‘I don’t meet Arab men,’ he answers, as indirectional and evasive as Zafar.
‘But it was one of the first things you asked me, did I have anything to do with oil,’ Zafar insists.
‘Well. . you said. . you said you were from Saudi Arabia and. . and. .’
‘And so, with charming stereotyping impulses, you thought, ah, Saudi Arabia, therefore, oil.’
‘Well, you’re not wrong. I was being a bit. . insular,’ Ritwik says, very sheepish now.
Zafar returns his hand to his thigh and gives it a squeeze. ‘My father made his fortune in oil. But it’s not going to last forever.’
‘What, the oil or the fortune?’
‘Neither. Do you know anything about Saudi Arabia?’
‘No, apart from. .’ he stops, trying to phrase sentences that won’t smack of camels, oil or harems.
Zafar rushes in. ‘Apart from thinking that everyone in that country is afloat on a fortune of oil.’
Ritwik tries to protest but Zafar gives a short, joyless laugh and continues. ‘Do you know who runs the country? Do you know what the oil revenue is used for? Who gets that money? Who owns the oilfields? How oil multinationals are run?’
‘No, Zafar, of course, I don’t know. But why don’t you take me through these things? I’ll be glad to be enlightened.’ Ritwik immediately regrets the last sentence: it could so easily be read as acid-soaked.
‘OK, little by little.’ There is no sign that Zafar has taken it as sarcasm but he clams up for a while.
‘It’s a one-resource economy. How long will that last you think?’ Zafar has started talking again but Ritwik gets the impression that he is thinking aloud. ‘In the next twenty or thirty years, that country is going to need nearly half a trillion dollars, yes, trillion, to upgrade oil pipelines, refineries, transport, the whole bloody infrastructure to keep the oil industry and its economy running. It’s living in a bubble. Oil money is an illusion.’
‘Where’s the money going to come from?’
Zafar doesn’t answer. Ritwik looks out of the window again and watches the fast glide of trees and houses and road signs. He is baffled by Zafar’s sudden outburst. He takes a left turn at a sign and the roads become narrower. They drive past open country with sudden battalions of brooding Lombardy poplars and hedges huddled in the dark. Zafar seems to know where he is going: he takes more turns, each taking them down a narrower road. Suddenly in front of them, skulking in the dark, is a huge house, a mansion made of darkness, hiding cunningly and willing itself to remain undiscovered. There is a long crunching of gravel under the tyres as the massed shadow moves closer and closer until Ritwik can make out a façade broken up by unlit windows, scores of them, and cornices, a doorway, chimneys, bussoirs. They get out of the car and Zafar leads the way to the front door. He takes out a giant bunch of keys and fumbles around, the keys clinking and jingling, till he finds the right one. They enter and Zafar turns on a light switch.
The sudden light hurts Ritwik’s eyes. They are in a huge hallway. The floor is wooden, with exquisite Persian and Afghani rugs on them. There is a mirror, in its heavy and intricate golden frame, reflecting them. There is wooden furniture everywhere — a slim table with curved and ornate legs, a heavy cabinet, two beautiful chairs with red silk upholstery; to Ritwik’s untrained eyes, they all look very expensive and classy. These are the objects for which words such as nonsuch chest, davenport, card table with floral marquetry, veneered cabinet are used, Ritwik thinks; if only he could unite name with thing.
‘What do you think? Come, come along, I’ll show you the rest. Are you interested in antique furniture at all? It’s something of an obsession with me,’ Zafar says, moving ahead.
Ritwik is too struck by the sheer magnitude and opulence of the house and its heavy English furnishings and objects to respond. He follows Zafar to an enormous room that borders on the vulgar in its excess — cabinets and a huge chest of drawers against the walls, tables and stands, a gateleg dining table so huge that the twelve identical chairs around it look distantly placed from each other. The light from the two crystal chandeliers will not allow any dishonesty, any evasion. Zafar keeps up a running commentary, most of which doesn’t reach Ritwik, apart from words and phrases here and there.
‘The chairs are all Louis Quatorze. . I had the rugs shipped to England. . the only bit of the house that’s fully furnished. . Queen Anne, by the way. . it’s almost ready. . Grace Carpenter in the village. . you look a bit gobsmacked, if you don’t shut your mouth, you’ll soon start catching flies.’ It is the laugh on which this ends that makes Ritwik pay attention to what he is saying. He shuts his mouth and says, ‘This. . this is amazing. How many rooms does it have?’
‘Twelve bedrooms, on three floors. There are reception rooms, drawing rooms, morning rooms, smoking rooms, a billiard room. I think if you add the bathrooms, kitchens, breakfast rooms, and all that sort of thing, maybe forty?’ Ritwik can hear the pride of ownership in his voice.
‘But what are you going to do with. . with this palace?’ He cannot keep the incredulity out of his naive voice. ‘You’re not planning to live here, are you? It looks like a stately home, something English Heritage looks after. Do you really own it?’
‘Yes, I do. As of last year. Do you want to have a quick tour around the other floors?’
‘Zafar, you must be joking, you cannot own this thing. It’s like saying you own Audley End or something. You cannot buy this sort of thing, can you?’
‘Of course, you can. You can buy anything you want.’
Ritwik thinks he catches a moment of truth, a brief flash of the inner, real Zafar, in this last statement and, for some intangible reason, it makes him feel both small and sad. He shakes it off and asks again, ‘But will you live here? In all of it? You could. . you could house ten, a dozen families here.’
‘Well, I wanted to buy something in this country, do it up, maybe have a place here when the family wants to travel.’ His voice becomes hooded again. ‘Besides, I work with important clients. It would be nice to have a place to entertain them, you know, have meetings, that sort of thing.’
‘Does it have a garden?’
‘A huge one. And an orchard. But it’s too dark to see them now. There’s even a gardener.’
Ritwik feels dispersed in this new world; in a strange way, it makes him feel dishonest, besmirched.
‘What time is it?’ he asks, feeling leached of interest and energy, as if it had all flown out to create the unremitting shower of attention the house so imperiously demanded.
‘It’s about half one. Time to go?’
‘Oh my god, it’s very late,’ says Ritwik, a bit too promptly. ‘Zafar, I would love to see the rest of the house but I must leave now.’
‘All right then, let me turn the lights off.’
‘I’m a bit paranoid about leaving Anne on her own. I keep thinking I’ll go back home one day and find her lying in a heap at the foot of the stairs or in the bathroom. She’s very, very old and frail. I’ve also recently discovered that she’s a little gin fiend.’ Ritwik keeps on this patter. ‘You’ll bring me here in the daytime one day, won’t you? I’d love to see the garden and the orchard and the whole house in the daylight.’
‘Yes, some time.’
‘Come to think of it, I’ve never seen you in the daylight.’
‘I might be a vampire, beware,’ Zafar says, making a lunge for his neck with bared teeth. Ritwik starts laughing and holds him away. In an instant, Zafar envelops him in his arms, lifts him off the ground, carries him to the room with the chandeliers and sets him down on the table on his back. He kicks out of his way a couple of chairs, unbuttons his fly, rubs himself against the seat of Ritwik’s jeans while he lies, knees up, on the table, then lifts him up again and pushes him down to his knees on to the floor. It is over in an instant, before Ritwik has even had a chance to tumesce. Saliva and semen drip off his chin on to the floor; he cannot banish the thought of the stain it will leave on the expensive wooden floor. He stands up, reaches into his pocket, pulls out some crumpled and frayed tissues, bends down and rubs the bit of the floor where he thinks the drops might have fallen: his dark-adapted eyes cannot make out anything much in this room.