointing to me, “out of here.”

“I will take your dollars, of course.”

“Eduardo—” Ransome jerks his head in the direction, perhaps, of a safe. The servant seems to know where it is.

“And I will take her, of course.”

“Good riddance.”

“But not him. He can rot.”

Eduardo and three Indians lug out a metal trunk. They throw away the pillows and start stuffing pillow cases with bundles of dollars, more pure currency than I’ve ever seen. They stuff the rest inside their shirts. What must it feel like? I wonder.

“Well, señor Andreas, you’ve got the money and the woman. Now what’s it to be — a little torture? A little fun with me before the sun comes up? Or what about him — I bet you’d have more fun with him. I don’t scream, señor Andreas, I warn you now. You can kill me but you can’t break me.”

I hear the safety clicking off. So does Clovis.

I know I would scream. I know I am no hero. I know none of this is worth suffering for, let alone dying for.

Andreas looks at Maria as though to say, “You decide.” She holds out her hand, and Andreas slips the pistol in it. This seems to amuse Clovis Ransome. He stands, presenting an enormous target. “Sweetie—” he starts, and she blasts away and when I open my eyes he is across the bed, sprawled in the far corner of the room.

She stands at the foot of their bed, limp and amused, like a woman disappointed in love. Smoke rises from the gun barrel, her breath condenses in little clouds, and there is a halo of condensation around her hair, her neck, her arms.

When she turns, I feel it could be any of us next. Andreas holds out his hand but she doesn’t return the gun. She lines me up, low, genital-level, like Bud Wilkins with a bird, then sweeps around to Andreas, and smiles.

She has made love to me three times tonight. With Andreas today, doubtless more. Never has a truth been burned so deeply in me, what I owe my life to, how simple the rules of survival are. She passes the gun to Andreas who holsters it, and they leave.

In the next few days when I run out of food, I will walk down the muddy road to San Vincente, to the German bar with the pay phone: I’ll wear Clovis’s Braves cap and I’ll salute the Indians. “Turtle eggs,” I’ll say. “Number One,” they’ll answer back. Bud’s truck has been commandeered. Along with Clovis’s finer cars. Someone in the capital will be happy to know about Santa Simona, about Bud, Clovis. There must be something worth trading in the troubles I have seen.

IMRE says forget it, but I’m going to write David Mamet. So Patels are hard to sell real estate to. You buy them a beer, whisper Glengarry Glen Ross, and they smell swamp instead of sun and surf. They work hard, eat cheap, live ten to a room, stash their savings under futons in Queens, and before you know it they own half of Hoboken. You say, where’s the sweet gullibility that made this nation great?

Polish jokes, Patel jokes: that’s not why I want to write Mamet.

Seen their women?

Everybody laughs. Imre laughs. The dozing fat man with the Barnes & Noble sack between his legs, the woman next to him, the usher, everybody. The theater isn’t so dark that they can’t see me. In my red silk sari I’m conspicuous. Plump, gold paisleys sparkle on my chest.

The actor is just warming up. Seen their women? He plays a salesman, he’s had a bad day and now he’s in a Chinese restaurant trying to loosen up. His face is pink. His wool-blend slacks are creased at the crotch. We bought our tickets at half-price, we’re sitting in the front row, but at the edge, and we see things we shouldn’t be seeing. At least I do, or think I do. Spittle, actors goosing each other, little winks, streaks of makeup.

Maybe they’re improvising dialogue too. Maybe Mamet’s provided them with insult kits, Thursdays for Chinese, Wednesdays for Hispanics, today for Indians. Maybe they get together before curtain time, see an Indian woman settling in the front row off to the side, and say to each other: “Hey, forget Friday. Let’s get her today. See if she cries. See if she walks out.” Maybe, like the salesmen they play, they have a little bet on.

Maybe I shouldn’t feel betrayed.

Their women , he goes again. They look like they’ve just been fucked by a dead cat.

The fat man hoots so hard he nudges my elbow off our shared armrest.

“Imre. I’m going home.” But Imre’s hunched so far forward he doesn’t hear. English isn’t his best language. A refugee from Budapest, he has to listen hard. “I didn’t pay eighteen dollars to be insulted.”

I don’t hate Mamet. It’s the tyranny of the American dream that scares me. First, you don’t exist. Then you’re invisible. Then you’re funny. Then you’re disgusting. Insult, my American friends will tell me, is a kind of acceptance. No instant dignity here. A play like this, back home, would cause riots. Communal, racist, and antisocial. The actors wouldn’t make it off stage. This play, and all these awful feelings, would be safely locked up.

I long, at times, for clear-cut answers. Offer me instant dignity, today, and I’ll take it.

“What?” Imre moves toward me without taking his eyes off the actor. “Come again?”

Tears come. I want to stand, scream, make an awful scene. I long for ugly, nasty rage.

The actor is ranting, flinging spittle. Give me a chance. I’m not finished, I can get back on the board. I tell that asshole, give me a real lead. And what does that asshole give me? Patels. Nothing but Patels.