Objects in the Mirror

by Nicolò Govoni

***

  Mel is at home and she’s holding her music box. “Enough with this shit,” she says, and flushes the drugs down the toilet.

  The next day, crossing the threshold of Candle Cove, Mel feels thankful. At the counter, the Smoking Woman is staring at the wall in front of her, smoke leaving her lips in blue clouds; the notes of “Enola Gay” by Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark echo through the gloom; and in the corner, sitting at their usual places, Nil and Ferang, drinking in silence. Upon seeing them, Mel laughs. She laughs. She laughs a hearty laugh.

  “Look who’s here,” she says and sits.

  Both flinch in surprise, but while Nil’s eyes light up like those of a puppy after hours of solitude, Ferang’s shun contact, clinging to the wall beside him.

  “Quite a fun party, yesterday, wasn’t it?” says Mel. No one replies. “I mean, I heard Imal went nuts and they had to give him some seven stitches in the forehead.” Mel orders a Chai Russian waving her hand. “What a hypocrite. He doesn’t eat meat because it’s impure, but his nostrils are always covered in white.”

  Ferang sips his Gin Rickey as if he were sitting alone. Nil rubs his eyebrows. Mel moves forward with her knee under the table, touching Nil’s legs, feeling his warmth, the sweetness of a thigh hinted at under a fine cotton layer, and there she stays, taking in the mixture of discomfort and joy she is giving him. Then, taking off the ballet shoe she’s wearing, she lifts her leg, reaching out with her bare foot, stroking

  NIL

  the most vulnerable part of him, where the blood flows bountiful.

  The Whole swells with the strength of a natural disaster. It screams, and Nil can’t do anything to shut it out. Mel fornicates with his best friend, so why can’t he stop himself from loving her?

  “Can we change the damn music?” Nil says, setting aside the fear of being judged musically illiterate. It’s something by someone from too long ago, and Nil is in no mood to educate himself.

  The waiter rushes to the table. “Certainly, sir,” he goes. “Tomorrow I will ask the boss to change the playlist.”

  “No, not tomorrow—ah, shit.” Nil clings to the table, his knuckles whitened. “I demand to speak with your boss, now.”

  “C-certainly,” says the waiter and disappears through a door behind the counter.

  Nil downs the rest of his drink and huffs and runs a hand on the table.

  “Come on, guys,” pleads Ferang. “This is our refuge.”

  “We’re starting a war,” says Nil, unable to face him.

  “It’s the Cartel who wants to divide the Pit to keep their reign,” Mel says. “Why else would they leave the corpse of drug dealer in the mosque with a bindi on his face?”

  Nil glances at her, but Ferang doesn’t seem to care.

  “My boss will soon be with you,” says the waiter, reappearing from God knows where before vanishing again.

  “It’s good for us,” she goes. “The Mafia is creating confusion, and confusion can generate interest.” Mel takes her Chai Russian from the waiter’s hands. “We’ll use it against them. If it’s a war that we’re starting, it’ll be one to free people.”

  “You make it sound like he’s gone already.” Ferang’s broken lips shine, alcohol-wet. “Gabriel, that is.”

  Silence falls.

  There’s something wrong with Ferang’s tone and the way Mel drinks her cocktail, and Nil cannot quite place it, this feeling, but it’s undeniable and frightening and it feels like waking up in the middle of the night after a lucid dream. And then Nil meets her eyes, and there is something nesting in their deep, and he can’t look away. He can’t look away anymore.

  Nil is glimpsing it, the truth, and Mel knows that. She moves her foot away from the inside of his thigh. Yet another unintelligible song fills the room.

  Nil stands.

  “Sorry, sir,” says the waiter. “The boss is not here.”

  The Whole roars and his heart is pounding into his ears and Nil walks to the counter, trying to get as far from the table as he can.

  “Please,” says the waiter, choked, stepping between Nil and the door behind the counter.

  Nil looks down on him, the room spinning all around.

  “He will skin me and make a hat with it!”

  Nil stumbles and needs something to lean on and reaches for the bar, but thinking he might go for the door the waiter blocks his path. Nil clenches his fists.

  “Nil,” says Mel, gripping his hand. Her skin feels soft and fair and deadly. “Come back.”

  Mel sits down and looks up, waiting for him to follow suit, but he can’t, he just can’t sit down with them again. He thinks of Worlds United and the Mafia and Gabriel risking everything—and for what? What is there to fight for if there is no love in this world? What use is to speak if there is no one there to listen?

  “Ex-excuse me,” Nil says, and walks away.

  Outside, there is no trace of the Mercedes. Nil calls up that asshole driver yelling to cut it with gambling or whatever he’s up to and show up before he has his family sent back to Bangladesh or wherever he’s from. He knows he’s from Ayodhya and he knows all too well how offended Mom would be by the way he treats his servants. Mom and Dad, businessmen, philanthropies, luminaries, hypocrites, mobsters, and his own blood.

  Nil shakes his head, trying to calm down, the lamppost showering his loafers in ochre light. He calls the driver and asks him to look for Ganguli’s phone number.

  “The cricketer?” Nil echoes. “No, you idiot, the journalist from the Express.”

  Nil lights a Benson, enjoying the gunpowder aftertaste on his lips. He kicks the dust on the ground and then bends to dust off his forty thousand rupees Gucci loafers. The driver texts him the number.

  “Hello, Mr. Ganguli, sir,” Nil starts when the journalist picks up. “Do you kindly have a minute for a few questions?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s about the Cartel.”

  “I have nothing to say about it. Who is this?”

  “Sir, we met in a cafe near the ghetto a few days ago. I’m—”

  “I know who you are. I have nothing to say to you.

  “Mr. Ganguli, please.

  A scoff. “This is not a game, kid.”

  “No, I know. I have information.”

  “Then contact someone who’s interested.”

  “I need your help.”

  “I’m going to hang up now.”

  “My father was Gabriel’s lover.” Nil listens to the silence. He’s always known, but hearing himself say it out loud makes all the difference. “He took him in right when Gabriel got to Ayodhya. He was a pretty boy, Gabriel, and an intelligent one. For years it looked like he was going to be the heir to the company. Not me, him. Until he remembered he wasn’t one of us, and he just left. He joined his own kind, down in the gutter, and betrayed my father, after all he did for him. That’s why my parents moved to Delhi. My father couldn’t handle the heartbreak.” Nil breathes in. “Even then, especially then, Dad wouldn’t pay attention to me. I was not as handsome, not as smart, not as lowcaste... I was not Gabriel. Until I—” A beat. He breathes out. “I guess my father hired Ameen to do what Gabriel had failed to do, control the slum.”

  Silence. Nothing but the road humming away behind Nil. Ganguli says nothing and for a moment Nil fears he might have cut the call. He knows he’s still there, though.

  “Ameen,” says Nil, “You had almost got him. You were almost there, two years ago. Why didn’t you follow through?”

  “He bribed everyone up to the Supreme Court.”

  “You too? Is this what happened?”

  “He killed my wife. A home fire, they said, but I know it was him. He bought the firemen, the policemen, even the damn reporter covering the news, and that son of a bitch worked two cubicles away from mine. And I have two children.”

  “We placed a trap. We’ll get him red-handed.”

  “After all you told me, do you still believe it’s him who wants the Hijra dead?”
/>
  The road murmuring.

  “Tell me where I can find him.”

  Nil can almost hear Ganguli shake his head. “Why, if your plan is so perfect?”

  “Because I want to look him in the eyes.”

  A beat. A pause. A silence so long Nil thinks he has hung up.

  “Baraspada Road.”

  “What?”

  “Baraspada Road, number 47.” Ganguli sneers. “Baraspada Road in the New Territories.”

  “Thank you.” Another pause. “Do whatever you want with the information I gave you. Write an article, quote me. Clear your name. This is the truth.”

  “So very kind of you.”

  “You are a coward, Mr. Ganguli,” Nil says. “But I am not.”

  Ganguli laughs again. “It’s not your father, baba.”

  He hangs up.

  The Mercedes is waiting for Nil under the lamppost.

  “New Territories,” Nil tells the driver.

  Going north, the Mercedes plows the border of Ayodhya where traffic rules have no more value and the cars and motorbikes, all at least a decade old, crowd like ants, fighting for every single inch of the road—the viability of the district a portrait of the incivility of its inhabitants.

  Horrendous cement flyovers cut through the leaden sky, and when the road gets narrower, gray buildings crop up like mushrooms in Sikkim. Nil would have never thought that in the world could exist a place gloomier of the Pit, but here lives the Indian middle class with its innate lack of class and manners and sophistication.

  The driver pulls over in front of a small dilapidated clinic, a faded sign featuring the smiling face of a random Cameron Diaz hanging above the entrance.

  The iPhone in Nil’s pocket buzzes. Jiya. A picture of her hanging out with Victoria Beckham. Nil clenches his fists. Puts the phone away.

  At the reception desk, a fat auntie, whose husband might very well be a taxi driver, greets him with reverence, eyeing his clothing, and Nil shudders, those vulture eyes on himself, thinking that what he’s wearing is worth more than a year of her salary. He asks to see Mr. Ameen. The woman doesn’t flinch, doesn’t seem suspicious, she simply points a fat finger to the door down to the left of the hall, and while Nil walks that way, he knows that those eyes are fucking his twenty thousand rupees Ferragamo belt.

  Nil opens the door. He feels no catharsis. Feels no sense of accomplishment. He just walks in.

  Ameen is sitting at his desk, his hands resting on a sheaf of papers stacked with obsessive neatness, just like every other object in the room—a small globe used as a paperweight in one corner and a reading lamp in another; an archive containing the dossiers of those who Nil presumes to be his patients, on the wall a picture of the human anatomy. It looks like the set of an amateur film.

  His features are those of any civil servant whose face you wouldn’t remember even after seeing it dozens of times; the only remarkable part of him are his long fingers, ten ringed, tapered tools of deception, always dancing in the air, tracing, plotting, covered in hair, black, thick, powerful hair spurting out of the sleeves of his pristine white coat, drawing attention away from the frailty of his constitution: a harmless man, almost worthy of compassion for the indifference mother nature paid him.

  “What a pleasure,” exclaims Ameen, turning the palms of his hands up toward the ceiling.

  Nil stares at him. He’s got this.

  Ameen wobbles his head. He scratches his face. “Why, have a sit, boss, please.”

  A beat.

  “So, what do you need?” Ameen chuckles. “Cough or fever?”

  Nil holds his gaze. Here he is, Ameen. The man himself. Nil feels rancour mounting second after second. He has planned this moment for so long, but right now he feels unable to formulate a single thought. The room smells like drywall dust.

  “Just kidding,” Ameen laughs. The son of a bitch laughs. “I know what you need, boss, a bit of white powder, perhaps—”

  Nil tries to control his breathing.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Ameen bends to open a drawer. “You know, your Babaji...”

  At the mention of his father, Nil takes one step in the room.

  “Here.” A bag of coke lands on the desk.

  Nil can’t take his eyes off it. Fatigue. Craving. The Whole. Nil feels like he might lose his balance and crash on the spotless floor.

  “Why so troubled, sir?” Ameen grins.

  Nil pushes his glasses up his nose, a dark halo besieging his vision. He feels powerless. He feels like crying.

  “We are not the bad guys here, boss,” Ameen says. “You think we are, but you’re young, idealistic, which is a good thing—we need people like you. But we also need you to understand that we are resettling those people. We are freeing them from their own ghettos, giving them the opportunity to start a new life away from the Pit. Do you see it?”

  Fervish rage.

  “And if that requires some strength, so be it. You may think you’re saving the world, but you have no idea of their suffering, of these people’s needs.” Ameen licks his lips. “Tell me, boss, if you knew with certainty that the world cannot be saved, would you stop trying to change it?”

  Nil looks up.

  “Don’t be fooled by the beautiful words of motivators. Change is like digging for gold, it’s a chaotic process, dirty work, thankless and painful, which often ends with losing a leg, an arm, and a life or two. That’s right, to get something that is both good and long lasting, some of us must stoop low and swim in the shit and do what no one else is willing to do, and take no credit for the final result. Someone has to take the blame for the ruins of what once stood.”

  Nil feels dizzy and clenches his fists and takes a deep breath to calm himself.

  “But it’s easier for you, from your skyscrapers, to decide what is right and what is wrong, gracing the poor with your magnanimity, with the future that you have chosen to be best for them without even asking if it fits their culture, their traditions, their beliefs. It must be easy to live when your only problems are the ones you cause the others.”

  “You killed Gabriel!” shouts Nil at the top of his lungs.

  Ameen puckers his lips and cocks his head to the side. “And why would I ever do such a thing?”

  “Because—”

  Those long fingers cut him off in the air. “Gabriel used to be your father’s right arm.” Ameen brushes over the small paperweight globe. “But you know that already. And even now, though, now that he turned on us in the name of justice, he is still our main channel to sell water in the Pit. We might dicker on the price, but our relationship is in the best interest of everybody. Caos is bad for business.”

  “Liar.”

  “Did he tell you I wanted him dead?” Ameen scoffs. “He’s always been a drama queen.” He shakes his head.

  “You bastards want the Pit.”

  “You bastards?” Ameen waves him off. “I’m one of them. Middle class, lower class, we all get pissed on. I’m doing it for them.”

  “You’re doing it for yourself.”

  “Plus, boss, that land belongs to the state, and yet we build them apartments before we dismantle the slums.”

  “You do?” yells Nil. “Then why are they all on the streets soiling and fucking and shitting around?” Wrong argument. Damnit.

  Ameen laughs. “Here you go, boss. That’s why.” Ameen takes off a ring, a green one, then he puts it back on. “Nobody really cares. Everyone hates the slums. There is only one Ayodhya, the Ring—everything else is raw materials.”

  It’s a desperate need, what Neel feels now, a need to kill and cry and die, but the Whole inside of him has collapsed into a black hole, and taken over. “I will destroy you.”

  “Are you sure?” Nil realizes that Ameen never quite looked at him straight in the eyes, always somewhere near the mouth. “Who do you think covered up your little incident three years ago?”

  Nil’s stomach turns.

  Ameen pretends to read on the she
ets before him. “That’s right, boss. It was me who made her disappear. It was me who placed her yellow kurti back in your apartment. If I were you, I’d stop that little investigation.”

  Nil stares at him in disbelief. “Who do you think you are?”

  “Go,” says Ameen, “before I call your father.”

  Nil stands before him a moment longer, looking for something strong to say, something to scare the shit out of him, to walk out with some resemblance of dignity, but there is nothing, nothing left alive.

  Nil slams the door open but then turns and grabs the coke and only then he gets out of the small office and, crossing the narrow corridor, he finds himself at the front desk, the sunlight filtering from the only window dazzling him, but while he shields his eyes with his hand, he realizes it’s nighttime. There can’t be any sunlight.

  The fat woman is on her feet, pointing her fat finger again, this time toward him, and Nil touches his nose and sees blood. Rushing into the street, blinded with anguish, Nil feels an unspeakable dread thinking the blood might drip on his loafers. He throws himself in the car, out of harm’s way.

  “Sir!” says the driver, but Nil has no time to silence him and is fumbling with the handle of the minibar to get a drink, and only then he remembers the dope in his pocket. Ameen’s fucking famous dope. Nil tries to take the envelope out, but his trousers are too tight, and he can’t reach it, and the packet is swollen, so mighty full of blow, and so, in exasperation, tearing the pocket off, he grabs the bag and presses it to his chest, calmed by the palliative effect of it.

  The driver is staring through the mirror with his ox eyes, but Nil can’t think but of one thing, and so he opens the packet, coke flying all around, and grabs the silver tray and is about to pour the equivalent of three lines when a searing doubt assails him.

  “What was Manchester’s score last night?” he asks the driver.

  The driver says he doesn’t know but then he’s wise enough to take out the company’s smartphone and run a Google search, and while waiting, Nil can feel his heart beating powerful beats in his eardrums so much so that for a second he feels like he’s back at the Dome.

  “They lost, sir,” says the driver. “Two to one.”