Fountainville

by Tishani Doshi

  I should have turned to her and said something reassuring – about how for years I’d seen women come and go from our clinic, swearing I would never do that to my body, not for love or money. And here was this unexpected stranger who had entered my life and changed all my ideas. Wasn’t that something? But all I did was say to the cold stone wall: ‘It’s done.’

  IX

  Rafi found me at the house the next morning as I was setting off for the clinic. He looked as though he’d had a rougher night than mine – his clothes were shredded, his arms and legs bruised.

  ‘Did you fall in a ditch?’ I said. ‘What’s the point of that walking stick if you don’t use it?’

  ‘The news is terrible,’ he said, reaching for me with his good arm. ‘Oh God, Luna, the news is so very terrible.’

  I ran to find Begum but she wasn’t in the house. She must have left early. Jenga was jumping with mad delight, grabbing hold of Rafi’s leg with her front paws. Normally he would have clubbed her one to the head and she would have settled at his feet in devotion. Not today.

  The world is automatically transformed. Isn’t it the way? Even the morning call of the birds, which I always interpreted as a song of insistence, of belong­ing, was now cacophony – the very trees, shrieking in dis­­belief. The sun was harsh, and all along Main Street, I suddenly felt visible again. I could feel eyes boring into me, although no one could know, not yet. Clothes were drying on washing lines, and roosters were shuffling about making their usual racket. Pastor Joseph, who was buying vegetables with his servant, saw me and raised his hand grandly in a papal-style greeting. I must have had tears in my eyes but could feel nothing except a deadness in my veins, the need to lay myself on the ground, to sleep. To forget. To wake to a different world.

  Begum was at the fountain. She was wearing her official robes, the ones she brought out for special functions – a long white dress clinched at the waist with a velvet tasselled belt, emeralds at her throat. When she dressed like that she was her most beauti­ful self – Goddess-like, overflowing. She was pouring water from the silver cup across the marble slab, washing the surface clean with her fingers. The branches of the alder tree above her were filled with thousands of prayer-flags – so many white-ribboned hopes of mothers-to-be. Watching her, I was for a moment, taken back to childhood. A scene exactly like this one: standing with my mother in the shade, looking at Begum go about her routine. ‘Isn’t she wonderful, Ma?’ I said. And my mother, holding me by the shoulders: ‘More wonderful now that she’s got those fertility gods to stop being so generous with me.’

  Begum looked up and smiled. ‘We’ve neglected the old ways for too long, don’t you think? Go change. We should prepare for your first trimester. I’d like to do this properly.’

  She knew nothing. How was it possible that she, who was so steeped in signs and portents could know nothing? Shouldn’t she have felt a cold shad­ow pass through her body; the very breath taken from her throat? Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen when two people are connected in a way they were?

  I had to tell her the news myself. Rafi had gone to round up the troops. ‘There’s going to be a ruckus,’ he said. ‘Best run to keep your hens safe.’

  *

  We had a funeral in the rain. Before we took his ravaged body to the cemetery we kept the casket in the house – open, so those devils could see what they’d done. It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be – seeing him lie in a wooden box against satin cushions with his beloved Book of Inspired Ideas tucked in his hands. There was a calmness about him even though his face was unrecognisable. The left side had been beaten so savagely it was nothing but crusted pulp. The only symmetry the undertaker could restore was to part his black hair and lavish talcum over his eyes and cheeks and jaw.

  There can be no beauty in death. Only diminishing. I saw that. But there was some pitiable redress in the knowledge that his body had suffered the full extent of its mortal decline. He would not grow old. All the careening and pedalling about we do in life was finally over.

  When I lost my family I never saw their bodies because they weren’t reclaimed. Their disappearance from my life was a continual haunting – as if they’d been lifted off by aliens, or had decided to emigrate to another country without telling me. There was always the half-fear-half-hope that they might suddenly reappear. With Kedar there were no such doubts. His body was like a Braille that held all the brutal marks of his murder. The knife wounds in his chest, the blows from blunt instruments to his head, the repeated kicks to his stomach and groin and legs. It was Rafi who had found him in the gutter – lifted him, covered him in rags and secreted him away to Xerxes, the bootlegger. He didn’t trust Kedar’s thugs, even though they were standing grimly like a row of crows, patting down the townsfolk who had come to pay their respects. They were expecting what? A suicide-bomber from a rival gang? Knives? Guns?

  How quickly the order of things changes.

  Everywhere there was a-whispering. Women ululating in full-throated mourning, beating their big chests, coaxing tears from eyes that needed no coaxing. Begum still in her robes, looking as though she might sink into the earth. The proxies around her in a ring of black – bloated and in full view of the townsfolk for the very first time.

  And this: I will not forgive or forget. Marina Duke, the seamstress, who had lived two houses down the street from us for more than twenty years, who brought over biscuits and her prized strawberries every Easter – Mrs Duke scuttling over like a giant crab and spitting on the floor at our feet. ‘In the end, God punishes those who meddle in His ways,’ she said, eyes glinting crazily. ‘You!’ she said, shoving and poking the proxies. ‘May sin come down upon your families. Do they know how you make a living? Whores, all of you. Nothing but whores.’

  Begum looked on benignly as though she could not see nor hear while Kedar’s thugs made a show of wrestling Mrs Duke out of the house. But it was too late. She had already cast a tarnish over the last sacred thing.

  ‘We have to prepare, Luna,’ Rafi said, pulling me to one corner of the room.

  ‘Bring Begum to the fountain as soon as the fune­ral is over. She must know that this was done by Kedar’s men. Play along now, but make no mistake, these men know everything that’s going on. If anyone in this town had the power to kill him, it’s them.’

  When they began to lift the coffin, I went to stand by Begum, who was still looking on, glassy-eyed, transfixed.

  ‘You,’ she said, pointing to Owain, who was one of the pall-bearers. ‘You will leave this place now.’

  ‘Begum,’ I started, but Owain lifted his hand to silence me. Mr Quintus slipped in to take his place.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Owain said, moving towards Begum. ‘So very sorry, you can’t know how much I...’

  Begum was unleashed, shrieking, down on her knees, beating her fists on the floor, the hem of her beautiful white dress, dirty and torn.

  ‘Luna,’ she screamed, ‘I won’t lose you too.’

  I ran to Owain and slid my father’s wedding ring into his palm. It was the only thing I had left of my family.

  ‘Take this and hide,’ I said. ‘There’s going to be a war.’

  Part Two

  I

  What am I doing in this country? I no longer remem­ber.

  I hear someone speak my name: Owain. Owain. It sounds like a noise from another life. The past is all around me but I cannot speak it. I cannot touch it.

  If you ask where I’ve been, I’ll tell you a lie.

  It has been a darkness.

  If you ask what were the trees like, the weather, did you see snow, or hear birdsong, was the rain warm or cold, did mountains ring close by, or the ocean, I couldn’t tell you. Did you lie with woman or man, did you build a house, did you grow fat or thin? I don’t know. How can a man lose months of his life you might ask. How can people vanish as if they never existed?

  This dream stick produces strange visions. It melts the blood and skin, mixing everythi
ng so exquisitely that all you want to do is put your spine to the threadbare mattress and sleep. Sometimes I can feel myself standing outside myself, watching, and it takes hours to get back inside. I must write to Luna, tell her I’m here, to come get me, because I don’t know if I have the strength to go to her myself.

  If I write, I will not forget. There are only two other people here with me. A sad-faced man who calls himself Earl, and Mala – the wasted beauty, whom we call countess.

  If I write, I will not forget.

  I remember watching the sun go down like a forest fire in the sky.

  I remember a house of twenty-four women.

  I remember the fountain.

  II

  Most nights I am woken by dreams. Running. Screaming. Weapons. Falling down a hillside. Dreams that inevitably have to do with dying. Begum lies next to me on a mattress on the floor, and beside her, Chanu Rose. We sleep together in the drawing room amidst jars and racks of ointments. None of us have been able to return to our beds.

  It has been six months since Kedar was murdered, since Owain disappeared. Six months since I started this mad assault on my body, which is changing and growing, just as I feared it would. I feel imprisoned, surrounded by a high stone wall, which is inching closer and closer around me everyday. I have no appetite for food, and am sick all the time. I don’t recognise myself. Not my skin, my hair. All of me is different, softer – dare I say it – almost beautiful? Dr Willis says I may have to take to bed for the last month. As if there was anywhere to go!

  ‘Don’t look so worried,’ he had said. ‘You’re perfect, you both were. Just one stimulation and plenty of champion swimmers. How could it not be perfect?’

  We have abandoned the fountain and the clinic, and moved our equipment into Begum’s bedroom for safekeeping. We live among Petri dishes, cath­eters, ultrasound machines, forceps, scrubs, hairnets, cryoship­pers, microscopes, test tubes, suction devices – instruments of torture used to bring life into the world.

  I could not do any of it without Begum. I faltered in the beginning, I will not lie. It would not have been hard to kill it. To try and bring us back to where we were before. But Begum wouldn’t allow it. She makes potions every day for Chanu and I – mashing forest leaves and honey into all kinds of vile concoctions, which we drink, because they help. She massages our shoulders, reads to us, sings, does everything but talk about what has happened.

  I wish she would speak: say, I told you so, Luna. This would be the ruin of our lives. But what need is there to speak aloud what everyone already knows?

  Fountainville has been under siege. Kedar’s thugs installed a rival chief, Marra, who runs the streets with a cruelty I never knew existed. Most of Marra’s men were recruited as children during the last War of Secession – abducted, brainwashed, orphaned. Boys. They’re just boys who’ve been wielding machetes and rifles since they were fourteen; forced to kill neighbours and friends to prove their manhood; smear the blood of the dead on their palms. For breakfast they’re fed cocaine, which they take through the day so they can remain high-strung and ruthless.

  We are in a state of permanent curfew because of these men who have no family, no country, no under­standing of remorse. Women who don’t stay indoors are carried off and locked in sheds where they are raped, shot, discarded. Children no longer play in the streets because they’d be picked off too – as easily as the panther steals dogs at night. Main Street is a ghost street – only roosters and pigs poke around in the empty gutters, and soon, they too will disappear. At night we sleep in the brief silences between gun shots, and during the day, those who still hope, congregate in the church to cower before their Lord. And this is the world I will bring my child into.

  ‘People of Fountainville,’ Marra said, the morning after Kedar’s funeral, smiling in that oily, unconvincing way only the most brutal dictators have. ‘We are here to help you. This is a new age for your town. My men are here at your disposal to make the transition. Any problem, you ask them. We mean you no harm. We must only make a negotiation with your Lady. If she agrees, you will continue your lives as they were before. If not... if not, we must see. Those who cooperate will be rewarded. Those who resist will experience the full wrath of Marra’s Army of Liberation.’

  We sent our proxies home immediately, all except for Chanu Rose, who is as far along as I am. She said we might as well put a hatchet in her head if that’s what we wanted because if she went home in this state she would soon be dead. Begum and I contacted all the prospective parents to inform them of our altered circumstances. We would do our best, we told them, but could no longer guarantee safe delivery and handover. Litigation was inevitable. We paid the proxies double what they were owed and urged them to find refuge where they could. Rafi helped with their passage through the forests.

  We managed to secure the fountain and the clinic for a few days with the help of Rafi and a group of townsfolk. But what could they really do? They were only shepherds and farmers after all. And even if Rafi alone could withstand the attacks of ten men bare-armed, his body wasn’t impervious to bullets. The awful truth is that all of it seems inevitable now. Kedar was killed because of the mother lode of Begum’s clinic. They had been waiting for him to soften, to turn his attention away, and I had helped them do it. Fools! What do they know about Assisted Reproductive Technology? What do they know about fertility and fountains for that matter?

  And there has been nothing in the news. For all our world-famousness, we are back in the red zone without any sign that the Mainland is aware of what’s going on. If they knew, I don’t believe they’d send troops to rescue us. They’d shift their gaze elsewhere – look above into the higher mountains or at those valley people suffering in the plains. There is always some place else that can make a greater claim on suffering.

  Marra came to our house dressed in a suit. He handed Begum a card before sitting down.

  ‘So,’ Begum said, ‘these days even terrorists have business cards.’

  ‘It’s very simple,’ he said, ‘you keep a fourth of everything you were making and continue to run the place exactly as it was before, with full protection offered by us. My men will step back. We have other wars to fight in the Borderlands. Your streets will go back to normal. All will be as it used to be.’

  Marra was a slight man with a scar for every battle he’d fought etched into his face like the twigs and string that line a bird’s nest. He had long, musical fingers, which he cracked earnestly as he spoke, and when he listened, he leaned in towards you, as if to better receive your words.

  ‘Take it all,’ Begum said. ‘I have no interest in running my clinic for other people. And you haven’t the first clue how to do it yourself.’

  ‘You are not irreplaceable,’ Marra smiled. ‘I’m only offering it to you as a courtesy. I know that the people of this town pay attention to customs and old stories. I’d like them to continue to have their stories. Stories are good, aren’t they? Otherwise what will people know about themselves? How will they understand their lives? You do an important job, Madam. But not as important as mine. You have my card, and a week to make up your mind.’

  ‘You killed my husband. What about that story? Want me to forget about that?’

  ‘Your husband was killed by his own men because he no longer served them as a leader. You understand well, I think, the laws of survival. Do not make me teach them to you. Good day.’

  Rafi thinks if we can smuggle Begum across to the Mainland she could get in touch with news channels about what is happening. He says the centre will be forced to take action because Begum is a public figure.

  ‘I was a public figure as long as Kedar was lining the pockets of the Minster of Health and Family Welfare. Now I’m just another woman from the Borderlands with a sad story to tell.’

  ‘But what else will we do,’ I say, ‘If we can’t defend the fountain, we’ve lost everything.’

  ‘Haven’t we already lost, Luna?’

  III

&n
bsp; Luna. You want to know about the place I am now? I tell you it is rife with sadness.

  The widowed countess, Mala, runs it. She fills our pipes and sweeps the floors, and smiles as though she invented the world but I know she has her own history with sadness. I heard she lost her husband terribly. After he died she could not find her way back.

  Do you know about a woman’s honour Mala asks. They would have me burn, jump into his dying flames to prove my worth. I am done with asking the earth to swallow me. Look – she lifts up the hem of her skirt, displaying a silver anklet on the delicate stem of each leg. Once I had rooms full of treasures. Now I have only this. A woman is nothing without a man to protect her.

  The days pass like this – in chatter and smoke.

  The Earl of Sadness has his woes too. He’s telling us about his two sons who went hunting in the forest and were captured by a bandit and his gang. Did they ask for a ransom? No – that would be easily done? Did they want his Earldom? He would gladly give it. What they wanted was the Earl’s fair daughter. He has only one. Those rascal bandits wanted to barter, to parley. We’ll give you your sons for your daughter. What a dilemma the Earl has! What’s a man without his sons? What’s a father without a daughter?

  Do you have children, Knight? The countess inter­rupts. If you don’t, you can’t possibly understand any of it. You’re a childless charlatan. What do you know what it means to lose? I had a child but he was born wrong. I had a husband but he was killed. Who do you have to live for but yourself?

  Hush, The Earl says, Do you want to hear the rest of it? The question is hypothetical of course – it doesn’t matter if you don’t have sons or daughters. The point is would you offer one in exchange for the other? Think about it. I’ve thought and thought, and I have to say I’d have to let my line end with me but I won’t give up my girl.