Fireproof

by Raj Kamal Jha

  The change of heart? I almost forgot.

  In all the pounding, the cutting, the stabbing, I have forgotten Good Girl’s heart. So back to the knife that’s now almost twice, thrice its weight, covered with blood and flesh and skin.

  I carve under her breasts; it’s slow going, as muscle and bone impede the blade’s path. Her blood gushes out as if on tap and I let it run over both my hands, flow over the wooden handle of the knife, trickle down her chest, onto the bed sheet. (I should be afraid but I have gone through this with Ithim in the dream so it’s a familiar sight, I am not worried except for the fact that there will be a lot of washing, cleaning up, to do, maybe I will get Nice Boy to help me with that.)

  I can see her heart now, a red-brown mass inside her body, a lump, a growth, trembling like an animal, triangular and deformed. No nose or ears, no arms or legs, just a torso, somewhat like my Ithim. But, no, Ithim has perfect eyes, Ithim can see; there is no comparison with him. Using both hands, I hold her heart and pull. Good Girl twitches but I can’t see her face, everything is mangled, I use the knife to cut the cords that bind her heart, I wrench all the heartstrings away.

  I have a towel by the side of the bed, a soft towel, like the ones they have in fancy hotels, white, absorbent, the kind they fold and drape over heated steel rods near the bathtub. Or fold and place in warm wicker baskets, along with green, white and blue translucent plastic bottles of oil, shampoo, conditioner and moisturizer. I think this will do, Good Girl deserves the best. I roll the towel into a ball, mop up the blood that’s spilled over her breasts, and then insert the sodden bundle into the cavity I have just carved out, that I have created. Immediately, more blood begins to soak into the towel, red staining the white until all I can see is one tiny white speck and I know then that Good Girl has had a change of heart.

  I have not spoken a word during this, not a whisper has passed my lips. I tell her that she will be all right after I am done, she just got a change of heart, the old, hard one is gone, and now she has one that’s softer, she’s now Better Girl, not just Good Girl. She will look at my Ithim and not see a monkey but a beautiful child.

  She doesn’t listen.

  Nice Boy has woken up, he is staring at me.

  He is staring at my hard work. He is lazy.

  Still sitting in his chair, his hands tied behind his back, he begins to scream. I want to tell him to stop but I am coughing, I am retching, my phlegm grey and green, speckled with the soot of this ugly city. I am sorry, I tell Nice Boy, let’s clean her up, then I need to take a shower, to feel fresh, I haven’t had a change of clothes for almost two days and two nights now, I have been through the fire, the hospital, the bus, the mall and now all this, I need to stand under water.

  But he says no no no no, don’t make me do it, he is shaking his head. (He looks like one of those brown toy dogs people hang in their cars, from the rear-view mirror, and because this city has so many potholes, these toy dogs keep wagging their heads all the time.)

  Sir, says Nice Boy, and he can’t get his words out, he is stuttering. Sir, let me go, he says.

  Not yet, I say, we have to clean this up.

  So we both get up on the bed, Nice Boy and I (he is tall, taller than I am and he has to crouch so his head doesn’t hit the ceiling). Nice Boy is very helpful – I am surprised – he is efficient, better than I am, stronger than The Monkey Man. I wrap the bed sheet around Good Girl, the bedcover too. The mattress is stained in several places, I will need to change that, the pillows as well. (Maybe I will buy a new set, surprise my wife when she returns.) With a heave, Nice Boy hoists the bundle down from the bed, onto the floor.

  He is crying, he is saying something I can’t make out between his whimpers and his toy-dog shake of the head.

  I love her, he says.

  Which makes me very angry.

  If you do, I say, why didn’t you once open your eyes when I was at her? You could have stopped me.

  He can’t answer, Nice Boy has no answer, he just keeps crying, like a child, stammering, shivering.

  You know why this happened? I ask him, and once again he stares at me. I take him by the arm and lead him to Ithim’s room, to Ithim’s cot and while he stands there, I remove the towel that’s draped over my baby. I show him that this isn’t a monkey. This is my child and he’s the most beautiful child in the world.

  Yes, sir, Nice Boy says.

  And I make him lean forward and gently touch Ithim on his forehead, just above his eyes.

  I am tempted to let him go. But, no, I am sure his father, Good Girl’s father, too, I am sure they are VIPs, not auto-rickshaw drivers, retired schoolteachers or ordinary mothers, I am sure they live in bungalows with gardens in front, or apartment buildings with power generators, they can pull strings with telephone calls, they can trace it back although no one saw me bring them home. (At least, I don’t think the old woman sweeping the corner of the mall saw anything but why take any chances?)

  So I tell Nice Boy, Sorry.

  And I get working on him as well and now I have done it once, it’s easier; in fact, I never thought it would be this easy although there is no doubt that fire is better, fire is faster once it gets going, flames lick everything clean, leaving nothing except smoke and ash that the sun and the wind can clear. Now there are two bodies on the floor and through the window I can see the bundles on the pavement are still there, not one of them has moved. Ithim is fast asleep, too. And looking around the room, at the bed, the floor, the blood, the flesh, the skin, at Nice Boy and Good Girl, at what I have just done, I feel the warmth of anger in the city on fire, a glow I think I have felt before.

  ‘WAKE up.’ Usher was standing next to me, shaking me by the shoulder. ‘Ten minutes the show got over,’ he said, ‘we have to clean up for the next. If you want to stay, go get another ticket.’

  The lights had come on but these were small lights set into the ceiling, like the stars in Ithim’s unused nursery at home. The hall was still dark, the screen blank. Ithim’s bag was where I had put it, on the adjacent seat. Safe, intact, unmoved. Sweat ran down my back, my neck, my arms, even my legs making my trousers stick.

  ‘Just a minute,’ I said, but Usher had already walked away.

  I sat there, waiting for the cool breeze from the fans and the air-conditioner to dry my sweat. When I looked into the bag, Ithim was fast asleep but I could get his smell. He must have soiled himself again.

  From the direction of the door I could hear the buzz of a crowd, waiting to get into the cinema. That meant the mall was busy, perhaps the street had returned to normal, the mob must have passed by, scattered or dispersed, which meant I could finally leave Plaza Mall.

  It was almost 1 pm, more than three hours had slipped by since I was in the Trial Room. I had four hours before the train, enough to take a trip to the hospital, check on my wife and then leave for the station. To meet Miss Glass.

  The dream about Good Girl and Nice Boy had left me drained and it was only when I saw them in the crowd again, just outside the theatre, looking at the Nike display window, laughing and talking to each other, Good Girl pressing herself against Nice Boy, that I felt some of that exhaustion slowly lifting.

  I am Screaming Woman from the TV news, I was twenty-six years old, or thereabouts, I am not so sure, I had one daughter, I lived in a large family with fifteen other people, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, we lived in a village two hours from this city, all our homes linked to each other, we would have our fights but then we also felt safe because there were so many of us living under one roof, my father-in-law has lived here for twenty-five years and everyone knew us in the village, I was known as the athletic one since, as a girl, I was always climbing up and down the stairs, running in the fields, even when I was pregnant with my daughter and if someone had to bring down a box, a suitcase from a high shelf on the wall, they would tell me to climb up and get it, my husband worked in a factory making plastic bags, he told me he wanted to move out of the village and go to
the city to make some more money and he said he wanted a son but now it makes no difference, that night when we heard the mob coming, we decided to run to the neighbouring village where there were more of us, it would have taken us only ten minutes, there was no moon in the sky which was a good thing because it was dark and we knew the route, a narrow road running through the fields, but they got us within five minutes of our leaving, they raped me, they raped my aunt, they raped my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law, they killed all of us, my daughter first, we were slit with knives, they raped my sister as well, they killed her three-year-old child and they left her for dead but my sister tricked them by lying still, by getting them to believe she was dead when she wasn’t and in the morning, the police came and took our bodies away, sprinkled a lot of salt on us and then buried some of us, others they set on fire, I was among the buried, the next morning my sister came looking, with a man from the village, they asked the police where we were and they said, sorry, we could not keep the bodies in the police station because it was warm and there was no ice, they did not tell her about the salt, about how it made our skin melt faster so that we began to smell and they buried us, one by one, they removed our bodies of evidence, now my husband is alive and I am gone, I will start searching for my daughter and everyone else since all of us are now together, in the land of the dead.

  18. Skipping Holy Angel,

  Ithim misses the meeting

  ITHIM and I left Plaza Mall and walked into the blazing sun. The street was strewn with slippers, stones and broken glass where the mob must have fought with the police while we were in the Multiplex, for the area was quiet now, the air shimmering in the heat that had wiped off any reminder of last night’s cold. Right by the exit, in front of the mall’s glass doors, I saw a private taxi, a white car parked behind the police vans, its rear door partly open as if it was waiting for me and Ithim. For Father and Son.

  Without even checking with the driver, I got in and said: ‘Holy Angel. I need to spend about ten, fifteen minutes there, then we will go to the railway station. Please be careful.’ I couldn’t take chances with Ithim in my bag.

  Through the taxi’s window I could see evidence of the fires, some still smouldering. I saw burnt-out shops – shop after shop; unlike my neighbourhood, where I had seen only three, here there were rows and rows of black rectangles, so that after a while I lost count, I couldn’t make out where one shop ended and the next began. In one place, it seemed, the fire had swallowed the entire block, the neighbourhood, erased all divisions and partitions.

  I saw men and women sifting through the rubble, the shop owners and their families who had had to run away last night and now returned, in the light of the sun, to search for what the fire didn’t take. Sirens screeching, red lights blinking, a convoy of cars, led by a fleet of police vehicles, sped by, forcing the taxi to pull over to let them through. They were, I guessed, VIPs from New Delhi who had come to inspect the damage, to see what had happened last night and what had not.

  And even as they passed us, I saw a black cloud staining the horizon, the smoke darkest near the ground and growing lighter and lighter as it met more of the white-blue of the sky, hard and unbroken.

  ‘Is that another fire?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, sir, don’t know when this will stop,’ Taxidriver said. ‘About two hours ago, there was police firing near the Plaza. And now, it seems closer to Holy Angel.’

  ‘Is the road clear to the hospital?’

  ‘Sir, when is your train?’

  ‘Four,’ I said, giving myself a one-hour cushion.

  ‘Let me see, I will try to make it to the hospital but if the road is blocked, it’s better to go straight to the railway station taking the bridge.’

  How could I tell him what I had pictured in my head, what I wanted to do.

  To walk into my wife’s room, to place Ithim, in his bag, on top of her. Between her ankles and her knees. I wanted to take my time looking at her, at her hands on either side, the marks on her wrist where the tubes were inserted, where the skin was punctured. I wanted to look at her fingers frozen in a curl, just like they were last night. I wanted to slip one hand into that curl and wait for her fingers to move. With my free hand, I would have touched her lips, dry and chapped; with my fingers, I wanted to mark the outline of her chin, of her nose, her cheeks, the holes in her earlobes where they had removed the rings when they wheeled her into the Operating Theatre. I would have looked down, at her sheet rise and fall, each movement perfectly matching the breath I could feel against my face. I wanted affirmation, definitive evidence that my wife was alive. For then I would have got the son to meet his mother.

  I wanted to take Ithim out of the bag, remove all his clumsy covers, until he was bare – I didn’t care who saw him, who didn’t – and then I wanted to bring his face to hers, to let his forehead, the charred strip of skin, touch her nose, lips, cheeks, eyes. I wanted my wife to take in all of Ithim’s smells, the baby formula, the talcum powder, his day-old skin. I wanted to press his lips, the knife-cut slit, against hers, press his left funnel-ear against her lips so that he could hear if she wanted to whisper anything to him. I wanted to place Ithim on her breasts, above her hospital gown, so his heart was right above hers and each could hear the other beat.

  ‘Sir, I don’t think we should go to Holy Angel.’ Taxidriver had stopped the vehicle.

  Up ahead, I saw the narrow road leading to the hospital, sealed off at the entrance with several police vehicles and ambulances.

  There was splintered glass on the ground. One ambulance had its doors open, through which I saw stretchers stacked, one on top of the other, each one with a body, sheets so hurriedly pulled over each that in many, I could see toes, feet, the glimpse of hair on a head.

  ‘What happened here?’ I drew Ithim closer to me.

  ‘Must have been another mob, it’s gone now but they aren’t allowing anyone to pass. Maybe you could walk from here, I will wait for you if they let me do that. Otherwise, you have to take another taxi.’

  There was a phone booth just across the street from where we were. I decided to call the hospital and check on my wife rather than walk there with Ithim. What if the police stopped me, asked me to open the bag? With Plaza Guard I had been lucky, but for a second time slipping past without being detected didn’t seem plausible. And I was taking no chances letting go of this taxi.

  Here’s my side of the conversation, from the phone booth, as I can recall it now. This is for the record. (The other side is irrelevant.)

  ‘HELLO, Holy Angel and Nursing? This is the husband of Patient Number 110742.

  ‘I am calling to check on her condition, she is in the Maternity Ward.

  ‘OK, I will hold.

  ‘Maternity Ward, Maternity Ward, sixth floor. Last night was the birth.

  ‘So who has the records?

  ‘Well, I am telling you the birth was last night.

  ‘No, I was supposed to call.

  ‘Doctor 1 told me to call him today, he said someone at the hospital would page him. And he would tell me how she is.

  ‘I want to know when she can be discharged, when I can take her home.

  ‘Last night. She was admitted last night.

  ‘I brought her to the hospital. I’m not sure of the exact time.

  ‘Number 110742.

  ‘Yes, how many times do you want me to give you the number?

  ‘Mrs Jay. Yes, J, A, Y. OK, I will hold.’

  I heard the phone being put down on the table. I heard coughing, I heard someone shout.

  In the phone booth, through the glass door, I saw another police van driving towards the hospital, I saw the taxi driver looking at me. Just a little while, I gestured to him.

  ‘When will Doctor 1 be there?

  ‘Can’t you page him?

  ‘He said he had a pager. He told me that last night.

  ‘Switched off? Can you then get me Head Nurse, please?

  ‘Head Nurse.

  ‘She fill
ed out the baby’s discharge slip.

  ‘I-t-h-i-m. Ithim.

  ‘When does her shift begin?

  ‘Can’t you find out?

  ‘But Head Nurse will come in today?

  ‘Is there any other doctor I could speak to?

  ‘OK, I will hold.

  ‘Yes?

  ‘I said, can you please check the room?

  ‘What do you mean that won’t help?

  ‘Isn’t there an extension you can transfer the call to?

  ‘No, I can’t come this evening, I won’t be here, I will be out of town.

  ‘It’s personal.

  ‘Do you have Doctor 1’s home phone number?

  ‘It’s urgent.

  ‘He said she will be under observation for a few days.

  ‘You have a list?

  ‘Yes?

  ‘OK, I will hold.

  ‘Yes?

  ‘Mrs Jay, I told you.

  ‘She’s not in that list?

  ‘I will call later.’

  So it had come to this: they couldn’t help; Head Nurse and Doctor 1 couldn’t be traced; there was no one to go and check how my wife was. If I wanted specific information, I would have to go after six in the evening, when the nurses’ night shift began. Maybe Head Nurse would be there, too. And, no, they couldn’t tell me if she was on duty or not. No, they couldn’t contact her. They hadn’t been able to contact her since last night. But, yes, there was a current list of casualties at Holy Angel this morning. And, no, my wife wasn’t on it. Patient Number 110742 was not on the list. Means she was alive, she must still be under observation. Just like what Doctor 1 had said last night.

  ‘WE are almost near the bridge,’ said Taxidriver. ‘Let’s hope it’s clear.’

  The bridge, my wife and I had stood there one night the week after I had proposed to her and she had said yes.

  It was a scorching summer, there was fear that the city would hit fifty degrees. So hot it was that even at night it seemed the sun was still in the sky, just blackened, rendered invisible by the heat. Walking was forbidden on the bridge – it had no pavement as such but there was a four-foot strip of concrete that flanked both sides, possibly for maintenance workers as and when they needed access. Traffic was thin, a couple of trucks carrying cargo, and I asked the auto-rickshaw driver to stop. He seemed unsure until I offered to pay him extra.