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world-wide congress of ball-bearings
manufacturers in Gothenburg, Sweden, and in his absence she invited Gibreel
into her apartment of stone lattices from Jaisalmer and carved wooden handrails
from Keralan palaces and a stone Mughal chhatri or cupola turned into a
whirlpool bath; while she poured him French champagne she leaned against
marbled walls and felt the cool veins of the stone against her back. When he
sipped the champagne she teased him, surely gods should not partake of alcohol,
and he answered with a line he had once read in an interview with the Aga Khan,
O, you know, this champagne is only for outward show, the moment it touches my
lips it turns to water. After that it didn't take long for her to touch his
lips and deliquesce into his arms. By the time her children returned from
school with the ayah she was immaculately dressed and coiffed, and sat with him
in the drawing-room, revealing the secrets of the carpet business, confessing
that art silk stood for artificial not artistic, telling him not to be fooled
by her brochure in which a rug was seductively described as being made of wool
plucked from the throats of baby lambs, which means, you see, only low-grade
wool , advertising, what to do, this is how it is.
               
He did not love her, was not faithful to her, forgot her birthdays, failed to
return her phone calls, turned up when it was most inconvenient owing to the
presence in her home of dinner guests from the world of the ball-bearing, and
like everyone else she forgave him. But her forgiveness was not the silent,
mousy let-off he got from the others. Rekha complained like crazy, she gave him
hell, she bawled him out and cursed him for a useless lafanga and haramzada and
salah and even, in extremis, for being guilty of the impossible feat of fucking
the sister he did not have. She spared him nothing, accusing him of being a
creature of surfaces, like a movie screen, and then she went ahead and forgave
him anyway and allowed him to unhook her blouse. Gibreel could not resist the
operatic forgiveness of Rekha Merchant, which was all the more moving on
account of the flaw in her own position, her infidelity to the ball-bearing
king, which Gibreel forbore to mention, taking his verbal beatings like a man.
So that whereas the pardons he got from the rest of his women left him cold and
he forgot them the moment they were uttered, he kept coming back to Rekha, so
that she could abuse him and then console him as only she knew how.
               
Then he almost died.
               
He was filming at Kanya Kumari, standing on the very tip of Asia, taking part
in a fight scene set at the point on Cape Comorin where it seems that three
oceans are truly smashing into one another. Three sets of waves rolled in from
the west east south and collided in a mighty clapping of watery hands just as
Gibreel took a punch on the jaw, perfect timing, and he passed out on the spot,
falling backwards into tri-oceanic spume. He did not get up.
               
To begin with everybody blamed the giant English stunt-man Eustace Brown, who
had delivered the punch. He protested vehemently. Was he not the same fellow
who had performed opposite Chief Minister N. T. Rama Rao in his many
theological movie roles? Had he not perfected the art of making the old man
look good in combat without hurting him? Had he ever complained that NTR never
pulled his punches, so that he, Eustace, invariably ended up black and blue,
having been beaten stupid by a little old guy whom he could've eaten for
breakfast, on toast , and had he ever, even once, lost his temper? Well,
then? How could anyone think he would hurt the immortal Gibreel?―They
fired him anyway and the police put him in the lock-up, just in case.
               
But it was not the punch that had flattened Gibreel. After the star had been
flown into Bombay's Breach Candy Hospital in an Air Force jet made available
for the purpose; after