I tried to fight it. I kept myself as busy as I could. I worked in two more Bollywood films, taking small parts-as an extra at a party and in a street scene. I met with Kavita, urging her once again to visit Anand in prison. Most afternoons, I trained at weights and boxing and karate with Abdullah. I put in a day here and there at the slum clinic. I helped Prabaker and Johnny to prepare for their weddings. I listened to Khaderbhai's lectures, and immersed myself in the books, manuscripts, parchments, and ancient faience carvings in Abdul Ghani's extensive private collection. But no work or weariness could drive the darkness from me. Little by little, the tortured Spaniard's face and silent, screaming eyes became my own remembered moment: blood falling on the page, and no sound escaping my howling mouth. They claim a hidden corner of our hearts, all those moments that stay with us unscreamed. That's where loves, like elephants, drag themselves to die. It's the place where pride allows itself to cry. And in those sleep-lonely nights and think-rambled days, Modena's face was always there, staring at the door.
And while I worked and worried, Leopold's changed forever. The crowd that had coalesced there dispersed and disappeared. Karla was gone. Ulla was gone. Modena was gone, and probably dead. Maurizio was dead. Once, when I was too busy to stop for a drink, I passed the wide entrance arches and I saw no face that I knew. Yet Didier persisted at his favourite table each evening, conducting his business and accepting drinks from old friends. Gradually a new crowd collected around him with a new and different style.
Lisa Carter brought Kalpana Iyer with her for drinks one night, and the young assistant producer became a Leopold's regular.
Vikram and Lettie were in the last stages of preparation for their wedding, and they stopped for coffee, a snack, or a beer almost every day. Anwar and Dilip, two young journalists who worked with Kavita Singh, accepted her invitation to drop in and look the place over. On their first visit they found Lisa Carter, Kalpana, Kavita, and Lettie, with three German girls who'd worked for Lisa as extras on a film-seven beautiful, intelligent, vivacious young women. Anwar and Dilip were healthy, happy, unattached young men. They came to Leopold's every day and night after that.
The ambience created by the new group was different to that which had flowered around Karla Saaranen. The indelible cleverness and piercing wit that were Karla's gifts had inspired her own group of friends to a more profound discourse and a higher, thinner laughter. The new group took its more erratic tone from Didier, who combined the expressive mordancy of his sarcasm with a proclivity for the vulgar, the obscene, and the scatological. The laughter was louder, and probably more frequent, but there were no phrases that remained with me from the jokes or the jokers.
Then one night, a day after Vikram married Lettie, and a few weeks after Maurizio went into Hassaan Obikwa's pit, as I sat amongst the new group while the cawing, shrieking gulls of good humour settled on them, sending up squawks of laughter and fluttering hands, I saw Prabaker through the open arch. He waved to me, and I left the table to join him in his cab parked nearby.
"Hey, Prabu, what's up? We're celebrating Vikram's wedding! He and Lettie got married yesterday."
"Yes, Linbaba. Sorry for disturbing the newly-marriages."
"It's okay. They're not here. They've gone to London, to meet her parents. But what's up?"
"Up, Linbaba?" "Yeah, I mean what are you doing here? Tomorrow's your big day. I thought you'd be drinking it up with Johnny and the other guys at the zhopadpatti."
"After this talk only. Then I will go," he replied, fidgeting nervously with the steering wheel. Both front doors of the car were open for the breeze. It was a hot night. The streets were crowded with couples, families, and single young men trying to find a cool wind or a curiosity somewhere to distract them from the heat. The crowd who streamed along the road beside the parked cars began to eddy around Prabaker's open door, and he pulled it shut hard.
"Are you okay?"
"Oh, yes, Lin, I am very, very fine," he said. Then he looked at me. "No. Not really, baba. In fact of speaking, I am very, very bad."
"What is it?"
"Well, how to tell you this thing. Linbaba, you know I am getting a marriage to Parvati tomorrow. Do you know, baba, the first time I ever saw her my Parvati, was before six years, when she was sixteen years old only. That first time, when she first came to the zhopadpatti, before her daddy Kumar had his chai shop, she was living in a little hut with her mummy and daddy and sister, the Sita who is a marriage for Johnny Cigar. And that first day, she carried a matka of water back from the company well. She carried it on her head."
He paused, watching the aquarium of the swirling street through the windscreen of the cab. His fingernail picked at the rubber leopard's skin cover he'd laced onto his steering wheel. I gave him time.
"Anyway," he continued, "I was watching her, and she was trying to carry that heavy matka, and walk on the rough track. And that matka, it must have been a very old one, and the clay was weak, because suddenly it just broke up in pieces, and all the water spilled down on her. She cried and cried so much. I looked at her and I felt..."
He paused, looking up at the strolling street once more.
"Sorry for her?" I offered.
"No, baba. I felt..."
"Sad? You felt sad for her?"
"No, baba. I felt a erection, in my pants, you know, when the penis is getting all hard, like your thinking."
"For God's sake, Prabu! I know what an erection is!" I grumbled.
"Get on with it. What happened?"
"Nothing happened," he replied, puzzled by my irritation, and somewhat chastened. "But from that time only, I never forgot my big, big feeling for her. Now I am making a marriage, and that big, big feeling is getting bigger every day."
"I'm not sure that I like where this is going, Prabu," I muttered.
"I am asking you, Lin," he said, choking on the words. He faced me. Tears bulged and rolled from his eyes into his lap. His voice came in stuttering sobs. "She is too beautiful. I am a very short and small man. Do you think I can make a good and sexy husband?"
I told Prabaker, sitting in his cab and watching him cry, that love makes men big, and hate makes them small. I told him that my little friend was one of the biggest men I ever met because there wasn't any hate in him. I said that the better I knew him, the bigger he got, and I tried to tell him how rare that was. And I joked with him, and laughed with him until that great smile, as big as a child's biggest wish, returned to his gentle round face.
He drove away toward the bachelor party that was waiting for him in the slum, and sounded the horn triumphantly until he was out of sight.
The night that walked me, long after he left, was lonelier than most. I didn't go back to Leopold's. I walked instead along the Causeway, past my apartment, and on to Prabaker's slum at Cuffe Parade. I found the place where Tariq and I fought the vicious pack on the Night of the Wild Dogs. There was still a small pile of scrap timber and stones on the spot. I sat there, smoking the darkness, and watching the slow elegance of the slum-dwellers drifting back along the dusty track to the huddle of huts. I smiled. Thinking of Prabaker's mighty smile always made me smile reflexively as if I was looking at a happy, healthy baby. Then a vision of Modena's face flowed from the flickering lanterns and vaporous wreaths of smoke, and faded again to nothing before it was fully formed. Music started up inside the slum. A strolling group of young men quickened their pace to jog toward the stirring sound. Prabaker's bachelor party had begun. He'd invited me, but I couldn't bring myself to go. I sat near enough to hear the happiness, but far enough away not to feel it.