‘That’s a big snake,’ I told the man behind the reception desk.
‘Yes, very big. Of course I have expanded the size for the sake of drama but only by a small degree.’ This was Harshad, the owner of the hotel. He had a comb-over and a drink problem. He rubbed his belly when he talked like he was making a wish. I supposed none of his wishes had ever come true.
He set the box of Officer’s Choice down on the counter and lifted up his right hand for my inspection. The first two fingers were missing, chewed down to stumps.
‘He found me here,’ he said, showing me the fleshy part between the thumb and the forefinger, burnt black where the venom had killed the tissue. ‘I was moving some bottles to be recycled when I disturbed him, he was hunting in the grass behind my home. He struck without warning and I was not able to defend myself. In this picture I am taking my revenge. I am not an artist so my daughter is making the image. She is very gifted. This picture will be the talking point of my hotel. I had the option of installing vending machine for soda, but you will find vending machines in every hotel lobby. I thought to myself I must have something more interesting.’
I lied and told him I liked it. I thought it was dramatic. This pleased him. His small black eyes shone briefly and he poured himself a drink. He told me his wife had been expired for five years, squashed by a juggernaut. He was looking after his daughter Amrita until she made a match. She was too picky, none of the boys he’d found had been good enough for her. She wanted an educated heart-throb with soft hands and ambition and she wasn’t prepared to settle for anything less.
Amrita was silent. The green she was using for the snake gave it a cartoonish quality and it made me feel momentarily younger than I had any right to feel.
Harshad caught me looking at the box of whisky and offered me a bottle for three hundred rupees. It sounded reasonable so I took it. He led me up the stairs, past the peeling plaster and the burnt-out bulbs to a room that looked as though it was made for the world’s forgotten to peacefully die in. The air under the sleeping ceiling fan smelt like the pineapple chunks they put in urinals. A handmade sign said ‘No Spitting’ where there should have been a fire-escape plan. Harshad started to show me how the TV worked and I had to stop him. I wouldn’t have time for TV while I was here. It felt good to say that and mean it.
I went to the window and looked out at the screaming road below and the train tracks behind it. A place of biblical dust, its saving grace a crumbling train station to leave by for the sort of places where shoeshiners are born and everyday dirt gets recycled into nosebags for the poorer horses of the West.
‘Do you know a man called Bibhuti Nayak?’ I asked. ‘He breaks records.’
Harshad’s eyes shone again. Yes, he knew him. He put down my case to free his arms and give himself the room to express his pride at being in the man’s circle.
‘He is my friend. He is famous man, the Bruce Lee of Navi Mumbai. He lives very close to here. You are knowing him?’
‘Sort of. I’ve come to help him with his next record.’
Harshad rubbed his belly thoughtfully. ‘Ah yes, the new one. Everybody is hearing about this. I think it cannot be done.’
I was hurt. ‘Course it can be done. You know about his other records then?’
‘I have seen them all. BB is very strong man. This one I am not so sure. I am hoping for the best.’
‘He can do it. Anything’s possible. If that French bloke can eat a plane.’
Harshad was confused. I explained. There’s this Frenchman who ate a plane.
‘A jet?’
‘No, just a single-engine thing, you know, one with propellers. But he ate it. He dismantled it and then he ate it one piece at a time. He eats anything made out of metal, that’s his thing.’
Harshad grinned. It was the most brilliant thing he’d ever heard and I felt a twinge of pleasure at having been the one to tell him. ‘He must have a very strong stomach. And teeth also. I do not believe this. He would surely die.’
‘No, he did it. It’s on the internet, you can look it up.’
Harshad reflected on the news. He watched me unscrew the whisky bottle and brought two tumblers from the bedside table. He cleaned them on his shirt and left the pouring to me.
‘You will help him?’ he said.
‘That’s the plan. If he’ll let me.’
‘He knows you are coming?’
‘Not really.’
‘How will you convince him?’
‘I’ll tell him it’s my dying wish.’
‘You are dying?’
‘Probably.’
Harshad took a belt of the whisky and sucked it through his teeth. The booze seemed to spark a generosity he wasn’t used to feeling.
‘I will take you to him,’ he decided.
I didn’t know what else to do so I clinked glasses with him. We drank in silence. When he left I fell onto the clean white sheets and cried. It felt strange not hearing the sound of Ellen breathing beside me. I’d never left the country without her before. I was alone for the first time since I could remember and it felt like being born again into a body I’d already worn out.
4
The first time I saw Ellen she was doing the twist at the Royal and I was trying not to look jealous of the air that held her up. Sipping on my pint all cocksure in the corner, as scared of dancing as I was of dying, a young man lost in the back-end of the Sixties with no real idea of what I’d end up doing with my life or what kind of fears I’d end up losing my appetite to. I’d wanted to hold someone up, I knew that. To be the solid ground for someone, and maybe the air they lived on if I could make myself gentle enough to be breathed in.
Mum always told me to be gentle, it’s what girls wanted and there was enough trouble in the world as it was.
So I came to the dancehall every Saturday night with the hope of being the gentle one, the one who stood out from all the lacquered warriors in their rollaway collars, the one without the flick-knife wit and the violent moves. And I looked for a girl who didn’t take to violence and who wouldn’t mind that I read books, turning the pages with fingers soft from grammar school and high ideals that belonged behind a desk. I tried to be standout by sticking to the walls, thinking it might draw in a quiet girl from the Tottenham crowd with as much need of a slow unwrapping as me.
But Ellen didn’t need looking after, I could see that straight away. Whatever man danced with her had to give her some room, she was all over the place and her eyes were shut tight in defiance of the four known dimensions. Unafraid of sheer drops and sharp edges she twisted away whatever sadness she’d woken up to, the rum and the music tricking her into weightlessness.
I was hooked and aware of myself. I wanted to be as light as she was.
In between songs she came to me where I was sitting and asked me why I wasn’t getting up. I told her I was happy just to watch. My friends made suggestive noises. I’ve got a drink, I said. I’m not really one for making a show of myself.
Her blue eyes were bolder than mine, she saw all my secrets before I had a chance to hide them with another careful swig from the glass. She saw a stillness that needed shaking up, that’s what she’d say later. She’d call me her snowglobe and I wouldn’t protest.
‘Come on,’ she said, and she held out her hand for me to take. ‘You’re not stuck to that chair, are you? Get up and show me what you’ve got.’
I ended up showing her everything. I promised there was more to come and she was happy to wait for it. If she asked for it now I don’t know what excuse I’d give. All my excuses went up in flames the moment I first saw Bibhuti in the flesh.
He was standing in the middle of the room dripping sweat and smiling saintlike and there were thirty kids lining up to kick him in the balls. They waited patiently for their turns. There was no talking or messing about. Some of the children were very young and they looked comical wearing their concentrating faces, barefoot and disciplined and stiff with training. Bibhuti would wave each one in and they’d bow to him with their little hands curled into a reverent fist. Then they’d arrange themselves into the right stance and step back and plant a kick between their sensei’s legs, true and hard and with meaning attached. Bibhuti would take the blow gratefully and nod his appreciation. Another bow for godspeed and the child would peel away to join their friends in warmdown and Bibhuti would wave the next one in.