“I don’t want to appear rude, but.”
“You want to know what it does. It will get you into the we are here. One to start, that is the way we do it. There are many varieties, but the ones by the door are the ones to start with. The rest you will discover on your journey. Relax, my lovely. You are among friends.” She offered the banana once again. As yt took it, Tal noticed the curl of plastic behind the aged woman’s right ear. That tilt of the head, that dodge of the eyes, were explained now. A blindhoek. Tal took a bite from the banana. It tasted of banana. Then yt became aware of the details in the woodcarving, the pattern of the tiles, the colours and weave of the dhuris. The individual parts of the music became distinct, stalking and twining around each other. A sharpness of focus. A lifting of awareness. A glow in the back of the head like an inner smile. Tal ate the rest of the banana in two bites. The old blind woman took the skin and deposited it in a small wooden bin already half-full of blackening, fragrant peels.
“I’m looking for someone. Tranh.”
The old woman’s black eyes hunted over Tal’s face.
“Tranh. Lovely thing. No, Tranh is not here, yet. But Tranh will be, sometime.” The old woman clasped her hands together in joy. Then the banana kicked in and Tal felt a relaxed warmth spread down from yts agnya chakra and yt hooked up yts music and explored the strange club. The balconies held low divans and sofas, arranged intimately around conversation tables. For those who did not do bananas there were elegant brass hookahs. Tal drifted past a knot of nutes, slo-moed in smoke. They inclined their heads towards yt. There were a lot of gendered. In the corner alcove a Chinese woman in a beautiful black suit was kissing a nute. She had the nute down yts back on the divan. Her fingers played with the hormonal gooseflesh on yts forearm. Somewhere Tal reasoned yt should be leaving, really, but all yt felt was a warm dislocation. Another banana, yt thought, would be good.
The crop from the far left pillar gave a short, sharp rush of well-being. Tal stepped carefully to the edge of the pool to look up at the tiered balconies. The higher you went, the fewer clothes you needed, yt concluded. That was all right. Everything was all right. The blind woman had said.
“Tranh?” Tal asked of a knot of bodies gathered around a fragrant hookah. An achingly young and lovely nute with fine East Asian features peered out of a press of male bodies. “Sorry,” Tal said and drifted on. “Have you seen Tranh?” yt asked a nervous looking woman standing by a sofa of laughing nutes. They all turned to stare at yt, “Is Tranh here yet?” The man stood by the third magic banana vine. He was soberly dressed in a semiformal evening suit; Jayjay Valaya, Tal guessed from the cut. A smart man, thin, middle-aged but took care of his flesh. Fine, aesthetic features, thin-lipped, a look of intelligence in his darting eyes. The eyes, the face, were nervous. His hands, Tal observed through the marvellous power of the banana that put everything into significant focus, were well manicured, and shaking.
“I beg your pardon?” the dapper man said.
“Tranh. Tranh. Is yt here?”
The man looked nonplussed, then plucked a banana from the fist beside his head. He offered it to Tal.
“I’m looking for someone,” Tal said.
“Who is this?” the man said, again offering the bananna. Tal brushed it away with yts hand. “Tranh. Have you? No.” Tal was already walking away.
“Please!” the man called after yt, clutching the banana between yts fingers like a linga. “Do stay, and talk, just talk.”
Then yt saw. Even in the flicker-lit shadows beneath the balcony, there was no mistaking the profile, the angle of the cheekbones, the way yt leaned forward to talk animatedly, the play of the hands in the lantern light; the laughter like a temple bell.
“Tranh.”
Yt did not look up from yts intent conversation with yts friends, all huddled over the low table, deep in shared memory.
“Tranh.” This time, yt was heard. Tranh looked up. The first thing Tal read on yts face was blank incomprehension. I do not know who you are. Then, recognition, then remembrance, then surprise, shock, displeasure. Last: embarrassment.
“Sorry,” Tal said, stepping back from the alcove. All the faces were looking at yt. “I’m sorry, I’ve made a mistake.” Yt turned and fled, discreetly. A need to cry pumped through Tal’s skull. The shy man still stood in the greenery. Feeling enemy eyes still on yt, Tal took the banana from his soft fist, peeled it, bit deep. Then the pharm piled in and Tal felt the dimensions of the courtyard inflate to infinity around yt. Yt offered the strange fruit to the man.
“No, thank you,” he stammered but Tal had him by the arm and was marching him to a vacant sofa dock. Yt could still feel those eyes hot on the back of yts skull.
“So,” Tal said, sitting sideways on the low sofa and draping yts thin hands over yts folded knees. “You want to talk to me, so let’s talk.” A glance back. They were still looking. Yt finished the banana and the fluttering lanterns opened up and yt fell into their gravity and yts next clearly focused thought was of the facade of a Kurdish restaurant. A waiter whisked yt past tables of startled customers to a small booth at the back partitioned by a fragrant carved cedar screen.
The blind woman’s bananas, like good guests, came promptly and departed early. Tal felt the carved geometric patterns on the wooden screens rush in from celestial distance to claustrophobia. The restaurant was hot and every customer voice, kitchen noise, and street sound was intolerably sharp and close.
“I hope you don’t mind me bringing you here, but I don’t like it back there,” the man was saying. “It’s no place to talk, really talk. But it’s discreet here; the owner is in my debt.” Mezze were brought, and a bottle of clear liquor with a jug of water. “Arak,” the man said, pouring a measure. “I don’t drink myself, but I’m told it is a great instiller of courage.” He added water. Tal marvelled as the clear liquid turned to luminous milk. Tal took a sip, recoiled at the alien aniseed, then had a slower, more considered measure.
“Yt’s a chuutya,” Tal declared. “Tranh. “Yt’s a chuutya. Yt wouldn’t even look at me; just sat mooning all over yts friends. I wish I’d never come now.”
“It’s so hard to find someone to listen to,” the man said. “Someone who doesn’t have an agenda, who isn’t asking me for something of trying to sell me something. In my work everyone wants to hear what I have to say, what my ideas are, every word I say is treated like gold. Before I met you, I was at a durbar in the Cantonment. Everyone wanted to hear what I had to say, everyone wanted something from me, except this one man. He was a strange man and he said a strange thing; he said that we are a deformed society. I listened to that man.”
Tal sipped yts arak.
“Cho chweet, we nutes have always known that.”
“So tell me the secrets you know. Tell me what you are. I’d like to hear how you came to be.”
“Well,” Tal said, conscious of every scar and implant under the man’s attentive gaze, “my name’s Tal, and I was born in Mumbai in 2019 and I work in Indiapendent on the metasoap design team for Town and Country.”
“And in Mumbai,” the man said, “in 2019 when you were born, what.” Tal laid a finger to his lips.
“Never,” yt whispered. “Never ask, never tell. Before I Stepped Away, I was another incarnation. I am only alive now, do you understand? Before was another life, and I am dead and reborn.”
“But how.” the man asked. Again, Tal laid its soft, pah finger against the man’s lips. Yt could feel them trembling, the flutter of warm, sweet breath.