River of Gods (32 page)

She reels out names and connections Vishram knows only from the pink
pages and money sections he would click past on his way to the
entertainment listings, attention only caught by the unintentionally
ridiculous corporate titles. He thinks of the khaki men with the
straitly tilted bush-hats and assault rifles. Hey guys, you're in the
wrong place. The tigers are up here.

He types, HYPOTHETICAL: WHY WOULD THEY WANT MY COMPANY?

There is an un-aeaily pause. When Inder speaks next, Vishram knows
that it is the flesh and bone.

"To tie you up forever in due diligence clauses, with the
eventual aim of gaining full control of the zero-point project."

Vishram sits on the warm mahogany seat and the wood beneath and
around him seems sweltering and oppressive, a coffin buried in summer
earth. It is going to be like this from now on.

"Thank you," he says aloud. Then he washes his hands to fix
his alibi and walks back to the men around the table.

"Sorry to be so long; funny, but I haven't readjusted to the
diet yet." He sits down, crosses his legs nimbly, comfortably.
"Anyway, I've had a think about your offer."

"Take your time," Clementi suggests. "This isn't the
sort of decision to rush. Take a look at our proposal, then get back
to us." He pushes a plastic wallet of high-gloss documents
across the table. But Weitz sits back, detached, planning
permutations. He knows, Vishram thinks.

"Thanks, but I'm not going to need any more time and I don't
want to waste any more of yours. I am not going to accept your offer.
I realise that I owe you some kind of explanation. It isn't going to
make much sense to you; but the main reason is my father wouldn't
want me to do it. He was as hard-headed a businessman as any of you
here and he wasn't scared of money, but Ray Power is first and
foremost an Indian company and because it's an Indian company, it has
values and morals and ethics that are quite alien to the way you do
business in the West. It's not racism or anything like that, it's
just the way we work in Ray Power and our two systems are
incompatible. The second reason is that we don't need your money.
I've seen the zero-point field myself." He touches a finger to
the flaking corner of his eye. "I know you've been politely not
staring at this; but that's the seal of approval. None genuine
without this mark. I've seen it, gentlemen. I've seen another
universe and I've been burned by its light." Then the rush
comes, that moment when you go off script. Head reeling with
adrenaline, Vishram Ray says, "In fact, we're going public with
a full-scale demonstration within the next two weeks. And by the way,
I gave up smoking three weeks ago."

After that there is coffee and very good armagnac, a drink Vishram
knows he will never be able to take again without a freight of
memory, but the talk is polite and mannered and dies quickly in the
way of enemies with etiquette. Vishram wants to be out of there, out
from the wood and the glass and the hunting creatures. He wants to be
on his own in a place he can enjoy the fierce, intimate burn of a
fine deed well done. His first executive decision, and he knows he
made it right. Then hands are shaken and leaves taken but as the
Major and his jawans escort Vishram back to the tilt-jet he imagines
he is walking differently, and that they can all see, and understand,
and approve.

The hostess doesn't try to come on to him on the flight home.

At Ray Tower a gang of coolies shifts corporate furniture to a
flotilla of removal trucks. Still glowing on adrenaline afterburn,
Vishram rides the elevator up to his former office. The executive
lift makes an unscheduled stop at the third floor, where a small,
dapper, birdlike Bangla in a black suit steps in and smiles at
Vishram as if he has known him all his life.

"Might I say, Mr. Ray, that you made the correct decision,"
says the Bangla, beaming.

The glass elevator climbs the curving wooden cliff of the Ray Tower.
Fires still burn out on the cityscape. The sky is a precious velvety
apricot colour.

"Just who," says Vishram Ray, "the hell are you?"

The Bangla beams again.

"Oh, a humble servitor. A name, if you must, would be
Chakraborty."

"I have to tell you, I'm not really in the mood for
obfuscation," Vishram says.

"Sorry, sorry. To the point. I am a lawyer, hired by a certain
company to convey a message to you. The message is this: we fully
support your announcement to go to a full output demonstration as
soon as possible."

"Who is this we?"

"Less who than what, Mr. Ray."

The glass elevator climbs higher into the amber glow of Varanasi's
holy smog. "What then?"

"Odeco is a company that makes a few, carefully chosen, highly
specific investments."

"And if you know that I just turned down an offer from a company
that at least I'd heard of, what do you think your Odeco could offer
me?"

"Exactly what we offered your father."

It is now that Vishram wishes this glass cocoon had the fantasy stop
button that is a mandatory feature in Hollywood elevators. But it
doesn't and they keep climbing the sculpted wood face of Ray Power.

"My father didn't take partners in the company."

"With respect, Mr. Ray, I differ. Where do you think the
investment for the particle collider came from? The budget for the
zero-point project would have bankrupted even Ranjit Ray,
unassisted."

"What's your cut?" Vishram asks. His Hero of the People
warmth has been snuffed out. Games within games, levels of access and
secrecy, names and faces and masks. Faces that can get into your
elevator and tell you your most secret dealings.

"Only success, Mr. Ray. Only success. To repeat and perhaps
amplify my employers' message to you, you intend to run a full-scale
demonstration of the zero-point project. Odeco desires this very
much. It wishes you to know that it will back you to ensure the
success of the project. Whatever that entails, Mr. Ray. Ah. This
seems to be my floor. Good day to you, Mr. Ray."

Chakraborty slips between the doors before they fully open. Vishram
ascends a full floor before he thinks to drop a level back to where
the weird little man got off. He looks out into the curving corridor.
Nothing, no one to see. He could have stepped into an office. He
could as easily have stepped into another, zero-point universe. The
lowering sun beats into the elevator but Vishram shudders. He needs
to get out somewhere tonight, away from all this, even for a handful
of hours. But which woman is he going to ask?

The apricot flies in a high, rising arc out over the parapet, turning
slowly, bleeding a trail of juice from its crushed skin. It drops out
of sight between the buildings, the long fall to the street.

"So that crossed the boundary in the air, so that makes it?"

"A six!" Parvati exclaims, clapping her hands together.

The crease is a line in gardener's chalk, the wicket, a ply seedling
box with three sides knocked off, stood on its heel. Krishan leans on
his bat; a spade.

"A six is technically a weak shot," he says. "The
batsman has to get under it and he's got no real control over where
it's going. Too easy for the fielders to get an eye on it and make
the catch. The real enthusiast will always applaud a four more than a
six. It's a much more controlled stroke."

"Yes, but it looks so much more bold," Parvati says, then
her hands fly to her mouth to suppress giggles. "Sorry, I was
just thinking, someone down there. and they haven't done anything,
but all of a sudden they're covered in apricot. and they think,
what's going on? Apricots are falling out of the sky. It's the
Awadhis! They're bombing us with fruit!" She folds over in
helpless laughter. Krishan does not understand the joke but he feels
the infection of laughing tug at his rib cage.

"Again again!" Parvati picks up a fresh apricot from the
folded cloth, hitches her sari, makes her short run, slings the fruit
side-arm. Krishan slices the apricot down into a skittering roll
towards the parapet drain slits. Shattered flesh sprays up in his
face.

"Four!" Parvati calls, pressing four fingers to her arm.

"Properly, it's a no-ball because it was thrown, not bowled."

"I can't do that overarm thing."

"It's not hard."

Krishan bowls a handful of apricots one at a time, slow up the back,
accelerating into the downswing, counterbalancing with his free arm.
The soft fruit go bouncing into the shrub rhododendron.

"Now, you try."

He tosses Parvati an underripe apricot. She catches it sweetly, bares
the sleeve of her choli. Krishan watches the play of her muscles as
she tries to make the run and step and swing in her cumbersome,
elegant clothing. The apricot slips from her grasp, drops behind her.
Parvati rounds on it, teeth bared in exasperation.

"I cannot do it!"

"Here, let me help you."

The words are spoken before Krishan can apprehend them. Once as a boy
in a school lesson he read on the school web that all consciousness
is written in the past tense. If so, then all decisions are made
without conscience or guilt and the heart speaks truly but
inarticulately. His path is already set. He steps up behind Parvati.
He rests one hand on her shoulder. With the other he takes her wrist.
She catches her breath but her fingers remain curled around the ripe
apricot.

Krishan moves her arm back, down, turns the palm upwards. He guides
her forward, forward again, pressing the left shoulder down, moving
the right arm up. "Now pivot on to the left foot." They
hang a precarious moment in their dance, then Krishan sweeps her
wrist to the zenith. "Now, release!" he commands. The
cloven apricot flies from her fingers, hits the wooden decking,
bursts.

"A fine pace delivery," Krishan says. "Now, try it
against me." He takes up his position at the crease, sights with
his spade-bat, affording Parvati all the sporting courtesies. She
retreats beyond the further chalk line, adjusts her clothing, makes
her run. She lunges forward, releases the fruit. It hits the deck
cleavage first, bounces crankily, spinning. Krishan steps forward
with his spade, the apricot hits the top, skips and splatters against
the wicket. The flimsy plywood falls. Krishan tucks his spade beneath
his arm and bows.

"Mrs. Nandha, you have clean bowled me."

The next day Parvati introduces Krishan to her friends the Prekashs,
the Ranjans, the Kumars, and the Maliks. She lays out the magazines
like dhuris on the sun-warmed decking. The air is as still and heavy
as poured metal this morning, pressing the traffic din and smoke down
under a layer of high pressure. Parvati and her husband fought last
night. They fought his way, which consists of him making statements
and then defending them with lofty silence, sniping down her sallies
with looks of high disdain. It was the old fight: his tiredness, her
boredom; his remoteness, her need for society; his growing coldness,
her ticking ovaries.

She opens the chati mags to the full colour centre spreads. Perfect
courtships; glossy weddings; centrefold divorces. Krishan sits in the
tailor-position, toes clasped in his hands.

"This is Sonia Shetty, she plays Ashu Kumar. She was married to
Lal Darfan—in real life, not in
Town and Country
—but
they divorced back in the spring. I was really surprised about that,
everyone thought they were together forever, but she's been seen
around with Roni Jhutti. She was at the premiere of
Prem Das
,
in a lovely silver dress, so I think it's only a matter of time
before we get an announcement. Of course, Lal Darfan's been saying
all kinds of things about her, that she is slack and a disgrace.
Isn't it strange how actors can be nothing like their characters in
Town and Country
? It's quite changed the way I think about Dr.
Prekash."

Krishan flips the thick, shiny pages, aromatic with petrochemicals.

"But they aren't real, either," he says. "This woman
wasn't married to anyone in real life, she wasn't at any premiere
with any actor. They're just software that believes it's another kind
of software."

"Oh, I know that," Parvati says. "No one believes
they're real people. Celebrity has never been about what's real. But
it's nice to pretend. It's like having another story on top of
Town and Country
, but one that's much more like the way we live."

Krishan rocks gently.

"Forgive me, but do you miss your family very much?"
Parvati looks up from her chati glamshots. "Why do you ask?"

"It just strikes me that you treat unreal people like family.
You care about their relationships, their ups and downs, their lives,
if you can call them that."

Parvati pulls her dupatta over her head to protect it from the high
sun.

"I think about my family, my mother every day. Oh, I wouldn't go
back, not for a moment, but I thought with so many people, so much
going on, to be in the capital, I would have a hundred worlds to move
through. But it is easier to be invisible than it ever was in
Kotkhai. I could disappear completely here."

"Kotkhai, where is that?" Krishan asks. Above him aircraft
contrails merge and tangle, spyship and killer, hunting each other
ten kilometres above Varanasi.

"In Kishanganj District, in Bihar. You have just made me realise
a strange thing, Mr. Kudrati. I mail my mother every day and she
tells me about her health and how Rohini and Sushil and the boys are
and all the people I know from Kotkhai, but she never tells me about
Kotkhai."

So she tells him of Kotkhai, for in telling she tells herself. She
can go back to clutches of cracked mud-brick houses gathered around
the tanks and pumps; she can walk again down the gently sloping main
street of shops and corrugated iron awnings sheltering the
stonecutters' workshops. This was the men's world, of drinking tea
and listening to the radio and arguing politics. The women's world
was in the fields, at the pump and the tanks, for water was the
women's element, and the school where the new teacher Mrs. Jaitly
from the city ran evening classes and discussion groups and a
micro—credit union funded on egg money.