The Brothers K (81 page)

Grayson turned to Peter. “Perhaps he’d take it best,” he said wryly, “if
you
described the basic situation.”

Peter gave it a try. “The good news, T Bar,” he began, speaking with great earnestness, but also with a sense of wonder that made every word virtually incomprehensible to Waites, “is that there was no Muslim boy killed in Aurangabad, there were no race riots, those weren’t vigilantes at the station, Kwester and Akasha are safely on their way to ’Nagar, and Dessinger and Grayson, or whatever their names may be, are two of the greatest impromptu actors we’ll ever live to see.”

Waites just kept wheezing and gawking, but Grayson was clearly flattered
by this beginning. “We do enjoy our work,” he remarked, studying T Bar’s panic as if it was a canvas he’d just painted. Which in a sense it was.

“The other news,” Peter continued, “and it’s also good, if you can just accept it for the blessing it is, is that we
needed
this to happen. Because face it, T Bar. It never could’ve worked if we weren’t such nincompoops. It
didn’t
work on Kwester and Akasha. But you and I have been stumbling around India with bags over our heads. Yours had penny-apiece trout flies sticking in it, and mine had medieval poetry scribbled all over it, but neither had eye or air holes. And when you’re stumbling around that stupidly, when you’re suffocating like that, T Bar, then the greatest thing that can happen is to have the damn bag ripped away. And that’s just what’s happening! That’s exactly what Grayson and Dessinger are doing for us!”

Grayson was smiling broadly now, but T Bar just kept wheezing.

“Forget your trout flies a minute,” Peter told him, “and think about some of the
bait
we swallowed today. Like about this guy.” He nodded at Grayson. “Think about the exact kind of fear that Dessinger slipped into us. Then think of the portrait he drew of this British convert to Islam. This mysterious Sufi. This sage counsel to the Indian Parliament, beloved by all Aurangabadians, with his three loving wives and herd of happy offspring!”

Grayson began to laugh. So did Peter. T Bar gaped at them as if they’d both sprouted moose antlers. “How handy for us that he happened to break up race riots for a hobby!” Peter cried. “Prob’ly spends his weekends leading groups of autistic kids up Mount Everest too, don’t you s’pose? And as we roll into the strife-torn station, praise Allah, there he is—the white man in the white suit in the
brown
crowd! ‘Just his greeting will save you!’ Dessinger tells us. So we leave everything. We dump everything we own for the great white life-giving hug!”

Grayson was roaring now—and Waites was hyperventilating.

“But now here’s the great part, T Bar,” Peter said, “and the part that Grayson and Dessinger maybe never planned on. Since we left everything behind,
including
our damned head bags, the whole stupid situation really
is
life-giving! Or could be. This moment is a
knife
, T Bar. But you’ve got to take a deep breath, calm yourself, and grab it by the handle, not the blade. Because if you look at it one way, yes, Dessinger probably
is
plowing through our suitcases even as we speak. But if none of this had happened, just think what we’d—”

It took Waites maybe three seconds to fully comprehend the phrase
“plowing through our suitcases.” He then grabbed it firmly—by the blade—and started roaring with rage. But it took Natu no seconds at all to comprehend the roar, grab his revolver by the barrel, and thwack T Bar hard in the forehead.

Peter caught him as he slumped sideways in the seat.

Waites was out cold.

C
ustomer appreciation being rare in his line of work, Grayson had no objection—while Waites lay unconscious—to sharing a few trade secrets with Peter. He refused to say whether Dessinger had anything to do with the breakdown of the first-class air-conditioners way back in Secunderabad. But he took obvious pleasure in explaining how he’d created and worked the mob of “Muslim vigilantes” at Aurangabad station. “There is no sports fanatic,” his discourse began, “quite like an Indian cricket fanatic …”

Strolling through the station a half hour or so before Peter and T Bar’s train arrived, Grayson had simply mentioned to a few idle Aurangabadsmen that he’d caught a broadcast on his radio (which was really a long-range walkie-talkie) saying that the All-India cricket team had just been in a serious bus crash on the way to their test match with Australia. “A little cruel,” Grayson admitted. “But within minutes it gave me my frantic throng.” He’d kept his throng’s interest up by grinding static into his ear and pretending to hear bits of reports as to which players had been injured, how seriously, and so forth. He then led his captive mob across the two sets of tracks so that the “White Train” would later separate the Westerners from their own. When the “static trick” got old and some of them began to talk about telephoning the
Times
of India, Grayson told them that the Westerners he’d come to meet, being cricket fanatics themselves, would be certain to have a world-band radio, and the most up-to-date news of the All-India team’s condition. This was why the “vigilantes” had scanned the train for white faces the instant it rolled into the station. As for the language barrier, Grayson guessed that there had probably been more Marathi than Urdu speakers in the crowd, so Peter’s Marathi had presented “an interesting technical problem.” In fact, Dessinger, during one of their early communiqués on the walkie-talkies, had wanted to cull Peter from the group. But Grayson hit on the idea of telling his sports-loving mob that one Westerner—the blond-braided one, and the real cricket expert, unfortunately—would speak only to whites, and that if they crowded him he might not speak at all. This stroke served two crucial purposes: first, it convinced the mob to let
Grayson alone address the Westerners; and second, it created some genuine antipathy toward the person most likely to see through the con—i.e., Peter.

After the second train’s arrival and the surprise radio broadcast (which had really been Dessinger spouting gibberish into his walkie-talkie not thirty yards away), Grayson had whipped his poor cricket-lovers into an even greater frenzy by saying that the radio report said nothing new, but that T Bar was an Australian journalist, that he had a wire service bulletin right in his pocket listing the Indian players’ injuries, but that he was so absurdly nationalistic that he refused to share the information with his country’s opponent. Even then the poor Indians managed to contain their ire. But when Akasha and Kwester suddenly left the group and the “White Train” began to roll out of the station, one frustrated fan finally shouted out a demand to hear the bulletin. “Then step forward,” Grayson had shouted back, “and I’ll read it to you myself!” Only then did the “mob” advance. And that was when Grayson turned to Peter and Waites in apparent desperation and cried, “Now! The White Train!”

T
he things people lug through life are seldom as valuable to others as they are to those who lug them. For this reason Grayson and Dessinger were not thieves, strictly speaking: they were luggage-nappers. Their preferred game, in other words, was to separate travelers from their possessions, then return everything in perfect condition—for “a modest price.”

The ransom negotiations began with a beep from the walkie-talkie: Dessinger calling. And to judge by the background noise, or lack of it, he was no longer on a train or anywhere near the noisy station. The first step was to itemize the take and guess its value to each “client”—and T Bar Waites, needless to say, looked to be an ideal customer. In addition to his “Global Village” fly-tying gear and much-missed asthma medicine he’d been toting two more pairs of deluxe cowboy boots, two new suits, a pile of Indian curios and jewelry, his Bombay/Kuwait/Paris/New York/Chicago/Bozeman return plane ticket, two fifths of Teacher’s scotch, a Rolex watch, his passport, and twelve hundred bucks in Barclay’s traveler’s checks. But when Grayson tried to soothe him by saying that he could have everything back within two hours by simply signing over the traveler’s checks, then wiring the States for another thousand dollars, Waites surprised Grayson and Peter both by snapping, “Go fuck yourself.”

Grayson remained calm, for the moment. But a ruthlessness came into his eyes that frightened Peter even more than the conscienceless grin of Natu—especially since Waites didn’t see it. “Come, come,” Grayson
said. “No tantrums. Your position is hopeless. We’ll cash your Barclay’s checks on the black market days before you can cancel them. We’ll scalp your plane ticket. You’ll have to return to the States, repurchase all that lovely equipment, and fly all the way back again. You’ll lose weeks of time, spend far more than the thousand we’re asking, and—”

“Fuck you, fuck Dessinger, and fuck Butt-weasel here too!” T Bar blored.

Grayson made no reply. He just grew still, turned cold, and stared at Waites so long that even Waites himself came to see that there was no reason now why he should be allowed to leave the gully alive. At last, Grayson murmured. “Have it your way. Take off your clothes.”

“I’ll pay you the thousand!” T Bar blurted.

“Natu!”

“Okay okay!” Waites began struggling with his boots.

“Faster. Every stitch. Socks and undershorts too.”

Waites did exactly as he was told.

“Now get out of the car on Natu’s side.”

T Bar stepped out into the sunlight. His skin looked blindingly white against the red rocks and dust. “Please,” he said, to no one in particular.

“Sit on the ground, facing the tree. Fold your hands on top of your head.”

“Please,” he kept whispering. “Please …”

Grayson spoke a long sentence in Urdu. Natu laughed. Then, to Waites, Grayson said, “If Natu hears your voice again he’s going to shoot you in the left buttock. If he sees your face, he’ll shoot you in the right. Do you understand?”

Without turning, almost without breathing, T Bar nodded.

Grayson beeped Dessinger on the walkie-talkie. “Peter’s turn,” he said.

“Hmm,” Dessinger began. “Looks like we robbed a monk. We got some Hindu-lookin’ threads, worn sandals, white Jockey shorts, bare-bones shaving kit. Got our passport, our travel diary, mail from the Fulbright Foundation, Harvard, University of New Delhi, Washington State. We got our Buddha statue, and our genuine leaf from the Bo Tree—so says the cellophane wrapper. And of course the shitload of books—dictionaries, lexicons, Indian poetry, mostly. And two typewritten manuscripts by the monk himself. Oh. Here’s his wallet. Empty. His cash must be on him.”

Without being asked Peter emptied his pockets and handed the contents—a money clip with rupees, $120 in traveler’s checks, and change—over
to Grayson. He pocketed them without a glance. “Describe the manuscripts,” he told Dessinger.

“One, titled
Maharashtran Poet-Saints
, looks finished. The other, untitled, looks rough. Both full of translated verse, commentary, footnotes. The second one full of handwritten additions and corrections.”

“A sentence from the finished one,” said Grayson.

“‘It should hardly be necessary to point out that, despite the parallels cited above, our three Vaishnava poets considered worship of the
nirguna
paramount to—’”

“That’ll do,” Grayson interrupted.

Peter nearly laughed.

“Original manuscripts, I’d wager,” Grayson said, watching Peter closely. “Both one of a kind.”

“Poet-Saints
isn’t. But the other one is.”

Grayson reached in his pockets, produced a pink pack of bidis, lit one up. “I’ll be frank,” he sighed. “When negotiations break down, my clients become Natu’s. And in his tradition, the dacoit tradition, the aftermath of robbery is death.”

Though he was careful not to speak or turn, T Bar began to wheeze again.

Grayson’s bidi had gone out. Smiling at Waites’ heaving back, he paused to relight it. “Dessinger and I are not dacoits,” he said at last. “So in cases like T Bar’s, we compromise with Natu. ‘Be sure we’re not followed,’ we tell him. Then turn him loose. He administers an excellent beating. Sometimes it’s difficult to make him stop.”

To judge by his gasping, Waites was not much relieved by this upgraded ticket.

“I admire scholarship,” Grayson said to Peter. “And there is no reason whatever for you to join this T Bar gowk. So come with us now, wire the States for five hundred dollars, and this entire episode can become a colorful little tale to share over drinks one day with tenured colleagues.”

Though it frightened him badly, Peter said, “I just can’t do that.”

Grayson turned to ice. “Don’t try to bluff me, my young Harvard scholar. Those manuscripts are your
life.”

“They were,” Peter said, struggling to steady his voice. “But thanks to you and Dessinger, that life is over.”

“Why is that?”

“If I didn’t speak Marathi, if I hadn’t studied Islam for years, if those poor men at the station had been anything but brokenhearted sports fans, if the train had been any color but white, then maybe I’d want my
manuscripts back. But I became a scholar because I wanted
truth
in my life. And if I buy those manuscripts back, my life becomes a lie.”

“Your choice here,” Grayson said coldly, “is not philosophical. It’s physical. You deal with me now. Or you strip down, join Waites—and deal with Natu.”

T Bar began to sob on top of his asthma. Natu grinned his lizard grin. “What’ll it be?” Grayson murmured.

Peter took a slow, dry swallow of almost nothing but fear—

and began to remove his clothes.

It’s good to be sensitive in life, but it stinks for baseball.

—Frank Viola, pitcher, New York Mets

T
he Pittsburgh Pirates won the National League East in ’70. They would win the World Series in ’71, and four division championships over the next five years. They had great players, decent coaching, fanatical fans, and they were in the process of making a whole lot of money, so naturally it gave the young Portland Tugs a charge to say they played for the top farm club of this mighty baseball machine. It took a seasoned old pro like Papa to recognize just how vicarious this charge was. Minor league teams are like coal-mining country: the only honor a big league city can regularly be depended upon to pay them is to plunder them. You’ve got to pretty much love New York and kiss off Kentucky to admire the way big league baseball operates. And Papa, like his mentor G. Q. Durham, was a lifelong baseball Kentuckian.