Chapter 1: The Gilded Illusion

The province knew Tiju Chauhan the way a province knows a forest fire — from a distance, with admiration, with the quiet hope that it will burn somewhere else.

He was thirty-one. He was rich in the way that made other rich men uncomfortable — not because the wealth was new, but because it was wielded without apology. He had inherited the shipping shares and the estate and the mansion and the stables, and he had taken these things and multiplied them through a merchant's instinct that bordered on cruelty. He bought low from men who were desperate. He sold high to men who were not desperate yet but would be. He signed contracts with a hand that did not tremble and a smile that did not reach his eyes. The province respected him. The province did not like him. Tiju did not care. Tiju had never cared whether he was liked. Tiju cared whether he was feared, and he was.

He was also, in the private architecture of his own body, a ruin.

The first time he had tried to take a woman — a prostitute in the southern quarter, seventeen, brought to his rooms at the Carlton when he was twenty-three — the body had not risen. He had been drunk. He had blamed the drink. He had tried again, sober, with a different woman, a week later. The body had not risen. He had tried a third time, a fourth, a fifth. The body had not risen. The body, which performed every other function he asked of it — walking, riding, signing contracts, striking servants — would not perform this one. He went to a physician. The physician examined him. The physician said: there is nothing wrong with the organ. The blood is healthy. The nerves are intact. The difficulty is in the mind. Tiju struck the physician. The physician said nothing more. Tiju did not go back.

The difficulty was not in the mind. The difficulty was in the body, and the body was the one thing Tiju could not negotiate with, could not buy, could not bully into compliance. The body was the one territory where his money and his temper and his contracts had no power. The body simply refused.

And then there was the other thing. The thing he never spoke of. The thing he kept behind the brandy and the rage and the contracts. Even when the body rose — even on those rare, desperate occasions when the drink and the woman and the darkness aligned and the flesh answered, briefly, partially — even then, the answer was three inches. Three inches of rigid, straining, insufficient flesh. He had measured it. He had measured it drunk, and he had measured it sober, and the measurement was the same. Three inches. The number sat in his chest like a stone.

He had been with women — not many, because the body often refused, but enough — and not one of them had said anything, because they were paid or they were afraid, and the not-saying was worse than any word could have been. The not-saying was the confirmation. The not-saying said: yes, it is small. Yes, it is inadequate. Yes, we noticed, and we are not saying so because we are paid to lie, and the lying is the only kindness you will ever receive from a woman, and the kindness is purchased.

He had a fantasy. He had had it for years. The fantasy was that one day — some day — he would find a cure. A pill. A paste. A rite. Something. And the cure would not only make the body rise. The cure would make the body grow. The fantasy featured eight inches. Sometimes nine. The fantasy featured him walking into a room and every woman in the room knowing, without being told, that the smallness was over. The fantasy featured Yogini on her knees. The fantasy featured the Governor's wife. The fantasy featured every woman who had ever pitied him, and the pity being replaced by something else. The fantasy was the only thing that got him through the brandy. The fantasy was the fuel. The fantasy was the fire.

The stone in his chest grew. The brandy grew. The rage grew.

And then there was Yogini.

He had seen her first at the Nashik temple, on the river, during the spring festival. She was standing beneath a banyan tree — dark hair, dark eyes, a face that did not perform beauty but simply possessed it. She was twenty-three. She was the daughter of a minor landowner. She was reclusive. She was educated. She was, the province agreed, the most beautiful woman in the western provinces.

Tiju wanted her the way a collector wants a rare coin — not for the coin itself, but for the possession of it. He courted her. He wrote letters — handwritten, on foreign paper, in a script he had practiced for hours. He sent orchids from Ceylon. He said the things her romantic mind wanted to hear. He said these things with the precision of a man drafting a contract. He said them because they worked. They worked. She believed them.

The wager at the Royal Turf Club was the thing that would, eventually, destroy him. Three hundred gold sovereigns. Sir Malhar, drunk on club brandy, had wagered that Tiju could not win the reclusive beauty in three months. Tiju had taken the wager without hesitation. He won the wager. He won Yogini. He collected the sovereigns and the woman in the same month.

The wedding was seven days of feast and fire. Yogini stood beside him in crimson and gold. She smiled when he whispered to her. She did not know that the whisper was a calculation. She did not know that the man beside her was measuring the hours until the bridal chamber, measuring them with a terror that grew with each hour, because the bridal chamber was the one room where his contracts did not work and his money did not work and his smile did not work. The bridal chamber was the room where the body would be seen, and the body was the one thing he could not hide.

The bridal chamber had been prepared with care. White silk sheets. Rose petals. A single brass lamp.

Yogini sat on the edge of the mattress in her crimson bridal silk. The clock struck ten. Eleven. Midnight. Tiju did not come.

He was in the study. He was drinking. He was drinking because the terror was on him — the terror of the body that would not rise, the terror of the three inches that would not satisfy. He drank until the terror became rage, and the rage needed a target, and the target was in the bridal chamber, waiting.

At half past one, the door crashed open. Tiju stumbled in. His breath was thick with brandy. He seized the back of her neck. He kissed her — his mouth tasting of brandy and tobacco. He shoved her backward onto the petals.

And then — nothing.

The body would not answer. The body that he had drunk himself into a fury to arouse — the body did nothing. It lay on top of her, soft, small, three inches of nothing, and the nothing was the loudest sound in the room.

He pulled away. His face twisted into a sneer. He could not let her see the shame. The sneer was the wall.

"The vows were a transaction," he said. "I do not perform."

He walked out. The door slammed.

In the bridal chamber, Yogini lay on the petal-strewn bed in the dark. She did not weep. She lay on the petals and stared at the ceiling and thought: this is my life now.

She did not yet know that the man who had knelt beneath the banyan tree had never existed. She did not know that the letters were a script and the orchids were props. She did not know that the man who would, in ten months, stand in a corridor of the Carlton Club and brag about the wager, was the same man who would find a book in a forgotten archive and tear out the pages that described a cure, and hide the pages that described a cost, and skim past the fine print that said the slave shall be endowed befitting his station, and perform the weeping at her door, and walk into a grove, and kneel, and feel the toe touch his brow, and feel the body rise — rise and grow — to eight inches, eight magnificent inches, the wish fulfilled, the fantasy made flesh — and then feel the eight inches shrink, comically, irrevocably, to three.

She did not know any of this. She lay on the petals. She endured.

The months passed. The brandy got worse. The rages got worse. The slap — when it finally came — was not a surprise.

It was the winter gala. Three hundred guests. Yogini in a deep crimson saree. Tiju circling the hall, drinking, drinking.

By ten o'clock he was vicious. Yogini stepped into the circle of businessmen beside him. She touched his arm.

"Tiju. The hour is late. Please — step away from the liquor."

His laughter cut off. Bloodshot eyes locked on her. "You dare lecture me in my own hall?"

He struck her.

The slap cracked across the silent hall like a gunshot. Her head snapped to the side. She stumbled backward against a marble pillar.

"Get out of my sight."

Yogini stood against the cold marble for three agonizing seconds. She did not shed a tear. She lifted her chin. She turned. She walked slowly up the grand staircase.

That night, alone in his study, Tiju looked at his right hand. He did not feel guilt. He felt the brandy. He felt the three inches of nothing between his legs, and the nothing was the cause of the brandy and the brandy was the cause of the hand and the hand was the cause of the bruise on her cheek.

He sat in the study until three in the morning. He did not drink. He thought: there must be a cure. Somewhere. Some book. Some rite. Some magic. There must be a way to make the body rise. And grow. Eight inches. Nine. And when the body is cured — I will take her. I will take every woman who ever looked at me and wondered.

He did not know, sitting in the study at three in the morning, that the book was already on his estate. That it had been sitting in a forgotten archive for longer than anyone could remember. That within its pages was the cure he was looking for — and a cost he would try to hide, and a fine print he would skim, and a cage he would beg to enter, and a joke the universe would play on him that would last forty-seven years.

He did not know. He would find out in three weeks.