Novel: Karma on Trial – Chapter 1

1

My wife died the moment an obstetrician grasped our first child from her womb. I’ve been reliving this ongoing daytime nightmare of life as mother-father for eight years. Karma?

The office phone’s strident ring alarms me.

           ‘Viśvās?’ I grunt. The onus is on the caller, ne? Also, my brain’s not at work today. The dhana seth speaks like a pukka Aǹgrēzī, “enunciating”, as Miss Soni, my primary school English teacher, used to say. I shut my trap ’cause I’m trained to listen. Rajshekhar Ori, Esquire, or whatever, hangs up after ’bout half a minute. Areh? Feller said only that he wanted to discuss in person a rape ’n murder case. Hare Ram! Who, where, when, why, how? No answers. Talk ’bout some people’s economy with words. It’s like the madhur’s dangling a sardine bait two inches above the Indian Ocean at Patterson’s Groyne. I swallow; my Adam’s apple does a piston hop. That tidbit cautions me that such nasty business could end up a criminal case of R v Viśvās. Bugger me going into any boxing ring if the purse isn’t heavy enough to bail me out of my current financial jam. Hell, I need eighteen thousand quid like yesterday or else ājī, ma, Arthi ’n me will be overnight parking on one of Durban’s filthy pavements. Anyway, the larnie’s coming to my office later with sordid details, no doubt. Does the topi want me to save an accused from the gallows? Acting like a robot, I loosen my lounge shirt collar and striped tie. Hell! Need I start worrying? My hutch suddenly feels and smells like a cell in Point Prison. I lock up and chuck.

I saunter to the Supreme Court on Masonic Grove to solicit, my forehead creased with lines. Who of sound mind would want to hire a thirty-nine-year-old charou gumshoe? After two and a half hours of peddling my unwanted fish in the wrong market, I walk back up Grey Street under midsummer’s rain-threatening clouds, into Victoria; turn ’round and with bloodshot peepers squint at the intersection. The Casbah, that part of Durban’s central business district reserved for use and occupation by Indians, is humming, now back to its usual bustling self, unlike its cemetery-quiet this morning. In its own way, this part of town could be considered paradise, especially if you’re a cockroach or rat, scurrying in and out of buildings that glitter and moulder simultaneously. Here am I, in the former colonial city on the east coast of the province of Natal, in the Union of South Africa, the continent’s southernmost country, wondering what the New Year will bring. Like me, many people may be recovering from yesterday’s hangover. The year-end holiday is for Christians, but we all take a week’s break to eat, burp, fart, drink ’n dance, forgetting our debts. I move on, climb up the concrete stairs of Valbro Chambers. Right name the Valjee brothers gave their dump, smelling like a pisspot. I unlock my first-floor office door with the writing on the frosted glass that reads, “ROHIT VIŚVĀS: PRIVATE DETECTIVE – DISCRETE INVESTIGATIONS”. I smile as I enter, rem’bering my lawyer friend told me “private” also means “confidential” – secret, like. What I know? A chap who doesn’t even own a dictionary. I glance at my Roamer – a watch awarded to pitāji on completion of twenty-one years’ service to the Natal Government Railways Police and bequeathed without ceremony to me just before his death. It’s 11.00 – time for high hot masala chāy. To hell with it.

Dust takes no vacation and was busy last week coating everything in my office and establishing another lousy smell – like that of a neglected cemetery. I take out a mutton cloth and wipe the antique, so I was told, mahogany desk I bought at the sheriff’s auction. Most of the rest of my stuff: steel filing cabinet; three-seater black Durohide sofa veined with white cracks, pine bookcase with some books older’n me, thrown out by the main library. My black mock-leather swivel seat is where my arse parks, with two backrest-less Globe chairs for clients and barflies popping in for gossip. I picked up most of these antique-like furniture cheap. Who am I gonna impress with a posh office?

Housework done in two shakes of a suar’s tail, I sit at the desk in my comfortably shabby joint drumming fingers, then go to the 1961 calendar on the wall and tear out the tissue paper cover. This reveals “N BHOLA & SONS’ WHOLESALE IMPORT & EXPORT MERCHANT’S” advert below the elephant-headed god, Ganesha. Hopefully this January model will bring prosperity, as he is supposed to do. The first page, and the eleven sheets beneath it, are unmarked – no appointments, no jobs, bugger all. What a start! Using my Bic, I draw a red circle ’round Monday, 2nd. How long to payday?

A knock on the door.

           ‘Come!’

           A skinny unshaven middle-aged man slinks in like a black mamba in blue overalls, carrying a large hessian sack. He stands, licks his lips, black pebble eyes darting.

           ‘Ram! Ram! Rohit bhāī,’ he greets me apologetically.

           I get off my backside; take his proffered hand in both my palms. ‘Santosh Munoo, Happy New Year. How did you enjoy it?’

           ‘Quiet – I spent whole day cleaning Kedarath’s garden.’

           I grin. ‘Nice start to the year. Everything, family okay?’

           ‘Yes, bāp. I’ve come to clean up, take the rubbish.’

           ‘As you can see, you’re too late, Mr Clean.’

           The street-sweeper from the City Engineer’s Department’s Cleansing Division spruces up my joint every Monday morning for five shillings. He looks downcast.

           ‘Here’s your pay.’ I hold out my hand.

           My visitor licks his lips, shakes his head. ‘Can’t take money for nothing, Rohit bhāī.’

           ‘It’s not for nothing, man.’

           ‘You shouldn’t worry.’ This is a customary line of Hindus, an initial reluctance to accept cash, tea, lunch, as it’s seen as an imposition. The refusal is made three or four times before the person finally accepts. Reluctantly. This practice that has graduated into a ritual.

           ‘I don’t worry. Don’t drink the money, eh?’

           ‘Don’t take dharoo. I’m gonna buy a little bit chops from Khan’s. We never tasted gośt over one month.’ The man salutes, closes the door as if it’s made of valuable antique glass.     

My head still throbs from New Year’s Day boozing, the pain sharp enough to split a watermelon. Since my brim-full tank won’t allow me to down a cure, I fill my pipe with Durban Poison and glance at the Natal Mercury. I’m an optimist, reading obituaries first. Through my office window that I don’t rem’ber ever being washed, the day looks as if all colours had been leached from it, and me. I spy pregnant clouds crying their eyes out, and down below charous and aunties being showered by the gods. Precipitation, the only kind we know, comes at any time in Durban, even without warning or invitation. Hā, in these blinding sheets of rain that doesn’t stop to catch breath even the ducks’ve waddled off for deep cover. I’ve got a coupla small, galvanised iron buckets placed to catch the bigger drips; the mingy-sized ones disappear into the dust of the mud-coloured carpet that matches the battleship-grey walls. Money comes before taste for most businessmen.

I’m minding nobody’s business for right now and some three months hitherto, a pukka English word I learned from my attorney friend, Sham Singh, trying to compose a piece of fiction to tell my landlord ’bout the extortionate rent. Coolie bastard, ten times worse’n a Jew. Money is God. Shakespeare in pyjamas with skullcap and a forever-mournful face, old man Fakir. If he gives me any shit, I’ll have to tune him up. But what ’bout that madhur chodh Campbell, two cold, liver-spotted hands ’round my throat, trying to choke out the money I owe his bank? Eighteen thousand pounds is the same as eighteen million to a flat-broke bloke.  

Killing time in solitude knowing doing nothing is a dangerous occupation, I’m munching a quarter mutton bunny with carrot salad, mango pickle, and vinegar chillies from Victory Lounge. The library-quiet of my lair is disturbed only by my chomping teeth and licking tongue, when I think I hear a knock. Hope it’s Lakshmi, Goddess of Wealth who up till today never lit up my office or home. I gobble down the rest of my lunch, lick my lips clean. I see a shapeless creature on the other side of the front door. Debt collector or enforcer, coming to grab an ou with a sub-zero bank balance? Hāi bhagvān, please send a paying customer – it’s so long since I sniffed the sweet smell of cash. I sigh, then squint.

The door opens and an Indian gentleman dressed like a funeral undertaker enters, blowing smoke like an Injun chief. We shake hands.

‘Rajshekhar Ori. Call me Raj,’ the visitor says, hand outstretched.

He sure looks like he used to be a prince, but now there’s sadness etched in the aged face. I make a mental note of the browned, Roman-numerated wall clock, another gift from my long-cremated father who used to, unnecessarily, say, “Time is money.”

Three bells and I’m not sure all’s well.

I walk ’round my desk, clasp his hand in both my palms, pull out a chair, and motion my caller to sit. The man plumps down; pouting prune-like mouth resembling an arsehole, releases wind from his flat belly. The Hollywood ex-lead-star handsome ballie removes his hat, pulls on his hooked pipe, cheeks hollowed. He looks my “office” over with a raking glance from his frosted brown eyes that then scan me as if examining a pornographic photo. Bapū waves away the tobacco smoke, genteel, but the ou doesn’t refuse a slug of dharoo. I drink poison like tea only as a last resort, so don’t offer it. I open my battered steel cabinet and from between files “L” and “N”, ignoring the half-full or half-empty office Mainstay cane spirit, fish out a sealed bottle of Chivas Regal that I’d been saving for an extra special occasion, and pour a libation for two. Hindu politeness and humility require I enquire ’bout my visitor’s health before getting down to brass tacks. After that we make small talk, which I encourage as I charge by the nearest or furthest quarter-hour, whatever, adding some fat for insurance and rainy days like this.

‘Do you mind?’

           It would be obvious even to a blind ou this topic is troubled. ‘Nahī, bhāīa, you carry on.’ I call him “brother” ’though we from different planets. I had read that Mr Ori made big, big money at Greyville and Clairwood racecourses, bought a house and a lorry from the winnings. Now he owns a mansion with an aquarium full of multi-Coloured fishes, six bedrooms, each with a toilet ’n bathroom, a sitting room quarter the size of a soccer field, three garages for shiny-new cars: Kapil’s Mercedes 300SL hardtop, the ballie’s hearse-like Rolls Royce Silver Cloud, and late younger son’s soft-top Studebaker Silver Hawk. I confirmed or corroborated these and all when I gate-crashed a wedding joll. But it is also my job to know. Bapū does sand-dredging, from four pits in the Umgeni River, now has fourteen trucks, most of them brand new, and other businesses I’m not aware of. Yet. He’s a motā, but as far as I know not involved in any illegal shit. Drinks whisky instead of Durban Corporation water from the time a bottle of Scotch for us hustlers would last a year or more. It would park proudly in an inherited mahogany, mirror-backed display cabinet with radio and 78 vinyl record turntable extracting the melodious voices of my favourite Hindi singers, Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammed Rafi.

In my seventeen years as policeman-detective and PI, I honestly can’t rem’ber ever seeing anyone with so much grief, pain, maybe fear, painted on one clean-shaven but creased face. ‘How can I help you, bapūji?’

The guy rubs his close-cropped salt ’n pepper hair and grimaces, ‘My youngest son, Anil, has been arrested for the rape and murder of a white woman.’ The ou delivers this headline as if it’s a cricket match commentary on the English Service radio by Charles Fortune.

My mouth must’ve fallen open like that of a landed catfish. An Indian did such things? Doesn’t sit right with me. Jesus! He’ll be double-damned after committing what the Japs call hurry curry. While we may be from different mothers, we’re brothers after all. I walk ’round my desk and embrace the hurting man. He holds tight, like a moffie. ‘I’m so sorry, bhāīram, to see you find yourself under torture. Such a blow to your izzat…’

‘Family name and dignity is one thing, Mr Viśvās…’

‘Call me Rohit, uncle…’

‘…what is worse is I have let Anil down.’

Letting someone down can be murder for a man such as this? I return to my seat, make my face look like I just heard my granny died. ‘I suppose no matter how hard you try, you can never protect your children from all the evils of the world, in this period…Kalyug.’

‘Yes; Kali’s Dark Age of Destruction. God, we are experiencing it right now…’

‘Tell me ’bout your son. What happened? Everything, in confidence, bhāīa.’

Mr Ori stares at me unblinkingly, an exotic fish trapped in the Durban Aquarium, searching my face, maybe looking for a sign of hope. I can’t oblige.

‘Anil was found at three this morning, fast asleep in his car. He had scratches on his face and chest; some blood on his clothes.’

‘Where?’

 ‘At La Mercy Beach. His car door was open, all the lights on…’

‘Was he asleep or had a black-out, from drugs or drink, maybe?’

‘Passed out, I guess, but the police have given me no details.’

‘He’s locked up. Where?’

‘At Central Police Station. They are not releasing him on bail.’

‘Hā ji. The góras think they’re gods.’ I’m using some little Hindi I know to show what you call empathy or sympathy, whatever, for a distressed father. You don’t blame a topic for the sins of his children. An ou can’t choose his heritage or offspring. ‘Where’s the body?’

‘At Gale Street or King Edward Hospital mortuary, I presume.’

I work with facts and the law; not assume or presume and that kind of shit. ‘And who was killed?’ I slip on a frown to show genuine concern. 

           ‘The police are not saying; most probably because the deceased hasn’t been identified and her next of kin not yet notified.’

           No, because a charou killed a góri. The newspapers will have the story for breakfast, tea, lunch, cocktails, supper, and all. ‘Ja, the police never release the full story. You have some contacts with the SAP, ne bhāī?’

           The man nods, holds a commanding hand up like a traffic policeman, with the other puts the pipe to his mouth and draws; maybe to gather his thoughts. ‘Retired Police Commissioner James True-May phoned me. But at this stage he could not disclose much. Do you, perhaps, know the gentleman?’

           ‘Yes, bhāīram, I worked under his son, Fred, the present Deputy Commissioner. Good góras.’ Seconds drift past in slow motion while Ori looks off into the distance with tear-glistened eyes as if rem’bering his childhood; me checking the ceiling for rain leaks, hoping they’d drop some clues. I clear my throat. ‘I’m not a betting man, bapū, but with rape and murder of a góri, the odds will be mighty heavy against your son.’

           My guest removes his pipe and jabs the air with its stem. ‘Don’t I know it?’ That is why I want you to investigate. Get the missing evidence, ones the police did not bother looking for, or would deliberately ignore. You know we are fighting the mighty colonial-apartheid legal machinery? Some of my white business rivals will be rubbing their hands, smirking, making facetious remarks behind my back.’

           Even under serious stress, Ori talks like a professor, not that an uneducated ou like me would know. I nod as if I understand the nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and all; show my yellowing teeth in a wince, thinking how swift “justice” can be in a case of white versus brown, a rich Indian downed by a below-the-belt blow, his good name dragged through the mud. Mind you, our own people will be the first to point fingers and throw stones.

           The Raj pulls the pipe out of his clenched teeth. ‘The police force will work fast, get Anil convicted, sentenced, and hanged, without looking far or digging deep.’

           Suddenly stone cold sober and struck dumb, I nod, realising that in South Africa the time between arrest, trial, conviction, and judicial hanging is not like in the United States where a jailbird can wait ten, twenty years before he is cooked in gas or fried. The English and Boers won’t spend their ‘hard-earned’ tax money putting a roof over, clothing and feeding a killer – hang him and be done. I don’t remind the topi that the reward for life is always, for sure, death, murder or no.

           ‘So, you want me to do that?’

           Ori shoots me a look you give intellectually challenged children. ‘Beg pardon?’

           ‘Do what the cops and the prosecution won’t – look far and wide, dig deep, to find evidence to prove Anil’s innocence?’

           ‘Yes, Rohit. While I said at my age izzat does not mean much but in real life it’s vital. What is innocence? Once a person is tried for crimes like rape and murder, he is condemned by the community even if subsequently found not guilty. Such a verdict does not label one “innocent”. You get tarred and feathered…’

‘Eh?’

‘Never mind. A condemned man carries that stigma beyond the grave, bequeaths it to his family.’

‘Hā ji. Life, a person’s name and reputation, goes on after death; will be rem’bered more if the guy had been arrested for some terrible thing it turns out he didn’t actually do. An accused gets, what you call, tainted, right?’ 

The client nods, rubs his eyes with thumb and forefinger. ‘Remember Moosa’s case?’

How could I ever forget? Moosa’s was the first take-away joint on Battery Beach. This was the country’s best seaside and was reserved for us charous, naturally, being on the shore of the Indian Ocean. It wasn’t ours for long, but that’s another story. Cācā Moosa was always there when we got to the samudra, his caravan chimney belching smoke of flame-grilled mutton sausages; sometimes fresh sardines; deep fried mince or potato samosas; I&J fish fingers; Saldanha pilchards cooked in masala, tomato, onions, and red-chili gravy; and other delights we call bites. I don’t know how that Muslim uncle managed in such a small place to make things so tasty spit falls out of your mouth.

One morning, after making no money caddying at Durban Country Club, I walked to Fitzsimons’s Snake Park, tummy grumbling like grumpy ājī, maybe it’s because ājā passed on to heaven so long ago. But ma doesn’t have such a short temper. Eleven o’ clock and Super Snacks caravan has its shutters down. No sign of life, no smell of cooking. I shout, “Cācā! Cācāji!” There’s no answer. I sit down pressing my stomach, hoping the ballie comes soon. I must’ve fallen asleep because now someone is kicking my legs. I squint at the sun, make out the umdoni-purple face of Bushknife Bobby. This is the man whose bark is worse than his bite, a feller known for making threats of violence, then disappearing quietly, tail and what-you-call machete between his skinny black legs, so Hari cācā told me later.

‘You heard, Roy?’

‘No, Bobby uncle, what?’ I stand up, staring at the “terror” of Sea Cow Lake village.

‘Ismail Moosa was arrested last night.’

‘Arrested? What’s that?’

‘Locked up by the police, guchoo.’

‘For what?’

‘Don’t know, Roy Boy. Rumour is a six-year-old white girl was found there in the amatingula bushes, covered in sand. She been raped.’

‘What’s “raped”?’

‘You’ll learn soon enough.’

‘Cācā can rape?’

‘We’ll know when the police bring him to court.’

This rape ’n murder story spread faster’n a winter bush fire. Bāba, who worked for the Railways Police, told us at the Somtseu Road Magistrates Court that cācā was crying when he said: “I didn’t do nothing. I went six o’ clock morning to Beachwood to catch some shad, bream, slingers, anything to make fish and chips. I cast two lines. There was a little bit wind, no bite, for about one hour. I went to the bushes to pee. Then I notice some toes sticking out of the sand. I began digging with my hands, seen it was a little girl, some blood between her legs. I tore off the dress and saw someone had damaged…raped her. She was already dead, had sand in her mouth and nose. Such a beautiful child, looking just like my Zohra…”

           According to bāba, a doctor examined the body at the mortuary and said the child was dead maybe ten, twelve hours before cācā went to Beachwood. Did he kill the girl earlier on and hide the body in the sand? Maybe under the amatingula bushes near the high trees with long roots going into the black water of the pond you cross before coming on the beach?

Everybody in the district was quietly saying that old man Moosa will hang. But bāba said wait and see because that ace detective, James True-May, will dig out the truth. The police topi arrested a white man who after one week gave the full story: He done it; was sorry. For what? Sorry won’t bring the dead back to life. Lucky, cācā was allowed to carry on his business in the caravan, but now he forgot how to smile. People looked at him like he was a jānmāri, until ’bout six months later, during muharram celebrations, he was found by his missus hanging from the rafter in his house near the Soofie Saheb Mosque in Riverside. Sad. At least the story made me think that I will one day become a detective looking hard to find what educated people call truth and justice.

‘Rohit?’

‘Bhāī?’

Ori holds his head sideways, like a watchful Indian mynah. He takes a packet from his pocket, puts tobacco into his pipe and tamps it with a thumb. He lights the Dunhill, drawing with pouting lips, like a mud-sucking mullet.

The gloom and silence here has made me as sober as a white judge – can’t rem’ber when last I was in that state. I crack my knuckles, watching the topi and not responding because I’m trying sharp to process all he’d just said. I don’t speak out loud what I’m thinking. Not good for business. I’m clever, when I want to be, but know I’m in a dilemma. I pour two rounds. Drink…and money can jog memory and loosen tongues.

‘I was trying to get the picture. Looking at where we are in this country, with the white man holding all the aces and trump cards, to put it bluntly, bhāī, there’s no guarantee if I take the case the pieces of evidence I find would save Anil’s life…’

‘Meaning?’

‘Get me right on this: The cops and the prosecutor will not be really interested in evidence that may go to show your son didn’t commit the crimes.’

The prospective client raises a forefinger and both eyebrows. ‘You could be correct, Rohit. We must not underestimate the might of the state – it can literally get away with murder. Today, a few of us Indians may have some wealth and power, but are nothing compared to whites. We will be fighting a Titan. Make no mistake you’ll be up against it.’ Ori nods.

Dunno nothing ’bout Titan, Bitan, and all. ‘That’s what scares me, bhāīram – a darkie nobody against the might of the English-apartheid criminal justice machinery.’ I sip; widened eyes on my client. I don’t tune the ballie that this case could be a bit complicated for a feller like me. I know the compulsory sentence for murder is death by hanging…Same for a non-white raping a góri. How can a small ou stop the hand of the white man’s almighty God?  

‘While you may enter the Coliseum alone, I will be always around; pay you handsomely as a gladiator, to find such proof, and I shall make sure the prosecutor places everything before the court.’

Bapu’s roaming in Rome. I stare, reading the kind of regret and sorrow on the man’s face that would melt a heart of stone. ‘I have to point out this, Mr Ori: What if I find proof showing Anil factly did those things he’s accused of?’

The larnie nods gravely. ‘Need I remind you that you will be working for me, the defence?’

‘Sure, boss, but according to the law, whatever information is found by one party must be shared with the other.’

‘Rohit, my man, the góras make the law and mostly, but not always, live by it. We darkies, as you call us, die by it. They write the rules of the game but are also players and referees. The system is weighted against us non-Europeans. Anil needs a chance in life. You can give him that; I did not. You know the cops will do a hatchet job, look so far, get a victim, and the white judge will hang him just like that.’ He snaps his fingers. ‘You cannot let that happen.’ Tears leak down into my client’s wrinkle grooves.

I guess the more someone has to lose – a son, family name, a business – the harder he’ll fight to keep it. ‘I’ll do my best, but what I’m saying is that my investigations could also unearth evidence that may point to Anil’s guilt.’

Ori’s eyes looking into mine go blank as if he’s retreated into some kind of private world of assessment and calculation. He comes out of the trance by raising both eyebrows.

‘You surely are a poker, thunny player, Rohit? Know how and when to show your hand, if ever you have to? This case can set you up for life, man.’

Or end it and my career, for what they’re worth. These are hanging offences; the Immorality Act is the least of the accused’s worries. This is a Supreme Court matter; the heavy artillery will be pointing directly at me ’n Anil. As Sūbri would say, we don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. Is karma stage-managing the show or do I as the main actor have a say in the production? But money is always important, especially if you grow up without it. Time to stop thinking and acting small.

‘Mr Ori, it’s one hell of a job: big, high profile. Could I have some time to think ’bout it?’

The man lowers the glass he was raising to his mouth, brings his eyebrows down almost to the top of his nose. ‘Time is a luxury we cannot afford. You are the first detective I have approached. I sense some hesitation – perhaps you think you’re not up to it; that this case is too big for you?’

The madhur has read my mind. I say nothing because I’m dumbstruck – not for the first time. Ori looks at me like a dentist examining a patient’s pee-coloured teeth.

‘If you do not want the case, tell me now and I will find someone else,’ he says with an edge to his voice.

I put some honey in mine. ‘Give me just coupla hours, bhāīram. Please?’

The client points the pipe stem at me with a stare that would’ve frozen a samosa sizzling in hot mustard-seed oil. ‘Fair enough. Sleep on it. Shall we say ten sharp tomorrow morning at my office?’

I nod because I’m tongue-tied, and then sip some Chivas to loosen the knot. ‘Have a shot for the wet road, bapū?’

Ori shows perfect old teeth. False? ‘If you insist.’

I pour two stiff jolts; we put them down in sync. ‘You’re not driving in this dark ’n dangerous weather?’

The future client sighs. ‘No, I have a chauffeur. Never drive drunk.’ 

I glance out: The sky is now like the grey of a dirty South African Railways & Harbours canvas tarpaulin, darkening my already-gloomy office. The silence is punctuated by crackling thunder. A blinding strobe of lightning freezes us two ashen-faced parents, the flash a few million times more powerful than that of the Metz I shoot with on my Nikon, or what white cops use on their cameras to photograph dead bodies.     

Ori stands up with an air of finality, shakes hands. ‘Don’t go native; thinking Anil is doomed to a certain karmic justice. Look in dark corners, Rohit.’

I can’t do cordiality so slip on my wintry half-smile. I told me don’t fall into any traps – there’s none as deadly as the one you set for yourself. ‘Are you saying…implying that Anil’s connection with the rape ’n murder was accidental, coincidental or incidental?’ A wise guy never fools anybody but himself.

‘Coincidence is God’s way of remaining neutral. But those questions are for you to answer. Rohit, you hold my son’s life in your hands,’ my potential financial saviour says. He cuts a line from my office, leaving the door and my mouth open.  

Wait a minute; hold the phone! I think a lot of things, sharp. The small alarm bell that had been ringing deep inside my head turned into Big Ben. The South African Police carried me for two years as a drunken passenger before giving me marching orders. The six years of odd jobs, bits ’n piece work to put roti and cane spirit on the table and out of the blue: rape ’n murder? What’s going on? A dead bloke is the best fall guy as he cannot speak for himself. Conspiracy? Because Ori says so? Doubt creeps along the edges of my mind. I return the Chivas to its place. Ja, if you can have dreams, you could also get nightmares. It’s unwise to let the customer make all the rules. I remind myself not to take decisions about anything without first examining the facts, looking into the entrails. What say I not get stupid? But I can’t take forever before acting. I will my drumroll heart to slow. I can’t get rid of my troubles by giving them to someone else – Arthi can’t inherit my burdens. A successful guy like Ori could hide his past; I shouldn’t be sitting in mine. Murder ’n rape? Just the idea makes me feel as light as a communion wafer, not that I ever tasted one. But what the hell – a boozer-loser can’t afford principles, must rem’ber I’m my own salvation. From long practice of doing the wrong things, it’s time I come right; mustn’t keep slipping my clutch; stop fumbling ’round. I’m suspicious of everybody but will not get ahead without taking some risks. Our sharks drown if they stop swimming. Chance of success in a case like this is slim to none. I blink rapidly, trying to focus through a whisky haze. Money is always useful. Must chant Om to get right with the cosmos. With these thoughts buzzing in my throbbing head, I close the door, walk back, open my desk drawer and switch off the tape recorder.