‘Fourteen months,’ I corrected her, feeling slighted by her shorter estimate. ‘Two months when I first got to Bombay, six months in Prabaker’s village, and now nearly six months in the slum. Fourteen months.’
‘Yes… okay… fourteen months.’
‘I thought no-one got to meet this Madame Zhou,’ I said, hoping to shift the puzzled, uncomfortable frown from her features. ‘You said she kept herself hidden away, and never talked to anyone.’
‘That’s true, but it’s a little more complicated than that,’ Karla replied, softly. A meditation of memories clouded her eyes for a moment, but then she concentrated again with obvious effort. ‘She lives on the top floor, and has everything she needs up there. She never goes out. She has two servants who bring food and clothes and stuff up to her. She can move around the building without being seen because there’s a lot of hidden passageways and staircases. She can look in on most of the rooms through two-way mirrors or metal air vents. She likes to watch. Sometimes she talks to people through a screen. You can’t see
‘So how does anyone know what she looks like?’
‘Her photographer.’
‘Her what?’
‘She has photographs taken of herself. A new one, every month or so. She gives them out to favoured clients.’
‘It’s pretty weird,’ I muttered, not really interested in Madame Zhou, but wanting Karla to go on talking. I watched her red-pink lips form each word-lips I’d kissed only days before-and her speaking mouth was a sublime performance of perfect flesh. She could’ve been reading from a month-old newspaper, and I would’ve been just as delighted to watch her face, her eyes, and her lips as she talked. ‘Why does she do it?’
‘Do what?’ she asked, her eyes narrowing with the question.
‘Why does she hide herself away like that?’
‘I don’t think anyone knows.’ She took out two beedies, lit them, and gave me one. Her hands appeared to be trembling. ‘It’s like I was saying before-there’s so much crazy talk about her. I’ve heard people say she was horribly disfigured in an accident, and she hides her face because of it. They say the photos are retouched to cover up the scars. I’ve heard people say she has leprosy or some other disease. One friend of mine says she doesn’t exist at all. He says it’s just a lie, a kind of conspiracy, to hide who really runs the place and what goes on there.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I… I’ve spoken to her, through the screen. I think she’s so incredibly, psychopathically vain that she, she sort of
‘How do you know so much about her?’ I asked. ‘How did you meet her?’
‘I’m a facilitator. It was part of my job.’
‘That doesn’t tell me a lot.’
‘How much do you need to know?’
It was a simple question, and there was a simple answer-
‘I’m not trying to pry, Karla. I didn’t know it was such a touchy area. I’ve known you for more than a year and, okay, I haven’t seen you every day, or even every month, but I’ve never asked you what you do, or how you make your living. I don’t think that qualifies me as the nosey type.’
‘I put people together,’ she said, relaxing a little, ‘and I make sure they’re having the right amount of fun to seal a deal. I get paid to keep people in the deal-making mood, and give them what they want. Some of them-quite a few of them, as it happens-want to spend time at Madame Zhou’s Palace. The real question is why people are so
‘What do
She sighed, exasperated.
‘I can’t tell you. It’s not just the sex thing. Sure, the prettiest foreign girls in Bombay work for her, and she trains them in some very weird specialties, but people would still come to her even if there weren’t any gorgeous girls there. I don’t get it. I’ve done what people want, and I’ve taken them to the Palace. A few of them even got to meet her in person, like I did, through the screen, but I’ve never been able to figure it out. They come out of the Palace like they’ve had an audience with Joan of Arc. They’re high on it. But not me. She gives me the creeps, and she always has.’
‘You don’t like her much, do you?’
‘It’s worse than that. I hate her, Lin. I hate her, and I wish she was dead.’
