Chapter Ten
The driver bullied his way through tight, midday traffic, reaching a warehouse in an industrial area in minutes. The warehouse was freestanding, with a screaming space between it and the nearest buildings. Danda was already there. My bike was parked on the gravel driveway in front.
The driver parked the car. A roller door opened to a little over halfway. We got out, stooped under the door, and a chain clattered noisily as it rolled shut again.
There were two big worries. The first was that they hadn’t blindfolded me: they’d allowed me to see the location of the warehouse, and the faces of the eight men inside. The second worry was the supply of power tools, torches and heavy hammers arranged on benches along one wall of the warehouse.
It took an effort not to stare. Instead, I focused on the long low chair standing alone in the open space near the back wall of the small warehouse. It was a piece of pool furniture: a banana lounge, upholstered in strands of acid-green and lemon vinyl. There was a wide stain under the chair.
Danda, the skinny moustache with short-story eyes, gave me a thorough pat-down. He took my two knives and passed them on to the leader, who examined them for a moment, before putting them down carefully on the long bench.
‘Sit down,’ he said, turning to face me.
When I refused to move, he folded his arms patiently and nodded to a tall, powerfully built man who’d been with us in the car. The man came for me.
Hit first, and hit hard, an old con used to tell me.
As the big man stepped in quickly, swinging out with an open-handed slap to the right side of my head, I rolled with the blow, and hit him with a short, sharp uppercut. It good-luck connected with the point of his chin.
The big man stumbled back a step. Two of the men drew guns. They were old-fashioned revolvers, military issue from a forgotten war.
The leader sighed again, and nodded his head.
Four men rushed forward, pushing me onto the green and yellow lounge chair. They tied my hands to the rear legs of the chair with coconut-fibre ropes. Slipping another length of rope under the front, they tied down my legs.
The leader finally unfolded his arms and approached me.
‘Do you know who I am?’
‘A critic?’ I suggested, trying not to show the scared that I was feeling.
He frowned, looking me up and down.
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I know who you are. I know a Scorpion when I see one.’
The leader nodded.
‘They call me Vishnu,’ he said.
Vishnu, the man Sanjay spared after the war that cost so many, the man who came back with a gang called the Scorpions.
‘Why do so many gangsters name themselves after gods?’
‘How ’bout I name you dead, you bahinchudh!’ Danda spluttered.
‘Come to think of it,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘Danda’s not a god. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Danda’s just a demigod. Isn’t that right? A minor deity?’
‘Shut up!’
‘Stay cool, Danda,’ Vishnu soothed. ‘He’s just trying to keep the subject off the subject. Don’t let him bait you.’
‘A demigod,’ I mused. ‘Ever asked yourself how often you get the short stick around here, Danda?’
‘Shut up!’
‘You know what?’ Vishnu said, stifling a yawn. ‘Fuck him. Go ahead, Danda. Fuck his happiness, if you want.’
Danda rushed at me, swinging punches. As I moved my head quickly, left and right, he only connected with one in every three. Suddenly he stopped. When I held my head still long enough to glance up, I saw the big man, the man I’d hit on the point of the chin, pulling Danda away by the shoulder.
The big man punched at my face. He was wearing a brass ring on his middle finger. I felt it crunch along the curves of my cheek and jaw. The big man knew what he was doing. He didn’t break anything, he just made it unwell. Then he changed tactic, and smacked me hard on the sides of the head with open-handed slaps.
If you beat a man with your fists for long enough, your knuckles will shatter, or the man will die, or both. But if you break him up a little with your fists, to make sure that a good, hard slap is filled with pain, you can go on beating him all day long with an open hand.
Torture. It’s heavy and flat in that space. There’s a density to it, a centripetal pull so strong that there’s almost nothing you can take from it; so little you can learn that isn’t dark all the way through.
But one thing I came to know is that when the beating starts, you shut your mouth. You don’t speak. You keep your mouth shut, until it ends. And you don’t scream, if you can help it.
‘Okay,’ Vishnu said, when the month of two minutes ended.
The big man stepped back, accepted a towel from Danda and wiped his sweat-soaked face. Danda reached up to rub the big man’s shoulders.
‘Tell me about Pakistan,’ Vishnu demanded, holding a cigarette to my lips.
I drew in the smoke with dribbles of blood, and then puffed it out. I had no idea what he was talking about.
‘Tell me about Pakistan.’
I stared back at him.
‘We know you went to Goa,’ Vishnu said slowly. ‘We know you picked up some guns. So, I will ask you again. Tell me about Pakistan.’
Guns, Goa, Sanjay: it was all coming home with one turn of the karmic wheel. But there’s a voice inside my fear, and sooner or later it says, Let’s get it over with.
‘A lot of people think the capital of Pakistan is Karachi,’ I said, through swollen lips. ‘But it’s not.’
Vishnu laughed, and then stopped laughing.
‘Tell me about Pakistan.’
‘Great food, nice music,’ I said.
Vishnu glanced at the tip of his cigarette, and then raised his eyes to the big man.
And it started again. And I limped through thick mud as each new slap on the side of my head smacked me closer to the fog.
When the big man paused, resting his hands on his thighs, Danda seized the moment to flog me, with a thin bamboo rod. It left me soaking wet with suffered sweat, but woke me up.
‘How are your balls now, madachudh?’ Danda screamed at me, kneeling so close that I could smell mustard oil and bad-fear sweat in the armpits of his shirt.
I started laughing, as you do sometimes, when you’re being tortured.
Vishnu waved his hand.
The sudden silence that followed the gesture was so complete that it seemed the whole world had stopped for a moment.
Vishnu said something. I couldn’t hear him. I realised, slowly, that the silence was a ringing in my ears that only I could hear. He was staring at me, with a quizzical expression, as if he’d just noticed a stray dog, and was wondering whether to play with it or kick it with his Gucci loafers.
Another man wiped the blood from my face with a rag smelling of petrol and rotting mould. I spat out blood and bile.
‘How do you feel?’ Vishnu asked me, absently.
I knew the survivor’s rules. Don’t speak. Don’t say a word. But I couldn’t stop anger writing words, and couldn’t stop saying them once they were in my head.
‘Islamabad. The capital of Pakistan,’ I said. ‘It’s not Karachi.’
He walked toward me, drawing a small semi-automatic pistol from his jacket pocket. The star sapphire in his eyes showed a tiny image of my skull, already crushed.
The entry door of the warehouse opened. A chai wallah, a boy of perhaps twelve, stepped through from the bright light of the street, bringing six glasses of tea in one wire basket, and six glasses of water in another.
‘Ah, chai,’ Vishnu said, a sudden wide smile smoothing out wrinkles of rage.
He put the pistol away, and returned to his place near the long bench.
The chai boy handed out glasses. His ancient street-kid eyes drifted over me, but showed no reaction. Maybe he’d seen it before: a man tied to an acid-green and lemon-yellow banana lounge, and covered in blood.
The gangster who’d smeared some of the blood from my face untied my legs and hands. He took a glass of chai from the boy, and handed it to me. I struggled to hold it in both numbed hands.
Other gangsters took their glasses of chai, courteously working their way through the ritual of refusing, so that others could drink, and then accepting the compromise of half-shares, spilled into emptied water glasses.
It was a polite and convivial scene. We might’ve been friends, sitting together at Nariman Point, and admiring the sunset.
The boy hunted around the space for the empty glasses of the last round, filling his wire baskets as he went. He noticed that one of the glasses was missing.
‘Glass!’ he growled, in a feral percolation of whatever it was that accumulated in his throat.
He held up one of the baskets, showing the offending empty space where the last glass should’ve rested.
‘Glass!’
Gangsters immediately scrambled to find the missing glass, turning over empty cartons and shoving aside heaps of rags and rubbish. Danda found it.
‘Hain! Hain!’ he said, revealing the glass with a flourish. It’s here! It’s here!
He handed it to the boy, who snatched it suspiciously and left the warehouse. Danda looked at Vishnu quickly, his eyes bright with grovelling: Did you see that, boss? Did you see it was me who found the glass?
When I was sure that I could move without trembling, I put my glass of chai on the ground beside me. It wasn’t all pride and anger: my lips were split and swollen. I knew I’d be drinking blood as well as chai.
‘Can you stand?’ Vishnu asked, setting his empty glass aside.
I stood. I started to fall.
The big man who’d slapped me around rushed to catch me, his strong arms encircling my shoulders with solicitous care. With help, I stood again.
‘You can go,’ Vishnu said.
He shifted his eyes toward Danda.
‘Give him the keys to his bike, yaar.’
Danda fished the keys from his pocket on impulse, but approached Vishnu, rather than me.
‘Please,’ he begged. ‘He knows something. I know it. Just . . . just give me a little more time.’
‘It’s okay,’ Vishnu replied, smiling indulgently. ‘I already know what I need to know.’
He took the keys from Danda and threw them to me. I caught them against my chest with both numbed hands. I met his gaze.
‘Besides,’ Vishnu said, looking at me, ‘you don’t even know about Pakistan, do you? You don’t have any damn idea what we’re talking about, isn’t it?’
I didn’t answer.
‘That’s it, my friend. Ja!’ Go!
I held his eyes for a moment, and then held out my hand, palm upwards.
‘My knives,’ I said.
Vishnu smiled, folding his arms again.
‘Let’s call that a fine, shall we? Your knives will go to Hanuman, as a fine for that shot you took at him. Take my advice. Go now, and keep this place a secret. Don’t tell Sanjay or anyone else about it.’
‘A secret?’
‘I let you know about this place, because you can use it to contact us. If you leave a message here, it will get back to me, very quickly.’
‘Why would I wanna do that?’
‘Unless I have misjudged you, and I’m really quite good at judging characters, you may decide, one day, that you have more in common with us than you think now. And you may want to talk to us. If you’re smart, you won’t tell anyone about this address. You’ll save it, for a rainy day. But for now, for today, as the Americans say, fuck off!’
I walked with Danda to the side door, stepping through as he opened it for me. He cleared his throat noisily, and spat on the leg of my trousers before slamming the door shut.
On the ground, beside my bike, I found a scrap of paper, and used it to wipe the mess of spit from my jeans. I put the key into the ignition of the bike. I was about to kick-start the engine, when I caught sight of my battered face in the rear-view mirror. My nose wasn’t broken, for once, but both eyes were pulpy and swollen.
I kicked the bike alive, but left her in neutral gear, resting on the side-stand with the engine turning over slowly. I twitched a control lever on a panel beneath one long edge of the seat. The panel dropped down, showing my Italian stiletto knife.
I hammered on the door of the warehouse with the butt of the knife. I heard an angry voice inside as someone approached the door, cursing whoever was disturbing the peace. It was Danda. I was glad.
The door opened. Danda was swearing angrily. I grabbed at the front of his shirt, slammed him against the doorjamb, and jabbed the stiletto against his stomach. He tried to break free, but I pushed the point deeper into his stomach until the knife spit red onto his pink shirt.
‘Okay! Okay! Okay!’ he shouted. ‘Fuck! Arey, pagal hai tum?’ Have you gone mad?
Several men began to approach me. I pressed the knife a little harder.
‘No! No!’ Danda shouted. ‘Get the hell back, you guys! He’s cutting me here!’
The men stopped. Without taking my eyes off Danda’s face, I spoke to Vishnu.
‘My knives,’ I mumbled, my lips as numb as the heel of a bricklayer’s hand. ‘Bring them here. Give them to me.’
Vishnu hesitated. I saw the terror in Danda’s sweat. He was more afraid of his employer’s disregard than he was of my anger.
At last, Vishnu slouched toward us with the two knives. When he handed them to me, I shoved them into the belt at the back of my trousers, holding the stiletto at Danda’s belly.
Vishnu began to tug on Danda’s shirt, wanting to pull him away from me, and back into the warehouse. I resisted, pressing the knife just a little harder against Danda’s soft stomach. A half-centimetre of the blade was inside his body. One centimetre more would penetrate an organ.
‘Wait! Wait!’ Danda shrieked in panic. ‘I’m bleeding! He’s gonna kill me!’
‘What do you want?’ Vishnu asked.
‘Tell me about Pakistan,’ I said.
Vishnu laughed. It was a good laugh, clear and clean. It was the kind of laugh that would’ve endeared him to me on another day, when he hadn’t introduced me to his pool furniture.
‘I like you, and I feel like killing you, at the same time,’ he said, his dark-rimmed eyes gleaming. ‘That’s a peculiar talent you’ve got.’
‘Tell me about Pakistan,’ I said.
‘You really don’t know anything, do you?’ Vishnu sighed, as his smile died. ‘We saw that you went to a Council meeting, and with your Goa trip and all, we assumed, like, that you must be knowing what’s going on. Your guys are really keeping you in the dark, my friend. That’s dangerous, for you. Not to mention a little . . . insulting, na?’
‘Your man here will be in the dark any second now, if you don’t answer my question. I wanna know what this was all about. Tell me about Pakistan.’
‘If I tell you what I know, you’ll tell Sanjay,’ he replied, stifling a yawn.
There was a fine but deep scar over his right eye. He rubbed a fingertip along the cicatrice as he spoke.
‘That would give Sanjay an advantage. I can’t allow that. Let Danda go. Get on your motorcycle and go. If you kill Danda, I’ll have to kill you. He’s my cousin. And I don’t want to kill you. I don’t want to kill anyone. Not today. It’s my wife’s birthday, you know, and there’s a party.’
He shifted his gaze to stare at the sodden clouds overhead.
‘Go fast,’ he said, looking back at me. ‘We thought you knew something, but it’s obvious that you don’t. When you know more, and you want to talk, you know where to contact me. No hard feelings. These things happen. As the Americans say, I am owing one on you.’
‘Not as much as I’m owing one on you,’ I said, stepping away from Danda, and backing toward the bike.
He laughed again.
‘Let’s call this even, and start fresh and clean. Leave me a message here, when you want to get in touch. One way or another, I’ll come to know.’