Ozi waves me over. ‘How are you, yaar?’ he asks, shaking my hand.
‘How are you?’ I respond, wanting to look friendly but aware that the smile on my face is forced. I hold on to him longer than is comfortable, trying and failing to think of anything to say, and I avert my eyes before letting go. I’m confused and a little out of breath, unsure whether what I’m feeling is fear or anger or guilt or dislike. Probably a bit of each. I force myself not to think about it as I drift about, chatting and embracing old buddies, but I’m deeply unsettled, and it’s some time before I manage to relax.
Dinner is a delicious march through colonial culinary outposts like mulligatawny soup and roast beef and caramel custard. As I eat, I find myself starting to enjoy the evening, temporarily taken back to the days when I had a crew cut and a sportsman’s colors on my blazer. It’s amazing how quickly old school friends slip back into remembered relationships. For an hour I’m not the poorest person here by far, the only one without a job or any secure source of income, but a schoolboy good at academics, a solid athlete, and a heroic prankster with a legendary raid on our headmaster’s house to my credit.
Then I meet Asim and reality slaps my beaming face.
Asim was our section’s arm-wrestling champ. I haven’t seen him in years, but it looks like he’s taken up bodybuilding.
‘Oye, Daru,’ he yells.
It’s clear he’s drunk, and I wonder where he’s hidden his booze.
‘Oye, Asim,’ I yell back.
‘Is it true you’re selling charas now?’ He says it in a loud voice that I’m sure is overheard.
‘Very funny,’ I say quietly.
‘That’s sad, yaar, sad.’ He shakes his head.
I’ve had enough. ‘What’s your problem, sisterfucker?’
‘Don’t speak to me like that.’
‘Suck me.’
He grabs me by my shirt, and I’m about to knock his teeth in when we’re pulled apart and I hear Pickles cry, ‘No fighting, no fighting.’
‘Bloody charsi,’ Asim yells, struggling against the hands that restrain him.
‘Ignore him,’ Ozi says, leading me away.
But I can’t ignore him. The words have been said. I’m sure everyone wants to know what the scuffle was all about, and by the end of the evening they will.
Remember Daru? He’s selling drugs now.
I pull away from Ozi and head for my car.
To hell with them all.
This time I buy a thousand worth from Murad Badshah. I’ve sold half of it when Shuja calls. He wants some more hash, so I tell him to come and get it.
He arrives later that night, in a car with a driver.
‘How old are you?’ I ask him as I take him inside. I’m stoned, as usual, and a little lonely because I haven’t had anyone to talk to today.
‘Sixteen.’
I wonder whether sixteen’s too young to be smoking hash. Then I decide it isn’t. I wasn’t much older than that when I started, and kids today are doing everything earlier than we did. It’s the MTV effect.
Manucci watches as Shuja and I exchange the hash for a thousand, a disapproving look on his face. I give him a quick glare, and he ducks back into the kitchen.
‘How long have you been a doper?’ I ask Shuja.
‘Oh, you know.’
‘I don’t know. Six months? A year?’
He looks uncomfortable. ‘A month, maybe. A couple of my friends tried it before that, but we never had anyone to buy from.’
Maybe I shouldn’t sell it to him. But he pays a thousand when all my other customers pay five hundred. Besides, he’s nothing to me.
‘Don’t do too much,’ I say.
‘I won’t. My father’s strict. He’d thrash me if he found out.’
I walk him out and stand in the driveway long after his car has disappeared, smoking a cigarette and trying hard to see even a single star through the night haze. I hear Manucci come up behind me. He doesn’t say anything.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘Saab.’
Something in his voice makes me turn around. He’s looking at the ground, and when he looks up I’m surprised because he’s so afraid.
‘What?’
‘Don’t do this.’
I take a drag of my cigarette and then drop it onto the driveway, putting it out with my shoe. ‘Do what?’
‘Sell charas.’
I feel the anger coming, slow and dry, the air moving through my nostrils, the swelling in my torso. This will not happen. I won’t permit it. My servant will not tell me what to do.
‘What did you say?’ I ask, my voice a warning.
‘This is wrong, saab. You shouldn’t sell charas.’
I look at Manucci, this boy now almost my height, at the sparse, dirty curls of his newly arriving beard, the food stain beside his mouth, the slack hang of his lips. And I can’t wait any longer.
I step forward and slap him across the face with all my strength.
His head snaps to one side and he stumbles, falling to the ground. He cries out softly, a low sound, rough at the end, and covers his mouth with his hands. Then he looks up at me, the fear gone from his expression, leaving only seriousness and a gleam in one watering eye.
My hand is numb. I walk into the house, rubbing it.
I wake up with my head pounding, sweating hard. Two blades of the ceiling fan come together in an insane grin, the whole contraption absurd as it hangs over my face, dead in the heat. I yell for Manucci, and the effort sends blood rushing into my skull.
Damn that boy. Where is he?
I yell again, so loud it hurts, and still he doesn’t come. An uneasiness settles into my stomach. I drag myself into the bathroom and sit down, my thighs sweating against the plastic seat of the toilet. As a general rule, I’m not one to wake and bake. But today I feel like making an exception, so I hollow out a cigarette, repack it with some hash, and take a long hit just as a shaft of pain knifes through my rumbling bowels.
Liquid. Completely liquid. And acidic. The worst kind. Frothy and all that. I need some Imodium, a double dose double quick, or I’ll be dehydrated by sunset.
I clean myself, wash my hands in the hot tap water with a sliver of soap, take my bedsheet, wrap it around my waist, and trudge out of my room in search of Manucci. The house is quiet, dead moths on the floor and sooty marks on the ceiling above candles that burned themselves into puddles of wax overnight. Not only has the boy forgotten to sweep, he’s wasted perfectly good candles by not blowing them out. He’s in for it when I find him.
But I can’t find him. I’m smiling now, the kind of smile that stretches over clenched teeth. When I step outside, gripping my bedsheet with one hand, and see the gate open, both metal doors flung outward, I tilt my face up to the sun and cover my eyes with my fists. Then I stand there, naked, the taste of blood in my mouth, holding the first knuckle of my fist with my teeth. A woman walks by the gate, leading a little boy with a balloon of hunger in his belly and hair bleached by malnutrition. Neither of them sees me.
I shut the gate, stare up and down the street from behind it. Somehow I know that he won’t come back. Manucci is gone. My own servant has left me, left because of one little slap. That boy had better pray I never see him again. To think that I fed him, sheltered him, for all these years, and this is his loyalty, his gratitude.
I can feel the heat radiating from the metal of the gate.
I head back inside, and my stomach is so bad that I vomit before I can make it to the bathroom. Then I curl up on my bed, exhausted. When the sun goes down, I get up again, take a cloth and bucket, and clean up the mess I’ve made, gagging from the smell. Even when I’m done, the stench lingers in the house. I head out to the medical store to stock up on Imodium and rehydration salts. I also pick up a packet of biscuits, but when I try to eat them, I can’t.