Objects in the Mirror

by Nicolò Govoni

  NIL

  “Good God,” goes Nil, wincing. Feeling something touching him, he withdraws his hand and sticks it in his pocket but then he realizes it’s just Ferang being Ferang and so he pulls it out and reaches out for Mel’s but she avoids his touch, and Nil feeling like he is about to faint, and the young hijras are singing among the old and dirty columns and although their faces are clean, almost ethereal, an idea of filth hovers over them.

  How can they even call this a temple? This place looks like a warehouse.

  The drug is kicking the hell in. As soon as Nil looks away, the cracked plates of the floor and the ceiling inch closer, but when Nil looks directly at them they go back to their starting positions. They’re quite sneaky, he thinks, the floor and the ceiling. And now the old hijra kneels down before the altar and joins in the same lullaby and his hoarse voice contrasts with that of the hijra children, and then he lights incense in a pot and the smoke rises like a pestilent breath and soon it envelops the entire room and Nil covers his face with his hand and has to squint to see Mel, whose face is turned away, and Nil would like to take her in his arms and take her out of here and, hell, why not? and so he takes a first tentative step, and then another and then another, and he’s going to hold her when Ameen enters the crypt and Nil knows it’s him, he instinctively knows it, and he’s a Muslim, of course, just as he had imagined, and that’s why Nil rests an arm on Mel and—

  MEL

  The bhang is having an effect on her, too.

  “It’s him,” Nil blabbers, trying to protect her with his body. He is freaking out.

  “No,” says Mel. Biting the inside of her cheek, grinding her teeth until she feels the thin skin tear and her wrath decrease a little, she says, “No, it’s not.”

  The leaders of the seven districts of the Pit enter one by one from a small door on the opposite side of the room. First but kept at arm’s length, Khader Bhai, the boss of the Muslim ghetto, whom Mel knows by sight and thanks to whose consent the best Afghan heroin circulates in the black market of Ayodhya. The others follow suit—Aarav, the old chief of the Brahmins; John, the Christian district’s leader, a dry man, dark as ebony, ostensibly devoid of jewelry or any symbol of religious recognition; Narayan, the guru of the Hindu district; Ab, the young leader of the Sikhs; Val, the Madame of Budhwar Peth; and closing the queue, also kept at a distance, Ram, the leader of the Dalits.

  The children stop singing, silence falls on the room, the old transgender lights the last candles around the statue of Naranari as the seven await standing between the columns, fidgety, casting grim glances across the room, while Nil, hurt by Mel rejecting his so-called protection, stands by her but doesn’t really, and Ferang observes the scene with martyr-like eyes.

  The small door opens again. Gabriel makes his entrance at a slow pace, a wonderful wedding sari covering him from head to foot, finished with gold and red, a veil framing his pretty face, elaborate embroidery on his chest, sides, buttocks, you name it, all of it dropping in train behind him. Piercing his nostril, a silver ring. To his ear lobes, pendants of the same material, and around his wrists, bracelets. But his most elegant accessory walks arm in arm with him—Ameen. Thin and leggy, he struts with self-control betrayed by his eyes darting from one corner to another, keeping the leader in check.

  Nobody talks. Ameen parts from Gabriel, starts biting his nails with feverish dedication, cocking his head and flexing his wrist to better reach the desired point. Even in the midst of this act, he keeps his eyes on the other guests. Except for the thick hair covering his arms and the back of his hands, he looks like every other man, his appearance so unexceptional to be both his worst shortcoming and his best stratagem.

  “This,” says Mel. “This is Ameen.”

  The Goddess Naranari, wrapped in incense coils, shines with the reflections of the small fires placed all around her. Gabriel parades down the aisle, his head held high, his chest puffed, swaying the nervous hips, accepting a cup from the hands of the old transgender. He lights a match, he drops it to set the bronze cup on fire, he watches the flames and speaks.

  “Exile, be my dwelling,” he says in the secret language of his community.

  “Exile, be my dwelling,” echo the old transgender and the children.

  “Exile, be my dwelling,” repeats Mel.

  The old transgender folds his hands, bows his head, takes the blade and the mirror from the hands of the statue. He raises both the objects before his face as if to show them to the dual Goddess. Whispering a prayer, he turns, starts walking, keeps his head down, approaches the altar and shows the objects to Gabriel.

  Gabriel hangs his head and prays. He nods, the flames swirling on top of the altar. The old transgender plunges the dagger into the bronze cup. The fire kisses the metal, purifies it. No one makes a sound, only the incessant whisper of a prayer moves Gabriel’s bloodless lips. While an old hand trembles with pain wielding the hilt, the flames brandish the dagger by the blade and they scratch it, showing its red meat, cleansing it, and the mirror reflects the dagger, and they both show themselves for what they actually are—the great contradiction.

  Gabriel closes his eyes, he opens his legs, the sari swelling in a flood of scarlet veils. The old transgender pulls the dagger from the fire and he is sweating when he rises the blade and the mirror high above his head before falling to his knees, his trembling lips lost in singing a soft prayer, and the

  NIL

  ceiling is melting with the floor but Nil has no eyes but for that thin man, that Ameen standing right there across the room, whom, except for the thick layer of hair spurting out from his cuffs, pouring over the back of his hands, is the most fucking common man he’s ever seen in his life, and doesn’t return his gaze in spite of Nil willing him to do so, and the old hijra kneels before the young hijra and places the mirror, that damn mirror, on the ground between his legs, and the fire dances and laughs and shouts blasphemies on the blade and the blade falls cutting through the air and the red sari flares up and

  MEL

  the dagger disappears under the scarlet cloth, burning it, the old transgender reaching between Gabriel’s legs, now bare and reflected in the mirror, defenseless before the ascending, luminescent metal, which dissipates the darkness and touches Gabriel’s sex, and Gabriel stops praying and bites his lips and closes his eyes a second before

  FERANG

  the old transgender cuts his cock.

  Ferang winches. He can’t raise his eyes from the mirror. That mirror showing the emasculation. That mirror now bloodstained. Sprayed with hissing blood. Covered by it. It takes several seconds to complete the process. The arm of the old transgender moves time and again with the utmost precision. Cutting the skin. Cutting the tendons. The nerves. Gabriel deprived of his manhood. His eyes wide open. His mouth agape. Observing the fire as if it were a pitcher of water in the desert. As if it were poison in the eyes of a suicidal. Then those eyes roll in their sockets, and Gabriel begins to tremble, to shake like an earthquake in Nepal, but he does not yield. Gabriel stands.

  His genitals, however, collapse. They collapse with a miserable sound. They collapse on the crimson surface of the mirror between his legs. And the mirror moves and the image reflected in it changes.

  MEL, NIL, FERANG

  In the blood, you can see a Crooked Woman, a man in a Bear costume, and a Little Girl.

  FERANG

  Ferang vomits inside his burqa. Stretches out his arms to cling to someone but finds no one to cling to. Retching, he bends. He glimpses at Mel rushing to the altar. Gabriel fell to the ground. The temple is in chaos. Or so it seems to him, on all fours panting in his own vomit. Nil’s hand on his back is warm and light.

  “Don’t worry,” says Nil. Nil is kind.

  Ferang tries to take off his veil, but Nil stops him. Nil brings him to reason. Nil loves him. Kill him. The little transgenders appear around them. They say nothing but they point at the door through which the three of them entered. Nil helps Ferang up. They star
t walking. The leaders are exiting from the opposite door. The old transgender is bent on the still figure that is Gabriel. Ferang can’t see Ameen. The bhang. Oh god, the bhang.

  “Mel,” says Ferang, once they’re in front of the door.

  “I’m here,” says she. Mel pops up next to them. She wasn’t there. But now she is.

  The children pave the way through the maze of corridors. Several times Ferang must stop to regurgitate in the corners. In a sense, he’s pleased that part of him will remain here, living his mark in a place that just a few are allowed to visit. Then they are back in the long, dark tunnel, walking the opposite direction. Up the stairs. Out from the hatch in the cabin. The old woman is gone. The movable stove is, too. Taking off his burqa, Ferang feels reborn. But then he shudders as if the temperature dropped all of a sudden. He tries to throw up again but nothing comes out. Before leaving the cabin, Ferang sees Mel’s bloodstained gloves lying on the ground.

  The way back through the Pit seems infinite and short at the same time, reduced to flashes of consciousness in a sea of fog. A sensory bhang-induced mist. Ferang swims in it, and when he re-emerges, he meets the searching gaze of a shoemaker inside his shop or of a porter with his load of merchandise. Then the mist submerges him again. Resurfacing, an after-school run by the Missionaries of Charity. The fog again. A gang kicking the carcass of a dog. Fog. The Worlds United logo on the wall of an inhabited shack. Fog. The Breach. Only now he realizes that the group of little transgenders has abandoned them. Only now he realizes that neither he, nor Nil, nor Mel have uttered a word throughout the whole journey. They cross through the Breach. It’s getting dark.

  Nil takes the iPhone out of his pocket.

  Mel: “What are you doing?”

  Nil: “I’m calling Manuj.”

  Mel: “Have you seen your face in the mirror?” The question makes Ferang uncomfortable. “Do not call him.”

  Nil’s fingers stop heavy on the touchscreen. He drops his eyes, unable to look Mel in the face. “If they hospitalize him out of the Pit,” he says, “Gabriel is a dead man.”

  “And what does that have to do with Manuj?”

  Nil looks up but once again he fails to meet her eyes. He lays his eyes on Mel’s breasts, giving no sign of being aware of his own inadequacy. His eyes are vacant, his face swollen and sagging. He shakes his head. Lifts his gaze to meet hers, then looks away. He doesn’t answer.

  Mel rings up one of the slaves of her father, asking him to get the Enfield, park it in a specific place and leave. They retrieve the motorcycle near the statue of Bapu. Mel pays two children for having been watching over it even without her asking them. She seems to know them. Ferang high-fives them. Nil looks straight ahead. He doesn’t seem to see them at all.

  On the motorcycle, Ferang closes his eyes enjoying the dazzling sensation of motion multiplied by the bhang high. The bhang. The bhang and severed cocks, bouncing around in his mind.

  Ferang asks Mel to pull over. Getting off, he tries to vomit but nothing comes out. Soon after, he finds himself at home. In front of it, rather. He staggers onto the alley. Laughs, or thinks about laughing, but the muscles of his mouth are numb. When he gets to the door, he hears the engine of the Enfield roar and knows that others are gone. He’s inside. Suresh is lying on the ground, possibly dead. Ferang slams against the door frame of the corridor and collapses on his bed. The world turns into a spinning top. Ferang gets up. In the bathroom, he tries to vomit. Again nothing comes out, but bent over there he can admire up close the bacterial colonies formed around the toilet hole as if they are natural works of art. Collapses in bed again. His eyes closed, thoughts running rampant.

  Ferang falls into a vigil sleep, or a sleepy vigil. Thoughts on the loose. Success. Immortality. Triumph. When he opens his eyes, it’s pitch black outside. You fight injustice, but only on Tuesdays. He glides back into sleep.

  ***

  Late in the morning, Ferang wakes up.

  “You alive?” Suresh is bent over him.

  Ferang rises his head with a start, damp cotton filling his skull. The cotton absorbs his brain fluids, slowly bringing him back to his senses. It’s pleasant, perhaps, being unable to feel anything. Or maybe it’s just another prison, Ferang can’t decide.

  Wiping the string of burr that connects him to the mattress, he realizes that he slept face down on the filth, without the sheets in between. A sense of disgust swells in his stomach but it doesn’t graduate to vomit, it stays a sketch, an idea of nausea. Ferang sits.

  “Ameen here?”

  “Ameen?” Suresh goes.

  Panic. Shit. What nasty screw up, yet Suresh doesn’t seem to pick up on it, confusion flitting about his pockmarked face.

  “Spandan,” Ferang corrects himself. He runs a dry hand over his face. “Has Spandan been here yet?”

  “Yes, while you were sleeping. I gave him the money.”

  Suresh rests his weight on the crutch to get back upright. Limps toward the other room.

  “We should go to Lazeez to celebrate,” goes Ferang.

  Suresh balances his weight bending down to pick up his briefcase. “Celebrate what?”

  Ferang waves his hand. “Friendship.” He smiles.

  Suresh stares at a point on the wall in front of him as if pondering upon it. Then he turns and walks out.

  Ferang stops smiling. He rubs his cheeks. Takes a shower. Even though it’s fucking hot, the water from the bucket is cool enough to wrest the air from his lungs. He curses softly and gets dressed, his brain still lying on a bed of cotton.

  Once outside, a neighborhood girl, Rosa, welcomes him offering him a flower.

  “Five rupees,” goes Rosa.

  Ferang, staring straight ahead, pretends not to see her. The child looks at him bewildered. The after effect of the drug keeps him from hearing the deafening sound of horns on the main road, to smell its rottenness, to feel the sweat already on his skin, but the idea of all these things fills him with anger and frustration all the same.

  What am I doing here?

  Like every morning, he’s supposed to visit the clinic of the Breach to help out, but since it’s already kind of late, he decides he doesn’t really give a damn. It’s the bhang influencing his choices, he tells himself, but then again he can’t help it. He goes back in and masturbates to his own photo before heading to the bus station.

  Here, a street vendor recognizes him and raises his hairy arm. Ferang walks straight. He doesn’t look anybody in the face, and those whom he looks at by mistake, he pierces them with eyes devoid of emotion. Stop.

  At the sight of the bus that should lead him to college—a can packed with human flesh throbbing and kicking—Ferang feels disgust. He stops a taxi, a yellow and black taxi, old and battered, but with a good system of air conditioning. On that he is very particular today. He orders the driver to pull up the windows and shoot the air conditioner to the maximum. Fuck the environment.

  His head against the headrest, looking out, Ferang hums. At first he’s unable to recognize the melody. The tune emerges devoid of title or any label whatsoever from the layers of cotton in his mind. Then the cloud surrounding his thoughts move aside, and the sun shines through. “I’ve got you under my skin” by Frank Sinatra.

  Once in front of the University, Ferang gestures with his hand to the taxi driver to keep driving. He has him take him to the Gymkhana.

  “I’m paying with Paytm,” Ferang tells the driver.

  Not at all, says the Bear, his reflection in the car window. It’s through his Paytm account that Ferang collects the donations for the kids.

  Ferang asks the driver to wait for him to withdraw some cash. At the nearest ATM—located in an air conditioned room, thank god—he fishes a credit card from a money belt hidden under his shirt. He collects ten thousand rupees and hides nine thousand eight hundred in the money belt. Waiting for the machine to confirm that his transaction has been completed, he sees, jutting out the last compartment in the back of the room, two pairs of
shoes. In part hidden by a divider, a homeless father and child sleep on the ground.

  Ferang’s out.

  “Bhai,” he tells the taxi driver leaning through the window. “I have only this.” He waves a hundred rupees bill.

  The driver tries to argue in broken English. “Two hundred,” he manages to say.

  Ferang sighs. Fishes another one hundred bill from his pocket. Looks at it as if it were an object of sentimental value, the legacy of a deceased relative, and finally hands it to the taxi driver along with a gracious smile.

  In the Gymkhana, he gives Nil’s name and says he is his guest. He is handed all the necessary items for the pool. In the locker room, he undresses careful not to show his family jewels, just like all other members of the club. He spends the rest of the morning doing a few sporadic laps, but mostly flirting with a middle-aged fat, rich and fully clothed woman in the pool.

  “I’m from Bombay,” she says, “And Colaba is incomparable to this rock. But Candil has decent clubhouses, too, I guess.”

  Ferang takes part in the conversation nodding and articulating monosyllabic, well calculated answers at the end of every sentence. For lunch, he orders a Port Blair lobster, gulping down white wine imported from France. The lady pays the bill.

  In his peripheral vision, he reads the front page of the Times on the iPad of a rich bastard sitting at the next table. The word “Pit” gives him a sense of exhaustion, a sort of pain of living coming from the bottom of his stomach. The cotton in his head begins to dissolve.

  To further relax his mind, he gets an Ayurvedic massage. After a back massage, he gets one for his feet. Nil’s treat. He relaxes and thinks about Priyal. He thinks she’s rich enough for him to marry her, one day. He sends her a message. In the late afternoon, he books one of the BMWs from the transport service of the Gymkhana to go to Candle Cove.