Today, of course, Jack looked much the same, save that he was covered with bug bites and lying on his belly. But in front of his nose was a pair of fine leather slippers covered with red velvet brocade, and above them, a pair of orange-and-yellow-striped silk breeches, and hanging over those, a long shirt of excellent linen. This was surmounted by the head of Surendranath. He had grown his moustache out but otherwise had a professional shave—which must have cost him dearly, so early in the morning—and he had a sizeable gold ring in his nose, and wore a snow-white turban with an overwrap of wine-colored silk edged in gold.
"It's not my fault I'm stuck in this fucking country with no money," Jack said. "Blame it on those pirates."
Surendranath snorted. "Jack, when I lose a single rupee I lie awake all night, cursing myself and the man who took it from me. You do not need to urge me to hate the pirates who took our gold!"
"Very well, then."
"But does this mean that other Hindoostanis, belonging to a different caste, speaking a different language, residing at the other end of the subcontinent, must suffer?"
"I have to eat."
"There are other ways for a Frank to make a living in Hind."
"I see those rich Dutchmen in the streets every day. Bully for them. But I can't make a living from trade when I've nothing to my name. Besides—for Christ's sake, you Banyans make even Jews and Armenians seem like nuns in the bazaar."
"Thank you," Surendranath said modestly.
"Besides, in Surat and all the other treaty ports, there is an astronomical price on my head."
"It is true that, as the result of your dealings with the Viceroy, the House of Hacklheber, and the Duc d'Arcachon, all of Spain, Germany, and France now wish to kill you," Surendranath admitted, helping Jack to his feet.
"You left out the Ottoman Empire."
"But Hind is another world! You have seen only a narrow strip along the coast. There are many opportunities in the interior—"
"Oh, one bug-pit is the same as the next, I'm sure."
"—for a Frank who knows how to use the saber and the musket."
"I'm listening," Jack said. "Fucking bugs!" and then—distracted, as he was, by the peculiar nature of Surendranath's discourse, he slapped a mosquito that had landed on the side of his neck. It was only noticed by Surendranath—who made a sound as if he were regurgitating his own gallbladder—and the boy who was standing next to Jack, holding out his neatly folded clothes. Jack met the boy's eye for a moment; then both looked down at the palm of Jack's hand, where the mosquito lay crumpled in a spot of Jack's, or someone's, blood.
"This lad thinks I've murdered his grandmother now," Jack said. "Could you ask him to shut up?"
But the boy was already saying something, in a bewildered—yet piping and clearly audible—voice. The senior bug-doctor hustled over shouting. Then they all converged, and to Jack they suddenly all looked every bit as determined and bloodthirsty as their patients. He snatched his clothes.
Surendranath did not even try to argue the matter, but grabbed Jack's arm and led him out of the room in a brisk walk that soon turned into a run. For news of Jack's crime had spread, faster than thought, through the echoing galleries of the hospital and out its innumerable holes to the front, and (to guess from the sounds that came back) a hundred or more unemployed Swapaks had taken it as a signal to force their way in and launch a furious manhunt.
The monkeys, birds, lizards, and beasts sensed that something was happening, and began to make noise, which worked in Jack and Surendranath's favor. The Banyan got lost in the darkness of the intestinal-parasite ward almost immediately, but Jack—who'd been skulking in and out of the place for weeks—surged into the fore, and soon enough got them pointed towards an exit; they staged an orderly retreat through the monkey room, opening all of the cage-doors on their way through, which (to put it mildly) created a diversion. It was a diversion that fed on itself, for the monkeys were clever enough to do some cage-opening of their own. Once all of the primates had been set free, they spread out into surrounding wards and began to give less intelligent creatures their freedom.
Meanwhile Jack and Surendranath fell back, taking a little-used route past the tiger's cage. Jack tarried for a moment to scoop up a couple of the big cat's turds.
Then they were out into Ahmadabad's main avenue. This was wider than most European streets were long. Its vastness, combined with blood loss, always gave Jack a momentary fit of disorientation; had he found his way back into the city, or gotten lost in some remote wasteland? The monsoon rains were finished, and this part of Hindoostan had turned into a sort of gutter for draining chalk-dry air out of the middle of Asia. On its way down from Tibet, today's shipment of wind had made a tour of the scenic Thar Desert, and availed itself of a heavy load of souvenir dirt, and elevated its temperature to somewhere between that of a camel's breath and that of a tandoori oven. Now it was coming down Ahmadabad's main street like a yak stampede, leaving no doubt as to why Shah Jahan had named the place Guerdabad: The Habitation of Dust.
This place had been conquered by Shah Jahan's crowd—the Moguls—a while ago, and the Moguls were Mohametans who did not especially care whether Jack killed a mosquito. Disturbing the peace was another matter, and if rioting Swapaks did not qualify as disturbing the peace, then dozens of monkeys pouring out into the streets, some with their arms in slings, others hobbling on crutches, certainly did—especially when they caught wind of a market up the street and began to make for it. They were mostly Hanuman monkeys—flailing, whiptailed ectomorphs who acted as if they owned the place—which, according to Hindoos, they did. But there was an admixture of other primates (notably, an orang-utan recovering from pneumonia) who refused to accord the Hanumans the respect they deserved, and so as they all fought their way upwind toward the market, variously scampering on all fours, waddling on all twos, knuckle-dragging, hopping on lamed feet, swinging from limbs of stately mango-trees, and stampeding over rooftops, they were acting out a sort of running Punch-and-Judy show, flinging coconuts and brandishing sticks at one another. Bringing up the rear: a four-horned antelope that had been born with six horns, a baby one-horned rhinoceros, and a Bhalu, or honey bear, blind and deaf, but drawn by the scent of sweet things in the market.
A pair of rowzinders—Mogul cavalrymen—came riding up, all turbaned and scimitared, black studded shields dangling from their brawny arms, to see what was the matter. Immediately they were engulfed in angry Swapaks telling their side of the story and demanding that the kotwal and his retinue of whip-, cudgel-, and mace-brandishing goons be summoned to favor Jack with a bastinado, or worse. The Swapaks' protests got them nowhere, as they spoke only Gujarati and the rowzinders spoke only Persian. But these Moguls, like conquerors everywhere, had a keen sense of how to profit from local controversies, and their dark eyes were wide open, following the stabbing fingers of the Swapaks, examining the guilty parties. Surendranath was obviously a Banyan, which was to say that he and his lineage had been more or less condemned by God to engage in foreign trade and make vast amounts of money all their lives. Jack, on the other hand, was a Frank wearing a snatch of leather held on by a crusty thong wedged up his butt-crack. The numerous scars on his back testified to his having been in trouble before—a nearly inconceivable amount of trouble. The rowzinders sized the Banyan up as a likely source of baksheesh, and made gestures at him indicating that he had better stay put for now. Jack they beckoned over.
Jack unfastened his gaze, with reluctance, from the thickening drama in the street. Industrious monkeys had evidently been opening up bird-cages. The entire Flamingo Ward emerged at once. It looked as if a hogshead of fuchsia paint had been spilled down the steps of the hospital. Most of them were in for broken wings, so all they could do was mill around until one of them appointed himself leader and led them away on a random migration into the Habitation of Dust, pursued or accompanied by a couple of Japalura lizards making eerie booming noises. This hospital had recently admitted a small colony of bearded vultures who were all suffering from avian cholera, and these now gained the rooftop; wiggled their imposing chin-bristles in the gritty breeze; and deployed their wings, which rumbled and snapped like rugs being shaken. They had been well-fed on a sort of carrion slurry made from patients that had died of natural causes, and so as they took to the air they jetted long spates of meaty diarrhea that fell like shafts of light across the backs of fleeing beasts: a praying mantis the size of a crossbow bolt, a spotted deer with a boa constrictor entwined in its antlers, and a nilgai antelope being pursued by the hospital's world-famous two-legged dog, which, miraculously, could not only run, but had been known to outpace many three-legged dogs.