River Of Gods

by Ian McDonald

  ‘Someone who is clever and successful and quiet and deep, with good taste and mysteries and secrets and is scared by it all but wants it so much.’

  ‘Isn’t that what we’re all looking for, janum?’

  ‘Someone who happens to be a man.’

  Nanak leans forward.

  ‘This is a problem to you?’

  ‘I got out of Mumbai to get away from complicated relationships and I’m in the most complex of them all. I Stepped Away because I didn’t want to have to play that game; the man and woman game. You gave me new rules, you put them in my head, down there, and now they don’t work either.’

  ‘You wanted me to check out that everything was functioning within its operational parameters.’

  ‘There has to be something wrong with me.’

  ‘There is nothing wrong with you, Tal. I saw right through you to the other side. You are perfectly healthy in body, mind and relationships. Now you want me to tell you what to do. You call me guru, you think I’m wise, but I won’t do that. There’s never been a rule of human behaviour that hasn’t been broken by someone, somewhere, sometime, in some circumstance mundane or spectacular. To be human is to transcend the rules. It’s a phenomenon of this universe that the simplest of rules can give rise to the most complex behaviours. The implants just give you a new set of reproduction-free imperatives, that’s all. The rest, thank the gods, is up to you. They wouldn’t be worth anything if they didn’t give rise to the most troubling and complex problems of the heart. They are what makes all this glory, this madness worthwhile. We are born to trouble as sparks fly upwards, that is what is great about us, man, woman, transgen, nute.’

  The notes of the flute stalk Tal. Yt smells a rumour of rain on the evening wind that blows up from the river.

  ‘It’s who, not what,’ Suniti comments as she gathers up thalis. ‘Do you love him?’

  ‘I think about him all the time, I can’t get him out of my head, I want to call him and buy him shoes and make him music mixes and find out all the things he likes to eat. He likes Middle Eastern, I know that.’

  Nanak rocks on yts hip bones.

  ‘Yes yes yes yes yes. My assistant is, of course, right as she always is, but you haven’t answered her question. Do you love him?’

  Tal takes a breath.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then you know what you must do,’ Nanak says and Suniti scoops the metal dishes up in the tablecloth and whisks them away, but Tal can tell from the set of her shoulders that she is pleased.

  After the dinner is the Jacuzzi. Nanak and Tal lap in nipple-deep water in the big wooden tub on the other wing of the flying bridge, dappled with marigold petals and a subtle slick of tea-tree oil, for Nanak’s persistent athlete’s foot. Incense rises vertically on three sides, the air is preternaturally still, climate in abeyance, waiting.

  Patna’s airglow is a golden nebula on the western horizon. Nanak strokes Tal’s thighs with its long, articulate big toes. There is no gendered rule of arousal in it. It is touching, what nutes do, friends do. Tal lifts two more Kingfishers from the plastic cool box, uncaps them on the side of the tub. One for yt, one for yts guru.

  Nanak, do you think it will be all right?’

  ‘You, personally? Me? Yes. It is easy for people to have happy endings. This city, this country, this war? I am not so sure. Nanak sees a lot from yts bridge here. Most days I can see the Indian Brown Cloud, I see the water level go down, I see skeletons on the beach, but they don’t frighten me. It is those dreadful children, those Brahmins, they call them. Whoever gave them that name knew a thing or two. I tell you what it is scares Nanak about them. It’s not that they live twice as long, half as fast as we do, or that they are children with the rights and tastes of adults. What frightens me is that we have reached a stage where wealth can change human evolution. You could inherit lakhs of money, send your children to American schools - like all those inbred half-mad Maharajahs - but you couldn’t buy an IQ, or talents or good looks even. Anything you could do was cosmetic. But with those Brahmins, you can buy a new infrastructure. Parents have always wanted to give their children advantages, now they can hand it down through all future generations. And what parent would not want that for their child? The Mahatma, blessed be his memory, was wise in many many ways, but he never spoke bigger nonsense than when he said the heart of India was in the villages. The heart of India, and her head, has always been in the middle classes. The British knew this, it’s how a handful of them ran us for a hundred years. We are an aggressively bourgeois society; wealth, status, respectability. Now all of those have become directly inheritable, in the genes. You can lose all your money on the markets, go bankrupt, gamble it away, be ruined in a flood, but no one can take your genetic advantage away from you. It is a treasure no thief can steal, a legacy they will pass free to their descendants . . . I have been thinking about this a lot, these days.’

  Tal says, ‘Nanakji, you mustn’t trouble yourself. It’s nothing to do with us. We’ve Stepped Away.’ Yt feels Nanak stiffen against yts touch.

  ‘But we haven’t, baba. No one can. There are no non-combatants in this. We have our beautiful lives and our crushing little things of the heart, but we are humans. We are part of it. Only now it is us divided against ourselves. We will be at each other’s throats for our children’s futures. All the middle classes have learned from the Lost Women decades is how easy it is to create a new caste, and how we love that, especially when the bindi is in your DNA. It will rule us for a thousand years, this genetic Raj.’

  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 non-combatant. 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 sub-level 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 skirt 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 glowworm 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 crore rupees and telling me you never want to see me again, to never cross your path again. I know what this. 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

  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 Ga
rden 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.