Temporary People

by Deepak Unnikrishnan

  “I am on the phone, fool,” she said. “Your walking’s distracting me. If you don’t stop, I am going to ask someone to remove you.”

  Chainsmoke sized her up. A Brit with varicose veins. Long like creepers. Thick eyeglasses. A surly creature with surly-looking white hair. Yelling at someone on the phone, “Where? Where did you go? Where?”

  She put the person on hold. “Well, are you going to stop bothering me?” she asked Chainsmoke again.

  “Sure,” said Chainsmoke. And he stopped moving. “Whatever Madam wants.”

  *

  At the end of his shift, Chainsmoke waited near the fake palms for Big Fella. Tired, he set his mask aside, atop everything else, and smoked quickly. The Brit had complained because she didn’t appreciate his tone. The floor manager asked him to apologize. “For what?” he protested.

  “Look,” the man said, “your work ain’t legal. She makes one call, we are both fucked.” So he said sorry. She thanked the manager, walked away.

  “Cunt,” said Chainsmoke.

  The parking lot was packed to capacity. It was Ramadan. Shoppers filled their vehicles with purchases. The garage echoed with the sound of families, the smell of car exhausts and bread. Big Fella was late. As Chainsmoke lit another one, the balloon hovered like Casper. Time, 11:30 p.m.

  When the Mercedes arrived, Chainsmoke, crushed butts at his feet, pursed his lips. He had stayed to vent.

  “Waited like a dog,” Chainsmoke grumbled as he climbed in.

  “Long day?” Abaya asked. Embroidered copper swallows circled Abaya’s abaya.

  “Some white lady asked me to stop walking, so I did.”

  “Rest of your day?” she wondered.

  “Not good,” he replied. “What’s it to ya?”

  “Poor baby,” Abaya crooned. Said without effort. Flat. Without soul.

  “Don’t patronize me, I ain’t your bitch,” he snapped.

  Abaya opened her eyes wide. “You’re not?” She rubbed the fingers on her right hand with her thumb, performed the gesture in front of his nose. “Oh, I think you are. You’re my bitch, bitch.”

  Chainsmoke sulked, staring at the floor mats.

  Abaya wouldn’t let it go. “Why do this, then?” She pumped her right fist like a piston.

  “Tuition,” he said firmly.

  “Tuition?”

  “Yeah, tuition,” he confirmed. Abaya peered at him, picking out his eyes through the slit in the mask. “Bullshit,” she said. “You born for this.”

  Chainsmoke glared at her.

  Abaya stared back. “I force you?”

  “No,” Chainsmoke admitted. “But you don’t need to. Coming, walking, you get what you want.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe? If you say so.”

  Abaya lit a beedi. “Sankar. . . got me. . . addicted to these,” she said, taking quick puffs. “Tell me,” she said, “in your perfect world. . . if you owned me, what would you do to me?”

  Chainsmoke inhaled the second-hand smoke; it felt good. “If I owned you?”

  “Yes.” Puff.

  “I would ask you things.”

  “Like what?”

  Chainsmoke thought for a bit. “Your father’s name?”

  “Ibrahim,” she answered.

  “The name of a lover.”

  “Hamad.” Puff.

  “The color of your cunt.”

  Abaya watched him. Inhaled. Beedi smog cirlicued young lungs. Ravaging them like wind weathering stone. Before the smoke left her body. “Tell me your mother’s, tell you mine,” she whispered. Grinned.

  “Fuck you!”

  “No dear boy, fuck you!”

  “On second thought, I wouldn’t even ask,” Chainsmoke said. “I would just take your cunt and fuck it.”

  “Really?” Abaya sneered. “Fuck me how, Brown Boy?”

  “I would tie you up.”

  “Where?”

  “The front of this van.”

  “How?”

  “Rope.”

  Abaya pictured it, smiled.

  “The engine’s still hot. I pin you. Your back burns. My cock opens you—” Chainsmoke dropped his trousers. “—kiss you, bite you, own you...” The rest of it was garbled, muttered in another tongue, as Chainsmoke, eyes shut, jacked off. But his masturbation was violent, as though strangling something shameful, the effort making his body shake, the shaking detaching the mask’s nose. And it fell to the floor. Like a big, fat red seed. Hitting Abaya’s right foot. Startling her. Making her laugh. Like a witch in a play. Even looking beautiful. As she impulsively reached forward and removed Chainsmoke’s mask, smelling cigarette breath. Watching his contorted horny face, seeing it for the first time, smelling his scent. Touching him, laughing at him. Cooing in Arabic. Brushing his prick with her knees. Laughing at him again. Which is how he came. On his chest, on her thighs, on the copper swallows on her dress. Unable to stop, as Abaya crumpled to the floor of the van in hysterics. In no mood to apologize, in no state to see Chainsmoke pull up his pants, pick up his nose, put on his fallen mask, and rush out the van.

  Big Fella, habitually tucking into a tiffin dinner of parathas and butter chicken near the front of the van, tensed up as Chainsmoke sprinted from the vehicle. The driver flung his food at the boy, hitting him, and was about to follow in pursuit, grabbing his Glock from the glove compartment, when he heard Abaya’s rich laugh. “Your nose, habibi, your nose!” she screamed. Then chuckled hysterically as she kicked out the rest of Chainsmoke’s gear. The marmalade sack, the balloon.

  The balloon hung in the air. For a moment. Before climbing towards space. Towards the moon.

  *

  Chainsmoke stopped running. He had darted past cars, startled shoppers. He reached the other end of the parking lot. Swore. Cringed as a woman howled in the distance: “Nose! Nose! My kingdom for a nose!” Then laughter. A woman’s. A man’s. He needed to return. To grab that sack.

  “Kloon?” A little voice.

  Chainsmoke turned. Wiped fingers on trousers. “Saarah?”

  Saarah grinned, but then she saw Kloon’s face, smudged with bright red curry. Blood. Bits of skull, she deduced. Someone had bashed open Kloon’s red brain, scooped it out with a teaspoon, and stolen his nose. In an instant, Saarah’s face blanched . Her body froze. She shut her eyes.

  “La!” she muttered in Arabic. Her scream arrived like bullets, echoing through the parking lot. “BABA! UMMI!”

  Her older sister, Grumpy, was dispatched to get her.

  Chainsmoke was confused. Thought the girl had gone mad. Then remembered his nose. Removing his mask. Wiping the redness off his clothes, making it worse, spreading it like frosting. “Habibti, don’t be afraid, it’s me, it’s me!” He moved closer.

  Saarah felt sick. In Kloon’s place stood a strange earth-colored man, a monster who devoured Kloon from the inside out and ate her friend. She tried fleeing but fell, bruising her knees.

  As Saarah lay on the ground, waiting to die, Grumpy arrived, bent to pick her up, but almost stumbled herself, giving Chainsmoke a quick peek at Daisy-Duck panties. But she quickly regained her balance and hurried her sniveling sister to the family’s Mazda station wagon.

  Saarah’s amused baba and concerned ummi, after a brief Q&A, a Mars bar, promises to report Kloon’s murderer, put her to work with the grocery bags. Grumpy excused herself, claiming she dropped an earring. Returning to face Chainsmoke, as he dragged his marmalade sack to hail a cab.

  “Why do that to Saarah?” Grumpy yelled in English.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You no clown.”

  “What!”

  “Your face, it’s white, but those arms, that face—everything’s black, Black Man.”

  “What?” Chainsmoke wrung beach-mud palms. “Black?” he said out loud.

  “Bastard,” Grumpy muttered loud enough for him to hear.

  “Bastard?”

  “Yes, bastard. Bastard.”

  “You know what ‘bastard’ means
?”

  “Your mother should know.”

  “Show respect, little shit,” Chainsmoke snarled.

  “Most blackies are bastards,” she said. “My uncle also told me that you people don’t wash. And that your farts smell like curry.”

  “Listen, you—”

  “Bastard, bastard, bastard...” she sang. Then she began to pirouette.

  “Wait—”

  She wouldn’t let him talk. “How many fathers you got? Bastard, bastard, you are a curry-farting bastard.”

  “Maybe I should tell your baba what a dirty girl he’s got,” Chainsmoke interrupted, just fed up now.

  Grumpy glared at him. “Baba knows I am good.”

  “Does he? Good girls don’t bend over like you did. Good girls don’t show their butts to strangers. You knew what you were doing when you showed me your Daisy Duck undies—”

  “No—”

  Chainsmoke wouldn’t let her finish. “Saarah’s good, I can tell. You, on the other hand, are a filthy little shit. Dirty mind, dirty heart.”

  “Stop it,” Grumpy said.

  “Letting me see your butt like that. Bad girls go to hell for doing shit like that, you know? You know, don’t you? Don’t you? What do you think your mother’s gonna do when I tell her what sort of daughter she’s raising? I mean, do you even have hair down there?”

  “Shut up!”

  “Bad girls make bastards. Know how? I can tell you do. If I bought you a Kit Kat, you’d just let me stick anything I want in there, wouldn’t you?”

  “SHUT UP!”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised. Filth like you have no shame—”

  “You didn’t see my butt, you didn’t see anything! I am telling Baba,” Grumpy fumed. Cheeks puffed like melons, arms by her side, hands rolled into fists.

  “Sure, bring Baba over, I will tell him myself. What his daughter’s really like and what she likes to do when he’s not looking.”

  “He won’t believe you,” she said softly.

  “Let’s see,” Chainsmoke challenged. “Look at your tummy, nice and big like that, you know how many bastards you could fit in there? No one would even know. Why don’t you admit it? You’ve done some sick shit, haven’t you? Call your pencil-dicked uncle for me so I can tell him his niece is no fuckin’ nun.”

  Baba, ready to leave, yelled from the car. “Noor! Come, habibti! Leave him alone!” Grumpy turned. “Coming, Baba!”

  “You better go, Noor, before I tell him,” Chainsmoke chuckled. “Go before the world knows! But you know what I really think. I think it’s too late for you. I’m pretty sure your baba knows! That everything’s not all right, everything’s not OK.”

  “I hope you die!” Grumpy cried. “You, you curry-farting asshole.”

  “Noor,” said Chainsmoke. “Go. Just go home, you little shit.”

  As Noor scurried back, holding back tears, moving like she had rocks in her tummy, Chainsmoke raised his arms, mask in one hand, and, as though guided by a slow-moving lever, he began to pirouette, keeping an eye on the Mazda. The man at the wheel, Mr. Ahmad, laughed, as his flushed daughter settled in the back, next to a chocolate-stained Saarah. As Chainsmoke yelled goodbye, he caught sight of a middle-aged man with huge palms, trembling with Parkinson’s, being helped towards a parked Volvo by a lady he leaned on, a woman with surly-looking white hair and a patient face, who said, “Almost there, Ed.” In her free hand, she held a bit of shopping: produce.

  Chainsmoke wasted no time. He grabbed the marmalade sack from where it had been dropped, lugging it behind him like a burglar in a fairy tale. And, measuredly, he began to walk towards the couple, exaggerating his steps, as though his legs were weighted with iron. “Madam, madam!” he shouted. She saw him. “Look,” he said. “Look, I’m walking. Bitch, I’m walking!”

  CHABTER EIGHT

  CUNNINLINGUS

  FIRST TIME, IN A Datsun by the beach somewhere in Dubai. It was Ramadan; mid afternoon. No shurtha in sight, few people around. Didn’t bite. Licked carefully, quickly. The AC was on, I remember. Unwittingly swallowed pubic hair. Refused feedback. Confident I had failed.

  CHABTER NINE

  NALINAKSHI

  MY NAME IS NALINAKSHI. I am from Nadavaramba, Thrissur. Yesterday, I turned eighty. My husband was fifty-eight when he passed. My sisters are in their sixties. They live with their grandkids and daughters-in-law. I also have a boy, my only son, Haridas Menon, my Hari. Ever since Hari could crawl, I knew he’d be a wanderer, destined to be a pravasi. And you know what, I was right. As soon as he started to walk, he walked his skinny ass all the way to Dubai. I suppose you’re too young to understand what pravasi means, young man, what it truly means. Maybe that’s why you singled me out for your research. Whatever comes, speak into the recorder, you said. Maybe I’ve got the look of an old crone with wisdom to spare. And you know what, you’re right, I feel like I’m going to be talkative in my eighties. So let me tell you what pravasi means, but when my voice gets played back to your teachers, tell them Nalinakshi was of sound state and mind as she said her piece. Not a trace of bitterness, not an ounce of pity.

  Pravasi means foreigner, outsider. Immigrant, worker. Pravasi means you’ve left your native place. Pravasi means you’ll have regrets. You’ll want money, then more money. You’ll want one house with European shitters. And one car, one scooter. Pravasi means you’ve left your loved ones because you’re young, ambitious, filled with confidence that you’ll be back some day, and you probably will. For a few weeks every year, you’ll return for vacations, but mind you, you return older. Blacker. News hungry. Before you’ve had time to adjust to power cuts and potholes, like they had in the old days when phones were luxuries or glued to walls, someone’s going to tell you so-and-so died. And it’ll be a shock, because you didn’t know. And when you go to this person’s house to pay your respects, you’ll discover someone else has died. And as you continue to see people you know you’re required to see, you’ll hear about more dead people. Or ailments. Or needs. Then you’ll see the new people, fat babies or wives or husbands. And you’ll look at what they’ve got. Inevitably, you’ll think about your own life, the choices you made. How far you’ve come, if paying for those shitters was worth it. And by the time you’ve done the math in your head, everything you’ve missed, what’s been gained, you’ll come to realize what the word pravasi really means: absence. That’s what it means, absence. When you write your book, address my Hari personally, and tell my beautiful, beautiful boy, tell my son that’s what it’s always meant: absence.

  BOOK

  VEED

  Consider a man with a suitcase for a face, a man living by the sea on brown land infected by strife, a man with an engineering degree. Buy Suitcase Face a ticket so he is welcomed at O’Hare as a tourist. Then change his name. Turn him illegal. Put him behind the wheel of a Lincoln Towncar. Make him drive until his wife forgets her husband, his son avoids his father. Make him drive until the immigrant rues the reasons he fled, until looking at the green card hurts. Observe.

  —

  CHABTER ONE

  KADA (SHOP). KADHA (STORY). KADAKARAN (SHOPKEEPER).

  BELOW MY BUILDING IS a kada. You know, shop. With a kadakaran. You know, shopkeeper. This kadha. You know, story. Involves him. Kadakaran Moidu is what Amma called him. I called him Karate Moidu because he called himself Karate Moidu because he took lessons for a few months before breaking his wrist after falling from a chair, ending what would’ve been a promising Karate Moidu career. So now he had his kada, which became his kadha, that he turned into another kadakaran in Arabee Naadu. You know, Arabee Cundry. All of this, his kada, his kadha, that he became a kadakaran, became his arabeekadha. That was his vidhi. You know, fate.

  CHABTER TWO

  WATER

  MY MOTHER, A TELLER of stories, was born near the coastline, where I was born, too, as well as my brother, on land watched by water, where coconut palms turn lakes and rivers olive. When the monsoons are heavy, the earth here is not o
nly watered, the ground is drowned. The rivers break banks, flooding potholed streets, scaring strays, moving train tracks, leaving homes at the mercy of water, forcing people to wait by dry land, in a cousin’s home, wherever, until the water recedes, until the rivers have explored enough and wish to return. By then, fish have nibbled in the kitchens of these houses, slept in the beds of strangers, defecated in their toilets, or died peacefully near makeshift altars, claimed by mollusks, crabs, water birds with wise faces. On decaying fish, bits of flotsam, water bugs leave eggs.

  There is a river not far from my mother’s home, where my parents made me, near the Hindu temple where they were married, with the head priest who, before he turned to priesthood, used to work in a butcher shop somewhere in Arabia, a frowned-upon but forgiven act. This river, my mother believed, was special, something the jinns may have had a hand in making. When the nights simmered like day, she told us, when weeks went by without rain, the fish in the river would swim up to the bank on certain nights, discarding their scales, fins, tails, becoming people, walking on land like they were testing its hospitality, in case the river beds dried up and they needed a new place to live. But the fish were a bundle of nerves when they ventured out, perplexed by the ways of man: how they walk, drove cars, mined mountains, built machines, bought Gold Spot for the kids. The fish, my mother said, felt vulnerable, and they became tense. In order to keep calm, many openly participated in the vices on offer, comfortably overeating in shaaps selling spicy beef fry, trading stories with alcoholics who didn’t want to go home just yet, drinking fresh arrack straight from the toddy tapper’s pot, searching for women whose men toiled abroad, searching for men whose women did the same. Near dawn, after a lot of eating or lovemaking or fucking or drinking or wandering, the fish would return to the banks, disappearing into the muddy river, convinced they were river creatures, unsuited for land.

  My mother now works on land almost completely bereft of water, where there are no rivers, but instead a salty sea where many years ago, men dove for pearls from wooden Sambuks. She takes care of a girl who is around my age. The girl’s name is Ibtisam and she understands our tongue. Only for a short time, my mother promised when she left, but the shortness has grown longer, many years, almost twelve, and I am now grown. Every two years, she would return, laden with gifts. At first, my little brother wouldn’t go near her, wouldn’t touch the chocolates she brought, or call her Amma, so she seduced him with stories, like she always did, when she used to feed or bathe him or put us to sleep. If she could manage it one day, she promised, she would introduce us to Ibtisam. Then, she promised, she would introduce us to her secret friends, men and women made entirely of liquid, who had little children our age made entirely of liquid. She referenced these families often in her conversations with us when she called, and in her letters. It was our secret, what we were in store for when she finally called for us to live with her, and we would be invited to the homes of her secret friends, where we would play with their children. They hide during the day, she wrote, to escape the heat. At dusk they emerge, exploring a more manageable climate, to partake in its nightlife, to eat at restaurants, to host dinners, to hold hands in the park, to play games, to kiss and not get caught, to teach their children how to ride bicycles. Before dawn, they disappear, only to return the following day.