Three Bargains: A Novel Read online

  “You’re asking for money?” Feroze asked. He had returned to the divan and his woman. “Do you know who this is?” He gestured at Madan. “This is Madan Kumar, Champa.”

  “Ah,” said Champa, her eyes alighting on Madan once again. “Avtaar Singh’s boy.”

  “I just work in the factory,” said Madan, and Feroze sputtered, choking on his drink. There was truth in that. He spent a lot of time unloading logs and hauling boards. Madan looked around the cramped room. It smelled and looked like he imagined it would—of stale liquor and smoke that had seeped into the walls and furnishings, of longing and lust.

  “So, how about this one?” Champa asked. She pulled a girl forward and Jaggu nodded at once, enthusiastically. Madan gave him a quizzical look and Jaggu said, “We’ve been talking about this for so long, I can’t wait any longer.”

  Champa laughed, revealing betel-stained teeth. Even this was as Madan had imagined it.

  “So, how about for you?” Madan and Champa considered the girls together, and though Madan looked at each girl carefully, he could not make his mind work sufficiently well enough to make a decision.

  “I’ll take him,” a voice came from the end of the room, and a girl detached herself from the group. “By the time he chooses, I’ll be bent over with age,” she said, her fingers trailing the breadth of his chest and the muscles of his shoulders, making appreciating sounds all the while.

  “Roopa is a good one,” Champa said. “What say you?”

  Madan nodded and Roopa took his hand, leading him away to the other side of the house. She closed the door and Madan looked uncertainly at the bed covered with a beige sheet. A battered dressing table was the only other furniture in the room.

  “So,” said Roopa. She was undoing her hair, letting it fall free over her shoulders. “Sometimes men like to catch my hair and twist it when they come. You can do that if you want.”

  Madan watched her unwrap her sari, dropping it to the floor. Her breasts fell out of her blouse, exposing the tops of her nipples. Madan gasped and she smiled, undoing the hooks of the blouse and letting it fall to the floor. She came toward him and Madan backed up until the edge of the bed stopped him, and he sat down. She lifted his hands, placing them on her breasts. Madan squeezed and she said with a giggle, “Gently.”

  “Now, first we need to get these off.” She bent down and unbuckled his jeans. “If it is your first time it can happen too soon, and then your pants will get dirty.” He lay back and in one movement she removed his shoes, jeans and underwear.

  “Ah,” she said when she saw him. “Who knew today would be my lucky day? And look at that, you are so ready too.”

  Madan was ready. He could feel the tightening and straining as he pulled her on top of him. She hitched up her petticoat and took him in quickly, moving fast and sure. He felt a mixture of the familiar and the strange, the wetness, the heat, the sticky tightness.

  “See, how quick?” she said.

  Roopa hopped off, and pulling her petticoat down she sat herself back on the bed next to Madan. Twisting and tucking loose strands of hair behind her ears, she admired her reflection in the dressing table’s mirror. Still on his back, Madan stared up at the blank ceiling, spent and unwilling to move. Roopa hummed and waited.

  She turned to him after a bit. “You’ll need me again tonight, don’t you think?”

  Madan moved his head in acquiescence.

  “Wait one minute,” she said.

  She stepped out of the room. Madan waited a moment, then went up to the door, wedging it open with his foot. Through the slender gap he saw Roopa conferring with the portly Champa. They whispered furtively, and he heard Avtaar Singh’s name. When she returned, he was back on the bed.

  “You got me for the night,” she said. “Or for how long you like.”

  “Good,” Madan said. He pushed her down on her back, pulled off her petticoat, and as she spread her legs, he grabbed her hair and wrapped it around his hand.

  CHAPTER 8

  MADAN STEERED THE CAR BETWEEN THE TONGAS, STRAY cows, bicycles and pedestrians littering the narrow roads of Gorapur. People hopped out of the way as the white Contessa weaved through them. They raised their hands in salute though they could not tell through the tinted windows whether Avtaar Singh was in the car or not. He was there today, his register books open on his lap, files taking over the rest of the backseat.

  Madan shifted gears gently. Avtaar Singh was the first and only person in the Gorapur area to acquire a Contessa, the luxury car recently introduced into the North Indian market. Everyone in the factory clapped when the car first drove onto the factory grounds, delivered straight from Delhi. No one but politicians and film stars in shiny magazines drove Contessas. The local edition of the Tribune had featured the car, with its power steering and air-conditioning making the news.

  “What happened to the Siliguri delivery?” Avtaar Singh shut the notebook and picked up a file.

  “They said next week,” Madan said. “Axle problem near Patna.”

  Avtaar Singh grunted and went back to his papers. In the rearview mirror, Madan’s eyes skimmed over his face. Avtaar Singh would smooth out his mustache and then hold the end of the pen to his temple, twirling it there as he read. Madan waited for this sequence of actions that were so familiar and, when they were completed, his gaze slid back to the road.

  When they drove by Dawn Guesthouse, Madan no longer felt the sharp stab of panic every time he thought of Dhiru Sood, who had come and gone so quickly, as if he had never appeared in Gorapur. And with preparations for college on his mind, Madan had scant attention to waste on Dhiru Sood anymore.

  “When do your results come out?” Avtaar Singh asked, their eyes meeting in the rearview mirror as the grounds of Gorapur Academy, emptied for the summer, came into view.

  “In a few weeks, saab.”

  “Nearly time for college, then, who would have thought?” Avtaar Singh looked out the window, stalks of sugarcane on either side of the road walling them in. “How time flies, Madan, how fast it goes by.”

  The driveway’s gravel crunched under the Contessa, and Madan pulled around the fountain to the front entrance of the house. The marble entryway shimmered in the late afternoon sun. Such a grand house, Madan thought, with its wide portico, tall white Georgian columns and windows like a hundred blinking eyes. He took pride that there was none other like it in Gorapur.

  “The girls’ results should be out soon too,” Avtaar Singh said as he got out of the car and Madan began to collect his briefcase and papers. Avtaar Singh leaned over and smoothed the top of the Contessa. “Each generation we go ahead of our fathers, don’t we?”

  “Saab?”

  “My father spent his life chopping trees. I drive in a Contessa, and my children will probably fly in airplanes, and their children in rocket ships. You’ll be the first to go to college. It’s more than your father could ever dream of.” Madan followed Avtaar Singh up the stairs. Avtaar Singh talked of Madan’s father lightly and without hesitation. “What’ll your children do, Madan, I wonder?”

  Madan gave him a bland smile, like he did when elders talked of things he couldn’t imagine.

  Music from a film song seeped out from the room and Madan, glancing at his watch, knew that his grandfather and Swati would be watching Chitrahaar. Washing his hands at the pump, he splashed water on his face, and realized he was humming the well-known tune.

  The antenna on the roof swung slightly as the wind rushed past. Inside, he heard them groan as the reception weakened, then caught again. He had bought the TV for his mother with his earnings some time ago, though, being so busy, she hardly watched it. But Swati and their grandfather had their favorite programs charted out. They planned their meals around what would air when, and waited and discussed their shows like bookies discussing the odds of their bets.

  At exactly eight-thirty, the TV went off and they came out. His grandfather shuffled to his bed and Madan took a beedi out of his pocket, lit it and pas
sed it on to him.

  “You want to eat, Madan-bhaiya?” asked Swati.

  “First look in that bag,” he said, pointing to a plastic bag slumped by the bed. Swati hobbled over, pulling it open, flashing one of her rare smiles. “Velvet,” she said, looking amazed as if it were a bag full of the most priceless of gems. “He finally had velvet.”

  Madan smiled and sat back. He had stopped at Fair and Lovely Tailors for the scraps of leftover cloth that Swati would spend hours sewing together. Not making a dress or a tablecloth or anything they would be able to use. She randomly sewed the pieces together into fantastic shapes, sometimes small as a fingertip and other times large as an irregularly shaped bedspread.

  Squinting as she threaded needle after needle, she sewed scrap to scrap, her tiny hands stitching and marrying one bit of cloth to another, the finished piece making sense only to her. They never knew what to say about her fanciful creations, so they marveled at her tiny stitches running neat and straight, like little sparrows in a line.

  Swati rubbed the scraps of purple velvet to her face. A few days ago, as she diligently worked on one of her pieces, she had hoped that sooner or later the tailor would have velvet. Madan didn’t ask why. That she expressed a need for anything, even a scrap of throwaway material, was enough for him. Swati showed the cloth to their grandfather, and he laughed as she stroked it against his face too.

  Their mother came back a little while later. They rolled out their sleeping mats and she admired the velvet scraps, glancing at the box in the corner piled high with Swati’s creations.

  Madan went out to check on his grandfather before they turned out the lights. He was sitting up in bed, and from the next room Bahadur’s snores escaped through his closed door.

  “Everything good, Dada-ji?”

  When Swati returned from the hospital, his grandfather had railed against his father and clawed at his own body, tearing off his clothes and running naked out onto the street, his scrawny arms and legs bent crooked, the shriveled folds of skin swinging like ruffled chicken feathers. “I don’t deserve to live for giving life to such a demon,” his grandfather had bawled when Madan and Jaggu brought him back. “I have no shame anymore. If I had any pride, it’s all gone.”

  He had refused to live with them anymore. “You don’t have to keep me; there is no need for me.” But eventually he stayed when he realized it was Swati who needed him most of all.

  Their grandfather had diminished in size over the years; soon he would be no bigger than Swati. Outside a dog howled and he jerked and shivered. “Fuck . . . mother . . . fuck . . . motherfucking dog,” he finally squeezed out.

  Madan nudged him down and covered his twitching frame with a sheet. “Someone’s died,” said his grandfather. “He’s howling . . . motherfucker’s howling . . . to let the world know.”

  Inside, Swati was already fast asleep, threads caught in her hair. Madan watched for a moment. Though he worried about her, he couldn’t be around her for too long. The sight of her always left him aching.

  His mother collected the scraps of cloth strewn around the room, putting them back in the bag. “I want to go see Pandit Bansi Lal again,” she said.

  Madan sighed. They had been over this before. “Pandit Bansi Lal can’t do anything,” he said.

  “There must be some puja he can do for us. If he wants more money we can manage from somewhere.”

  It isn’t about money, he wanted to scream. But he said, “You’ve done more than enough of that already.”

  “But Pandit Bansi Lal—”

  “His prayers are no different from yours or any of his pujaris. Besides, his pujas cost much more than we have.”

  His mother sat down on her mat, staring blankly at the dark TV screen.

  “I’ll think of something,” he said, more tersely than he had intended.

  Lying down, he heard Ma mumbling her prayers. At the temple, the pujaris of Pandit Bansi Lal, who scurried and fed like rats on their god-fearing worshippers, had recommended many sets of pujas for Swati’s well-being. His mother paid for the pujas, gave food and clothing to the pujaris and did whatever they said. Though it had been tough to afford, Madan let her indulge in these rituals. They all wanted to feel like they were doing something about Swati. Once someone told Madan about a psychologist in Karnal and Madan hoped for more practical help, but on further investigation the man had not been a doctor but a professor at the college, and nothing came of it.

  Ma ended her prayers with a long sigh, and now there was no sound but the ceiling fan whirring a creaky tune above him. His mother wanted to appeal to a higher power for Swati, but Pandit Bansi Lal was no trustworthy messenger. If this God of theirs listened to men like Pandit Bansi Lal, then in all fairness he should certainly listen to her prayers too.

  Anyway, Pandit Bansi Lal would never access whatever special connections he had with God for Madan or his family. Every time they were in each other’s company, and it was regularly, since Avtaar Singh had other dealings besides those of a religious nature with him, the pandit looked pained and uncomfortable, as if Madan were an illegal squatter in Pandit Bansi Lal’s own house.

  “Snakes have no shit hole, all the crap stays inside,” his grandfather once said in those early years, when he had come across Madan sobbing in the corner of their room after Pandit Bansi Lal had used his walking stick to admonish him for dropping his prayer thali. Madan never told Avtaar Singh about that beating, and though now he had no fear of the man, he steered clear of the Pandit as much as possible.

  The dog continued to howl into the night and Madan forced his eyes shut, dreaming of a snakelike Pandit Bansi Lal coiled around his neck, squeezing slowly, while Madan begged to be finished off with one venomous strike.

  In the accountant’s office, Madan shut the last ledger and placed it on Mr. D’Silva’s desk. Every morning Madan attended the timber auction at Lakad Mandi, bidding for quintals of poplar and eucalyptus. While poplar’s price depended on its grading—a good-quality log might cost more up-front but yield more too—the mottled-bark eucalyptus was not as fussy, and he learned to look for logs that Mother Nature favored with near-perfect cylindrical proportions. That would mean less wastage when peeled down to its pale underbark.

  For the rest of the day he helped in the office, reconciling orders and helping Mr. D’Silva with the accounts.

  “All done?” Mr. D’Silva asked, flipping through the ledger. “You’re getting faster and faster.”

  Madan thought about what he could do next. It was too hot to work on the factory floor and unless there was a problem, there was no need for him to go out there. He took out the book he had started that morning.

  “What’re you reading?” asked Mr. D’Silva, peering over his glasses.

  “Noble House,” said Madan, holding the book cover up so he could see. Embossed on the paperback’s stark white cover was a cracked bronze pendant with Chinese inscriptions.

  Mr. D’Silva answered the curt ring of the phone. “Put it away, saab wants you,” he said.

  Avtaar Singh was on the phone when Madan entered. “He’s here now, I’ll send him over.”

  Placing the phone down, he said, “I need you to drive memsaab and the girls. Do you remember Trilok-bhai’s house? On the way to Hathni Kund?”

  “I think so.” Madan recalled going there once; the house was out of the town limits of Gorapur, but still fell under its administrative jurisdiction.

  “If Ganesh is outside, take directions from him, but it’s easy to find, no other house is as big in that area. And Madan,” he said as Madan stepped out, “take the Contessa.”

  The twins were waiting when he drove up. “Come on, Mama, hurry up, he’s here!” they shouted into the house. Minnu memsaab came out a while later, adjusting earrings so big and round that they hid most of her ears.

  The twins chattered like monkeys and Madan, his thoughts on his book, tuned them out. Presently they shed the clamor and tumult of the town, and as the Contessa traveled
silently through fields of mustard and rice, the occupants of the car fell into a dreamy silence.

  All the land west of Gorapur as far as one could see—farmland, forest, villages—belonged to Trilok-bhai. Madan first met the stout landowner in the factory and the man often came into town with his wife for social occasions at Avtaar Singh’s house. Though Trilok-bhai was older than Avtaar Singh by a few years, they shared an easy friendship, for Trilok-bhai’s focus was on the running of his lands, and he did not interfere with Avtaar Singh’s ventures in Gorapur. It was during election time that Trilok-bhai’s interest in Gorapur stirred, and he and Avtaar Singh usually supported the same candidate. They had to ensure that whoever took office would be amiable and open to running things their way and not the way of the distant government in Chandigarh.

  If people talked about Trilok-bhai, it was because of his three sons. The girls from the villages and the deer in the forests ran and hid when the boys came thundering through in their jeep. They were well known to hunt them with equal enthusiasm. Madan often ran into the boys when they were in town causing a commotion. As long as you matched them joke for joke, one dirtier than the next, and admired their well-oiled hunting rifles, they had no dispute with you.

  “There it is!” said Rimpy as the house came into view, its odd shape reminiscent of one of Swati’s sewn creations. The house had stood in this location for generations, even longer than Avtaar Singh’s family had been in Gorapur.

  “Finally, Minnu, you come out to the country to see us!” said Trilok-bhai’s wife, Neeta, who was waiting out front. Her bangles clinked as she hugged the girls and guided them toward the house. Madan looked around for a shady spot to park the car. They would stay for lunch and evening tea, so he had a few hours of reading time.

  “Auntie, where’s Neha?” Dimpy asked as they walked in.

  It had been about twenty minutes. In his book, Ian Dunross, the new tai-pan, was about to discover who was behind the hostile takeover bid of his company, Noble House, when a movement at the front of the house caught Madan’s attention. The twins and Neeta memsaab had come back out, and stood on the front steps.