A Good Old-Fashioned Future (17 page)

Jackie, despairing, had left the score as Smith had recorded it, for the weird noise seemed to fit the story, and young Smith had worked on percentage—which would likely come to no real pay at all. Western historicals were hot in Bombay this year—or at least, they had been, back in ’48—and Jackie had scripted one in an all-night frenzy of coffee and pills. A penniless Irish actor had starred as John Fitzgerald Kennedy, with Betty Chalmers as a White House chambermaid who falls for the virile young president and becomes the first woman to orbit the Moon. An old film contact in Kazakhstan had provided some stock Soviet space footage with enthusiastic twentieth-century crowd scenes. Bubbles had done a spacesuit dance.

Somewhat ashamed of this excess—he had shot the entire film with only five hours sleep in four days—Jackie gave his best to No. 130, a foreign dramatic romance. Bobby Denzongpa starred as an Indian engineer, disappointed in love, who flees overseas to escape his past and becomes the owner of a seedy Glasgow hotel. No. 130 had been shot, by necessity, in the crew’s own hotel in Glasgow with the puzzled but enthusiastic Scottish staff as extras. Bubbles starred as an expatriate cabaret dancer and Bobby’s love interest. Bubbles died in the last reel, having successfully thawed Bobby’s cynical heart and sent him back to India. No. 130 was a classic weepie and, Jackie thought, the only one of the four to have any chance in hell of making money.

Jackie was still not sure about the plot of No. 131, his fifth British film. When the tax troubles had caught up to him in Scotland, he had picked the name of Bolton at random from a railway schedule.

• • •

Bolton turned out to be a chilly and silent hamlet of perhaps sixty thousand English, all of them busy dismantling the abandoned suburban sprawl around the city and putting fresh paint and flowers on Bolton’s nineteenth-century core. Such was the tourist economy in modern England. All the real modern-day businesses in Bolton were in the hands of Japanese, Arabs, and Sikhs.

A word with the station master got their rail cars safely parked on an obscure siding and their equipment loaded into a small fleet of English pedalcabs. A generous offer to pay in rupees found them a fairly reasonable hotel. It began to rain.

Jackie sat stolidly in the lobby that afternoon, leafing through tourist brochures in search of possible shooting sites. The crew drank cheap English beer and bitched. Jimmie Suraj the cameraman complained of the few miserable hours of pale, wintry European light. The lighting boys feared suffocation under the mountainous wool blankets in their rooms. Kumar the soundman speculated loudly and uneasily over the contents of the hotel’s “shepherd’s pie” and, worse yet, “toad-in-the-hole.” Bobby Denzongpa and Betty Chalmers vanished without permission in search of a disco.

Jackie nodded, sympathized, tut-tutted, patted heads, made empty promises. At ten o’clock he called the studio in Bombay. No. 127 had been judged a commercial no-hope and had been slotted direct to video. No. 128 had been redubbed in Tamil and was dying a slow kiss-off death on the southern village circuit. “Goldie” Vachchani, head of the studio, had been asking about him. In Jackie’s circles it was not considered auspicious to have Goldie ask about a fellow.

Jackie left the hotel’s phone number with the studio. At midnight, as he sat sipping bad champagne and studying plot synopses from ten years back in search of inspiration, there was a call for him. It was his son Salim, the
eldest of his five children and his only child by his first wife.

“Where did you get this number?” Jackie said.

“A friend,” Salim said. “Dad, listen. I need a favor.”

Jackie listened to the ugly hiss and warble of longdistance submarine cables. “What is it this time?”

“You know Goldie Vachchani, don’t you? The big Bombay filmwalla?”

“I know Goldie,” Jackie admitted.

“His brother’s just been named head of the state aeronautics bureau.”

“I don’t know Goldie very well, mind you.”

“This is a major to-do, Dad. I have the news on best private background authority. The budget for aeronautics will triple next Congress. The nation is responding to the Japanese challenge in space.”

“What challenge is that? A few weather satellites.”

Salim sighed patiently. “This is the fifties now, Dad. History is marching. The nation is on the wing.”

“Why?” Jackie asked.

“The Americans went to the Moon eighty years ago.”

“I know they did. So?”

“They polluted it,” Salim announced. “The Americans left a junkyard of crashed machines up on our Moon. Even a junked motor car is there. And a golf ball.” Salim lowered his voice. “And urine and feces, Dad. There is American fecal matter on the Moon that will last there in cold and vacuum for ten million years. Unless, that is, the Moon is ritually purified.”

“God almighty, you’ve been talking to those crazy fundamentalists again,” Jackie said. “I warned you not to go into politics. It’s nothing but crooks and fakirs.”

The hissing phone line emitted an indulgent chuckle. “You’re being culturally inauthentic, daddyji! You’re Westoxicated! This is the modern age now! If the Japanese get to the Moon first they’ll cover it with bloody shopping malls.”

“Best of luck to the damn fool Japanese, then.”

“They already own most of China,” Salim said, with sinister emphasis. “Expanding all the time. Tireless, soulless, and efficient.”

“Bosh,” Jackie said. “What about us? The Indian Army’s in Laos, Tibet, and Sri Lanka.”

“If we want the world to respect our sacred cultural values, then we must visibly transcend the earthly realm.…”

Jackie shuddered, adjusted his silk dressing gown. “Son, listen to me. This is not real politics. This is a silly movie fantasy you are talking about. A bad dream. Look at the Russians and Americans if you want to know what aiming at the Moon will get you. They’re eating chaff today and sleeping on straw.”

“You don’t know Goldie Vachchani, Dad?”

“I don’t like him.”

“I thought I’d ask,” Salim said sulkily. He paused. “Dad?”

“What?”

“Is there any reason why the Civil Investigation Division would want to inventory your house?”

Jackie went cold. “Some mistake, son. A mixup.”

“Are you in trouble, daddyji? I could try to pull some strings, up top.…”

“No no,” Jackie said swiftly. “There’s bloody horrid noise on this phone, Salim—I’ll be in touch.” He hung up.

Half an anxious hour with the script and cigarettes got him nowhere. At last he belted his robe, put on warm slippers and a nightcap, and tapped at Bubbles’s door.

“Jackie,” she said, opening it, her wet hair turbanned in a towel. Furnace-heated air gushed into the chilly hall. “I’m on the phone, darling. Long distance.”

“Who?” he said.

“My husband.”

Jackie nodded. “How is Vijay?”

She made a face. “Divorced, for Pete’s sake! Dalip is my husband now, Dalip Sabnis, remember? Honestly, Jackie, you’re so absentminded sometimes.”

“Sorry,” Jackie said. “Give Dalip my best.” He sat in a chair and leafed through one of Bubbles’s Bombay fan mags while she cooed into the phone.

Bubbles hung up, sighed. “I miss him so bad,” she said. “What is it, okay?”

“My oldest boy just told me that I am culturally inauthentic.”

She tossed the towel from her head, put her fists on her hips. “These young people today! What do they want from us?”

“They want the real India,” Jackie said. “But we all watched Hollywood films for a hundred bloody years.… We have no native soul left, don’t you know.” He sighed heavily. “We’re all bits and pieces inside. We’re a jigsaw people, we Indians. Quotes and remakes. Rags and tatters.”

Bubbles tapped her chin with one lacquered forefinger. “You’re having trouble with the script.”

Mournfully, he ignored her. “Liberation came a hundred bloody years ago. But still we obsess with the damn British. Look at this country of theirs. It’s a museum. But us—we’re worse. We’re a wounded civilization. Naipaul was right. Rushdie was right!”

“You work too hard,” Bubbles said. “That historical we just did, about the Moon, yaar? That one was stupid crazy, darling. That music boy Smith, from Manchester? He don’t even speak English, okay. I can’t understand a word he bloody says.”

“My dear, that’s English. This is England. That is how they speak their native language.”

“My foot,” Bubbles said. “We have five hundred million to speak English. How many left have they?”

Jackie laughed. “They’re getting better, yes. Learning to talk more properly, like us.” He yawned hugely. “It’s bloody hot in here, Bubbles. Feels good. Just like home.”

“That young girl, Betty Chalmers, okay? When she tries to speak Hindi I bust from laughs.” Bubbles paused.
“She’s a smart little cookie, though. She could go places in business. Did you sleep with her?”

“Just once,” Jackie said. “She was nice. But very English.”

“She’s American,” Bubbles said triumphantly. “A Cherokee Indian from Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. When your advert said Indian blood, she thought you meant American Indians.”

“Damn!” Jackie said. “Really?”

“Cross my heart it’s true, Jackie.”

“Damn … and the camera loves her, too. Don’t tell anybody.”

Bubbles shrugged, a little too casually. “It’s funny how much they want to be just like us.”

“Sad for them,” Jackie said. “An existential tragedy.”

“No, darling, I mean it’s really funny, for an audience at home. Laugh out loud, roll in the aisles, big kneeslapper! It could be a good movie, Jackie. About how funny the English are. Being so inauthentic like us.”

“Bloody hell,” Jackie marveled.

“A remake of
Param Dharam
or
Gammat Jammat
, but funny, because of all English players, okay.”

“
Gammat Jammat
has some great dance scenes.”

She smiled.

His head felt inflamed with sudden inspiration. “We can do that. Yes. We will! And it’ll make a bloody fortune!” He clapped his hands together, bowed his head to her. “Miss Malini, you are a trouper.”

She made a pleased salaam. “Satisfaction guaranteed, sahib.”

He rose from the chair. “I’ll get on it straightaway.”

She slipped across the room to block his way. “No no no! Not tonight.”

“Why not?”

“None of those little red pills of yours.”

He frowned.

“You’ll pop from those someday, Jackieji. You jump
like a jack-in-box every time they snap the clapperboard. You think I don’t know?”

He flinched. “You don’t know the troubles of this crew. We need a hit like hell, darling. Not today, yesterday.”

“Money troubles. So what? Not tonight, boss, not to worry. You’re the only director that knows my best angles. You think I want to be stuck with no director in this bloody dump?” Gently, she took his hand. “Calming down, okay. Changing your mind, having some fun. This is your old pal Bubbles here, yaar? Look, Jackieji. Bubbles.” She struck a hand-on-hip pose and shot him her best sidelong come-on look.

Jackie was touched. He got into bed. She pinned him down, kissed him firmly, put both his hands on her breasts, and pulled the cover over her shoulders. “Nice and easy, okay? A little pampering. Let me do it.”

She straddled his groin, settled down, undulated a bit in muscular dancer’s fashion, then stopped, and began to pinch and scratch his chest with absentminded Vedic skill. “You’re so funny sometimes, darling. ‘Inauthentic.’ I can tap dance, I can bump and grind, and you think I can’t wiggle my neck like a natyam dancer? Watch me do it, for Pete’s sake.”

“Stop it,” he begged. “Be funny before, be funny afterward, but don’t be funny in the middle.”

“Okay, nothing funny darling, short and sweet.” She set to work on him and in two divine minutes she had wrung him out like a sponge.

“There,” she said. “All done. Feel better?”

“God, yes.”

“Inauthentic as hell and it feels just as good, yaar?”

“It’s why the human race goes on.”

“Well then,” she said. “That, and a good night’s sleep, baby.”
Jackie was enjoying a solid if somewhat flavorless breakfast of kippers and eggs when Jimmie Suraj came in. “It’s Smith, boss,” Jimmie said. “We can’t get him to shut up that bloody box of his.”

Jackie sighed, finished his breakfast, dabbed bits of kipper from his lips, and walked into the lobby. Smith, Betty Chalmers, and Bobby Denzongpa sat around a low table in overstuffed chairs. There was a stranger with them. A young Japanese.

“Turn it off, Smithie, there’s a good fellow,” Jackie said. “It sounds like bloody cats being skinned.”

“Just running a demo for Mr. Big Yen here,” Smith muttered. With bad grace, he turned off his machine. This was an elaborate procedure, involving much flicking of switches, twisting of knobs, and whirring of disk drives.

The Japanese—a long-haired, elegant youngster in a sheepskin coat, corduroy beret, and jeans—rose from his chair, bowed crisply, and offered Jackie a business card. Jackie read it. The man was from a movie company—Kinema Junpo. His name was Baisho.

Jackie did a namaste. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Baisho.” Baisho looked a bit wary.

“Our boss says he’s glad to meet you,” Smith repeated.

“Hai,”
Baisho said alertly.

“We met Baisho-san at the disco last night,” Betty Chalmers said. Baisho, sitting up straighter, emitted an enthusiastic string of alien syllables.

“Baisho says he’s a big fan of English dance-hall music,” Smith mumbled. “He was looking for a proper dance hall here. What he thinks is one. Vesta Tilly, ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, that sort of bloody thing.”

“Ah,” Jackie said. “You speak any English, Mr. Baisho?”

Baisho smiled politely and replied at length, with much waving of arms. “He’s also hunting for first editions of Noel Coward and J. B. Priestley,” Betty said. “They’re his favorite English authors. And boss—Jackie—Mr.
Baisho
is
speaking English. I mean, if you listen, all the vowels and consonants are in there. Really.”

“Rather better than
your
English, actually,” Smith muttered.

“I have heard of Noel Coward,” Jackie said. “Very witty playwright, that Coward fellow.” Baisho waited politely until Jackie’s lips had stopped moving and then plunged back into his narrative.