He drew shapes in the sand. “He became this legend in my mind. A hero . . . So different from my father. When I left school, I knew my father was a big man. We had this gated, white-walled villa in Meerut, security, important people visiting day and night, coming to him. Ram Singh, coming to him. And I had all the toys I wanted. But he wasn’t a hero to me at all. Maybe he knew that. I don’t know. But he sent me out into the fields, out into Eastern UP, where Vicky lived. To learn to be a man.”
He stopped talking a second and thought about those words. When he started again his voice became quiet, she had to strain to catch the words. “I lived beside a sugar mill we owned. I stayed in a cottage on the grounds. Cooked for myself, washed my own clothes, grew this shitty little beard. I went running every morning. Every morning. I became lean and strong and fast. I led this . . . pure life. I went running through the fields every morning, past the workers, I could smell their food on the wood fires, I could see their girls. Watching me. Handsome. I had this desire . . . I hadn’t been with anyone before.”
He smiled. “I did all this. It went on and on. For months I was there, living with the mill workers like I was one of them, happy, humble. I wrote all this in my journal. My hopes and dreams, my desires. All that time I was waiting for Vicky, but he never came. He never came. No one even spoke his name. Then, one night, he came. He arrived with this entourage. Their jeeps came down the long road, pulled up outside the mill.”
He flicked his cigarette into the sand. “He stepped out. He was huge. All the workers were terrified. He rounded them up, intimidated them. I just stood at the back of the group, waiting. Waiting for him to look at me. He didn’t even acknowledge me. He went off with his men to inspect the workers’ camp, and I went back into my cottage. I still waited. It got late. It must have been eleven when he walked in. He was a mountain. His men were there too. They were . . . wild. They filled my room. He scared me. He took my seat. Handed me a bottle and told me to drink. He told his men stories about my childhood. My mother. Then he started reading my journal, started reading passages out, private things, things that hurt me. But there was nothing I could do. There was”—the memory was becoming very painful—“a knock at the door. Several of his men entered with three girls. They were young, fifteen maybe, I don’t know, but I recognized them from the laborers’ camp. They were as scared as I was. Well, two of them were. The third was . . . defiant. She looked defiant . . . she looked us all in the eye in turn. She looked at Vicky. He stood and walked toward her. He turned to me. He said I could stay if I wanted to or . . .”
“Sunny . . .” She put her hand on his arm.
“I ran.” He pushed his hand through his hair. “I just ran. I ran to the fields and I hid in them for hours. I didn’t recognize this man. I watched their jeeps leaving in the early hours and crept back. The cottage was a wreck, empty. It smelled of liquor and sweat and worse. I made a space on the floor, curled up, and went to sleep. When I woke up it was chaos outside. The workers were screaming, shouting, they wanted to tear the place apart.”
“Jesus.”
“The police were there. They took me to safety . . . They sent me back to my father.”
He fell silent, stared at the ocean.
“What happened?”
“Two of the girls were found hanging from a tree. The third was never found.”
She felt herself shivering, speechless.
“I was sent to London after that. My father said I’d ‘earned it.’ I was given a first-class ticket. Credit cards. I was sent to a man who gave me cash. I was told to do whatever I wanted. No one spoke about what happened. So I tried to forget it. I tried to change myself there. I partied. A lot. Did a lot of drugs. Acid. MDMA. I went to galleries, museums. I tried to construct a new self. The one with the sculptures and the paintings. The one with the big ideas. And I was good at it. I carried him back to Delhi with me and I pulled the trick off for a while. I thought I could be that man forever. But look at me. I can’t be that man. I can’t keep it up. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t. It was all a lie . . . I love beauty. I want to create beautiful things. But that’s the last thing they understand. They want me to have a beautiful surface and be rotten to the core, like they are.”
* * *
—
The crows flew round the pines, the wind whipped along the tide, the sun dipped into the Arabian Sea. After a long silence he described the bioluminescence of the ocean, as if nothing else had been said. It was growing cold. Her skin was stippled with goose bumps. He remained in the sand with his arms wrapped around his knees as the sky grew dimmer by the second. She stood and slouched to the water and the water was warmer than the air. She waded in and soon enough she let the tide push and pull her body. When she climbed out again, he was still there, like a petrified nobleman in the ashes of a volcano. She pulled him by the hand and said, “Let’s build a fire.”
* * *
—
Santosh dug the pit. A basket of firewood was brought from the huts. The beach dog came and watched. It didn’t take long for the whole thing to wheeze and crackle and pop, roaring magnificently, sparks spewing and blinking out in the night. When it calmed, more logs were loaded on top and the three of them stood, admiring the work that pitched the rest of the beach into dark.
Santosh was the first to pull away, returning to the huts. Neda climbed into one of the hammocks and felt the heat spread over one side of her body as the other received the cool air. When she closed her eyes she saw the imprint of flame. Santosh returned shortly with three other men, from where he brought them she didn’t know. They were dragging cushions and mattresses. They spread them around the fire.
“My mother brings food in one hour.”
Another man brought blankets.
“Don’t you need them?” she protested.
“We don’t sleep,” he said.
“What do you do?”
He pointed to the sea. “We fish tonight.”
* * *
—
The fire became something solid, permanent. They lay cozy in their hammocks while Santosh and the men hauled their boats out into the waves. It couldn’t have been more than eight. When night fell, it fell.
* * *
—
By an unspoken agreement they descended from the hammocks and arranged themselves low down on the mattresses near the now hot sand, the blankets loosely draped around their bodies. Neda’s feet toyed with the cold sand away from the fire until the sand became too cool, then she moved her feet near to the flame. The beach dog crept closer on the other side and curled up to sleep. Santosh had left them a bottle of water and a bottle of Old Monk. Sunny poured large measures of rum into two chipped glasses, squeezed a little nimbu with the seeds falling in, threw in the husks, passed one glass to her, wedged the bottle in the sand. “I have some grass,” he said. “We can smoke.”
* * *
—
In her mind she stood and stretched and looked out to sea, though she lay still. “They’re out there now. In the dark. I’ve always been afraid of the sea. Not the surface, but what’s underneath.”
He passed her the joint.
She propped herself up on her elbow to smoke.
“I bought those boats,” he said.