The Book of Chocolate Saints

by Jeet Thayil

  Accompanied by an assistant to Dev they showed their papers at a security gate and walked past a tower of locked wooden chests and entered a tin-roofed warehouse. Skylights ran along the centre of the ceiling in twin wings, upside-down landing lights that illuminated a world of lost objects, and in a corner they found the things they had shipped to India from New York. Then Dev’s assistant raised the first objection.

  “One, because DOA is September, TR will not apply. You will have to pay.”

  The Indian obsession with acronyms – what was he talking about? There was a long discussion and they understood that without a transfer of residence they would have to pay an additional holding charge.

  “Two, the size of your TV is larger than specification. Three, CD and DVD are different machines or the same?”

  A separate duty would have to be paid on each item. They followed the assistant to a room jammed with tables and the kind of petty bureaucrats Paro had warned them about.

  “The customs department is full corruption,” she told them when she heard their boxes had been at the clearance hangar for two months. “They will make you pay extra for every day.”

  Unexpectedly the customs men were amenable. Write a letter to the Deputy Commissioner of Imports, they said. Explain that you were travelling and that’s why you were unable to pick up your shipment. Dev’s assistant, their agent in the transaction, seemed disappointed with the new turn of events and he watched suspiciously as Xavier wrote in longhand in English. The official read the letter with some care and told them to wait until the deputy commissioner arrived. He was at the Central Secretariat in North Block – Goody knew the words were tribal power mantras, Central Secretariat, North Block – and he would be back, though the official could not say when. He did not know the DC’s schedule; nobody did; all they knew was that he would return, like the Saviour.

  After waiting an hour Goody gave her cell phone number to the clerk and asked him to call when the deputy commissioner arrived. They walked back to the car and asked the driver to take them to a restaurant. When he stopped at an establishment that had ‘PURE VEG’ on its frontage in lieu of a name they were both too exhausted to argue.

  Upstairs it was cool and gloomy. The waiter was a boy of about seventeen, who rushed to fetch water and refill the napkin holder. In his haste, rushing, the boy dropped the menu. Immediately he picked it up and dusted it and kissed it. Goody understood. The day had just begun and the menu was an object of veneration, the good book that gave the boy his livelihood.

  The Bombay sandwiches they ordered were soggy with butter and chutney. Xavier was lifting up a slice of bread to examine the cucumber and tomato when Goody said, “Last night on the terrace, what did you mean when you said nobody knows how much time we have?”

  “It’s a useful thing to brood on, I find, it puts life into perspective.”

  He lit a cigarette. He was cutting down, he said.

  “Did somebody die? Is that what this is about?”

  “Everybody died if you fast forward into the future. What can I say? What can I say? Let the day perish wherein I was born. I’m sorry, Goody.”

  “Everybody says that to me. I’m sorry, Goody.”

  They got into the car and went back to the reception area where Xavier dozed for a few minutes. He was woken up at four by the ringing of Goody’s phone. The deputy commissioner had arrived. They went through security and out into the sun-made landscape and they tried to keep to the shade but there were too many things in the way, too many objects that had lain unclaimed for years, piled office chairs and desks, Fords and Toyotas and SUVs, combine harvesters and Chinese armoured trucks. Parked outside the warehouse gates was a customised car with curtains in the back and a blue beacon on its roof. The vanity licence plate said DC SS1. The deputy commissioner’s chariot, no doubt, said Newton, as they squeezed around it. Inside, Dev escorted them to the deputy commissioner’s office and they presented their papers to a guard who went into the cabin and immediately returned. The DC was waiting for them, he said. They felt sudden new attention directed their way. After a day of waiting they had received the call from the corner cabin; now they were persons of interest to every guard, clerk, and agent in the hangar.

  In the cabin three air-conditioning units ran at full blast. A couch and armchairs were grouped in a seating area to the side and behind a large desk sat a man in his thirties. Instead of the bureaucrat’s bush shirt and matching trousers he wore a slim-fit Polo, a Stalin moustache, and jeans. On his forehead was a flame of red from his visit to the temple. He waved them to seats and Goody noticed that there were a lot of men in the room.

  “Yes,” said the deputy commissioner to Goody. “Your company?”

  “We work out of a studio office,” said Goody. “We are self-employed.”

  “Studio office,” the deputy commissioner said to a man seated on the couch. “Kumar, you know this studio office?”

  Kumar was a bearded man in a white kurta and churidars. He took off his dark glasses and said, studio. An assistant brought a bundle of files and attempted to place them on top of other files on the desk. Over there, the deputy commissioner said, pointing to a far corner. He positioned his pen over the files that were nearest. He scanned the first two pages and made a small pout with his lips and signed quickly and fastidiously and moved to the next folder. The files were identical to the file that their agent and his assistant had been carrying all day, in which the letter Xavier had composed had been attached to a checklist of contents, a photocopy of the dollar cheque they had paid, and the shipping form and receipt.

  The deputy commissioner looked at Xavier. “Where are you employed?”

  Xavier checked his wristwatch and froze.

  Goody said, “He is a painter and writer. His retrospective is coming to the National Gallery and his writing has appeared in Harper’s and Outlook.”

  “Harper’s and Outlook,” said the DC. “Kumar,” talking across the room, “who is Harper’s and Outlook?”

  “Harper’s,” said Kumar, repeating the word slowly, making it sound like a threat. “Outlook.”

  In Hindi he said, “I don’t remember.”

  Goody started to explain why it had taken them so long to come and collect their things. They had been travelling and work-related decisions had to be made – but the deputy commissioner was not interested.

  “Have you done your post-graduation?”

  “Yes.”

  “What subject? From where?”

  “International relations and an MA in gender, media, and culture.”

  “What aspect international relations?”

  “Conflict resolution. My subject was Kashmir. I travelled around the state for two months.”

  “What is resolution to the conflict in Kashmir?”

  “Free and fair elections? Something drastic, I’d say.”

  “Easier said than done. What will solve the conflict?”

  Goody said something about the people of Kashmir and the deputy commissioner seemed to like the phrase.

  “All these people write books. People with long beards give long lectures but what happens to the conflict? What difference it makes to the people of Kashmir? What can your international relations and conflict resolution do? Painters” – he gestured at Xavier – “paint pictures and journalists make their careers, like that fellow” – and he looked at Kumar, who knew the name his boss was looking for and supplied it – “he made his career with one stupid article on the people of Kashmir. I used to be a journalist also. I’ll tell you, ninety per cent of them are middlemen and money collectors. Some tea?”

  There was no question of refusing. He was magnanimous now that he’d put Goody, a graduate of international relations, in her place, and Xavier, a writer and painter, in his. Goody asked for his card and the man slid it over. His name was Sunil Srivastava.

  He took her card and said, “Do you work on Saturday?”

  “No.”

  “Did I say something wr
ong?” he said to the men, who were laughing.

  “No, sir,” Kumar said.

  “Bring tea for ten,” Srivastava said to a canteen boy. The tea arrived in small paper cups, each consumed in a single sip.

  “It is a problem,” he said. “The transfer of residence is a problem but don’t worry.”

  He made a show of signing the file.

  He said, “It is waived.”

  Xavier lit a cigarette. There was no ashtray in the room.

  Srivastava understood the man who had made his career with the article on Kashmir. His main job at the newspaper had been to inform on his colleagues and friends, including Srivastava. In this way he managed to stay employed and win promotions. His colleagues’ careers depended on the information he passed to the proprietors or kept to himself. That kind of power was intoxicating and addictive. Srivastava loathed the man but he understood him.

  He did not understand the painter who kept examining his shoes, old-fashioned shoes that were red in colour. What kind of man wore red shoes? Srivastava knew there was something wrong with the painter, but what? Kumar was intelligent. He had the gift of the gab. He could stand in front of a crowd of people and talk for an hour but the fellow had no insight into personality because he had no interest in personalities. He looked at the painter but did not really see him. What was it about the painter? Srivastava thought maybe it was the eyes. They were too steady and too cold, as if they were the eyes of a criminal who had donated them on the eve of his execution, not from a feeling of generosity or brotherhood but from a kind of egoism. He wanted his eyes to continue seeing in the world. The painter moved his head from side to side like a blind man. Under his misshapen nose a beard hung to his chest, the ragged beard of a ruffian. Smoke stains surrounded the mouth.

  Insolent fellow smoking in my office and tapping ash on my floor.

  He turned his attention to the woman. She was speaking but he could not understand her. Conflict resolution. What did she know about conflict resolution? Let her try to work in a government office and she would understand that conflict was eternal and resolution impossible.

  Boobs too large for her shirt.

  It was difficult to keep his eyes on her face. He was a boob man; it was his weakness. Was she saying something about his job? The painter yawned and tapped ash on his floor and settee.

  Srivastava said, “Customs? I’ve been here for some years now.”

  Goody had asked if a job with the customs department had been his goal as a young man. The deputy commissioner hadn’t heard her or he had misheard her, a consequence of doing too many things at once. The signing of files, the ordering and drinking of tea, the remarks to subordinates, the flirting with a woman in the presence of her partner, the casual display of power.

  Then Srivastava said, “I am thirty-nine. I never wanted to get into this line. My interest was philosophy and religion.”

  Actually philosophy and religion were Kumar’s subjects, but Kumar was his subordinate and crony. Kumar was his creation. They were close enough to be family members. What belonged to Kumar belonged to him.

  “Everything is written on the head, as per fate. I could have landed up somewhere like New York. I went there last year to see the Times Square,” he said. “Such a long flight. For fifteen hours I am sitting next to a Negro. Never again.”

  Goody tried to fill the silence that followed and made a mistake.

  She said, “What kind of books do you read? We have lots of reference titles in our studio. We can send you something.”

  “I’ll take your help. I surely will. I’ll take books on religion, philosophy, and my favourite, governance. I will come to your office.”

  “I’ll ask my assistant to send you a list and you can let her know which ones you want.”

  “No. I will come to your office for your help.” And it was Xavier he was looking at, as if it was Xavier’s help that he wanted. Goody recognised it as his tactic, to speak to one person and look at someone else. “I’ll come to see you. Give me your mobile.”

  He returned her business card so she could write her number on it.

  “He’ll bring a turtledove and pinch off its head and the blood shall be drained out on the side,” said Xavier.

  Srivastava said, “What side?”

  “Leviticus,” said Xavier.

  “Kumar,” said Srivastava, “what is this levity curse?”

  Kumar took a seat beside Xavier. “He is quoting Bible, sir.”

  Srivastava said, “Why?”

  “He is making a comment on power, sir.”

  Srivastava was comfortable with power. It was one of his subjects. Also he had a special interest in spiritual matters even when they emanated from suspicious foreign sources such as the Bible. This man had mentioned blood. He had the guts to sit in a government office and talk about blood.

  “Explain,” he said.

  Kumar said, “People have many needs and desires. What do they really need? They need the possessions they have accumulated. The phones and TV. They need their families and friends to give them company. They need money to buy some luxuries and necessities. They need to know that their homes are secure and they have opportunities in life. It is the job of power to provide these small needs. What will power receive in return? It receives the goodwill of the—”

  Srivastava said to Xavier, “Do you go to Lodi Gardens?”

  Xavier said, softly, “There is no peace there, only unease.”

  Srivastava said, “What are your qualifications?”

  Xavier said he had set aside an unfinished list of suicide saints and begun a new one. He was making a list of dark-skinned saints to correct the western historical record that acknowledged only fair saints with blond hair and blue eyes. Many saints were dark-complexioned, swarthy, or negroid, with unwashed hair and poor nutrition. Like Jesus. He hoped to compile a book of chocolate saints, a directory in which there would be no pale faces, only dark and darker, as a counterbalance against the many books in the world that had no black or brown or yellow faces, not to mention greeny faces such as the one he was addressing. Even so it was a partial list, he said, because it could never be complete. There were too many everyday saints, obscurely situated patron saints of the commonplace overlooked by the church and unseen by the laity.

  “They may be described as imaginary saints but only by the unimaginative,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “As you know, everything is prophecy.”

  Srivastava looked at Goody and said, “Kumar?”

  “He is speaking of sants,” Kumar said.

  Goody said, “Thank you. If we’re done, we—”

  “Naked came you out of your mother’s womb and naked shall you return,” said Xavier. “This is my qualification, perhaps my only one. What, I wonder, is yours?”

  And now Goody was in a hurry to be off, to take her ailing lover and leave the hellish premises of the customs shed. She asked if there was anything else that remained to be done. They were free to leave, said Srivastava, and it was clear that there had been no reason to sit and watch the man conduct his business; it had simply been his wish.

  Early the next day he called to ask if their goods had arrived. He turned up at the studio office unannounced, the blue beacon flashing from the roof of his car. Goody told Payal at the desk to serve him tea and tell him to wait. She came into the reception area twenty minutes later and told Srivastava she was taking a meeting. She said he could help himself to any of the books on the shelves and made an apology and left. When Srivastava finished examining the shelves he planted himself in front of Payal’s desk and asked her how much she earned. She told him a figure slightly higher than her salary. He nodded and smiled and put his card on the desk. You should work for customs, he said, sarkari job security is better. She said, thank you, uncleji, I’ll keep your card just in case. He said, uncle? No, no, no. Tell me one thing. When I speak to someone like you where should I look, your face or your chest area?

 
“I think he was asking a genuine question,” Payal told Goody. “He really wanted to know. Thank god the phone rang then and I got busy. When I hung up he was gone. Where do you find these types?”

  Goody said, “Where do you not?”

  When Payal left work at six that evening she didn’t notice the car that was parked across the street with a clear view of the entrance to the studio. It had tinted windows and a blue beacon light and a vanity licence plate that said DC SS1.

  3.

  The sun disappeared in January and the temperature dropped to four degrees. All day the skies were overcast, the streets ruled by fog or smog, ambiguous matter that hung to the ground in a low white veil. For weeks there had been no sign of sun and if you looked up at night you saw no stars, only the impenetrable sky. Goody imagined fleeing the city and driving south, driving without cease until they reached brightness. But car crashes were common and flights had been grounded or diverted: there was no escape. They kept their coats on and huddled around space heaters. The houses of Delhi were designed for the summer; winter was brief and deniable but only for those who lived in houses. The homeless wandered the streets wrapped in blankets or sheets, rubber slippers on their feet. When the cold entered their bones it did so at night and they died in their sleep.

  By the last week of February winter had gone and it was difficult to imagine a time when overcoats and sweaters had been an indoor necessity. The temperature rose ten degrees and more from one week to the next; in a matter of days, the city went from winter to summer, from heating to air-conditioning. Then, in April, a rain bird’s high cry announced the coming of a storm. It took days to build. The bird called at all hours of the night and the morning, always with the same note of dementia. The breeze smelled of moisture but when the storm came it came in the form of dust, a yellow powder that coated trees and cars and people, bleached yellow that may have fallen from the moon; and there it stopped, there was no rain.