Narcopolis

My neighbour said, Please wait. She took a notebook and pen from her purse. My son is interested in US for higher studies. What are the details of your visa, please? She waited with pen poised but Xavier didn’t reply. He was immobile, looking glassily in her direction. There was silence for four or five seconds. Then a single high-pitched snort burst from his mouth: he was sitting upright with his eyes open, but he was asleep. Several voices started up at once. Suddenly, it seemed, everybody had a question for Xavier. Iskai made his closing remarks but an elderly man stood up in the front row, and, by force of will, made himself audible above the crowd. His question was punctuated by Xavier’s distinctive snore.

‘Forster said patriotism was the last refuge of scoundrels. Johnson said he would rather betray his country than betray a friend. Yeats said the worst are filled with passionate intensity. Your early paintings eschewed patrilineal posturing for flat evocation. In this light, I find your anti-citizenship stance simply unconvincing. If US citizenship doesn’t matter, why not take it up? My question, therefore, is two-part. Aren’t you pandering to the home crowd when you make such statements? And, connectedly, have you taken a position vis-à-vis recent developments in that most programmatic of all states, the Soviet Union?’

Iskai said, ‘Newton?’

Xavier got to his feet, said, ‘Yes, such as it is,’ and fell backwards into the arms of the peon, who lowered him gently to his chair. Then he said, ‘It is only now that I know what colour means.’

‘What does it mean?’ asked the short man at the back.

‘What?’

‘You said it’s only now that you know what colour means.’

Xavier looked at the man for the first time.

‘Colour is a way of speaking, not seeing. Poets need colour, and musicians too. But painters should forget it. Colour, if you don’t mind me saying so, is a crutch, like the necessity of God. For some nineteenth-century European painters, the absence of God was as intolerable as the absence of colour. They used the entire spectrum for every negligible little thing, a rain-slicked street, a house on a cliff, boats on a lake. I’m sorry to say it makes little or no sense for a painter in Bombay or Delhi or Bhopal to use a similar approach. Where’s the context? If you want to make something genuine in this climate you have to think about indolence and brutality. Also: unintentional comedy. But there’s no use saying this to you. You’ll only misunderstand and misquote me, and I will end up sounding pompous or foolish, which is really the same thing.’

Iskai said the meeting was over. He said Xavier would not be signing books. He thanked the audience and pointed them to the exit. People talked among themselves and nobody got up to leave. Even the elderly critic in the front row seemed satisfied. Xavier hadn’t let them down.

*

I sat where I was. I’d had a long and exhausting day. I’d just begun work at a pharmaceutical company where my job was to proofread the house newsletter. It was dull business. I spent long hours correcting articles on the umbrella benefits of broad-spectrum antibiotics, or the latest research in the treatment of fungal complaints. But the job put me in lovely proximity to high-grade narcotics. I had access to government-controlled morphine, to sleeping pills, painkillers, synthetic opiates, to all kinds of fierce prescription downers. That morning, unable to stop by Rashid’s on my way to work, I’d taken two strips of Prodom from the shop stores. They were a miracle cure for whatever ailed you, two pills and you were staggering around as if you’d been drinking vodka all morning. It helped me forget that I was opium sick. Later I stopped at Rashid’s for an hour and made it to PEN in time for the reading. With the downers and a pipe of O under my belt I was numb, if not rubbery. I wasn’t as wasted as Xavier, but I was in the same neighbourhood. When I opened my eyes, I saw I was the only audience member still in the hall. Xavier was asleep in a wheelchair and Iskai spoke to him in a low monotone. Nobody noticed except Madame Blavatsky, whose eyes followed me around the room.

‘Come on now, Newton, do wake up. I promised to get you home in one piece. I know you can hear me, so wake up, old boy, it’s a question of will.’ When he saw me getting to my feet, he said, ‘Look, could you help me out? The bloody peon has disappeared: it’s probably past his official working hours. Would you mind taking Mr Xavier down while I go and find a taxi?’

I agreed, of course, and pushed the wheelchair with the still-unconscious Xavier out of the building to the gate. But when the wheelchair stopped, he opened his eyes. He was perfectly composed.

‘Okay, thanks. I’m assuming Akash left you here to look after me, but why aren’t you looking for a taxi?’

‘Mr Iskai went to find one.’

‘That might take all night. Let’s go.’