The Opium Prince Read online

  Daniel’s house was at the end of the street, villas rising on either side, five in all. Beyond were hills, slopes of barren land. The street had no name, but some people called it Dollar Djinn Lane—djinns were mischievous, powerful spirits, and only supernatural beings could make people so rich even in dollars. It was easier to be a millionaire in the local currency, after all. A million afghanis was only about eleven thousand dollars. The residents of Dollar Djinn Lane were referred to as “American millionaires,” though they were mainly locals, Daniel the only one with an American parent.

  He had known most of his neighbors since he was a boy. Their parents still lived with them in their childhood homes, because their fathers were alive and their mothers hadn’t left them. The Nesbars, who were bankers, lived diagonally across from Daniel and Rebecca, three generations under one roof. Daniel passed the lavish home of the Yusafzais, the heirs to a carpet empire. The elderly patriarchs would have known Sayed, but Sayed didn’t have friends so much as followers, a role that didn’t suit everyone. A few houses down lived a government official, a known Communist whose thirteen-year-old son, Keshmesh, had become buddies with Daniel.

  Like on every night, lepers lined the walls around every house on the block. Where their noses and fingertips should have been, there were red scabs and large open sores that loomed large in Daniel’s vision, as if his sense of sight had grown sharper after its catastrophic failure on the road. The lepers looked at the flies on their ruined fingers the same way they looked at the world around them, like there was nothing they could do about it.

  The line was longest at the Silver Skewer Shack, as everyone jokingly called the house of the city’s premier restaurateurs, the Kherzadas, who dealt in everything from sidewalk snacks to white-tablecloth veal. Their lights were always on, as if they expected an emergency to strike at least one of their establishments every night.

  At last, Daniel arrived home. A chorus of notes escaped through the open window. Rebecca had started her Beethoven. She’d begun practicing this piece a few weeks before the accident. Outside his walled property, the stench of urine overpowered the fragrance of the lilac trees, and through the courtyard gate, Rebecca’s Ford gleamed under the moonlight. Its German companion was somewhere else, being repaired.

  Ahmad, the housekeeper, appeared. He was carrying a cooler, and the cook behind him had a basket of naan that hid his face. They were enacting a nightly ritual, feeding the lepers. Ahmad greeted Daniel and held open the gate for him, but he didn’t enter. An urchin suddenly emerged from the men along the wall. He was untouched by disease, all his limbs as they should be, a look of mischief on his face. He could have been a boy in any neighborhood, and Daniel wondered if he was Taj’s lookout. The child broke into a run toward the hills. Daniel dropped his briefcase and followed, but when he turned the corner and peered into the emptiness beyond, the boy had vanished. The sonata from his house seemed to get louder and louder.

  When Daniel headed into the hills, it was not because he wanted to find the boy. It was because he didn’t want to stop. He walked quickly and then began to run through the dark, fallow land toward the horizon, aimless and unstoppable.

  Telaya’s eyes shone in the night. I am faster than you.

  Daniel thought of the Yassaman boy rotting among the poppies. He wondered why the boy left him in peace, but the girl did not.

  Look up, she said.

  Telaya was in her mirrored red dress, holding her doll as she ran ahead of him through the desert.

  Now.

  Her voice was soft.

  Please.

  Why didn’t she see that there was no cause to plead? He saw her. He always saw her. He saw nothing else—not the desert camp behind her or the sky above, not the tents or the road or her parents—because her face filled his vision. He could make out every detail of it: her unlined skin, her eyes marred by crimson blood vessels, her pupils like dark tunnels.

  “Turn back,” he told her. “Go home.”

  His voice was hoarse like an old man’s. He fled into the wind-burnished night.

  Goodbye

  Boy pushes off the blanket and gets up when it’s still dark because it’s too cold to sleep. He loosens the ties at the front of the tent and pops his head out to look at the sky. It’s morning. Ice hangs from everything: the pointy black trees, the rich man’s roof, the poles that hold up his tent. He feels the cold on his face and pulls his head back in.

  Last night he tore a hole in his wool jacket, just under the left armpit. He was pretending he was a bird flapping its wings, to make Mother laugh, and he raised his arms too high. He decides he will surprise her by fixing the coat himself. She’s still sleeping. As quietly as he can, he opens her box of sewing things. Boy sees well in the dark, so he’s able to cut off a length of thread with his teeth and carefully push it through the needle’s eye. Sitting cross-legged next to Mother, listening to her breathe, he smooths the coat across his lap, struggling to keep it still as he starts sewing. It takes longer than he thought it would, and he worries that he won’t finish before she wakes up. He works faster, hurting himself with the needle and sucking on his fingers so the blood won’t drip onto the shiny black coat. The stitches aren’t pretty like when Mother sews, but she will still be proud of him.

  She is still sleeping when he hears the rich family start their day. Like almost every morning, the girls come out of the house fighting about something. In her high voice, the smaller one tells her older sister that she is a stupid donkey. The stupid donkey answers: You’re so dumb and ugly, you must be adopted. Boy hears the sound of car doors slamming shut. Something is wrong when the driver tries to start the engine. He tries twice. Three times. Boy listens hard as the engine makes growling noises. The car doesn’t start. Curiosity overtakes him, and he runs across the garden toward the house, where he stops and crouches low against a wall. He pretends to be playing with the spool of thread still in his hand, but he is looking toward the driveway out of the corner of his eye. They don’t see him. They never do. The chauffeur gets out and pulls open the hood. Then he starts cursing in a way that sounds both angry and sad.

  Boy keeps his back close to the wall but shifts closer to the driveway. The back doors fly open, the sisters jump out and run to the driver’s side as he pulls something out of the engine, shaking his head and saying woy woy woy. The younger girl balls her hands into fists and presses them into her eyes, and when she starts to scream, it is the most terrible sound Boy has ever heard. Her sister comes to her side and hugs her hard. The girls do not see the driver walk quickly toward the front door of the big house, holding in his arms a cat, its white fur matted with blood, its legs limp. The animal shakes so much that Boy wonders how the driver can hold on to it. The rich grown-ups from the house come out, everyone talking over each other, but the howls of the little girl are loudest of all.

  Boy knows what death is. He has seen dead rats and donkeys and dogs when he and Mother go walking around to look for work. But he has never seen anything like this, a creature about to die. Not knowing what to do, he walks back to the tent and notices that he’s forgotten to put on his shoes and that the snow is very cold under his feet. By now, Mother will be awake, and he can show her the coat and tell her about how the car wouldn’t start, and how the girl’s cat must have climbed into the engine because it was a warm place to sleep on a cold night. He can still hear the girl’s screams in his head even though it’s quiet now. Back in the tent, Mother is still sleeping, lying on her side with the thick blanket pulled up high, covering her ears. He nudges her. She doesn’t move. He strokes her hair. She is so still.

  He calls out for her, pushes the blanket off, and pulls on her arm. She rolls onto her back, limp and heavy, her eyes open very wide and still. The spool of black thread still clutched in his hand, he screams, “Mother!” She doesn’t answer. He screams again and again until he knows she will never wake up. Then he runs from the tent, h
is heart jumping into his throat, tears choking him. He almost falls as his feet sink into the snow, but he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t stop running until he is outside the garden, past the quiet street with the fancy houses, on the other side of the big road with all the honking cars. Boy knew about death, but he didn’t really know before today.

  6

  It was nearly dawn when Daniel awoke, strands of light fraying the sky. He was on the couch in his study, covered loosely with a blanket. Memories churned in his mind. Manticores, blackmail, and Kochi children who had died but knew how to live forever: by slipping into the minds of their killers.

  Daniel got up, sure he was supposed to be somewhere. He remembered coming home when it was still dark and needing a drink. He wondered if Rebecca had woken up and found him missing. His body ached, his head thick from the whiskey. He decided to sleep it off in bed. As he crossed the study, he sensed movement behind him. He flicked on a sconce and turned to find Rebecca at his desk, spinning slowly in his chair, arms folded.

  He squinted against the light. “What are you doing in here?”

  She paused with her back to the room, then spun back to face him. “I could ask you the same thing,” she said softly.

  “I got home late from the office.”

  “Very late,” she said, continuing to spin.

  He apologized and added, “I kept working when I got home. I must have fallen asleep.”

  “So you clean your desk before you take a nap?” Rebecca swept her hand over the mahogany surface. “You put all your work away before moving to the sofa? There’s not a single file or notebook here.”

  There was no right answer to this, so he said, “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  She nodded. “You’re always so considerate.”

  He asked her how long she had been in the study. No more than a few minutes, she assured him. “I put the blanket on you. You looked cold.” She bit her nails. “What time did you come home?”

  “I don’t know, Becca.”

  Pushing her unpolished toes into the floor, she made the chair spin over and over. “Aren’t you getting dizzy?” Daniel said, more sharply than he’d meant.

  “Aren’t you? This must make you disoriented, not knowing when you came home, not knowing when you went to sleep.” She rose, pushing against the desk. She had on blue pajamas and a silk robe. Embroidered on the breast pocket was a butterfly.

  “I’m tired.” Daniel walked over to the desk and touched her hand, hoping it would bring the exchange to an end. It didn’t. She removed her hand with a proprietary yank.

  “I told you, I worked late. I’m sorry, Becca.” He meant it. He was sorrier than he could ever explain to her. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  “It’s four in the morning,” she said. She glanced at the window each time she heard a sound. The slap of a moth’s wings against the glass. The distant hum of a car switching gears as it sped along the paved road, blocks away. Rebecca narrowed her eyes as if struggling to understand how everything outside could go on as normal.

  “I’m going to make some tea,” he said. On the way to the kitchen, he found his briefcase by the stairs. He heard the soft tread of her slippers behind him.

  “Ahmad brought that in from the courtyard,” she said.

  In the kitchen he stood in front of the stove, watching the kettle. His limbs felt too heavy to make tea. Too heavy to do anything but stand. The cuckoo clock painstakingly ticked away the minutes. He moved to the refrigerator, opened the door, and simply stood there. Rebecca was behind him. She took his hand and stroked his fingers as if afraid they might break. “Daniel?”

  “Yes.”

  She wrapped her arms around him tightly. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Right,” he said.

  “Listen to me. Please. You couldn’t have avoided her. It wasn’t your fault.” She turned him to face her. He nodded.

  “Talk to me,” she said.

  “About what?”

  She shook her head and made a sound of disbelief. “You think we can just take August seventeenth off the calendar, like it never happened?” she said. “Just leave it out, like the thirteenth floor of a building?”

  “Becca, what do you want from me?”

  Her voice broke and she fell into him. “Daniel,” she said. “My God.” The force of her sorrow brought out a strength in him, and he pulled her so close he was afraid they both might suffocate. She buried her face in his chest, and her tears felt like warm blood.

  “I know,” he said. “I know.”

  They stood like this for a while. The refrigerator door was still open, and he felt garishly framed in its rectangle of light. Then she pulled him to the kitchen bench. He leaned against its rigid back as she snuggled up against him, her face sticky with trails of dried tears. He kissed her on the forehead, holding her hand. She searched his face, waiting for words, but there was nothing more he could say. She climbed onto his lap, her fingers cool against his chest. She straddled him and grasped the back of the bench. Tilting her head back, she inhaled as if drinking something sweet from the air. Then she moved with resolve. Resolve was the right word, not passion. She had made a decision, not been overwhelmed by a feeling. He could tell the difference.

  Her robe fell to the floor, and in her embrace he found a kind of peace, the crash, the ghost, all of it fading in the simplicity of her nakedness and her touch. He laid her across the table, which was hard and unyielding. Daniel whispered, “Let me move you,” and lifted her. Not far, slouching against the pantry, was a large sack full of rock salt, the kind the grocer’s boy brought on a mule along with enough onions for a month. Rebecca gasped in surprise as they fell softly against the canvas, the salt crunching beneath her body.

  She laced her wrists around his neck. The night before their anniversary, there had been a single encounter, a cautious, almost virginal affair underneath blankets in the dark. Now a primitive version of her emerged. He lost himself in her. She had a way of making it seem like she was on top even when she wasn’t. Rebecca didn’t notice when a crystal of salt escaped from the canvas as she moved against it. Then another. And another. She never opened her eyes. Nor did she speak. She was only movement and breath. Salt streamed through the canvas now, forming crystalline trails.

  Daniel wanted her to scream, not only to feel her pleasure, but because the terrible sounds were coming back. A body against a windshield. Brakes struggling against the laws of physics. His wife screaming a very different kind of scream, anguished and hoarse. The echo of a gunshot, the echo of a ghost.

  When Rebecca came, it was like glass shattering. On the wall, the cuckoo lurched out of its hovel. Five o’clock. They both laughed at the incongruity of their union and the clock’s slapstick sound. Daniel’s own laugh sounded strange to him, like something from another time. Rebecca cuddled against him and slept until the cuckoo made its clanking appearance again at six o’clock. She smiled, showing off those perfect California teeth, a result of the braces that served as a rite of passage for every suburban teen.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  It was the worst thing she could have said. Daniel felt like a patient being evaluated by a nurse who’d just administered a drug.

  “Never mind me,” he said. “How are you?”

  She smiled again, shrugging into her bathrobe and tightening the belt. When she told him she wanted a shower, it sounded like she was asking for something, though Daniel didn’t know what. He stayed alone until the cook, Firooz, came down to make breakfast. He said nothing about the salt, but later that morning, Daniel heard the Hoover running in the kitchen.

  7

  Friday morning, he walked to the bakery closest to his house. The aroma of fresh naan filled the air. Crowds swarmed the counter. Poor men walked away with free naan and rich men tossed bagfuls of it into their cars. Chaderi wrapped it in towels and stacked it in basket
s on their heads, while modern girls wedged it into shiny shoulder bags. Four men from three generations were at work in the bakery. Their movements were quick and practiced, matched by the rhythm and twang of a dusty radio blaring pop melodies, the guitar-like rubab mewling to a tinny beat. They worked on the floor, squatting by stone slabs, hair trapped in skullcaps.

  “Sir, naan for you!” one of the bakers called out. With two spiky rods, he coaxed a sheet of naan from a smoldering hole in the floor and wrapped it in paper for Daniel, who dropped exact change in a copper bowl. Whatever you could pay was exact change. Rebecca was right: a sheet of naan looked like a snowshoe.

  He went home, and the day ticked away slowly. Rebecca chose clothes, linens, and flowers for the next day’s party. Daniel worked from his study. The office was closed. They ate lunch by the pool, their conversation shallow. As evening neared, he thought about the Zoroaster and Taj’s request for “confirmation,” as he’d presumptuously called it. He watched the sun set on the terrace, night tumbling over the city. He didn’t go to the Zoroaster.

  Rebecca was lying awake when he came to bed. She gave him her hand, and he took it. They slept. On Saturday morning, the servers for the evening arrived. They helped the housekeeper polish, prepare, and arrange. Rebecca grew cheerful as the day wore on, sorting through china and silver and fashioning napkins into boats. She shared jokes with the hired help and inquired about their families, asking about their children by name when she knew them. Daniel admired the white, fur-trimmed ensemble she’d chosen for tonight. She stood close to the full-length mirror, then took a few steps back to examine the effect from a distance. She experimented with hairstyles, tossing her hair behind her shoulders, gathering it in a ponytail, and finally settling on a loose, glamorous bun. In the early afternoon, she asked softly, “Do you think you’ll shave for tonight?”