A Matter of Marriage

by Lesley Jorgensen

  Two things happened. Once she touched the bird, instead of the stiff dryness of old feathers, her hands encountered a damp, yielding stickiness, as if it had been incompletely preserved and was rotting from the inside out. And when she tried to lift the peacock, it refused to budge. Mrs. Begum grunted in disgust: this dirty-dirty thing in her sitting room had to go. She tightened her grip, her fingers sinking, and pulled upward fiercely.

  It was then that one leg, apparently glued to the mantel by that same sticky substance, suddenly broke clean off. The peacock sprang into the air, Mrs. Begum’s arms still attached, its tail feathers going every which way, and after a moment, in which Mrs. Begum saw herself in the mantel mirror, arms at full stretch with the peacock directly overhead, like Tariq’s old picture of Magical Johnson catching the orange ball, she and the now one-legged peacock sailed backward onto the carpet.

  She was unhurt and soon recovered herself sufficiently to look around. Peacock tail feathers were scattered over armchairs and occasional tables. One had landed across the top of a picture frame, looking like one of Mrs. Darby’s Christmas decorations. The bird lay in the hearth, its remaining leg pointing up the chimney. Mrs. Begum grunted in disgust: cheap-and-nasty gifts shame the giver. Dr. Choudhury’s so-shiny new watch had probably stopped by now as well.

  When she returned from the kitchen with dustpan and brush and squatted to sweep up the remains, she saw that the peacock’s body had pulled apart in a spill of old straw to reveal a dark object about the size of two fists pushed together. She poked it with the brush, and it rolled free of the straw, gleaming with cling wrap. She leaned closer to look and cautiously picked it up. This was not peacock.

  It was as heavy as a stone from her rockery. It felt like the Plasticine that little Tariq would bring home from kindergarten, but a rich brown instead of the blues and yellows that had made her son’s wobbly soldiers and serpents. Its substance came off on her hands in streaks with a distinctive, delicate perfume. She sat back on her haunches and lifted the object to her nose, sitting-room mess forgotten. Her head hurt.

  She was little Syeda again, perched on her grandmother’s lap in the dull heat of the late-afternoon harvest. Watching the silhouettes of the men and women from her village walking slowly backward through rows of nodding, bobbing poppy heads, armed with their nushturs, selecting and scoring the seed pods.

  Then other memories, of herself older now, headachey and nauseated and following her father with the small earthenware pot into which the poppy milk, now dried to a dark resinous gum, was placed after being scraped off the poppy heads by his curved iron sittooha. Between each pod he would lick the blade, and when she once complained of headache, he had taken a little of the gum off the blade with his thumb and wiped it on her bottom lip.

  Opium, scourge of Bangladesh and its five neighbors and forbidden by the Prophet (peace be upon him) as the most soul-destroying of the addictions. That number-one-dirty-bastard Kareem had brought opium, a cake of cooked opium paste, into her house. In a peacock, a creature so pure that its feather was permitted to touch the Qur’an. The essence of evil and death was here, in her home, her sitting room.

  She stood up quickly, spilling the dustpan to the floor, her breathing tight, her headache growing, and looked for the solitary crooked shelf (put up with much difficulty by Dr. Choudhury) that held the holy book. It was still there: she could see its green and gold spine, high in the corner. She ducked her head, pulling a corner of sari over her hair, and looked up at the Qur’an then back at the hearth and at her stained hands. Too polluted to touch and take protection from the sacred words of Allah.

  She remembered Uncle’s son, his only living child, seen by her just once soon after she had arrived in Dhaka. Uncle had never spoken of him, but one of the market stallholders had pointed him out from a distance as her uncle’s curse, a casra charsi, a dirty addict. He was filthy, painfully thin and swaying against a wall in one of the refuse alleys that led off the market. She had been standing perhaps twenty paces away, but could still smell the animal dung in which he must have been walking, lying. His sherwani was torn at the front and, between the flaps of fabric, his abdomen looked like knotted rope. One of his hands was curled like a claw under his chin, dark, almost black lips were drawn back from his teeth; and his cheeks and chin were glazed with saliva. His eyes were half closed, and even though he was upright, she had wondered if he was dead.

  The words of the village mullah at Friday prayers, echoed at every Jumma she had been to in this country, came back to her then.

  Remember death . . . remember that you will stand before Allah to be accountable for your deeds on a day that no wealth or children will benefit you. Beware the seeking of mufattir, intoxication, for it is addiction and damnation. Die and meet Allah in this state and you will drink eternally, eternally, from the impure rivers of Hell.

  She’d had nightmares for days after seeing her cousin.

  Dreams about her little sister, dead from the typhoid, and her parents as she had last seen them after the river, in the wet-season floods, had swept most of their village away. Drowned by Allah for harvesting the poppy. Dreams of herself rotting in that alley, a casra charsi for carrying the earthenware pot for her father, licking the gum from her lip.

  A few months later, by which time she was over her big-city shock and navigating the laneways around her uncle’s shop with impunity, she heard from the same stallholder that her cousin had been found dead in one of the ancient water cisterns that still existed beneath the city, and into which waste water now flowed. She never spoke to her uncle about what she had seen, or dreamt, but from then on had seen his quietness and removed life with different eyes.

  —

  MRS. BEGUM SHUDDERED. Averting her eyes from the hearth she retreated to the kitchen. The clock said three. Dr. Choudhury would be home in an hour from his healthy-walk, and she had a strong urge to make salat. And she could not pray if she was impure, unclean. That thing in her house, on her hands. She slipped the fingers of her right hand into her mouth and, biting their tips, muttered “Il Allah, wah il Allahu,” the old formula for passing graveyards, speaking or thinking of the dead. What could she do?

  Fingers still in mouth, Mrs. Begum looked out the kitchen window to the back garden—vegetables in rows, tall and strong, her washing flapping behind them, the rabbit hutch flanked by the neat hessian-topped curve of the compost—and thought.

  With sudden decision, and tucking her sari’s pallu, peasant-style, into her waistband, she ran to open the front door, grabbed hold of the cast-iron shoe-scraper, a strange but practical present from Mrs. Darby, and dragged it into the hallway. She shut the door and pushed the shoe-scraper hard up against it. If Dr. Choudhury was to return early, he must not catch her unawares and perhaps stop her from taking the necessary steps.

  This house, her sanctuary and her pride, had been polluted. Police would come, perhaps those reporters. The Women’s Institute would hear about it, perhaps exclude her. And Mrs. Darby, her great friend, what would she say? Mrs. Begum knew what was necessary, what only she could do. She hurried out to the back garden.

  With a trowel and fork from the miniature shed, she attacked the far side of her perfect, symmetrical compost mound, digging steadily until she had excavated a narrow cavity that ran into the steaming heart of the heap. She dropped her tools and hastened back to the sitting room, where she levered the opium cake off the floor and, holding it before her like a hot pan so as not to stain her sari, proceeded back outside.

  Once she reached the heap, she peeled off the remnants of cling wrap, then squatted opposite the hole and carefully fed the opium in, only releasing it when her arms were at full stretch. The cake, hitting the warm interior of the mound, flooded the air with its perfume, and she felt her stomach contract. Swallowing a retch, she grabbed the trowel, rapidly filled the hole and patted it down. Done.

  Mrs. Begum sat back on her heels
and took a few deep breaths of the rich familiar smell of leaf-mould, mango skins and tea leaves. The tightness in her chest started to ease, though the headache, the old harvest headache she remembered, still pounded. In one month, maybe two, the evil thing would rot away into the soil from where it had come, and no one would be the wiser. Then she would spread it around the perimeter of the garden, under the privet hedge. Nothing could kill that.

  She got to her feet, then hesitated. It had been a hot day and a hot night was coming. Normally she would have forked over the tightly compacted heap and taken away a little for her radishes, but there was no time left. What would they taste like after this anyway? She had to clear away the rest of that dirty bird, then do wudu, washing herself three times in the proper way so she could make salat and finish before her husband came home and wondered what had been broken, who had died, that she needed to pray. She threw the tools into the shed, lifted the skirt of her sari and ran inside the house.

  By the time Dr. Choudhury’s signature fumble at the front door was due, the peacock’s tail feathers had been gathered, plopped into an ugly vase from Bora Khalo, her dirty father-in-law, and positioned on the mantel, not that her husband would ever notice. The hearth was swept and polished, and an elaborate and heartfelt salat had been performed. Dinner was not yet started. She flew into the kitchen, banged a saucepan into the sink and started to wash the rice.

  —

  DR. CHOUDHURY’S HEALTHY-WALK had not gone well. Halfway around the village he had become uncomfortably hot and sweaty, but had not been willing, in the muggy June heat, to remove his tweed jacket and be seen walking like some laborer in shirtsleeves. People expected more of him than that.

  He’d developed a disagreeable dampness under his arms and across his upper back, and he suspected that his upper lip and forehead were shiny. This was confirmed by a glimpse of himself in the latticed display window of the new Ye Lydiard Style dress shop: a most unflattering representation in more ways than one, due to the convex nature of the glass.

  Now, with two-thirds of the steady incline of High Street still to traverse, a small, sharp stone somehow crept into his shoe and under his right foot: the one with a particularly tender bunion and several significant corns that Mrs. Begum had neglected to completely remove. He arched his sole and wriggled his toes as he walked, but to no avail. With every step it embedded itself further into his sole.

  There was no way he could stop, stand on one foot and be shoeless in the high street to remove a stone. He would look ridiculous. He was an academic, not an athlete. He would just have to soldier on until he found his home.

  Finally his front gate came into view. Stoic, he struggled with the gatepost, which seemed to have developed an aggravating lean, catching his right thumb painfully in its latch before managing to swing it open. Mrs. Begum was often in the garden at this time of day, but now it was silent and empty. He struggled up the gravel path, the uneven surface a further refinement in pedal pain. Stones on the outside and the inside. He would far rather just have had one big one to deal with, like Sisyphus.

  A dog barked, and he stopped abruptly to look around, nursing his sore thumb, but no one, animal or human, was to be seen. Odysseus returns, full of tales of heroic achievement, but no one recognizes him, no one cares. Nursing his digit, he limped up the path and slowly climbed the three steps to the front door. Why had Mrs. Begum never expressed concern about his pounding heart, his labored breathing? She should have made him see a doctor, have some tests.

  He tried to turn the door handle without using his sore thumb, but could not get a sufficient grip. Other men, more traditional, less modest, would just have banged on the door, expected their wife to fly to greet them after such a trial. He leaned his left shoulder against the door and fumbled with his uninjured hand to twist the knob.

  The catch gave suddenly, and he stumbled into the house, just missing the edge of the hall table, but temporarily tangling with some minor domestic item that Mrs. Begum had left lying about. He gave the item an impulsive shove with his foot, merely to move it out of the way for others, only then recalling that it was his sore foot, and discovering that the object was both hard and heavy. Pain shot up his leg. He rested against the wall and tears welled, mixing with droplets of sweat and stinging his eyes.

  Still no one even knew he was there, what he had been through. He sniffed, straightened and for the first time ever avoided the hall mirror as he hobbled into the sitting room to divest himself of the instruments of his suffering and collapse into his wing-back armchair. Oh, the bliss of being finally shoe- and jacket-less, the comforts of home all around him, the pressures of his public persona left behind.

  And where was his Penelope? He must not forget that her many trivial domestic tasks were all designed to contribute in some small way to his material comfort and happiness. Not that the physical comforts were ever paramount with him, given the vastly superior pleasures that the mind could bring. She must be cooking his favorite dish right now, or perhaps rolling a soft, fresh, green betel leaf around a mixture of paan, lime powder, scented sugar balls and cardamon, perfectly tailored to her husband’s taste. He swallowed, and realized how dry his mouth was.

  But he would leave her in peace for now. Her presence, though well-meaning, was full of hustle and bustle: the ceaseless, needless noise and activity so symptomatic of the shallow mind. Only true stillness, deep repose, was conducive to, nay, almost indistinguishable from, deep thought. His eyelids began to droop.

  He reclined his head into the chair’s soft tapestry, closed his eyes and let his legs rise from the floor to rest upon . . . nothing. They floated in midair, wavered from side to side, searching for their entitled resting place, then dropped, defeated. Where was his ottoman?

  He opened his eyes, pained and annoyed. Had he been through so much, expected so little, for this? It seemed an intentional betrayal, a mockery of his pain, that the ottoman, always precisely placed for his shoeless feet, was sitting on the far side of the hearth, a good five feet away from its appointed spot.

  This wifely dereliction must not be tolerated, for where would it end? How could Mrs. Begum respect herself if she did not know her failings as a wife? And if not a good wife, then not a good mother, for did not the two go together, hand in hand? For her own sake the rot must be stopped, before she could no longer look at herself in the mirror. He cleared his throat. That alone, she should be able to hear from the kitchen. Due warning.

  “Paper, paper,” he shouted, then sat back, feeling a little calmer.

  She would come in with a collection of newspapers from the hallstand and offer them to him. Once he had made his selection, he would clear his throat again, meaningfully, perhaps look at the ottoman sitting flagrantly by the hearth. She, comprehending, would rush to replace it under his feet. She would notice the odd way in which he positioned his injured foot and show wifely concern, offer to wash or massage it. She would perhaps ask him if he wanted some paan or a cup of tea to demonstrate her contrition, which of course he would accept. Domestic harmony, the natural order of things, would be restored, all would be forgiven and forgotten.

  Something banged and hissed in the kitchen. There was a rushing and a rustling and his wife was suddenly in front of him, and a cascade of papers fell into his lap. Before he could speak she was gone again, back into the kitchen, to a flurry of cupboard doors opening and shutting, the clash of utensils and the rattle-crash of a pan landing hard on the stove. He sat perfectly still, a hurrumph dying in his throat. More banging from the kitchen, and now that he thought of it, dinner was usually almost ready when he returned from his walk.

  He stood, pushing all the papers to the floor except for the fashion supplement, and limped on socked feet back down the hall and into his study. Sometimes, when dealing with the truly irrational aspects of womanhood, which Freud so well recognized, discretion was truly the better part of valor. Not to mention demonstrating a
mature understanding of the frustrations and known moodiness of the inarticulate sex. He was not retreating, merely respecting, in the civilized give-and-take of the modern marriage, Mrs. Begum’s need for space. He had read all about this in Cosmopolitan.

  He shut and locked his study door. It had been a hot day, and it was going to be an even hotter night. The accoutrements of man were so constricting and unhealthy in this weather. He unbuttoned his shirt and turned to the cheval, breathing in and upward. The afternoon sun lit his skin to shades of golden brown, threw his stomach into shadow and made his chest gleam. Yul Brynner knew what he was doing when he wore those open waistcoats, so heavily embroidered, over his naked torso. Humming the theme to King of Siam, he considered his reflection further. What a fine figure of a man he was.

  Thirteen

  THEY HAD ARRANGED to meet at Shilpi’s house this time, rather than Aisha’s dorm room where they usually went every Thursday. But while Shunduri was still with Kareem in his flat, Aisha had texted to say they were doing mendhi, henna designs, and could she bring her magazines for the patterns. So Kareem had done a detour and was now waiting in the Rover while she ran up to her dorm room to get them.

  Despite having showered before she’d left Kareem’s flat, she felt tired and somehow still dishevelled. She quickly changed into one of her college salwars and lower shoes, then freshened up her make-up with a nude lipstick and more kohl around the eyes. She wasn’t going to have a repeat of last week, with Shilpi deciding to hold forth about Muslim modesty while she was in her leggings and backless choli with just a bit of chiffon around her.

  Kareem was smiling and relaxed when she returned. He had three mobiles out and was finishing one call while he held another and texted on the third.