China Room

by Sunjeev Sahota

  There was one photo that I’d focus on, a small picture in a dark-wood frame. It was of my great-grandmother, an old white-haired woman who’d travelled all the way to England just so that she might hold me, her new-born great-grandson. She’s looking down and smiling, unused to a camera’s eye, her chunni sliding off her head. I am screaming. The photo hung there quietly as I sat at the table, opened up my laptop and started to write. I realised then that by leaving all those books unread I’d been clearing the ground the better to see what was in front of me, which was the past. All sorts of pasts, in fact, including one that found me rehabilitating on a farm in India, in 1999, the summer after I turned eighteen.

  * * *

  *

  ‘You should have called from the station,’ my uncle said, as he struggled with my case and, in the end, abandoned it halfway up the stairs with a little pat on its head. We were inside his tall house in the village of Kala Sanghian. ‘I’d have come to get you.’

  ‘You should have called from England,’ my aunt said. ‘Ambushing us like this. It shows no respect. None at all.’

  ‘Oh, we knew you were coming.’

  ‘Not which day we bloody didn’t.’

  ‘Yes,’ my uncle conceded, wincing, smiling with embarrassment. ‘But he’s here now.’

  Aunt Kuku stared at me sceptically. Her wide heavy face drooped forward at the neck, as if she’d been gently drugged, but her eyes were alert. Surely she was contrasting the healthy, plump-cheeked boy of four years ago with the young man in front of her now: too skinny, too pinched, too drawn. I felt myself squirming under her gaze, looking left and right in an effort to shrug it off, and then I remembered the duty-free in my rucksack and presented my uncle the bottle of Glenfiddich. He turned it round in his hand, admiringly, and placed it on the table between us.

  ‘You drink?’ Kuku asked.

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said.

  ‘A man now, isn’t he,’ Jai said approvingly. He was short, with a big, teddy-bear belly and a naked, youthful face clear of any wrinkles. His inch-high pelt of glossy hair was, unlike his wife’s, entirely untroubled by grey. A friendly enough man, but no match for her, so everyone said. There was a rumour she’d slapped him once, in the first month of their marriage, for raising his voice to her. Been silent ever since, the gossips tittered.

  ‘One last holiday before university, yes? Is that what this is?’

  ‘Thanks for letting me stay.’

  ‘Silliness,’ Jai said. ‘But the heat will only get worse, you know.’

  I felt a sudden, violent clenching in my stomach and I pulled my lips into my mouth and trapped them between my teeth, hard. The pain backed off, as quickly as it had pounced, but it left its mark, its warning, as if someone had smiled at me from the wings, all threat. I tried to tune back into whatever my uncle was saying, but he was looking at me expectantly, then with confusion, a single crease folding his brow.

  ‘So will you?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Kuku said.

  ‘Turn the geyser clockwise when having a cold shower?’ Jai said.

  ‘Shall we have that drink now?’ I said, motioning for the bottle.

  ‘Son, it’s not even nine yet,’ he replied, but I was already on my feet and carrying the bottle to the fridge. When I opened the door, the fridge’s humming got louder, a drilling in my ear. I took out the jug of water and grabbed two tumblers from a high shelf dressed in doilies. They were both looking at me (he agape, she calm) as I returned with the whiskies and passed him his. I raised my glass in an unspecified toast and downed about half.

  * * *

  *

  I’d got steadily through three-quarters of the bottle when Jai, without a word, removed the whisky from the table and took it downstairs. I heard a lock turning. When he returned, he was wriggling into his jacket, gazing at me sadly, disappointedly.

  ‘I’m going to work,’ he said. He moved to the kitchen and spoke through the wire mesh of the door. ‘The poor boy must be starving. Can you please give him something to eat?’ Then he left, to sit at a desk in the bank next door.

  For most of the afternoon, I willed myself to concentrate on playing with their three-year-old, my cousin Sona, under Kuku’s powerfully silent supervision, until the shadows began to stretch and I said I was going downstairs. My uncle Jai’s house was a slim, three-storey building; its iron double-doors sealed with a chunky foot-long bolt. My bedroom was on the lower floor, along with the bathroom, utility and a further spare room. The rest of the family slept either in the large living room on the middle storey or, if it was especially hot, like now, across charpoys on the roof. I rolled the suitcase into my room, closed the door, drew the curtain across it, and dropped to the bed, lying flat on my back. The ceiling fan whirred, stuck on its lowest setting and creaking with every revolution. The window to my left, twice as high as it was wide, looked out on to one of the bazaar’s side lanes. A man was swirling jalebis in a huge black vat of oil. Another man was berating him from the balcony above. I reached across and drew the curtain over the scene, so that my veiled room was suddenly filled with a treacly dark light, reddish-brown, too thick for the air from the fan to penetrate. I could feel my back seeping moisture. I checked my rucksack, more for reassurance than anything else, and, yes, I still had the four bottles of local Bagpiper I’d bought on the twelve-hour coach ride from Delhi. I lay back down. I didn’t think I’d need any more alcohol tonight. I’d cushioned myself well enough, I hoped, but it felt good to know it was there. I hadn’t had a hit of heroin for twenty-four hours. I was so very frightened of what lay ahead.

  * * *

  *

  Later, I was pacing the room, twitching, already fighting my panic, when Jai arrived with a greasy blue bag of fried chicken, two cans of sweating Coke, and laid it all out at the foot of my bed on a tablecloth he pulled from his rear pocket. Not much was said. We paused in our eating every few minutes and sat absolutely still, as if that might give us some respite from the heat. The four wall lights were all of heavy glass moulded to look like seashells and together they cast a foul glow that seemed almost sulphuric. I picked at the chicken, stripping it of its skin. It tasted bitter. Everything did.

  ‘So how’s my big sis and brother-in-law?’ Jai asked with forced cheer. ‘Any retirement plans yet?’

  I shook my head. It hurt to talk too much.

  ‘They’ll drop dead behind that counter, those two.’

  I nodded, slowly. Some moments passed before Jai went on, more sombrely.

  ‘Ignore your aunt. You know what she’s like. But I’m sorry she’s kept you hungry.’

  ‘I can go somewhere else if it helps.’

  ‘We rub along well enough most of the time. It can’t be easy for her. Married to someone she hates.’

  I glanced up at him, swigging his Coke, looking at me over the can. He put the drink back down, shrugged.

  ‘She wanted to marry someone else. What can you do?’

  ‘How do you know she wanted to marry someone else?’

  ‘He was a neighbour from her own village. Which means he might as well have been her brother.’ He ran his hand down his face. ‘Oh, she told me. The day after the wedding. She told me.’

  I looked back down, sad for him, and carried on picking at my food.

  ‘Is her village far?’ I asked. I knew nothing about my aunt. On previous visits I’d been too young to pay her any attention, registering her as little more than a sour presence behind the stiff net of the kitchen door.

  ‘Far? It’s the next village along! You know our old farm? Half an hour beyond that and you’re there.’

  I’d forgotten about the farm. I think I’d been there once, as a kid. I have a memory of being carried on the scoop of my mum’s hip as she walked around an empty courtyard, smiling to herself.

  ‘Who lives on the f
arm now?’

  ‘Mosquitoes,’ he said, and pinged my can with his thumbnail. ‘Drink.’

  I nodded. ‘Later.’

  ‘You must be tired.’

  I nodded again. He seemed to want me to continue, but I didn’t, and some more time passed.

  ‘Is everything okay, son?’

  ‘Couldn’t be better.’

  He looked put out, aggrieved, even, as if I’d gone back on a promise, and I realised he’d only been so honest with me in the hope the intimacy would be returned. I imagined him at his desk all afternoon, calculating how best to get me talking.

  ‘You drank quite a bit earlier.’

  ‘Can I have a blanket, please? I’m—’

  ‘And you don’t look well,’ he added, before I’d even got my sentence out. ‘A blanket? In this furnace?’

  We finished the meal in silence, until I said I was full, and Jai, in no great hurry, perhaps fearing the hostility upstairs, bundled the bones and empty cans back into the damp blue bag. He considered the tablecloth for a moment, crushed that into the bag, too, and kissed the top of my head, saying he’d throw a blanket down.

  * * *

  *

  Around midnight, closing the door with care, I slipped back out into the hallway, which was a tall roofless corridor. I remember looking up, at the astonishments of the stars framed by the four high walls. There was the sound of scooters quacking their horns, and from over the gate rich notes of leather and diesel and shit. In the bathroom, I stepped out of my boxers, turned the lever with my shaking hand and stood my sweating body under the steaming water, my shoulders hunched and teeth chattering. I’d forgotten to grab a towel, but drip-dried fast enough, and at the sink outside the bathroom I avoided looking in the mirror as I tipped the toothbrushes out of the plastic tumbler and took the tumbler back to my room. I poured half a glass of whisky, necked it, and sat doubled-over at the end of the bed, under the slow fan. Its creaking began to bother me as much as any noise ever had, and I got up and slapped frantically at the dial until the thing agreed to stop. Swallowing, scared, I stood with my back to the wall. I thought I’d have had longer before my cluck started, but already I was scratching, at my elbows, my back, my feet. My skin felt as if it was crawling, as if it didn’t fit my body. My stomach convulsed, convulsed again, a heaving as hard and dry as a lizard’s spine, and at the third retch my hand leapt to my mouth and caught grey slugs of chicken. I drank another whisky, a larger one this time, and then, still freezing, still shivering, I climbed under the blanket.

  * * *

  *

  On the third day, Jai and Kuku entered my room, along with a man I hadn’t seen before. It was early afternoon: behind me I could hear kids ambling home from school. I was sitting on the window ledge with my hands pressed under my thighs and my feet lifted to the sweat-marked bed.

  ‘This is Dr Duggal,’ Jai said, stepping aside with habitual deference. ‘We thought he might take a look at you. Just a quick one.’

  It felt like the least I could do for my uncle, who was gamely putting up with me living in his house. The doctor, who was elderly and with exactingly side-parted white hair, had an air of having been dragged here against his will. Perhaps he’d just been finishing up for the day. He placed his black medical bag on the bed and took out his stethoscope.

  ‘Lift your arms,’ he said. ‘Open your mouth – flex your fingers – breathe in – out.’

  More instructions followed and I acquiesced to each one, though my joints felt so unlubricated it was as if my bones were grinding up against each other. When he shone a light in my mouth I thought my teeth would fall out on to my tongue. I admitted none of this.

  ‘Dengue,’ Dr Duggal said.

  ‘Dengue?’ said Jai.

  ‘Dengue.’

  ‘Doctor?’ Jai said.

  ‘He’s struggling to lift his arms, the temperature, sweating, et cetera. It looks like dengue fever. Nothing to do. Water and rest.’

  ‘If you’re sure,’ Jai said, though he didn’t sound convinced.

  ‘Well.’ Dr Duggal looked irritated, unused to having his diagnosis questioned, or, maybe, these days, sick of it. ‘Have there been any other symptoms?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘If it gets worse, take him to the city hospital.’

  Jai turned away from me, as if wishing to speak to the doctor privately. ‘He has soiled himself a few times.’

  ‘Speak up. I left my aid.’

  ‘He shat himself,’ Kuku supplied, enunciating very clearly.

  Dr Duggal looked to his bag on my bed, then moved it to the floor.

  ‘Should he even be in this house?’ Kuku shot me a poisonous look. ‘My poor son. All this time he’s been exposed to this disease. Shouldn’t he’ – meaning me – ‘go somewhere else?’

  ‘I don’t see a rash, Doctor,’ said another voice.

  I’d had a sense that someone else was in the room. She’d been standing far back, obscured by shadows, and now moved a little forward. With both hands, she held her own medical bag down in front of her skirt, which was floor-length, pleated. Over her white blouse she wore a short doctor’s coat, light blue instead of white. She seemed to be levitating, gliding towards me. I couldn’t tell how old she was.

  ‘How’s his sleep?’

  ‘He’s not sleeping at all,’ Jai said enthusiastically, as if this younger doctor might be on to something. ‘I can hear him pacing about, turning the fan on and off all the time, sometimes too hot, sometimes too cold. He’s always going to the toilet.’

  ‘A rash isn’t as common as your manuals would have you believe,’ Dr Duggal said.

  ‘And he’s been like this since the day he arrived?’ the younger doctor asked.

  ‘Via Delhi,’ Dr Duggal said, as though that settled things. ‘Awful epidemic of dengue in that city. He’s been most unlucky. Most unfortunate.’

  I saw her looking at my clothes. ‘It’s very hot to be wearing a jumper,’ she observed.

  ‘He’s always shaking,’ Jai said. ‘Is that normal with dengue?’

  ‘Mentally, any . . . bad thoughts?’ she asked, this time to me.

  ‘Who’s the senior in charge here?’ Dr Duggal said, glancing around the room in a show of sarcasm, but she continued looking at me intently, until at last she conceded the ground and let him take over once more.

  * * *

  *

  The first time I left the house was to use the telephone. The aching by then was mostly concentrated in my shins and I could control that by walking on my heels and only very gently pressing down on to the balls of my feet. I had a shower, changed into a fleece because the shivering was still inside me, and called up to my uncle, whose face now appeared over the terraced railing.

  ‘I’m just going to the PCO.’

  ‘Oh.’ He looked surprised, then cautiously happy. ‘Feeling better?’

  ‘I won’t be long.’

  ‘Take your time. Some fresh air, that’s what you need. Are you calling home? Do you want some money? Won’t you be hot?’

  ‘I won’t be long,’ I repeated and stepped through the door-shaped hatch in the iron gate, fists in my pockets, heading for the bazaar. It was strange moving from painfully bright sunlight into the darker lanes of the market, where the sun felt unwelcome and everything seemed touched by loss. A great despondency hit me, like sand slowing me down, and I stopped and sat on some stone steps and closed my eyes. I thought of how on previous visits I’d loved walking around the bazaar, enjoying the feeling of looking like everyone else for a change, but now all I wanted was to be free from all this.

  ‘Which country?’ the woman at the PCO asked, little able to disguise her boredom.

  ‘England, please,’ and after pressing some buttons on her switchboard, she bowed her head ironically – ‘Mister England’ – and invited me to take t
he final cubicle in the row.

  My dad answered and somehow I hadn’t been prepared for his gentle, deep hello, the way it closed something in my throat.

  ‘How are you, son?’

  I nodded, kept nodding.

  ‘I know,’ he said, as if he could see me.

  ‘It’s hot, Dad.’ I love you, Dad.

  ‘I know, son.’

  He’d had to come pick me up one night a few weeks ago, when I’d spent all my money on scoring and just had enough left to use a payphone. It was a wet night, I remember, water streaming down the windscreen, and as we paused at a fuzzy ruby traffic light, he asked me what plans I had for the summer.

  I was leaning far back in my seat, worrying I’d not scored enough for the next day. ‘I’ll need things for uni. A lamp and stuff. I can get them tomorrow,’ I added sheepishly. ‘If you give me some money.’

  He turned to the window, away from me. ‘Your mum and I thought you could go to your uncle. In India. Get away from everything here.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I didn’t want to talk about it. ‘Probably not.’

  I saw him nod. ‘We can’t force you. Everyone tells me it has to be your choice.’ I heard him breathe out, as if expelling all the air inside him. ‘It’s like we’re not allowed to help you.’

  I didn’t say anything. I was finding it hard to process the idea that my dad had resorted to searching out doctors, experts, about his son’s drug habit.

  When we got home, he paused outside the door, touched my arm, and said he’d take some time off tomorrow and come shopping with me to buy whatever I needed to start uni.

  I nodded.

  ‘Please,’ he said, as if unable to help himself.

  ‘Don’t say please,’ I replied, so quietly, so very glad of the rain.