Walls of Silence

by Walls Of Silence Free(Lit)

  “We can talk if you like,” I said.

  “Not here.” My mother scanned the bar with that air I remembered from her haughtier days. “On the plane, please.”

  There would be a plane for both of us, but not the same one. I wasn’t ready to tell her that.

  Instead I tookIn Black and Whiteout of the suitcase.

  I challenged the turbaned sentinel on the front cover. He wanted to keep his secrets secret. He was telling me to keep useless watch on the door and leave his little book alone. Beneath him was an elephant poking its head from a small banner announcing that the book was No. 3 in the Indian Railway Library, price one rupee. Not a godlike elephant this time, more the circus variety, capable of tricks and with sawn-off tusks.

  Everything seemed quiet enough.

  “Only half an hour, Mum,” I said. She stared into space. I’d leave her to her astronomy for the time being.

  I opened upIn Black and White. It was a book of short stories, eight in all. About black men, said the introduction, the common people. I flicked through it, sensing nothing that would interest the disparate likes of Mendip, Ernie, and Baba Mama.

  It was the sort of book Dad would have read to me at bedtime. Until I was eight he had been a loyal bedside visitor. Then his world had sped up and I only had his word for it that he came into my room every night to make sure I was okay.

  The first story was a gutsy tale of unrequited revenge. It was only a few pages and read easily.

  The next two stories were pretty good too.

  Then the fourth story: “Gemini.” I didn’t get into the text; the heading caught my attention. Under the title was a native proverb: “Great is the justice of the White Man—greater the power of a lie.”

  The words of Baba Mama, the rules of her house, order and harmony wrought from the justice of the white man. A coincidence? There was no such thing as a coincidence in India.

  I read the tale of twins, one switching with the other and ripping him off in the process. A cute story, but no hint of anything for my purposes.

  Suddenly I was thirsty. The waiters were determined to avoid my plaintive hand signal. So I got up and went over to the counter to order a mineral water.

  When I returned to the table, Mum was wearing her reading glasses and was turning the pages of the “Gemini” story. She looked different from a few minutes before, more composed somehow, more the mum of old. I smiled.

  “It was a club, you know,” she said. “A silly schoolboy thing.”

  “What was a club? What schoolboy? Dad?”

  She shook her head. “No. Not your father. It was before his time, but he knew about it. The Gemini Club.” She closed the book and handed it to me.

  “And?” I said.

  She took off the reading glasses. “It was one of those Oxford conceits. Dinner jackets, secret talk, and funny handshakes. Playing posh. The only thing was”—she laughed gently—“nobody wanted to play in their club, or maybe it was just too secret for the membership secretary to drum up members. So it was really just Sunil Askari and Charles Mendip and two others. Not much of a club. Too exclusive. But they took it very seriously: clandestine meetings, expensive meals. They claimed they did a lot of charity work. A bit of hanky-panky more like, your father reckoned. By the time he went to Oxford, nobody remembered it.”

  “Who were the other members?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Some American over on a Fulbright or a Rhodes or whatever they call those scholarships. The other was a German. I remember him; he stayed in touch with your father and visited the house a few times. Strange man, clever, I think, but an obsessive look about him, not healthy, I remember thinking. He was called Stein. I can’t recall his first name. Conrad? No. But German anyway. Jewish, I think.”

  “Do you know any more about what the club did?”

  “No more than I’ve told you. Silly and pretentious boys practicing for the grown-up world. Later, they sometimes roped your father into things. Only the charity stuff, or so your father insisted.” She tapped her fingers on the paisley bag. “The brass elephant. It was a token ofthanks for his help on some project of Askari’s. Your father didn’t say what, but the thing seemed to have significance for him. And it’s a nice piece. I managed to salvage it from one of his drunken demolition sessions.” She sighed. “There was so little left by the time he died. He seemed to want to destroy everything around him.”

  The face reverted to inconsolable sadness. “Perhaps if he had confided in me, I could have saved him. I was blind then. I saw only a drinking problem and hoped it would go away.”

  He’d confided in me. He’d sent up the flare, but I’d ignored the distress signal. He should have called my mother instead. Then maybe she could have done more than simply erect a cross after the event, like one of those sad shrines on the side of the road at the site of a fatal accident.

  I looked at my watch. “It’s time I went. Stay here for five minutes and then go out and ask for Mrs. Holden’s taxi. They’ll have the number and call it for you.”

  Was she listening? She had to listen. It was important.

  “When you get to the airport, go to the Air India ticket sales desk. I’ll be there. If I’m not, just wait for me.”

  She nodded. “Don’t worry, Fin. I understand.”

  I held her hand and smiled.

  “When we’re on the plane together we can talk properly,” she said.

  Still I couldn’t tell her.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Will you be needing an umbrella, sir?” It was the Sikh I’d robbed earlier in the day.

  “Just a car, thanks.” I returned his stony gaze pebble by pebble. “It’s reserved in the name of Border.”

  The Sikh scanned a sheet of paper clipped to a lectern and screamed out a number before turning his back on me.

  I waited for a good five minutes, but my cab didn’t show. I wandered around the side of the canopied entrance and saw a fleet of taxis waiting for the call; there must have been fifty of them lined up, their drivers leaning against them chatting and smoking, taking advantage of a lull in the rain. The talk of taxis being in short supply was bullshit.

  “Mr. Border, sir.”

  I wheeled around to see a uniformed driver standing next to a black S Class Mercedes. He came toward me. It was the Askari & Co. driver.

  My heart quickened.

  “They said you were waiting for a taxi,” he said amiably. “I was expecting to take you, sir. Later, sir. I will be more than happy to take you now, however. I am freely available.”

  He stretched out and jerked the suitcase out of my hand and went toward the car.

  “Change of plan,” I said. “It’s okay, I’ll go in a taxi.”

  I saw my mother come out of the hotel and talk to the Sikh dispatcher.

  She noticed me and did a double take.

  The Askari & Co. driver appeared shocked at my taxi suggestion. “Goodness, no, sir. What would Mr. Askari say? You come with me. Bah, a dirty taxi. No, sir.”

  He pulled the suit carrier from my shoulder and hurled it into the trunk over my suitcase. The burn on my back shrieked at the violent passage of strap over raw flesh.

  While this was going on I contorted my face in a way that I prayed my mother would take as an instruction to ignore me.

  “Please,” I said. “Iwantto take the taxi. Can I have my bags back now?”

  My mother walked down the steps to a taxi that had appeared almost instantly after the Sikh had screamed out the number. She got in, but the taxi couldn’t go anywhere. Its path was blocked by the Mercedes.

  “You will be traveling in this car.” It was a voice behind me, deep and honeyed and totally assured. I felt something stick into my lower back.

  “Yes, it is a gun,” the voice said. “Don’t turn around and just getin.”

  It wasn’t a voice to be disbelieved.

  I opened the rear door to the Mercedes and sat down. The door immediately slammed shut. The driver was already behind t
he wheel and was pointing a gun at me, his earlier affability no longer evident. The other man sat in the passenger seat and rested his weapon in the gap between the headrest and the top of the seat. It looked so at home in that position, as if Mercedes had thought of every design detail, including a little gun emplacement.

  The driver turned forward and eased the car out of the Taj forecourt.

  I watched the gun. I wasn’t used to firearms: a few wildly inaccurate sessions on the college firing range and a skeet shoot at somebody’s house in Westchester where I had displayed my Brit ignorance by asking what kind of bird a skeet was. And that was it.

  “Do you know who I am?” asked the gunman. I studied his face. It registered with me. New York somewhere. Yes: the Regent, with Sunil Askari, in the lobby. The excited fellow who had joked with Sheldon Keenes. The big teeth, the big jewelry. The slightly pockmarked playboy face.

  “I am Damindra Ketan.” Son of Ashish, brother of Parves. The keeper of candles in the Shrine to Perfection that was Ketan Securities.

  “What do you want with me?” I asked. My voice sounded scared, childish almost. My back and hand throbbed.

  “I have told you my name,” Ketan said, “and that will do for the time being.”

  The rain started up again, powering through the headlights of the few cars around at that time of night.

  “Your visit to India is over,” Ketan said.

  Silence was an enemy, in silence I couldn’t proceed. Talk would be progress, a foothold from which to advance to a stage that might be better rather than worse. Silence was like the red treasury tape that had bound Raj. Apparently innocuous, but deadly. “What the hell do you want with me? Just tell me, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Shh,” Ketan said, placing a well-manicured finger against lips the color and shape of Brazil nut shells.

  I peered out of the window. The rain thickened even more, the meager traffic seeming to glide on the slick road. We had crossed over the narrow promontory and reached the sea again. Luminous white horses fizzed on the waves. Was there stuff in spume that made it glow in the dark? Dad had once said there was.

  As I had waited at the hotel reception for my account, I’d decided that I would go back to England. After New York. I couldn’t stay with Mum on a permanent basis, but seeing her regularly wouldn’t be so bad. I had started rehearsing negotiations to get Carol to join me.

  Would I ever see either of them again? So much for advance planning.

  We passed Chowpatty Beach. Blue plastic sheets covered a small carnival; a network of metal legs dug into the sand and rose into the modesty of its blue skirt.

  If we had been going to the airport then we should have peeled away from the beach and into the hinterland. But we were climbing the first terraces of Malabar Hill. My stomach tightened and the burn on my back stung from each new release of sweat.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. “This isn’t the way to the airport.” Dumb comment, of course it wasn’t the way to the fucking airport. But again, I felt the silence smother me.

  “I don’t think you are as clever as your father,” Ketan said. “He went to Oxford, I believe. Clever chappie.” He shook his head sadly. “I couldn’t, unfortunately. My father needed me to stay in Bombay and manage the business. Parves went, though. He said it was for us both. I did not mind. We got a good degree. Philosophy, politics, and economics.”

  I toyed with the idea of opening the door and bailing out, but the car was moving too fast.

  With his free hand, Ketan picked at his teeth and inspected the result on the tip of his fingernail. “Sunil Askari hates you very much. I’ve told him not to get so upset. He is an old man now and should relax more. But he has added you to the two things that already consume him: firstly, your father and secondly, the modern scourge, as he calls it, of e-mail. Is it not strange the combination of sublime and ridiculous that can preoccupy an old man’s heart? But I think that your father is his overriding obsession and he sees much of him in you. In many ways your father was such a stupid man.” His face displayed a sudden interest. “Are you your father’s son, Fin Border?”

  “Why should you care?” I said.

  Ketan shrugged and muttered something to the driver. The driver flicked me a brief glance and started laughing.

  “Do you know where we are going?” Ketan asked.

  “I’ve been asking you that,” I said.

  Ketan smiled. “But I think you can guess for yourself now.”

  I could, but the words were hateful to me, they scared me rigid. Twice in two days. “Perhaps,” I said.

  “Your father nearly committed a great sacrilege. And in his heart he succeeded in doing a great wrong. I am not a Parsi, but Bombay is a place of diversity and we respect each other’s religions. It is a pity that your father should have chosen to die in such a manner. Mr. Askari was terribly embarrassed by your father’s thoughtless behavior. Mr. Askari went to Oxford. He can’t understand why an Oxford man would perpetrate such a thing.”

  “I don’t think my father knew what he was doing.”

  “Maybe,” Ketan conceded. “Mr. Mendip cannot understand either. Another Oxford man. He was there with Mr. Askari, you know.”

  I knew, Mendip the Gemini.

  “And he is your godfather, I understand,” Ketan said incredulously. He shook his head. “I’m afraid that Mr. Mendip has been rather sentimental in your direction and his friends have had to rally round and protect him from himself. And you.”

  Mendip: my mentor, my father’s friend. I felt sick. The air in the car was cool, but Ketan was wearing a strong, musky aftershave and it was acting as a catalyst for my fear. Breaking the silence hadn’t helped; no progress made.

  Ketan withdrew his gun for a moment and wiped it with a handkerchief before replacing it in the arrow slit. “You should atone, finance a temple. Maybe an Atash Bahram. You know what that is? It is the most sacred of Parsi fire temples. It contains a fire from sixteen different sources, one of which must be started by lightning. The Parsi religion is an intriguing faith, don’t you think?”

  “Stop the car,” I said uselessly. “I’m going to be sick.”

  The car lurched and rocked and I sensed the braking system rising to the challenge of mud and wet scree. We had turned off the main road and were slithering on an unpaved surface.

  We drifted to a halt. The driver cut the engine and only the noise of rain could be heard.

  I was going to be killed. They didn’t want anything from me, except my death. Dr. Dadabhoi Road was a rehearsal, the blood-soakedman lying in a pile of books was my stunt double, merely a temporary stand-in.

  “Lie facedown on the backseat,” Ketan ordered.

  I swiveled on the leather, careful not to rub my back or right hand against anything in the process.

  Ketan leaned over the front seat. “Get on with it,” he said viciously. He slapped his palm against the top of my back and roughly pushed me into a half-lying position. I screamed with the pain.

  “Now put your legs up.”

  “Okay, okay,” I yelled.

  “If you move, I will shoot your knees.”

  I could hear both front doors open and slam shut. Then the moments were filled with nothing, except the noise of the rain beating on the roof of the car.

  The door next to my head opened. I felt the warm rain gust into the car. My lower right arm was bent upward toward my neck. “Stand up.” It was Ketan again.

  I could feel his grip only an inch or so from my burn. One small slither and I would descend to another world of pain.

  I moved around into a sitting position and then eased myself out of the car. The driver stood over Ketan with an umbrella in one hand, and in the other a thin blue plastic bag, the sort one gets in very cheap grocery stores. Ketan kept my arm twisted up by the nape of my neck. I felt the cold metal of the pistol barrel against the side of my head.

  Even in the dark, even in the driving rain, I knew where I was. About thirty yards to my left
I could see the outline of the hut, behind me the cindery path snaked back to the road, and above me I could sense the clifflike walls enfolding the Towers of Silence.

  I moaned. “Why are you doing this?”

  Ketan ignored me.

  We walked toward the hut, and then slightly beyond.

  We were standing precisely where Raj had stood when he told me what had happened to my father in this place. I felt the flagstones beneath my feet. I looked up and could see the first ten or so steps leading up to the door to the Towers, but no farther. Everything beyond was lost in a swirl of rain and darkness.

  A cataract of water was dancing down the steps.

  I started to shiver. My body stayed upright, but it jerked violently. “What is this?” Ketan shouted. “Some kind of trick?”

  It was no trick; it was the sniveling realization of my impending execution. In the car, the thought had crashed around in my head, but it was locked in a padded cell, smashing uselessly against the cushioned walls, unable to commune with the rest of my brain, or my body. Now the thought was out, running riot.

  Ketan rammed his fingers into the top of my right hand. A bolt of lightning to shot through me and I sank to my knees. Soon the pain would subside; it had to, it served no physiological purpose, so why persist?

  Ketan took out a handkerchief and wiped his fingers, the blood mixed with the creams my mother had applied, a red ripple across the clean linen. He looked disgusted and handed the cloth to the driver, who put it in the blue plastic bag.

  “The fire at Sunil’s office hurt you.” Ketan said. “That will appease him a little. You made him destroy what he loved most. He will never forgive you, but he will appreciate the poetic justice of your pain.”

  “Now stand up and remove your clothes,” he then said.

  I didn’t ask if he meant every stitch, I’d just unpeel until he told me to stop.

  I dropped my jacket at my feet, watching it turn black as it soaked up the slime. Then the shirt, like removing a bandage that had been superglued to my back. I tugged at it gently.