Between the Assassinations

DAY SIX: THE SULTAN’S BATTERY

The Sultan’s Battery, a large black rectangular fort, appears high up to your left as you go from Kittur to Salt Market Village. The best way to explore the fort is to ask someone in Kittur to drive you up there; your host will have to park the car by the main road, and then the two of you will have to walk uphill for half an hour. When you pass through the arched doorway, you will find that the fort is in an advanced state of decay. Although a plaque from the Archaeological Survey of India declares this a protected site and speaks of its role in “enshrining the memory of the patriot Tippu Sultan, Tiger of Mysore,” there is no evidence of any attempt to preserve the ancient structure from the onslaught of creepers, wind, rain, erosion, and grazing animals. Giant banyan trees have germinated on the walls of the fort; their roots smash between the stones like gnarled fingers reaching into a mouse hole. Avoiding the thorns and piles of goat shit, you should walk to one of the holes in the walls of the fort; here, hold an imaginary gun in your hands, close an eye, and pretend that you are Tippu himself, firing down on the English army.

HE WALKED QUICKLY toward the white dome of the Dargah, a fold-up wooden stool under one arm, and in the other a red bag with his album of photographs and seven bottles full of white pills. When he reached the Dargah, he walked along the wall, not paying any attention to the long line of beggars: the lepers sitting on rags, the men with mutilated arms and legs, the men in wheelchairs, the men with bandages covering their eyes, and the creature with little brown stubs like a seal’s flippers where he should have had arms, a normal left leg, and a soft brown stump where he should have had the other leg, who lay on his left side, twitching his hip continuously, like an animal receiving galvanic shocks, and intoning, with blank, mesmerized eyes, “Al-lah! Al-laaaah! Al-lah! Al-laaah!”

He walked past this sorrowful parade of humanity, and went behind the Dargah.

Now he walked past the vendors squatting on the ground in a long line that extended for half a mile. He passed rows of baby shoes, bras, T-shirts bearing the words NEW YORK FUCKING CITY, fake Ray-Ban glasses, fake Nike shoes and fake Adidas shoes, and piles of Urdu and Malayalam magazines. He spotted an opening between a counterfeit-Nike seller and a counterfeit-Gucci seller, unfolded his stool there, and placed on it a glossy black sheet of paper with gold lettering.

The golden words read:

RATNAKARA SHETTY

SPECIAL INVITEE

FOURTH PAN-ASIAN CONFERENCE ON SEXOLOGY

HOTEL NEW HILLTOP PALACE NEW DELHI

12-14 APRIL 1987

The young men who had come to pray at the Dargah, or to eat lamb kebabs in one of the Muslim restaurants, or simply to watch the sea, began making a semicircle around Ratna, watching as he added to the display on the stool the photo album and the seven bottles of white pills. With grave ceremony, he then rearranged the bottles, as if their position had to be exactly right for his work to begin. In truth, he was waiting for more onlookers.

They came. Standing in pairs or alone, the crowd of young men had now taken on the appearance of a human Stonehenge; some stood with their hands folded on a friend’s shoulder, some stood alone, and a few crouched to the ground, like fallen boulders.

All at once, Ratna began to talk. Young men came quicker, and the crowd became so thick that it was two or three men deep at each point; and those at the back had to stand on their toes to get even a partial glimpse of the sexologist.

He opened the album and let the young men see the photos in plastic folders inside. The onlookers gasped.

Pointing at his photographs, Ratna spoke of abominations and perversions. He described the consequences of sin: he demonstrated the passage of venereal germs up the body, touching his nipples, his eyes, and then his nostrils, and then closing his eyes. The sun climbed the sky, and the white dome of the Dargah shone more brightly. The young men in the semicircle pressed against one another, straining to get closer to the photographs. Then Ratna went in for the kill: he shut the book and held up a bottle of white pills in each of his hands. He began shaking the pills.

“With each bottle of pills you will receive a certificate of authenticity from Hakim Bhagwandas of Daryaganj in Delhi. This man, a greatly experienced doctor, has studied the wise books of the pharaohs, and has used his scientific equipment to create these magnificent white pills that will cure all your ailments. Each bottle costs just four rupees and fifty paise! Yes, that is all you need to pay to atone for sin and earn a second chance in this life! Four rupees and fifty paise!”

In the evening, dead tired from the heat, he boarded the 34B bus with his red bag and fold-up stool. It was packed at this hour, so he held on to a strap and breathed in and out slowly. He counted to ten, to recover his strength, then dipped a hand into the red bag, taking out four green brochures, each of which bore the image of three large rats on the cover. He held the brochures up high in one hand, in the manner of a gambler holding up his cards, and spoke at the top of his voice:

“Ladies and gentlemen! All of you know that we live in a rat race, where there are few jobs and many job applicants. How will your children survive, how will they get the jobs you have? For life in this day and age is a veritable rat race. Only in this booklet will you find thousands of useful general knowledge data, arranged in question-and-answer form, that your sons and daughters need to pass the civil service entrance examination, the bank entrance examination, the police entrance examination, and many other exams which are needed to win the rat race. For instance”-he took a quick breath-“the Mughal Empire had two capitals; Delhi was one of them. Which was the other? Four capital cities of Europe are built on the banks of one river. Name that river. Who was the first king of Germany? What is the currency of Angola? One city in Europe has been the capital of three different empires. Which city? Two men were involved in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Nathuram Godse was one of them. Name the other man. What is the height of the Eiffel Tower in meters?”

Holding the pamphlets with his right hand, he staggered forward, bracing himself as the bus bumped over the potholes of the road. One passenger asked for a pamphlet and handed him a rupee. Ratna walked back, and waited near the exit door; when the bus slowed down, he dipped his head in silent thanks to the conductor and got off.

Seeing a man waiting at the bus stand, he tried to sell him a collection of six colored pens, first at a rupee a pen; then at two pens a rupee; finally offering three for a rupee. Although the man said he would not buy, Ratna could see the interest in his eyes; he took out a large spring that could give much amusement to children, and a geometrical set that could make wonderful designs on paper. The man bought one of the geometrical sets for three rupees.

Ratna headed away from the Sultan’s Battery, taking the road toward Salt Market Village.

Once he got to the village, he went to the main market, took out a handful of change, and sorted it out on the flat of his palm as he walked; he left the coins on the counter of a shop, taking in exchange a packet of Engineer beedis, which he put into his suitcase.

“What are you waiting for?” The boy in charge of the shop was new to the job. “You have your beedis.”

“I usually get two packets of lentils too, included in the price. That’s the way it’s done.”

Before entering his house, Ratna ripped open one of the packets with his teeth and poured its contents onto the ground near his door. Seven or eight of the neighborhood dogs came running, and he watched them crunch the lentils loudly. When they began digging at the earth, he tore open the second packet with his teeth and scattered its contents on the ground too.

He walked into his house without waiting to see the dogs devour this second lot of lentils. He knew they would still be hungry, but he could not afford to buy them a third packet every day.

He hung his shirt on a hook by the door, as he scratched his armpits and hairy chest. He sat down on a chair, exhaled, muttered, “O Krishna, O Krishna,” and stretched out his legs; even though they were in the kitchen, his daughters knew at once that he was there-a powerful odor of stale feet went through the house like a warning cannon shot. They dropped their women’s magazines and busied themselves with their work.

His wife emerged from the kitchen with a tumbler of water. He had begun smoking the beedis.

“Are they working in there-the maharanis?” he asked her.

“Yes,” the three girls, his daughters, shouted back from the kitchen. He did not trust them, so he went in to check.

The youngest, Aditi, crouched by the gas stove, wiping the leaves of the photo album with a corner of her sari. Rukmini, the oldest sister, sat beside a mound of white pills, which she was counting off and pouring into bottles; Ramnika, who would be married off after Rukmini, pasted a label on each bottle. The wife was making noise with plates and pots. After he had smoked his second beedi and his body had visibly relaxed, she built up the courage to approach him:

“The astrologer said he would come at nine.”

“Uhm.”

He burped, and then lifted a leg and waited for the fart. The radio was on; he placed the set on his thigh, and slapped his palm against his other leg to the beat of the music, humming all the while, and singing the words whenever he knew them.

“He’s here,” she whispered. He turned off the radio as the astrologer came into the room and folded his palms in a namaste.

Sitting down in a chair, he took off his shirt, which Ratna’s wife hung for him on the hook next to Ratna’s. While the women waited in the kitchen, the astrologer showed Ratna the choice of boys.

He opened an album of black-and-white photos; they gazed at the faces of one boy after another, who looked back at them out of tense, unsmiling portraits. Ratna scraped one with his thumb. The astrologer slid the photo out of the album.

“Boy looks okay,” Ratna said after a moment’s concentration. “The father does what for a living?”

“Owns a firecracker shop on Umbrella Street. A very good business. Boy inherits it.”

“His own business,” Ratna exclaimed with genuine satisfaction. “It’s the only way ahead in the rat race; being a salesman is a dead end.”

His wife dropped something in the kitchen; she coughed and dropped something else.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

A timid voice said something about horoscopes.

“Shut up!” Ratna shouted. He gestured at the kitchen with the photo-“I have three daughters to marry off, and this damn bitch thinks I can be choosy?”-and he tossed the photo into the astrologer’s lap.

The astrologer drew an X across the back of the photo.

“The boy’s parents will expect something,” he said. “A token.”

“Dowry.” Ratna gave the evil its proper name in a soft voice. “Fine. I’ve saved money for this girl.” He breathed out. “Where I’ll get dowry for the next two, though, God alone knows.”

Gritting his teeth in anger, he turned toward the kitchen and yelled.

The following Monday, the boy’s party came. The younger girls went around with a tray of lemon juice, while Ratna and his wife sat in the drawing room. Rukmini’s face was whitened by a thick layer of Johnson’s Baby Powder, and garlands of jasmine decorated her hair; she plucked the strings of a veena and sang a religious verse, while looking out the window at something far away.

The prospective groom’s father, the firecracker merchant, was sitting on a mattress directly opposite Rukmini; he was a huge man in a white shirt and a white cotton sarong, with thick tufts of glossy, silvery hair sticking out of his ears. He moved his head to the rhythm of the song, which Ratna took as an encouraging sign. The prospective mother-in-law, another enormous and fair-skinned creature, looked around the ceiling and the corners of the room. The groom-to-be had his father’s fair skin and features, but he was much smaller than either of his parents, and seemed more like the family’s domestic pet than the scion. Halfway through the song, he leaned over and whispered something into his father’s hairy ears.

The merchant nodded. The boy got up and left. The father held up his little finger and showed it to everyone in the room.

Everyone giggled.

The boy came back, and squirmed into place between his fat father and his fat mother. The two younger girls came with a second tray of lemon juice, and the fat firecracker merchant and his wife took glasses; as if only to follow them, the boy also took a glass and sipped. Almost as soon as the juice touched his lips, he tapped his father and whispered into his hairy ear again. This time the old man grimaced; but the boy ran out.

As if to distract attention from his son, the firecracker merchant asked Ratna, in a rasping voice, “Do you have a spare beedi, my good man?”

Searching in the kitchen for his packet of beedis, Ratna saw, through the grille in the window, the bridegroom-to-be, urinating copiously against the trunk of an Ashoka tree in the backyard.

Nervous fellow, he thought, grinning. But that’s only natural, he thought, feeling already a touch of affection for this fel low, who was going to join his family soon. All men are nervous before their weddings. The boy appeared to be done; he shook his penis and stepped away from the tree. But then he stood as if frozen. After a moment he craned his head back and seemed to gasp for air, like a drowning man.

The matchmaker returned that evening to report that the firecracker merchant seemed satisfied with Rukmini’s singing.

“Fix the date soon,” he told Ratna. “In a month, the rental rates for wedding halls will start to…” He gestured upward with his palms.

Ratna nodded, but he seemed distracted.

The next morning, he took the bus to Umbrella Street, walking past furniture and fan shops until he found the firecracker merchant’s place. The fat man with the hairy ears sat on a high stool, in front of a wall of paper bombs and rockets, like an emissary of the God of Fire and War. The groom-to-be was also in the shop, sitting on the floor, licking his fingers as he turned the pages of a ledger.

The fat man kicked his son gently.

“This man is going to be your father-in-law, aren’t you going to say hello?” He smiled at Ratna. “The boy is a shy one.”

Ratna sipped tea, chatted with the fat man, and kept an eye on the boy all the time.

“Come with me, son,” he said, “I have something to show you.”

The two men walked down the road, neither of them saying a word, till they got to the banyan tree that grew beside the Hanuman temple on Umbrella Street; Ratna indicated that they should sit down in the shade of the tree. He wanted the boy to turn his back to the traffic so that they faced the temple.

For a while Ratna let the young man talk, only observing his eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and neck.

Suddenly he seized the fellow’s wrist.

“Where did you find this prostitute that you sat with?”

The boy wanted to get up, but Ratna increased the pressure on his wrist to make it clear that there would be no escape. The boy turned his face to the road, as if pleading for help.

Ratna increased the pressure on the boy’s wrist.

“Where did you sit with her? At the side of a road, in a hotel, or behind a building?”

He twisted harder.

“By the side of a road,” the boy blurted out, then looked at Ratna with his face close to tears. “How do you know?”

Ratna closed his eyes, breathed out, and let go of the boy’s wrist. “A truckers’ whore.” He slapped the boy.

The boy began to cry. “I only sat with her once,” he said, fighting back his sobs.

“Once is enough. Do you burn when you pass urine?”

“Yes, I burn.”

“Nausea?”

The boy asked what the English word meant, and said yes once he understood.

“What else?”

“It feels like there is something large and hard-like a rubber ball-between my legs all the time. And then I feel dizzy sometimes.”

“Can you get hard?”

“Yes. No.”

“Tell me what your penis looks like. Is it black? Is it red? Are the lips of your penis swollen?”

Half an hour later, the two men were still sitting at the foot of the banyan tree, facing the temple.

“I beg you…” The boy folded his palms. “I beg you.”

Ratna shook his head. “I have to cancel the wedding, what else can I do? How can I let my daughter get this disease too?”

The boy stared at the ground, as if he had simply run out of ways to beg. The drop of moisture at the tip of his nose gleamed like silver.

“I’ll ruin you,” he said quietly.

Ratna wiped his hands on his sarong. “How?”

“I’ll say that the girl has slept with someone. I’ll say that she’s not a virgin. That’s why you had to cancel the wedding.”

In one swift motion, Ratna seized the boy’s hair, yanked back his head, held it for a moment, and then slammed it against the banyan tree. He stood up and spat at the boy.

“I swear by the god who sits in this temple before us, I will kill you with my own hands if you say that.”

He was in fiery form that day at the Dargah, thundering, as the young men gathered around him, about sin, and disease, and about how germs rise from the genitalia, through the nipples, into the mouth, and eyes, and ears, until they reach the nostrils. Then he showed them his photos: images of rotten and reddened genitalia, some of which were black, or distended, or even appeared charred, as if acid-burned. Above each photo was one of the face of the victim, his eyes covered by a black rectangle, as if he were a victim of torture or rape. Such were the consequences of sin, Ratna explained; and expiation and redemption could come only in the form of magic white pills.

Three months or so went by. One morning, he was at his spot behind the white dome, bellowing at the Stonehenge of worried young men, when he saw a face that made his heart stop.

Afterward, when he was done with his lecture, he saw the face again, right in front of him.

“What do you want?” he hissed. “It’s too late. My daughter’s married now. Why have you come here now?”

Ratna folded the stool under his arm, dropped his medicines into his red bag, and walked fast. A flurry of footsteps followed him. The boy-the firecracker merchant’s son-panted as he spoke.

“Things are becoming worse by the day. I can’t piss without my penis burning. You must do something for me. You must give me your pills.”

Ratna gnashed his teeth. “You sinned, you bastard. You sat with a prostitute. Now pay for it!”

He walked faster, and faster, and then the footsteps behind him were gone and he was alone.

But the following evening, he saw the face again and the quick steps followed him all the way to the bus stand, and the voice said, again and again, “Let me buy the pills from you,” but Ratna did not turn around.

He boarded the bus, and counted to ten; producing his brochures, he spoke to the passengers of the rat race. As the dark outline of the fort appeared in the distance, the bus slowed down and then stopped. He got down. Someone else got down with him. He walked away. Someone walked behind him.

Ratna spun around and seized his stalker by the collar. “Didn’t I tell you, leave me alone? What has gotten into you?”

The boy pushed Ratna’s hands away, straightened his collar, and whispered, “I think I’m dying. You have to give me your white pills.”

“Look here, none of those young men is going to be cured by anything I sell. Don’t you get it?”

There was a moment of silence, and then the boy said, “But you were at the Sexology Conference…the sign in English says so…”

Ratna raised his hands to the sky. “I found that sign lying on the platform of the station.”

“But the Hakim Bhagwandas of Delhi -”

“Hakim Bhagwandas, my arse! They’re white sugar pills that I buy wholesale from a pharmacist on Umbrella Street -right next to where your father has his shop; my daughters bottle them and stick labels on them at my house!”

To prove his point, he opened his leather case, unscrewed the top from a bottle, and scattered the pills across the ground, as if broadcasting seed on the earth. “They can do nothing! I have nothing for you, son!”

The boy sat on the ground, took a white pill from the earth, and swallowed it. He got down on all fours and scooped up the white pills, which he began swallowing in a frenzy, along with any dirt attached to them.

“Are you mad?”

Getting down on his knees, Ratna gave the boy a good shake, and asked the same question again and again.

And then, at last, he saw the boy’s eyes. They had changed since he had last observed them: teary and red, they were like pickled vegetables of some kind.

He relaxed his grip on the boy’s shoulder.

“You’ll have to pay me, all right, for my help? I don’t do charity.”

Half an hour later, the two men got off a bus near the railway station. They walked together through streets that became progressively narrower and darker, until they reached a shop whose awning was marked with a large red medical cross. From inside the shop, a radio blared out a popular Kannada film song.

“Buy something here, and leave me alone.”

Ratna tried to walk away, but the boy clutched his wrist. “Wait. Pick the medicine for me and then go.”

Ratna walked quickly in the direction of the bus stop, but again he heard the footsteps behind him. He turned, and there was the boy, arms laden with green bottles.

Regretting that he had ever agreed to bring him here, Ratna walked faster. Still he heard the light, desperate footsteps again, as though a ghost were following him.

For several hours that night Ratna lay awake, turning in his bed and disturbing his wife.

The next day, in the evening, he took the bus into the city, back to Umbrella Street. When he reached the firecracker shop he stood at a distance with his arms folded, waiting until the boy saw him. The two of them walked together in silence for a while, and then sat down on a bench outside a sugarcane juice stall. As the machines turned, crushing the cane, Ratna said:

“Go to the hospital. They’ll help you.”

“I can’t go there. They know me. They’ll tell my father.”

Ratna had a vision of that immense man with the tufts of white hair growing out of his ears, sitting in front of his arsenal of firecrackers and paper bombs.

The following day, as Ratna was folding his wooden stand and packing his case, he was conscious of a shadow on the ground in front of him. He walked around the Dargah, past the long line of pilgrims waiting to pray at the tomb of Yusuf Ali, past the rows of lepers, and past the man with one leg, lying on the ground, twitching from the hip, and chanting, “Al-lah, Al-laaah! Al-lah!”

He looked up at the white dome for a moment.

He went down to the sea, and the shadow followed him. A low stone wall ran along the sea’s edge, and he put his right foot up on it. The waves were coming in violently; now and then water crashed against the wall, and thick white foam rose up into the air and spread out, like a peacock’s tail emerging from the sea. Ratna turned around.

“What choice do I have? If I don’t sell those boys the pills, how will I marry off my daughters?”

The boy, avoiding his gaze, stared at the ground and shifted his weight uncomfortably.

The two of them caught the number five bus and took it all the way into the heart of the city, disembarking near Angel Talkies. The boy carried the wooden stool, and Ratna searched up and down the main road, until he located a large billboard of a husband and a wife standing together in wedding clothes:

HAPPY LIFE CLINIC

Consulting Specialist: Doctor M. V. Kamath

MBBS (Mysore), BMec (Allahabad), DBBS (Mysore),

MCh (Calcutta), GCom (Varanasi).

SATISFACTION GUARANTEED

“You see those letters after his name?” Ratna whispered into the boy’s ear. “He’s a real doctor. He’ll save you.”

In the waiting room, a half dozen lean, nervous men sat on black chairs, and in a corner, one married couple. Ratna and the boy sat down between the single men and the couple. Ratna looked curiously at the men. These were the same ones who came to him: older, sadder versions; men who had been trying to shake off venereal disease for years, who had thrown bottle after bottle of white pills at it, to find no improvement-who were now at the end of a long journey of despair, a journey that led from his booth at the Dargah, through a long trail of other hucksters, to this doctor’s clinic, where they would be told at last the truth.

One by one, the lean, wasted men went into the doctor’s room and the door shut behind them. Ratna looked at the married couple and thought, At least they are not alone in this ordeal. At least they have each other.

Then the man got up to see the doctor; the woman stayed back. She went in later, after the man had left. Of course they are not husband and wife, Ratna told himself. When he gets this disease, this disease of sex, every man is alone in the universe.

“And who are you in relation to the patient?” the doctor asked.

They had taken their seats, at last, at his consulting desk. On the wall behind the doctor a giant chart depicted a cross-section of a man’s urinary and reproductive organs. Ratna looked at it for a moment, marveling at the diagram’s beauty, and said:

“His uncle.”

The doctor made the boy take off his shirt; then he sat next to him, made him put his tongue out, peered into his eyes, and put his stethoscope to the boy’s chest, pressing it to one side and then the other.

Ratna thought, To get a disease like this, on his very first time! Where is the justice in that?

After examining the boy’s genitals, the doctor moved to a washbasin with a mirror above; he pulled a cord, and a tube light flickered to life above the mirror.

Letting the water run into the basin, he gargled and spat, and then turned off the light. He wiped a corner of the basin with his palm, lowered a blind over the window, inspected his green plastic wastebasket.

When he ran out of things to do, he returned to his desk, looked at his feet, and practiced breathing for a while.

“His kidneys are gone.”

“Gone?”

“Gone,” the doctor said.

He turned to the boy, who was trembling hard in his seat.

“Are you unnatural in your tastes?”

The boy covered his face in his hands. Ratna answered for him.

“Look, he got it from a prostitute, there’s no sin in that. He’s not an unnatural fellow. He just didn’t know enough about this world we live in.”

The doctor nodded. He turned to the diagram and put his finger on the kidneys, and said:

“Gone.”

Ratna and the boy went to the bus station together at six in the morning the following day, to catch the bus to Manipal; he had heard that there was a doctor at the medical college who specialized in the kidneys. A man with a blue sarong, sitting on the bench in the station, told them that the bus to Manipal was always late, maybe fifteen minutes, maybe thirty, maybe more. “Everything’s been falling apart in this country since Mrs. Gandhi was shot,” the man in the blue sarong said, kicking his legs about. “Buses are late. Trains are late. Everything’s falling apart. We’ll have to hand this country back to the British or the Russians or someone, I tell you. We’re not meant to be masters of our own fate, I tell you.”

Telling the boy to wait for a moment by the bus stand, Ratna returned with peanuts in a paper cone which he had bought for twenty paise, and said, “You haven’t had break fast, have you?” But the boy reminded him that the doctor had warned against eating anything spicy; it would irritate his penis. So Ratna went back to the vendor and exchanged the peanuts for the unsalted kind. They munched together for a while, until the boy ran to a wall and began to throw up. Ratna stood over him, patting his back, as the boy retched again and again. The man in the blue sarong watched with greedy eyes; then he came up to Ratna and whispered, “What’s the kid got? It’s serious, isn’t it?”

“Nonsense; he’s just got a flu,” Ratna said. The bus arrived at the station an hour late.

It was late on the way back as well. The two of them had to stand in the densely crowded aisle for over an hour, until a pair of seats became empty beside them. Ratna slid into the window seat and motioned for the boy to sit down next to him. “We got lucky, considering how crowded the bus is,” Ratna said with a smile.

Gently, he disengaged his hand from the boy’s.

The boy understood too; he nodded, and took out his wallet, and threw five-rupee notes, one after the other, into Ratna’s lap.

“What’s this for?”

“You said you wanted something for helping me.”

Ratna thrust the notes into the boy’s shirt pocket. “Don’t talk to me like that, fellow. I have helped you so far; and what did I have to gain from it? It was pure public service on my part, remember that. We aren’t related; we have no blood in common.”

The boy said nothing.

“Look! I can’t keep on going with you from doctor to doctor. I’ve got my daughters to marry off, I don’t know where I’ll get the dowry for-”

The boy turned, pressed his face into Ratna’s collarbone, and burst into sobs; his lips rubbed against Ratna’s clavicles and began sucking on them. The passengers stared at them, and Ratna was too bewildered to say a word.

It took another hour before the outline of the black fort appeared on the horizon. The man and the boy got off the bus together. Ratna stood by the main road and waited as the boy blew his nose and shook the phlegm from his fingers. Ratna looked at the black rectangle of the fort, and felt a sense of despair: how had it been decided, and by whom, and when, and why, that Ratnakara Shetty was responsible for helping this firecracker merchant’s son fight his disease? Against the black rectangle of the fort, he had a vision, momentarily, of a white dome, and he heard a throng of mutilated beings chanting in unison. He put a beedi in his mouth, struck a match, and inhaled.

“Let’s go,” he told the boy. “It’s a long walk from here to my house.”