Maps for Lost Lovers, page 17
This year’s butterflies would soon begin to emerge—a season heaving with life, the air above the river slightly fragrant like a garment still carrying the odour of its vanished owner. And now a piece of red cloth with a silken sheen, giving off a pronounced honeysuckle scent as though it had been used to swab up spillage from the perfume flask, floats across his vision, about to fall into the water. Instinctively he reaches for it before it disappears, and as he’s bending over the low wall towards it the newspapers slip from his grip and fall into the water below, changing colour instantly as the water soaks the paper. He’s suddenly lighter, his muscles relieved, the fingers holding nothing but that scarf which has butterfly blue lozenges along its crenulated edges. He looks around. The sun laughing in her glass bangles, a young woman is looking at him from a few yards away. He holds out the scarf towards her.
“Thank you.” She whispers quietly. “I am sorry about your newspapers.” And immediately she turns and begins to move away from him, twisting the retrieved scarf and using it like a ribbon to collect and secure her hair in a loose ponytail at the base of the neck, her skin that pale rust-brown colour that white jasmine flowers take on at the end of the day.
Propriety dictates that he should not attempt to detain her but he hears himself say abandonedly, “It’s a beautiful morning.”
She stops—no doubt as staggered by his boldness as he himself is— and, turning around after a while to face him, nods her head which is a mass of curls, a few of which are already escaping the scarf and tumbling onto her shoulders. Small, fine-boned, she is perhaps in her late-thirties and is wearing a primrose shalwar-kameez with a wide length of see-through chiffon draped about the body to serve as a head veil when required. Her expression conveys a mark of consternation and she looks around, perhaps to make sure that this encounter is being observed by someone, that she is not too alone here with him, or perhaps to make sure that they are not being observed.
Feeling ashamed for having given her cause for concern and irresponsible for not keeping in mind the risks to her honour before addressing her, he raises his hand part way to his forehead to bid her farewell in the courteous Subcontinental Muslim manner and quickly turns around to go back into the town centre and get more newspapers.
“I was on my way to the lake. There is an Urdu bookshop there and I wanted to know the opening times,” he hears her say. Her face awaits him with the polite hint of a smile when he stops and turns around, the face that only seconds ago was tortured by doubts and dark considerations. She takes the edge of the veil and covers her head in a gesture of infinite grace, handling the fine material gently—one of those actions that reveals a person’s unspoken attitude to things; the thin sun-flecked fabric settles on her hair in a wonderfully slow yellow wave. “I think the shop is called the Safeena. It is, if I remember correctly, a poetic Urdu word for ‘boat’ and also for ‘notebook.’ ”
Like a matchstick struck on the inside of his skull, spilling sparks, the ecstatic torpor of adolescent summers comes to him in a brief warm illumination, and he experiences a thrill which is very close to happiness. “It was the name I gave my rowboat during my boyhood on the banks of the Chenab. And the shop, the property of a friend, was named by me after my boat.”
The bridge between them is made of glass and so he takes one very tentative step towards her.
She’s considering him, as though thinking deeply. “My name is Suraya.” She smiles, more openly than she had the first time, and a very pale apricot-brown mole (if it were surrounded by others like it, it would be called a freckle—it’s that pale) on the side of her mouth gets pulled into a fold in the skin, vanishes into a laugh-line.
“The shop is open in the afternoons on Saturday and Sunday, if you would care to visit,” he says. He is concerned for her safety: she shouldn’t be seen talking to a stranger. A Pakistani man mounted the footpath and ran over his sister-in-law—repeatedly, in broad daylight—because he suspected she was cheating on his brother. I only fear that by dying you will pollute the dead just as your life pollutes the living. This was here in England and, according to the statistics, in one Pakistani province alone, a woman is murdered every thirty-eight hours solely because her virtue is in doubt. He should withdraw; and he bows slightly at the waist towards her: “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must leave.”
Touching her scarf, she says, “Thank you for this. The wind kept it just out of my reach as I ran after it; but Allah had planted you in my path to help me. I nearly caught it once but it seemed to fly at the speed of thought. And I am sorry for the newspapers.”
“I’ll go into town again and get some more.” He recriminates himself for vainly thinking that she’s delaying him on purpose, that she wants his company. And yet she is looking at him intensely, and since he doesn’t know what to say, is standing here silently, her eyes roam across his body as though searching for the slot to put coins into to make him operate. Suddenly self-conscious, he raises his hand and touches his hair to see that the breeze hasn’t dishevelled it too much. With an agitated heart he turns and walks away, feeling suddenly very old, exhausted, leaving behind the pale gold English river, the glittering continuity of it, and those countless single threads of spider silk that are shining on the tall reeds, sagging in bright curves. It was there on the bridge that Chanda’s mother had approached him a few weeks ago to tell him Jugnu had been spotted in Lahore; he shakes his head and frowns to dispel the memory. Before him the columns of the flowering horse chestnuts stretch either side of the road that climbs the hill; the town centre is situated at the top. The pale shadows of the horse chestnuts are combed across the road, a white butterfly again and again turning an iridescent bluish-pink as it flies across them.
In the town centre there are horses of stone. Lions guard the entrance to the library. A granite deer looks down from the top of the train station’s façade.
The electric light inside the newspaper shop seems to be a continuation of the weak sun shining outside. He quickly explains that he has lost the newspapers to the river and asks for another batch. As always he doesn’t wish to be engaged in a conversation because it might lead to talk about the murdered lovers. They have become a bloody Rorschach blot: different people see different things in what has happened.
And so he leaves as soon as possible, speaking no more than two or three sentences between arriving and departing, finding contentedness only in wordlessness these days.
As he turns around to leave, he is aware that his eyes, as always, are lifted slightly higher than need be, to catch a blurred glimpse of the magazines on the top shelf.
With the newspapers under his arm he begins the journey home, lingering outside the florist—called La Primavera—to look at the brush-like Australian flower-heads and sprays of eucalyptus like a flinging of coins; at the wide-open lilies possessing a thick chewiness of petals; the Germolene-pink roses; the gardenias; the carnations as red as bullet wounds, luxuriant with pain; the small flowers with petals the size of his grandson’s fingernails; sunflowers that seem to be on fire; the edge of a leaning arum pressed flat against the glass like a soft marine creature in a tank; leaves of every shape, each as different in its serrated outline as the notches on different keys. There are roses in the window the colour of Suraya’s clothing, he remarks to himself in passing . . .
He raises a hand in greeting at a plumber from Calcutta whose van bears the legend, You’ve tried the cowboys, now try the Indian, his heart full of anxiety that the man will stop the vehicle and come over to talk.
The breeze gives his face feathery touches.
Changeable like a cloud, a low flock of pigeons keeps flying by, the white wings taking on various tinges from the colours reflecting off the shop exteriors, and, as he watches, the flying birds form the faces of Chanda and Jugnu in the air just for an instant—two images undulating like pages on moving water. The lovers are everywhere, lying in ambush.
He can never be certain about Chanda’s father but he is sure the mother knows nothing about what happened to her daughter and Jugnu. According to the Home Office statistics 116 men were convicted of murder last year as opposed to just 11 women. Women are usually at the receiving end.
A few days after the couple went missing, the girl’s father had visited Shamas to say that he was aware of the rumours implicating his family in Jugnu’s disappearance. He sat in the blue kitchen, drinking the tea Kaukab had made, and insisted that neither he nor his wife and sons knew anything about what had happened to Jugnu. It was strange. The fact that Chanda too remained unaccounted for didn’t seem to enter the man’s mind—or if it did it didn’t seem to concern him, and he didn’t see why it should concern anyone else either. The only crime he and his wife and sons could be accused of was the possible one against Jugnu; the girl—the daughter of the parents, the sister of the brothers—belonged to him, to them, to do with as they pleased. Is that it? Would he, would they, expect a pardon if Jugnu were to turn up tomorrow, unharmed, but the girl were to remain missing?
And then he had felt ashamed at these thoughts: he knows that it is a matter of great distress for a parent from the Subcontinent—for the majority of parents on this imperfect and shackled planet, in fact—that their daughter is living with someone out of wedlock. It is likely that Chanda’s father could not bring himself to mention his daughter’s name because of the shame he felt, not wishing to see the girl coupled with Jugnu in his own speech, not having the strength to see them together even in language.
Now Shamas briefly pictures the two names merged and intertwined with each other: C J h u a g n n d u a
Despite understanding his discomfort, there are, however, times when Shamas imagines Chanda’s father physically preventing his wife from revealing some important bit of evidence. He imagines violence. Keep your mouth shut! This woman is a complete haramzadi! The kanjri woman didn’t say anything when it was time for her to speak and raise her badmash kutia daughter properly and now she cannot hold her tongue! It is a possibility, however grotesque; it happens in millions of homes throughout the world every day, from hamlet to metropolis. Hadn’t he himself slapped Kaukab one day all those years ago? He had torn her shirt with both hands and dragged her across the room with all his strength, one of her breasts exposed and bloody from his fingernail.
It happened in 1974, the year the younger boy, Ujala, was born. Kaukab returned home from the maternity ward on a bright April day with the sun lying like a new coat of metallic paint on the street. The two other children—all toffee-sticky fingertips and grime-covered toes in their mother’s absence—examined the baby and declared he looked like a tortoise because his upper lip was pointed in the middle, that he was the colour of tangerines, and his always-clenched fists made them think he was tightly holding on to coins.
Within hours the house was heavy with the intimately lush smell of recent birth that the mother and child gave off—it was like heat clinging to footpaths long after the sun has gone. Ujala was born in the middle of April just a few days before the Muslim month of Ramadan began. Dozens of people came to see the baby because the word immediately spread that he was a blessed child destined to be an especially pious Muslim: he was one of those rare boys who are born without a foreskin, the Muslims believing that such children have been marked by Allah for an exemplary virtuous existence in the world.
For Shamas the visits and the visitors were a headache. Kaukab, on the other hand, felt several stories high after the baby Ujala was born.
“Who else but a cleric’s daughter would have been blessed by such an event!” said one visitor, the matchmaker, in tones of wonderment and awe. “I knew someone in Peshawar who was born like that. I remember the lullaby his mother used to sing to him—O nurses with milk too white and sweet: wean him soon as can be, for the black hearts of infidel kings will be his meat. The boy had learned the entire Koran by heart by the time he was three years old, and he was teaching Arabic to the djinns by the time he was five. A number of profligate djinns converted to Islam at his hand.”
But the angels, it seemed, forgot about the baby after the birth because his health began to deteriorate after about a week: he became increasingly irresponsive to noise and other sensations, and seemed deficient in strength, so much so that eventually even the act of crying seemed to defeat him. As the days passed he lost weight despite regular breast-feeds and the minor infections he had developed began to give the doctors cause for concern despite the medicines prescribed. One afternoon, after he had been fed, Kaukab brought him to lie next to Shamas and he had leaned over the small soft heap and stroked the head, the nap of short hair on the pate like some kind of moss under the touch. Shamas’s little finger hovered closed to the baby’s lips and when the tiny mouth moved to take in the tip of the digit and began sucking at it forcefully, everything suddenly became clear. His legs shook as he went into the next room, the kitchen. She was cooking the children’s lunch, pale steam rising from the pan like morning mist from a pond.
“He is still hungry, Kaukab.”
“That’s very strange. I’ve just fed him.”
“Perhaps you should feed him again. He suckled my finger: you should’ve seen how he reacted when the finger got near his mouth. He was electrified.”
“I am empty and raw. I’ve just fed him.”
“Have you remembered to give him his medicine?” For a moment he thought he was going to black out.
“Of course I have.”
He was clenching and unclenching his fists, the palms feeling cold. “I just thought you might have forgotten: you are after all fasting, and people become forgetful when they fast. Or are you making the baby fast too? Not giving him anything—milk or water or his medicine—from dusk till dawn?”
“I don’t know what you mean. And don’t raise your voice, please.”
“What I mean is that I think you have been making the baby—your holy baby!—observe Ramadan. You have been starving him during the daylight hours.”
“If it’s true—which it isn’t—then it’s because he himself insists on it. He refuses to let anything pass his lips during the daylight hours. And don’t make light of my beliefs: he is an exalted infant. Must you talk like a heretic in this house? I blame father-ji for marrying me to a Communist.”
“Get your head out of the clouds and come give him milk right now.” He was trying to speak quietly because he could sense the other two children—the nine-year-old Charag and the four-year-old Mah-Jabin— on the staircase next to the kitchen. A few moments ago a yellow-and-green striped sweet the size of a sparrow’s egg—slipped from the hands of one of the children—had fallen and landed at the bottom of the staircase, alerting him to their presence. They must’ve been up there, listening, and now he could hear the small movements they were making.
“No I won’t come. It’s my milk. He and I will break our fast at sunset. It’s just a matter of changing the routine: I give him everything he needs during the night.”
“Has someone stolen your ears? I said come now.” The world had become stark, the colours harsh in his eyes.
“No. I have just fed him and have nothing left.”
“Show me.” They stared at each other until neither of them knew who the other one was. By grabbing hold of the neckline he tore open her kameez with both hands to reveal a soaked brassiere which he pulled at here and there until one of the cups ripped and spilled its load like weights in a sling. She had resisted and he had dragged her across the floor, her exposed breast bloody from his fingernail. In the next room he lifted the baby in its sail-white blanket and placed it in her lap where she sat on the floor, milk beading bluishly at the tip of the chocolate-coloured nipple. Inert and apparently insensible, she hadn’t moved to connect the baby to the breast and he had slapped her face:
“Feed him, you haramzadi!”
The pale steam that had been rising from the pan in the kitchen had become black smoke as the unstirred food had begun to burn, the dark tendrils choking the house. He went and turned off the gas. The acrid smell had replaced the lime-and-rosehip perfume that the geraniums in the kitchen had released when the two of them had stumbled against them in their struggle. As he turned off the gas he was aghast to see her step into the kitchen, her wide open eyes the size of rose leaves, the baby screaming in the other room. His disbelief and desperation grew fuller, becoming its own organism, out of control. He was he but less and less with each passing moment. With one jerk she freed her wrist from his grip when he grabbed hold of her to take her back. As though she were walking in a howling storm, she staggered to the sink and washed her hands:
She had been cutting up chillies earlier and didn’t want to touch her baby with those hands.
With safe hands she picked up the baby and nursed him, despoiling his fast, wincing at the pain breast-feeding had always caused her.
They didn’t speak to each other for the next six or seven months. One day he decided that he should talk to her: she listened to his apology, listened as he hinted that an apology from her too was required—and later, to convey to him that she hadn’t forgiven him, and had no intention herself of asking for forgiveness, she burnt the wedding dress on to which she had embroidered his verses years ago.
He moved out of the house within the week, having rented a small room two bus-rides away on the other side of town. Each month he posted most of his wages into the house through the letterbox. One year passed, and then two; two-and-a-half. He lived in squalid conditions and days would at times go by without him having talked to anyone. His world was so reduced that half an eggshell would have served as sky.
He met her and the children only a handful of times, either by chance or very reluctantly. When he saw her coming up the stairs one day he locked the door from the inside and pretended to be out: she banged to be let in, aware of his presence perhaps, and was eventually forced to say out loud through her tears that she was bringing him the news of his mother’s death back in Sohni Dharti.
