“Who’s your partner?”
“Don’t know what you mean.”
“Who nicks the wallet?” They hadn’t twigged the bird-shit, which is funny. Mark complains he was pestered by a beggar, a boy on all fours, and next thing he knows his wallet’s missing. Never mentions bird-shit. Well, it’s demeaning to be shat on, quickly as possible wipe from shirt and mind.
“Which wallet?”
“Don’t mess with me you miserable sonofawhore.”
His fist thuds down, it was the first of many beatings I took from Reserve Inspector Prithviraj, the street folk call him Fatlu because of his massive butt and the way his belly bulges like it’s being throttled by his belt. Fatlu has hated me for years, he’d lay into me whenever he saw me on the street, didn’t even have to be doing anything. Well I can take a thrashing. I’m used to sticks thudding on my back. Beat, fuckers, beat harder, maybe you’ll straighten me out! If there’s a god, which I personally don’t believe, but Ma Franci says there is, he must have recorded every blow. Ma says that very soon all the bad people in the world will get what’s coming to them. I am happily picturing Fatlu with his balls in a truss pulling a cart lashed by demons when here’s Faqri standing beside me. “Saw you from over there,” says he.
I congratulate him on a fine performance.
“A little rusty.” We’ve left the bus station, Faqri checks the mark’s wallet, extracts folded notes fresh from some Nagpur bank, tucks them in his pocket. “These days I am more in the pharmaceutical line.”
“I know. It’s that I’ve come to talk to you about.”
“Shop’s not open today, so let’s go to my place.”
Just outside the galla mandi, the vegetable market, on certain days you will find Faqri sat on a stool with packages of herbs and powders spread out on newspapers by his feet. This is his shop. The packets are unwrapped to show their contents, leaves, seeds, petals, roots. He sends kids to gather these things from all over the city. Some even grow in corners of the Kampani’s factory. He employs women to grind them and mix up with molasses to make pills, one rupee per pill, buy half a dozen he’ll pop them in a matchbox for you. Faqri’s pills can cure whatever you want and in a city like Khaufpur there’s no shortage of illnesses. He has pills for coughs and breathlessness and aches and pains plus the type of problems people don’t like to talk about. He tells me of the patients he’s cured. Woman had white water discharge. Man couldn’t get it up. Chap was worried because he has feelings for men instead of women. Faqri’s now such a medical expert, he’s thinking of calling himself “doctor.”
“So you’re a sex-specialist?”
“Specialist in everything,” he says proudly. It should be his motto. Look at his razor-crease pants, shirt with hoisted collar, Faqri is twenty years old, already you can see the man that’s coming, prosperous, devious, can’t give a straight answer, would make a perfect politician.
Subtlety is of no use, I’ll have to be blunt. “I’m after something that takes away the sex urge.”
“Takes it away? What? Your famous lund is out of control?”
“Not for me.”
“Lady friend?”
Having no choice, I tell him the story.
“Are they already doing it?” he asks.
“How would I know?”
“Jealous,” sniggers Faqri. “Wish it was you?”
“Don’t be disgusting,” I say. “She is like my sister.”
“Some sister,” says he. “Kuala Lumpur Police Department.”
“Fuck off.” Kuala Lumpur Police Department, it’s a way of saying KLPD, which in turn is a way to say Khade Lund Pe Dhoka, or deception of the standing cock, c’est à dire, a pricktease.
When we reach his place, Faqri sets about grinding some black seeds into a powder. A little bit later he shows me a thing that looks like a goat dropping.
“One of these, he’ll feel sick as a dog, in no mood even to speak to a girl let alone get sexy with her.”
“How long do they work for?”
“One pill per day,” he says. “If things look really bad you could give one and a half. Do not exceed prescribed dose. How many do you want?”
“Discount for quantity?”
I go away with a plastic jar containing thirty-six pills.
The first pill I give Zafar on the day of the big democracy. The democracy is a meeting where everyone has their say, followed by a big fucking row, after which everyone does what Zafar wants. This one happens in Somraj’s music room which he keeps sacred to goddess Saraswati and blue-throated god Siva. It’s a beautiful room to my eyes, it has walls of white, hung all over with instruments that make many types of sounds. There are bolsters, cushions, plus rugs spread on the floor, one came from Afghanistan, it was brought by a Hazara who traded it for singing lessons, pictures of helicopters and guns are woven into it. Zafar despises possessions, but these carpets are the only things I’ve seen him take pleasure in. “In Khorasan,” he told us, “the weavers tie one knot of the wrong colour because only god can make something perfect.”
“Since when did you start believing in the upstairs-one?”
“Hark at Animal,” says Farouq, “god’s knot in humanity.”
Zafar was well pissed-off with Farouq, but I don’t think he was sticking up for me, Zafar hates all mention of god, but even more hates being caught praising him.
So now let’s tell you who all were at this durbar. The room’s so full it’s like a bladder bursting with important types. Zafar and his mates, they’re on one side. Opposite is Somraj, with a couple of his musical chums, in between are all the rest. Ram Nekchalan the shopkeeper is there looking mighty pleased, first time he’s been invited to a meeting so grand. He’s sat next to a sardarji Timecheck Singh. Ask Timecheck anything, he’ll look at his watch. Lawyers charge per minute. Say “Hello,” he’ll check the time, can’t help it. All these are from the Chicken Claw, there are a half-dozen others from elsewhere in Khaufpur, plus two from the Nutcracker. Last of all’s me, I’m hanging in the door, Zafar sees and calls me in. No room there’s, but Nisha signs for me to sit between her and Zafar, so I’ve squeezed in. Oh joy, Nisha puts her arm round my shoulder, from the other side Zafar drops his arm round me, I’m truly among friends, chuffed to be included in the council of the great.
Zafar starts the meeting by telling how this Amrikan woman’s appeared in Khaufpur and bought the building, what the Khaufpur Gazette wrote, she was doing a wonderful act of charity, and how Zahreel Khan, the Minister for Poison Relief, will open this so-called clinic.
“So-called?” asks a woman I don’t know. “Isn’t it a real clinic?”
“I am sure it is a real clinic, Dr. Misra,” Zafar replies, “the question is, what is its real purpose?” He then reports what we’ve learned from Dayanand and Co. about the kind of medical work that will go on across the road.
“Excuse me, Zafar bhai,” says someone else, “but these things, they’re exactly what is needed here.”
Zafar’s not having it all his own way, but I’m no longer listening. Eyes, I don’t give a twisted fuck about politics, I’m in Zafar’s group for one reason which is to be near Nisha, and you can’t get much nearer than I’m at that moment. Her thigh’s pressed tight against my knee, my nostrils are full of the scent of her, she is warm and her flesh is soft. I begin thinking about certain things I’ve seen in the frangipani and the monster down there stirs. It shifts, gives a throb, I feel it thickening. My kakadus are changing shape. Fuck! No! Not in front of all these people. I dive a hand into my pocket to clamp the unruly beast against my leg, my fingers find Faqri’s box of pills. Desperate I’m, will have to pop one, but can’t slide it open without letting go of my unruly lund, which immediately starts to rear and buck, damn that fucking thing, it has no respect. Well, there’s nothing for it but to lean right forward and plant my other elbow on the creature, but this in turn leaves the hand twitching to no purpose, so I rest my chin on it like I’m concentrating, must look peculiar for Nisha whispers, “Are you okay?”