“You don’t,” says Marianna Fusco. “You shake hands and you smile politely and you listen to what they have to say and you do absolutely nothing. Then you report back to me.”
“You’re not coming with me?”
“You’re on your own on this one, funny man. But be prepared for Govind to make Ramesh an offer this afternoon.”
By the time he gets to the airport, Vishram’s forehead is starting to flake. The car drives past the drop-off zones and the white zones and picking-up zones and tow-away zones to the bizjet zone through the double barrier security gate on to the field up to a private executive tilt-jet perched on its engines and tail pods like a mantis. An Assamese hostess, immaculate in traditional costume, opens the doors, namastes like a flower budding, and takes Vishram to his seat. He raises a hand to Marianna Fusco as the Merc pulls away. Flying solo.
The hostess’s hand lingers as she checks Vishram’s seat belt but he doesn’t notice for then Vishram feels his belly and balls sag as the tilt-jet leaps into the air, puts its nose down, and takes him up over the brassy towers of Varanasi. An ineluctable part of Vishram Ray registers the close presence of an attractive woman next to him but he keeps his face pressed to the window as the tilt-jet swoops in over the river temples and ghats and the palaces and havelis onto a course following Ganga Devi. The shikara of the Vishwanath temple dazzles gold. The hand on his thigh finally draws his attention as the engines swivel into horizontal flight and the pilot takes the aircraft up to cruising altitude.
“I can get you some ointment for your forehead, sahb,” says the perfect, round face full in front of his like a moon.
“I’ll survive, thank you,” says Vishram Ray. The first of the champagne arrives. Vishram assumes it’s the first. He’ll make that first last, although he’s supposed to abuse the hospitality. It is cold and very very good and drinking airborne has always made Vishram Ray feel like a god. The bastis spread under him, multicoloured plastic roofs so tight together they look like a cloth spread on the ground for a feast. The tilt-jet follows the line of the river to the edge of Patna airspace, then swings south. Vishram should read his briefing but Bharat bedazzles him. The titanic conurbation of slums breaks up in a weave of fields and villages that rapidly turns from tired yellow to drought white as the river’s influence diminishes. It would have looked little different two thousand years ago and were Vishram Ray indeed a god passing across holy Bharat to battle the rakshasas of the black south. Then his eyes catch on a power line and a stand of wind-turbines turning sluggishly in the heavy dry air. Ray Power turbines. His brother’s turbines. He looks out at the yellow haze of the horizon. Does he imagine a line of shadow in the brown high-atmospheric smog, the skirmish line of an advance of clouds? The monsoon, at last? The burned stone of the plain deepens to beige, to yellow, to outcrops of green trees as the land rises. The tilt-jet rises with the edge of a plateau and Vishram is over high forest. To the west rises a line of smoke, drifting northward on the wind. The green is a lie, this high forest is dry, fire-hungry after three years of drought. Vishram finishes his champagne—flat and hand-warm now—as the seat belt sign lights.
“Shall I take that?” the hostess says, too close again. Vishram imagines a tic of irritation on that perfect, made-up face. I resisted your seductions. The tilt-jet leans into a landing spiral. A change in turbine pitch tells him the engines are swivelling into landing mode but looking down Vishram can see nothing that appears like an airport. The tilt-jet drifts across the forest canopy, so low its jet wash sends the leaves raving and storming. Then the engine roar peaks, Vishram drops into the canopy, birds scatter on every side in a silent explosion of wings, and he is down with a gentle bounce. The engines ebb to a whine. Assam girl is doing the thing with the door. Heat floods in. She beckons. “Mr. Ray.” At the foot of the steps is an old Rajput with a great white moustache and a turban so tight Vishram feels himself developing a sympathetic migraine. Ranked behind him are a dozen men in khaki with bush hats bent severely up at one side and heavy assault rifles at the slope.
“Mr. Ray, you are most welcome to Palamau Tiger Sanctuary,” says the Rajput with a bow.
Assam girl stays with the tilt-jet. The hats carrying rifles spread out on all sides as the Rajput guides Vishram away from the ’plane. The ship has come down in a circle of bare dirt in a dense stand of bamboo and scrub. A sandy path leads into the trees. The path is lined with what seems to Vishram an excessive number of solidly built wood shelters. None is more than a panicked sprint away.
“What are they for?” Vishram asks.
“In case of attack by tigers,” the Rajput answers.
“I’d imagine anything that could eat us is kilometres away by now, the noise we made coming in.”
“Oh, not at all sir. They have learned to associate the sound of aeroplane engines.”
With what? Vishram feels he should ask, but can’t quite bring himself to. He’s a city boy. City. Boy. Hear that you man-eaters? Full of nasty additives.
The air is clean and smells of growing and death and the memory of water. Dust and heat. The path curves so that in a few footsteps the landing pad is invisible. By the same camouflage the lodge conceals itself until the last stride. One moment it is green and leaves and rustling stems; then the trunks turn into stilts and ladders and staircases and there is a great wooden game lodge strung out across the treetops, like a galleon lifted by a monsoon and dropped in the forest.
White men in comfortable and therefore expensive suits hang over the balcony rail, greeting him with waves and smiles.
“Mr. Ray! Come aboard!”
They line up at the top of the wooden companionway as if receiving a boarding admiral. Clementi, Arthurs, Weitz, and Siggurdson. They have firm handshakes and make good eye contact and express Business School bluff cheer. Vishram does not doubt that they would bend you over and stick a mashie niblock up your hoop at golf or any other muy macho power game. His theory of golf is, never play any sport that requires you to dress as your grandfather. He can see quite a nice little routine falling together about golf; if his were the kind of life that any longer contemplated stand-up routines.
“Isn’t this just the greatest place for lunch?” the tall, academic-looking one, Arthurs, says as he escorts Vishram Ray along wooden walkways, spiralling higher and higher into the roof canopy. Vishram squints down. The men with rifles look up at him. “Such a pity that Bhagwandas here tells us we’ve almost no chance of seeing a tiger.” He has the nasal, slightly honking Boston accent. He’ll be the accountant then, Vishram decides. In Glasgow they had said, always have Catholic lawyers and Protestant accountants. They pass between rows of elegantly pyjamaed waiters in Rudyard Kipling turbans. Double mahogany doors carved with battle scenes from the Mahabharata are thrown open, a maitre d’ leads them to the meal, a sunken dining pit with cushions and a low table that would be the acme of kitsch but for the view out under the eaves through the panoramic windows to the waterhole. The verge is puddled to mud but Vishram thinks he sees chital sip nervously from the dirty brown water, ears swivelling on perpetual alert. He thinks of Varanasi, her vile waters and her radar defences.
“Sit, sit,” insists Clementi, a wide, dark-haired man, sallow as an Indian and already developing a blue chin. The Westerners adjust themselves with some huffing and laughing. Punkah fans wave overhead, redistributing the heat. Vishram seats himself comfortably, elegantly on the low divan. Maitre d’ brings bottled water. Saiganga. Ganges water. Vishram Ray raises his glass.