“Please!” he rasped. “It’s not safe — not safe for you.”
But his voice lacked power and no one could hear him. Even as his senses swam, bodies were pushing all around him, holding him up, shifting him to a different location. There was nothing he could do. The deadly virus was already slithering into new hosts, fresh from his skin. Bitter tears joined the sweat pouring down his cheeks. The linen suit’s cruel scheme was working like precision electronics.
Some hours later, the young ex-agent had been reestablished in the hut of a man who introduced himself as Shankh. He seemed to be the same person who had been standing beside the morning’s corpse, but the difference in his behavior made it hard to be sure. He was no longer reserved and self-effacing, but welcoming and friendly.
Inside the hut were Shankh’s wife and two other women who may have been cowives or sisters, it was hard to tell.
Dome was lying on gunnysacks spread out on the floor, which was clean and dry. The dwelling was perhaps six feet square and a little less than that in height. The only source of illumination was a gas lantern. The women were crouched in the far corner, talking between themselves, while Shankh was turned toward Dome. There were at least three infants inside the hut and a couple of chickens, pecking here and there on the floor.
Blocking the entrance were the head and forequarters of a huge portly animal that had settled itself down right there.
“What is that creature?” Dome asked.
Shankh replied, smiling at the ignorance of the visitor, “A pig. Have you never seen one? We know that you eat them from the pictures on the tins of food products that you city people throw away.”
A pile of old newspapers sealed within plastic bags formed a bolster for Dome to lean against. He was wearing borrowed clothes, a string vest and a thin cotton lungi. Still practically naked by his standards, yet he didn’t have the energy to care.
His head was spinning with fever and his speech was reduced to a bare trickle of sound.
“Never mind pigs. Listen to me, Shankh,” he whispered.
“Please... there’s something terrible I must tell you... even though it’s too late.”
Shankh’s smile didn’t waver as he listened.
When Dome was finished — it did not take long — the other man said, “Bas? That’s all you’ve brought for us — one more disease?” He threw his head back and laughed. “Never mind! We’ll accept it graciously; after all, you know what they say about beggars...”
Dome’s heart contracted with sadness. “You don’t understand. This is something worse than anything that has yet existed — it’s been designed to destroy you—”
“But we refuse to be afraid,” interrupted Shankh. “And you know why?” He waggled his finger in the air. “Because whatever’s thrown at us, we grab it, recycle it, and return it with interest. So they have cooked up a new disease in their medical factories? Good. Wonderful. We will circulate it through the living factories of all our hundred thousand bodies, and some of us will die, and some of us will live, and those who survive will repackage that same disease and send it back out to your friends in the city, so that they can enjoy it too.” He laughed once more and patted Dome’s hand. “So stop worrying! Cheer up. Let’s eat.”
The women brought food on tin plates. Later someone brought a herbal infusion that would help Dome with his breathing. Later still, in the darkness of that steamy night, a young woman joined him on his gunny bed and showed him a definition of hospitality that he had never known before.
The remaining two days of Dome’s life were spent peacefully and comfortably, given the circumstances. With the desperate thirst of one who is about to leave this world forever, he wanted to understand how the residents of Golden Acres had survived, what gave them the incentive to keep fighting.
According to Shankh, it was simply a question of perspective. “From the bottom of the pit, all roads lead up,” he explained, smiling. “So in one sense, this is an extremely positive place to be. Rich people throw away things at such a rate that for us, living in the dump, we only have to wait long enough before whatever we want comes sailing out of the sky — for free! Cars, food, books, furniture, machinery, medicine, bottles, toys — you wouldn’t believe how much gets thrown away. And very often in its original packing. So we’re not complaining. We take what we need, repackage the rest, and send it back out.”
A week after Dome died, a new product began to appear on the shelves of fashionable stores in the city. Small black tins of pickled beetroot, straight from Russia, according to rumors.
The labels looked like burnished gold and each tin was secured within its own individual membrane of cling film. A flattened medallion of red sealing wax provided a guarantee that the contents were authentic and had not been tampered with in transit.
It proved to be very popular and the entire stock sold out even before the first case of a terrifying new strain of flu was reported in the Continuum.
Among the first hundred people to fall ill was the man in the linen suit.
He, more than anyone else, should have known exactly how soon he would succumb to the mysterious fever that had already felled dozens of victims. He had no family and all his staff had deserted him the moment he began to manifest the telltale symptoms. As he lay in his silk pajamas, alone in bed, writhing with joint pains and gasping for breath, his attention was caught by something on his bedside table. It was a little black tin that he’d bought at great expense a few days earlier.
“Tasty stuff,” he wheezed to himself, as he fished for the last few morsels with a silver pickle fork. “Might as well finish it.” With streaming eyes, he squinted at the gilded label, embossed in running script with the product’s name: D’Ohm’s Pickled Beetroot.
“D’Ohm’s...” he said aloud. “Doesn’t sound very Russian!”
It reminded him of something.
Someone.
If only he could remember who! He sensed a gigantic truth swirling in the ether, just out of reach of his understanding.
But a spasm of coughing shook him just then.
A day later, he was dead.
Glossary
The following glossary provides simple explanations of certain Indian terms used in Delhi Noir. These words come from Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, English, and Bengali.
aarti: Hindu ritual that usually occurs at the end of religious ceremonies..
abhi aaya: I’ll be right there.
achaar: pickled vegetables or fruits.
adda: station; den for thieves.
almirah: closet.
amla: Phyllanthus emblica; the Indian gooseberry tree.
anchal: end of a scarf, sari, or other garment.
Angrezi: English language.
aunty: term of respect used for older female family friends, neighbors.
ayah: nanny.
baba: old wise man; also used colloquially to express frustration or irritation.
babu: midlevel civil servant.
bahoot: very.
bahu: daughter-in-law.
baingan bharta: curried eggplant.
bakra: goat.
bakwas: bullshit.
bania: trader, shopkeeper.
banyan: undershirt.