Dead Money

by Srinath Adiga

  What a tempting thought that was. The dead had it easy. All they had to do was lie still in a box and decompose. He remembered the look on his father’s embalmed face at the funeral parlor. Calm, peaceful, perhaps even a trace of a smile, as if trying to advertise the idea of death to those looking at him.

  He pictured the same look on his own face, then glanced at the bottle in his hand. It was three-quarters full. Enough for an eternal sleep. His hands trembled slowly at first and then after a while, pills were flying out of the bottle’s open mouth.

  He dropped it to the floor and wept loudly into his hands. He hadn’t cried like this since the night his mother collapsed on the kitchen floor, thirty-odd years earlier. Then, as now, nothing made sense. Then, as now, the night seemed like it would never end.

  AT SOME POINT, he must have gone to sleep. Because when he opened his eyes, he saw blades of daylight in the room. Something crunched under his feet when he got out of bed. It sounded as if he’d stamped on a beetle. Then he remembered the pills.

  He went to the window and tightened the gap in the curtain, scared of letting anything in. Even light. In the bathroom, he washed his hands and brushed his teeth mechanically, without looking in the mirror.

  His body felt devoid of mass as he padded down the stairs. No flesh, no bones, no sinew, just pixels that would vanish the instant someone pressed a remote.

  In the kitchen, he tipped some cereal into a bowl and opened the fridge. There was no milk. On another day, he’d have simply gone to the supermarket to fetch some. But his hands trembled at the mere thought of stepping outside his front door. He clenched his fist to stop the shaking, but it sped through his body right down to his knees, forcing him to lean on the counter for support. Twenty-four hours earlier, he hadn’t known fear. Now, it was inside him, choking his airways. How his life had changed in one afternoon.

  Because of one person.

  He sniffled.

  Why, Mathias? Why?

  Suddenly, he picked up a bowl from the drying rack and hurled it to the floor. Then another and another. Something he didn’t recognize had taken over his body and he let it. Because he wanted to feel hate. He wanted to know what it smelled like, tasted like. Because if there was one thing he understood less than love, it was hate. And more than anything in the world, he needed to hate Mathias.

  He threw cups, plates, wine glasses. When he ran out of breakable objects on the drying rack, he turned to the cabinets: more plates, bowls, glasses, cups, dishes, bottles, jars. Crash, crash, crash, crash.

  The glittering pool of shattered glass and porcelain on the floor reminded him of Chinatown. He’d destroyed his kitchen, yet couldn’t feel any hate, just a deep and excruciating sadness. Tears streamed from his eyes as he thought about Mathias. Not the man from the day before, but a boy of nine, jumping on the frozen surface of a pond till the ice beneath his feet broke, then a cackle when his boots sank in the water as if it were the funniest thing ever. A gum-chewing teenager who told the guidance counsellor he wanted to grow up to be a dirty old man in a smoking jacket, fucking women half his age. The counsellor laughed, not realizing it wasn’t a joke.

  A twenty-year-old Mathias, who was seriously depressed when he started losing his hair, but delighted when a slew of movie stars with shaved heads made bald sexy. The Mathias who wore fake tan. The Mathias with a ceiling mirror in the bedroom. The Mathias who psyched himself up by playing Kanye West before big meetings. And then the Mathias from the day before who whispered, “Chinese lantern.”

  Which was real? If they were all real, then where did the last Mathias come from? Was there a defining moment, a sermon heard at a rally or on the internet? One carefully calibrated to harness the anger from broken dreams? Or was it accomplished in infinitesimal steps? Like walking unmindfully through a forest: a series of paths, all unmarked, each one taking you deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. But you didn’t know it was darkness even as you entered its belly, because there were many others like you, a brotherhood saying this darkness was light. So you thought it was light.

  The day before, Theo had wept for the Chinese man. Now, he wept for the friend he’d lost. He wouldn’t have thought he’d have any tears left. Maybe it wasn’t tears that gushed from his eyes; maybe it was blood. The kind that washed the streets of this city.

  32.

  ON A CHILLY AUTUMN MORNING A FEW MONTHS after the Chinatown riots, Theo stepped out of his house to find the world had turned orange. Countless orange banners draping building faces and trailing from lampposts. Orange bleeding into the raucous human mass assembled on the street: T-shirts, wigs, capes, flags, body paint. All in a color that once inspired a visceral terror in Theo, but that day he pushed through the throngs of cheering Dutch Pride supporters, hands tucked in the pockets of a coat that was defiantly black.

  Soon, he arrived at Mara’s apartment. She was still in her nightdress, hair tied back in a bun. A clenched jaw sharpened the lines of her face, making it appear harsher than normal. He followed her to a smelly, cluttered room starved of light by the drawn curtains. She returned to her spot on the sofa and continued watching the news.

  “And now we cross over live to the Hall of Knights at The Hague, where the new Dutch prime minister is about to be sworn in …”

  The rottweiler face of Charles Barbour flashed on-screen, looking less of a rottweiler than usual. For the ceremony, the Dutch Pride leader was attired in a sharp black suit, hair glistening with product. A bit like those “Before/After” ads for grooming centers. In the “Before,” Charles looked like a street criminal. In the “After,” he appeared to be doing a passable impersonation of a statesman.

  The king, a tall man with a thin crop of red hair, read the oath in a dull, listless voice. Charles repeated it, palm beside his ear. A few moments later, they shook hands, blinking into the barrage of camera flashes.

  Mara turned away sharply, as if she couldn’t bear to look. In the last few months, she’d been campaigning furiously to prevent this moment from coming into being. She’d been arrested twice: once for spray-painting “Fascist” on the doors of Dutch Pride supporters in the neighborhood, and the second time for throwing eggs at the man on-screen now. He looked straight at the camera, smiling gleefully, as if he knew she’d be watching.

  “We’re fucked. Totally fucked. You know what’s coming. You know what’s going to happen next, don’t you?” she said, cheeks flushed.

  Theo nodded glumly.

  “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you have anything to say?” she snapped.

  “What would you like me to say?” he answered with a sigh of irritation.

  She scoffed, “See, it’s happening already.”

  “What is?”

  “You’ve accepted it. Accepted him.” She pointed at the TV. “You may as well wear an orange shirt because soon, you’ll find the means to justify everything he’s going to do. Stockholm fucking syndrome. You know what? You can sit back and pretend everything’s okay. I won’t.”

  “Fine,” he said, hoping she’d shut up, as her shrill voice was giving him a headache. But his passivity seemed to only fuel her anger.

  “You know what your problem is? You run away when things get hard. You’re a coward.”

  Theo glared at her. How dare she accuse him of cowardice? Did she have any idea what he’d been through? People like her who judged from their high horses would never understand that sometimes, courage was just the ability to wake up every morning and carry on despite knowing how fucked the world was. Courage was the strength to look another person in the eye after you’d seen the darkest depths of the human soul.

  And to her earlier point, no, he hadn’t accepted Charles Barbour, because you couldn’t accept something that didn’t exist. He’d banished Charles behind an impenetrable wall, along with Mathias and everything else that tormented him. Because if he didn’t, he’d either go insane or kill himself.

  Of course, he didn’t say any of this, because there was no point. S
he was up and away, orbiting the room in the grip of a fevered delirium.

  “We’re going to march to The Hague. The resistance will continue. We won’t give up,” she muttered to herself.

  “We? Who is we?”

  “The group.”

  “The group?” He laughed scornfully. “You sound like Adolf Hitler toward the end of the war, when he was moving phantom armies. The group’s dead. No one gives a fuck anymore.”

  “Viktor does.” She glowered.

  “Viktor. Are you crazy? The man’s a wanted terrorist. So what’s the plan? Are you two going to set up your own little terror shop, the new Baader-Meinhof? Set off car bombs? Run like hunted animals and get shot? Is that what you want?”

  “Sometimes you’ve got to fight fire with fire.”

  Theo inhaled sharply and rose. Enough of this lunacy. But just as he was about to leave, she gripped his arm and threw herself at him. The force caused them both to topple to the sofa. He tried to get up, but was pinned by her weight as she pushed her head into his chest. A second later, he felt the warmth of her tears soak into his shirt. He leaned back and sighed.

  This was her moment of hard landing, he realized. Her worst nightmare had come true and there was nothing she could do about it, because she wasn’t up against a system or an ideology, but the greater forces of history. Not a battle you could hope to win. He’d come to this conclusion one blistering afternoon in Chinatown a few months earlier, and now it was her turn.

  It wasn’t going to be easy. Because people like her needed to be angry with something all the time. It was her life force, her raison d’etre. How would she cope when she had nothing to fight against? Without a cause or a group, she had nothing but hundreds of knickknacks stolen from here and there. Her life was empty, just like his. That’s why she was leaning on him, because like him, she had no one else to lean on. He wouldn’t have minded this so much, but for one thing: the damn vintage-store smell wafting from her pores.

  He stifled his breath and held his nose high above her head, waiting for her to finish her cry. Meanwhile, at the other end of the room, the TV had moved on from the inauguration to other news.

  “Accusing China of unfair trade practices, the European Parliament in Brussels today announced a flat thirty-seven percent duty on all Chinese imports. This follows similar punitive actions from the United States. The move has been described as unfair by Beijing, which has promised retaliatory measures. The trade dispute comes amidst growing tension between China and the West. Senior Communist Party officials also condemned US arms sales to Taiwan’s pro-independence government, calling it an interference in its internal affairs. More on this soon.”

  33.

  A FEW DAYS LATER, THEO PAID MARA ANOTHER visit. It took several knocks to bring her to the door. She was dressed in her nightgown, eyes pink and muddy, either from lack of sleep or too much of it. She said nothing, but trudged straight back in. He shut the door behind him and followed her.

  Inside the living room, the curtains were drawn, the darkness concealing a new array of smells lurking beneath the old. Her vast collection of knickknacks disappeared and reappeared in the flickering light of the TV.

  She stepped around the tower of dirty plates accumulated over the past couple of days and fell on the couch. She looked like a different person now, lying there with her head resting on a pile of cushions. Her long, bony face was stripped of all anger and in its place, a blank stare directed at the television.

  He watched from the armchair with a look of sympathy, as he’d been through something similar not too long before. So over the next few weeks, he made a point of checking in on her regularly. Each time, he sat at a safe distance, in case she felt the urge to hug him. They hardly said a word. The TV babbled in the room’s dusky silence, each day delivering a fresh instalment of bad news.

  “China cancels operating license for forty-seven EU firms …”

  “Cyberattacks on American corporations linked to Beijing …”

  “Over two hundred killed in Tibet riots. China blames the CIA …”

  “Russia, China and Iran to sign mutual defense treaty …”

  Theo watched the events unfold with growing consternation: the rise of nationalism, the ratcheting of global tensions, the slow slide from news to propaganda. History, like Hollywood, had only so many plots; “economic crisis leading to war” was one that was rehashed time and time again.

  When he wasn’t following the news, he streamed documentaries on World Wars I and II as if that might help him prepare for the next one. In a way, you could argue that World War III, if it did occur, would make a perfect sequel to number two. The villain who you thought was dead reappeared, except there were more of him. Not to mention more planes, more warships, more submarines, more WMD. Would this Michael Bay epic be indeed the war to end all wars? Or were there more instalments in the franchise? Like Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween.

  “Do you think it’s going to happen?” he asked Mara in an attempt to share his anxiety.

  “What?” she answered from the sofa. By now, he was certain, it contained a permanent imprint of her comatose body.

  “War.”

  She shrugged, meaning “I don’t know” or “I don’t care.” She slid lower on the couch, causing her purple nightdress to bunch at the knee. It was the same nightdress she wore the day before and possibly the day before that. When was the last time she showered? he thought, twitching his nose.

  Suddenly, he became aware of the room: the darkness, the clutter, the smells, the congealed remains of the previous night’s takeaway in the bowl. All the things that had become wallpaper over the weeks, but now garroted him.

  How can she live like this?

  He rose abruptly and left, convinced he’d be dragged to her level of misery if he stayed.

  But concern for her well-being brought him back a couple of weeks later. He stood at her door, knocking repeatedly. When there was no answer, he dialed her number. An automated message informed him her phone had been turned off.

  What if she’d done something to herself?

  A sick feeling rose from his stomach. He took a step back and kicked the door with all his might. After a few attempts, it flew open. He charged inside, shouting her name.

  Suddenly, he stopped and did a double take.

  At first, he thought he’d entered the wrong apartment. The presence of minimal furniture—sofa, TV stand and bookshelf—flushed the room with space and light. Gone, too, was that low, funky smell. In its place hung a faint trace of incense.

  Theo stared, puzzled by the transformation. A few moments later, he heard footsteps in the corridor.

  “Where the hell were you?” he asked when she appeared in the room.

  “Meditating. I joined a meditation group last week. What are you doing here? How did you get inside my apartment?”

  He pushed past her and raced out of the flat, embarrassed and obscurely angry.

  34.

  THE ROCKET SOARED IN THE SKY: A TAPERING silhouette with a fiery tail that ruptured the ink of dusk. The newscaster’s voice accompanying the grainy picture was a dull monotone:

  “Last night, Chinese warships fired ballistic missiles into the Taiwan Strait. The move, seen as a warning shot to the pro-independence movement in Taipei, has drawn widespread condemnation from the international community. A spokesperson for the US State Department has said America is going to stand by its ally. Two carrier groups from naval bases in Guam and Diego Garcia were rushed to the South China Sea. In the UN Security Council, a move to condemn Beijing has been vetoed by China and Russia. But the US secretary of state responded by saying it doesn’t need a UN mandate to protect the island nation in the event of a Chinese attack. Several European leaders, including Dutch PM Charles Barbour, have reaffirmed their support for the island nation, saying they wouldn’t hesitate to be a part of a coalition that guarantees Taiwan’s territorial sovereignty. Meanwhile, tensions rose in the subcontinent as American and In
dian forces conducted joint military exercises near the Indo-Tibetan border …”

  Theo turned off the TV as if that would make all the bad news go away. A new gloom descended from the skies when he looked out the window. It was snowing. Large, foreboding flakes swaying in the air, bearing a message from the future. An endless winter.

  Companies making nuclear shelters would be a good investment, he inferred instinctively. Then laughed at the ridiculousness of the thought process.

  The doorbell rang. He answered, surprised to see Valerie at his doorstep, a dusting of snow on her shearling coat, face hidden behind a pair of sunglasses that reflected his face.

  She pushed past him and rushed to the warmth of the living room. The gloves came off first, followed by her coat, but the sunglasses remained on her face as she settled on the couch.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, observing her turned-down mouth.

  She lowered her gaze and scrunched the gloves on her lap.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked again.

  “Jan says we should get rid of it,” she answered at last, voice hoarse and cracked.

  “Get rid of what?”

  “The baby.” She looked at her belly. The bump underneath the black dress was the size of a small cushion.

  “Right,” he said, semi-distracted as his mind flitted back to the Chinese missile test.

  “Aren’t you even going to ask me why?” she snapped.

  “Sorry … Why does he want you to get rid of the baby?” he asked, forcing himself to concentrate.

  “We can’t afford it.”

  “What do you mean, can’t afford it?” He eyed the expensive coat, curled up beside her like a fluffy animal.

  She opened her handbag and offered him a piece of paper: an itemized list of expenses in a spreadsheet. He held it in his hand and studied its contents.

  Toys and clothing: fourteen thousand euro.

  Food: ninety-one thousand euro.