The police arrive in short order, and for the next hour, about a hundred moviegoers who escaped from the building without injury help them rescue the wounded buried under the debris, lifting steel and concrete off the people underneath and making bandages from shirts and dhotis. I see Sheela rip her fine silk sari with her teeth and quickly fashion a tourniquet to stanch the bleeding of a crushed leg. By the time we get the injured to the lobby, a ragtag convoy of cars, trucks, scooters, cycle rickshaws, motor rickshaws and tongas are waiting to transport them to nearby hospitals. Sheela is efficiently directing who goes where. The few ambulances in Jaipur are privately owned and come only when called.
When I glance at my watch, I see that it’s now 1:00 a.m. For the past three hours, I haven’t stopped to think; I’ve been engrossed in what needed to be done. My arms ache from the effort of lifting bodies. I rub the back of my neck to ease the headache that I’ve just become aware of. My throat feels parched—from thirst, or from the dust of the debris? I go inside the theater, again, to see what I can do. One side of the theater is almost completely destroyed. That’s where a good part of the balcony collapsed. The theater’s other half appears to be intact. But no one knows, yet, why the structure in the one area failed, and so we can’t assume the rest of it won’t. Better we clear the building just in case the worst happens.
Samir is standing, arms akimbo, in the middle of the wreckage. The theater is almost empty. He’s speaking again to Mr. Reddy, whose face, and Nehru jacket, are covered in plaster dust. The man’s perspiring; he looks dazed. Mr. Reddy removes a handkerchief from a pocket, blows his nose, then wipes his eyes. He nods to Samir, walks around him, goes past me and heads through the corridor that leads to the back of the stage.
Now Samir stands alone, his back to me; I’m not sure he knows I’m watching him. His silk coat’s torn neatly down the center back seam and across one shoulder. His hair and clothes are covered with mortar dust. He cocks his head; something on the floor seems to have caught his attention. He leans down to pick up a broken piece of cement concrete. He examines it, turning it over in his hand.
I survey the rubble, too. I look up at the innards of the balcony, the skeleton of rebar and cement mortar. Three seats, still securely bolted to the now exposed balcony floor, lean precariously toward the gap, as if, at any minute, they, too, might let go. I can see that two columns supporting the balcony gave way, sending several rows—maybe fifteen, twenty seats—to the ground floor. These are the seats that landed on the audience sitting directly below.
I study the torn carpet, littered with chunks of building material, broken seats lying askew, covered in plaster and mortar dust. All at once, I feel pity for Ravi Singh—a thing I never thought possible. All the work that went into this building. All the hours. And the money, and the talent. He had planned this grand opening down to the last detail.
I kick one piece of broken brick, and it rolls over. I can tell by the indentation on one side that it was a decorative brick. Strange. I squat and pick up another piece. Also a decorative brick. Manu once showed me that one side of each decorative brick is stamped with the manufacturer’s logo. Suppliers take pride in their work.
But the bricks I’m looking at have no factory stamp—just a shallow indentation where the logo would usually be. I spot another brick without a logo. Then another. These, too, have the same rectangular well in the center. Why are there so many decorative bricks? I look around the theater. Bricks weren’t used to adorn either the walls or the balcony facade. I think about those invoices I’ve been logging in. Every invoice for bricks came from the same place: Chandigarh Ironworks. So where’s their stamp?
I weigh the brick in my hand. It feels lighter and looks more porous than the bricks Manu showed me. If I were to pour a glass of water on any one of them, I’m pretty sure the water would flow through and saturate the brick in record time.
“Abbas?”
I raise my head to see Samir standing next to me. Dust has settled in the grooves of his forehead and the crevices around his mouth as if he were a stage actor made to look older than his years. I stand up, a piece of brick still in my hand. Samir looks at it, too.
“I told everyone to go home. Tomorrow morning, my people will start cleaning up.” He takes the brick fragment out of my hand. “After that’s done, we’ll sort out who’s doing what, and when.”
“But, Uncle. How could this have happened? So many people worked on this. The building was inspected many times—”
He holds up a hand. “I know no more than you do, Malik. But, for now, take Sheela home. She’ll be exhausted.” He looks directly into my eyes as he says this: “Ravi must have escorted the actress back to her hotel. He may not be aware of what’s happened.”
Is he guessing that’s the case, or is he telling me? It doesn’t matter. I’m too tired to argue, much less disagree.
* * *
Sheela and I are quiet in the car. We’re sitting in the back seat, as far away from each other as possible. Mathur’s driving. It’s almost 2:00 a.m. When we finally arrive at Sheela’s house, every light in is on. She looks at me.
“You’ll stay for a little while?” she asks. There’s a tremor in her voice.
I hesitate because of how it was the last time I was here, alone with her. I’m not impervious to her charms. Tonight, though, she and I have been through a catastrophe we could never have imagined, and I’m sympathetic to her need to talk to someone, someone who experienced what she experienced tonight.
When she says, “Please,” I ask Mathur to wait in the drive until I return.
Asha opens the front door and cries out, “Oh, MemSahib, please come inside. Samir Sahib called Mrs. Singh to let her know you are all right. It must have been so terrible! Mrs. Singh said she would keep the children tonight so you can rest. I was to wait for you, then go back to her house so I can take care of Rita and Baby in the morning.”
Sheela nods faintly. Her sari is in tatters. Her hair is disheveled. The ayah hesitates. “Ji, there is blood on your arm. Shall I get a plaster?”
Sheela looks at her arm as if seeing it for the first time. “It’s someone else’s blood,” she says.
The ayah’s eyes go wide, but she says nothing more about it. “I will serve the food,” she says. She locks the front door and steps around us to head to the kitchen, barely giving me a glance.
Sheela looks at me, as if to see if I want dinner. I shake my head.
“Asha,” she says, “we’re not hungry. You can go.”
The maid turns, her expression puzzled. Sheela shakes her head again. Then, with a quick glance at me, Asha heads down the hallway, to the back door where she’ll leave this house and walk the hundred yards to Samir Singh’s.
Sheela steps into the library. At the mirrored cocktail cabinet, she fills two glasses with Laphroaig. I’m still standing in the foyer when she holds out a glass to me. After everything that happened at the movie house, the frenzy and the chaos of it all, my body is too tired to move.