He was staring at Antar with bloodshot, grime-caked eyes; his lips drawn back in a grin, baring yellow, decaying teeth.
'What's the matter?' a voice cried out suddenly, filling the room through Ava's concealed sound outlets. 'You wanted to see me, didn't you? I'm just a little early, that's all.'
Antar picked himself up and made his way slowly towards Ava's control panel. He found himself skirting around the edges of the room, with his back to the walls, keeping as far away from the figure as possible, as though it were a real presence.
'Where have you been?' the figure shouted after him. 'Why have you kept me waiting so long?'
Antar's eyes fell on the mud-caked thighs and he turned away, with an involuntary shudder. Reaching for Ava's keyboard, he rewrote the vectors of the image.
There was a tremor in the image and the man's torso vanished. Now only his head remained, vastly enlarged, much larger than lifesize, blown up to the scale of a piece of monumental statuary.
'Guess you couldn't bear to look at my body any more,' said the man, laughing again.
Now Antar could see the maggots in his hair; the sight was so grotesque that he reached for the control panel and tilted the head away. But then, as the flat cross-section of the neck hove slowly into view, he discovered that Ava had done such a realistic job of severing the head that every artery and vein was clearly visible. He could see the throbbing capillaries; even the directional flow of the blood was reproduced, in motion, so that the neck looked as though it were spouting gore.
Antar choked: the head was startlingly like a vision that often recurred in his worst nightmares; an image from a medieval painting he had once seen in a European museum, a picture of a beheaded saint, holding his own dripping head nonchalantly under his arm, as though it were a fresh-picked cabbage.
The man began to shout as his head tilted further and further back.
'Put me down, you bastard,' he shouted. 'Look me in the eye.'
Antar tilted the image again, with a signal, and the red glaring eyes fastened upon him. 'So you want to know what happened to Murugan?' he said.
'Yes,' said Antar.
The man erupted into another burst of manic laughter. 'Let me ask you again,' he said. 'Are you quite sure?'
Chapter 43
IT WAS RAINING HARD when they got down to the pillared portico of the tumbledown old mansion. The neon lamps on Robinson Street were glowing fuzzily greenish, like aquarium lights. Urmila and Sonali drew their saris over their heads as they stood under the portico, looking into the pouring rain. Murugan started down the gravelled driveway at a run. At the gate he stopped to look back at the two women, who were still waiting uncertainly under the portico.
'Come on,' he shouted, at the top of his voice, urging them on. 'Let's move it, let's go.'
His voice came back to the portico disembodied, buffeted by the wind, and softened by the rain. Urmila gave Sonali's arm a tug and they began to run, hesitantly at first, and then faster, following Murugan as he sprinted down the road, towards the entrance of number eight.
Turning blindly through the gate of Mrs Aratounian's building Murugan ran straight into something that was standing in the narrow driveway. He picked himself up and saw that two bamboo pushcarts were standing in the driveway, blocking the entrance. Tents of translucent tarpaulin rose out of them, stretched tight over jumbled heaps of objects.
He was rubbing his knees, swearing, when Sonali and Urmila caught up. Urmila edged quickly past the carts, made her way to the entrance and started towards the lift. Halfway through the dimly lit hall she noticed two men in lungis and vests, squatting by the staircase, smoking biris. Standing beside them was a large piece of furniture, a heavy mahogany sideboard.
Urmila stopped dead, shifting her gaze from the two men to the sideboard and back again. The men stared back in unruffled calm, the biri-smoke rising above them in widening spirals.
Sonali came to a halt beside her: 'What's the matter?'
'That's Mrs Aratounian's,' said Urmila, pointing at the sideboard. 'She used to have it in her dining room. I remember it.'
'You're right,' said Murugan. 'I saw it there last night.'
Speaking to the two men in Hindi, Urmila said: 'Where did you get that?'
One of the men flicked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing up the staircase. A moment later they heard a loud clatter, followed by shouts and grunts. Three barebodied men came around the bend in the stairs carrying a huge chintz-printed sofa.
'Hey!' said Murugan. 'That's Mrs Aratounian's too; I was sitting on it last night, watching TV.'
Raising her voice, Urmila said: 'What's happening?'
One of the men took aim with the butt of his biri and flicked it away, into a corner. Then he rose unhurriedly to his feet, and stretched. 'Someone's leaving,' he said with a yawn, putting his shoulder to the sideboard. 'And we're carrying away the furniture.'
'Who's leaving?' Urmila said.
The man shrugged and lowered his shoulder to the sideboard. 'How am I to know?'
Urmila went running over to the lift and opened the door, motioning to Murugan and Sonali to follow. They squeezed in beside her and she pressed the button for the fourth floor. None of them said a word as the ancient lift ascended slowly upwards through the hollow centre of the staircase.
The lift came to a halt and Urmila stepped out. Her eyes fell on Mrs Aratounian's door and she froze.
The door was wide open, held in place by a brick. Light was pouring out of the flat, gilding the scarred, dusty planks of the landing. On the wall beside the door where the nameplates had once hung, there were now two discoloured rectangular spots.
Their eyes were drawn irresistibly past the door. The hall beyond was empty; the clutter and the brio-a-brae were gone. The walls were absolutely bare. As they stood there staring, two men came out with jute sacks slung over their shoulders: both were full to bursting.
Murugan was the first to move. Running through the empty drawing room he darted into the room he had slept in the night before. Urmila followed, walking as though in a trance, with Sonali close behind her.
A moment later a howl echoed out of Murugan's room: 'My things are all gone. Everything: my laptop, my clothes, my Vuitton suitcase, everything…' Murugan came running back, wild-eyed: 'Even the bed and the mosquito net are gone – everything…'
Footsteps sounded somewhere behind them, along the corridor that led to the kitchen. All three of them turned in unison and found themselves facing a thin, bespectacled man, in a fraying shirt and trousers. He had a pencil behind his ear, and he was holding a clipboard and a sheaf of stapled papers in one hand. In the other he had a fistful of peanuts.
He glared at them, his eyes hugely enlarged by his spectacles. 'Who are you?' he said, with an uncomprehending blink. 'What are you doing here?'
'Who are you?' snapped Urmila. 'And what are you doing in Mrs Aratounian's flat?'
The man stiffened and a frown appeared on his forehead. His eyes flickered angrily from Urmila's face to Murugan's. Then he looked at Sonali and suddenly his face went slack. His arm rose slowly upwards, trembling, scattering peanuts on the floor. His mouth dropped open and his eyes grew larger, spilling out of the rims of his spectacles.
'Why,' he stammered, stabbing his index finger in her direction. 'Why, but you… you are… you are Sonali Oas.'
Sonali gave him a nod and a distant smile. He swallowed convulsively, his Adam's apple bobbing like a fisherman's float.
'Do you know who she is?' he said to the others, spluttering in excitement, spraying a fine plume of spit in their direction. 'She is Sonali Oas… the great actress… I never dreamed… '