Kavita makes a run for me and her father has to scoop her up before she can land a blow.
The door is slammed and the siren is deployed. We pick our way through a hail of fruit and fire fed from a communal pyre. I’m starving and in fear of my life. I nearly laugh. This is fame. I don’t want it anymore.
The police station is a single-storey concrete shed on the outskirts of a residential district, simmering like an unexpired curse across the road from a scrap-metal kiosk where a fat man and his wife offer coconut water to a passing trade that doesn’t look like it will ever turn up. The man scalps the coconuts with a blunt-looking machete and lines them up on the table to be forgotten about. His hopeless occupation must be a penance of some kind and I try not to think about the atrocities he must have committed to land himself in such demeaning shackles.
The constables walk me inside and take me to an office with no windows or cameras. Another policeman is waiting for me there, standing with his arms folded. He has the sullen poised demeanour of a weekend psychopath. He wishes me harm. The desire of it drips from him. He introduces himself as an inspector and tells me there have been some complaints. One of the constables closes the door and guards it.
I tell the Inspector I’ve got my passport and a valid visa. They’re somewhere safe and close by, at the home of my friend. I can get them for him. I’m English. I’m above board.
‘The friend who you are trying to kill two days ago?’ he asks.
‘It wasn’t like that. I was helping him.’
‘This is not the way it appeared to some of the witnesses. They have described it very differently.’
‘Then they don’t understand what we were doing,’ I say. ‘They don’t know what Bibhuti’s all about. I made him happy. He’ll tell you the same thing when he wakes up.’
‘If he wakes up,’ the Inspector corrects.
‘I know it looks bad. I was just doing what he asked me to do. We trained for it. It’s what he does. Look him up, you’ll see. He never ended up like this before.’
‘He did not have you to assist him before. I am asking myself what is your desire to kill this man? Why is it so strong that you will come all this way to strike him down? Indians are killing each other every day. The Naxals are killing us. Pakistan is killing us. The rain is killing us. We do not need another method of killing Indians. You could perhaps restrict these habits to your own country. Or did you think nothing would happen here? Did you think my country would allow such a thing? We are all ignorant, yes? We will tolerate this? Is that what you thought?’
I remind him that I haven’t killed anyone.
‘It is only a matter of time,’ he says. His daydreams hang on the air, of all the things he’ll do to me when he gets the chance.
I ask for Jolly Boy. He’ll speak for me. Someone has to speak for me before things get out of hand.
They make me wait in the corridor while someone fetches him. No one’s in much of a hurry to put me out of my misery. An hour crawls by. The sounds of the outside bleed through the cracks in the walls. The crying of unseen living things. Birds mating on the satellite dishes and dogs furiously eating themselves. A crashing somewhere, cars trying to kill each other. Three men are brought in and put in the cell across the room from me. They’re scabbed and chattering, bony limbs jangling against the walls. Their eyes dart to me for mediation. I give them a look that says I’m sorry but I can’t help them. We’re in the same boat.
‘They robbed a tourist,’ the Inspector tells me. ‘Left him broken and tried to set him on fire. Perhaps I will let you join them. I am sure you will have something to talk about.’
The threat passes through me like thin soup. Death by their savage hands would be a leniency, right now. The stomach cramps are back and I’m sitting on razor blades. I listen to my vital organs winding down, the grinding of bare metal when the brake pad wears through. I try to picture Mum’s face but I can’t settle on it. I can’t remember my favourite song. I hug myself around the middle to try and wring the pain out and wait for sleep to come around again.
They bring Jolly Boy in on his own. He rushes to me and grips my arm. The hairs on it shiver in the breeze he makes. I tell him not to be afraid. They take him away.
I warn them not to hurt him. I try and make it sound decisive.
When Jolly Boy comes back his eyes are red from crying and he stands taller. He’s walked through fire and become a man. I look him over, searching for their infringements. He tells me he’s okay. I take his shoulder but he worms away. He doesn’t need my hand anymore. I’m free to go, for now.
We’re driven back to the hospital. The constable on the passenger side curses me in the wing mirror, his gaze burning a hole in the place where my third eye would be if I were one of his gods.
The grounds are scarred by scorchmarks from the extinguished torches of Bibhuti’s disciples. When they see me they light them again and take up a howling. The fruit comes pelting down on the car. Among the limes and pomegranates are boulders. One of them comes through the back window and showers my neck in glass. I drape myself over Jolly Boy to shield him.
Harshad and Amrita are in the first wave. They beat the car with their fists as it inches past. Amrita screams, her head thrown back and her mouth open wide. She stomps her feet, scaring up an earthquake. Paint scabs still adorn her elbows but they’re from a different project, the sign she’s given her father to carry reads ‘Hang the Killer of Bibhuti Nayak’. It leans over his shoulder like a cross. For the first time he looks sober. I gave him a cause to pin his cleansing outrage on.
‘I didn’t kill him,’ I shout at him. ‘He’s alive.’
Amrita spits at the window. I’m impressed by the volume. I watch it slip down the glass.
The monks are praying in a circle behind the welcoming party, their ping-pong table standing dormant. Among them is the boy who unravelled the string that blessed me. I move away from the spit so he can see me. Our eyes meet and he smiles. The smile tells me that everything will be alright. I’ll meet my judgement honestly and my judgement will be fair. I can’t ask for any more than that. My monk picks up a paddle and initiates another game.
We make for the entrance and the constables run us to the door. Other officers have arrived in our absence to keep the protesters from storming the building. We’re pushed between them and birthed out into reception where the doctors greet our return with open hostility. They’re fussing over stab wounds and furnace burns, rubbing ghee on the raw stumps of grinning amputees. They don’t need the disruption my circus is causing. I head for the lift, pulling Jolly Boy with me.
I ask him what he said under interrogation.
‘I told them the truth,’ he says, as if the answer’s an obvious one. ‘I told them Baba wants you to hit him. You are his friend and you are helping him.’
‘That is the truth.’
‘I know.’
‘He’ll wake up soon. He’s probably awake already. He’ll be asking for you. He’ll be wanting a mirror to check on his hair.’
The boy smiles timidly. Pain rips through my guts again and it’s the least he deserves.
The reporter is sitting outside the room, a paper cup of coffee held tight in her hand. Her little knuckles are white and her cameraman’s nowhere to be seen. Her eyes flash as we approach and she fumbles with her iPhone, cueing the video recorder for a global exclusive. I give her nothing, steer Jolly Boy into the room.
The women run to us in their individual fashions, Jolly Boy’s mother the first out of the blocks. She takes hold of him roughly, pulls him as far away from me as the arrangement of the furniture allows. She checks him for bruises and tears and then she sits down and draws him into her, her arm curled like a rustler’s rope around his waist.