"And you can't get any more? Not from any place?"
"No," I answered, packing my few belongings into my backpack.
"This is a very serious trouble, Lin, if you don't mind I'm telling your bruise and scratchy face."
"I know. Do you think we can sell my watch to the hotel manager?"
"Yes, Lin, I think so sure. It is a very nice watches. But I don't think so he will give us a big fair price. In such matters, the Indian businessman is putting his religion in his back pocket only, and he is driving very hard bargains on you."
"Never mind," I replied, clipping shut the catches on my backpack. "So long as it's enough to pay the bill, and catch that night train you were talking about, back to Bombay. Come on, pack your things, and let's go."
"It is a very, very, very serious trouble," he said as we closed the door to the room for the last time, and walked down the corridor. "No money is no funny in India, Lin, I'm telling you."
The frown that compressed his lips and consumed his features remained with us all the way back to Bombay. The sale of my watch covered the hotel bill in Aurangabad, with enough left for two or three days at the India Guest House in Bombay. With my gear stowed in my favourite room, I walked Prabaker back to the small entrance foyer of the hotel, trying in vain to revive the little miracle of his wondrous smile.
"You will leave all those unhappy things in my caring," he said, earnest and solemn. "You will see, Lin. I will make a happy result on you."
I watched him walk down the stairs, and then heard the manager, Anand, address me in friendly Marathi.
I turned with a smile, and we began to talk in Marathi. Six months in the village had given me the simple, everyday conversational phrases, questions, and sentences. It was a modest achievement, but Anand was obviously very pleased and surprised.
After a few minutes of conversation, he called all the co- managers and room boys to hear me speak in their language. They all reacted with similarly delighted astonishment. They'd known foreigners who spoke a little Hindi, or even spoke it well, but none of them had ever met a foreigner who could converse with them in their own beloved Marathi language.
They asked me about the village of Sunder-they'd never heard of it-and we talked about the daily life that they all knew well from their own villages, and tended to idyllise in recollection.
When the conversation ended, I returned to my room, and had barely shut the door when a tentative knock sounded at it.
"Excuse me, please. I am sorry to disturb." The voice belonged to a tall, thin foreigner-German, or Swiss, perhaps-with a wispy beard attached to the point of his long face, and fair hair pulled back into a thick plait. "I heard you speaking to the manager, and the room boys, before, and... well, it is sure that you have been here in India very long... and... _na _ja, we just arrived today, my girlfriend and me, and we want to buy some hashish. Do you... do you maybe know where we can get for ourselves some hashish, without somebody cheating us, and without trouble from the police?"
I did know, of course. Before the night was out, I also helped them to change money on the black market without being cheated.
The bearded German and his girlfriend were happy with the deal and they paid me a commission. The black marketeers, who were Prabaker's friends and contacts on the street, were happy that I'd brought new customers to them, and they paid me commissions as well. I knew there would be other foreigners, on every street in Colaba, who wanted to score. That casual conversation in Marathi with Anand and the room boys of the hotel, overheard by the German couple, had given me a way to survive in the city.
A more pressing problem, however, was my tourist visa. When Anand had signed me in to the hotel, he'd warned me that my visa had expired. Every hotel in Bombay had to supply a register of foreign guests, with a valid visa entry for each foreign name and passport number. The register was known as the C-Form, and the police were vigilant in its supervision. Overstaying on a visa was a serious offence in India. Prison terms of up to two years were sometimes imposed, and the police levied heavy fines on hotel operators who permitted C-Form irregularities.
Anand had explained all that to me, gravely, before he fudged the figures in his register and signed me in. He liked me. He was Maharashtrian, and I was the first foreigner he'd ever met who spoke the Marathi language with him. He was happy to break the rules for me, once, but he warned me to visit the Foreigner Registration Branch, at police headquarters, immediately, to see about an extension on my visa.
