Free Shadow Play by Rajorshi Chakraborti Page A

realized they were speaking Portuguese I thought we might be somewhere in Africa, but then I asked the driver’s friend who was very courteous and open with me, just as Faisul of Brick Lane had been. He also informed me that the local time was three o’clock on Wednesday morning. Perhaps it was the policy of their organization to put forward such a face, or else it was one of the indulgent eccentricities of absolute power. As I sat in the back of the van, shaking my head, rotating my neck, and stretching my arms and legs which were sore as though they’d been tied, it was strange to ponder how Faisul had been in my Tooting room less than a week ago, and that the Wednesday before that I’d been waiting to meet him at Shoreditch station.
    There wasn’t much more to recall: I’d calmly submitted to the three men waiting for me when I returned to the main road after spending the night in that demolition site. Even though I’d spotted them from some distance away and it was morning, I behaved as though I expected them there, and couldn’t imagine running a second time. Without a word I had got into the back of the white van whose door they held open. Later, in a roomwithout windows, I was injected twice in the left arm, and must have fallen asleep. I awoke in another van in Brazil.
    Foolish thoughts coursed through my mind: I wondered what the landlady would decide about me. She was used to my quietness and my disappearances, but would she inform the police when I didn’t show up on the third for our usual cup of tea and cake over the rent? I thought about the faces at The Three Bells and how they would respond to any inquiries. It had not taken long for me to be accepted once they’d actually approached me, and soon I felt just as easy about sitting at the bar and listening to their chat as I did about taking my drink to the conservatory area to be alone. In either case my next pint was poured and waiting whenever I was ready for it. The discussions I participated most often in were about cricket, and that was only when something reminded me of an incident or a player from the seventies or earlier. Most of the other things that occurred to me to remark on during pub conversations were to do with minor changes I’d noticed on my walks through different parts of London, and occasionally I contributed an observation I found relevant, about a new supermarket appearing or a building being demolished, a shop changing hands or new kinds of people I had noted in a particular area. What these aroused was astonishment at my habits, because I spoke in detail of neighbourhoods that were as unseen and far off to those around me as India or Brazil would have been. For a brief time this tendency even earned me the nickname of ‘Postman Pat’.
    I thought then of Patty: would she worry or would she swear off and dismiss me? For three years she had been the reason my pints were always ready, and it was nearly two months since I first took her home after hours. Now, as we drove insilence, I recalled images of Patty astride me, which alternated with those of her face in close-up as we kissed, and Patty as she prepared breakfast in my kitchen, standing over my cooker in her underwear with the radio on, with as much command as when she presided over her bar.
    I was surprised to find myself close to tears. I realized I was drawing strength from the fact that someone who had chosen to remain friendly with me despite my silences for three years would not dismiss me immediately from her feelings. I wished I had not been so self-absorbed over the last fortnight, that I had left her with at least some indication of my plans. But what could I have revealed that didn’t involve revealing more, and that wouldn’t have surfaced once the police were called in?
    Yet Patty was the only person who would have been satisfied with a word. She never inquired about my past, never a question about why I