“Main jaanta hoon tum kaun ho, Heera Gopal. Heera, it means diamond, doesn’t it?” I repeat.
They all stare at me.
“How did you do that?” Amisha asks.
“Do what?”
“You sounded as if you spoke Hindi fluently,” Billy says.
“I don’t know. I’ve always had an ear for languages.”
“Incredible, really.” Amisha turns to Faruk. “You wouldn’t have to cut the dialogue.”
Faruk stares at me. “It is three days shooting, starting next week. Here in Mumbai. You will have to learn lines. I can have someone help you with the Hindi pronunciation and translations, but there is a good bit of English.” He strokes his beard. “I can pay you thirty thousand rupees.”
I pause, trying to do the conversions.
Faruk takes my silence for bargaining. “Okay,” he counters. “Forty thousand rupees.”
“How long would I have to stay?”
“Shoot starts Monday, should last three days,” Faruk says.
Monday is when I’m meant to fly back to Amsterdam. Do I want to stay three more days? But then Faruk continues. “We would put you up in the cast hotel. It’s on Juhu Beach.”
“Juhu Beach is very nice,” Billy says.
“I’m meant to leave on Monday. I have a flight.”
“Can’t you change your flight?” Faruk asks.
I’m sure Mukesh can. And if they’re putting me up in a hotel, it would keep me from having to go back to the Bombay Royale.
“Fifty thousand,” Faruk says. “But that’s my final offer.
“That’s more than a thousand dollars, Mr. de Ruiter,” Amisha informs me with a husky laugh and a billowing exhale of cigarette smoke. “Too good to turn down, I think.”
Twenty-eight
The production immediately relocates me to a posh hotel in Juhu Beach. The first thing I do is shower. Then I plug in my phone, which has been dead for the past day. I half expect a text or call from Yael, but there isn’t one. I consider telling her I’m staying longer, but after our last conversation, after the last three weeks—three years—I feel like she has no right to this information. Instead, I text Mukesh, asking him to bump my departure date by another three days.
Immediately, he calls back. “You’ve decided to stay with us longer!” he says. He sounds delighted.
“Just a few days.” I explain to him about being an extra and now being cast in a small part.
“Oh, that is most exciting,” he says. “Mummy must be thrilled.”
“Mummy doesn’t know, actually.”
“Doesn’t know?”
“I haven’t seen her. I’ve been staying out by the studios, and now I’m in a hotel in Juhu Beach.”
“Juhu Beach. Very classy,” Mukesh says. “But you haven’t seen Mummy since you came back from Rajasthan? I thought she picked you up at the airport.”
“Change of plans.”
“Oh. I see.” There’s a pause. “When do you want to leave?”
“I’m supposed to start shooting on Monday, and it’s meant to take three days.”
“Safer to assume it’ll take double,” Mukesh says. “I’ll see what I can do.”
We hang up and I pick up my script. Faruk has written English translations above the Hindi and someone has made me a tape recording of the Hindi. I spend the afternoon repeating the lines.
When I’m done, I pace the room for a bit. It’s all modern and posh, with a bathtub and a shower and a wide double bed. I haven’t slept somewhere this nice in ages, and it’s a little too quiet, a little too pristine. I sit on the bed, watch Hindi TV just to have some company. I order dinner in my room. That night when I go to bed, I find I can’t sleep. The bed is too soft, too big, after so many years of sleeping on trains, in cars, on bunkbeds, sofas, futons, Ana Lucia’s cramped bed. Now I’m like one of those rescued shipwrecked men who, once rescued and back in civilization, can only sleep on the floor.
• • •
Friday I wake up and practice my lines again. The shoot doesn’t start for three more days, and they stretch in front of me, endlessly, like the gray blue sea out my window. When my phone rings, I am embarrassed by my relief.
“Willem, Mukesh here. I have news about your flights.”
“Great.”
“So soonest I can get you out is April.” He tells me some dates.
“What? Why so long?”
“What can I say? All the flights are booked until then. Easter.”
Easter? In a Hindu/Muslim country? I sigh. “You’re sure there’s nothing sooner? I don’t mind paying a bit extra.”
“Nothing to be done. I did the best I could.” He sounds a bit insulted when he says the last bit.
“What about booking me a new flight?”
“Really, Willem, it is only a matter of weeks, and flights are expensive this time of year, and also full.” His voice has gone scolding. “It is just a few extra days.”
“Can you keep looking? See if any seats open up?”
“Certainly! Will do.”
I hang up and try to fight off the sense of impending doom. I’d thought the film would keep me here a few extra days, all of them in a hotel. Now I’m stuck. I remind myself that I don’t need to stay in Mumbai past the shoot. Nash and Tasha and Jules are going to Goa for a few days if they can cobble the cash together. Maybe I’ll go with them. Maybe I’ll even pay.
I send Jules a text: Is Goa still a go?
She texts back: Only if I don’t kill N&T. Last night unbearably loud. You are a traitor for deserting.
I look around my hotel room where last night it was unbearably quiet. I take a shot of the view from the balcony and send it to Jules. It’s quiet here. And there’s room for two if you want to desert, I write.
I like dessert, she texts back. Tell me where you are.
A few hours later, there’s a knock at the door. I open it and Jules comes in. She admires the view and hops on the bed. She picks up the script from the coffee table.
“Want to run lines?” I ask. “There’s English translations.”
She smiles. “Sure.”
I show her where to start. She clears her throat and arranges her face. “And who do you think you are?” she asks in a haughty voice, her attempt, I think, to mimic Amisha.
“Sometimes I wonder,” I reply. “The name on my birth certificate reads Lars Von Gelder. But I know who you are, Heera Gopal. Heera, it means diamond, doesn’t it? And you glitter as brightly as your name.”
“I don’t care to discuss my name with you, Mr. Von Gelder.”
“Oh, so you know me after all?”
“I know all I care to.”
“Then you know I am the top exporter of diamonds in South Africa, so I know a thing or two about precious gems. I can see more with my naked eye than most jewelers can with a loupe. And looking at you, I can tell that you are a million carats. And flawless.”
“Word has it that you’re after my family’s diamond, Mr. Von Gelder.”
“Oh, I am, Miss Gopal. I am.” I pause for a beat. “But perhaps not the Shakti Diamond.”
At the end of the section, Jules puts down the script. “This is quite cheesy, Mr. Van Gelder.”
“It’s Von Gelder, actually.”
“Oh. Sorry. Mr. Von Gelder.”
“It’s very important, you know? Names,” I say.
“Oh, yeah? What’s Jules short for?”
“Juliana?” I try. “Like the Dutch queen?”
“Nope.” Jules stands up from her chair and walks toward me, smiling as she folds herself into my lap. Then she kisses me.