Devil May Care - Sebastian Faulks [38]
Eventually, they stopped beside what looked like a warehouse, set back in a fenced yard a short way from the street. There were no signs or coloured lights. It reminded Bond of some of the dingier back lots of Los Angeles.
‘It’s called the Paradise Club,’ said Darius. For Bond, the name stirred the faint memory of an exciting juvenile visit to the gaming tables. They went past the bouncer on the front door, into whose
hand Darius pressed some notes, then down a concrete-lined corridor to double wooden doors with iron studs. A young woman in traditional costume welcomed them and pressed a pedal with her foot. The doors parted silently, letting Bond, Darius and Zohreh into an enormous room, the size of an aircraft hangar, whose furthest wall contained a waterfall cascading over crimson-illuminated rocks into a pool of turquoise water in which a dozen naked women were swimming. Around the pool, arranged as though in a garden, the guests lay on imitation-grass carpets or reclined on loungers and padded chairs, where the chastely clad waitresses brought them drinks and sweetmeats. To one side of the huge area was a raised platform where people danced to Western pop records, but in the ‘garden’ there was a string quintet of traditional Persian musicians.
Zohreh turned to Bond and smiled, her lips parting over dazzling white teeth. ‘You like it?’
A young woman approached them and spoke to Darius in Farsi. She wore the same uniform as the doorkeeper – a cream-coloured robe held with a scarlet sash. Although it was quite demure, Bond could see from where the two halves of the material met between her breasts that she wore nothing beneath it. The candlelight and the coloured bulbs in
the wall brackets gave a glow to her skin, the colour of rose under gold.
‘ This is Salma,’ Darius explained. ‘She is here to make sure we enjoy ourselves. There are a number of options open to us. I suggest we look into the opium room first, then the famous hammam.’
‘I’m not sure I feel like a Turkish bath,’ said Bond.
‘You will,’ said Darius, ‘when you see this one. It’s a rather special kind, I understand.’
They followed Salma to a raised platform on one side of the huge open area.
‘ The name Salma, by the way,’ said Darius, into Bond’s ear, ‘means ‘‘sweetheart’’.’
‘Her parents must have been clairvoyant.’
‘Enough English charm, James – though I shall tell her what you said. Have you ever smoked opium?’
They found themselves in a square room with tapestry-covered couches round the walls. On the floor lay outsize cushions, on a few of which men reclined as they sucked at opium pipes prepared for them by one of Salma’s colleagues at a low central table with a glowing brazier in the middle. Soft Persian music was playing, although no musicians were visible.
Zohreh sat down cross-legged near the table and gestured to Bond and Darius to do likewise. The girl
took a stick of opium, shaped as a tube, and cut a piece from it. She placed it in the china bowl of a pipe, then, with silver pincers, took an ember from the brazier and held it over the opium. She gave the mouthpiece of the pipe to Darius, who took it with a wink at Bond. Then the girl blew on the ember until it glowed red and the opium beneath it sizzled. Smoke rose through a small hole above the china bowl and Darius sucked it in. Eventually, he passed the pipe to Bond, who took it with some hesitation. He didn’t want his capacities impaired by drugs, but was reluctant to offend his host. He took some smoke into his mouth, nodded his approval, and passed the pipe back to Darius. When he thought no one was watching, he allowed the smoke to escape through his nostrils.
Around them, half a dozen men lay back among the cushions, their eyes closed, with expressions of dreamy pleasure.
‘It’s a problem for some of these men,’ Darius said. ‘Opium used in moderation is all right. Say once a week. But in this country too many people are its slave, not its master. At