by Bapsi Sidhwa
Feroza was used to the odor of filth, the reek of poverty: sweat, urine, open drains, rotting carrion, vegetables, and the other debris that the poor in Pakistan had become inured to.
But those were smells and sights she was accustomed to and had developed a tolerance for. This was an alien filth, a compost reeking of vomit and alcoholic belches, of neglected old age and sickness, of drugged exhalations and the malodorous ferment of other substances she could not decipher. The smells disturbed her psyche; it seemed to her they personified the callous heart of the rich country that allowed such savage neglect to occur. The fetid smell made her want to throw up. She ran out of the building, and, leaning against the wall of the terminal, began to retch.
“What’s the matter?” Manek asked, and when Feroza raised her face for an instant, he saw the horror and compassion that mingled with her physical misery. She began to retch again, and Manek said, “Don’t do that, you’ll make me vomit too.” He took her arm. “Come on, let’s cross the street while the light’s green.”
They turned right on Forty-second Street, and Manek said, “So, you’ve seen now, America is not all Saks and skyscrapers.”
Feroza blinked in the sudden glare of light from the cinema marquees advertising their titles: Lustful Lucy Bangs the Boys, Behind the Green Door, Virgin Lust, Deep Throat.
Forty-second Street appeared to have its own distinct character. A couple of shifty-eyed young men walked sideways besides them, furtively dangling gold chains and wristwatches. From the way Manek quickened his step, Feroza guessed they were selling stolen goods.
A grubby, bulky man with sloping shoulders sidled up to Manek and pushed a dog-eared flyer at him. He whispered something and Manek said, “I’m not interested, sir.”
The man hurried his pace to keep up with them and continued shoving the flyer at Manek until he took it. Feroza glimpsed the words “massage” and “sauna” in bold type. The man frightened her. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, clutching Manek’s arm.
“What’s there to be afraid of?” Manek said, assuming an exaggerated nonchalance. As another unsavory character made eye contact and started walking towards them, he said, “There’s a bus stop a little further up — let’s go.”
They climbed aboard a bus and moved toward the empty seats at the back. The last row was occupied by a solitary bag lady with scraggly blond and gray hair and an unbuttoned overcoat. They backed off at once. The raggedy lady, wearing layer upon layer of unwashed clothing, was flanked by two large shopping bags that sat on either side of her like overstuffed watch-dogs, and she gave off a tidal wave of an aroma that staggered them. The noxious smell staked out her domain as surely as an animal’s territorial scent warns off intruders.
As she reeled forward between the aisles, Feroza again elongated her neck and made alarming retching noises. Manek hung back, preferring not to know her.
The bus was fairly full with a batch of middle-aged Eastern European and Russian immigrant women who cleaned the skyscrapers every night and couples on their way home from the theater or a restaurant. Manek and Feroza found seats in front.
They had barely settled down when the bus took a sharp turn and suddenly they were bathed in a shower of lights. Soaring billboards flashed their neon dazzle in blue, red, and green. Legitimate theaters advertised their fare, and Feroza noticed the billboards for A Chorus Line and Cats — remote and legendary musicals she had heard about and never even dreamed of seeing. White and yellow light spilled from restaurants and souvenir shops.
Feroza felt as if a stage set had been flipped around to reveal the glitzy and glamorous side of the ugliness and tawdry scenes they had witnessed on Eighth Avenue and on Forty-second Street.
“It’s Times Square!” Manek announced, leaning across Feroza to look out the window. He turned his bright face to hers, and his eyes were shining.
Feroza was glad to be sharing her adventures with her uncle: Manek seemed to have shed the last vestiges of his adolescent jealousy of her. Her melancholy and fear flew out the window, and her lightened heart thrilled to the rhythm of the garish lights, to the sight of Japanese tourists taking photographs, the vendors displaying jewelry, scarves, tacky T-shirts, and buttons. Feroza felt it all represented a rich slice of the life and experience she had come to America to explore.
A new lot of passengers climbed aboard the bus. Some, tourists like themselves, were mildly drunk and flushed with excitement. There were a couple of middle-aged, drunken men with tattoos.
Manek observed a respectable-looking family with teenage children. Manek had sold Bibles in the South one summer, and he guessed right away that they were from the Bible Belt. After a tiring day spent sightseeing, they appeared agog, stunned by their glimpse of Sodom. The rest of the passengers consisted of some stoned kids, flamboyant toughs who were also stoned, their shaved heads, black leather accouterments and earrings proclaiming their sub-caste as distinctly as caste marks on a Brahmin’s forehead declares his. It was a racially impartial mixture of black and white.
A tall, rail-thin young man lurched up the aisle and fell into the two empty seats in front of Feroza and Manek. He appeared restless. The bus braked and then pitched forward, jolting back the youth’s blond head. He balanced himself by spreading his long arms in an expansive, good-humored gesture, and at the same time, he turned and glanced back.
He had an open, pleasant face, and Feroza noted with surprise the distended pupils shadowing his light eyes. The kid was about her age; he couldn’t be more than sixteen. He smiled at Feroza, his eyes wandering slightly, and said, “Hey, lady, I haven’t eaten in a week. D’you have any change so I can get some breakfast?”
Was he also addressing the passengers behind them? Feroza wasn’t sure. The indulgence and affection she had felt for Manek earlier, when her heart had ached at the thought of his severance from Lahore, was instantly transferred to the hungry kid. Again his eyes wandered and, of their own accord, kept rolling up, showing anemic white crescents as if he was about to faint from weakness.
Feroza reached into her handbag and stretched out her hand with a dollar bill.
“He’s spaced out,” Manek remarked, eyeing the clear-cut profile of the emaciated youth with disgust and disapproval.
“Shush!” Feroza said, embarrassed.
“Why?” Manek asked. “Are you afraid of hurting his feelings? I’m not in awe of these trashy whites like you are.” And, able to belch at will, Manek belched loudly, twice.
“I’m not sitting near you if this is how you’re going to behave.” Feroza stood up from the window seat and tried to edge past.
Manek pulled her down by the tail of her polka-dotted shirt from Bloomingdale’s. “Sit, stupid. You must get over your gora complex. Once you know enough whites, you’ll realize how ignorant and dirty they are, and you’ll stop feeling sorry for bastards like him.”
Meanwhile the emaciated young man stood up. Balancing his slender shanks against the seat, he spread his hands as if embracing all the passengers with his affectionate gesture.
“Gee, lady,” he said to Feroza with such rapture that he appeared to be lit up from within. “People are so nice!” He lurched past them, his dimples twinkling in little pools of reflected light.
“Thanks, pal,” Feroza heard him say behind her and wondered how much someone else had given him.
“Would you give anything to a drugged afeemi back home? No, only a nice little kick in the balls.”
Although Manek spoke quietly, Feroza was quite sure people could hear him. She turned away, furious. Manek glanced at her profile gone rigid with embarrassment and emitted a series of loud, chastising belches.
Chapter 8
Feroza insisted she would sleep late the next morning.
Feroza insisted on sleeping late every morning, but Manek, assuming the role of both lion and lion tamer, roared and growled until he awakened her. The previous morning, he had twisted his bed sheet into a rope and cracked it in the air until, reminded of th
e whip he used to chase her with, Feroza threw off her blanket and, grumbling, shoved her arms into her robe.
Manek accompanied her to the ladies’ rest room and stood vigil outside while Feroza made sure there were no suspicious-looking legs lurking in the cubicles. Manek hung around for a few moments, warning off potential attackers with his presence. Sometimes he waited till she came out, particularly at night.
This morning, too, she mumbled and whined her protests.
When she finally unglued her eyes at Manek’s insistence, Feroza found herself, from a distance of less than two inches, peering at a whorl of dark hair in Manek’s left armpit. Manek hung above her nose, stretched out diagonally like an awkward gymnast.
Feroza promptly shut her eyes.
“Smell anything?” he asked.
“No. Get away.”
Feeble with sleep, Feroza tried to push him. She felt the pressure ease from the mattress as Manek stood up.
“I want you to open your eyes for just one minute, then you can go back to sleep.”
Feroza did not believe him.
“I’ll pour water on your face if you don’t.”
Resistance was futile. Feroza discreetly opened an eye.
“Watch me.” Manek quickly rubbed the deodorant stick into his hairy armpit. “This is how you use it. Then put on your clothes. Okay?”
Feroza nodded.
“Okay. You can go back to sleep.”
Surprised at her unexpected reprieve, Feroza sat up in bed to mumble sarcastically, “Thank you!” and promptly ducked beneath her comforter.
“I’ll have breakfast, get some papers photocopied, and be back in an hour.”
Feroza’s head jiggled beneath the comforter to indicate she had heard.
She was dressed by the time Manek returned.
He told her it was time he wrote to his university and the banks to sort out the trouble with the immigration authorities at the airport. He also needed to work on a neglected term paper. He suggested that Feroza have her breakfast, window-shop around the YMCA, and return by one-thirty. He would then treat her to a tour of an art gallery.
By now Feroza was longing to saunter into shops and browse at her own pace in New York instead of rushing from museum to museum. She gave a yelp of pure joy, and Manek prudently removed the larger bills from her purse, saying, “Now be alert. Don’t get lost. And don’t look dopey, or someone like that white monkey you squandered your wealth on yesterday will mug you.”
“I can look after myself, uncle dear,” Feroza asserted with so much confidence that Manek leaped out of the chair, grabbed his niece by the arm and warned, “Look, don’t show off. If something happens to you, I won’t know what to do. You’d better stay close. If you get lost, raise your hand like this and wave it for a taxi. Tell the driver to take you to the YMCA at Broadway and Sixty-third Street. Remember that.”
He quickly scribbled the address on a scrap of paper. “Here, put this in your purse. There are twenty other YMCAs and you could end up in the Bronx or someplace.”
“I know, I know, baba,” Feroza said, trying to conceal her irritation. “I won’t go far.”
Feroza walked up and down the streets, a sharp wind flattening the loose shalwar against her shins and causing the excess material to flutter like flags behind her legs. Lured by the windows of the small shops as if by magnets, she barely felt the cold. Manek had explained the grid system to her, but with him in haste and her in tow, she had not quite understood what he meant. Discovering the beauty and the simplicity of its logic for herself, noting street numbers and the names of the avenues, Feroza struck out with mounting confidence and researched the area in a widening square around the YMCA.
Satisfied by her exploration of the shops, Feroza bought, after much deliberation and heart searching, a Cross pen and a knitted red beret to match her coat. The deliberation and heart searching were occasioned by the conversion rate of eleven rupees to the dollar. To spend twenty dollars on a pen and cap was an extravagance. Many families in Pakistan lived on less each month. Feroza had not considered costs, or comparisons like these, while Manek did the spending, but digging into her own purse and handling the currency weighted her down with responsibility. She walked out of the small store wearing the cap at a jaunty angle.
Feroza returned to the YMCA at around one o’clock. Manek and Feroza had been out most afternoons and Feroza had never returned so early. She was surprised by the long lines of people waiting for the elevators. Feroza looked around, perplexed, wondering which one to stand in, and hastily positioned herself in a line that was being rapidly absorbed through open doors into an elevator.
Feroza realized only when they sailed past the fifteenth floor that the elevator did not stop on her floor but on the twenty-second floor, the level reserved for women.
She stepped out with the others wondering what she should do. She glanced around but she couldn’t see any sign of a door leading to the staircase.
Her smile twitching, embarrassed, Feroza turned to a cheerful-looking woman who had got off with her and was observing her confusion with friendly, inquiring eyes. Feroza explained what had happened.
“The elevators stop at different levels, didn’t you know?” the woman asked, voicing her surprise.
Feroza colored and apologetically mumbled, “I wasn’t sure.”
“You’ll have to go down again, get into the correct line, and take the elevator that goes to the fifteenth floor. Read the numbers that are marked on top, or ask someone.”
The woman spoke rapidly, and although she exuded a daunting air of confidence, she was sympathetic and pleasant. She wore no makeup and her short, wavy brown hair with its sun-bleached highlights gave her a reliable, wholesome air.
Feroza found herself warming to the woman’s no-nonsense charm and considerate manner. “That’ll take another hour,” she confided ruefully, discouraged at the thought of all that going up and down and standing in line again.
“There’s another way,” the amiable woman said. “Come, I’ll show you.”
Feroza almost ran to keep up with the brisk figure walking down the hall. She was evidently in a hurry, and Feroza felt grateful that she was sparing the time for her.
The woman opened a heavy, green metal door. “Here,” she said with a indulgent smile, “just run down to the fifteenth floor.”
Feroza stepped inside the door hesitantly. There appeared to be no light. She wondered if she had not better use the elevators after all.
The woman gave her an almost impatient shove.
“Go on, it’s all right,” she said and shut the door.
It was instantly very dark and quiet, as if in closing the door, the amiable woman had shut Feroza out of New York.
It was also much colder. Feroza felt disoriented, confused for a moment about where she was. The air was rank with the odor of stale cigarette smoke and food. She got a whiff of urine and of decaying refuse.
Feroza stood still, blinking, trying to accustom her eyes to the darkness and adjust them to the weak cone of light from a bulb hanging over the landing. Soon she was able to make out the tarnished surface of a rod running across the center of the door. The rod ended in a curved projection that she guessed must be the handle.
Fearing that the woman who had been so kind to her might still be in the hall and think she was not only ungrateful but also a coward, Feroza waited a minute and then tried the handle quietly to see if the door would open.
It didn’t.
The bulb dangling from an exposed length of wire showed the unswept cement floor of the landing. Some debris had accumulated in a corner — cigarette butts, food cartons, a grimy plastic bag with something in it.
Feroza noticed the beginning of a wrought-iron balustrade running along some concrete steps. She moved cautiously to peer down. The shallow steps appeared to dissolve in the darkness. Feroza took hold of the railing and slowly, tentatively, began her descent.
It became so dark she had to feel her way
with the tip of her sneakers, then plant both feet before negotiating the next step. The bulb on the next landing must have died. At certain places the bannister had become loose in its moorings and wobbled beneath her hand. She couldn’t see anything. What if some part of the balustrade were missing — as happened in nightmares — or a section of it came away where the concrete had crumbled, and she plunged into the void? She moved closer to the wall, and an unsettling weakness crept into her legs.
A little further down, following the steps round a sharp angle, Feroza saw the opaque glow from a dust coated bulb forming a pale oval of light on the next landing. She quickened her pace.
Again the handle wouldn’t give. She exerted more pressure and pressed her shoulder hard against the door. She knocked tentatively. There was no responsive sound.
Feroza stood by the door to collect her thoughts and became aware of her rapidly beating heart. She must not panic. She was glad she had on sneakers. Although part of her craved to shout and bang on the door, a stronger instinct warned her to conceal her presence — to assess her situation before making a noise. To be more in control.
Perhaps the woman knew the door on the fifteenth floor would open.
Treading carefully lest the grit on the steps should crunch beneath her feet and echo in the unknown space through which she was descending, Feroza went down another flight of steps and another. She lost count.
Was this the fifteenth floor? It must be. Feroza felt completely disoriented. She tried the knob, pulling and pushing. She shoved her shoulder against the door’s solid mass. It was immovable.
Feroza suddenly found it difficult to breathe. The wave of fear she had managed to bank so far broke through her defenses. She slammed the door with the flat of her hand and shrieked, “Can anybody hear me? Is anyone there? Open the door … Somebody, please, open the door!”
She waited, listening, eyes enlarged and intent, terrified at the noise she had just made.