What would really stay with Bibi? Above the Tata’s foremost window, in curly painted letters, turquoise blue and white in shades that matched the thread in her own hands, were the very words she had been stitching. Al-Fadhil, the Utmost, Kindest One. Al-Fadhil! God’s name on bus and cloth! Was this not much more than a lucky-look-up at collision? Was this not a super perk, to make doubly-triply sure that Bibi Kulthum was informed? She and he—the boy, whom she could see between the concrete moldings of the balcony, framed by a neatly crafted opening shaped precisely like a heart—were, or were they not, stitched together in a cosmic bus-to-balcony alert? The undeniable conjunction, the fact that between herself and the scene there was a heart drawn in the air, and that the bus that hit the boy proclaimed God’s Almighty Kindness just as she was doing in her lap, prompted Bibi to deploy a courage that surprised her only later.
She had not touched the thing before. Insisting that she had never needed one, and why should she start now? and, hadn’t she grown up and borne four children without a hitch or flaw? she had frankly refused to; but Issa, stopping wisely short of saying that three of those four kids (himself the one exception) had fallen ill and died almost right away and think what might have been if they had rung a doctor, had subjected her, as youth these days were wont to do, to lectures. Issa had talked on and on and on, and Bibi, because she loved him very much, had heard some of what he said. And so, well drilled despite herself by her modern son “in case anything should happen” (and what a thing had happened!), Bibi lifted the receiver—which was heavy, which she did not know how to hold—and used the only number (also lucky) that she had learned by heart.
One eye on her own Al-Fadhil, the other on the phone, she tapped and tapped as she’d been shown and waited for the click. The operator spoke. Bibi gave the number of nearby, cool Kikanga Clinic, where bright and promising Nisreen was none other than the woman at reception. Click-click. Click. And click. An unseen switchboard ticked, then gave over to a clatter. A voluminous quiet rose. Bibi held her breath. At long, impatient last, there came a rolling ring. Nisreen, accustomed to emergencies, picked up at the first shiver of her very own black box and, after expressing her surprise at hearing Bibi’s voice, listened to her mother-in-law relate the news that a holy Tata bus had smashed into an ordinary boy just outside their building. The bus, said Bibi, had sent that boy’s four limbs aflying (arm, arm, leg and leg) in each cardinal direction. “Do something!” she said. “You work in a clinic!” It was Nisreen’s job to “do something,” of course, and she would have, quite regardless. But hearing Bibi so excited made her do it faster. As she dropped the telephone, leapt up from her seat, and raced into the ward, she did not ask herself if her limp made her seem lame. It escaped her mind completely to wonder how she looked. Driven, brave, she found the orderlies and doctor and told them what she knew.
Therefore, with Bibi’s timely vision and Nisreen at reception, Sarie’s actions were perhaps not as weighty as they felt. She’d made the boy more comfortable, and may have stemmed his blood at a semicrucial juncture, but no more. After she’d secured the yellow cloth, whispered some more things, and was about to press a testing hand to the small boy’s pounding wrist, a troop of medical assistants descended on the scene. Their leader gave the order for the members of his little group to take the boy away, which, without a gasp or shout, or—to their credit—so much as a blink, they did.
Two of the assistants, scolding her for touching what they argued was now theirs, took the leg from Agatha. At the ominous pinching in the recess of her chest, she did the only thing she could, causing the two white-coated men to falter, stamp, and sigh: as the leg was taken up, she stood to tie the shoelace back again. It was a skill that she was eager to display (recently acquired with her father’s single pair of dress-ups), and (bright girl) she also feared that that shoe might be lost: she would not be rushed. Medical assistants frowning all the while, poor leg in midair, the shoe was tied up snug.
Once the dislodged limb, the boy, the clinic-folk, were gone, the compact huddle loosened. The street, with all the things upon it, came slowly right again. The stationer’s index cards fell back in relief and waited for new dust; the pens rolled into place. The pavement settled down. Bystanders who had screamed and then gone absolutely still now shrieked in retrospect. Some hooted. Others, hands on heads, reminded themselves and their neighbors patiently that God-must-not-be-cursed-no-matter-what-no-matter-what, and tried to give Him thanks for His mysterious work. The coffee-man announced to no one in particular that the bus had burst as though from smoke into the day. The woman with the wandering eye recovered from the shock and noted with dismay that some produce had been lost. The litter-woman saw a heap of coco husks and thought that she might pluck them. The paperboy, who had thrilled to being on the scene when new news came about, gathered up his now outdated sheets.
Hisham’s Food and Drink was open by this time. The owner, named not Hisham but Iqbal, brought out a bucket full of passion juice and a set of metal cups for the watchers who remained. This he did because all humans are involved in this big life and sometimes need refreshment that should not be bought. For Agatha, however, because white children can for good or ill inspire certain things, he made a show of proffering a straw. The litter-woman drank without tilting her head back. The coffee salesman, preferring his own beverage to theirs, did not accept the offer. The newsboy, whose days out in the sun were thirstier than most, came back for a refill, which he felt he deserved.
Upstairs on the balcony of Mansour House, Bibi happily took up her stitching once again, stopping now and then to shake her head in awe. Won’t Issa be surprised, how I’ve mastered his appliance? She was happy with herself She tucked her chin down towards her chest and smiled into her lap. At how modern his ma is? Nisreen would tell him, too. She’d heard that phone ring all the way around the corner, after all, and picked it up herself And, more than this! Had not Bibi’s scandal-seeking sense been accompanied by portent? Had she known all along, without knowing that she did, that an Al-Fadhil-bearing bus would surge into the day? Had she, in deciding for Al-Fadhil on that hanging instead of something else (Kids are wealth, A marriage is a tomb, Business is a blessing), been fingered by the cosmos? Not simply to catch things as they fell, but to forecast with her work? While Bibi stitched and mused, below on India Street the driver’s tout, fearing that the next professionals to swoop might hold handcuffs and batons, snapped his fingers and then vanished. The driver was long gone.
Two
At home again that day and for the following five, Sarie mentioned to her husband several times that she wanted to discover where the hurt boy lived. But Gilbert Turner was suspicious of, and did not like: involvement. Much better, he thought, to let the world unfold around oneself and, as a rule, not make any stink. He therefore did not believe that Sarie should involve herself expressly in the life-business of strangers. For five days like a husband and a father, he did manage to dissuade her. But Agatha, who could not stop thinking of the limb she’d cared for in the sun, wished to find out for herself if the shin and calf and foot had been sewn back onto their owner. She seethed with anger at her father, pouted at her mother, and stamped her little feet. “Leave well enough alone!” said Gilbert, and, “Forget it, won’t you, now?” when Sarie asked again. He added something about sleeping dogs, which Sarie did not understand, and sent Agatha outside.
Sarie’s husband did not like involvement because it made him feel unsafe. As many people do, Gilbert masked his shyness with elaborate shows of expertise that were sometimes impressive. He kept up a fair library that experts might have thought an amateur’s good show. In leather, paperback, and cloth, the writers of his books purported to lay bare the logic beneath peculiar local lore, exhaustively detail the mores and the habits of this land’s many tribes, and explain how natives are; others, less imaginative, discussed the (so they said) obscure ins and outs of agricultural procedures under tropical conditions, described how boats and homes were b
uilt; still others tried their hand at generating history. From his volumes, thumbed and eyed and loved, Gilbert had acquired, in some measure, the tenor of authority.
Drawing on the things he’d read, and also on his days in the Colonial Service (when more able men had drilled him), Gilbert said—among other things—to Sarie: “Muslims won’t consort with any likes of us, my dear.” He was reading at the time a pamphlet that seemed relevant, and he had gleaned from Sarie’s talk (about Hisham’s Food and Drink, a mention of the Aga Khan) that Muslims the boy’s family must be. He found some pleasure in the word “consort.” He tried it out again, this time for himself “We can’t consort with Muslims, dear. Just think!” Sarie turned to face him and did not, for once, speak, which pleased him. Thusly, he thought, gaining ground, he added, in a tone he meant to be consoling, “My dear, what will you ever do? What will you ever do if they should want you first of all to be unshod of your shoes, and leave them in the hallway?”
Gilbert liked to view himself as a strong man and as an able husband. And so he often told himself that Sarie, no matter what she said or did, was a fragile thing, unsure of what she wanted, and that she needed him to tell her what to do. Sarie was aware of this and sometimes played along, but there were limits to what she could accept. Her days, aside from making small, plain meals, keeping track (if absently) of Agatha, and wishing without making any plans that life was rather different, were not exactly full. And Agatha had reached a restless age. With her “when-can-we-where’s-his-leg’s” she had become a nuisance. From what was but did not seem to be a notably long distance, Sarie looked at Gilbert. She weighed her knowledge of him with her eyes. J’complete, she thought. Indeed: although he wore a singlet and a shirt, she knew precisely where, below two ashen nipples, the flesh sagged from his chest. She could have pointed out exactly where the soft mass of his belly was dimpled and was not. She knew without having to look how many ribs he had. And she was tired of his talk.
She breathed out through her nose. “If that is what the Muslims want,” she said, “then I will take them off.” Demonstrating—in one motion, without losing her balance—Sarie slipped her two big feet from her orange rubber thongs. Gaining some momentum, feeling contrary and sure, she went on: “It is not as if I had the sandals to unstrap. Regarde! One, two.” She put the shoes back on, then slipped them off again. She did a peppy dance step on the rust-red, tattered rug. “It is not”—and here she sighed—“as if I had some stockings. Or fancy Bata pumps.” For the moment she had given up on giving in to Gilbert. Daring, really, almost happy, she placed one of her large feet square onto her husband’s lap. “See? It takes no time at all.”
Sarie’s toes distracted him. She did not often touch him. Gilbert moved his pamphlet to the side, adjusted his small hips, and smiled indulgently at her. “Oh, Sarie.” He wrapped a round pink hand around her weighty ankle and looked up at his wife. Sometimes Sarie’s looks and height slipped Gilbert’s mind completely. Was that the little nose he’d liked, with the hint of lioness about it? The soft shoulders that were strong? Was that the ceiling fan, just beyond her hair? On their wedding day, he thought, the flush of love had made her seem so small! He looked back at his hand, her ankle, at her toes, which flared and curled towards him. Oh, he knew she wanted shoes. He wished she would forget. “You just won’t understand,” he said.
Sarie, aware still on that day that husbands need attention and timely, kindly acts, softened her approach. She leaned down from afar and kissed him on the brow, which, despite the argument at hand, thrilled Gilbert’s thin hair. She crooned: “I understand much more than you can know.” Gilbert, not quite catching what she said—hearing, in fact, I understand, and nothing of the rest—was touched by Sarie’s gesture and the sweet smell of her face. Perhaps, he thought, she didn’t really mind his lack of permanent employment, his staying in during the day, skimming his old books, his wandering in the afternoons and evenings. She loved him, after all. Is that not what wives were for? Sensing that her husband had gone mild, was dreaming, Sarie put an end to the debate. “I am taking Agatha today,” she said, “and we will see that little boy.”
Gilbert, bested by her touch, relinquished his objections. She had leaned down from the distance of her body and come close. Had pressed her toes against his thighs and had not pulled away, when, beneath her arching foot, his loins gave out a shiver. She had kissed him, after all. He could still, he imagined, feel her mouth on his bare brow. Let her do just as she pleases, Gilbert thought at last. What harm is there in it?
Completely unaware that Sarie would soon access some freedom of her own, he crossed his feet, which were doughy, damp, and he smiled up at his wife. Decided to be generous. Fair is fair, old man. Why shouldn’t she go out? “All right,” Gilbert shrugged. “Do just as you like.” Sarie put her foot back on the floor. Gilbert sighed and turned back to the pamphlet: His Holiness in Africa: An Account of Dr. Saheb’s Tour of Light and Love Among the Vunjamguu Adherents. He himself was planning, reading done, to take an early evening stroll to the Victorian Palm Hotel, where he hoped, as always and as idly, to find a fellow ex-colonial on the lookout for a partner in a business. Someone who would notice all he had to offer and who would take him on in a reassuring, easy venture that would unfold for him at last the future, which he vaguely dreamed of now and then but did not know how to find.
In the bedroom, freed, Sarie called to Agatha. She put on her best dress, a light gray thing with small white dots, short sleeves, and a scooped neck. With a finger and saliva, she nudged accumulated grime from a yellow vinyl purse. Into it she slipped a pen and five pineapple sweets wrapped in glossy paper. “We are going,” Sarie said. “Are you now content?” Agatha did not answer, but she nodded, satisfied. She sat down on the bed and, watching in the mirror, aped her mother’s moves. She did not have a purse, but she rolled her shoulders and her neck like a woman making an assessment of her looks, and, once Sarie was done, asked to be assisted with the zipper of her own best thing (a long purple-buttoned smock with a radish-print design), and smoothed down her dark hair. Sarie zipped her up and clipped her daughter’s mop with a cracked, worn plastic pin that had, in its first days, resembled a chameleon. Engrossed in the next room, Gilbert put his lightly smelly feet on Sarie’s favorite table and set about imagining himself desired and aglow among the dignitaries who were pictured milling pleasantly about a bird-filled Chancellor’s garden. Peacocks, Gilbert thought. Surely there were peacocks.
On the streets, the light was fierce, but Kikanga Clinic’s world was dim and still and cool. Sarie stood still for a moment on the threshold, relishing the air. Agatha, waiting for the flashes in her eyes to quit, blinked six times in quick succession, then raised her eyebrows high before blinking again. Everything looked green. Directed by her mother, Agatha moved spryly towards the heavy wooden chairs that waited by the wall. Feet adangle, she sat looking up with one eye closed at two framed pictures of the famous Aga Khan—each of which, healthy and avuncular, almost but not quite like the other self, flashed a winning smile. The ceiling fan wheezed idly.
Sarie smoothed the dotted dress down over her thighs and moved up to inquire. The receptionist, a narrow girl with fine, long hands and a sturdy pair of glasses over two perfectly round eyes (Bibi’s own Nisreen), looked patiently at Sarie. Nearly dropping but retrieving one pineapple sweet that had got caught on the cap, Sarie fished her pen out. She zipped the purse back up, leaned forward towards the girl, introduced herself, and explained why she had come. “It was me, you see,” she said. “It was me who tried to help.”
Nisreen had heard about her from the medical assistants, who had, as it turned out, described Sarie very well. But they hadn’t said she’d helped. Nisreen cocked her head and said, “I see.” She didn’t say it meanly. She looked past Sarie, towards Agatha (the girl, she’d heard, who’d prevented them from going till she’d laced up the one shoe). “My daughter,” Sarie said. She looked down a moment at her dress, then swayed a bit from hip to
hip. “I, too. We want to see him. How he is.” She was not sure how to proceed. Sarie did not go out much, not to visit people, and not to speak to strangers. She also did not know what happened, ordinarily, to boys who’d lost their legs so suddenly. She had seen abrasions, stab wounds, ulcers, too, sometimes broken arms and toes, small things plucked, removed, and once an amputation, but nothing quite like this. Was he still at the clinic? Sarie clenched her jaw. Had he, perhaps, died? She didn’t ask these things out loud, but Nisreen understood.
Because she was obedient and responsive above all, before thinking to be careful, Nisreen answered Sarie’s question. “He’s at home,” she said. The boy had been released. “He’s going to be all right.” Resting one long finger on a page of the reception book, where coordinates were noted, she read Sarie the address, and Sarie, on a weathered scrap of paper she had slipped from Gilbert’s special drawer, wrote the following down: Tahir. Majid. Ghulam. Jeevanjee. 10 yrs. Fthr. M. G. Jvnjee. Kudra House. Flr. 2.
Feeling pleasantly accomplished, Nisreen closed the book and slid it gently back onto its shelf But, watching Sarie fold her piece of paper, it occurred to her, a little late as usual, that she now felt some doubt. Should she have done what she just had? Should she not have asked more questions? Gotten her address? Nisreen stood silently and wavered. Biting at the inside of her cheek, she looked across the tiles to the bright doorway, thinking. Sarie had zipped up her yellow purse and was about to go, but, seeing the receptionist so quiet, she felt suddenly uncertain that the interview had ended. In Nisreen’s heavy glasses, a pane of street appeared: a small transparent man pulled a cart behind him; a gleaming Fiat swerved. Sarie wondered briefly how well Nisreen saw. Ought she call her daughter and go on with her mission, wave thank-you from the door?
The Blue Taxi Page 2