And I was a writer. In Australia I'd written since my early twenties. I'd just begun to establish myself through my first published work when my marriage collapsed, I lost the custody of my daughter, and I lost my life in drugs, crime, imprisonment, and escape. But even as a fugitive, writing was still a daily custom and part of my instinctual routine. Even there, in Leopold's, my pockets were full of notes, scribbled onto napkins, receipts, and scraps of paper. I never stopped writing. It was what I did, no matter where I was or how my circumstances changed. One of the reasons I remember those early Bombay months so well is that, whenever I was alone, I wrote about those new friends and the conversations we shared. And writing was one of the things that saved me: the discipline and abstraction of putting my life into words, every day, helped me to cope with shame and its first cousin, despair.
"Well, Scheisse, I don't see what's to write about in Bombay.
It's no good place, ja. My friend Lisa says this is the place they were thinking about, when they invented the word pits. And I think it is a good place for calling a pits. Better you should go somewhere else to write about, like Rajasthan maybe. I did hear that it's not a pits there, in Rajasthan."
"She's right, Lin," Karla added. "This is not India. There are people here from every part of India, but Bombay isn't India.
Bombay is an Own-world, a world in itself. The real India is out there."
"Out there?"
"Out there, where the light stops."
"I'm sure you're right," I answered, smiling in appreciation of the phrase. "But I like it here, so far. I like big cities, and this is the third-biggest city in the world."
"You're beginning to sound like your tour guide," Karla joked. "I think, maybe, Prabaker has been teaching you too well."
"I guess he has. He's been filling my head with facts and figures every day for two weeks-quite amazing really, for a guy who left school when he was seven, and taught himself to read and write here on the streets."
"What facts and figures?" Ulla asked.
"Well, for instance, the official population of Bombay is eleven million, but Prabu says the guys who run the illegal numbers racket have a better idea of the real population, and they put it at anything from thirteen to fifteen million. And there are two hundred dialects and languages spoken in the city every day. Two hundred, for God's sake! It's like being in the centre of the world."
As if in response to that talk of languages, Ulla spoke to Karla quickly and intently in German. At a sign from Modena she stood, and gathered her purse and cigarettes. The quiet Spaniard left the table without a word, and walked toward the open archway that led to the street.
"I have a job," Ulla announced, pouting winsomely. "See you tomorrow, Karla. About eleven o'clock, ja? Maybe we'll have dinner together tomorrow night, Lin, if you're here? I would like that. Bye! _Tschus!"
She walked out after Modena, followed by leers and admiring stares from many of the men in the bar. Didier chose that moment to visit several acquaintances at another table. Karla and I were alone.
"She won't, you know."
"Won't what?"
"She won't have dinner with you tomorrow night. It's just her way."
"I know," I grinned.
"You like her, don't you?"
"Yeah, I do. What-does that strike you as funny?"
"In a way, yes. She likes you, too."
She paused, and I thought she was about to explain her remark, but when she spoke again it was to change the subject.
"She gave you some money. American dollars. She told me about it, in German, so Modena wouldn't understand. You're supposed to give it to me, and she'll collect it from my place at eleven tomorrow."
"Okay. Do you want it now?"
"No, don't give it to me here. I have to go now. I have an appointment. I'll be back in about an hour. Can you wait till then? Or come back, and meet me then? You can walk me home, if you like."
"Sure, I'll be here."
She stood to leave, and I stood also, drawing back her chair. She gave me a little smile, with one eyebrow raised in irony or mockery or both.
"I wasn't joking before. You really should leave Bombay."
I watched her walk out to the street, and step into the back of a private taxi that had obviously been waiting for her. As the cream-coloured car eased into the slow stream of night traffic, a man's hand emerged from the passenger window, thick fingers clutching a string of green prayer beads, and warning away pedestrians with a wave.
