River of Gods (38 page)

It is full dark now. Tal feels cool air from an unexpected quarter on
yts skin. Yt shivers, a small thing on a huge continent, sensing a
future with no place for yt, Stepped Away, genetically noncombatant.
An Australian accent calls up from below.

"Good evening to you up there, Nanakji! Rain in Hyderabad, I've
just heard."

Nanak lifts ytself half out of the scented water but the caller in
the night cannot be seen.

"Good news indeed!" yt replies. "We shall certainly
celebrate that!"

"I'll drink to that!"

There is a soft sound from the hatch to the main bridge. The bathers
turn. A nute stands there, wrapped in a crisp blue
yukata
,
arms wrapped round itself.

"I heard. I thought, could I?"

"All are welcome," Nanak says, fishing in the ice bucket
for a Kingfisher.

"Is it true, is the rain really coming?" the nute asks as
yt slips out of yts blue cotton robe. Tal experiences a cold shock at
the narrow shoulders, the broad child-giving hips, the
hormone-injection flattened breast buds, the sacred triangle of the
shaven yoni. Pre-op. The shy one, the one Nanak had said might bolt.
Yt tries to remember the three years yt had lived as a pre-op, trying
to save the deposit on a berth on the
Fugazi
. Like a memory of
a nightmare it is a series of disjointed impressions. The three-a-day
hormone jabs. The constant shaving. The endless roll of mantras to
stop thinking like a gendered, be a nute.

"Yes, I believe it's coming at last," Nanak says as the
nute steps down into the water beside yt and all sexual identity is
erased. They move together through the blood-warm water, touching, as
nutes do. Tal sleeps that night by Nanak's side, curled up and deep,
touching, as nutes do, as friends who sometimes sleep together.

"Take care in that Varanasi," Nanak calls to Tal as yt
climbs down the scabbed side of
Fugazi
to the waiting Riva,
skipping on the filthy water.

"I'll try," Tal calls back, "but it's a crushing
little thing of the heart."

Looking out of the window as the hydrofoil pulls away from the
astonishing sweep of the Bund waterfront, Tal sees a plane of churned
grey cloud spread into the south and east further than yt can see.
ROMANCE AND ADVENTURE MIX booms in yts inner ears.

As Tal had hoped, yt wows Varanasi. More specifically, yt wows
Indiapendent Productions, Meta-Soap Design Department. Precisely, yt
wows Neeta on the desk, who claps her hands and tells yt yt looks
faaaabulous and yt obviously had a good time in horrid Patna and oh I
almost forgot there's a letter for you, special delivery and all.

The Special Delivery wears a plastic wallet with
priority
and
hand deliver
and lightning flash seals and tricky little strings
to pull here that released tabs there which in turn enable you to rip
a perforated strip and then draw out the inner IMPORTANT DOCUMENT
liner on its quick release thumb-pull and tear open the sealed
plastic along the marked perforations and only then do you get the
message. A single sheet of paper. Handwritten; these words.
Must
see you again. Can you come tonight, August 12? The club, whenever.
Please. Thank you
. And a single looping initial at the bottom.

"It's like
Town and Country
, but real!" Neeta
declares.

Tal reads the letter a dozen times in the phatphat to the White Fort.
As yt tarts up
the look
for the big night (if there's anyone
else in the club with
the look
, yt'll have their eyes) the
television news is all war bores and the entertainment channels are
all full of smiling people dancing in echelon and for the first time
yt can't watch any of it. Nothing for it. Yt grabs yts bag and
dashes. Mama Bharat is out on the landing leaving out trash.

"Can't stop, can't stop, hot hot date," Tal shouts. Mama
Bharat namastes, then yt's down the stairs, squeezing past a couple
of men in suits who stare just those few seconds too long. Yt watches
them pass yts door and up the next flight. Down in the pillared
sublevel the cab is waiting and tonight tonight tonight the kids can
shout what they like and call names and make animal and sucking
noises and they just fall around Tal like marigold petals. On yts
system this night of nights are STRANGE CLUB, FUGAZI FLOAT TANK and,
dare yt dare yt dare yt? FUCK MIX.

At the entry to the alley of the Banana Club Tal slides up yts sleeve
and programmes in
blissfullfloatyanticipationsmoulder.
The
protein chips kick in as the grey wood door opens. The blind
bird-woman in the crimson sari is there, head tilted back slightly,
fingers filled with dwarf bananas. She might not have moved since
Tal's last visit.

"Welcome back, welcome back, lovely thing! Here, help, have."
She offers her fruit. Tal gently curls her fingers on the bananas.

"No, not tonight." Tal hesitates, shy to ask, "Is
there."

The blind woman points to the topmost gallery. No one's in tonight,
though it's early in the month. Rumours of war and rain. Down in the
central courtyard a nute in a long swirling skin performs a kathak
with a grace beyond classical. The second level is deserted but for
two couples talking on the divans. The third level is leather club
armchairs and low tables. Brass table lanterns shed a glow-worm
ambience. The chill zone. There is only one guest up here tonight.
Khan sits in the chair at the end of the gallery, hands resting
symmetrically on the armrests in that way that Tal has always thought
timelessly classy. Very English. Eyes meet. Tal blinks a blessing.
Khan is so sweet, he doesn't know the language. Tal trails yts hand
along the wooden rail. Sandalwood has been used in the construction,
the handrail leaves a pheromone imprint on Tal's palm.

"Oh, you," Tal says as yt curls ytself into a chair at
right angles to Khan. Yt waits for a smile, a kiss, any greeting.
Khan starts edgily with a small grunt. There is a white envelope on
the low fat-legged table. Tal takes out yts own letter, neatly
quartered and sets it beside the envelope. Yt crosses yts smooth
thighs.

"Well, at least tell me I look stupendous," Tal jokes. The
man starts. This is not going by his script. He nudges the envelope
towards Tal.

"Please, take that."

Tal unfolds the flap, peeks inside, then can't believe what yt's
seeing and takes a longer, even less believing stare. It's a wad of
thousand rupee notes, one hundred of them.

"What is this?"

"It's for you."

"What, me? This is."

"I know what it is."

Tal sets the envelope flat on the table.

"Well, it's very generous, but I'd need to know a bit more about
it before I accept it. It's a hell of a lot of money."

The man grimaces.

"I can't see you again."

"What? Is it me, what've I done?"

"Nothing!" Then, soft with sorrow, "Nothing. It's me,
I should never. I can't see you. I shouldn't even be seeing you
here." He laughs painfully. "It seemed the most secure
place. Take it, it's for you, please have it."

Tal knows yts mouth is open. Yt experiences what yt imagines it might
be like to feel your brain slam against the back of your skull after
an impact from a cricket bat. Yt also knows, by the smooth sacred
skin on the back of yts skull, that there's someone else up on the
third level balcony with them, a newcomer.

"You're buying me off? You're handing me a lakh rupees and
telling me you never want to see me again, to never cross your path
again. I know what this is. This is get out of Varanasi money. You
bastard. You bastard. What do you think I'll do? Blackmail you? Tell
your wife, or your boyfriend? Run to the papers? Tell all my pervy
nute friends and lovers, because we're all over each other, everyone
knows that? Who do you think you are?"

The man's face crumples in anguish but Tal will not be stopped. Yt
has the red rage in yt. Yt snatches out the money, lunges across the
table to shred the treacherous paper in Khan's face.

The man lifts his hands, turns his face away, but there is no
defence.

"And hold that, Tal," says a voice. A flash of light. Tranh
stands at the end of the table, feet apart, a solid brace for the
palmer camera in yts right hand. "And another one" Flash.
The man hides his face behind his hands, looks for a getaway but
Tranh is backed by muscle in suits. "I'll tell you who he bloody
thinks he is, cho chweet. He is Shaheen Badoor Khan, Private
Parliamentary Secretary to Sajida Rana, that's who. And I am so sorry
about this, my lovely, I am so sorry it had to be you. It's nothing
personal, please believe me. Politics. Bloody politics. So sorry,
Tal." Tranh snaps the palmer shut, hesitates, hand pressed to
mouth as if holding in a vomitous secret. "Tal, get out of
Varanasi. You were set up from the start. I was sent to find you; you
were new, you were innocent, you are absolutely dispensable. Go!"
The heavy men guide yt down the stairs, a hummingbird mobbed by
crows.

Najia Askarzadah, power-walking with her girlfriends. In crop-top and
shortie shorts and noo shoes that grope your feet and remember the
sensation. She bought them with money from the Rath Yatra shots, and
a lot of other things besides. Things for her, things for friends, to
keep them friends. Najia Askarzadah's relationships have always been
contracts.

The girls have been doing this walking before breakfast every Tuesday
and Thursday since Najia joined the Imperial International set. This
morning she needs it. They all got destroyed on Omar Khayyam
champagne last night. Bernard was present to praise her grudgingly on
her journalistic fortune and then talked for the rest of the evening
about representation and epistemic polyverses and how the only
possible intellectual response was to treat the whole thing as an
episode of
Town and Country
, no less and certainly no more,
the unfolding soapi that can never be dramatically concluded, had
anyone any evidence that Sajida Rana actually set foot on the Kunda
Khadar apart from TV pictures? and as for N. K. Jivanjee, well, it's
a good political joke that everyone's seen him but no one can
remember meeting him; the impending wedding of Aparna Chawla and Ajay
Nadiadwala at least had the credibility of the kitsch. But he was
glad about her success, glad, because now she was realising the
totalising energy of war.

He's going to invite me back, she thought. He's jealous and hasn't
had a fuck in a week.

Would she like to come back, work up a theory about all this with
him? He'd got some Red Roof Garden Skunk in.

He had got into gauze. It was draped all over his rooms, great swags
and drapes, billowing slightly in the rising winds through the
louvers. He had heard that the rain was moving up over the Deccan and
whole villages were going out to dance. He would love that, to dance
in the rain, dance with her. She liked the thought of that. The Red
Roof Garden was very fine and within half an hour she was squatting
naked, thighs drawn up oyster-pose, on his lap with his penis held
straight and hard inside her, clenching and releasing, clenching and
releasing in time with the hummed mantra in the light of a dozen
terracotta oil-lamps. But it was the bottle-and-a-half of Omar
Khayyam that worked the magic so that they achieved what Bernard
promised so long, which was to keep his cock inside her for one hour,
not moving, breathing and chanting as one, clenching and releasing,
clenching and releasing, clenching and releasing until, to Najia's
surprise, she felt the slow glow of orgasm light inside her and
spread like running lamp oil until they both came in a white blast of
semen and Kundalini burning a hole through the tops of their Sahasrar
chakras.

The walking girls turn out of the shaded drive of the Imperial
International on to the Mall. The greenery is cool and smells damp
and growing but out on the boulevard the heat an hour after sunrise
is already like a hammer. She's sweating. Sweat out the night things.
Najia Askarzadah's gloved fists beat out her walk and her skinny ass
rolls in her tight shortie-shorts as two lanes of traffic head
inbound to Varanasi, gold and pink in the morning haze. Men whistle
and call but power walking expat girlies are faster than Varanasi
crush-hour traffic. Those foot-grope sports shoes can have Najia
Askarzadah intersections ahead in the time it takes them to jerk one
car length. By the new park hawkers are already laying out their
plastic tarpaulins and arranging their fruit and car batteries and
bootleg pharma in the limp, dusty shade of the dying almond trees.
It's going to be the hottest one yet, Najia's pores tell her. It
reaches a peak of unbearability just before it breaks, Bernard says.
She scans the horizon as she takes a sip from her water bottle, but
the sky beyond the towers of Ranapur is an upturned bowl of hammered
bronze.

She feels the heat radiate from the big, soft-engined car as it tucks
in beside her, a Merc SUV shimmering scarab black. The mirrored
window rolls down, the low-level dhol'n'bass thud from the music
centre jumps a level.

"Hi! Hi!"

A gap-toothed, dark-faced gunda leers out at her. He wears a string
of pearls knotted around his neck.

Head down, fists up. Keep moving. Her ass quivers; her palmer, hooked
over her waistband, is being called. Not a voice or video or a text:
a direct data-transfer. Then the Merc accelerates past and the driver
waves his palmer at her and gives an OK sign. He swings the black car
through a gap between a municipal bus and a water tanker with its
military escort.

Najia wants to collapse into the cool of the Imperial's leisure pool
but her mystery message won't let her. It's a video file. Her
journalistic sense whispers caution. She takes the palmer into a
shower cubicle and clicks up the video. N. K. Jivanjee is seated in a
light, airy pavilion of beautifully patterned kalamkaris. The fabric
billows gently, pregnantly. N. K. Jivanjee namastes.