Delirium

Not just another day at Koshy’s in the company of Dr James Buchanan, smarmy swadeshis and AA types: fresh new fiction from Jeet Thayil

THERE WAS NO GENTLE BUILD-UP; no glass of wine one evening, two the next, and so on, exponentially into the dark. He went all out from moment one. He bought himself a quarter bottle of whisky first thing in the morning, put a slug in his coffee and got to work: he went from teetotaller to alcoholic in one sip. But the canvas was glowing with light. It was possible, no, it was highly likely that if he kept at the booze he would stop working, but this morning, whisky taken, he was blazing; he was high in the visionary company of love. He banged out two self-portraits, one after the other, before lunch, without so much as breaking a sweat. They were variations on a theme, painted on pages of ghetto porn, all glossy flesh tones and harsh lighting, but they were living things, incandescent. He gave himself an egg-shaped head and leaden eyelids; put bits of white paint around the eyes and mouth, the only white on the canvas, as it turned out; made the body and head big blocks of burnt umber and sienna; and left only one area unpainted, the heart, and—this was when he knew he was in the presence of God and all his angels—it just so happened that the heart occurred on a high-res image of an ebony vagina, slippery and liver-colored, absolutely perfect; all he did was pencil in a few quick lines to suggest the heart’s rubbery tubing. No viewer would make out what it was, nobody would know unless he told them, which he would, of course, to get a little buzz going in the right places, push the price up by a digit or two. The second portrait was faster and stranger, a humanoid blob of multi-colored oil spatters. And the two finished pictures put him in such a good mood that he took Maya to Koshy’s for lunch. Before leaving, he killed the rest of the quarter in the bathroom and brushed his teeth again.

They were at a table by the window, Xavier taking big gulps of iced tea, saying, Remember that waiter, the one in the café on rue de la Harpe, who refused to serve you because he said you were too young? And we had to show him your passport? We drank all day and they gave us buy-back shots and I left the keys on the bar and had to climb in through the window to get into the apartment?—Xavier looked around him at the photos on the wall: mostly shots of old Bangalore, when you could walk the length of the promenade in a leisurely half hour and there was no traffic except the occasional Model T import; sepia full frontals of the town hall, the Parade Ground and the Victoria Hotel; royals and other notables, and the inevitable picture of the Mysore Maharaja, unresplendent in his crooked turban—“Climbed in the living room window and opened the door for you and we fell asleep fully dressed and I woke up in the middle of the night because you had me in a choke hold, and all I’d done was snore.”

“It was a snore heard around the world. You were so drunk. I had a nightmare in which you were trying to kill me.”

“So you thought you’d kill me instead?”

“It was me or you.”

“Anyway, the first time you left me and went home to Father Lol, I tried to find that bar. I went up and down Rue de la Harpe and all around the quarter. I thought if I got drunk enough you’d come and save me.”

“Such a silly man.”

“I never did find the bar. Instead, I sent you an e-mail telling you where I was, and I sent postcards. I thought you might turn up and surprise me.”

“You surprised me, I had no idea you were such an ardent lover.”

There was a figure beside him, a squat toad-like man in starched white kurta pyjamas, gold ballpoint prominent in his breast pocket. It was not Xavier he was looking at, but Maya. His hands were folded in namaste. Xavier had no idea who he was, until Maya said, Mr. Cherian, how nice to see you. Newton, you remember Mr. Cherian, from the party the other day? Xavier remembered: it was the Lipton man.

“May I join you?”

Xavier said, “My pleasure. What are you drinking?”

Cherian called for a waiter and demanded beer.

“For everyone,” he said. “Beer.”

Even Maya was agreeably smiling. And why not? A glass of beer, a smallish glass of frothy lager, what possible harm could issue from so blameless a beverage? When it came, and was poured, glorious honey-bright refreshment, Xavier emptied his prettily sweating tankard and poured another, and only then did Maya’s face register some—what?—not coldness exactly, but discomfort. And then there were more people by the table, Keith and Vincent and other AA boys.

“I can see it’s working for you,” Keith said, “not going to meetings, I mean. Helping you stay clean and sober.”

Vincent said, “Watch out, mister, keep talking that way and the man might go for your throat.”

Xavier said, “I’m sorry, as I said before and say again, I’m sorry and I’m sorry.”

Maya said, “Did you attack him? My god.”

And the swadeshi Cherian said, “Are you boys from AA? You don’t look like it, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“We should go.”

“Well, maybe I should go with you,” said Cherian, but he didn’t get up from his seat. And it was Xavier who went with them to the door, to shake hands and make a last apology to Vincent.

“I mean it, forgive me, I’m not okay in the head.”

“I hope I’m never so desperate I have to resort to violence.”

“You’re right, you’re right.”

“Yeah, well, looks like you got other problems, bro. Looks like the fat man’s got his eye on your girl-friend.”

Cherian was kissing her hand.

“And she doesn’t mind, does she?”

Maya was smiling, and, dear god, did she just bat her eyelashes at him? Xavier hadn’t seen that move in years. He went back to the table, where she was saying, I mean, I enjoy beer, though really it doesn’t have much of an effect on me—other than to make me affectionate, that is. The smarmy swadeshi still had her hand in his and she was making no effort to take it away. Of course, it was entirely possible she had a thing for ugly men. Xavier was no prize in the prettiness department. Maybe she had a thing for ugliness in all forms, human, divine, artistic. Maybe it was time to give in and give up and confront the ghost that walked with him everyfuckingwhere. This called for urgent measures, of whisky, if not beeru, winu, rumma. Xavier summoned the waiter and ordered a double Black & White with ice. He said to Maya, Tu mettrais l’univers entier dans ta ruelle, femme impure!

“If that’s French for I’m a complete fucking alcoholic and I can’t wait to flush my life down the loo, you can say it again.”

“L’ennui rend ton âme cruelle.”

Their voices had risen above the general Koshy’s din—no small feat, considering the level of noise in the restaurant. Cherian, being the oily Malayali he was, decided a marital spat was not the best thing for his public image and scuttled off at last, mumbling something about being late for a lunch appointment.

With his two hands, Xavier held his whisky up to the dim electric light. It was the color of smudge. Thank you, oh lord, for your small mercy, he said, and swallowed the drink and ordered another. He was glowing, in the flow, high and visionary. Maya left without another word, though she took her time gathering her things. Was she expecting mollification and coddlement? Not today, he was not in the market for Molly or Coddle; he was in for the conspicuous consumption of Choice Old Scotch Whisky from the twin barrels of the inestimable Dr James Buchanan and his company of highland terriers. But there was a balance to be struck, a window of chance and opportunity before the booze reinstated its depressive temperament. He needed to be back at work. Because he had had an idea, a real idea, a flash of lightning type IDEA. He lifted up the new whisky and said to the deserted table, Emperor Buchanan, to your incomparable malts and grains. Then he paid the bill and left a good tip and walked home, stopping to buy wine at a shop on Infantry Road, cheap red wine for a cheap red day. The wineshop owner’s daughter gave him a calendar on the house, saying, It’s our honor, sir, to serve you. I saw your picture in the newspaper. You can pay later if you don’t have money. She gave him his change and said, in Hindi, Sir, thank you, we also have free home delivery. He said, Good, good, now stop calling me sir. What’s your name? Dharini, she said. Dharini, he replied, it’s a pleasure indeed to make your acquaintance.

He went home and hung the calendar on a bare wall near his easel. It was the usual devotional scene, an array of gods in fleshy human poses. He poured himself a short glass of red and noted the absence of The Maya and tossed off the monumental mixed media nude that had been flashing in his head all day, hips so big they were a landscape of their own, boulder breasts, tree trunk neck, small delicate lovely head. He used a marker to draw a faint outline, then filled the canvas with paint, two colours, no more. Then he used the marker again. He found a piece of gold fabric in a closet, heavy gold inlaid with cheap gemstones, which he shaped into a necklace and placed on the nude’s slender neck, and she took on the unmistakable contours of the giantess of his youth, a figure from a poem he’d once read that had filled his erotic life for weeks, the idea of living in the valleys and crevices of a big brown woman devoid of speech but full of tenderness and desire. He was blazing. And then he was thinking of Koshy’s, that there was time for one last drink before they closed for the day, that they’d still be serving dinner, the waiters in a hurry to count their tips and be gone. The giantess was done. Anyone could see that he hadn’t put much into it, had tossed it off quickly, the necklace positioned slightly wrong, the color dull, unfinished skin tones against flat yellow. But it didn’t matter: the power was in the line, the curve of hip, the Greek serenity of her lips and eyes. The giantess was done, and so was he; time for a swig of red and out into the night.

He took a rickshaw and told the man to wait. At Koshy’s, candles had been lit and there was music. Was it jazz, opera, heavy metal? It was impossible to tell, the sound was so muddy; or was the mud in his head? John, eradu whisky kodu, he told the old waiter, who replied in English. Sir, we are closing, do you want food? Closing time. Dread words calculated to put The Fear into any man. He called for two whiskies, then made it three, and told John to line them up on the table. Where was Maya? He should have checked her closets of course, to see if she’d taken her clothes. No, it would take her a day or two to move everything out: art, books, toiletries, all kinds of pots and pans. Where were Keith and Vincent, his AA buddies? Where were all his friends? He went to a table by the window where a couple of middle-aged men worked on their rum and Thums Up. “Do you think I could possibly,”—Why did he get so plummy and English when he had taken a drop or two? He’d lived in Paris almost as long as he’d lived in London, but when he was drunk, or even just drinking, it was always the English who won—“possibly borrow a cigarette from you?” One of them held out a damp pack of Classic Milds and he took one. Then he went to his table and smoked, suddenly unwilling to drink, unaccountably reluctant to reach for the whisky waiting before him. He took a deep drag of the cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs. He actually felt the nicotine kick in, and still the drinks stood on the table, and still he didn’t want them. He’d smoked too quickly, which put a pint of nausea in his head. Where were his friends? Here, of course, here they were, all three of them. He drank two, one after the other, and someone joined him.

“Mr. Koshy, the younger. How good to see you, dear boy.”

“Mr. Xavier, how are you? Looking a little the worse for wear, I’m sorry to say.”

“I’d offer you a drink, but I know you’d refuse. You would, right?”

“With pleasure.”

“Well, here’s to you and your odd sobriety.”

Xavier downed his third and last whisky, and felt the heat percolate downward into his kundalini, felt the serpent goddess begin her ascent up his spine and just as quickly die; suddenly bereft, he raised his hand for the waiter.

“We’re closed, at least to you. Go home, Newton, for god’s sake, do yourself a favor, go home and make it up to your lovely lady.”

“I think I’ve just seen everything—a merchant refusing to sell his merchandise. This is tremendously noble and all, but aren’t you shooting yourself in the foot, old boy?”

“You have the trembles, did you know that?”

“Give me a drink, merchant, or give me the bill.”

“Your money’s no good here, go home.”

But he didn’t go home. He stepped out of Koshy’s and found the rickshaw still waiting and took it to Dewar’s, a bar hidden under flyover construction in one of the city’s oldest cantonments, and there they let him buy a half bottle of whisky and sit at a table for as long as he liked. A boy put a menu and a bowl of peanuts in front of him, pulled the shutters to and lit a candle in a saucer. Police, he said, turning out the lights. What a toy town. After eleven, you drank with the lights off because the guardians of the law would rather shake down drinkers than do any kind of honest work. How do you tell the difference between a cop and a crook?, he asked the boy.

“Ji?”

Cigarette kodu, Xavier said. The menu was a collage of old Hindi movie posters, and there was the old Dev Anand-Zeenat Aman hit Hare Rama Hare Krishna showing bell-bottomed lovers with the Himalayas behind them. Maya, he thought, I miss you, come home. There was already so much to tell her, the three paintings of the day and the fact that he was feeling better, Almost Normal, in fact. Maybe the drink had calmed him down and cured the hypomania. Was she gone with the oily Cherian to his sprawling bungalow where she would sip daytime cocktails with the city’s VIP set? The boy put a pack of cigarettes on the table. Eyevathu rupiah, he said. When had he become a smoker, Xavier asked himself? Already it seemed as if he had been in this life forever, his days measured in whisky and nicotine, and he was dreading the hangover that was surely coming. But he was afraid to stop, because there was the possibility that something worse would take its place. When the bottle had one drink left, he put it into his pocket and checked his wristwatch: it was only 3, no, it was 3:10. He blew the candle out, and in the sudden darkness the words came to him unbidden. He said: lift your face up to the sky and unbefuddle yourself, Commander Xavier. A great and complex task awaits you. Lift your face free of its infirmity and find her, for she is rescue from the disaster that awaits. Lift up, Saint Xavier, lift up. But when he opened the door of the bar and stepped out into the street, his legs didn’t obey him and he had to bend from the waist to keep from falling over. He stopped on the main road, still bent over, to wait for a rickshaw, but there was nothing moving at that time of night, and then, unable to walk any further, he sat heavily on the concrete bench of a bus-stop and felt the bottle shatter in his pocket, and there was a sudden jab in his hip. He picked the broken glass out of his trousers, trying to catch whatever was available for salvage, a small handful of whisky that he transferred to his mouth. Just then, the sky began to lighten on a stretch of dug-up road, great shards of concrete pointing upwards like glass. No wonder there had been no rickshaws: there was no road. He limped onward, his pants wet with blood and whisky, until he came to a junction dominated by a Kannada film poster. And then, as if all of Xavier’s travels had brought him to this pre-dawn meeting, he saw a man whose long hair and black shirt were wet with lake water. He was still naked from the waist down and on his wrist was the pink rakhee. The dead man said, why did you not ask yourself the obvious question?

“As in, who but a crazy man would find himself in conversation with a dead one?”

“No, that question is not obvious, it is merely uninteresting. The real question is, what does it mean when a drowned man is found without his trousers?”

“Ah,” Xavier said, as if he were about to sneeze. “Forgive me, I don’t mean to tremble so, but I can’t seem to stop.”

“It means he was robbed and murdered. It means he did not drown himself as the police claim. It means he must choose someone in whom he can place his trust, some one person who will know the truth even if he is unable to act on it.”

Without warning, the tears came to Xavier’s eyes.

“There’s no peace in death, only unease and restless dreams.”

Then the dead man clasped Xavier to his wet shirt and kissed him on both cheeks. As he walked away, he turned back once to point in the direction of a bridge. “Go that way, you’ll know where you are.”

Xavier limped toward the bridge, which, as it turned out, was a flyover, and beyond it was traffic and new sunlight and, most miraculous sight of all, a line of rickshaws waiting for business. On the ride home, he wondered how it was that a hallucination had left such a genuine memento; for the dead man had been a creation of his mind, but the wetness on his shirt was real. It was full day when he got out of the rickshaw and made a last stop before home. Hello, Dharini, a bottle of Grover red, and two bottles of Khajuraho, please, he said, leaning heavily against the counter. And it occurred to him that he’d made a similar purchase some 24 hours earlier, when all had seemed so hopeful in the world. How things had changed, in how short a span.

“Are you ok, sir? No, no. You’re bleeding.”

He was touched, there was no point denying it, he was deeply touched by her distress. He missed the ministrations of women. Dharini came around the counter with his beer and wine, and insisted on carrying it home for him. She helped him up the stairs. She took the key from him and opened the door. She took charge, bustling about, finding cotton wool and water, putting antiseptic on his wound. Then she poured a glass of beer for him and helped him get comfortable on the sofa.

He took a long drink and said, thank you, I can’t tell you what a day it’s been, I.

And he was asleep.

(Excerpted from a work in progress by Jeet Thayil)