"How long will you stay in Bombay?" he asked, without looking at me.

"I don't know. It's funny, everyone seems to ask me that in the last few days."

"You have already stayed longer than the usual. Most people cannot depart the city too quickly."

"There's a guide, Prabaker's his name, do you know him?"

"Prabaker Kharre? The big smile?"

"That's him. He's been showing me around for weeks now. I've seen all the temples and museums and art galleries, and a lot of the bazaars. From tomorrow morning he's promised to show me something of the other side of the city-the really city, he called it. He made it sound interesting. I'll stick around for that, and make my mind up then where I want to go next. I'm in no hurry."

"It's a very sad thing, to be in no hurry, and I would not be so free in admitting it, if I were you," he said, still staring at the bottle. When he wasn't smiling his face looked flabby, slack, and pallid grey. He was unwell, but it was the kind of unwell you have to work at. "We have a saying in Marseilles: a man in no hurry gets nowhere fast. I have been in no hurry for eight years."

Suddenly his mood changed. He poured a splash from the bottle, looked at me with a smile, and raised his glass.

"So, let's drink! To Bombay, a fine place to be in no hurry! And to civilised policemen, who will accept a bribe, in the interests of the order, if not of the law. To _baksheesh!"

"I'll drink to that," I said, clattering my glass against his in the toast. "So, tell me, Didier, what keeps you here in Bombay?"

"I am French," he replied, admiring the dew on his half-raised glass, "I am gay, I am Jewish, and I am a criminal, more or less in that order. Bombay is the only city I have ever found that allows me to be all four of those things, at the same time."

We laughed, and drank, and he turned his gaze on the wide room, his hungry eyes finally coming to rest on a group of Indian men who sat near one of the entrances. He studied them for a while, sipping slowly at his drink.

"Well, if you decide to stay, you have picked a good time for it.

This is a time of changes. Great changes. You see those men, eating foods with such strong appetite? They are Sainiks, workers for the Shiv Sena. Hatchet men, I think, is the charming English political phrase. Your guide, has he told you of the Sena?"

"No, I don't think so."

"A conscious lapse, I would say. The Shiv Sena Party is the face of the future in Bombay. Perhaps their mode and their politique is the future everywhere."

"What kind of politics?"

"Oh, regional, language-based, ethnic, us-against-them," he replied, sneering cynically as he ticked each characteristic off on the fingers of his left hand. They were very white, soft hands. His long fingernails were black with dirt under the edges.

"The politics of fear. I hate politics, and politicians even more. They make a religion of being greedy. It's unforgivable. A man's relationship to his greed is a deeply personal thing, don't you think? The Shiv Sena controls the police, because they are a Maharashtrian party, and most of the lower ranks of the police are Maharashtrians. They control a lot of the slums, too, and many of the unions, and some of the press. They have everything, in fact, except the money. Oh, they have the support of the sugar barons, and some of the merchants, but the real money-the industrial money and the black money-that is in the hands of the Parsees and the Hindus from other cities in India and, most hated of all, the Muslims. And here is the struggle, the guerre economique, the truth behind their talk of race and language and region. They are changing the city, a little less and a little more every day. Even the name has been changed, from Bombay to Mumbai. They haven't managed to change the maps, yet, but they will do it. And they will do almost anything, join with almost anyone, in their quest. There are opportunities. Fortunes. Just in the last few months some Sainiks-oh, not the public ones, not the highly placed ones- made a deal with Rafiq and his Afghans and the police. In exchange for certain cash and concessions, the police closed down all but a few of the opium dens in the city. Dozens of the finest smoking parlours, places that have served the community for generations, were closed in a single week. Closed forever!

Normally, I do not interest myself in the pigsty of politics, or in the slaughterhouse of big business, for that matter. The only force more ruthless and cynical than the business of big politics is the politics of big business. But this is big politics and big business together, in the destruction of the opium smoking, and I am incensed! I ask you, what is Bombay without its chandu-its opium-and its opium dens? What is the world coming to? It's a disgrace!"

I watched the men he'd described, as they concentrated with energetic single-mindedness on their meal. The table was heaped with platters of rice, chicken, and vegetable dishes. None of the five men spoke, nor did they so much as look at one another as they ate, bending low to their plates and scooping the food into their mouths rapidly.

"That's a pretty good line," I commented, grinning widely. "The one about the business of big politics, and the politics of big business. I like it."

"Ah, my dear friend, I cannot claim it as my own. It was Karla who said it to me the first time, and I have used it ever since.

I am guilty of many crimes-of most crimes, to say the truth-but I have never claimed a cleverness that was not my own."

"Admirable," I laughed.

"Well," he puffed, "a man has to draw the line somewhere.

Civilisation, after all, is defined by what we forbid, more than what we permit."

He paused, drumming the fingers of his right hand on the cold marble table top. After a few moments, he glanced around at me.

"That is one of mine," he said, apparently peeved that I hadn't drawn attention to the phrase. When I didn't react, he spoke again. "About the civilisation... it was one of mine."

"And damn clever," I responded quickly.

"Nothing at all," he said modestly, then he caught my eye, and we both laughed out loud.

"What was in it for Rafiq, if you don't mind my asking. That stuff about closing all the opium dens. Why did he go along with it?" "Go along with it?" Didier frowned, "Why, it was his idea. There is more money to be made from garad-brown sugar heroin-than there is from opium. And now everyone, all the poor who were chandu smokers, they have become garad smokers. Rafiq controls the garad, the brown sugar. Not all of it, of course. No one man controls all the thousands of kilos of brown sugar that come from Afghanistan, through Pakistan, into India. But a lot of it is his, a lot of the Bombay brown heroin. This is big money, my friend, big money."

"Why did the politicians go along with it?"

"Ah, it is not only brown sugar and hashish that comes from Afghanistan into India," he confided, lowering his voice and speaking from the corner of his mouth once more. "There are guns, heavy weapons, explosives. The Sikhs are using these weapons now, in Punjab, and the Muslim separatists in Kashmir. There are weapons, you see. And there is power, the power to speak for many of the poor Muslims who are the enemies of the Shiv Sena. If you control one trade, the drugs, you can influence the other, the guns. And the Sena Party is desperate to control the flow of guns into their state, their Maharashtra. Money and power. Look there, at the table next to Rafiq and his men. You see the three Africans, two men and a woman?"

"Yes. I noticed her before. She's very beautiful."

Her young face, with its prominent cheekbones, softly flared nose, and very full lips, looked as if it had been carved in volcanic stone by the rush of a river. Her hair was braided into a multitude of long, fine, beaded plaits. She laughed, sharing a joke with her friends, and her teeth gleamed large and perfectly white.