Narcopolis

New beige paint coated the walls but the staircase and the banisters were scuffed wood. I went up, past a locked door on the half landing. The door on the first floor was open and a light was burning in the hall but otherwise the house was dim. Rashid sat in an armchair by an open window and the only noises in the room came from the courtyard below, where children were playing. Their voices echoed against the walls, high voices ringing with fury. He stared out the window but there was no sign that he saw or heard anything. There was a crocheted white skullcap on his head and he was counting prayer beads. I was surprised by his thinness, the expression of unreachability on his face, and by the clothes he was wearing, a blue shirt and new black trousers, Rashid, whose colour had always been white.

Rashidbhai? I said. He flinched and looked wildly around the room. I introduced myself. I said I had been away for many years and had returned only recently. I said it was a pleasure to see him and introduced myself again and the stiffness left his posture.

‘All that was a long time ago.’

He had given up drugs and become a thin man. But he’d lost more than weight. There was nothing about him that was recognizable to me. He’d gotten thin and his charisma was gone.

‘How are you?’

He nodded. Then, changing his mind, he shook his head to indicate he wasn’t well, or that he didn’t know how he was, or that he didn’t care. A girl came in with tea.

‘I often think of those days, when your khana was the best in the city. Some people said in the country.’

‘Useless. It was my mistake, that stupid business.’

‘Not such a big mistake. At least you’re still here.’

‘I’m not here.’

‘Dimple?’ I asked.

‘Dead.’

‘Bengali?’

‘Dead.’

‘Rumi?’

‘Dead.’

‘And yourself?’ I said. ‘Alive?’

He was already drained by the conversation. He blinked at me, meeting my eyes for a moment. Then he shook his thin white-bearded cheeks.

‘Worse each day. And alive.’

The girl came back with a plate of grapes, washed and peeled and set on a white plate. Too much, he said to her. But he reached out his fingers and took some and pushed the plate to me. I took some too. There was silence in the room.

I said, ‘What happened to Dimple?’

The girl offered more grapes.

‘No, no, no,’ he said.

*

He locked up the office. He picked up his phone and keys and went up. His father was sitting in his room with the fan off and the window open, doing, as far as he could see, absolutely nothing. The old man sat all day in the same position, staring out the window. Sometimes Jamal heard him talking to himself, very softly, as if he didn’t want to be overheard. His father left the room only occasionally, sometimes for a walk, sometimes to the apartment on the half landing where the kaamvali used to live. What he did in the apartment Jamal couldn’t imagine. The place was full of junk and mould and things that needed to be thrown away. Jamal went into his own room and washed his face and neck at the sink. He picked up a towel and thought of Farheen, of her tummy fat, which never failed to excite him. She wore burkhas that she designed herself, patterned burkhas cut like a lab coat, tight around the hips and belly. She reminded him of his father’s kaamvali. Once, in a guest house in Lonavla, he came so many times that he wanted to keep count. Number seven, he said, what do you think of that? I wish you also thought of pleasuring me a little, Farheen replied. Sometimes I wish you were older, or that you acted older. To this he said nothing, because he was the age he was, younger than her by two years, and there was nothing he could do to change it. When he thought about it, about her calm appraisal of him as they fucked, the way she kissed him, the way nothing he did surprised her, as if she’d been fucked many times by many men, and the fact that she never talked about marriage though she was a spinster of twenty-five, already older than his sisters when they’d been married, and when he brought it up all she would say was that he wasn’t ready — it maddened him, it made him want to own her. He ran his fingers through his hair and checked his shave and then he turned off the lights and went out.

*