Copyright 2011 David H Bridges
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine or journal.
First Edition
All characters in the work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Chapter One
Calcutta August 1985
For the past three years his beard had been left free to grow wild, his thinning hair was now swept up from an inch above an ear to cover a bald patch; Madhu was aging badly.
Frank had to speak before the shopkeeper raised his head.
“Madhu, can I buy you a drink?”
His eyes lit up, and a smile grew, slowly erasing the frown from across his face.
“Mister Frank. How you are doing?”
“I’m feeling just fine Madhu, very pleased to be back. How’ve you been?”
“Now I also am fine, it’s very good to be seeing you again.
From where you are coming?”
“I left London yesterday Madhu, came straight here from the airport.”
His smile was fixed; it had been ruined by a deep red dye left behind from years of chewing betel nut.
“Mister Frank, you are going down.”
What Madhu was referring to, was how much weight Frank had lost since he’d last been in the shop. Frank delighted Madhu with his answer.
“Too much exercise with too many women Madhu.”
The grocer let out a low moan.
“Too many women? You are a very fortunate man.”
“Indeed I am Madhu, do you have a room?”
“I am always having room, nobody he is staying here.”
“Is your brother around?”
“Brother is still working construction in Hong Kong.”
“I may need his house for a couple of months, is it empty?”
“Nobody he is now there. My brother will be returning for Diwali.”
The Festival of Lights was a major annual festival; due in three months.
“So you old rascal, are you still taking the occasional sip of the hard stuff?
“Yes when I have money I am drinking the good arrack, but price keeps rising, and quality is getting worse.”
“Good, I bought you a present from duty free.”
Frank dipped into his bag and handed over a bottle of Black Label, still packed in the box.
“I hope you’ll drink it in good health.”
Madhu cradled the carton in both hands; he read the gold embossed lettering.
“Jonny Walker Old Scotch Whisky. Twelve years old. Mr. Frank this is a very fine gift, very fine.
Frank thought the shopkeeper was going to burst into tears. He quickly changed the subject.
“You deserve a decent drink Madhu; can I take quick look at the house?”
Opening a drawer beneath the counter, the shopkeeper picked out the keys; then stood, and made his way across the shop floor toward the bottom of the stairs. With the carton safely under an arm, he screamed an order to his wife to take over in the shop.
They walked together down the dimly lit alley. Frank almost trod on a frightened duck that ran past his feet. Stopping at a door a hundred yards further down from the shop, Madhu turned the lock and dropped the handle.
A motor started up, and a bight neon light leant against a wall lit up the empty ground floor. It was bare concrete, littered with building materials.
“Is the water piped in and running?”
“Everything he is working, water is here; generator is brand new and just delivered.”
Frank followed Madhu, who led the way into the kitchen.
“See, he is brand new.”
“The place looks perfect Madhu, how much do you want?”
“You are wanting brother’s house; and room above shop? Pay me for brother’s house now, pay my wife for room above shop.
After being quoted a months rent, Frank dipped into his belt, and handed over a three month cash advance, he paid with crisp new bills he’d picked up at the airport. The dirty old shopkeeper shifted his weight from one foot to the other, unable to contain his glee.
After counting out the notes, he folded them twice, and pushed them deep into a pocket sewn into the front of his pants below the waistband. With the money secured near his balls, it was surely safe. He sidled up to Frank, and lowered his voice to a whisper.
“Please don’t discuss this financial transaction with my wife, and also, mentioning of the whisky would not be helpful.”
Frank laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“Count on my total discretion Madhu.”
With his cash secure and reassured; Madhu passed the house keys over.
“Go to shop for room keys; my wife will give you. Lock door before leaving.”
With the transaction complete, Madhu was off, skipping up the alley on his way to sell the whisky, and buy some arrack.
After locking the door, Frank walked back up the almost pitch black lane to the shop.
Sitting behind the counter, she was a healthy woman with a double chin; Madhu’s wife was finishing adjusting the bun at the back of her head.
“Mrs. M. Wonderful to see you, how are things?”
“Oh, Mr. F, you are coming back, how are you doing?”
“If I felt any better than I do right now Mrs. M, I’d spontaneously combust, go up in flames right before your eyes.”
She was short and solid, not unattractive. Madhu’s wife was approximately fifteen years junior to her wastrel of a husband, and a damn sight cleaner. As she smoothed down her clothes with the flattened palms of her hands, Frank was reminded she took some pride in her appearance.
Sleeping alongside the drunken unwashed Madhu every night must have been a revolting experience for her.
“You are wanting room?”
Frank put his flat hand theatrically up against his forehead.
“Mrs. M you’re a clairvoyant, a mind reader. I do want a room; and I’ll pay you a month’s rent in advance.”
Her wide grin showed off a healthy set of white teeth, she quoted him the price and the bargain was made. The keys she gave him from the drawer were for one of the rooms upstairs, and the front door to the shop.
“Room is one where you were staying last time, welcome back.”
Frank lifted his bag.
“You’re welcome is well received Mrs. M, It’s done me a power of good seeing you in such sterling and robust health.”
She shot him back a stare set against a modest blush.
“Very good also to see you again Mr. F, I am pleased to see you have returned to us.”
A roll in the sack with her would have been fun; she’d have enjoyed the experience too.
After years of struggling with her selfish old husband, she could have done with a shot of romance.
Waiting for a customer to show up before she called it a night, she knew Madhu would be gone until the early the next morning.
The time then was eight o’clock. Frank Allen had last slept in his house in London, he was beat.
The two exchanged good nights, as he climbed the narrow staircase and turned toward his room on the next level, Mrs. M shouted up from behind the counter.
“Clean bed sheets are folded in cupboard on landing.”
Frank shouted back over his shoulder.
“Thanks Mrs. M, see you tomorrow.”
After bolting the door behind himself, he unpacked his bag, and placed his folded clothes on the back of a tubular steel chair.
The thin mattress rested on a plywood board, laid over crisscrossed metal bands stretched over a bed frame. He tried to get comfortable.
Apart from his clothes, the empty shoulder bag on the floor, and the creaking ceiling fan, there was nothing to see. Then he noticed the wall that separated his new refuge from the empty space next door was pockmarked with holes, some had been covered with strips of tape. Frank looked closer to see if he could spot ones that were still exposed. While searching, he noticed some tiny graffiti that had been written in biro.
He had to get right up close to read the words clearly. The small message read:
I killed myself in this room.
Of course, Frank had no idea if the author of the brief suicide note had followed through on the promise, but if a person had washed up alone in that room in reduced circumstances; suicidal thoughts would not have been far away.
His new home was a terrible dive, but his immediate prospects looked bright. The recent interruption back in London would soon be a bad memory, a momentary blip that had slowed them down. Indeed within weeks, Frank and Vincent were expecting to be upping production from their earlier operation.
Early next morning, after giving Mrs. M a sunny greeting, he walked up to the top of the alley to find a cab. First stop, a major hospital, where a bribe and a doctor would be the first business of the day.
What he was buying; would in most people’s eyes, seem to be another seriously stupid choice to be making. Leaving through the gates of the hospital, forty five minutes after he’d entered, the first things he’d bought that day were:
24 ampoules of Pethidine, 100 caps of Duraphet and 20 gms of Morphine Sulphate.
These drugs gave Frank a boost, his choice of life support systems made him function better.
In Calcutta, as in any other city, dope has a bad rap. Drug slaves can be easily spotted.
You can see them in your own town, pimping, robbing, and stealing, before moving on and skulking around in some alley for hours on end, hoping some lowlife, shifty, junkie motherfucker, is going to show up, and sell them pure unadulterated drugs at a fair price.
That’s no way to run a life. Stick to dope the government approves, siphon it through legal sources, or if you can, make your own.
After spending the rest of that morning wrestling with the city’s patched up, empty cans and a string telephone system, Frank had a list of supply houses to visit.
For a week, he went to dozens of them in locations all over the city, pitching up with the American I.D. of Ari Silverman; he then whittled down the prospects to three, each of these places could supply him the two prime items he needed.
Everything else he wanted was so commonplace; the stuff could be picked up piece by piece from countless outlets without attracting suspicion.
Over a period of years, Frank had developed a close relationship with employees who had access to the two most valuable of chemical building blocks. He was aware, when dealing with them; they were first, putting in time at the job to feed their families. Frank was a man looking to help them on their way. In Calcutta in the nineteen eighties, a persuasive man with ample baksheesh and a proven idea, could quickly be up and running a profitable business.
The thing drawing Frank forward then, was the amounts of precursors they could supply. He knew the lab running out of Madhu’s brother’s house would be yielding $25,000 a week within two months.
The money would be split three ways. Minus expenses, he’d be pulling in eight grand a week.
Starting with an empty house in a new place, Frank chose to limit the work to the hours between midnight and six in the morning. Going flat out all day until the operation was running smoothly wasn’t safe; there were far too many noxious and explosive dangers to think about. On top of that, he also had hours ahead of running around, packaging, bottling, and shipping the completed Essential Oils out to several addresses Vincent was organising in Europe.
The next three months leading up to the Diwali festival would see Frank working round the clock. Before starting, he needed a final evening out.
After showering, he took a cycle rickshaw at the top of the alley to Park Street.
The journey took fifteen minutes, and ended with Frank forking over the fare to his wheezing driver.
The area he’d chosen was home to five star hotels, bars, and dubious Indian versions of Chinese restaurants.
Before beginning the night, Frank was forced to use the nearest gap between buildings off the footpath to throw up in.
That was the problem in the beginning with a new dope supply, finding the right balance between the ecstatic humming of ones body, and a feeling comparable to the worst effects of a rough ocean voyage.
Bending over garbage, and coughing up little more than bitter tasting yellow bile, he retched repeatedly. By balancing himself with a stiff locked arm, his right palm held flat up against the bricks, feet as far back as possible, he was able to protect his shoes and pants from being stained.
With the drugs more pleasant effects taking over from the sick waves, Frank made his way back to the street and headed for a bar.
Sitting in a secluded corner in the first one he’d arrived at, he ordered a gin and tonic; his entire attention while sat at a table, was drawn to the rising bubbles appearing out of nothing from inside the glass.
Waiting for his stomach to catch up to the rest of his body, he leaned forward, and for a moment, went into a state known in the opiate world as, nodding.
Four bare feet wrapped in simple leather sandals came directly into his line of sight. Frank heard a jumble of words that made no sense. He looked up, the nausea had left. They were two Italian girls he’d met on the plane, each with their hair still damp, they smelled of pine fresh scented shampoo.
Their wide grins framed perfect teeth. Frank thought he saw static shoot from their clothing.
Since leaving them at the airport, they hadn’t entered his mind, now, a week later, and in the state he was in, he wasn’t sure how he felt about seeing them again.
After not answering several questions, a painfully awkward silence followed.
Frank eventually responded with his own lame question.
“What are you doing here?”
They both burst out laughing.
The older of the two spoke.
“We found rooms just a few minutes from here; we’re looking for a place to eat, could you recommend somewhere? Perhaps you’d like to join us?”
Frank kept his head low, and he grabbed his knees; the girls burst out laughing again.
“What happened to you? Are you sure you’re alright?
“Must have been something I ate.”
They cracked up again, Frank thought he was making a right twat out of himself, the girls did too.
“Are you stoned? You’re in a different world.”
With his head still low, he mumbled another apology, then, quickly returning from his dream, he shifted comfortably back into the world the girls were living in.
The following morning, the more confident of the Italian girls, Marcella, had phoned him. Frank had used the excuse of a bad case of food poisoning to pass on her offer of lunch.
Chapter Two
After two weeks, the Essential Oils business had settled down into a steady routine. So stable was the operation, Frank was able to extend work at the house to twelve hours at a stretch.
By then, with the supply side established, he’d soon be able to take brief periods away from the grinding monotony, and still keep Vincent busy in Europe.
The only people he’d recently had any form of conversation with since the work began, had been Madhu’s wife, staff at a supply houses, and clerks at the post office.
Neither Frank nor Mrs. M had seen much of Madhu, who’d gone off on a wild bender since his recent cash infusion.
One morning, Marcella had phoned Frank at the shop, extending him an invitation to dinner. Frank was surprised, but glad she’d called. He’d assumed the girls were long gone from Calcutta by then.
The opportunity to put away all things chemical for a few hours, and take an evening off, was welcomed. Frank left the shop that night feeling confident the interruption back in London had been overcome, and the relocation had gotten off to a spectacular beginning.
The three met up at a glum backpackers dive off Sudder Street, where Carla and Marcella, began the evening, by telling Frank, the reason they were still in Calcutta, was their planned visit to Lhasa had hit a snag.
The capital of Tibet, and only that city in the Chinese province, had recently opened up to guided tours. Unfortunately, the government had temporarily stopped issuing visas.
With their plan blocked by Beijing bureaucrats, the two of them had been taking the trip each day to the Consulate, to see if their luck had changed, only to be met by the same negative notice hanging from the bars of the compound gate.
In the darkened room, catering predominantly to young tourists; the girls again looked fresh, and had an air of mischief about them that night.
Together they put out an enormous amount of energy; initially Frank had difficulty adjusting to their company.
Periodically their chatter would erupt into animated laughter, and their enthusiasm spread well beyond the table. Few people Frank came across at the time, had the ability to carry off being both loud and likeable.
After the confines of the house, the Italians were sparkling company. They contrasted sharply with the lackluster bunch sitting around them in that crummy dive. Frank wondered why the girls had picked such a place.
Looking sullen and bored, the other diners sat quietly in the dim light. Many of them, Frank knew from bitter experience, had little to say.
If they said nothing, and did even less, they could at least appear detached, even cool.
For hippies in India, looking cool, is one of their alarmingly few ambitions.
Carla asked if his stomach was ready to tackle some food. Frank felt dubious. He took another look around the room filled with people trying to create a memory, in a restaurant where a cheese and tomato melt, followed by a slice of stale cheesecake, were the most hopeful items on the menu.
He went on to explain the vicious workings of the stomach parasite that had caused him to back out of their last meeting, reassuring them, the bugs had left no permanent damage.
Parasites of the gut can be atomic in strength in Calcutta.
The standard of cleanliness around people who prepare food in that city, and the parasites they carry on their hands, would pass on to a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a bowel disorder.
He ordered a Kingfisher Beer and drank to the background sound of a worn out Joni Mitchell tape, the wan Canadian, grinding out her warbling self indulgent take on her drab love life.
Carla and Marcella were well travelled, and were interested in acquiring as much information about the world around them as they could.
Franks own life had largely been built around the obsession of exploring anything new to him. If he knew nothing about a subject he thought worth taking the time to learn about, he was off, headed straight for the nearest library, or tracking down somebody who had first hand knowledge to help himself understand more.
Too many people refused to read, education wasn’t cool. Trying to look like Jim Morrison was considered cool.
Those people had no idea how boring they were.
Far too many travelers physically moved to a country, but mentally, they brought along too much baggage from home.
One look, and Frank would have a clear image of those fun seekers on the day they’d left home to become International. He pictured them, walking away from their parent’s house, the home they’d been born in, waving goodbye to their tear ravaged parents and anxious relatives.
As the evening moved along, Frank was enjoying himself, Carla and Marcella seldom spoke of home, and never asked Frank about his life in England. They were a welcome change from the thundering bores who could never shut up about the place they were allegedly taking a vacation from.
Frank was also grateful he didn’t have to make up a fictional past about himself to get through the evening, and the girls had no list of dreadful books or half baked notions of some foggy vision of Indian Nirvana as inspiration for their trip.
Those who did could be found far too easily on a journey to the Sub Continent then. Doe eyed, lost in loincloths in a jungle, with messed up tangled minds.
For the price of an orange robe, you could sit cross legged while muttering Om and look pious to those clueless wanderers. Yogis and con men, with half baked schemes for fleecing intoxicated tourists did well in India. Isolating vulnerable tourists and ripping them off was a viable racket.
At that time, the creepy viper hissing Rajneesh was running his spiritual equivalent of Butlins in Poona.
At least that shabby, third world shaman, never disguised the fact, what he wanted in exchange for his spiritual dribble, was a mountain of cash, and an ostentatious fleet of luxury cars.
The girls kept quiet about religion, it was one topic they avoided. That night they behaved like a couple of excited kids on their first day of vacation from school.
Carla was the one Frank would have made a move on if he hadn’t been so single minded about getting on with his work. Had their paths crossed at a different time, getting his hands into her pants would have occupied most of his waking moments.
Each time he was close to her, he took the opportunity to lean closer and breath in her smell while she was turned away.
Frank advised the girl’s to forget Lhasa. Their whole plan was taking up too much time. If the girls couldn’t be flexible, they may find themselves spending their entire vacation in the city.
Sensing some support for his holiday revamp from Carla, he saw her kept firmly in line, by the more forceful Marcella, who’d crafted their tour schedule back in Italy.
At the end of an interesting evening, the girls invited him back to their rooms. Frank excused himself again, saying he had to make a phone call to Europe from the post office.
Waking back to clear his head along Free School Street, he wished he’d met the Italians at a different time. They’d be gone soon, and anyway, Frank was going to be shunning the outside world for some time. Everything he’d ever wanted was so close.
After walking half the distance back, he flagged down a cab.
Mrs. M didn’t hear him climb the wooden steps. She hadn’t noticed him when he’d entered; was she asleep? She seemed lost in a trance. Her eyes stared at an invisible point that hung in the air, directly in front; and slightly above her head.
As Frank went quietly up to his room, Mrs. M remained dead silent.
After he heard her lock up for the night, he went down to her brother in laws house, and got back to working through the night.
Chapter Three
Two months later:
With money regularly flowing from Vincent, work at the house had been further extended, often up to thirty six hours without pause.
After isolating himself deeper in the work, and cutting off all but necessary contact from outside, Frank was looking ahead to the upcoming Diwali holiday, and Madhu’s younger brother’s return.
With the Essential Oils business now a huge success, he was planning a break, and a move to a more industrial location on the outskirts of town. New premises would afford him greater anonymity in which to raise the output of the Oils to previously unimagined and stratospheric levels.
Around noon, as Frank boxed up bottles in the room above the shop, Mr.’s M. had come running up the steps, shouting as she’d neared the door.
“Mister F, Mister F, phone he is for you.”
“I’ll be down in a minute Mr.’s M”
The Italian girls had arrived back from their trip to Lhasa and Nepal that morning, they’d invited Frank to meet up with them again that night.
As soon as he’d dropped the receiver, he knew he’d accepted their offer far too quickly.
Frank doubted he could successfully negotiate an entire evening with them. The girls had been a handful when he’d been feeling on his best form, since then, his physical and mental states had deteriorated. They’d find out how far immediately; they’d soon see he wasn’t the tourist he’d claimed. They were far too curious not to speculate on his real reasons for being in West Bengal.
Why should he keep in touch with those two? Work was the priority, his reason for being in India. With the life he was living, he didn’t need friends, Carla and Marcella could threaten his whole operation.
What had been entertaining for a couple of evenings when he’d first arrived, would now present a considerable trial for Frank. Could he still pull a public appearance off?
In any bar he could have found some stranger to have a conversation with, even in his current fried state; if he needed company, he could talk himself into the life of anyone who appeared interesting for an evening. He didn’t need to be involved with anyone who may want to poke into his background.
After so many unbroken nights alone, driven along by his massive intake of stimulants to stay awake, he’d routinely been tackling fearsome apparitions, both in the room above Madhu’s shop, and down at the house. Audible voices literally shrieked at him from out of the walls.
He carried on spirited arguments with them; at times these rows had lasted for hours at a time, they were fought while he oversaw the mixing of bubbling liquids in the surrounding flasks, the phantom voices rarely left him alone.
Similar psychotic episodes had crippled Frank earlier in his life. These however, had lasted briefly. Those earlier trips into another place had left him temporarily disabled, after he’d found himself in a bad place as a kid after dropping acid. His experiences this time around were far darker; Frank was flirting with his own manufactured schizophrenia.
Escaping for brief moments with doses of barbiturates, he passed out when it became too much, any benefit he felt after sleep, had been ruined each time he’d opened his eyes, strapped himself in, and had taken off again.
Each of the voices had a distinct and developed personality, so real; it was hard to come to terms with the fact, they only existed, due to the accumulation of stimulants cranking inside his head. And he couldn’t stop, couldn’t rest while the business lay idle. He was behaving like a manic gold prospector who after years of fruitless prospecting, had suddenly hit the big time; he refused to halt mining the continuing rich seam of pay dirt.
Outside, around people, Frank became increasingly convinced; every thought rattling about in his head was in the public domain. He even entertained a suspicion that Mr.’s M was plotting to poison him, aiding Madhu, in an elaborate plot hatched by the both of them, to do him in.
While the voices mocked him, Frank could regularly hear the bolted front door of the house being smashed down from outside with a battering ram. Raucous shouting accompanied the sounds of splintering wood.
Open up, this is the police!”
For much of the time, Frank was keenly aware this insanity was a reaction to his dope intake, and the resulting paranoia it caused, however, during the times when these delusions seemed crystal clear and hyper real, he was at a loss to wonder how he was able to keep the business turning over. He should have avoided meeting the girls that night; he should have waited until the upcoming Diwali holiday, and taken a break away from anyone he’d ever met.
After reaching the top of Madhu’s alley, he wasn’t nearly ready to face them. Negotiating the streets, each person Frank passed openly spoke about him. He was the one person in Calcutta, who was not in on the secret everyone else in the city shared; to avoid them, he took shelter under the hood of a rickshaw.
Frank was early for the meeting. As he waited; he prayed Carla and Marcella wouldn’t show up. What was he doing there? Why had he made such a terrible decision?
Then they walked through the door, looking bigger than he’d remembered.
Right away, he knew the girls were in on the secret. So was the ten year old kid who’d served him the poisoned bottle of beer he was refusing to drink.
Their two voices meshed together and grated. Their combined sound reminded him of crow’s claws scratching at a tin roof, their pale taut skins stretched over boney faced scaffolding. The frames of their bodies were covered not in skin, but a layer of latex.
Showing up there to be examined by the girls had been a mistake. As they looked him over, Frank played the role of a cow, corralled and bleeding from his mouth, his hooves slipping on the wet floor of a bloody abattoir.
The girls moved as though they had mechanical limbs, they spoke about him to each other, ignoring the fact he was at the table with them. They grabbed at pieces of his skin between thumbs and forefingers, up and down his arms, at his stomach, through his T shirt. He cut off their jabbering before they could go further.
As words spilled out of his mouth, they reminded him again, he was a clanking, pre programmed talking man machine. They followed each other in an uneven pattern.
“I had amoebic dysentery; I’ve been receiving treatment at a local hospital. I still have to visit the out patients clinic every day for shots. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.”
The girls stretched balloon skins spread across their skulls, and slowly morphed into expressions of sympathy before him.
He looked down and saw his torso carved open, his lungs and stomach spilled across the table, all his internal organs had landed over his friend’s laps.
“Of course, I’d love to eat, how was Tibet?”
Responding to his enquiry, the girls at first had little to say, they’d merely twisted the muscles around their lips. The immediate impression was; things hadn’t gone well. The girls became excited again after pouring over the limited menu, apparently; food in Tibet was almost inedible. It must have been, for them to be so excited about a meal back at that same awful hippy hovel they were so fond of.
The filthy restaurant that night; was a place where human beings were nothing more than farm animals. The cheap diners dived into the dished up food slop. Staff constantly brought out bucketfuls of the stuff. The serving kids mucked out toilet waste; and constantly mopped up their shit after it had fallen, the loose wet stools that had missed the porcelain target hole sunk into the floor. The diners should have had rubber tubes connected up their arses leading directly into the shit hole. They could be constantly eating and defecating at the same time, maintaining a non stop flow of food through their bodies.
Marcella began bitching about what they’d both been initially trying to avoid.
Their lousy month spent as tourists, part of a controlled group in Lhasa.
The pair had been chaperoned the entire trip with guides trained by the Chinese Ministry of Culture. A succession of daily tours of model factories and public works departments for a whole month, while their guides quoted figures of the output of plastic sandals, and metal brackets, and workers, clad in brand new ill fitting overalls were dragged off production lines to tell the band of travelers, via a translator, how fortunate they were, to at last be free from a life of ignorance and poverty.
Tibet turned out not to have been Shangri La. How could they have thought it ever would be? Unfortunately, the girls continued to unload onto Frank, each miserable and tiny detail of the journey they’d freely entered into, had willingly paid for, looked forward to, and had planned for months.
Trying to hold a blank expression on his face while staring at his arsenic beer, Frank sat back as the girls moaned, about how ridiculous an experience it had been, to have been a member of one of the first tour groups.
Both Carla, and Marcella, claimed the place could never have been fun at anytime for any Tibetans, apart from ruling monks, who according to their account; lived a life of absolute indulgence and idleness.
Since arriving, Frank thought he’d made a good stab at appearing normal that evening, whooping and hollering at appropriate moments, he’d balanced most of the balls they’d tossed his way.
He’d been visiting the bathroom far too often to top up his medication, and to spit out the beer he refused to drink, he’d lost track of time while away from the table. As the night wore on, the girls became confused as to why he kept disappearing.
The two of them kept asking if he was sick, Frank went along with that. Fact was, in that room, he couldn’t find enough air to breathe. Soon, he was going to drop dead, while the Italians told more stories from Tibet he didn’t want to hear. Stories of a blind drunk population, slumped against walls and surrounded by vomit, broken glass, and empty cough medicine bottles. And packs of menacing wild dogs, they claimed; roamed in packs freely about the city barking mad, on the prowl.
The thing that surprised him that night was still having the ability to appear vaguely normal while sitting in a chair. He was being kept alive by a functioning heart that squeaked an unnatural noise each time it beat. He was sure the thing was about to seize up and stop.
As the meal progressed, so Frank tried his best to introduced himself via the Italians back into the human race. One disturbing thing he found hard to get used to; was the way they ate. Both now used the same spastic rhythm. Each loaded a fork, then held the food in front of their mouths for an age, stared intently, then snapped lightning fast, swallowing each mouthful in one single gulp. At times they slowly changed into massive insects as Frank stared, horrified.
Following that terrible meal, he went straight back to the house and spent the entire night dismantling the lab. The Diwali holiday was a week away, he’d become too disconnected too soon. He had to take the coming break a few days early.
Over the next twenty four hours, he’d cleaned and stored the glassware and bottles, and had packed them into several tea chests. After placing them in storage in a rented garage, he began to breathe more evenly. His primary drug of choice those days after closing down the business was the barbiturate Nembutal. High doses had shut off the voices, and Frank was getting plenty of sleep. He began visiting a realtor’s office near the racetrack in search of an ideal industrial unit. During this time, he was relaxed and enjoying the down time.
A week after the awful evening with the girls, they invited Frank to a birthday bash they were throwing. The party was scheduled to take place on the roof of the building of the same rented rooms they’d returned to. This birthday shindig was intended for some guy from a crowd they’d met from the Italian Consulate located off Diamond Harbour Road.
After his welcome break from work, and the stimulants, Frank had regained, and sustained, the ideal chemical balance. Once he’d grown used to the idea of another night out with the Italians, when he wouldn’t have to think about work, he’d looked forward to meeting them.
Carla and Marcella gave him a suitably theatrical Italian greeting; this involved close contact, cheek kissing, and multiple introductions. The only resistance he met on his arrival, came from the birthday boy and his three pals from the Consul, who when introduced, sneered disapprovingly at him. They looked ridiculous on the roof of that building, battling tropical heat while dressed in Armani. They were, more than most foreigners in the city, completely out of place.
Understanding one out of every three words they were saying, didn’t qualify Frank to be a translator at the U.N. However, he did have a general idea of what they were talking, or rather complaining about.
Anything Indian was fair game. Considering where they were, they could spend the rest of their lives wearing out that topic.
They reminded Frank of actors pulled from a Cinzano advertisement.
For some reason that escaped him, Carla and Marcella thought the Consulate pen pushers worthy of the massive effort they’d put in to organising the party. The girls hovered around the parasites, happily filling their drinks, and massaging their ego’s, while still being affable hosts to the staggering number of people who’d shown up to the hastily arranged bash.
Most were locals, who the girls seemed to know after being resident in the city for two brief periods.
Where had they met them all? The roof that night was crowded.
The four slick Italians sat on metal chairs around a metal table; each of them looked foul faced.
After trying to start up a conversation, first in English, a language they pretended never to have heard before, then in Italian, Frank gave up, and sat down to roll a succession of morphine laced joints, these scud missiles did an adequate job of leaving the four fops floating in a collective coma.
Each of them was vain, dull, and unimaginative. Frank wasn’t surprised; he’d previously come across spoiled, middle class Italian men spending time in a sulk. They needed female figures to comfort them, to make their bad feelings go away.
Where the girls could have lit up a funeral, those posers brought everyone in their vicinity down. They held a grudge against life; each held a shared undisguised bad attitude toward Frank. And he knew why. The dandies thought he may be boning both of the girls.
This was particularly true of Marcella, who’d begun to refer to him coyly, as Blonde English. Frank had misread this as her attempt at a sense of humour.
The lost boy’s reaction was understandable. It couldn’t have been easy for those young Italian men, decked out in the current mode, to openly be overshadowed in the adoration department before two attractive women from home, by a stoned Spurs fan from Chalk Farm.
Leaving them behind to get wrapped up in himself, he walked through the crowd to the wall at the front of the building.
Propped up against the bricks, he was soon lost in the unfolding night theater playing out on the street below.
Hand pulled rickshaws were being dragged by wiry old men in loincloths, they ran in bare feet, ringing bells to warn anyone in the way.
Plump women sat high in the carriages, above the wooden wheels protected with clanging iron rims.
Street vendors flogged all manner of goods.
Old men, sat beneath antique water pumps, the kids they’d paid to pump streams of water over them, scrubbing at their backs and shoulders with harsh carbolic soap.
Rubbish carts endlessly picked up human and animal waste.
Watching this filthy ant farm, Frank was enjoying the warm euphoria throbbing throughout his body, radiating from his abdomen, striking every nerve ending, the opiate had spread a warm feeling across his itching skin. He was away again, glad to be lost.
Chapter Four
A soft tap on his shoulder yanked Frank back from his dream.
Turning, he found himself staring at a young athletic masculine slice of beefcake; the man looked like another poser, another Italian dressed in the flash style the Consulate dandies sported.
His name was Massimo; he was from the Roman suburb of Tivoli.
Since arriving at the wall, Frank had been enjoying his own company, however Massimo turned out to be quite the charmer.
The two of them were getting along famously, chatting about football, and of Frank’s memories of the time he’d spent in Rome.
Unexpectedly, during a lull in the conversation, Massimo had laid a hand on the back of Frank’s, resting on the wall; he then followed up the sly move with an indecent suggestion.
In his defense, the lad from Tivoli had gone on to explain to Frank, Carla and Marcella had suggested he make the first move, they’d told him, the blonde English was a fully paid up member of the rainbow club.
The incident was an embarrassing moment for both of them, the awkwardness ended after Massimo apologised for the misunderstanding.
Why had the two girls ever thought he was gay? Frank stared back down at the street, giving the matter some thought.
Later that night, he was once again shaken back into reality on the rooftop by Carla.
“Frank, Frank…it’s late, you should go back.”
Recalling where he was, Frank replayed the evening’s events in quick time.
“Yea, yea, I’m fine, just fine, what time is it?”
“Two o’clock.”
Recalling how he’d been set up with Massimo, Frank was feeling none too happy.
“Why did you tell that poof from Tivoli I was gay? Where on earth did that come from? You embarrassed both of us, what makes you think I could enjoy making love to another man?”
“Frank, Marcella and I have both been sure for some time you were gay, we each wanted to start a relationship with you, we made it so obvious, you left us with the impression you didn’t like women, we gave you every chance to begin a relationship.”
“Are you saying you’ve both wanted to take this friendship further?”
“Yes.”
That was a shock. Frank knew they liked him as a guy they’d met on holiday, he’d thought of sharing a bed with Carla, but the three of them together?
The idea of wrestling with those two made him wince.
“You kinky Italian minxes, I’m stunned, are you sure Marcella wants this?”
Carla laughed in his face.
“We don’t want to sleep with you at the same time.”
Leaning over the edge of the wall, she stared down at the street and laughed to herself, she then asked Frank a question he rarely heard from women.
“Would you like to get a room?”
Carla preferred not to take him downstairs; with the party at an end, her closest friend, who apparently had a crush on Frank, was already down there, and he knew Carla didn’t want to go back to Madhu’s.
To keep the girl’s away from the grocery store, Frank had spent a great deal of time exaggerating its infestations and horrors. It was with these obstacles in mind, she’d subsequently suggested a hotel.
The surprising offer of sex at such a clapped out time in the morning had thrown him.
Usually, Frank would meet a girl, be attracted, and then spend the evening trying to convince her to sleep with him. This either ended in failure, or the girl would deliberately keep him tap dancing before her on hot coals, before eventually deciding where the night was heading.
Carla’s cold proposal had taken some of the shine off the moment.
As Frank followed Carla down the stairs, he felt dizzy from his lousy diet. Hypoglycemia was causing him recurring problems; he had to find something sweet.
Outside the girl’s rooms, Carla told Frank to wait downstairs. He was looking for a snack, when she came out through the door and joined him on the almost empty street.
They checked into a hotel opposite. Frank bought two bottles of lemon Fanta from a dispensing machine at reception while Carla picked up the key.
Once in the room, Frank left the remaining bottle of Fanta, his loose change, and his keys together on a side table next to the bed.
Regarding their sex appeal, the two Italians each had a distinctive look, and bags of personality. And being from Italy, they must have been hit upon several times a day from every straight man they’d ever met, probably since the day they’d started kindergarten. Every Italian man, no matter what age; see’s himself as a randy teenager. That’s why both girls had thought Frank was gay. The alternative was too hard for them to accept. The idea that Frank, a healthy male, had failed to find either of them attractive.
Turned out, Carla was an extremely slow; almost painfully gentle partner, who approached lovemaking with Frank’s needs foremost in her mind. He doubted she could, or would want to sustain her admirable effort of that night, certainly not over a span of years in a long term relationship.
Next morning, Carla wanted to stay in the room until check out at noon. For two hours, she talked as if in confession about her relationship with Marcella, who it turned out was not such a close friend, Marcella was very tight with Carla’s elder sister.
Carla had lived in Firenze for ten years; she’d not seen a lot of her sister or Marcella during that time. When her sister had pulled out of the India / Tibet trip due to a sudden illness, Carla had taken her place at the last moment. That first time Frank had met them on the plane; the tense sniping between the two of them, had been down to them getting re-acquainted.
Carla was concerned about Marcella’s reaction to that night. Apparently, she’d been constantly talking about Frank. Since they’d met, she’d developed, something more than a crush on him, one that had gone unnoticed.
The lean Italian had constantly been putting herself down around Frank. She had a distorted image of her body, which was wiry, muscular and taut. Marcella claimed this was due to her background in dance. Her athletic vests exaggerated her image as a buff, competitive gymnast. She looked toned, and possibly bulked up on nandrolone supplements.
The main self put down she repeated often, was expressed by her in one short resigned sentence:
“I look like a man.”
Of course she’d been looking for reassurance each time she’d tossed that one out. Frank had failed to notice her neediness. They hadn’t spent much time together at that point, just a few nights. Marcella’s holiday infatuation with Frank seemed almost desperate; she was thirty five years old.
Carla was happy to stay in the room till noon, to delay meeting up with her passed over roommate, and what she anticipated, would be an icy reception.
Frank gathered the stuff he’d taken from his pockets the night before, and realised he was missing his keys. Carla was walking out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel as he asked her the question.
“Have you seen my keys? I left them on the table right here last night.”
“Keys? You mean the room keys?”
“No my keys”
I didn’t see them here; perhaps you left them up on the roof at the party.”
“No, I put them there last night. I left them on the table.”
Frank was down on his knees looking under the bed; Carla joined him, lifting up travel literature provided by the hotel, and then, half heartedly, she turned back the blankets and looked hopelessly under the pillows
Since opening a local bank account, and renting a safe deposit box, Frank had not had the tiresome trouble of keeping track of his passports, and money, everyplace he went. That’s why his keys and life support systems were the few things of value he constantly needed, the stuff he carried and monitored at all times.
The four keys attached to the ring opened Madhu’s shop door, and the upstairs room, along with the other two for his brother’s house. If he’d left them on the roof, Frank had been separated from them for the whole ten hours he’d spent with Carla.
With the keys unaccounted for, his imagination suddenly sped into warp drive.
Anyone with a sound knowledge of organic chemistry, and a burning need to know what Frank was up to, could bring his current adventure to a dead stop.
The idea that some friend of Carla’s from that party could lift his keys, and rummage through his business, while she kept him busy in a hotel, had him looking at the girls in a new light.
In another fifteen minutes they had to vacate the room, Carla told him she was off to search the roof across the street for his keys.
“I’ll be back soon; I know you left them up there last night.”
Sure enough, within ten minutes, she was back; waving the keys theatrically by the ring from her outstretched hand.
“You left them on top of the wall, right where you were standing at the party before we left.”
Glad to have them back in his hand, and one hundred percent convinced of Carla’s duplicity, Frank wouldn’t feel happy until he’d gotten back to Madhu’s, and had checked the rooms. His date talked him into joining her for a late breakfast at a nearby restaurant, making it perfectly clear; she’d have been pissed off if he’d left her at the first chance after spending the night with her.
Reluctantly, Frank went along, the breakfast lasted thirty minutes.
As he drank coffee, he regretted ever having set eyes on either of the girls. With nobody else in his life in Calcutta; those two now represented a grave threat to his achieving a lifelong ambition.
Twenty minutes after he left Carla, he was back above Madhu’s shop, and he knew the key had been used on the door since he’d left the previous evening.
Frank had a long standing habit of leaving his possessions in precise order before leaving any room he was renting, this had become well embedded, after finding with increasing dismay, almost every room he’d paid for in Asia was routinely snooped over by nosey landlords while he was out.
Finding if somebody has been into your room while you’ve been away is simple.
A small piece of folded paper wedged into the space between the door and the frame on the outside is effective. And if you leave objects at certain angles each time you go out. If someone has been looking through them, they won’t return them back in exactly the same position. After finding yourself the victim of a snooper, one quickly becomes used to the order of where property is left and stacked, any change after the habit sticks is easy to spot.
His landlord of course came to mind, though in the three months Frank had been above the shop, none of the traps he’d left had been tripped by either Madhu, or his wife.
When he’d checked, as far as he could see, the numerous triggers down at the house had not been disturbed.
The only suspects were the Italian camp. Those keys had left that hotel room during the hours when Frank had been knocked out on barbiturates.
There was nothing he could do about that right then, if he’d directly accused her, the situation would have degraded fast; Frank figured he’d be better off if he remained close to Carla.
Screaming she was a thief, a whore, and a liar, would have done nothing to alter the damage she’d already caused; and he’d have been cut off from finding anything about who she was, and all he needed to know about her in the future.
Until the girls were out of the way, Frank was happy to continue being a tourist.
The last batch he’d made for Vincent had been flown out to Copenhagen, and the house was as fully disinfected as he could get it. For the moment, he’d stopped breaking the law.
The girl’s were due another trip in a week. Cleaning up his room above the shop with a new bed and flattering lighting, would be a sound investment.
By making the room more acceptable for Carla to spend time in, he could reveal to her, a lifestyle that explained his odd but predictable routine.
Let her have full access to the room, drugs, needles, the heavy drinking, everything he knew that had already been uncovered. She’d be welcome to a look closely at his sordid habits, why not give her full license to pry? That’s what she wanted from him.
The drug tourist life he was leading above the grocery shop was clichéd. That room revealed he was abusing dope and booze while on holiday in India, hardly a reason to scream: Stop the Press.
Later, Frank walked up to the post office to phone Vincent, who was waiting at the arranged time at a payphone. Frank let him know he was taking time off to become invisible for a few weeks. He then went shopping for linen and lamps, before phoning Carla and arranging to meet up with her later that evening.
The following two nights were awkward. Marcella tagged along, an uneasy third partner. When the evenings were over, Carla left with Frank, while she slipped off, back to their rooms, alone.
A shift in Marcella’s attitude had pushed Carla closer to Frank. They began to spend more time together, sleeping each night since the rooftop party in Madhu’s freshly spruced up room, while Marcella increasingly spent more time hanging around with the spoiled gang from the Consul.
Frank quickly made a habit of spending too much time in the bathroom, and leaving Carla alone. He went shopping for half an hour after waking each morning, leaving each tiny scrap of information about his daily habits on display.
Several days after the party, the girl’s tour was back on, they were heading for a trek in the mountains, a trip to Nanital, followed by a jeep ride to Almora, the base for a bout of serious hill climbing.
Carla invited Frank to join them; her disappointment was real when he turned her down.
Trekking and the Italian girls were two more things Frank had crossed off his list of things to do in India.
If his work had been compromised, he had a few ideas where he could shift the operation to. There would always be prohibition to take advantage of.
To be able to walk away from one life with the ability to show up in another, that was his talent.
The morning Carla left on her trek, she’d sobbed on Frank’s shoulder, claiming to be broken up about letting this new relationship go.
There never had been a relationship; Carla had interrupted his life; and a thriving business with her meddling.
One result of Carla sleeping at Madhu’s each night, was the new interest this stirred in both of them.
Mr’s M, smiled at Frank, with no small hint of mischief. She was obviously excited at being on the periphery of his love life.
Walking past Madhu, and hearing his filthy comments after Carla became a regular visitor was pretty funny as well.
His landlord thought Frank had a good thing going on in the sex department; Madhu had no idea what he himself already had in his house with Mrs M.
The woman he shared a bed with, had one hell of a sex power stove up in the steaming healthy boiler of her body.
The stinking old goat had no need to look further than his wife for a good grind. She stank of sex. The old letch had been so close to her for so long, so tied up with her together in the shop; he couldn’t smell the thing wafting constantly around him, was what he so desperately wanted. It percolated under her dress, in between her legs. The dirty old fool was too busy lusting after other women; too busy envying their husband’s to see what he was missing out on in his own home.
Chapter Five
On the day she’d flown home to Italy, Carla had kissed Frank on both cheeks at the airport. After slipping a folded piece of paper into one of his palms, she’d whispered an invitation.
“Phone this number, if you come to Italy I can help you. Don’t carry anything illegal when you fly back to Europe, I can’t explain, I understand you not trusting me after what I did, I’ll do all I can to help you.”
And then her voice had cracked and she’d burst into tears. After loosened her grip, she walked a few steps, and then had fallen against Marcella. Holding on tightly, she’d been in immediate danger of falling over.
What had led her to such a state? And why had she left Frank with such a bizarre invitation?
That melt down at the airport hadn’t been the result of her regret, or her duplicity on the night of the party; she was trying to deal with something far darker on the day she’d returned home.
Why was she so desperate to make things right? They had no future. The claim she could help him in Italy seemed ridiculous. If she’d wanted to help, why did Frank have to travel to Italy? Then, despite being delighted to at last be rid of her, he carefully copied down her phone number into a notebook.
The night after Carla left, Frank’s life had come unstuck in spectacular fashion.
The evening had begun, when he’d gone to the General Post Office to phone Vincent at an arranged time.
When you made an international call from India, the caller had to give the number to a clerk at a Post Office, a deposit was handed over; the clerk then phoned the person on your behalf, while you waited in one of several wood and glass phone booths.
When the line was connected, the clerk would transfer the call to the box, and the phone inside would ring with an ear shredding noise. The length of the call was monitored, and the balance settled.
The clerk told Frank no one had answered, and he should perhaps try later.
Vincent always showed up on time for those regular calls, Frank knew something terrible had happened when he hadn’t shown up. Those days since he’d shut down the lab, the days with Carla, had been full of the darkest omens.
Frank passed over to the clerk a London number.
The lawyer was known to his friends as Stan. His real name was Peter Raymond; he was a partner of Frank and Vincent’s. Nobody knew why the nickname had stuck, it went right back to primary school, even Stan had forgotten how he’d originally gotten the name. Frank, Stan, and Vincent had grown up in London together; they’d been close since childhood.
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