I walked back through the slum to the clinic. A conversation with Ayub and Siddhartha, the two young men I'd trained to run the clinic, reassured me that all was well. I gave them some money to keep, as an emergency float, and left money with Prabaker for his wedding preparations. I paid a courtesy visit to Qasim Ali Hussein, allowing him to force the hospitality of chai upon me.
Jeetendra and Anand Rao, two of my former neighbours, joined us, with several other men I knew well. Qasim Ali led the conversation, referring to his son Sadiq, who was working in the Gulf. In turn, we spoke of religious and communal conflict in the city, the construction of the twin towers; still at least two years from completion, and the weddings of Prabaker and Johnny Cigar.
It was a genial, sanguine meeting, and I rose to leave with the strength and confidence that those honest, simple, decent men always inspired in me. I'd only walked a few paces, however, when the young Sikh, Anand Rao, caught up, and fell into step beside me.
"Linbaba, there is a problem here," he said quietly. He was an unusually solemn man at the best of times, but at that moment his expression was unambiguously grim. "That Rasheed, that fellow I used to be sharing with. Do you remember?"
"Yes. Rasheed. I remember him," I replied, recalling the thin, bearded face and restless, guilty eyes of the man who'd been my neighbour, with Anand, for more than a year.
"He is making a bad business," Anand Rao declared bluntly. "His wife and her sister came from their native place. I went from that hut when they came. He has been living with them alone now, for some time."
"And... what?" I asked, as we walked out on to the road together. I had no idea what Anand Rao was driving at, and I had no patience for it. It was the kind of vague, insinuated complaint that had come to me almost every day when I'd lived in the slum. Most of the time, such complaints came to nothing. Most of the time, it was in my best interests to have nothing to do with them. "Well," Anand Rao hesitated, perhaps sensing my impatience, "it is... he is... something is very bad, and I am... there must be..."
He fell silent, staring at his sandaled feet. I reached out to put a hand on his broad, proud, thin shoulder. Gradually his eyes lifted, and met mine in a mute appeal.
"Is it money?" I asked, reaching into my pocket. "Do you need some money?"
He recoiled as if I'd cursed him. He held the stare, for a moment, before turning and walking back into the slum.
I strode on through familiar streets, and told myself that it was okay. Anand Rao and Rasheed had shared a hut for more than two years. If they were falling out because Rasheed's wife and her sister had moved to the city, and Anand had been forced from the hut, it was probably to be expected. And it was no business of mine. I laughed, shaking my head as I walked, and trying to figure out why Anand Rao had reacted so badly to the offer of money. It wasn't an unreasonable thing for me to assume or to offer. On the thirty-minute walk from the slum to Leopold's, I gave money to five other people, including both of the Zodiac Georges. He'll get over it, whatever it is, I told myself. At any rate, it's got nothing to do with me. But the lies we tell ourselves are the ghosts that haunt the empty house of midnight.
And although I pushed Anand and the slum from my mind, I felt the breath of that ghosted lie on my face as I walked through the long, thronging Causeway on that hot afternoon.
I stepped up into Leopold's, and Didier seized me by the arm before I could speak or sit down, turning me about and leading me to a cab that was waiting outside.
"I have searched for you everywhere," Didier puffed as the cab pulled out from the kerb. "I have been to the most unspeakably foul places, looking for you."
"People keep telling me that."
"Well, Lin, you really must try to spend more time in places where they serve a decent alcohol. It may not make the finding of you easier, but it will make it far more pleasant."
"Where are we going, Didier?"
"Vikram's great strategy-my own superb strategy, if you please- for the capture of Letitia's cold and stony little English heart unfolds, now, even as we speak." "Yeah, well, I wish him all the best," I frowned, "but I'm hungry. I was about to make very loud noises in a plate of Leopold's pulao. You can let me off here."
"But, no! It is not possible!" Didier objected. "Letitia, she is a very stubborn woman. She would refuse gold and diamonds if someone insisted that she should take them. She will not participate in the strategy unless someone convinces her. Someone like you, my friend. And this must be achieved in the next half hour. At exactly six minutes after three o'clock."
"What makes you think Lettie will listen to me?"
