River of Gods (42 page)

"I don't know what to say."

It is so weak. And it is a lie. He does. He had rehearsed it as he
reeled in the phatphat back to the haveli. The words, the order of
the confessions, the drawing out of secrets a lifetime deep, all had
come to him in one mass, one rush, perfectly formed in his head. He
knew what he must do. But he must be let do it. She must grant him
that grace.

"I think I deserve something," Sajida Rana says.

Shaheen Badoor Khan lifts one hand in exquisite pain but there is no
placating it, no amelioration. He deserves no mercy.

The lamps had been on in the old zenana. Standing in the cloister,
Shaheen had strained to pick out women's voices. Most nights there
were guests; woman writers, lawyers, politicians, opinion makers.
They would talk all the hours beyond the old purdah. Bilquis should
know, before any, before even his Prime Minister, but not in front of
guests. Never in front of guests.

Gohil the chauffeur came bleary, hobbling with a rolled-down sock in
his boot, stifling a yawn. He turned the official car in the
courtyard.

"The Rana Bhavan," Shaheen Badoor Khan ordered.

"What is it, sahb?" Gohil asked as he drove through the
automatic gates into the perpetual crawl of traffic. "Some vital
affair of state?"

"Yes," Shaheen Badoor Khan said. "An affair of state."
By the time the car reached the junction he had written his letter of
resignation on the government notepad in the arm-rest. Then he took
his 'hoek, set it to audio only, and called the number he had kept
next to his heart since the day he was invited to the Prime
Ministerial Office and offered the role of Grand Vizier, the number
he had confidently expected never to use.

"Shah." He heard Sajida Rana's breath shudder. "Thank
gods it's you; I thought we'd been invaded."

Shaheen Badoor Khan imagined her in bed. It would be white; wide and
white. The light would be a small, shallow pool from a lamp. She
would be leaning over a bedside cabinet. Her hair would be loose, it
would fall darkly around her face. He tried to imagine what she wore
in bed. You have betrayed your government, your nation, your faith,
your marriage, your dignity, and you are wondering if your Prime
Minister sleeps naked. Narendra would be at her side, rolled over
into a muffled, white cylinder, go to sleep, affairs of state. It was
well known that they still slept together. Sajida Rana was a woman of
appetite, but she insisted on her family name.

"Prime Minister, I must tender my resignation with immediate
effect."

I should have rolled the partition up, Shaheen Badoor Khan thought. I
should have put glass between myself and Gohil. Why bother? In the
morning he will see everything. Everyone will see everything. At
least he will have a good story, nuggety with gossip and
eavesdroppings. You owe him that much, good and faithful driver.

"Shah, what nonsense is this?"

Shaheen Badoor Khan repeated himself verbatim, then added, "Prime
Minister, I have put myself in a position that has allowed the
government to become compromised."

A soft sigh like a spirit departing. A sigh so weary, so tired. A
rustle of fine, crisp, clean-smelling white cotton.

"I think you should get over here."

"I am on my way, Prime Minister," Shaheen Badoor Khan said,
but she had already cut the connection and all he heard was the Zen
hum of cyberstatic in the sanctuary of his skull.

Sajida Rana rests on the white balustrade, hands firmly gripping the
rail.

"How good is the detail?"

"My face is clearly visible. There will be no doubt that it is
me. Prime Minister, they photographed me giving money to the nute."

She bares her teeth, shakes her head, lights another cigarette.

Shaheen Badoor Khan had never thought of her as a smoker. Another
secret about his Prime Minister, like her vile mouth. That is the
reason she must have brought him out here; to keep the smoke out of
the Rana Bhavan. Marvellous, the details he notices.

"A nute."

Now the dying within starts. In that one syllable are all her disgust
and incomprehension and betrayal and rage.

"They are. a gender."

"I know what they are. This club."

Another cube of him is torn away. The tearing is agony but once it is
gone the pain vanishes. There is a clean joy in being able say the
truth for once.

"It is a place where people go to meet nutes. People who find
nutes sexually attractive."

Smoke rises straight from Sajida Rana's cigarette before breaking
into lazy, phantom zigzags. The air is wonderfully still. Even the
eternal roar of the city is muted.

"Tell me one thing, what did you think you could do with them?"

It was never a doing thing, Shaheen Badoor Khan wants to exclaim.
That is what you can never understand, soft from your bed with the
smell of your husband still on you. That is what the nutes have
always understood. It is not about doing anything. It is about being.
That is why we go there, to that club, to see, to be among creatures
from our fantasies, creatures we have always longed to be but which
we will never have the courage to become. For those brief burning
stabs of beauty. Sajida Rana does not let him say these things; she
cuts in: "I don't need to know any more. There is, of course, no
hope of you remaining in the administration.""

"I never thought there might be, Prime Minister. I was set up."

"That's no excuse. In fact, it only makes it. What were you
thinking? No, don't answer that. How long has it been going on?"

Another wrong, uncomprehending question.

"Most of my life. As long as I can remember. It's always been
going on."

"When you said that time we were coming back from the dam, when
you said you and your wife were going through a cold period. for
fuck's sake, Khan." Sajida Rana grinds the dead stub out with
the heel of her white satin slipper. "You have told her, haven't
you?"

"Not about this, no."

"Then about what?"

"She knows about my. predilections. She has known for some time.
For a long time."

"How long?"

"Decades, Prime Minister."

"Stop calling me that! You do not call me that. You've been a
liability to this government for twenty years and you still have the
gall to
Prime Minister
me. I needed you, Khan. We could lose
this. Yes, we could lose this war. The generals have all been showing
me their satellite pictures and their aeai models and they all say
that the Awadhis are moving troops in to the north towards Jaunpur.
I'm not so sure. It's too obvious. One thing the Awadhis have never
been is obvious. I needed you, Khan, to play against that fool
Chowdhury."

"I am sorry, I am truly sorry." But he does not want to
heat what his Prime Minister has to say. He has heard it all already,
he told it to himself again and again as the car slipped through the
stifling morning. Shaheen Badoor Khan wants to talk, to let all the
things he has packed down all this lifetime spill out like water from
the stone lips of a fountain in some decadent European city. He is
free now. There is no secret now, no restraint, and he wants so much
for her to understand, to see what he sees, feel what he feels, ache
where he burns.

Sajida Rana settles heavily on the balustrade.

"It's raining in Maratha, did you know that? It will be here
before the week is out. It's moving across the Deccan. As we speak,
there are children dancing in the rain in Nagpur. A few days more,
and they will be dancing in the streets of Varanasi. Three years. I
could have waited. I didn't need to take the dam. But I couldn't risk
not taking it. So now I'm going to have Bharati jawans patrolling the
Kunda Khadar dam in the rain. How will that look to the plain people
of Patna? You were right though. We did fuck N. K. Jivanjee up the
ass. And now he's paying me back. We have underestimated him. You
underestimated him. This is the end of us."

"Prime. Mrs. Rana, we don't know."

"Who else? You're not as clever as you think, Khan. None of us
are. Your resignation is accepted." Then Sajida Rana clenches
her teeth and smashes her fist into the carved limestone railing.
Blood starts from her knuckles. "Why did you do this to me? I
would have given you everything. And your wife, your boys. Why do men
risk these things? I will condemn you."

"Of course."

"I can no longer protect you. Shaheen, I do not know what is
going to happen to you now. Get out of my sight. We shall be lucky if
we survive the day."

As Shaheen Badoor Khan crunches back over the raked gravel to the
state car, the dark trees and shrubs around him light up with
birdsong. For a moment he thinks it is the singing ringing in his
inner ear of all the lies that are his life rubbing past each other
as they flock to the light. Then he realises it is the overture of
the dawn chorus, the herald birds that sing in the darkest of night.
Shaheen Badoor Khan stops, turns, lifts up his head, listens. The air
is hot but piercingly clean and present. He breathes pure darkness.
He senses the heavens a dome above him, each star a pin of light
spearing down into his heart. Shaheen Badoor Khan feels the universe
wheel around him. He is at once axle and engine, subject and object,
turned and turner. A tiny thing, a small song calling out with
countless others into the vast dark. Time will smooth out his deeds
and misdeeds; history will flatten his name into the general dust. It
is nothing. For the first time since those fisher children splashed
and adventured in the Kerala sunset he understands
free
.

Joy kindles in the well of his manipura chakra. The Sufi moment of
selfessness, timelessness. God in the unexpected. He does not deserve
it. The mystery of it is that it never comes to those who think they
do.

"Where to, sahb?"

Responsibilities. After enlightenment, duty.

"To the haveli." It is all downhill now. The words having
been said once are easy to repeat. Sajida Rana had been right. He
should have told her first. The accusation had surprised him: Shaheen
Badoor Khan had been reminded, sharply, that his Prime Minister was a
woman, a married woman who would not take her husband's name. He
polarises the windows dark against prying eyes.

Bilquis doesn't deserve it. She deserves a good husband, a true man
who, even if she no longer loved him or shared his bed or his life,
would do her no disgrace in public, would smile and talk the right
talk and never cause her to cover her face in shame among the Ladies
of the Law Circle. He had it all—Sajida Rana had said as
much—he had it all and he still could not stop himself from
destroying it. How deeply he deserves what has happened to him. Then
on the sun-cracked Bharat government leather upholstery, Shaheen
Badoor Khan's perceptions turn. He doesn't deserve it. No one
deserves it and everyone deserves it. Who can hold his head up, and
who would presume to judge? He is a good advisor; the best advisor.
He has served his country wisely and well. It still has need of him.
Perhaps he can go dark, burrow down like some toad in a drought to
the bottom of the mud and wait for the climate to change.

An edge of light fills the streets as the government car whirrs
along, soft as a moth. Shaheen Badoor Khan allows himself to smile
inside his cube of darkened glass. The car turns the corner where the
sadhu sits on a concrete slab, one arm held aloft in a sling strapped
around a lamppost. Shaheen Badoor Khan knows that trick. After a time
you lose all feeling. The car stops abruptly. Shaheen Badoor Khan has
to put out his hands to keep himself from falling.

"What is it?"

"Trouble, sahb."

Shaheen Badoor Khan unpolarises the window. The road ahead of him is
blocked with early traffic. People have left their cabs and are
leaning against their open doors to watch the spectacle that has
stopped them. Bodies stream past the intersection; shadowy men in
white shirts and dark pants, young men with first moustaches, moving
at a steady, angry jog, lathis jerking up and down in their hands. A
battery of drummers passes, a group of fierce, sharp-faced women in
Kali red; naga sadhus, white with ash, wielding crude Siva trishuls.
Shaheen Badoor Khan watches a vast, pink papier mache effigy of
Ganesha lumber into view, gaudy, almost fluorescent in the rising
light. It veers from side to side, steered unsteadily by bare-legged
puppeteers. Behind Ganesha, an even more extraordinary sight: the
billowing orange and red spire of a rath yatra. And torches. In every
hand, with every attendant and runner, a fire. Shaheen Badoor Khan
dares open the window a crack. An avalanche of sound falls on him: a
vast, inchoate roar. Individual voices emerge, take up a theme;
submerge again: chants, prayers; slogans, nationalist anthems,
karsevak hymns. He does not need to hear the words to know who they
are. The great gyre of protestors around Sarkhand Roundabout has
broken out and is streaming across Varanasi. It would only do so if
it had a greater object for its hate. Shaheen Badoor Khan knows where
they are going with fire in their hands. The word is out. He had
hoped for longer.

Shaheen Badoor Khan looks behind him. The road is still clear.

"Get me out of here."

Gohil complies without question. The big car backs up, swings round,
hooting savagely at traffic as it mounts the concrete central strip
and crunches down on to the opposite side of the road. As Shaheen
Badoor Khan blackens the windows, he glimpses smoke coiling up into
the sky in the east, oily as burning fat from a funeral pyre against
the yellow dawn.

The phatphat is headed nowhere, just driving. Tal had thrust a
bouquet of rupees at the taxi driver and told him that: just drive.

Yt has to get away. Abandon job, home, everything yt had made for
ytself in Varanasi. Go to a place where nobody knows yts name.
Mumbai. Back to Mum. Too close. Too bitchy. Deep south, Bangalore,
Chennai. They have big media industries there. There is always work
for a good designer. Even Chennai might not be far enough. If yt
could change yts name, yts face again. Yt could go via Patna, buy
more surgery from Nanak. Stick it on the tab. If yts credit was still
good with Nanak. Yt'd need work, soon. Yes, that's yt; get
everything, get to the station, get to Patna, get a new identity.