I Am an Executioner (22 page)

Our unknown lead actor Narayan delivered a stunning performance, going on to a wonderful career, and thus was established Jogesh’s reputation as a star-maker. I was able to quit my job (for, despite Jogesh’s entreaties, I had previously only taken sabbatical to work on
Calcutta Nights
). Jogesh easily secured funding for his next project, and next, and next, and gave me a salary such that I did not have to find work in advertising, or even with other directors for that matter, and could finally move my family to a proper house.

I didn’t mistake Jogesh’s generosity. Certainly I was grateful for the money, but he had no choice; he paid me so well because he needed me badly. His films could not achieve their beauty without me.

And in any case, he did not pay me so well I could put my wife in a separate flat, as she might have wanted. She watched
Calcutta Nights
, of course, and enjoyed it, but could not resist her little questions: “Why your film has too much of weeping? Why it only has one dance number?”

“Believe me, I asked Jogesh the same questions,” I told her. “It is the modern style, that is all.”

“Modern style is fine and all, but don’t tease us with just one dance number. One dance number means neither coming nor
going, neither sleeping nor waking, neither Puna nor Hyderabad. If you have one, then you must have several,” she laughed at me.

Here was my one yearly respite: “I am going away for twelve weeks’ shooting. Please look properly after the household and don’t spend too much money. Call the boys over if you get lonely.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she always replied. “I am quite satisfied with my own company.”

Meanwhile, on the set of the films, Jogesh’s behavior was different. He was no longer amiable Jogesh, available for Johnny Walkers by the poolside in the evenings as in days of yore. He was secretive, as if he were a famous movie actor, the pompous and princely side of him having come to flower.

“What is the problem, Jogesh?” I would ask, as I saw him berating the bellboy in the lobby. He would point to his perfectly fine garment bag.

“Absolutely crushed and ruined,” he spoke in his quiet fury. “And I have a dinner appointment in fifteen minutes.”

He began acting that way even to his crew—even to me. I remember the day when I could no longer walk in his office at will, but had to ask an appointment. Where once were equal partners in a grand endeavor, now were servants obeying the great maestro, who had his own private vision, his own private social schedule.

What was he up to? Even when at 3:00 a.m. we barged to his hotel room to see if he was free for cards? And there was nobody there?

I am implying nothing, and even at that time I was mum. Because that is the rule among our boys: What happens on the shooting stays on the shooting.

Okay, I will not lie: I knew about his affairs. I am breaking
the rule, but: we all knew, even from the first day that first big actress came for her cameo (in two scenes she played—very improbably—a humble unmarried schoolteacher, for whom our hero is pining) and that night was eating private dinner with Jogesh, and by two weeks’ time had no compunction to stand side by side with him, wearing her ostentatious blue jeans and all manner of diamonds, holding his hand and caressing his hair, even though she had no business anymore on the set. Jogesh and I talked freely of it—with our mutual understanding—about how smart she was, how well she spoke French, and so on. The crew and I actually admired him, our own little Jogesh making cha-cha with the famous actress; even as sometimes we wondered if we should instead be telling him: Shameful! Disgusting! Even as we suspected she was only using him so she could make her break into serious films. But I never chided Jogesh, and I never dreamed to mention it to Nirmala or anyone outside of our little circle.

But for this, am I guilty to Nirmala? Not even a choto bit. Jogesh’s sin is Jogesh’s sin is Jogesh’s sin alone. Anyway, it has all worked out for the best.

Late at night, after Nirmala and I return unnoticed to the cocktail reception, we all retire to a celebratory dinner in some cavernous Manhattan restaurant. I see how Jogesh waves off the waiter who arrives to refill his wineglass, a gesture which I have never seen fit to imitate.

Jogesh is the only man in Kolkata with a private wine cellar, and yet he always stops after one glass. In some ways, success is entirely wasted on him.

It is difficult to watch him side by side with Nirmala. The Mumbai Actress is not invited, so all of false Jogesh’s attention is to his wife. Although Nirmala’s disdain for him is unmistakable,
she makes an admirable effort at feigning amusement at his stories—look, she is tinkling with laughs at some long bore of a tall tale about meeting Fellini. (“Everything Federico did was with style, with passion,” he is blathering.) Now Nirmala puts her hand on the back of his neck, demonstrating such admirably forged fondness that I am sweating through my shirt with unwonted pain and envy. For Jogesh’s part, how he stands up when she leaves for the restroom, how he offers her the first bite of his food, how he whispers in her ear—forced and futile assertions of intimacy, pitiful, pitiful, which make me want to stand up and smack him.

I excuse myself frequently for cigarettes.

At 11:15 p.m. precisely, Jogesh rises from the table, taking Nirmala gently by the arm. He must always have his seven hours.

When he and Nirmala are gone, I beckon the waiter for more wine. “Fill it all the way, I say!” I bellow, irritated by the empty space in the top of my glass. And very early in the morning, thirsty and smoke-stenched, with full bladder, I barge into my hotel room to the sight of the manila envelope—Jogesh’s new screenplay, which he had the valet deliver this evening. It is sitting fat and clean, like a smiling Buddha, on my dressing table, with my room number penciled quietly on the front.

I go to sleep with dark dreams of stomach-churning catastrophe. Rain and tears, sounds on the window. A stairwell rising before me, tilting and warping every time I step on it. Outside the window, airplanes scream and plunge, while ahead of me on the stairs appears Nirmala in a trench coat and dark wig—or is it an impostor? I climb toward her but she outruns me; the walls shift, the stairs twist away beneath my feet.… Whirling Bernard Herrmann violin music and everything spinning like the tower scene in
Vertigo …

It is only very late the next afternoon, after sufficient quantity from the pitcher of room service coffee, and four soft pancakes bubbling with blue-colored berries and good salty American bacon on the side, that I arrive soundly from the turbulence of the previous night, and can move myself to bend open the aluminium tabs and slide the contents from the manila envelope. I flip through the cleanly printed pages at an increasing pace. What polished dialogues! What unexpected turns of plot! What interesting characters!

It is a heavy screenplay. A screenplay which (as one A. O. Scott in the New York newspaper wrote of Jogesh’s previous film) “looks into life and finds there the rocks, the boulders we have all been quietly hiding under, calling them the sky.”

I feel my headache and stomach upset slowly returning. Halfway done and in despair, I turn the manuscript facedown. My own screenplay—how can it compare? I use my finger to wipe up the sugary dregs from the bottom of my coffee cup, and disconsolately I lick.

My screenplay took me two years—two years, after the thirty-three Nirmala and I had already suffered. It is the opus of my life, revolving around the giddy days of youth: A young man and creative soul with dreams of success; the bends in the road of life taking him this way and that. Also his close friend and bosom companion, a lofty and serious fellow. And the woman who comes between them.

Two years I struggled and wrote it. Slowly I sent it to foreign producers, only to face rejection upon rejection. I could not approach any Indian producers, because all of them were deferential to Jogesh. So I cast my line blindly into Hollywood (“Dear Sir, I admired your film such-and-such and believe you will be interested to read my …”) until finally I received an e-mail, with the deceptively small-fonted subject line “i want to meet u!!!” from an independent film producer in California named Jefferson Bundy.

I think: Hal Pereira, Robert Boyle, Henry Bumstead. Who in the general public knows these names? They are Hitchcock’s wonderful art directors, but for all their beautiful work, what acknowledgment? I am destined to be just as much forgotten, unless I make my own film. But as I read Jogesh’s screenplay, such an endeavor is starting to feel entirely beyond me.

To calm myself, I take my sketch pad from my suitcase. I turn the screenplay open and begin drawing. I sketch quickly and with the usual satisfaction, envisioning the scenes instantly in moving frames, the sequences and characters in terms of color. As I draw, I fill the margins with costume notes, suggestions for which scenes must be shot on location, which can be economically built as sets.

Only when my stomach starts to grumble do I realize several hours have been passed in pleasant creation. I put down my pencil and stretch my back and legs. Still buoyed by a certain giddiness, I decide to go for a walk and search for some nice American clothes for my Saturday meeting. I leave my thus-far-completed storyboards at the desk for Jogesh to pick up later. Our last collaboration, I think happily, and not without a certain sweet rue.

I walk out into the cool sunny day. The pleasant weather lifts me further, makes my legs feel like skipping. At a small shop, I buy some slices of pizza and eat them outside, enjoying the breeze, the hot cheese scalding the roof of my mouth with nicely tangy pains. I am feeling elated to be among all the people walking madly just like in Kolkata, but wearing nice clothes on the clean sidewalks under the cool, clean-smelling sky! I wish only Nirmala were free to share the afternoon with me. Unfortunately, the poor thing has been forced by Jogesh to attend a boring luncheon; until our circumstances change, she feels compelled to go on being the dutiful wife.

Meanwhile, I am free to enjoy the city. I walk into Bergdorf Goodman, bah bah! It is so beautiful. The price is a little bit over my current head, but I fight down my frugal instincts (the
production designer by nature hews to the budget) and fit myself out in a trim designer suit, a lovely silk tie. “Denzel’s stylist was here last week,” whispers the shamelessly flattering salesman, “and bought him the
same outfit
.” Examining myself in the mirror, I momentarily indulge the delusion that Denzel couldn’t look better in it than I do.

Interior, painting studio, daytime. A tall old man with silver hair and white stubble stands painting on a large canvas in his enormous studio. He holds his brush between long, bony fingers, slashing and stabbing the canvas with reds and yellows and blues. His focus is intense and violent. He wears a paint-spattered white kurta-pyjama and no chappals. Behind him, an old woman in a white sari—his wife—steps quietly inside the studio, sets down a tumbler of tea and plate of biscuits, then disappears again. The painter never registers her presence.

(What does Jogesh know about painting? Jogesh cannot even draw in a straight line. I suppose that is why he has written the painter as an abstract artist.)

Now the painter is visiting the renowned local arts college, talking to students and critiquing their work. With the self-assurance that comes with fame and great talent, he quietly and fearlessly shows the flaws in each student’s painting, roughly dismissing the youngsters’ questions, reducing them to awe, and in one case, to tears.

(What fantasies of self-importance Jogesh has! It is a well-written scene, however. The dialogues are crisp and essential, carrying electricity.)

One student challenges him. He quickly dismisses her challenge. But she repeats her point, drawing on examples from the painter’s own work. Flattered, impressed, intrigued, even a little humbled, he turns and finally notices that the student—behind
her glasses, smock, tied-back hair—is a very attractive young woman.

(Pure male fantasy! What is startling is that Jogesh, through his screenplay, inadvertently admits to so much.)

He invites her to his studio to continue their conversation. He hires her as his assistant, and inevitably, they start an affair.

(How embarrassing! What audacity! A twenty-year-old and a seventy-year-old. Vain Jogesh, imagining the whole world to have his own dispositions, that all men are eager for young flesh. But somehow he makes the improbable behaviors convincing, showing the vulnerabilities and pathos of both the old man and his lover. Even as I sketch and turn the pages, my stomach ties itself in anticipatory knots.)

Not plagued by conscience exactly, but constantly fretting, lest his patient and loving spouse should find out and be devastated—and also fearing that his young and energetic, independent lover will grow bored and leave him—the painter simply and with new vigor continues painting.

It reminds me of the time I couldn’t find my reading glasses after paying a visit to Nirmala’s house. This was most unusual, because I always placed them carefully inside my briefcase, which in turn I always kept leaning against the same chair in the hallway. How my wife berated me, immediately traveling to the glasses store to purchase me a new pair. Nirmala called me two days later.

“Jogesh found your glasses.”

“Where were they?”

“In the bedroom. Just poking out from beneath the bed.”

How could the glasses have gotten there? I wondered. My mind raced through all I did: a pleasurable reminiscence. Even with the teenage wildness of it all, the transfer of the reading glasses was difficult to explain. I considered that Jogesh had seen me many times wearing them, and was likely to have recognized them.

“Listen, Bibhuti. Was he behaving differently to you on the film set? Does he suspect something?”

“Not in the least. He has been perfectly normal, perfectly cool,” I said, feeling a chill.

“Same in the home. He is absolutely impossible to flap. I don’t understand it.”

“How self-absorbed he is! What better proof of his vanity could there be? Anyway, let us not allow it to worry us. I am on page ninety-five already. Love triangle is being resolved.”