‘Oh, yes! I will take you to the best restaurant, and with the finest Maharashtra foods. You will enjoy, no problem. All the Bombay guides like me eat their foods there. This place is so good, they only have to pay the police half of usual baksheesh money.
‘Okay…’
‘Oh, yes! But first, let me get it Indian cigarette for you, and for me also. Here, we stop now.’
He led me to a street stall that was no more than a folding card table, with a dozen brands of cigarettes arranged in a cardboard box. On the table there was a large brass tray, carrying several small silver dishes. The dishes contained shredded coconut, spices, and an assortment of unidentifiable pastes. A bucket beside the card table was filled with spear-shaped leaves, floating in water. The cigarette seller was drying the leaves, smearing them with various pastes, filling them with ground dates, coconut, betel, and spices, and rolling them into small packages. The many customers crowded around his stall purchased the leaves as fast as his dexterous hands could fill them.
Prabaker pressed close to the man, waiting for a chance to make his order. Craning my neck to watch him through the thicket of customers, I moved closer toward the edge of the footpath. As I took a step down onto the road, I heard an urgent shout.
‘
Two hands grasped my arm at the elbow and jerked me back, just as a huge, fast-moving, double-decker bus swept past. The bus would’ve killed me if those hands hadn’t halted me in my stride, and I swung round to face my saviour. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She was slender, with black, shoulder-length hair, and pale skin. Although she wasn’t tall, her square shoulders and straight-backed posture, with both feet planted firmly apart, gave her a quietly determined physical presence. She was wearing silk pants, bound tightly at the ankles, black low-heeled shoes, a loose cotton shirt, and a large, long silk shawl. She wore the shawl backwards, with the double-mane of the liquid fabric twirling and fluttering at her back. All her clothes were in different shades of green.
The clue to everything a man should love and fear in her was there, right from the start, in the ironic smile that primed and swelled the archery of her full lips. There was pride in that smile, and confidence in the set of her fine nose. Without understanding why, I knew beyond question that a lot of people would mistake her pride for arrogance, and confuse her confidence with impassivity. I didn’t make that mistake. My eyes were lost, swimming, floating free in the shimmering lagoon of her steady, even stare. Her eyes were large and spectacularly green. It was the green that trees are, in vivid dreams. It was the green that the sea would be, if the sea were perfect.
Her hand was still resting in the curve of my arm, near the elbow. The touch was exactly what the touch of a lover’s hand should be: familiar, yet exciting as a whispered promise. I felt an almost irresistible urge to take her hand and place it flat against my chest, near my heart. Maybe I should’ve done it. I know now that she would’ve laughed, if I’d done it, and she would’ve liked me for it. But strangers that we were then, we stood for five long seconds and held the stare, while all the parallel worlds, all the parallel lives that might’ve been, and never would be, whirled around us. Then she spoke.
‘That was close. You’re lucky.’
‘Yes,’ I smiled. ‘I am.’
Her hand slowly left my arm. It was an easy, relaxed gesture, but I felt the detachment from her as sharply as if I’d been roughly woken from a deep and happy dream. I leaned toward her, looking behind her to the left and then to the right.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘I’m looking for your wings. You
‘I’m afraid not,’ she replied, her cheeks dimpling with a wry smile. ‘There’s too much of the devil in me for that.’
‘Just how much devil,’ I grinned, ‘are we talking about here?’
Some people were standing in a group, on the far side of the stall. One of them-a handsome, athletic man in his mid-twenties-stepped to the road and called to her. ‘Karla! Come on,
She turned and waved to him, then held out her hand to shake mine with a grip that was firm, but emotionally indeterminable. Her smile was just as ambiguous. She might’ve liked me, or she might’ve just been happy to say goodbye.
‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ I said, as her hand slipped from mine.
‘How much devil have I got in me?’ she answered me, the half-smile teasing her lips. ‘That’s a very personal question. Come to think of it, that might just be the most personal question anyone ever asked me. But, hey, if you come to Leopold’s, some time, you could find out.’
