Chapter Seventeen

The night crawlers were already out. Rats tottered along the line where pavements met the road. Lizards secreted themselves along curtain poles at open windows and the shutter blades of shut off air conditioners. Bu could feel no breeze, just the reek that came from the mixing energies of too many people. Old men bristled from the day walked with their backs bent from labouring and their opaque eyes sagging to the ground. Drunks, their bony bodies the colour of Madhu’s cola concentrate syrup only available from wholesalers at Crawford market, were already about. Boys dressed up as Hindu Gods, their bodies painted blue, pressed their palms to passing cars for money. Lata Mangeshkar bleated out an old Bollywood song on a stall owner’s radio for the millionth time. Flower sellers rolled out their cotton bedding and lay on the streets of Tardeo, dreaming it to be their bedrooms and the passing of human feet to be their TV window. Bu used her shortcut, she had never been to the Maya Building so late, almost eleven. In the entrance hall flies spun around the ceiling light and heat hid in every corner. Bu wanted Vivek, not the dream version of him. She made her way to the fourth floor but a hand softly caught her arm, it was Rohit. He was alone, without his dead grandfather. He wanted to know why she had not returned his calls - she never got his messages. Bu told him of her father’s debt but Rohit had no money of his own and could not help. On a stair, beside a bird shaped stain of red betel nut juice, they held hands.

Mrs Pravin appeared eating a drippy jelebie, with ‘where have you been?’ and ‘you can’t just leave without telling me,’ drastically changing her tone when she saw Rohit with Bu, ‘she knows I’m surrounded by males, but we can be females together.’ Mrs Pravin held her door open but if Bu went into their flat she would get lost in their family and never find herself again. Bu asked for three thousand rupees not looking at Mrs Pravin but fixed on her dirty own shoes, then onto Rohit’s open toes, clean and strong. Mrs Pravin’s oily hand was on Bu’s back, behind her heart, driving her in. The image of her father gobbling dirty food flashed up. Now the guilt and the biscuit would stay, go to sleep and wake up and it would be there, waiting for her in her brain, in her dreams, unless... ‘Wait,’ said Bu. She wanted it all, her freedom, the money, happiness and fun, all. Mrs Pravin pushed harder but Bu dug her heels into stone floor.

‘Wait...’ said Rohit, ‘you can’t make her go if she doesn’t want to, stay with me Bu, it’ll be fine.’ Bu smiled, ‘you’re nothing like my mother...’ she said.

Mrs Pravin, her face now as red as rosewood, tossed back her left arm and slapped the back of Bu’s head. Bu fell onto the wall. Mrs Pravin slammed her door shut.

Bu could not tell what was hot blood and what was hot sweat on her face but there was pain, a thin line but intense. Her body was drying out like a papadom, her lips on the verge of cracking open, she forced them to part. Tiny seams of blood came, tasting salty. Rohit was everywhere - over her, swearing for her, kneeling into her, holding, kissing. His Colgate white smile wiped Mrs Pravin away forever. In wide-eyed wonder Bu sucked Rohit’s energy in.

If Rohit had asked her, then, his breath all over her, if he had asked she would have said that none of it had been real. She had imagined it. Had she seen his grandfather, had she heard his dead grandfather, had she talked to his dead? She would have said no, of course not, no one speaks with the dead unless they are a hundred year old Guru or...or dead but... he never asked.

Gopal was dead. He had thrown himself off a three-storey building the day before and had not survived the fall. He was no longer alive, but dead. His small body had lain in the dust of the road outside the police station. His knees crushed, legs squashed like overripe bananas and bones pulped to mango flesh like a newborn. He did not know how long he had been there, he had got up and walked without feeling pain of any sort - physical or emotional. No one had mopped up his blood but the rains would wash the pavements of him soon enough. He could only just hear the living. He could hardly see his two little girls praying for him, his mother and his young wife wailing for him but crows - those who could call for the dead - had clearly called to him and he had heard. He had to hurry, he moved through people - they did not see the peon for the Mumbai police, they could not. His life on earth as Gopal was almost closing but there was one more thing he had to do, leave without it and there would be a stain on his soul.

It was one minute to midnight. Bu’s eyes were runny. Gopal entered the Maya Building, as light as a wafting mosquito. Bu pulled Rohit’s arms from her body and got up, dizzy and damp everywhere. She recognised Gopal as part of Ajit’s police unit but felt strangely drawn to him. She went with her feelings, her inner voice, her insides, whatever it was that was telling her, ‘there’s something good about Gopal now, he won’t try and strangle me.’

‘Bu, what is it?’ said Rohit looking ahead of her.

Bu dragged her legs to the bottom of the second floor steps. Gopal halted, he had gone in too quickly and had not smelt the people on the first floor. ‘No...’ he said, his voice sounding like it was outside him, ‘it is not the Pravins.’ The lift’s gate was open on second. Two servants were eating stolen bread from a plastic bag on the floor, they did not look up when Bu stepped over them to get into the lift. Gopal saw Bu as a big blur but she did not have it, that thing that would open up the truth to him, the air of guilt, the colours of a murderer. He had not thought about catching the lift, it would be quicker.

‘Just come home with me, I said I’ll look after you,’ said Rohit standing right behind Bu. She tried to switch on the ceiling fan, the size of a chapatti cut into three portions, but it was not working.

Gopal wondered for a second if Bu could see him but it did not matter. With his new higher sense, he scanned behind the locked doors of the second floor for some odour from the occupants that would give him the truth. Staring at Bu Rohit stepped to the back of the lift and began to rub the back of his neck. Gopal stood at the front left and Bu closed the gate on the three of them. She felt lighter as if all her body had shifted up to her head.

Gopal heard the dead crows, four in all, signaling to him and he understood that he was going to the right place. Bu could hear crows cawing as if it they were just behind her, then just over her, in front of her. She wanted to see them but Rohit kept tapping her arm, sucking up her attention. The lift halted at the third floor and Bu could smell burning camphor. After a quick round Gopal returned, Bu closed the gate again and pushed the button for the fourth floor. The lift seemed to slow down. Bu felt fresh, looking into the eyes of a stranger - Gopal, she felt his interest in her. The ceiling above them could have dissolved and a clear blue sky with clouds the shape of smiling faces could have been over Gopal’s head. For a few snatched seconds it seemed like there was no one else in the world, just their two pairs of eyes and whatever went on between them. She had always wanted to feel that way with Vivek ... both of them caught randomly but all alone on the stairs of the Maya Building. Vivek looking at her and having to speak to her of his life, his day, his thoughts and ask her endlessly about her life and by merely talking, fix all of her troubles in an instant. Gopal was hunched, puny and much too old but passing from one set of eyes to another was a good energy, love even, or something like it, and she deserved it.

‘Where are you going Bu?’ said Rohit. He put his arm over to the front of the lift but Bu pushed it away. ‘No,’ she said blocking the button panel with her body. Rohit took both her hands, held them tight, swung her to the back of the lift and darted to the front. At the same time, Gopal shifted into his place.

‘Vivek Sharma please,’ said Gopal but Rohit did not react.

Bu heard Gopal as if his voice was blaring through two loud speakers on either side of her head. Rohit kept pressing for the ground floor.

‘I said I’ll look after you,’ said Rohit.

The lift shook as Bu slapped Rohit’s back, when it did not work she tried to nudge him aside with her forearms. She lost her balance and stubbed the red ‘stop’ button by mistake. Bu could see Rohit’s lips still moving. She tried to run her fingers through her knotted hair but angled her elbows so that they naturally poked Rohit’s chest.

‘What’s wrong with you Bu?’ said Rohit feeling stabbed.

Bu creased her forehead so hard that it made her eyes turn bulbous like lychees. Where were the right words? ‘What is wrong with you? Don’t you see, Gopal is dead?’ did not fit. Before Bu could find words that might not scare Rohit off she and Rohit were shuffling to and fro trying to make each other do what the other one wanted. The couple locked their arms, bumping against the walls until they were moving around the tiny space of the lift in a sweaty dance. Gopal suddenly appearing in one vacant corner then the next as though he was ahead of both of their minds, and the whole time loud cawing was right behind Bu’s ears. The light above the dead fan went out and mid way between the first and second floor the carriage began to swing by its strings like a silk evening bag. Rohit lurched for the control panel pushing randomly to start the lift.

‘Vivek Sharma, now,’ said Gopal looking at his hands, a white light was forming around his palms.

The lift jolted back to life halting at the fourth floor. They all got out.

‘Where’s the truth? I must have it,’ shouted Gopal. His body was going to be too wispy soon to put his feet down. He passed through the front door of the Sharma flat. Bu felt heavy again, she looked around the hallway but Gopal had gone. Rohit, his hands on his non-oiled hair was uselessly patting his fringe down.

In Vivek’s flat there was no trace of the birds, it was as if Vivek had never killed them. In Vivek’s bedroom, the ceiling fan on its highest setting was blowing through Gopal making him unsteady. He looked and looked. Vivek had the shape of a child and on his bed next to him was Mangal. The two dead felt each other but each knowing their true path let the other alone. Gopal reappeared to Bu, he seemed to be glowing, ‘Vivek rests like an innocent child,’ Gopal’s mouth had not moved and the crows had become silent. Gopal looked upwards. He saw his last desire as a film clip in the air - the murderer’s thick hands around Mangal’s neck, he saw jealousy colouring the man’s chest, the boy’s terrified eyes, he saw the murderer.

‘Mudhvani...’ said Gopal. It was too late to go to the fifth floor. Bu could smell burning wood and burning ghee. Gopal was forgetting - how he got to the building, the soft fingers of his little girls on his face, Ajit... He saw darkness, the floor and the walls gave way, Bu became a shadow and only the flame of a lone candle was beside him. He was ready and now nothing mattered to him. Gopal’s soul left Earth at great speed.

Bu must have blinked. She looked down the steps, rushed up to the fifth floor but Gopal had gone. Rohit followed her up to the roof terrace, calling to her, trying to yank her back to the ground floor. Bu opened the terrace door and ran onto the moonless plane. She hurried to see the entrance and driveway below but it was empty.

‘Gopal, Gopal, GOPAL-’ she said until her mouth caked.