Harbart tried to pluck some courage from his swiftly soaring high, but somewhere inside him lurked a can’t-do-it, just-can’t-do-it feeling. “Can’t do anything without English. That’s where they’ve all beat me to it.”

“English will get you fuck-all. You’ll have an interpreter, you idiot—you’ll speak, he’ll satin-smooth translate. Any client gets hitchy-twitchy, he’ll clench his teeth and call them names: Fuck you! Tit! Cunt! Prick!”

“So you think this will work? That I can make it work? I’m just scared I’ll screw it all up.”

“Rubbish. You’re too scarefull for your own good. I, on the other hand—I’m carefree, scarefree. It’ll be my setup, after all. Fifty-fifty. Marik–Sarkar Enterprise.”

A pint in the tummy

Makes the bait seem very yummy …

And Harbart agrees, am I right?

“So, dear sir, when will you be back?”

“Aha. When I’ll come, which day, what time—that’s my business. Marik alone will decide. My mission is now to hold you aloft. Spread your scent from nose to nose. Washing powder Nirma!”

“Eh?’

“This bastard’s a spastic, I tell you. Those kids who call you Titface, Titface—I support them. Now, my Number One task is to organize some publicity for you. Tong-prong strategy. On one side, a whisper campaign … hush-hush, low-buzz. On the other side, a couple of articles thrown into the English papers. Now, our collaboration has commenced. And I’m off. Oh, yes, you can keep the cigarettes. But you’d better stop ruining your liver drinking with those local loafers. From now on, it’ll be you and me, AC rooms and dim lights, and only Black Dog.”

Surapati Marik pinched Harbart’s cheeks. “Coochy coochy coochy coochy,” he cooed.

And left.

*

Evening thickens into night. In the dark, Harbart lights a Classic cigarette. Buki, lady doctor, fairy … the sadness will always swell, and yet, on the other side, little by little, the gates of heaven are opening.

In the dark, Harbart sings softly to himself:

Cat, bat, water, dog, fish …

Cat, bat, water, dog, fish …

Cat, bat, water, dog, fish …

Cat, bat, water, dog, fish …

The smoke from his cigarette draws pictures in the dark, even though no one can see.

The fire at its tip merely blows big, glows small.

Seven

Oh listen to the chorus

say, that this land

Is no land for lamentation.

—Hironmoyee Devi

April is the cruelest month, when clusters of virulent viruses run riot through the streets of Calcutta.

Street-dwellers, slum-dwellers, had waged heroic wars against these viruses and somehow succeeded, through stubborn skullduggery, to develop resistant antibodies, or else so many of them wouldn’t have lived to die under the slab of the Stoneman—the viruses would have wiped them out, every he and she and their family tree.

Unlike the slum-dwellers, these virus vampires have no trouble slaying the middle classes flat: during the change-of-season, the middle classes inevitably suffer from a lack of Vitamin C. Those adolescent girls whose thoughts of spring revelry, of blissful grazes against macho manes and manly fuzz, set their tender-tendril bodies aflame with acid desir e—in the middle of their dirty dreams, they cry out “oh yes, oh yes” to these viruses and then wake up from their siestas engulfed in phlegm. And the adolescent boys—no sooner do they awaken—hardly opening their eyes—than they’re choking in the viral wrestler’s spiral armpit-hold.