Ithaca (5 page)

Seppi’s final novel arrived, as he had promised, two days before Christmas 2007.
Angels Falling
was shorter than the previous volumes by about 250 pages, but despite the occasional slack or unpolished passages, the story of the Archangel Uriel fighting the forces of darkness represented by Hitler, Mussolini, and their ungodly armies was told as muscularly and clearly as his previous books. When he presented the book to his sales force Zach was unequivocal in his assertion that the book was a masterpiece, and that Seppi belonged in the pantheon of great authors whose insights and prose were uncluttered and deep, and who did not need props like pretty words and unnecessary disquisition to tell their tale. He had wondered how much of the work was the translator’s; despite his problems with Caryn, the company and he were indebted
to her; to express their gratitude he sent a magnum of champagne and two crystal flutes.

Litmus published within ten weeks of receiving the manuscript, the fastest turnaround of any book they had published. If that was impressive what was perhaps even more astonishing was that nine of the countries that were translating the book from Italian or English published simultaneously with Litmus. Zach took personal charge of every aspect of publication, from the editing and design, all the way through to the moment the first book rolled off the presses. He drove every one of his colleagues to the breaking-point, starting with his creative director, Alice, a short-tempered genius who threw a coffee cup at him one day when he rejected her fifteenth attempt to come up with suitable typography for the inside text. They got it right on the sixteenth attempt when they chose Aetna Roman, a modern font designed by Jack Yan, based on the typeface created by the fifteenth-century punchcutter Francesco Griffo. Zach loved its smooth-flowing ligatures, the wonderfully buoyant serifs, the balance and exactitude of its stroke weight. When he e-mailed a sample page to Seppi, the author’s reply was instantaneous: he loved the look of the page, the fact that it was called Aetna was a gift from God.

Things went more or less smoothly from that point onwards. For the cover, Zach told Alice to ignore the advice of the marketing people and the sales force and go with her most inspired creative instincts – he figured he could sell the book with nothing more on it than Seppi’s name. What she came up with was stunning. Eschewing commercial
considerations, she created a snowy-white background (to represent the decisive turning point of Stalingrad) on which was superimposed a tiny three-dimensional figure in blue; the type was restrained and elegant and balanced the image perfectly. The cover would win Alice a raft of awards from design organizations that year.

On the appointed date of the launch, shops opened at the stroke of midnight to service the long lines of customers; in an attempt to separate genuine fans from speculators who wanted to sell first editions on eBay, each customer was restricted to two copies. As always Seppi was present at none of the launch occasions. He wanted his illness to be hidden from the world. As he hadn’t appeared in public for his last two books, this was easy enough to arrange; the customary print interviews were conducted over the phone, as were radio and television interviews. And that was that. Within twenty-four hours of publication, the book had sold two million copies, and a month later that total across thirty-two editions (sixteen more were in the pipeline) was approaching 8.5 million copies –
Angels Falling
had become one of the five fastest-selling books of the twenty-first century. Massimo Seppi was unaware of this when he died at home on March 8, 2008, a week after the book was published. He hadn’t wanted to be visited by any of his publishers during his final days; Caryn was the only one at his bedside, besides a nurse from the Home Healthcare Institute.

On an impulse, Zach buys the paperback copy of
The War of Angels
from the proprietor of the bookshop, who has been giving him the look shopkeepers the world over have perfected when customers linger past closing time. He leaves the shop and goes in search of the Swiss Bakery. He finds it easily enough, an unpretentious restaurant with a limited selection of sandwiches and pastries on offer. It is almost deserted, like every other establishment he has been in since he got to Thimphu; it is one of the things he likes about the city. He is trying to make up his mind between a chicken and cheese sandwich and a plain grilled cheese sandwich when he feels a tap on his shoulder. He turns to find himself face to face with a short, balding man dressed unusually for these parts in trousers, shirt, and cardigan. He looks familiar, but Zach can’t place him, and then he does, when the man says, “Its Zach isn’t it?”

“Das?”

Before he left India for London and a master’s degree at Goldsmiths College, Zach studied at one of Delhi’s great educational institutions, which was much sought after because of the excellence of its faculty and its proximity to a women’s college whose students were renowned for their beauty. Much of his time there has blurred away, but one incident emerges as clear as if it had happened a few minutes ago. All freshers had to endure a few weeks of ragging, a stupid and pointless ritual that was eventually banned when a less than
robust junior killed himself after being humiliated nightly for over a month by a particularly vicious band of seniors.

In Zach’s time, however, ragging had been alive and well; his worst moment came when he was summoned to a senior’s room one Sunday afternoon just before lunch. One of the three seniors present asked him whether he was hungry, and he answered that he was.

“Hot or cold snack, junior pisser?”

“Er … hot, sir.”

A tub of red chilies was produced from behind the senior’s back and he was ordered to eat every one, which he did, masticating each bite thoroughly. The agony was unendurable, spikes of pure pain shot to his brain before being channelled to every part of his body. Tears streamed down his cheeks, his mouth and head threatened to explode, the sound of his heart filled his chest like a mercilessly struck gong, his body was on the verge of giving way from the punishment it was absorbing – but he was determined not to beg, to give in, he was too stubborn for that. There must have been close to a hundred chilies in the tub. He had munched his way through about thirty or so of them when one of the trio, alarmed at the symptoms of near collapse Zach was exhibiting, told his friends to ease off.

“Want some water, junior pisser?” the senior who had given him the chilies asked.

Zach managed to nod. The senior reached under his bed, pulled out a large plastic bucket of soapy water in which his dirty laundry had been soaking, and told Zach to go out of the room into the corridor and drink every drop of the water.
He had picked up the bucket, staggered out into the corridor and, beyond caring by now, started to drink the filthy water in great breathless gulps. Within minutes, he had begun to retch.

Das, who was passing, had taken in the situation and gestured to Zach to put the bucket down. He had curtly informed the three seniors that he was “borrowing” the junior, as he needed him to run an errand. He was a year senior to them; they had no choice but to agree. When they reached Das’s room, he was set free with a bowl of curd to cool his tortured mouth and palate. The incident was not the beginning of a deep friendship; Das was graduating that year and was too senior to bother with a newcomer like Zach. But they would greet each other in passing at the hostel or on the way to class, and Zach had never forgotten the senior’s kindness.

It has been over twenty years since they last met. The long hair he remembers has vanished; Das is almost bald, the fringe is very grey, and he looks older than his years. He tells Zach he has lived in Thimphu for seventeen years, and that he works for a non-profit organization, is married to his childhood sweetheart, and has three children, ranging in age from six to fourteen. Before they part, Das invites him to dinner the following night.

Das lives in Motithang, a quiet suburb built on an elevation above Thimphu. The night is crisp and clear and the lights of the city stream up to the stars. The house the taxi deposits him at is built in the traditional way: three stories tall, with a prayer flag planted squarely in the middle of the roof, upward curving eaves, wooden shutters, an ochre-yellow façade bright with Buddhist paintings of dragons, tigers, and
fertility symbols, including a larger-than-life representation of a brownish-pink penis.

No sooner has the taxi’s engine cut off, than Das comes out, and ushers Zach into the house. He introduces his wife, Sonam, a woman with a serene face, and their three children. Instinctively, for he hasn’t done this in a long time, Zach raises his hands in a namaskaram and bows slightly. The family smile at him, then Sonam disappears to organize dinner, and the children scamper upstairs to their room.

Das pours Zach a glass of Bhutan Mist, a surprisingly good malt, and they make the first stuttering steps towards reestablishing the slender connection they once had. At first the conversation moves through the great events of the day, especially Barack Obama’s extraordinary rise to prominence. Even in this Himalayan fastness people were glued to their TV sets, Das tells him, mesmerized by Obama’s charisma and compelling story, the momentary brightness of his election shining through the enveloping gloom of a decade racked by war, terrorism, and economic blight. By the time the second whisky is poured, they have begun delving into each other’s lives, and here Das is the more forthcoming of the two. He tells of the years spent working in India in the administrative service, the decision to move to Bhutan where Tenzin, the eldest of their children was born, the job with the NGO that has something to do with education, the building of their own house after years of living with Sonam’s parents. He shows Zach around the place, explains the architecture and adaptations he has made to the traditional Bhutanese house that everyone is required to build by law. The ground floor
that is still used to house livestock in the rural areas has been converted into the living room they are sipping their whisky in, with wooden floors and glass panes in the windows rather than the usual wooden shutters. There is a proper staircase that leads to the first floor instead of the tree trunk with steps cut into it that the older houses still have. Zach, who has never owned a house, would have usually been bored stiff by these details but he finds that he is quite interested. Would he have behaved differently if the conversation had taken place in London, would he perhaps have been condescending towards Das and his small, uneventful life? Undoubtedly. But as the evening carries on it seems that Das is the one to be envied, with his stable existence and calm outlook on the future. What does Zach have, what has his life of frenzied preoccupation with work, years of short-lived romances, evenings spent drinking with unreliable friends, lunches and parties with the publishing set in London, and an absence of rootedness brought him? A broken marriage. Anxiety about work. And the constant need to experience the next adrenalin rush, take the next step on the high wire his life is balanced on because not to move forward would be to fall – and to fall would be to perish, there are no safety nets in his life – it is why he continues to whip himself on. Whereas Das will continue to accumulate slowly his little triumphs, he will watch his children grow to adulthood, dandle his grandchildren on his knee (do people even do that anymore?). And then this train of thought comes to an end: no, Zach could not have led this life; he would have died of boredom, better to go out on his own terms.

They dine without the children, who have already eaten. He jokes about his difficulty in learning how to appreciate ema datse on his first visit here, and Das and Sonam laugh together, their eyes meeting, a reflexively intimate moment born of long years of love and friendship. Zach’s mood sours momentarily. He thinks: When Julia and I were together, except in the very early days, we did not have this. Within a couple of years we were leading our separate lives and careers, and when we were together we were not fused but distinct. Sonam asks whether he is married and he replies truthfully that he is, but that work has kept Julia back in London. At some point in the evening, when the conversation has moved away from the personal and back to political and social events, Zach says he is not convinced by the Bhutanese concept of governance.