Stephen Kelman - Man on Fire

‘When our prayers have been answered you will come back to see us. You must stay warm until then. Our sun will be waiting for you.’

‘He’s a good kid.’

‘No, our sun. For the heat. This will restore you to full health.’

‘Right.’

‘Jolly Boy also will be waiting.’

I turn to look at him wedged impatient between the seats. ‘Will you? Will you remember me?’

Jolly Boy smiles and tilts his head, asserting his devotion to me.

‘We could go to Tadoba,’ he says. ‘We will find my tiger, he will let you stroke him too.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’

Bibhuti grabs the wheel to steer us around a dead dog. We clip its bloated carcass and send it bobbing away on the shallow wave that nudges us towards the creek.

‘Watch the road,’ Bibhuti scolds me, the effort of wrenching the wheel sending pain whipping through him. ‘We must get you to the airport in one piece.’

The traffic crawls across the bridge, fearful of treading too heavily on a world that has softened and become uncertain under the sustained assault of the rain. More people are walking, trusting their own lightness over the clumsy weight of steel and rubber, having made their peace through a season of erosion with the idea of being washed away. They weave between the bumpers with agility, umbrellas hiding their faces, wet hands sliding over bonnets and grasping for the momentary attachment of wing mirrors as the cars edge them out to the railings and invite them to jump.

The creek laps at our ankles, the grey water savaging the retreated land, and heroic swimmers are backstroking in the wake of a god come to life.

Down on the water Ganesh is taking a dip, sitting in silent contemplation on a deck of wood while the waves shake the teeth from his head. I imagine the delusions have kicked in as the mercenary cells take hold and the blood in my veins turns to mercury. Its elephant head tilts my way, and I see that its large painted eyes are unpanicked by its immersion. I see that it’s lifeless and incapable of fear.

‘Today is start of Ganesh Chaturthi,’ Bibhuti says. ‘It is big festival here. It is supposed to be the birthday of Ganesh. People all over are making statues of him to immerse in water. This is to bring prosperity.’

The figure spins wild in the current, a symbol of intervention against chance. The swimmers steal in to steady its hull and turn it towards the mouth of the creek. A sniff of the sea brings its many limbs to order and its journey is plotted by the men who turned the clay and painted the rings on its fat fingers and toes. There’s no chance here, only the preordained outcomes of a thousand negotiations and an infinite number of fears fired to charm-size figurines in the kiln of meticulous faith. The swimmers make a band and tug their Ganesh by his flank to keep him pointed at the future. His face will charm diamonds from the mud when the rain has passed.

A man sets his umbrella down and jumps smiling from the bridge. He doggy-paddles to join the party. The swell rises to meet him with open arms. He disappears under the water. It looks like he’s been lost. A moment later he’s fished out to the jubilant cries of his new friends. He scrambles to the safety of the floating Ganesh, coiling a grateful arm around the statue’s foot. Appeased by the offering of gods and men the clouds unstitch their fingers and blue sky leaks out, and I know I’ll never see another morning as bright and crowded with fine noise as this one.

The airport palms are bowing in a satire of adulation as I eat up the Indian sun for the last time, stretching my legs on the Departures slipway. My last sniff of Indian air is a devoted one, drawn deep. Diesel and shit and blood and rain. Limes and sweat and the constitutional dawn.

Time embraces me. My thoughts run away. I close my eyes and breathe it in.

The hit comes from behind. A fist in the back of the head, I hear it before I feel it. I drop to my knees. When I look up my attacker is poised over me, wild-eyed and trembling. Bibhuti sticks his head out of the car and remonstrates with him. The man is young and muscle-bound. I recognise him from Bibhuti’s class. Once I saw him take a flying leap at another man’s head. I stay down, inch away out of range of his feet.

‘What did you do that for?’ Ellen demands of him.

He pays no attention to her. He listens to his sensei as he talks him through his mistake.

Bibhuti’s wife looks at me on my hands and knees. She won’t allow herself a smile but there’s pleasure in her dark eyes, just at the edges. I’ve found my place. She couldn’t have wished a better ending for me. I feel the back of my head. My fingers come back bloody. The blood is a gift and so is the pain. I’m a breathing bleeding fugitive of time. My life wasn’t a dream after all.

Bibhuti sets the man straight and he rushes to help me to my feet, pulling me up one-handed as if I weigh nothing at all. He rains apologies. He’d thought I was his master’s enemy. That’s the way the footage and the press painted it. He didn’t know the truth of it. Can I forgive him?

I spit out some blood. I’ve bitten my tongue. I tell him not to worry.

He dashes into the terminal building and comes back with a wheelchair for Bibhuti. We help him into it, and Jolly Boy sweeps in to load a trolley with our luggage and wheel it to the doors. The man offers to wait with the car. Witnesses to my attack surround him. He tells them who we are and they follow us inside, eager for a glimpse of their celebrity cripple and the man who took his legs.

Cool air. Inside is international. India is already behind me. The witnesses stop us and lay hands on Bibhuti’s shoulders and arms, patting him like wet clay, leaving their finger marks in him for providence. A couple of them pose for photos crouching alongside their hero. They retreat at the sight of the security guards flexing their trigger fingers. We roll through the concourse, each of us pining in secret for the time when we can be alone to scratch at the various itches we’ve stirred in each other. Jolly Boy struggles to steer the misfit luggage trolley along a straight course. We laugh at the mess he’s making of his attempt at swanlike self-possession. Knowing I’ll never see him again prompts a dread that I cover up with idle talk.

‘Will you carry on with your book?’ I ask Bibhuti.

‘Of course,’ he says. ‘My story is not yet finished.’

I thank him for letting me be a part of it.

‘Not just a part. The biggest. When you come back it will be finished. You will read what I have written.’

His well-meaning lies make my heart ache.

The girl at check-in sees the blood dripping down my neck and offers me a tissue to wipe my wound. When the cases have gone through Jolly Boy takes control of the wheelchair and races me to the security line, his father’s cries of alarm echoing off the sun-streaked marble. People are emptying their pockets and removing their belts, a nervous submission to an illusion of safety. I take out the last of my Indian money and give it to Bibhuti’s wife. It’s not meant to be a bribe and it’s not her forgiveness I seek. I just want to leave her with an impression of a man who can settle his own debts.

She whispers thank you for bringing her husband back to her.

I bend down and kiss Bibhuti’s neck, a scrap of brown between the plaster casts. I feel a tiny contraction as he recoils and then relaxes. I breathe him in and then I take Ellen’s arm and lead her behind the security tape. I take off my shoes before I’m asked. When I’ve filled my tray I look behind me and my friend is gone. The men with their guns walk in lazy circles and the lights above them make everything look older.

Over the tin roofs and Rebati the ape girl waves at us from her place of grand design. The smaller children pause from braiding her face hair to look up at the sky and wonder at the treasures a plane holds in its belly and where they’re being taken. I think I see more Ganesh idols floating in the bay, the sun glinting off trunks raised in denouncement of the sea’s irresistible pull. I’m a fruit that’s missing its stone. The dark heart of me has been scooped out and without its unifying mass the flesh is falling in. What a sweet falling. Everything sings with a new sweetness and I’m more tired than I’ve ever been. I unbuckle my seatbelt and squeeze Ellen’s hand.