“What are you talking about?” I asked. “I mean, can you make offerings to propitiate whatever is doing this? This is deep water for me. I can’t feel the bottom.”
“I have to go back,” he said. “Anyway, Ubah wants to make a visit. So, think of it as a combination of a tourist trip and a cure for homesickness. Think of it as my need to find out if there’s a there there for me. Then you don’t have to endanger your rationalist worldview.” This, almost angrily. But then a grin to excuse and compensate for the harshness of his tone.
“What do you think would happen if you didn’t go?”
“If I didn’t go,” he said, “then I think a dark force out of the past would fly across the world and probably destroy us all.”
“Oh.”
“Maybe it’s too late. Maybe the dark force has made up its mind anyway. But I’m going to try. And in the meanwhile Ubah can stroll on Marine Drive in the evening and see the hanging gardens on Malabar Hill and visit a movie studio, and maybe we’ll take a side trip to look at the tomb of Taj Bibi in Agra, why not.”
“You’ll go soon?”
“Tonight,” he said. “Before it’s too late.”
Every time I heard something about the family’s past, I became aware of the gaps in the Golden family narrative. There were things that were not being told and it was hard to know how to get beyond the veil that fell across the story. Apu seemed frightened of something, but whatever it was, it wasn’t a ghost. Skeletons in the cupboard seemed likelier. I found myself thinking, not for the first or last time, about the story Nero Golden told me in the Russian Tea Room on our first visit there together, the story of “Don Corleone.”
I said to Suchitra later that day, “I wish I was going along with them on their trip. It might be an important part of the story.”
“If it’s a mockumentary you’re making now,” she said, “then make it up.”
I was a little shocked. “Just make it up?”
“You have an imagination,” she said. “Imagine it.”
A golden story, I remembered. For the Romans, a tall tale, a wild conceit. A lie.
It so happened, and it did not so happen, that the great sitarist Ravi Shankar in all his life only ever played on four sitars, and on one of those four he taught the Beatle George Harrison something about the instrument, and those lessons took place in a suite at the grand hotel by the harbor, and now Ravi Shankar was gone but the sitar remained in a glass case, benevolently watching the suite’s guests come and go. The grand hotel had been beautifully restored after the terrorist atrocity, the strength of the old stone building had enabled it to stand firm, and the interior looked better than ever, but half the rooms were empty. Outside the grand hotel there were barriers and metal detectors and all the mournful apparatus of security, and the defenses were a reminder of horror and the opposite of an invitation. Inside the hotel the many celebrated stores in the shopping arcades reported a decrease in sales of fifty percent or more. The consequence of terror was fear and though many people spoke of their determination to support the grand hotel by the harbor in its period of rebirth the tough language of the numbers said, not enough did. Courting couples and ladies of quality no longer splashed out on tea and snacks at the Sea Lounge and many foreigners too went elsewhere. You could repair the fabric of the building but the damage to its magic remained.
What am I here for, the man who now called himself Apuleius Golden said to Ubah Tuur while the sitar of Ravi Shankar listened in. This is the building where my mother died. This is the city I stopped loving. Am I really so crazy that I believe in ghosts and fly across the world for what? Some sort of exorcism? It’s stupid. It’s like I’m waiting for something to happen. What can happen? Nothing. Let’s be tourists and go home. Let’s go to Leopold for coffee and for art to Bhau Daji Lad Museum and also Prince of Wales Museum which I refuse to call Chhatrapati Shivaji Museum because he didn’t give a damn about artworks. Let’s eat street food on Chowpatty Beach and get a stomach upset like real foreigners. Let’s buy some silver bracelets in Chor Bazaar and look at Kipling’s father’s friezes and eat garlic crabs in Kala Ghoda and feel sad that Rhythm House has closed and mourn Café Samovar also. Let’s go to Blue Frog for the music and Aer for the high-rise view and Aurus for the sea and Tryst for the lights and Trilogy for the girls and Hype for the hype. Fuck it. Here we are. Let’s do it.
Calm down, she said. You sound hysterical.
Something’s going to happen, he said. I was pulled across the world for a reason.
In the lobby a glamorous woman flung herself upon him. Groucho! she cried. You’re back! Then she saw the tall Somali beauty watching her. Oh, excuse I, she said. I’ve known this one since he was a boy. We called his older brother Harpo, you know. She tapped her temple. Poor boy. And this one Groucho because he was always grouchy and he chased women.
Tell me about it, said Ubah Tuur.
We have to throw a party! said the glamorous woman. Call me, darling! Call me! I’ll round up everybody. She rushed off, talking into her phone.
Ubah Tuur’s eyebrow interrogated Apu.
I don’t remember her name, he said. It’s like I never saw her before in my life.
Groucho, said Ubah Tuur, amused.
Yes, he replied. And D got called Chico. We were the fucking Marx brothers. Get your tutsi-frutsi ice cream here. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member. That’s in every contract, that’s what they call a sanity clause. Ha ha ha…you can’t fool me. There ain’t no Santy Claus. How much would you charge to run into an open manhole? Just the cover charge. I’ve had a great evening, but this wasn’t it. I’d kill you for money. Ha ha ha. No, you’re my friend. I’d kill you for nothing. That was worth running halfway around the world to get away from.
It’s already worth the trip here, she said. I’m learning things about you I never knew before, and we haven’t even left the hotel.
I’ve been looking for a girl like you, he said, groucholy. Not you, but a girl like you.
Cut.
They had not walked more than a few steps along Apollo Bunder in the direction of the Gateway before Ubah stopped and drew Apu’s attention to the quartet of almost comically visible men perspiring in black hats and suits, white shirts with narrow black ties, and sunglasses, two walking behind them and two across the street.
Looks like we have some reservoir dogs for company, she said. Or blues brothers, whichever.
When confronted the quartet responded respectfully. Sirji we are associates of some business associates of your great father, said the one who looked most like Quentin Tarantino as “Mr. Brown.” We are tasked precisely with your personal security and instructed to proceed with maximum subtlety and discretion.
Tasked by whom? Apu asked, annoyed, suspicious, still grouchy.