Читаем Shantaram полностью

‘Yeah. Rasheed took the money and ran. The two sisters were devastated. Their health deteriorated. They went downhill fast. They ended up in hospital. First one, and then the other-they both fell into a coma. Lying together in their hospital beds, they were pronounced dead within minutes of each other. Anand was there, with a few others from the slum. He stayed long enough to see the sheets pulled over their faces. Then he ran out of the hospital. He went out of his mind with anger and… guilt, I suppose. He went looking for Rasheed. He knew every one of Rasheed’s drinking dives. When he tracked him down, Rasheed was lying in a rubbish pit, sleeping off a binge. He’d paid some kids to keep the rats off his drunken body. Anand chased the kids off and sat down beside Rasheed, and listened to him snore. Then he cut his throat, and waited there until the blood stopped flowing.’

‘Pretty messy’ Kavita muttered, not looking up from her pad.

‘It was. It is. Anand gave himself up, and made a full confession. He’s been charged with murder.’

‘And you want me to…?’

‘I want you to make it a front-page story. I want you to build some kind of popular movement around him, so that if they do convict him-which they will, for sure-they’ll have to go a little easy on him. I want him to have support while he’s in prison, and I want to keep his prison time down to as little as possible.’

‘That’s a lot of I want.’

‘I know.’

Well,’ she frowned, ‘it’s an interesting story, but I’ve got to tell you, Lin, we get too many stories like this every day. Wife-burning, dowry murders, child prostitution, slavery, female infanticide-it’s a war against women in India, Lin. It’s a fight to the death, and mostly it’s the women dying. I want to help your guy, but I don’t see this as page one, yaar. And anyway, I don’t have any pull with page one. I’m new there myself, don’t forget.’

‘There’s more,’ I pressed her. ‘The kicker in the story is that the sisters didn’t die. Half an hour after they were pronounced dead, Rasheed’s wife stirred beneath the sheet. A few minutes later, her sister moved and groaned. They’re alive and well today. Their hut, in the slum, has become a kind of shrine. People come from all over the city to see the miracle sisters who returned from the dead. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to the businesses in the slum. They’re doing a roaring trade with the pilgrims. And the sisters are richer than they could ever have dreamed. People are throwing money at them, a rupee or two at a time, and it’s really adding up. The sisters have set up a charity for abandoned wives. And I think their story-back from the dead, you know-is enough to jump this to page one.’

‘Arrey yaar, baba!’ Kavita yelped. ‘Okay first you have to get me together with the women. They’re the key to this. Then I have to interview Anand Rao in prison.’

‘I’ll take you there.’

‘No,’ she insisted. ‘I have to speak to him alone. I don’t want him prompted by you, or responding to you. I have to see how he’ll hold up on his own. If we’re going to build a campaign around him, he’ll have to stand alone, yaar. But you can speak to him first and prepare the way before my interview. I’ll try to get to see him in the next two or three weeks. We’ve got a lot to do.’

For two hours we discussed the campaign, and I answered her many questions. I left her in a happy, enthusiastic whirl of pressure and purpose. I rode straight out to Nariman Point, and bought a sizzling meal from one of the fast-food vans parked on the beach. But my appetite wasn’t as good as I’d thought, and I ate less than half. I went down to the rocks to rinse my hands in the seawater, within sight of the spot where Abdullah had introduced himself to me three years before.

Khader’s words floated on the swift, shallow stream of my thoughts once again: the wrong thing, for the right reasons… I thought of Anand Rao, in Arthur Road Prison, in the big dormitory room with the overseers and the body lice. I shivered the thought off into the breeze. Kavita had asked me why the Anand Rao case was so important to me. I didn’t tell her that he’d come to me before he committed the murder, only a week before he cut Rasheed’s throat. I didn’t tell her that I’d brushed him off, and insulted him, demeaning his dilemma with an offer of money. I smudged an answer to her question, and let her think that I was just trying to help a friend, just trying to do the right thing.