Читаем Shantaram полностью

‘A very strong body.’

‘Yes.’

‘Make sure you feed him properly, and give him plenty of milk.’

‘Yes.’

‘Buffalo milk.’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘And make sure he doesn’t learn any bad words. Don’t teach him any swearing. There are plenty of arseholes and bastards around who will teach him the wrong sisterfucking words. Keep him away from mother-fuckers like that.’

‘I will.’

‘And don’t let anyone take advantage of him. He doesn’t look too bright. Keep an eye on him.’

‘He’s brighter than he looks, but yes, I will look after him.’

It troubled none of the other passengers on the bus that the conversation of several minutes had taken place before we could board the bus and move off. The driver and Prabaker had made sure to speak at a volume adequate to the task of including everyone in the bus. Indeed, once we were under way, the driver sought to include even those outside the bus in the novelty of the experience. Whenever he spied men and women strolling on the road, he sounded the horn to draw their attention, gesticulated with his thumb to indicate the foreigner in the rear of the bus, and slowed to a crawl, so that each pedestrian could examine me with satisfactory thoroughness.

With such democratic rationing of the astounding new attraction, the journey of one hour took closer to two, and we arrived at the dusty road to Sunder village in the late afternoon. The bus groaned and heaved away, leaving us in a silence so profound that the breeze against my ears was like a child’s sleepy whisper. We’d passed countless fields of maize and banana groves in the last hour of the bus ride, and then on foot we trudged along the dirt road between endless rows of millet plants. Almost fully grown, the plants were well over head-height, and in a few minutes of the walk we were deep within a thick-walled labyrinth. The wide sky shrank to a small arc of blue, and the way ahead or behind us dissolved into curves of green and gold, like curtains drawn across the living stage of the world.

I’d been preoccupied for some time, nagged by something that it seemed I should’ve known or realised. The thought, half submerged, troubled me for the best part of an hour before it swam into the field of vision of my mind’s eye. No telegraph poles. No power poles. For most of that hour I’d seen no sign of electric power-not even distant power lines.

‘Is there electricity in your village?’

‘Oh, no,’ Prabaker grinned.

‘No electricity?’

‘No. None.’

There was silence, for a time, as I slowly turned off all the appliances I’d come to regard as essential. No electric light. No electric kettle. No television. No hi-fi. No radio. No music. I didn’t even have a Walkman with me. How would I live without music?

‘What am I going to do without music?’ I asked, aware of how pathetic I sounded, but unable to suppress the whine of disappointment in my voice.

‘There will be music full, baba,’ he answered cheerfully. ‘I will sing. Everybody will sing. We will sing and sing and sing.’

‘Oh. Well. Now I feel all right.’

‘And you will sing, too, Lin.’

‘Don’t count on it, Prabu.’

‘In the village, everybody sings,’ he said with sudden seriousness.

‘U-huh.’

‘Yes. Everybody.’

‘Let’s cross that bridge and chorus when we come to it. How much further is it to the village?’

‘Oh, just a little bit almost not too very far. And you know, now we have water in our village also.’

‘What do you mean, now you have water?’

‘What I mean is, there is one tap in the village now.’

‘One tap. For the whole village.’

‘Yes. And the water is coming out of it for one whole hour, at two o’clock in every afternoon.’

‘One whole hour per day…’

‘Oh, yes. Well, on most days. Some days it is only coming for half an hour. Some days it is not coming out at all. Then we go back and scrape the green stuff off the top of the water in the well, and we are no problem for water. Ah! Look! Here is my father!’

Ahead of us, on the rambling and weedy path, was an ox-cart. The ox, a huge curve-horned beast, the colour of café latte, was shackled to a tall, basket-shaped cart mounted on two wooden, steel-rimmed wheels. The wheels were narrow but high, reaching to my shoulder. Smoking a beedie cigarette and sitting on the ox-bow yoke, his legs dangling free, was Prabaker’s father.