"Is he afraid of you?" I asked, smiling.

"Yes. I think he is, a little bit. That's one of the reasons I like him. I could never respect a man who didn't have the good sense to be at least a little bit afraid of me." She stood up, and I rose with her. Under the street lamp her green eyes were jewels of desire, wet with light. Her lips widened in a half-smile that was mine-a moment that was mine alone-and the beggar, my heart, began to hope and plead.

"Tomorrow," she said, "when you go to Prabaker's village, try to relax completely, and go with the experience. Just... let yourself go. Sometimes, in India, you have to surrender before you win."

"You've always got some wise advice, haven't you?" I said, laughing gently.

"That's not wise, Lin. I think wisdom is very over-rated. Wisdom is just cleverness, with all the guts kicked out of it. I'd rather be clever than wise, any day. Most of the wise people I know give me a headache, but I never met a clever man or woman I didn't like. If I was giving wise advice-which I'm not-I'd say don't get drunk, don't spend all your money, and don't fall in love with a pretty village girl. That would be wise. That's the difference between clever and wise. I prefer to be clever, and that's why I told you to surrender, when you get to the village, no matter what you find when you get there. Okay. I'm going. Come and see me when you get back. I look forward to it. I really do."

She kissed my cheek, and turned away. I couldn't obey the impulse to hold her in my arms and kiss her lips. I watched her walk, her dark silhouette a part of the night itself. Then she moved into the warm, yellow light near the door of her apartment, and it was as if my watching eyes had made her shadow come to life, as if my heart alone had painted her from darkness with the light and colours of love. She turned once to see that I was watching her, before she softly closed and locked the door.

That last hour with her was a Borsalino test, I was sure, and all the walking way back to the hotel I asked myself if I'd passed it, or if I'd failed. I still think about it, all these years later. I still don't know.

CHAPTER FIVE

The long, flat interstate platforms at Victoria Terminus train station stretched out to vanishing points beneath a metal heaven of rolling vaulted ceilings. The cherubs of that architectural sky were pigeons, so far overhead in their flutter from roost to roost that they were only faintly discernible; distant, celestial beings of flight, and white light. The great station-those who used it every day knew it as VT.-was justly famous for the splendour of its intricately detailed facades, towers, and exterior ornaments. But its most sublime beauty, it seemed to me, was found in its cathedral interiors. There, the limitations of function met the ambitions of art, as the timetable and the timeless commanded equal respect.

For a long hour I sat on and amid our pile of luggage at the street end of the northbound interstate platform. It was six o'clock in the evening, and the station was filled with people, luggage, bundles of goods, and an agricultural assortment of live and recently deceased animals.

Prabaker ran into the crowds milling between two stationary trains. It was the fifth time I'd watched him leave. And then, a few minutes later, for the fifth time, I watched him run back.

"For God's sake, sit down, Prabu."

"Can't be sitting, Lin."

"Well, let's get on the train, then."

"Can't be getting on also, Lin. It is not now the time for the getting on the train."

"So... when will it be the time for the getting on the train?"

"I think... a little bit almost quite very soon, and not long.

Listen! Listen!"

There was an announcement. It might've been in English. It was the kind of sound an angry drunk makes, amplified through the unique distortions of many ancient, cone-shaped speakers. As he listened to it, Prabaker's face moved from apprehension to anguish.

"Now! Now, Lin! Quickly! We must hurry! You must hurry!"

"Hang on, hang on. You've had me sitting here like a brass Buddha, for an hour. Now, all of a sudden, there's a big rush, and I have to hurry?"

"Yes, baba. No time for making Buddha-beg of pardons to the Holy One. You must make a big rush. He's coming! You must be ready.

He's coming!"

"Who's coming?"

Prabaker turned to look along the platform. The announcement, whatever it was, had galvanised the crowds of people, and they rushed at two stationary trains, hurling themselves and their bundles into the doors and windows. From the broiling tangle of bodies, one man emerged and walked towards us. He was a huge man, one of the biggest men I'd ever seen. He was two metres tall, well muscled, and had a long, thick beard that settled on his burly chest. He wore the Bombay train porter's uniform of cap, shirt, and shorts, in rough red-and-khaki linen.

"Him!" Prabaker said, staring at the giant with admiration and dread. "You go with this man now, Lin."

Having long experience with foreigners, the porter took control of the situation. He reached out with both hands. I thought that he wanted to shake hands, so I extended my own in return. He brushed it aside with a look that left me in no doubt as to how repulsive he'd found the gesture. Then, putting his hands under my armpits, he lifted me up and dropped me out of the way to one side of the luggage.

It's a disconcerting, albeit exhilarating, experience, when you weigh 90 kilos yourself, to be lifted up so effortlessly by another man. I determined, there and then, to co-operate with the porter in so far as it was decently possible.

While the big man lifted my heavy back-pack onto his head and gathered up the rest of the bags, Prabaker put me at his back, and seized a handful of the man's red linen shirt.

"Here, Lin, take it a hold on this shirts," he instructed me.

"Hold it, and never let it go, this shirts. Tell me your deep and special promise. You will never let it go this shirts."

His expression was so unusually grave and earnest that I nodded in agreement, and took hold of the porter's shirt.

"No, say it also, Lin! Say the words-I will never let it go this shirts. Quickly!"

"Oh, for God's sake. All right-I will never let it go this shirts. Are you satisfied?"

"Goodbye, Lin," Prabaker shouted, running off into the mill and tumble of the crowd.

"What? What! Where are you going? Prabu! Prabu!"

"Okay! We go now!" the porter rumbled and roared in a voice that he'd found in a bear's cave, and cured in the barrel of a rusted cannon.

He walked off into the crowd, dragging me behind him and kicking outwards by raising his thick knees high with every step. Men scattered before him. When they didn't scatter, they were knocked aside.

Bellowing threats, insults, and curses, he thumped a path through the choking throng. Men fell and were pushed aside with every lift and thrust of his powerful legs. In the centre of the crowd, the din was so loud that I could feel it drumming on my skin.

People shouted and screamed as if they were the victims of a terrible disaster. Garbled, indecipherable announcements blared from the loudspeakers over our heads. Sirens, bells, and whistles wailed constantly.

We reached a carriage that was, like all the others, filled to its capacity with a solid wall of bodies in the doorway. It was a seemingly impenetrable human barrier of legs and backs and heads.

Astonished, and not a little ashamed, I clung to the porter as he hammered his way into the carriage with his indefatigable and irresistible knees.

His relentless forward progress stopped, at one point, in the centre of the carriage. I assumed that the density of the crowd had halted even that juggernaut of a man. I clung to the shirt, determined not to lose my grip on him when he started to move again. In all the furious noise of the cloying press of bodies, I became aware of one word, repeated in an insistent and tormented mantra: Sarr... Sarr... Sarr... Sarr... Sarr...