Within sight of the Palace, the driver pulled over beside an open chai shop. He pointed to it, with a jerk of his thumb, and told Karla that he would wait for her there. I knew enough cab drivers, and had travelled enough in Bombay cabs, to know that the driver’s offer to wait was a decent gesture of concern for her, and not just hunger for work or tips or something else. He liked her. I’d seen it before, that quirky and spontaneous infatuation. Karla was young and attractive, sure, but most of the driver’s reaction was inspired by her fluency with his language, and the way she used it to deal with him. A German cab driver might be pleased that a foreigner had learned to speak German. He might even say that he was pleased. Or say nothing at all. The same might be true of a French cab driver, or an American, or an Australian. But an Indian will be so pleased that if he likes something else about you-your eyes, or your smile, or the way you react to a beggar at the window of his cab-he’ll feel bonded to you, instantly. He’ll be prepared to do things for you, go out of his way, put himself at risk, and even do dangerous or illegal things. If you’ve given him an address he doesn’t like, such as the Palace, he’ll be prepared to wait for you, just to be sure that you’re safe. You could come out an hour later, and ignore him completely, and he would smile and drive away, happy to know that no harm had come to you. It happened to me many times in Bombay, but never in any other city. It’s one of the five hundred things I love about Indians: if they like you, they do it quickly, and not by half. Karla paid his fare and the promised tip, and told him not to wait. We both knew that he would.
The Palace was a huge building, triple-fronted and three stories tall. The street windows were barred with wrought-iron curlicues beaten into the shape of acanthus leaves. It was older than many other buildings on the street, and restored, not renovated. Original detail had been carefully preserved. The heavy stone architraves over the door and windows had been chiselled into coronets of five-pointed stars. That meticulous craftsmanship, once common in the city, was all but a lost art. There was an alleyway on the right-hand side of the building, and the stonemasons had lavished their handiwork on the quoin-every second stone from the ground to below the eaves was faceted like a jewel. A glassed-in balcony ran the width of the third floor, the rooms within concealed by bamboo blinds. The walls of the building were grey, the door black. To my surprise, the door simply opened when Karla touched it, and we stepped inside.
We entered a long, cool corridor, darker than the sunlit street but softly illuminated by lily-shaped lamps of fluted glass. There was wallpaper-very unusual in humid Bombay-with the repetitive Compton pattern of William Morris in olive green and flesh pinks. A smell of incense and flowers permeated, and the eerie, padded silences of closed rooms surrounded us.
A man was standing in the hallway, facing us, with his hands loosely clasped in front of him. He was tall and thin. His fine, dark brown hair was pulled back severely and tied into a long plait that reached to his hips. He had no eyebrows, but very thick eyelashes, so thick that I thought they must be false. Some designs, in swirls and scrolls, were drawn on his pale face from his lips to his pointed chin. He was dressed in a black, silk kurtapyjama and clear plastic sandals.
‘Hello, Rajan,’ Karla greeted him, icily.
‘
He stood to one side, and gestured towards the stairs at the end of the hall. The fingers of his outstretched hand were stained with henna stencils. They were the longest fingers I’d ever seen. As we walked past him, I saw that the scrolled designs on his lower lip and chin were actually tattoos.
‘Rajan is creepy enough,’ I muttered, as Karla and I climbed the stairs together.
‘He’s one of Madame Zhou’s two personal servants. He’s a eunuch, a castrato, and a lot creepier than he looks,’ she whispered enigmatically.
We climbed the wide stairs to the second floor, our footsteps swallowed by thick carpet and heavy teakwood newels and handrails. There were framed photographs and paintings on the walls, all of them portraits. As I passed those images, I had the sense that there were other living, breathing people in the closed rooms, all around us. But there was no sound. Nothing.
‘It’s damn quiet,’ I said as we stopped in front of one of the doors.
‘It’s siesta time. Every afternoon, from two to five. But it’s quieter than usual because she’s expecting you. Are you ready?’
‘I guess. Yes.’
‘Let’s do it.’
