Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [137]
"In other words, you want me to know you are a big shot?"
"No. In other words, I want you with me in Mexico."
She could have screamed. Yes, I'm flattered, I'm grateful. Drive me to- night to Cubbon Park. Have your peon pick up my stuff from Parvati's tomorrow. She would spell her first name as Anjolie on her first-ever passport. She said, "Mr. Gujral, I shall consider your offer and make my counteroffer when you get back from your trip."
Mr. GG grinned. "You were born to be a debt collector, Miss Bose."
All the way back to Dollar Colony, he gushed about the sad, stark majesty of Mayan ruins. She imagined herself scrambling up the stony sides of an alien people's monuments. Every death made possible a new beginning. And then she thought, with a suddenness and finality that shocked her, I don't want a passport. My new beginning is here, but different from Baba's and Ma's generation. They had to fight the British; their big fight was to establish an independent India and create a nonaligned world. Theirs was a struggle—lost, in Baba's case—against communalism and caste-ism and poverty and superstition and too much religion. They were lucky. Their fights weren't easy, but simpler and clearer than mine with Mr. GG. Poverty terrified Baba. But I'm terrified, tempted, and corrupted by the infusion of vast sums of new capital. Light and angles, that was it. Truth revealed in an imaginary viewfinder. She stepped out of her Photoshopped Bangalore. Aloud, she said, "I get no kick from Champagne. Spend too much time away from India, and it drives you crazy."
In the Banerjis' driveway, she opened the passenger-side door to let herself out. GG grasped her arm and held her back. "I don't want you to go. Let's get you a passport. Visas are no problem. I have contacts. Don't just walk away from me."
She wondered what the night watchman and the dog sitter were making of the scene. The dogs would be curled up in bed with Auro and Parvati. "And what would you expect of me in Mexico?" she asked, swinging her sandaled feet out of the car. Porch light glinted off the silver anklets.
"Be my—"
Then Mr. GG stopped himself. His face was so pleading, so pained, she almost got back inside. "No," he said, "that came out wrong. Be whatever you want to be. If you don't want Mexico, fine. There's Indonesia. There's America. There's the world ... I want you with me."
What a sad, pathetic thing it is, a man's cry for what? Favors? Companionship? His private little prostitute?
She felt a surge of power. Glad she had the night watchman and the dog walker as witnesses, she kissed Mr. GG on the mouth. "You'll be back," she whispered, stepping out of the Daewoo. She was careful not to slam the door.
8
Sometime late that night, in the hours when Anjali never slept, she was startled by a sudden, piercing whine. One of the advantages of Dollar Colony was the silence of the dark hours: no cars, no rickshaw horns, no bicycle bells, no cowherd flicking a stick on buffalo flanks. She ran to her window, the one that looked out over the narrow lane, but saw no one. Then she realized the watchman wasn't at his post. He must have gone to the servants' bathroom behind the main house. And the dog walker? Of course: he was with Swati. He'd left the house unguarded.
And then she identified the source of the whine. By moonlight and dim streetlamp she could make out the shape of Ahilya lying on her back, her legs straight up. Anjali had never seen a dog in such a posture, and as she watched—and watched—Ahilya didn't move.
A white van prowled the lane at bicycle speed, then parked, blocking the driveway. Two men in dark, hooded sweatshirts descended from the van and silently opened the heavy iron gate just wide enough to squeeze through. In Dollar Colony, no commercial vans circulated at night. No one was on foot at two A.M.
Ahilya was dead.
Anjali's instinct was to lock herself in