Venom, page 15
Still, he was not by nature a cruel man, and he didn’t enjoy seeing another man suffer. He turned to one of the crewmen who had dragged Michel up from the holds. ‘Give him some water,’ he said.
The man went out and returned a few moments later with a metal cup. He held Michel's head back and tipped the water into his mouth. He spluttered and coughed as it went down his throat, but it revived him a little.
♦ ♦ ♦
Michel looked up into the unsmiling face of Captain Parwit. It seemed to float in the air above his head, the round apple cheeks the color of burnished bronze. Michel tried to speak, but the words would not come out.
‘You are a stowaway,’ Captain Parwit said slowly, in halting English.
Michel shook his head desperately. He recognized the three crewmen who had done this to him. He had seen them every day of the voyage. He had seen the captain perhaps only twice, but the captain had certainly seen him. They knew he wasn't a stowaway.
Perhaps he had caught a fever. In a moment he would wake up and the terrible dream would end.
‘You are a stowaway,’ Captain Parwit repeated.
‘No,’ Michel croaked. ‘My ... my father. He paid ... for my tickets ... in Saigon.’
‘What is your father's name?’
‘Krisnan . . . Joginder Krisnan,’ Michel said. His head ached. It felt as if it were splitting apart.
‘I know nobody of that name. Where are your papers?’
‘In my cabin ...’
‘You do not have a cabin. You are a stowaway.’
‘But my father ...’ Michel began, and stopped. In that moment he saw it all with blinding absolute clarity.
‘You are a stowaway,’ Captain Parwit repeated. ‘I must hand you over to the authorities in Bombay. Do you understand?’
‘How much did … my father pay you?’
‘I don't know what you're talking about. Take him up. The police launch will be alongside any moment.’
Michel went for him, or he would have done if he had the strength left in his body. But it wasn't the Thai captain he imagined in front of him, it was the tailor. He wanted to tear his throat out with his teeth. As it was the crewmen grabbed him easily before he could reach the captain and then kicked him till he lay still.
White-faced and trembling, Captain Parwit got to his feet. ‘Take him away,’ he said. ‘Quickly. He's a madman.’
♦ ♦ ♦
Michel smelled the Port of Bombay jail long before he first saw it.
He was handcuffed to three other men, all Indians, in the back of a prison van. Through the mesh grille of the rear window he stared at the press of traffic as it honked and jostled; the ox-carts, buses, cyclists, trucks and battered hand carts competing with the yells of the balloon sellers and the chants of the saddhus.
Over it all hung the sour odor of decay and stale urine.
The man at his side nudged him. ‘That is the prison,’ he said, grinning, revealing the brown stumps that were all that remained of his teeth.
‘Oh God.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing,’ Michel said. ‘My father ...’ he stopped, still too bitter to recount the betrayal. ‘I have no papers.’
The Indian rubbed his fingers together in a pantomime of counting notes. ‘You have money?’
‘I have two thousand piastres.’
‘Piastres? What are they?’
‘It’s Vietnamese money.’
The other man laughed. He turned to the others and said something in Hindi. They laughed as well.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Keep the money. It will be very useful. For lighting a fire, perhaps!’ He laughed again; he was starting to get on Michel’s nerves. ‘Unless you have rupees or American money you might as well have nothing.’
Michel kicked the side of the van in fury. ‘The bastard! When I get my hands on him, I'll cut out his liver and shove it down his fucking throat!’
‘If you get out, my friend,’ the man said quietly.
‘What do you mean, if? I'm only a stowaway. They'll ship me back to Vietnam, won't they?’
‘First you must be brought to trial.’
‘What?’
‘You should have murdered someone,’ he said. ‘Like I did. It would have been easier for you.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Take a last glimpse at the world, friend.’
‘How long will they give me?’
‘Six months. But that is not the problem. As I said, first you must get to court.’
‘So?’
‘You do not understand. To get to court you need a lawyer. Lawyers must be paid. Without a lawyer you can wait a very long time for justice in India. Perhaps you will rot and die in jail. Many do. Who will care?’-
He was right. Who would care? No one.
No one.
Chapter 17
Port of Bombay Prison
Mud walls the color of mustard, vultures squatting in grotesque malevolence, preening grease-black feathers and craning their pork-pink necks into the compound at the shuffling and miserable humanity below. A pall of dust clung to the scorched air. Women clustered around the medieval wooden gates, clutching pannikins of curries and boiled rice and dried fruits while the guards, in their shabby dun-colored uniforms, looked on, silent, bearded, unmoved.
Andrew Rosen sat in the shade outside the mud hut in the ‘Western section’ listening to the footfall of the guard on the wall. Lank blond hair curled around his shoulders, and his thin goatee beard accentuated, rather than disguised, his youthfulness. He was pale and thin; the filthy, embroidered shirt he wore had been bought in a bazaar in Kabul.
He had been in Bombay prison for seven months, ever since he had been arrested on the street, buying hashish from a snaggle-toothed Indian boy, a police informer. He had sent an urgent telegram to his father in San Francisco.
This time his father had refused to bail him out.
Jack Rosen had wanted his son to go into the family business, become the third generation of Rosen Marine. Instead Andy had grown his hair, dropped out of high school, and played Rolling Stones and Beatles records day and night. One night, Rosen Senior told his indolent son to get out of the house. He probably hadn’t mean it, but two days later young Andy was gone. It had been the first time in a very long while that he had obeyed one of his father’s instructions.
Jack did not hear from his son again until he received a postcard picture of the Parthenon. There was one word scrawled on the back. It said: ‘Athens’.
Two weeks later Andy wrote again. He was in prison in Istanbul. He needed money.
Twice more, in Tehran and Kabul, Rosen had bought his errant son out of trouble. Each time he had extracted written promises that Andy would use the rest of the money to buy an air ticket back to the United States. Instead Andy just kept going further along the pot trail across Asia.
This time he had decided to teach his son a lesson.
Andy had accepted his punishment with equanimity. He knew that finally, when his father considered he had done a suitable penance, he would get him out.
He always did.
Now he watched with idle curiosity as the new prisoner was led across the compound, escorted by two khaki-clad soldiers. He was tall, with shoulder-length blond hair - black roots though - and startling brown eyes that didn’t quite match. His clothes - a Western-style T-shirt and blue denim jeans - were ragged and filthy, but the man who wore them had a panther-like grace about him. He looked around at his new surroundings with an arrogant calm.
Even when the two guards pitched him forward onto the skillet-hard earth, he seemed unperturbed. He got nimbly to his feet and brushed off his filthy and sweat-stained clothes as if brushing a little dust from his tuxedo.
‘Welcome to the Bombay Hilton,’ Andy said.
‘Thanks. I won't be staying long.’
The young American laughed. ‘Andy Rosen.’ He held out a pale, bony hand.
‘Michel.’ For the first time Michel used the surname he had discovered just two weeks ago. ‘Michel Christian.’
‘You're French?’
‘My mother was.’ Michel looked at the Sikh guard in his puttees, patrolling the five-meter-high wall above them, an ancient Enfield carbine slung over his shoulder. ‘What’s the best way out of here?’
Andy followed his gaze to the wall. ‘Think you can jump that high?’
‘There are other ways,’ Michel said.
‘Sure. You can buy your way out. Or die. What are you in for?’
‘They say I'm a stowaway.’
‘That's not too bad. You have money?’
‘Not enough.’
‘Then you must get some. Where are your family?’
‘I don’t have a family.’
‘There must be someone. Everyone has a family.’
‘No. I have no one.’
‘Then you're a dead man, pal.’
Michel did not seem to be listening. He seemed to be measuring the distance between the hut and the prison wall. He could hear the bazaaris haggling in the market just on the other side.
‘How far is it to the wall?’
‘Who cares?’
‘It cannot be more than twenty meters.’
‘Go anywhere near that wall and they'll shoot you down like a dog.’
‘No, they won't, because they won't see me.’
‘Why? Are you going to make yourself invisible?’
‘No,’ Michel said. ‘I'm going to dig a tunnel.’
♦ ♦ ♦
There were two prisoners sharing the hut; another American and a French-Canadian. Freak had been a freshman at UCLA when the Beatles held the first five positions on the US Billboard charts and the US Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Soon after, he discovered acid and the Rolling Stones, grew his hair, dropped out of college, and went to live in Haight-Ashbury. In 1965 he had been drafted into the US army. In 1966 he lost his right arm below the elbow just north of Da Nang.
He had developed a taste for the strong Afghan hash he bribed the guards to smuggle into his cell. Most days he drifted in and out of a psychedelic haze, mumbling unintelligibly into his beard.
The French-Canadian was known as Belmondo. His real name was Serge Duval, but he had earned his nickname because of his resemblance to the French actor of the same name. He claimed to own a two-story house in Quebec and somehow managed to retain an appearance of sartorial elegance. It was an illusion of personality, for his silk shirt was ripped under each arm and his cream cotton slacks were dirt-smeared and patched.
He had been arrested by the Indian police for fraud. When they had opened his luggage at Bombay airport they had found twenty-three passports.
He was scornful when Michel told him about his plan. ‘Fou!’ he said, in French. ‘The earth, here … see! It is baked hard.’ He beat his hand on the floor to emphasize his point. ‘You might as well try to dig through solid rock with your fingernails!’
‘I didn't ask if you thought it was possible,’ Michel said calmly. ‘Only if you wanted to help.’
‘Mais non! I have bribed a lawyer to get me out of here. Why risk everything on a craziness like this?’
Michel turned to Freak, who was rocking gently on his heels in the corner. Michel said, in English: ‘I'm going to dig a tunnel from the corner of the hut under the wall and into the bazaar. Do you understand?’
Freak giggled and waved the stump of his arm at him. ‘No shit.’
‘Do you want to help?’
Freak continued to rock back and forward, back and forward. Andy tugged at Michel's sleeve. ‘You won't get any sense out of him tonight. We'll talk to him in the morning.’
Michel shrugged. ‘All right.’ He held out his hand. ‘Give me your spoon.’
‘My spoon?’
‘I need something to dig with.’
Belmondo leaned his head against the wall and guffawed. ‘A spoon! Magnifique! By the time you reach the wall they'll have to get you out of the hole in a wheelchair!’
Michel ignored him. ‘The spoon.’
Andy unwrapped his flimsy bundle of possessions and handed Michel his metal spoon. He had paid one of the guards a ghusa - a bribe - to buy it for him in the bazaar. He didn’t want to part with it but he didn’t see how he could say no.
Michel went to the far corner of the hut and began to scrape at the dirt.
‘Give him an hour,’ Belmondo said to Andy, ‘he'll have had enough. Then we'll have enough talk about tunnels. Imbecile!’
But Belmondo had underestimated his man. As he dug, Michel thought of Joginder and Adrienne. With each scrape of the brick-hard earth he made a silent promise that they would both live to regret what they had done to him.
It was that thought that gave him strength.
He dug all through the night, waiting when the guard's footsteps came close, then beginning again as soon as the steady tramp-tramp continued along the wall. He kept working until the first light.
When Belmondo and Andy woke, they found that Michel had dug down almost three feet. ‘Four days,’ he beamed triumphantly. ‘Four days and we'll be out of here.’
‘If the guards find the hole we're all for it!’ Belmondo said, staring at the hole open-mouthed. ‘He is going to ruin everything for me!’
Michel looked up at Belmondo with candid amusement. ‘They will not find it. We will cover it with our sleeping mats.’
‘What about the dirt? What will you do? Leave it in a pile outside the hut and hope no one will notice?’
‘No,’ Michel answered, his tone sweetly reasonable. ‘We will spread it over the floor of the hut. We can take the big rocks to the outhouse toilet inside our shirts and empty them there.’
Andy smiled. It occurred to him that Michel's plan might work.
Belmondo hauled Michel to his feet. ‘Enough! You will not endanger me with your stupid tunnel!’
‘I think you should let go of me,’ Michel said.
‘What if I don’t, you scrawny little gook?’
Michel’s knee jerked into Belmondo's groin and his hands moved so swiftly Andy did not even see the blows. Suddenly Belmondo lay flat on his back, thick blood oozing from his nose and teeth.
Belmondo put a hand to his mouth and found one of his front teeth in his palm. ‘Bordel de merde … what … what have you done?’
‘Don’t ever touch me again,’ Michel said. He bent down, his voice low and chill. ‘I'm getting out of here. And nothing is going to stop me.’
♦ ♦ ♦
Freak sat outside the door of the hut, playing his bongo drums to cover the noise of the excavation taking place inside. Andy went inside with a pannikin of slimy rice and a half-raw chapati. Michel's feet protruded just out of the hole.
Andy knelt down and tapped him on the ankle. ‘Michel. Here, you gotta eat.’
He helped Michel haul himself out of the hole. He had toiled for almost eighteen hours without a break.
Michel took the rice from him and wolfed it down. ‘Are you coming with me?’
‘If I don't, the guards will beat the shit out of the rest of us. Yes, why not?’
‘What about the other two?’
‘The hippy wants in. But I haven't seen your friend Belmondo since this morning.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I don't know. Probably still sulking because you bruised his pretty face. Where did you learn to fight like that?’
‘At school.’
‘At school?’
Michel wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I went to a very tough school. It was as big as a city and everyone was a teacher. It was called Cholon.’
Andy looked at the hole. He couldn’t believe how big it was getting. Michel’s determination astonished him. ‘You must want to get out pretty bad.’
‘Oh, yes, I want to get out very badly. There is someone I have to see again. Every day away is a day too long.’
‘A girl?’
‘No. My father.’
‘Your old man?’
‘Yes, my old man. He is in Saigon, right now, fucking his yellow whores and counting his money and laughing at the way he tricked me. He put me on a boat and paid the captain to turn me in as a stowaway. He thinks he has got rid of me.’
‘Jesus, man. This is a joke, right?’
‘Yes, it's a sort of joke. On me. But when I get out of here the joke will not be so funny anymore. Because I'm going to kill him.’
The tap-tap of the drums stopped abruptly. It was their warning signal. Freak had spotted a guard heading their way.
‘Shit,’ Andy murmured.
Michel was on his feet in an instant, spreading his bamboo sleeping mat across the hole in the floor. Andy went to the doorway, thinking to stall the guard somehow. He didn't get more than a couple of paces. The chief head warden and •two guards burst in and one of the guards shoved Andy off his feet with the butt of his rifle.
Michel was already squatting on the mat, the pannikin and spoon in his lap. He took a spoonful of rice, looked up at the warden and offered him a beatific smile.
‘Where is it?’ the warden growled, in English.
‘I don't understand,’ Michel said.
The warden looked at the bamboo mat and kicked Michel off it. Then he bent down and whipped it away with a flick of his wrist. The dark mouth of the hole yawned back at him.
Michel hawked the phlegm from deep in his throat and spat on the floor. ‘Belmondo.’
‘Oh, Jesus Christ,’ Andy whispered and then the first boot thumped into his stomach.
♦ ♦ ♦
The chief head warden was a tall, ramrod-straight Sikh. He wore the uniform of a major in the Indian army. He had a full and luxurious beard, and all the arrogance of a career officer sent to exile in a demeaning job. He prided himself that no one had ever escaped from the prison while he had been the warden, and the discovery of the tunnel had outraged him.
He was deeply offended that this half caste and his friends might even think of disgracing him in such a manner. He had the guards drag all three of them into his office.
