A Bad Character (19 page)

People in the room start to laugh.

So what does he do? His temper goes, OK. He gets up, he’s had enough, he empties his bag on to the sand, dumps everything out, everything in his bag, and looks at the cow and he shouts at it, in Hebrew, he’s saying, Go on then, fucker, eat it. Eat everything. And the cow, it just keeps going on, doesn’t know what he’s saying, it keeps coming forward and starts eating. There is some banana, a piece of bread. And everyone around is laughing. Everyone thinks it’s fucking funny, you know. But what else is in the bag? This fucking machete. So what does he do? He picks up the machete. It’s also on the
ground. Boom. He puts it into the fucking cow’s neck. Right into its fucking neck. This guy’s crazy, you know. He puts the machete right into the neck. Crack. You see the bone and the meat and the blood. Blood everywhere. Everyone who was laughing, now they’re jumping up from the sand. What the fuck? Are you crazy, man? But he keeps going. He’s taking the head off, there’s blood everywhere. There are locals on the beach, fishermen, chai sellers. They’re all watching this. They’re not happy. Oh no. And before you know what’s happening, a crowd is forming, they’re watching this like they don’t believe their fucking eyes. This cow is fucking dead and everyone else is backing away from him and he’s there with the cow. Then he kind of, you know, wakes up, he looks around. There’s this dead cow on the ground and he’s standing there and these locals are all staring at him. This guy is thinking, Fuck.

People start laughing in the room.

And he’s running. Running for his life. There’s all these locals after him, and they’ve got knives and machetes and sticks and he’s running away from the beach, towards the trees, he’s gone over the bushes, into the trees, and the locals are charging after him. He vanished. Never seen anyone run so fast, not even in the middle of a war. We never saw him again.

Now he holds the machete in the air, touches the chillum to his forehead. Says, Cow-killing machete motherfucker.

With coke in my blood and my brain I take to driving fast into the night. I drive through Lutyens’ Delhi. The thrill of a straight road, of regular street-lights ticking like a metronome, the steady purr of the engine, changing down gears, suddenly coming to a stop at the red light. Two men pull up alongside me on a bike.

They look inside the car. I know the wild excitement they must feel when they see me alone in here. The bike’s engine revs. And the light is still red. So do I drive? Do I look at them? The last thing I should do is look at them. I turn my head and I look at them. As soon as I do their eyes widen in pleasure and the passenger grips the rider’s waist, holds him and says something into his ear. The bike veers away in a loop. It loops to the left, off
behind me, and it pulls back louder and faster a moment later alongside my driver’s window.

Like a kennel of dogs they howl and bang on the glass with the palms of their hands. Then the pillion rider tries to open the door.

Although the light is still red, I put my foot down on the gas. I’m screeching off, along Akbar Road towards India Gate. The motorbike does the same, following me at speed, racing with me, pulling up alongside my window, dipping behind, flashing its lights and beeping the horn, and I can hear the men wailing on top of it. The road ahead is empty, the wide road deserted, shrouded by the overhanging trees—I accelerate into it.

Around India Gate they’re still on me. I twist round Tilak Marg and accelerate hard out of the bend. A few cars pass on the other side. Ahead at the crossroads by the Supreme Court the light is red. I see the bike coming to my side and jerk towards it, forcing it to brake. Then
I take my chance and floor it, drive straight through the light and the traffic.

Behind, in the mirror, I watch the bike being hit by a car side-on at speed, a police van far behind with flashing lights, and the bike and the men spilling out on the road.

I dreamed of him last night, and in the dream he came back to life. He didn’t even know that he’d been dead. It’s the guilt that’s doing this to me I suppose, the guilt of resurrecting him. Of making him over, using his likeness and sculpting him like a piece of clay.

In the dream he’s following me around, all over Delhi, begging me to take him back, like a fool, to let him be with me. He looks exactly as he did, the same clothes and hair, the same age. But he is calmer. Infinitely sadder because of this.

He doesn’t remember the things he’s done so he can’t understand why I won’t have him. He begs me, he’s close to tears. I feel pity for him. I try to let him down gently, tell him it’s impossible. I don’t have the heart to tell him he’s been dead, that more than ten years have passed. He doesn’t seem to notice that I’m older than him now. He seems so ordinary, without power. And he continues to beg all the while, hands wrung. He says, I won’t make a sound, I’ll be by your side, I’ll follow you everywhere, make you happy, do anything you say.

We leave the Israelis at midnight. He has a weight behind his reddened eyes. He drives around in silence, we drive through the night and he drinks and he smokes and he drives, but he doesn’t talk to me and he won’t let me go home. I fall asleep in the car. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.

Then it’s light outside, men are clearing their throats, retired colonels are taking their morning walks. I’m sure they can see me, that they all know. We drive and we park and we climb upstairs to go home.

Once inside he goes straight to the computer, sits there in silence typing away, talking in a chat room, looking at porn, drinking the whole time, smoking joint after joint. He doesn’t look at me, still doesn’t talk. I stand in the middle of the living room waiting for him to speak, but he doesn’t speak. I go to bed and hug the pillow and try to sleep.

When I wake he’s sitting at my side with a bottle of whisky in his hand.

He looks at me tenderly and strokes my face. He says, You’re just like a stupid fucking college girl.

I pull the sheets around me and turn away. I tell him to leave me alone, ask him why he has to drink all the time. He only gets up and walks back outside.

I go out and he’s on his computer again.

What are you doing?

He doesn’t reply.

I go towards him and he puts his hand on the monitor
switch. When I get close enough he switches it off so I can’t see what he’s been looking at.

He turns to face me and smiles.

I slap his face. I slap it again, I punch his arms and chest and pull at his hair. He watches me and just smirks. I tire, I’m suddenly exhausted, so I sit down on the sofa, and when I do he switches the monitor on again.

Enraged by this I storm over to him. I lift the monitor in my arms and threaten to throw it to the floor, the whole thing. I’ll do it, I say. Don’t try to stop me.

He looks at me and says that he won’t. So go ahead. Do it. Go on.

I say I will. I’ll do it right now.

Do it then. Go on.

I make a motion to throw it down but he doesn’t react.

There are tears in my eyes.

He says, I’m waiting. Do it.

I don’t do it. I can’t. Instead I put it down and get my bag and head to the door. When I’m out and halfway
down the marble stairs he calls out to me from above. I look back up to see him standing at the apartment door, smiling at me strangely, wires trailing behind him, the monitor in his arms.

His smile wilts as he lifts and then hurls the monitor through the air. It smashes by my feet on the ground.

The NRI rejected me too, after all was said and done. No reason was given, his family only made their polite excuses to Aunty on the phone. She was troubled, defeated. She said then that it was over, she had tried her best, she had always done what was right, but enough was enough. Now it would be better if I graduated and found a job, and maybe with a job I could look for another place to live.

The first man I pick up is in the coffee shop of the Claridges hotel. I’ve given up our old places. Given up the apartment with those people inside. There’s nothing left of him but me. I want to go where we have no memory.

He’s German, sandy blond and blue-eyed, almost a stereotype, with a face that’s unmemorable and is saved only by his clothes, which give him a pardonable air of wealth. He must be in his late thirties—a powder-blue shirt and cream linen suit. He walks in and he’s waiting to collect a cake for someone’s birthday party, a niece maybe, or the daughter of a friend. Or maybe his own child. The cake is pink. While he’s waiting for it to be packed he’s starting to look around the room. I’ve been watching him from my table since he walked in, looking to be looked at. He sees me, makes eye contact for a moment, turns away. It’s not five seconds before he comes back again.

Because I’ve continued to look, he decides to come over to the table. He approaches casually, asks if he can sit down while he waits. He’s very polite. I tell him he can do as he likes. Now I see the tan line of his absent wedding ring.

Adjusting himself in his seat, he asks me where I’m from, and when I say I’m from Delhi he acts surprised.
He says he’s never met a girl from Delhi like me, he thought I was a tourist. It’s hard to speak to girls here, he says. His cake is brought to the table but he makes no effort to leave. I sit and let him talk. He tells me he’s on a business trip, that he works as an analyst in corporate finance and he’s often in Delhi and Bombay, sometimes in Bangalore.