River Of Gods

by Ian McDonald

  ‘Do you not fancy the music?’ Shaheen Badoor Khan says.

  ‘I prefer classical,’ the man says. He has an English-educated voice.

  ‘I’ve always thought Indira Shankar very under-rated myself.’

  ‘No, I mean Classical; Western Classical. Renaissance, Baroque. ’

  ‘I’m aware of it but I don’t really have the taste for it. I’m afraid it all sounds like hysteria to me.’

  ‘That’s the Romantics,’ says the man with a private smile but he has decided Shaheen Badoor Khan shares some kindred feeling with him. ‘So, what line are you in yourself?’

  ‘I am a civil servant,’ Shaheen Badoor Khan says. The man gives his answer consideration.

  ‘So am I,’ he says. ‘Might I ask what area?’

  ‘Information management,’ Shaheen Badoor Khan says.

  ‘Pest control,’ the man says. ‘Congratulations then to our hosts.’ He raises his glass and Shaheen Badoor Khan observes that the man’s suit is smudged with dust and smoke.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Shaheen Badoor Khan says. ‘A fortunate child indeed.’

  The man grimaces.

  ‘I cannot agree with you there, sir. I have considerable issues with geneline therapy.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘It is a recipe for revolution.’

  Shaheen Badoor Khan starts at the vehemence in the man’s voice. He continues, ‘The last thing Bharat needs is another caste. They may call themselves Brahmins but in fact they are the true Untouchables.’ He remembers himself. ‘Forgive me, I know nothing about you, for all I know . . .’

  ‘Two sons,’ Shaheen Badoor Khan says. ‘The old way. Safely at university, God be praised, where no doubt they’re at things like this every night, prowling for wedding material.’

  ‘We are a deformed society,’ the man says.

  Shaheen Badoor Khan wonders if this man is a djinn sent to test him for everything he speaks is in Shaheen’s own heart. He was remembering a young married couple, their careers dazzling, their path luminous, the parents so proud, so delighted for their children. And, of course, the grandchildren, the grandsons. Everything you have, save this one thing, a son. A son and spare. Then the appointments with the doctors they had not asked to see, and the families poring over the results. Then the bitter little pills, and the bloody times. Shaheen Badoor Khan cannot count how many daughters he flushed away. His hands have twisted the limbs of Bharati society.

  He would talk more with the man, but his attention is turned to the party. Shaheen follows his direction: the woman Bilquis had derided, the good-looking country woman, makes her way through the excited crowd. The arrival of the diva is imminent.

  ‘My own wife,’ the man says. ‘I am summoned. Do excuse me. A pleasure to have met you.’ He sets his champagne down on the ground and goes to her. Applause as Mumtaz Huq arrives on the stage. She smiles and smiles and smiles to her audience. Her first song tonight will be a tribute to the generous hosts and a hope for joy, long life and prosperity for their graced child. The players strike up. Shaheen Badoor Khan leaves.

  Shaheen Badoor Khan’s raised hand fails to stop any of the infrequent taxis in this private-mobility suburb. A phatphat drums past, turns at a gap in the concrete central reserve and pulls over to the verge. Shaheen Badoor Khan starts towards it but the driver twists the throttle and surges away. Shaheen Badoor Khan glimpses a shadowed figure in swathes of voluminous clothing beneath the plastic canopy. The phatphat again crosses the median strip, rattles towards Shaheen Badoor Khan. A face peeks out from the bubble, a face elegant, alien, fey. Cheekbones cast shadows. Light glints from the hairless, mica-dusted scalp.

  ‘You are welcome to share my ride.’

  Shaheen Badoor Khan reels back as if a djinn has called the secret name of his soul.

  ‘Not here, not here,’ he whispers.

  The nute blinks yts eyes, a slow kiss. The engine races, the little phatphat pulls into the night traffic. Streetlight catches on silver around the nute’s neck, a Siva trishul.

  ‘No,’ Shaheen Badoor Khan pleads. ‘No.’

  He is a man of responsibilities. His sons have grown and left, his wife is all but a stranger to him these years but he has a war, a drought, a nation to care for. Yet the directions he gives to the Maruti driver who finally stops for him are not to the Khan haveli. They are to another place, a special place. A place he hoped he would never need go to again. Frail hope. The special place is down a gali too narrow for vehicles, overhung by intricately worked wooden jharokas and derelict air-conditioning units. Shaheen Badoor Khan opens the cab door and steps out into another world. His breath is tight and shallow and fluttering. There. In the brief light of a door’s opening and closing, two silhouettes, too slim, too elegant, too fey for mundane humanity.

  ‘Oh,’ he cries softly. ‘Oh.’

  TAL

  Tal runs. A voice calls yts name from the cab. Yt does not look. Yt does not stop. Yt runs, shawl pluming out behind it in a blur of ultra-blue paisleys. Horns blare, sudden looming faces yell abuse; sweat and teeth. Tal reels back from a near miss with a small fast Ford; music thud-thud-thuds. Yt spins, dodges the shocking blare of truck horns, slips between a rural pick-up and a bus pulling out from a halt. Tal halts a moment on the median strip for a glance back. The bubble cab still purrs on the footpath. A figure stands there, glimpsed through the headlight glare. Tal plunges into the steel river.

  Tal tried to hide that morning, behind work, behind huge wrap-round tiltjet pilot shades, behind the Lord of the Hangovers, but everyone had to come and get the goss on the faaabulous people at the faaabulous party. Neeta was celebstruck. Even the cool guys circulated past Tal’s workstation, not of course asking directly, but accessing hints and suspicions. The goss-nets were full of it, the news channels too, even the headline services were beaming pictures from the night to palmers all over Bharat. One of which was two nutes going at it on the floor and A-listers cheering and clapping.

  Then a neural Kunda Khadar burst behind Tal’s eyes and it all came gushing back. Every. Little. Detail. The taxicab fumblings, the airport hotel mumblings and profanities. The morning light flat and grey with the promise of another merciless day of ultra-heat, and the card on the pillow. Non-scene.

  ‘Oh,’ Tal whispered. ‘No.’ Yt crept home as early as the impending wedding of Aparna Chawla and Ajay Nadiadwala would permit, a shaking, paranoid wreck. Huddled up in the phatphat yt could feel the card in yt’s bag, heavy and untrustworthy as uranium. Ger rid of it now. Let it flutter out the window. Let it slip down the seat lining. Lose and forget. But yt could not. Tal was terribly, terribly afraid yt had fallen in love and yt didn’t have a soundtrack for this one.

  The women were on the stairs again, winding their way up and down with their plastic water carriers, their conversation dying as Tal squeezed past, mumbling apologies, then resuming in titters and low whispers. Every rattle, every snatch of radio seemed a weapon thrown at yt. Don’t think about it. In three months you will be out of here. Tal plunged into yts room, tore off yts stiff, smoke-reeking party clothes and dived naked into yts beautiful bed. Yt programmed two hours of non-REM sleep but yts agitation and heart-hurt and wonderful, mad bafflement defeated the subdermal pumps and yt lay watching the nibs of light cast by the window blind bindings move across the ceiling like slow worms and listening to the voiceless, choral roar of the city moving. Tal unfolded that last insane night again, smoothed out its creases. Yt hadn’t gone out to get involved. Yt hadn’t even gone out to get fucked. Yt had gone out for a simple mad time with famous people and a bit of glam. Yt didn’t want a lovely person. Yt didn’t want an entanglement. Yt didn’t want involvement, a relationship. And the last thing yt wanted was love at first sight. Love, and all those other dreadful things yt thought yt had left in Mumbai.

  Mama Bharat was slow answering Tal’s knock. She seemed in pain, her hands uncertain on the door locks. Tal had washed in a cup of water, removing surface layers of sleep and grime but the sm
oke, drink and sex were engrained. Yt could smell them off ytself as yt sat on the low sofa watching the turned-down cable news while the old woman made chai. She was slow about her making, visibly frail. Her aging scared Tal.

  ‘Well,’ Tal said. ‘I think I’m in love.’

  Mama Bharat rocked back on her seat, swaying her head in understanding.

  ‘Then you must tell me everything about it.’

  So Tal began yts tale, from stepping out of Mama Bharat’s front door to the card on the pillow in the numb morning.

  ‘Show me this card,’ Mama Bharat said. She turned it over in her leathery, monkey hand. She pursed her lips.

  ‘I am not convinced about a man who leaves a card with a club address rather than a home address.’

  ‘Yt’s not a man.’

  Mama Bharat closed her eyes.

  ‘Of course. Forgive me. But he is acting like a man.’ Dust motes rose in the hot light slanting through the slatted wooden blind. ‘What is it you feel about him?’

  ‘I feel I’m in love.’

  ‘That is not what I asked. What do you feel about him? Yt.’

  ‘I feel . . . I think I feel . . . I want to be with yt, I want to go where yt goes and see what yt sees and do what yt does, just to be able to know all those little, little things. Does that make any kind of sense?’

  ‘Every kind of sense,’ Mama Bharat said.

  ‘What do you think I should do?’

  ‘What else can you do?’

  Tal stood up abruptly, hands clutched.

  ‘I will, then, I will.’

  Mama Bharat rescued Tal’s discarded tea-glass from the rug before he could flood it with hot, sweet chai in his excited determination. Siva Nataraja, Lord of the Dance, watched from his place on the tallboy, annihilating foot eternally raised.

  Tal spent the remains of the afternoon in the ritual of going out. It was a formal and elaborate process that began with laying down a mix. STRANGE CLUB was yts mental title for yts venture to Tranh. DJ aeai sourced an assortment of late-chill grooves and Viet/Burmese/Assamese sounds. Tal stripped off yts street clothes and stood in front of the mirror, raising yts arms over yts head, relishing yts round shoulders, child-slim torso, full, parted thighs free of any sexual organ. Yt held yts wrists up, studied in reflection the goose flesh of the sub-dermal control studs. Yt contemplated yts beautiful scars.

  ‘Okay, play it.’

  The music kicked in at floor-shaking volume. Almost immediately Paswan next door began banging on the wall and shouting about the noise and his shifts and his poor wife and children driven demented by freaks perverts deviates. Tal namasted ytself in the mirror, then danced to the wardrobe cubby and swept back the curtain in a balletic twirl. Swaying to the rhythm, Tal surveyed yts costumes, weaving permutations, implications, signs and signals. Mr Paswan was beating on the door now, vowing he would burn him out, see if he did not. Tal laid out yts combo on the bed, danced to the mirror, opened yts make-up boxes in strict right to left order and prepared to compose.

  By the time the sun set in glorious polluted carmines and blood, Tal was dressed, made up and geared-in. The Paswans had given up hammering an hour ago and were now treating Tal to half-heard sobbing. Tal ejected the chip from yts player, slipped it into yts bag and was out into the wild wild night.

  ‘Take me here.’

  The phatphat driver looked at the card and nodded. Tal hooked up yts mix and slumped back on to the seat in ecstasy.

  The club was off an unprepossessing alley. In Tal’s experience, the best clubs usually were. The door was carved wood, grey and fibrous from years of heat and pollution. Tal guessed it had been there even before the British. A discreet camera bindi blinked. The door swung open to the touch. Tal unhooked yts mix to listen. Traditional dhol and bansuri. Tal took a breath and walked in.

  A great haveli had once lived here. Balconies in the same weathered grey wood rose five floors around the central courtyard garden, now glassed over. Vines and climbing pharm bananas had been let run and ramble up the carved wooden pillars to spread across the ribs of the glass dome. Clusters of biolume lamps hung from the centre of the roof like strange fetid fruit; terracotta oil lanterns were arranged across the tiled floor. All was flicker and folded shadow. From the recesses of the wooden cloisters came low conversation and the musical burble of nute laughter. The musicians sat facing each other on a mat by the central pool, a shallow rectangle dappled with lilies, intent on their rhythms.

  ‘Welcome to my home.’

  The small, bird-like woman had appeared like a god in a film. She wore a crimson sari and a Brahmin’s bindi and carried her head cocked to one side. Tal guessed her at sixty-five, seventy. The woman’s gaze darted over yts face.

  ‘Please, make yourself at home. I have guests from every walk of society, from Varanasi and beyond.’ She pulled a thumb-sized banana from its broad-leafed vine, peeled it open and offered it to Tal. ‘Go, eat eat. They grow wild.’

  ‘I don’t want to appear rude, but . . .’

  ‘You want to know what it does. It will get you into the way we are here. One to start, that is the way we do it. There are many varieties, but the ones by the door are the ones to start with. The rest you will discover on your journey. Relax, my lovely. You are among friends.’ She offered the banana once again. As yt took it, Tal noticed the curl of plastic behind the aged woman’s right ear. That tilt of the head, that dodge of the eyes, were explained now. A blindhoek. Tal took a bite from the banana. It tasted of banana. Then yt became aware of the details in the woodcarving, the pattern of the tiles, the colours and weave of the dhuris. The individual parts of the music became distinct, stalking and twining around each other. A sharpness of focus. A lifting of awareness. A glow in the back of the head like an inner smile. Tal ate the rest of the banana in two bites. The old blind woman took the skin and deposited it in a small wooden bin already half-full of blackening, fragrant peels.

  ‘I’m looking for someone. Tranh.’

  The old woman’s black eyes hunted over Tal’s face.

  ‘Tranh. Lovely thing. No, Tranh is not here, yet. But Tranh will be, sometime.’ The old woman clasped her hands together in joy. Then the banana kicked in and Tal felt a relaxed warmth spread down from yts agnya chakra and yt hooked up yts music and explored the strange club. The balconies held low divans and sofas, arranged intimately around conversation tables. For those who did not do bananas there were elegant brass hookahs. Tal drifted past a knot of nutes, slo-moed in smoke. They inclined their heads towards yt. There were a lot of gendered. In the corner alcove a Chinese woman in a beautiful black suit was kissing a nute. She had the nute down, yts back on the divan. Her fingers played with the hormonal gooseflesh on yts forearm. Somewhere Tal reasoned yt should be leaving, really, but all yt felt was a warm dislocation. Another banana, yt thought, would be good.

  The crop from the far left pillar gave a short, sharp rush of well being. Tal stepped carefully to the edge of the pool to look up at the tiered balconies. The higher you went, the fewer clothes you needed, yt concluded. That was all right. Everything was all right. The blind woman had said.

  ‘Tranh?’ Tal asked of a knot of bodies gathered around a fragrant hookah. An achingly young and lovely nute with fine East Asian features peered out of a press of male bodies. ‘Sorry,’ Tal said and drifted on. ‘Have you seen Tranh?’ yt asked a nervous looking woman standing by a sofa of laughing nutes. They all turned to stare at yt. ‘Is Tranh here yet?’ The man stood by the third magic banana vine. He was soberly dressed in a semi-formal evening suit; Jayjay Valaya, Tal guessed from the cut. A smart man, thin, middle-aged but took care of his flesh. Fine, aesthetic features, thin-lipped, a look of intelligence in his darting eyes. The eyes, the face, were nervous. His hands, Tal observed through the marvellous power of the banana that put everything into significant focus, were well manicured, and shaking.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ the dapper man said.

  ‘Tranh. Tranh. Is yt here?’ />
  The man looked nonplussed, then plucked a banana from the fist beside his head. He offered it to Tal.

  ‘I’m looking for someone,’ Tal said.

  ‘Who is this?’ the man said, again offering the banana. Tal brushed it away with yts hand.

  ‘Tranh. Have you? No . . .’ Tal was already walking away.

  ‘Please!’ the man called after yt, clutching the banana between yts fingers like a linga. ‘Do stay, and talk, just talk . . .’

  Then yt saw. Even in the flicker-lit shadows beneath the balcony, there was no mistaking the profile, the angle of the cheekbones, the way yt leaned forward to talk animatedly, the play of the hands in the lantern light; the laughter like a temple bell.