The Truth (12 page)

‘Look, Farud, it’s been a long trip from London and I’m quite tired. Maybe tomorrow would be a better time to see the temples.’

Farud adjusted his glasses and extended a hand towards the door.

‘But there are many to see. It is best to start now. Please.’

Sensing that it might be best to maintain the guise of a tourist, Mabbut acquiesced. The first of the six temples they saw that afternoon was fifteen hundred years old and undeniably beautiful. The walls were covered with lively likenesses of musicians, dancers, elephants, gods and goddesses, all in their own little panels. Mabbut
would have been quite happy just to follow his guide’s footsteps, but Farud would have none of this. He was a master of the interactive.

‘Do you know how many gods and goddesses we have in the Hindu religion?’

Mabbut’s tired brain ran through the names he’d mugged up during the flight.

‘Er . . . ten? Twelve?’

‘Three hundred and fifty million!’

‘Ah.’

‘Every single family has its own gods, you see!’

Farud then explained that the temple they were in was one of the first to be built when Buddhism was overthrown by resurgent Hinduism in the fifth and sixth centuries.

‘You would think that Buddhism and Hinduism were very different, would you not, sir?’

Mabbut dutifully took the bait. ‘Yes, I would.’

‘Well, you would be wrong. At that time they were very close to each other. In fact many people believed Buddhism to be a part of Hinduism, so when they converted to Hinduism they built temples for their Buddhist statues.’

‘Right.’

‘So where did they keep their statues before that, sir?’

‘In their homes?’

Farud threw him a look of scorn. ‘No! Under the trees.’

Mabbut couldn’t help noticing the absence of any other white visitors on the temple circuit. This didn’t trouble him immediately. If anything it added to the feeling that, despite a sense of almost dizzying weariness, he was seeing something new and wonderful and very different from anything the rest of his life, spent entirely west of Suez, had prepared him for. At the same time he realised that it was not going to be easy to be inconspicuous. Occasionally he cast furtive glances around him, as if at any moment Hamish Melville might come striding into view. He feared that if the great man sensed the presence of another Englishman, he would vanish for ever.

The afternoon wore on and Farud continued his erudite and expansive explanations of the evolution of the Jagamohana, the
Natir and Bhoga Mandirs and various other elements of Hindu architecture.

‘And the trident on top of the tower, sir, what does that signify?’

‘That we are near the coast?’

Farud swung his head from side to side with delight.

‘No! It is the temple of Shiva, the creator. And if it were a temple of Vishnu, what would appear up there?’

‘An elephant?’

‘No! If it were Vishnu, the symbol would be a wheel!’

‘I think I should get back to the hotel, Farud. I must make a call to London before it gets too late,’ Mabbut lied, weary of being the foil.

‘It will be eleven o’clock in the night in the UK.’

‘Yes, and I must tell my wife I’ve arrived safely,’ he lied again.

‘Ah-ha!’ Farud winked conspiratorially. ‘The wife. Of course.’

The next morning Mabbut slept off some of his jet-lag, and, having deferred Farud until late afternoon, he set to work on a plan of action. Matching all the information he’d gleaned in the last hectic week in London with the various leads he’d collected from Rex Naismith, everything seemed to point to a nondescript guest house that was said to be Melville’s base in the city. But when Mabbut showed Farud the address, the man’s face darkened and he shook his head.

‘This is not a good place, Mr Keith. This is far from the airport. Many poor people stay here.’

‘Well, I’d like to see it. A friend recommended it.’

Farud nodded obligingly but the look in his eyes spoke volumes.

They set off in the late afternoon. The shiny white Toyota 4x4 supplied by Farud’s company seemed increasingly out of place as they left the wide boulevards of the city and bounced across railway tracks into a labyrinth of narrow, twisting back streets. Bodies spilled around the car. Mabbut had never seen so many people on the street – the only comparison he could think of was the Holloway Road on a night when Arsenal were playing at home, except that these crowds were not on their way to anywhere else. This was where they lived. There was no elevated sense of excitement urging them on. If
anything, the common emotion was resignation. Faces stared into the windows, their eyes unblinking and vacant.

‘Where are all these people coming from, Farud?’

‘They are always here, Mr Keith. Coming and going, you know. This is a very poor area.’

They moved deeper into the old part of town, their driver, like all the other drivers, leaning on his horn, adding his contribution to the constant, discordant cacophony of the street. It was not a cacophony of complaint, or even of purpose, just an acknowledgement of a shared existence. Children squeezed between their parents, sitting two or three to a motorbike. Stooped old women moving at a snail’s pace. Boys with a dozen egg-boxes on their heads. Meandering cows, skin stretched tight across spiky haunches. All were given their space on the road. And, despite the noise of all the horns, no one seemed to get out of anyone else’s way.

Nothing had quite prepared Mabbut for this. It was the India he had heard, and read, about, but now it was real, he found it exhilarating and alarming at the same time. For what seemed like hours the Toyota inched its way through endless narrow bazaars until Nirwan the driver – a large, broad-shouldered, endlessly patient man – pointed out an arched gateway set a little way back from the road, and quite incongruous among the shacks selling fruit, wicker baskets and gleaming piles of pots and pans. ‘Hotel Farhan, Foodings and Lodgings’ read the faded sign above the entrance. Beneath it had been painted, more recently, ‘P. Singh, Prop’. Nirwan swung the wheel, blasted his horn one last time and passed between cracked and mildewed pillars into a small courtyard. A black cockerel strutted irritably across their path.

Farud was not at all comfortable. He registered his displeasure by being even more curt than usual with Nirwan, who could clearly have felled him with one blow had he so wished.

‘Stop here! Not
here
! There! By the door.’

The building now occupied by the Hotel Farhan had clearly been around for a while. It was almost square, with a shallow pitched roof, stone walls trimmed with laterite and rooms on three floors. Indeed, its proportions were not unlike those of a Georgian rectory. The windows on the lower level were shuttered and barred. Between
them was a doorway of surprisingly elegant design, with stuccoed columns on either side. From it emerged a tall man, light of colour, with a grey, military moustache, and a shiny bald head. He wore steel-rimmed glasses and was naked to the waist.

He looked with some disdain at the car, its driver and its passengers. Mabbut felt embarrassed and wished he’d asked Farud to drop him outside in the street, where their approach would have seemed less invasive, but it was too late for that. Farud got out and talked to the man, wobbling his head a lot and glancing over at Mabbut. Then he climbed back into the car, shut the door and wound up the window.

He looked serious and when he spoke it was in a strange and formal tone, like a policeman advising someone of their rights.

‘Sir Keith, if it is your wish to stay here, there is a room free. It will be two hundred rupees a night. There is water and a toilet close to the room. They do not have a cook. He is gone.’

He nodded in the direction of the bony proprietor.

‘But he will make some food for you. He speaks a little English.’

Mabbut was confused, and more than a little dubious. He rooted about in his notebook to check the address he’d been given.

‘This is 28 Awanati Road?’

The driver nodded. Time seemed to stand still for a moment. The proprietor waited in the shade of the doorway, flicking away flies with a cotton towel. A dog appeared in the yard, barked fiercely then collapsed on the ground, panting with the effort. Mabbut knew they were all waiting for his decision. The sensible course of action would be to return to the Garden Hotel and start again, yet the name and the address matched what he’d been given. And he had to start somewhere. He looked again at the dingy yard, with the emaciated dog and the strutting black cockerel and the pile of paper and dust half swept into a corner.

‘Tell him I’ll take the room.’

TWO

M
abbut unpacked his things, and finding nowhere to put them, packed them away again. Apart from a low bed with slightly damp sheets, the furniture in his room was limited to a chair, a small table stabilised by wedges of tightly folded newspaper and a chest of drawers with no drawers in it. A bulky air-con unit above the door burst into action and shuddered to a halt at frequent intervals, as if it were trying to cough something up. After a while Mabbut turned it off and relied instead on a wooden-bladed ceiling fan that swirled silently, languidly and largely ineffectively. To combat the disorientation he felt, he took out his notebook and began to write down everything that had happened to him since his arrival in India.

When he finally looked up from his work it was evening. Farud had returned to his office, so Mabbut decided to take a walk in the thronged street outside the hotel. The air smelt of spice and incense and dung. Scooters fizzed around him, motorised rickshaws snarled their way through, an occasional gaudily decorated truck pushed past, horn blasting, while cows emerged from side streets, wandering into the thick of it all with serene indifference. A bicycle bell clanged behind Mabbut and he quickly stepped aside to avoid being impaled on the six-foot lengths of steel piping slung across the handlebars. Once he’d accepted the confusion Mabbut began to feel oddly safe and comfortable. The rough and tumble of humanity offered its own sense of security.

Then a sudden sharp cry from farther up the street cut through the ambient noise. Mabbut stood on tiptoe, craning his neck for a better view. A crowd was converging on a tilted autorickshaw. He could hear shouts, raised voices, people thumping the roof of the vehicle. He half walked, half ran to join the group of onlookers.
Anger and argument filled the air as arms were raised and fists clenched. Apportioning blame seemed to be more important than helping the injured. A woman lay moaning on the ground. Beside her, a young man in shirt and jeans was cowering from the blows and kicks that were raining down on his body. Some bystanders were making an attempt to pull away the assailants and Mabbut pushed forward to join them. As he did so he felt a tight pressure on his arm and heard a soft but authoritative voice.

‘Don’t get involved.’

Mabbut wheeled round to find himself being gently, but firmly, led away from the scene by a tall, rangy white man wearing loose cotton trousers and a kurta. Though his face was partially obscured by a mane of lank grey hair, the jut of the jaw, the long straight nose and the deep-set eyes were unmistakable. Mabbut’s mouth went dry. It was, undoubtedly, the man he’d come to look for.

They sat at a table farther up the street, away from the angry crowd. Beside them a boy with thick dark hair and almost jet-black skin pumped a pair of bellows to arouse the fire beneath his saucepan. Stirring the milk and tea together and adding a touch of fennel and cardamom, he brought the mixture to the boil then carefully deposited the contents into two small glasses which he set before them. Mabbut smiled his thanks. His companion picked up his glass without acknowledgement and took a careful sip.

‘They’re a volatile lot,’ he said, staring off into the street. ‘They get upset pretty quickly.’

Melville spoke crisply, almost curtly, his tone softened by the merest hint of a Scottish burr.

‘No good at bottling it up.’

He turned to Mabbut and paused just long enough to make him feel uncomfortable.

‘Unlike us.’

Mabbut nodded appreciatively. His glass was almost too hot to hold so he took a sip swiftly, hoping Melville wouldn’t notice that his hand was shaking. Unsure what to say next, he looked back towards the scene of the accident, where arms and voices were still being raised. He sensed Melville’s eyes on him.

‘Here for long?’

Mabbut shrugged unconvincingly.

‘Me? No, just a few days.’

‘Interesting choice of hotel.’

Mabbut felt increasingly hot and flustered. He cleared his throat.

‘I like to get off the beaten track,’ he replied. ‘Meet the real people, you know.’

‘Ah, the real people. Yes.’

Melville leant back and, gathering his long grey hair in both hands, he drew it into a bunch at the back of his head and held it there for a moment. It seemed an oddly careless gesture for a man of his age and made Mabbut feel a touch more comfortable. There was so much he wanted to ask, but he was aware that he must not rush things, must control any tendency to gabble. There would be plenty of time. But then, quite suddenly, Melville stood, dropped a twenty-rupee note on the table, spoke briefly in Hindi to the boy and hoisted a bag on to his shoulder. He smiled down at Mabbut, who rose too, rather more clumsily.