Their successive sightings of such a curiouser character may have led the ayahs and durwans to think he was a madman. At the same time, a closer look may have led them to think that in his veins must be flowing the blood of a white man. Or else how to explain that fair skin, that blueish-eyed gaze …

Harbart is walking. Suddenly, in front of a packers and movers, he stops. Is he about to say something? There was something he wanted to say. Never mind, it can wait.

Harbart walks on. “Cat, bat, water, dog, fish,” Harbart mutters under his breath.

Smells waft out of the cake shop. The cake shop, its windows of tinted glass. Will he go in? Oh god, how large that house is. How enormous the gate. A Maruti is reversing up the driveway, its tail lights flashing white. The homeowners in the car—Harbart knows the house far better than they. There must be a wooden staircase inside. Leading up to a point, and then splitting into a right and a left. Where it splits, a mirror encased in a black wooden frame which rests on a stand whose round feet are shaped like tiger paws. On either side of the mirror towers a tall brass vase.

Harbart is used to climbing the stairway on the right. But—what were the rooms like upstairs, how many rooms were there, what had happened in those rooms, who lived in them?

Harbart’s head hurts. He lights a cigarette.

An old iron water trough, once meant for the horses, sits along the side of the pavement. Harbart perches on its rim. “Cat, bat, water, dog, fish!” he mutters.

Yet he can see, shadowy and unclear, dressed in white so fine, the skin so fair, so gold the hair … Harbart shuts his eyes and keeps on seeing … A candle, glowing, someone coming closer, someone leaning forward to blow out its flame … the sound of glasses clinking …

Harbart opens his eyes. It is dark. The streetlamps are dark too, only the cars glowing by.

Harbart thought two thoughts at once: that he had something to say, and that this house did not have that top-terrace.

*

A famous jeweler’s son had come to him, accompanied by his employees, but Harbart’s words had deeply embarrassed him. Made his face flush red.

“What nonsense! My father was like a god. Ask these men, they all worked with him for years—Mr. Das, tell him—”

“What have I said that I need to ask them? What have I said that’s so hard to swallow? That’s sticking in your throat? Have I called him names?”

“Yes, you did—you called him a sinner.”

Harbart burst out laughing. “Only a minor sinner, I said. Only a third-plane dweller—but you’ve started quacking. Do you even know what that means?”

The young man falls silent. The young man sits still and listens.

“A businessman, he was. So he’s cast a huge big net, and he’s drawing it in—now the fish are scrabbling, now he’s grabbing the males from this pond and chucking them into that—what, understood?”