The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack

by HM Naqvi

  My knees are soiled from the feline funeral, my bush shirt blotched with sweat. “Au contraire, mon frère,” I reply. “I am preparing to wage war!”

  “Who’re your brothers-in-arms?”

  “This is Bosco, grandson of one Felix Pinto, the Caliph of Cool”—the lad stands up but cannot enunciate because he has stuffed several stale crackers in his mouth—“and this is Jugnu, a near and dear friend of mine.”

  Jugnu has lost the cap, loosened her hair, undone the buttons of her kurta at the chest and looks like a dame again (and what a dame she is). “Thank you for your hospitality,” she says.

  Raising his thick eyebrows, Tony mutters, “Mi casa, su casa.”

  “Hear, hear!” I stumble.

  Steadying me with a firm hand, Tony asks, “What’s wrong, Abdu?”

  “Uric acid in the knees?”

  “You’re hot to the touch.”

  “He has been running fever,” Jugnu says, grabbing my arm. “He needs medicine and rest.”

  “Come on,” Tony tugs, “I’ll show you to your room.”

  Tony’s large, lived-in suite wafts scented oils and marijuana and overlooks the orchard. It features modern amenities including a two-ton Korean air conditioner, a small refrigerator, and one of those state-of-the-art television sets as wide as a blackboard, but the décor is decidedly rustic: a zebra skin lies across the floor and a pair of crossed Enfields are fixed on the wall (pilfered, if I recall correctly, from Papa) alongside lithographs depicting local vistas, a forgotten redbrick fortress, and the sombre grandeur of the necropolis of Makli. I would be pleased as punch to be interred in one of those solid tombs amongst the nestled cacti, but I am probably fated to waste away on the old four-post Burma-teak towards the far end of the room, draped with mosquito netting.

  Surveying the premises, arms folded, Jugnu says, “Chalay ga,” or This will work.

  Winking at me, Tony says, “Cool.”

  “But what about Bosco?”

  “Don’t worry: there are other rooms, other—”

  “Lie down,” Jugnu instructs, and I do as I am told. Then turning to my brother, she says, “Take me to the kitchen.” Saluting, Tony leads her out, hand on the small of her back.

  After ingesting a litre of water, a bowl of peppery chicken stock & a pair of paracetamols—I don’t have an appetite and feel like death—I lie across the bed in a borrowed cotton sarong (“It’s the only thing that’ll fit, Abdu,” Tony said) before lapsing into an uneasy sleep. I dream I am traversing a cavernous white-tiled room—it might be a hotel kitchen, a public loo, a morgue—when I am blinded by the savage swipe of a phantom feline. Presently, I notice an eyeball, my eyeball, rolling across the floor like a peeled cherry towards an open drain with the momentum of inevitability. The Cruel Logic of Nightmares dictates that I must trample it underfoot. It’s a gruesome spectacle—fleshy juice everywhere.

  I wake startled and shivering and squinting to check that my eyeballs are lodged in their respective sockets. I find Jugnu, unperturbed, lying snoring next to me. She does not lie like a lady; she lies with enviable abandon, rump exposed. I lie conjuring the moist, musty crevice of her buttocks, the whorl within, for I am known to be what is termed a Rump Man—I confess I stare at dames perched on the backs of motorcycles. At this juncture of history, however, Rump or Bust is neither here nor there; when one is depleted or dying, one requires companionship. Some find God. I have Jugnu. I have to hold on to her somehow; I must ask her for her hand. I sleep better after, and do not wake until white afternoon sunlight cuts through the mossy curtains.

  Since the fever has not subsided and an alarming rash is spotted across my torso, a thermometer is produced and thrust into my maw. The mercury reads forty degrees Celsius. I hear hushed discussion in the hall outside: We need to get him to … The nearest is … He’s in no state … I’m calling … He’ll be here within … I overhear Bosco rambling: “You know, it could be some kind of erythema, which is fine, because it’s usually caused by a drug reaction … but then it could also be Scarlet Fever … meningitis … bubonic plague. My mother would know what to do … He can’t die. Is he going to die?”

  The doctor, a dark, distinguished, bovine-faced gentleman named Lal, calmly informs me that I am afflicted with the national epidemic known as Dengue. I want to ask him about the genesis of these new, fanciful, fearsome maladies in the headlines, viz., Swine Flu, Naegleria, Mad Cow Disease—and what of the classics: Rickets, Scurvy, Legionnaires’?—but the doctor repairs to the hall before I can articulate myself.139 I can hear him fielding other questions. Critical phase … low platelet count … six days, a week … Risks at his age … diabetes … fluid accumulation in the chest … Call immediately …

  There is no doubt about it: I am dying. And what a sorry way to die! A tragedy! A farce! I can imagine the inscription on my headstone:

  HERE LIES ABDULLAH K. (THE COSSACK)

  A MAN MOUNTAIN FELLED BY A MOSQUITO

  At some juncture, I crawl out from beneath the sheets, racked by a headache that permeates my ocular cavities, and notice Tony sitting bedside. Clasping his hand, I say, “I want to be buried at the Lodge. They can’t sell the place. Promise me you won’t let that happen. Promise your dying brother.”

  “I promise, Abdu, but you ain’t dying: doc’s prescribed aspirin, water, and juice for God’s sake!”

  “I bring you a pao of the best hashish this side of the Indus and you offer me juice?”

  “Thanks a lot, Abdu—I’m really stoked—but you need to drink up.”

  Between gulps (mercifully it’s apple, not bitter gourd) I express the wish to divide a third of my assets amongst the Childoos, a third between Bosco and Jugnu, and the rest to Tony to do with as he wishes. “Of course, there’s nothing left … nothing left of me … I’ve wasted my life, Tony … Your brother’s a failure.”

  Running his fingers through my knotted hair, Tony insists, “You made me who I am, Abdu.”

  “Then why did you leave me?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with you! I split because of all the family shit. I needed something of my own …”

  The cat claws at my conscience as I lapse in and out of consciousness: I find myself amongst mutilated felines twisting from the limp branches of the mango trees. Clouds of flies swarm the carcasses, crows swoop to pick at the offal, and there is the tangy stink of cat urine in the air. It is a wretched, revolting tableau, a forlorn corner of Hell. I do what has to be done: I find a scythe in the ramshackle shed at the far side of the orchard and hack each twine. I bury each carcass with blood-spattered hands before digging a ditch and crawling in. I shut my eyes and it’s all over.

  When I stir, I behold Bosco sitting perfectly still on a chair before me, hands flat on his thighs, like a chastened schoolboy. Taking my pulse, he asks, “What will happen to me if you die?” When I stir again, Jugnu is lounging beside me, leafing through an old album. “I’m dying,” I mumble.

  “We are all dying,” she coos.

  “Don’t die before me. Everyone I love dies before me.”

  Studying me with her keen obsidian gaze, she inquires, “You love me?”

  “I love you.”

  Smiling widely, like a Dentonic-Once-A-Day-Everyday billboard, Jugnu kisses my blistered lips. “You are my Rus Gullah!”

  I cringe at the sobriquet but then reckon there is nothing wrong with being called a ball of cheese boiled in syrup. In any event, I want to ask if she reciprocates my sentiment, if she will marry me, but it is not an opportune moment—I cannot turn on my side much less bend my knee.

  I recall the doctor returning. I recall a rectal itch, the charnel balm of incense and roses and wet earth that sweeps graveyards at dusk. I recall Jugnu announcing, “Your fever’s broken. You’re not dying tonight.”

  137. I could pen a manual entitled “Abdullah the Cossack’s Rules of the Road.” Rule No. 1: Nobody has Right of Way. Rule No. 2: Everybody has Right of Way. Rule No. 3: The shortest distance between two p
oints is not a straight line but a road free of traffic lights.

  138. For the record—always for the record—Tony’s the only one on God’s Green Earth permitted to call me Abdu.

  139. I have a sense that the changing pathogenic environment is informed by the chemicals we spew into the atmosphere, the chemicals we pump into our fauna, flora—the company that pioneered Agent Orange must be stopped—but we all also know that God via John of Patmos has threatened plagues at the End of Days. Although Nargis doesn’t care she might invoke “Qiyamat ki nishanian,” viz., the Signs of Armageddon. At the very least, however, my end seems nigh.

  ON THE GAMES WE PLAY

  (or HARD SCRABBLE)

  We install ourselves on beach chairs in the orchard after the chirrup of parrots subsides, slicing ripe mangoes with sticky fingers. The sky is velvety at night, and dusted with stars, the air thick with pyrethrum, hashish, nostalgia:

  You remember Felix, the Caliph of Cool?

  Rock star, that guy.

  He got me snookered on my birthday.

  Them Goans can drink anybody under the table!

  Except me, chum.

  Remember Uncle Ben?

  That killer Cointreau!

  You hear Mrs. D’Abreo passed?

  What a fine dame!

  Do you keep in touch with anybody from school?

  I barely keep in touch with family.

  Whilst Tony is aloof when it comes to codes and conventions, he is an excellent host: if I require a cushion for my raw rectum, or Bosco expresses a desire for Pakola, or Jugnu mentions the gratification of sucking a beedi, the item materializes, courtesy of the gunmen-cum-bearers (or bearers-cum-gunmen). Tony might have apprenticed only briefly at the Olympus, in what is now called the Hospitality Industry, but his sense of hospitality is innate; we are, I like to believe, fundamentally Mummy’s boys. We have not spoken about her—if it were just the two of us, it might have been different—but she is always present. And because we are amongst company, I cannot find the opportunity to lobby for the Lodge. Instead we palaver about this, that, the other—one evening, Jugnu asks Tony, “What do you do here alone?”

  “When I am not farming, I am making wine, breeding dogs, mastiffs mainly: Tosas, Neopolitans, Dogo Argentinos.”

  “What’s the name of that dog that was barking when we came, Uncle T.?” Bosco interrupts.

  “I got two, brother-man: Hero and Daku.”

  “Daku as in dacoit?” Bosco asks. Bosco keeps an eye on the boundary wall and asks when we are returning to the city.

  “As soon as I have a serious chat with Uncle T.,” I assure him.

  “And my pals show up every month,” Tony is saying, “a couple landlords (cats who have studied abroad, you know), and this Communist pir from Sakrand, this retired colonel we call Flashman, and Hur—old Hawkeye—he drops in time to time. We smoke, drink, go fishing upriver or on the sea. There is a place called the Khadda three hours from the coast. It’s like the border of the Continental Shelf. You find these massive marlin there, barracuda—kund, you know? In the winter, we hunt quail and partridge. It is a simple life.” Tony smiles. “I am a simple man.”

  “Haan haan,” Jugnu teases, sure sure. “You make tharra, kill animals.”

  “Really small animals, Jugnu Begum.” Tony winks. “I am a lover, not a fighter.”140

  Jugnu persists, “So you have a woman?”

  “Well, yes, yes, I do,” he replies, “but tell me, how did you and Abdu meet each other?”

  “One afternoon,” Jugnu begins before I can get a word in, “I was strolling in Garden when I stopped for corn on the cob.” I imagine Jugnu curbside in a technicolour kurta, observing the gaggle of burqas, the street-side dentist, the laden donkey. She might have adjusted her bra, picked kernels from her teeth. But in the version she narrates, she neglects to mention that she had been trolling the streets since her lover was imprisoned down the road at the station. “I saw a man,” she continues, “who did not care for—how should I say?—social conventions. I thought: this is somebody I want to know. I pursued him, then he pursued me.”141

  “You wanna elaborate?” Tony asks me.

  “No,” I blurt, “it’s late.”

  When conversations falter, or mosquitoes swarm, we play carom inside—Tony is the reigning champion—or Gin Rummy, which is Bosco’s game. It’s the only time he is in his element in the Interior. After beating everyone roundly, he explains, “I used to play with Mum all the time. She taught me Scrabble also. Do you have a set, Uncle T.? We could place bets.”

  “That’s why I ain’t gonna play with you, brother-man. You’ll take all my money, my land, and leave me for dead.”

  “Oh, come on!” Bosco pleads. “What about you, Uncle Cossack?”

  “I put ideas together, lad, not letters.”

  To be entirely honest, late at night, I am eager to play other games, games adults play. The night after my recovery, I had shut the door behind me and lumbered towards Jugnu like a cheeky circus bear. Raising her arms like a ballerina, Jugnu allowed me to slide her kurta over her head & sample her dark, pubescent bosoms. “Pasand aya?” or Like it? she asked palming my head. They tasted tart, like green mangoes. “Pasand aya,” I cooed with my mouth full.

  We fell on the bed after, kissing and groping each other like children. But when she started unbuttoning my shirt—tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man—I childishly drew away. Whilst Jugnu has seen me shirtless, even pantless, it was as if I suddenly realized that I am a toothless, misshapen man who possesses breasts befitting an Italian matron and a briar of lint in the navel. “The air conditioner,” I blurted, “it’s cold.” Unfastening my trousers instead, Jugnu appraised my member. I was afraid it would not respond but when she swallowed it whole like a moist seekh kebab, there was no doubt that all remained in working order.

  Each time I attempted to negotiate her cummerbund, however, she swept my hand away. “Not now, my Rus Gullah,” she whispered, “not now.” What is it? Misplaced modesty? The dictates of the menstrual cycle? The clap? But what does it matter? We are lovers. We have time.

  “When the hell will you show me around?” I ask Tony over breakfast in the hope we will finally be able to talk to each other, mano a mano. But Tony invites everybody for a jaunt across his estate. Jugnu announces she will drive. When Tony explains that the vehicle, a relic of the Second World War, does not feature power steering, she says, “Chalay ga.” Bosco jumps up front, crying, “Shotgun.”

  “She doesn’t drive like a woman,” Tony whispers as we lurch ahead on a dirt road,142 dust billowing behind us. Tony is of the opinion that the most inept drivers in the country are dames and maulvis. I must concur.

  As we wend past women in colourful costumes squatting in the fields, clearing the land with dupattas slung around their backs, I say, “You’ve become a regular feudal.”

  “These women, they’re tough cookies. They put food on the table. They wear the pants in the family. They share profits with me, fifty-fifty.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  “You’re busting my balls but lemme tell you I’ve set up a basic clinic and elementary school for the kids. I’ve even sent a couple for higher studies. You tell me who has done the same?”

  When we pull up to a narrow sylvan chase by the canal bank—the border separating our land and the vast holdings of the neighbouring feudal—Tony says, “I come here for shooting but I haven’t in a while because things are dicey these days: the old man—you remember him, right, Dada’s friend and protégé?—is on his deathbed and his sons are jackholes—”

  “Jackholes?”

  “Half jackass, half a-hole—know what I mean?—and they’re itching for a fight. They got nothing else to do.”

  When Jugnu points out a monitor lizard scrambling across a knoll to Bosco, I take Tony aside. “Hidayatullah and Bakaullah are itching for a fight also. I have to ask you, Tony: Are you with me or against me?”

  Leaning b
eside a tree, my brother sucks his teeth. “Of course, I’m with you, Abdu—I’m always with you—but you gotta remember I also owe Bakaullah. He was there for me when things were rough in the US. He paid for my education. And, you know, we weren’t always there for him.”

  If Tony insists on dredging up the past, I could remind him that he is technically squatting: the land beneath our feet belongs to us all—no transfer certificate has ever been issued. Perhaps that is why he does not want to get involved. In the effort to save the Lodge, however, I am not in the mood to let it go: “Let me remind you,” I say, “I am the only one who went to him after the accident. I loved those children; I loved Bhabi. I did what I could do, but what could I do?”

  “I know, Abdu, I know—”

  “Bakaullah has principles, lofty principles, that are entirely his own.”

  “Yeah but you also live in your own world, Daddy-O. You see things the way you wanna see them, not the way they are.”

  “This is about what’s right: the Lodge is a monument, our monument.”

  “If the Lodge had been declared a trust or something,” Tony philosophizes, “there’d have been no discussion, no mess. Money creates and destroys families. That’s why I left.”

  “Yes, well, I have nowhere to go. I would have bought them out but I have no capital inflow. I can’t even repair the generator. You’re the ace in my sleeve.”

  “Never been nobody’s ace before—”

  “You were always mine.”

  “Lemme just think about it, okay?”

  “Think quickly, kid. I had planned to be here for only three days. I need to leave tomorrow. For all I know, they have squatted on the property by now, sealed the doors.”

  “Okay but you gotta meet Devyani before you leave.”

  “Who’s Devyani?”

  Devyani arrives whilst I am sipping cold, minty shikanjabeen in the orchard, Bosco is scouring the walls for dacoits and monitor lizards & Jugnu is discussing the difference between wine & moonshine with Tony. “You see the outhouse?” Tony is saying, with a wave of the hand. “It houses my winery. I will give you a tour if you like.” But Devyani’s advent defers the tour until daylight. We all stand to attention. We all stare.