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Walls of Silence

Page 27

by Walls Of Silence Free(Lit)


  The gap in the counter, that’s what I needed to find. Find that and then it would be a short step to the stairwell and a way out of this inferno.

  First I had to find the counter. I crawled in what I took to be the right direction and found myself pressed against another table.

  I couldn’t breathe; drawing in air was like sucking on brick. I turned and crawled the other way, beginning to thrash as my hands sank into burning paper and molten plastic dripping from the seats.

  Something crashed to the floor nearby, plaster from the ceiling or a fan blade maybe. This is it, I thought. I should have been getting on a plane to New York in a few hours. In New York, I’d emerge into the sunlight, if Terry managed to do his thing. And then, armed with a stack of material in my hand baggage, I was going to sock it to these fuckers.

  But it wasn’t turning out that way.

  I started to slump and was surprised that there was nothing between me and the floor; no desk, no chair, no counter.

  I had found the gap.

  I crawled a few yards. The smoke was still thick, but the heat a little less intense.

  Then I heard shouts and footsteps. I headed toward them and found myself falling. The smoke cleared a little and I took a breath. I felt myself fly through space. Maybe I was dead.

  A fireman broke my fall.

  There was a loud clang as the oxygen tank on his back hit the deck. Through his mask I could hear him scream in pain and anger.

  He tried to grab me.

  I didn’t need rescuing; I’d just rescued myself. I flailed my arms and carried on down the stairs, through the line of firemen behind him.

  I emerged from the building at speed. There was a big crowd outside: police, soldiers, firemen, and onlookers. A few stretched out their arms, as if to take me, to comfort me. I charged at them.

  There was a loud explosion and a shower of glass and debris rained down, scattering the crowd.

  I ran like hell down the road and into the first alley I came to.

  It was a good five minutes before my lungs would accept the gift of oxygen.

  Raj was dead. Poor bastard. But I was alive. Burnt, but alive. My back stung where the blast had thrown me off Raj and I tried to crane my neck to get a look at the damage, my hands attempting to feel its extent. My eyes were unwilling to give up crying, blinking, and stinging, but I forced myself to inspect an area of burnt linen jacket and burnt shirt beneath. Where burnt cotton ended and burnt flesh began, I couldn’t tell. The only real guide was the pain. My right hand had suffered too; molten plastic from furniture had tried to mold itself on me, came away, and left a nasty mess.

  I ran my left hand through my hair, only to discover that I had been left with half an inch of stubble that spread black ash on my palm.

  I felt the bulge in my jacket pocket. I still had my passport, money, and a ticket to ride. But I needed to get back to the hotel to retrieve my stuff and head to the airport before someone cottoned on to the identity of a charred Caucasian racing out of the Askari fire and refusing, most impolitely, all offers of assistance.

  The sirens wailed nearby. I could hear the crowd too; they sounded as if they were enjoying the spectacle.

  The pain turned up a notch and I felt nauseous. I had to get back to the hotel.

  At the end of the alley there was a small market, brightly lit and even now still boisterous. There was no choice. I slunk through it as best I could, conscious of the stares. Children leaped around me, sometimes touching me, and it took all my patience not to lash out at them.

  Then suddenly I could see open road ahead, the yellow and black flash of taxis passing, like angry hornets. In a few moments I would be in the backseat of one of them. I felt myself relax, then warned myself not to, not until I’d made it.

  Someone walked into the center of the narrow gap between the stalls. A glimpse of khaki, a lathi hanging languidly from one hand. A policeman.

  I sidestepped between two stalls.

  “Do you need help, sir?” A large, friendly face peered around a dead chicken hanging on a meat hook.

  I stepped back and rammed my burn into the corner of the stall behind me. The pain tore through me. But I wasn’t going to let it show.

  “Actually I am lost. Perhaps youcanhelp me.” I heard my P.G. Wodehouse voice.

  “You are hurt, sir.”

  I thought of the actorless film set I’d seen earlier en route for Dr. Dadabhoi Road.

  I laughed the easy laugh of someone most definitely not hurt. “Oh, this mess, you mean. No, no. I’m an actor.”

  The man looked incredulous.

  “No, seriously.” I sidled up to him, glad of the pile of boxes of meat and vegetables cluttering up the back of his stall. They made a good screen. “We are filming something nearby. On location. An action movie.”

  The man’s eyes widened. “Golly. I think I heard about this. Where is it happening?”

  “That’s the point. There was a break in the shooting and I went off for a wander and appear to have lost my way.”

  “I will ask around. I am sure we can find out where you were, and I shall escort you back there.”

  I picked some fluff nonchalantly off the jam on the back of my right hand. “No, thank you all the same. You see, I rather want to go back to my hotel now. The director has been so infuriating, and I’ve had enough for this evening.”

  The man nodded solemnly. The actor’s sensitivity, he could understand that; he had read about that.

  “I am assuming you are staying at the Taj, sir,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  He peered at me closely. “Are you a famous actor?”

  “Have you seenLethal Weapon Six?”

  “No, sir, but I have seen the others on video.”

  I smiled. “Wait till you see this one; it’s the best of the lot.”

  He brought his hand to his mouth. “Oh my heavens,” was all he could manage.

  “But shh, okay? I don’t want to be pestered. I’m tired enough as itis.”

  “I shall take you to the Taj myself, sir.”

  The policeman was bearing down on us.

  “A lift would be marvelous,” I said.

  “My car is on the street, follow me.”

  By the time we reached it, he knew my stage name, the plot of the film we were shooting, and the names of every other cast member.

  By the time we got to the Taj, he knew my full list of credits. He was almost as impressed as I was.

  “The side entrance please,” I said. “Too much fuss round the front.”

  He pulled up exactly parallel to the discreet door. I autographed a piece of paper for him with a suitable expression of my gratitude and tried to hand him a thousand rupees for his trouble.

  “No, sir, I couldn’t. It has been a privilege.”

  I made him take it. He would discover how small a privilege soon enough.

  As the pain drove its steel toe into a new foothold on my back, I wished Raj had been there to applaud my performance.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Ifell against the door of my hotel room and, as it unlocked and opened, I stumbled through and kicked it shut.

  My hand and back were pools of sulfurous pain that bubbled and welled. I hardly noticed the splinters in my feet.

  The room was dark. I staggered to the mini-bar, took out all the bottles of Bisleri water, and started pouring them over me.

  Mistake. The paradigm of sting. Bees were bloody amateurs.

  I yelled.

  “Be quiet,” my mother said.

  I fiddled with the switch on the desk lamp and looked at the bed.

  She was lying on the bedspread, hands across her chest, her face half obscured by a loose layer of silken gray hair.

  “What on earth are you doing here?”

  She sat up, peeling her hair back behind her ears. Jesus, she’d aged. Puffy crescents under her eyes, the color of gravy, her network of wrinkles increased fourfold in the year since I’d seen her. She h
ad been beautiful. But now . . . she still was, but the beauty was frayed, an echo.

  She put her hand to her mouth. “Good God, what’s happened to you?” she said. I was tempted to ask her the same thing.

  “A fire, Mum.” I slumped facedown on the bed. A fire started by Askari henchmen. Why else would his office be so comprehensively vacuumed before the flames took hold?

  My mother got up and started to inspect me, wincing at the charred cloth and flesh on my back. She gently lifted my right hand, peered at it, and slowly replaced it on the bed.

  She ran her hand over my hair.

  I resisted closing my eyes, though the temptation was nearly overwhelming. There would be pursuers, men in suits with guns,lathi-wielding men in uniform with big dogs. “We have to get going.”

  “Don’t move.” She went into the bathroom and I heard her whipping the towels off their rods and running the faucets.

  She came back out with the bathroom wastebasket slopping with water, steam rising from it. She rummaged in a paisley-patterned overnight bag, the same one she’d lugged around Europe when I was a child and still featured on family vacations. Dad and I joked about it. Not about the bag itself, but its contents. She had everything in it. It was a challenge to come up with a situation for which her paisley bag couldn’t cater.

  She produced a small bottle of disinfectant and two tubes. One antiseptic, the other anesthetic.

  Cautiously taking my shoulders, she eased me into an upright position and started to remove the jacket. As she slipped off the right sleeve it brushed over the back of my hand. I nearly fainted with the pain.

  Then the shirt. I strained my neck to see what lay underneath. It was like removing the cellophane dividers from sliced smoked salmon.

  “Someone died,” I said.

  “Shush.”

  The image of Raj came back to me, tufts of mustache hair pressed over lips, white teeth bloodied, from biting his tongue maybe, or perhaps it was dye from the treasury tape. Surely I could have saved him? He was bound in stuff made to keep a few bits of lousy paper together. It should have been as easy as tugging at the ribbon on a birthday present.

  And yet, in the absurdity of his death, there had been a dark dignity, a sense that life would carry on in another form, that the ashes of Raj would remain part of something that mattered. His religion decreed a status for him and consoled him with the possibility of a better life next time around. Or was it simply that Raj was the kind of person that, when the flames licked over him, could focus on others: his sister, the wood nymph that now had a name. And me. He cared about me, despite the fact that I’d stuffed an order-routing agreement down my pants and gotten him killed.

  The shirt was off and my mother started with the tubes of cream. She didn’t have to warn me that it would hurt. I yelled out with the pain.

  “There,” my mother said, giving me a gentle pat on the shoulder.

  I looked at my stinking socks. “There are splinters somewhere under the slime.”

  My mother waved her hand. “Lie down.” She put on her reading glasses.

  “There isn’t time.” But I still lay down.

  Tweezers emerged from the paisley bag. She peeled off my socks, wiped my feet with a warm wet towel, and started searching.

  “You said someone died,” she said.

  “Yow.” It felt as if she’d drawn an arrow from me. She held up the tweezers to show me a small shard held between their jaws, an itty-bitty thing, no more than a quarter of an inch.

  “Yes, somebody died,” I said. I couldn’t tell my mother that the somebody had a sister, once a visitor to Hampton Court, a plaything of my father’s. And that I’d promised to make sure Preeti had a future.

  “Tell me what happened,” she said.

  “Just pack. We have to leave.”

  “I’ve just arrived,” she said.

  Why, for Christ’s sake? Why? I knew why: Distance was a curse for her and disaster the excuse she needed to come and confront it.

  “I’ll explain everything later,” I hissed. “Just please get packed.”

  I eased myself off the bed, flung open the wardrobe, scooped out my clothes, and stuffed them into the suitcase. I then tore my shirts,pants, and jacket from their hangers and loaded them into my suit carrier. I left out a fresh shirt to put on just before leaving.

  “Where are we going?” my mother asked.

  Good question. Wherewerewe going? It was now eleven; the car was booked for two; the flight to New York was at seven-ten. The flight to London was at five-fifty-five and Mum was going to be on it. First-class.

  Choice: Get a car now or go somewhere else and wait.

  Decision: Order another car. No, two cars. One for me, and one for Mum. She’d be safer if we separated.

  “Wait a moment,” I said. I called down to reception.

  The receptionist started to take my booking and abruptly stopped. Someone else came on the line. “I’m sorry, sir, but it is a very busy time and all the cars are booked. A car will be available in about an hour.”

  “What about a regular taxi?” I asked.

  “The rain, sir. Everything is topsy-turvy, I’m afraid. The wait is about the same, maybe a few minutes less.”

  For me, every minute counted. “I want two taxis. One for me and one . . . one for a Mrs. Holden.”

  I turned to my mother. “You shouldn’t have come.”

  She sat on the bed with the paisley bag on her lap. She looked wrecked. Tears rolled freely down her face.

  “I had to,” she said. “You are all I have. When your father left us . . .” Her face creased and she covered it with her hands. I moved over and put my arm around her.

  “Shh,” I said quietly. “I know, I know. We’ll pack and check out and find a corner of the hotel coffee shop. We can see who shows up from there and then, if we have a clear run, I’ll go to the taxi first, you wait a minute or two and then follow. Okay?”

  “What’s happening, Fin? Didn’t all this end five years ago? Why has it come back?”

  “I don’t think it ever really went away,” I said. “It just hung around in the shadows, while I was busy ignoring it.”

  My mother started sobbing.

  “Have you got everything?” We needed simple, discrete tasks, one at a time and in the right order.

  “I’m so tired,” she said.

  “You’ll soon be on a plane; you can sleep then.”

  She wiped her face and stared at me. “A plane? Where?”

  “To London,” I said gently. “Up front, in comfort. I already have a ticket and it can be switched to you at the airport.”

  “But I came here to, to . . .” She looked blank for a moment. “To resolve things. Resolve things, with you. We need to do it together. We’ve never really resolved anything, what it was that drove your father to that . . . that place.”

  “I think it was a corporation called Huxtable. That and Sunil Askari.”

  “Askari,” she repeated, barely audible, her eyes burning.

  “Look,” I said, “we really must get out of here.” I scanned the bedside table. The photo of Dad in Corfu. A snapshot of me on the same beach. It had been a good vacation; the dice had rolled double sixes for two weeks.

  There was also a brown bottle of pills, the sleepy variety, the same as she’d had on the bedside table five years before.

  And a small brass elephant, the size of a fist. I stared at it. Then it clicked. It was Ganesh. Ganesh, the god of Preeti’s school crest. Ganesh, the god of a prostitute’s account book at Baba Mama’s. With four arms, two small white tusks peeking out from under its trunk and, behind its head, a sun halo with a spiked corona, just like the suns one drew as a child.

  I picked up the little elephant. It was heavy, pleasantly tactile. On its base, there was an engraving. “Our everlasting gratitude,” it said. That was all.

  I put Ganesh, the photos, and the pills in the paisley bag.

  “Anything in the bathroom?” I went in there a
nd was arrested by my image in the mirror.

  Mum had done a good job of cleaning up my face. But the hair. I looked like an escapee from a Victorian mental asylum. I turned around and tried to see my back. An irregular red lake rose from about the base of the ribcage to my shoulders.

  The bathroom shelf was a mixture of my bachelor clutter and Mum’s precisely assembled toiletries. I just swept it all into my hands and switched off the light with an awkward flick of the elbow.

  I came back into the bedroom, chucked the stuff into the paisley bag, and eased on a fresh polo shirt. I felt the cotton implacably attach itself to my back.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  My mother lifted herself from the bed with an effort out of all proportion to the hundred-and-ten pounds I reckoned her to be.

  “You can’t carry all that on your own,” she said, taking the paisley bag.

  I was about to shut the door behind us, when the nagging worry that had been muttering incoherently at the back of my mind thrust itself forward and screamed out its name.

  “Shit.”

  I dumped the luggage and rushed back into the bedroom.

  There was a letter rack on the desk and from behind the postcards and envelopes I removed my copy ofIn Black and White.

  “Hold that,” I said, handing the book to my mother while I opened my suitcase.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “You ever seen it before?”

  She stared at the cover doubtfully, perhaps suspicious of the profile of the knife-wielding, turbaned assassin guarding the book’s contents.

  “We had a blue set of Kipling,” she said, “but I don’t remember this. Where did you get it?”

  She gave me the book and I put it in the suitcase.

  “I’ll tell you later. Let’s get downstairs.”

  My mother was still sitting at the corner table in the coffee shop when I returned from checking out. The coffee in front of her was untouched and she was staring into the middle distance. She was the unhappiest person I’d ever seen. Except maybe for Carol when I’d pushed her away.

  I sat down, realizing that we were in a room with one door and no view of approaching threat. If the posse showed up, then we were finished.

 

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