JOHNNY GONE DOWN Read Free Page B

looked at me appreciatively. I was quick despite my arm. We had obviously been trained in the same school.
    ‘Can you help him out a bit?’ the handler said. ‘I need to check on a few other things. People should be arriving any moment now.’
    He walked towards the door.

    By the time Daya found the bump on the temple, he was sweating profusely, his hands clammy and unable to get a firm grip on the barrel. He looked down at himself in disgust.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ I told him. ‘You aren’t scared. It’s the heat in the room.’
    He looked at me gratefully.
    ‘They said you are from a big college like IIT, sahib,’ Daya said, once he had practised a few times with a firmer grip. ‘Is that true?’
    I winced. My absent arm began to hurt again, the same throbbing, phantom pain that had plagued me for years now.
    ‘MIT,’ I replied shortly. ‘It’s outside India. I was there a long time ago, but it doesn’t matter now.’
    ‘I am honoured to do this with you, sahib.’
    ‘Likewise,’ I said.
    ‘But I am no IIT graduate. I’m just a naukar in a big man’s house. Now that I am dying, who is going to take care of my family? This money will be like a lottery for us if I win. If I lose, nothing lost, I’m dying anyway.’ His face darkened. ‘They assured me that they will give the money immediately if I win - can I trust them?’
    I thought of Marco in the Jocinha favela of Rio de Janeiro, who had almost given up his life for me; good money thrown after bad.
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You can trust them with your life.’

    The audience, all of them men, began to stream in and the small, airless room turned stuffier and sweatier. They eyed Daya and me curiously as they gathered around the table, sweat glistening on their temples, starched shirts darkened from being in an unsavoury part of town, their faces flushed, either from the stifling Delhi summer or with barely contained excitement.
    That could have been me, I thought suddenly as I looked at the smartly-dressed, wealthy looking men. A few different turns and I could have been strolling in here on my way to a Bernard Shaw adaptation or a Beethoven rendition. But the old, naive me probably wouldn’t have believed that such a game could take place in Delhi - or anywhere outside Hollywood. Now, nothing surprised me. I had seen the best of human nature and the worst of it. I believed in the evil of man as much as I trusted in the good.
    A dark, well-dressed young man bumped against my chair. I looked up at him. Reflexively, he raised his right foot and rubbed it against his left pant sleeve. Polishing his shoes, I thought. What would he tell his young wife when he got back home? Honey, I forgot the onions because I bet fifty thousand rupees on someone blowing his brains out. What kindof emptiness made these men come here? How could you be so insulated from death that you had to seek it out? Our eyes met. I saw the gleam in his eyes and averted mine so he wouldn’t see the pity in them.

    The handler walked up to the table once the fifty-odd men in the audience had huddled around us.
    ‘Thank you for being here,’ he mumbled, looking uncomfortable at having to speak.
    The room fell silent as the suits moved closer, breathing down hard on our necks, a few spare drops of sweat splashing onto the table.
    ‘Move back, please,’ said the handler authoritatively.
    This was the kind of direction he was used to giving. The men complied immediately and shuffled back a few steps.
    ‘As you know, we have been trying to arrange this for a while,’ the handler continued. ‘Finally, I present before you two fearless men.’
    A smattering of applause broke out and seemed to unnerve the handler. The rest of his words came out in a jumbled heap. ‘The rules are simple. The revolver has six rounds, but only one bullet. The other five are blanks. One shoots at himself, passes the gun to the other who shoots at himself, and so on, until one of them falls. Someone could die