The room we go to is like Franklin’s. Mosquito bloodstains on the walls, sewer stench lingering, incense burning. In the process of packing, unpacking or repacking, someone’s belongings got scattered about the place. There are drums and chillums and dirty clothes, and a machete on the bed.
Ten of them are standing there. The bed is cleared, fifty tolas are spread out on the mattress. One is opened up, passed around, inspected by everyone. Guarded smiles and shrugs and nods, a ripple of cautious approval, and someone begins to crumble charas into a mixing bowl.
The negotiations begin. He starts at eight hundred per tola and they baulk at this, laugh at him. They say, Come on, man, be real. He laughs back, gives nothing away, declares the provenance, says it’s from Malana itself, reminds them that he’s the trustworthy one and they came to him, he’s not a dirty Kashmiri, he’s not like the others on the street. He says they won’t find anything this good on their own, not here, not for this much, not now. Go out in the street and ask for it, see what they give you. So they offer five. He looks offended, goes to collect the charas in the shoebox like a kid gathering his toys. They laugh at him and push him away and say, OK, OK. Make it six, and he looks at them with raised eyebrows and shakes his head and says, Seven five. Six, they repeat. He makes as if to spit on the floor, pauses, grins, says, OK, six five.
Six five. There’s a discussion about it. Good enough.
Thirty-two thousand, rounded down.
Smoke in the room now, everyone getting blasted, chillums being smoked empty, cleaned with cloth that’s torn into strips, repacked, bom Shiva, lit. One of the men picks up the machete from the bed. He says it belonged to another guy, another Israeli, not in their group though, a guy who smoked too much, didn’t have the right head, had a bad temper, cracked. They were at the beach one morning after a party, it was in Goa at the start of April, the season was ending, the music was still playing in the jungle not far away, and this guy, he was sitting at the edge of this group in the sand, spaced out, coming down. And then this cow … This cow is behind him, coming towards him, trying to get into his bag, you know, poking its head around, flicking out its tongue, the flies are around it. He has some food in his bag. The cow wants the food. This guy is pushing it away, cursing it, pushing it with his hands, but every time he pushes it, it just keeps coming back again. And this guy is getting angrier and angrier. His, how do you say? His patience, you know, it’s not so good.
People in the room start to laugh.
So what does he do? His temper goes, OK. He gets up, he’s had enough, he empties his bag on to the sand, dumps everything out, everything in his bag, and looks at the cow and he shouts at it, in Hebrew, he’s saying, Go on then, fucker, eat it. Eat everything. And the cow, it just keeps going on, doesn’t know what he’s saying, it keeps coming forward and starts eating. There is some banana, a piece of bread. And everyone around is laughing. Everyone thinks it’s fucking funny, you know. But what else is in the bag? This fucking machete. So what does he do? He picks up the machete. It’s also on the ground. Boom. He puts it into the fucking cow’s neck. Right into its fucking neck. This guy’s crazy, you know. He puts the machete right into the neck. Crack. You see the bone and the meat and the blood. Blood everywhere. Everyone who was laughing, now they’re jumping up from the sand. What the fuck? Are you crazy, man? But he keeps going. He’s taking the head off, there’s blood everywhere. There are locals on the beach, fishermen, chai sellers. They’re all watching this. They’re not happy. Oh no. And before you know what’s happening, a crowd is forming, they’re watching this like they don’t believe their fucking eyes. This cow is fucking dead and everyone else is backing away from him and he’s there with the cow. Then he kind of, you know, wakes up, he looks around. There’s this dead cow on the ground and he’s standing there and these locals are all staring at him. This guy is thinking, Fuck.
People start laughing in the room.
And he’s running. Running for his life. There’s all these locals after him, and they’ve got knives and machetes and sticks and he’s running away from the beach, towards the trees, he’s gone over the bushes, into the trees, and the locals are charging after him. He vanished. Never seen anyone run so fast, not even in the middle of a war. We never saw him again.
Now he holds the machete in the air, touches the chillum to his forehead. Says, Cow-killing machete motherfucker.
With coke in my blood and my brain I take to driving fast into the night. I drive through Lutyens’ Delhi. The thrill of a straight road, of regular street-lights ticking like a metronome, the steady purr of the engine, changing down gears, suddenly coming to a stop at the red light. Two men pull up alongside me on a bike.
They look inside the car. I know the wild excitement they must feel when they see me alone in here. The bike’s engine revs. And the light is still red. So do I drive? Do I look at them? The last thing I should do is look at them. I turn my head and I look at them. As soon as I do their eyes widen in pleasure and the passenger grips the rider’s waist, holds him and says something into his ear. The bike veers away in a loop. It loops to the left, off behind me, and it pulls back louder and faster a moment later alongside my driver’s window.
Like a kennel of dogs they howl and bang on the glass with the palms of their hands. Then the pillion rider tries to open the door.
Although the light is still red, I put my foot down on the gas. I’m screeching off, along Akbar Road towards India Gate. The motorbike does the same, following me at speed, racing with me, pulling up alongside my window, dipping behind, flashing its lights and beeping the horn, and I can hear the men wailing on top of it. The road ahead is empty, the wide road deserted, shrouded by the overhanging trees — I accelerate into it.
Around India Gate they’re still on me. I twist round Tilak Marg and accelerate hard out of the bend. A few cars pass on the other side. Ahead at the crossroads by the Supreme Court the light is red. I see the bike coming to my side and jerk towards it, forcing it to brake. Then I take my chance and floor it, drive straight through the light and the traffic.
Behind, in the mirror, I watch the bike being hit by a car side-on at speed, a police van far behind with flashing lights, and the bike and the men spilling out on the road.
I dreamed of him last night, and in the dream he came back to life. He didn’t even know that he’d been dead. It’s the guilt that’s doing this to me I suppose, the guilt of resurrecting him. Of making him over, using his likeness and sculpting him like a piece of clay.
In the dream he’s following me around, all over Delhi, begging me to take him back, like a fool, to let him be with me. He looks exactly as he did, the same clothes and hair, the same age. But he is calmer. Infinitely sadder because of this.
He doesn’t remember the things he’s done so he can’t understand why I won’t have him. He begs me, he’s close to tears. I feel pity for him. I try to let him down gently, tell him it’s impossible. I don’t have the heart to tell him he’s been dead, that more than ten years have passed. He doesn’t seem to notice that I’m older than him now. He seems so ordinary, without power. And he continues to beg all the while, hands wrung. He says, I won’t make a sound, I’ll be by your side, I’ll follow you everywhere, make you happy, do anything you say.