Fireproof

by Raj Kamal Jha

  We had walked on the bridge, my wife and I, had looked at the giant metal plates and the joints that kept the beams in place, held together by rivets, each the size of our feet. We had looked at the broad arches that swept across the sky, the trusses that cut the clouds with iron. The riverbed below was dry, just patches of stagnant water that caught the shimmering lights of the city. My wife had held my arm. ‘The bridge is moving,’ she had noticed with a touch of fear and surprise. And it was.

  Moving, that colossus swaying like a child’s toy, made of rope, slung between two trees. ‘I think they build it like that,’ I had said, ‘to absorb the vibrations of the traffic. It swings because that’s the way it stays safe.’

  ‘We should come here again,’ my wife had said.

  ‘It’s clear,’ said Taxidriver, ‘the bridge is clear. We are lucky today.’

  As the taxi had picked up speed, I turned in my seat to see if I could identify the place where we had stood, my wife and I, that night. And there it was, clearly visible. So I raised Ithim’s bag. Let him have a look, too.

  I pointed the spot out to him and for the first time since I got him home, I found myself talking to him, to my child. ‘That’s where your mother and I once stood,’ I said.

  He couldn’t hear but just in case he was watching, filing away the image in some corner of his mind that he might one day recall, even act on, once they set him right – now that we had entered the last lap of our journey.

  END OF PART TWO

  PART THREE

  THE NIGHT AFTER

  19. Bright Shirt At Railway Station

  IT was as if the city itself, or the part of it that was on the run, had hurriedly packed whatever it could gather and had come to the railway station, ready to leave along with Ithim and me as we got out of the taxi. A sea of children, women and men, their luggage afloat like countless pieces of wreckage. Tied with plastic strings or jute ropes, bundles and briefcases balanced on shoulders, trunks dragged along, some on wheels, some without. Bed sheets and quilts folded, trussed up in holdalls. Cups and plates and jars and tins squeezed into bags. And all these buffeted by wave after human wave, so unpredictable its crest and its trough that I didn’t have to wade or swim, much less offer any resistance. Clearly visible in that ceaselessly shifting wave, were faces swathed in bandages, some even on stretchers, some limping, crushed arms and legs in casts, men, women and children with a flash of hard plaster white on their feet or their arms. All sitting, walking, limping, embellishing their pity with signs and symbols. Ithim and I found ourselves being swept in, carried along with other passengers until I found myself in front of the Arrival/Departure Display Board, its green and red lights flashing like beacons to those still adrift.

  I read through the list: there were Express trains and Passenger trains, there were the Superfast Expresses and the Galloping Locals, going to and coming from, with their platform numbers and their schedules. And only then, standing there, afraid to move, did I realize I was marooned with neither a map nor a compass. I had no idea where Ithim and I were heading.

  On the phone, Miss Glass had said not very far. I checked her message again in case she had mentioned the train, the time, the place, maybe between the lines, somewhere that I had missed. But, no, just those three verses stared at me, almost mocking me with their vagueness.

  At the railway station, as we discussed last night, meet at five in the evening, we will set the baby right . . . and in case you don’t see me, in the maddening crowd, there will be someone there to call out, clear and loud.

  Some comfort came from the huge clock on the wall that showed it was close to three – the journey from Plaza to here had taken more than an hour and a half, a journey that on any other day would have taken only half as much. The train, Miss Glass had said, was at five so Ithim and I had time, enough time, I thought, for Miss Glass – or the someone she had sent – to find us here, even if by accident.

  ‘Miss Glass told me

  You will certainly be here,

  With the child by your side

  And a little bit of fear.’

  More than forty minutes of waiting later, this high-pitched singsong whine, nasal, almost metallic, like the soundtrack in TV cartoons. The words rattled off so fast that each one fused with the other, withthechildbyyourside, littlebitoffear, childbyyoursideanda, into a glorious garble and only when the lines were repeated, over and over again, could I make them out.

  The voice was coming from down below, from somewhere near my feet, where I suddenly felt someone pulling at my trousers, pressing against my shoes, making me think it must be a child but when I looked, no, this wasn’t a child, when I looked, I almost jumped back in both horror and disbelief.

  This was a man, a dwarf, a midget.

  Balding, his hair a thin white frizz around his head, his face almost overpowered by his thick glasses, two to three sizes too big, which kept slipping down to the tip of his nose so he kept, in what seemed a totally futile effort, pushing them back into place. He was in costume. As if he had come straight from some kind of a show. His yellow trousers hugged his legs in a drainpipe fit all the way to his ankles where they suddenly opened up and flared out, almost covering his disproportionately large shoes, their laces dragging along the floor.

  His face was fair, almost white – whether this was his actual complexion or whether this was face paint I had no way to tell – but the paleness was accentuated by his shirt done right up to his chin, its collars so large that their corners fell over his shoulders. And what a shirt it was. A profusion of not only fabric, a fabric that shone like silk and velvet, but also of wild colour and twisted asymmetry: blue and red and green and yellow and white and black, stripes, checks, triangles, circles, swirls, ellipses, straight lines, curls. And as if this weren’t loud enough to make whatever statement he was trying to make, there was a scarf, too, around his neck. A black-and-white-chequered woollen scarf that was obviously not made to measure since its edges trailed on the floor behind his back so that he seemed to stand in a large coloured puddle of his trousers, his shoelaces, the scarf and his shoes, all mixed together, and all, it seemed, ready to trip him up at any moment.

  But he didn’t seem to care less.

  Instead, he was running, on the spot, stomping and stamping in this puddle, his clothes flapping like giant tropical birds perched on his body. He was jumping up and down, his elbows and knees jerking back and forth, restless, impatient, like a player limbering up before a game. But the oddest thing of all was how he appeared so natural in whatever he did, how he made his perpetual motion appear smooth and graceful, almost at one with all the chaotic swirl around him in the railway station. And how not one person passing by even stopped to take a second look when a man, of his appearance and mannerisms, would normally have attracted quite a crowd in this city.

  ‘Myself, Bright Shirt,’ he said, ‘very obvious as you can see. You can call me Shirt, you can call me Bright, you can call me Joker, Clown, anything that suits you, depending on the time of the day or night, use Hindi, use English, sometimes Hindi sometimes English, mix it up. Call me names.’ He finally paused for breath. And offered his hand to me.

  So suddenly had Bright Shirt appeared and so out of the ordinary was his presence that it took me a while to recover from the shock. He must have sensed my unease, however, as I realized that to shake hands with him I would have to stoop, almost go down on one knee, because he thrust a hand into the pocket of his trousers, and still whistling, fished out a red plastic rectangle that he then unfolded into a table, barely a foot high. He placed this on the floor, right next to where I stood, climbed onto it and then again offered his hand, this time almost level with me.

  ‘No need to bend, Mr Jay, when I am ready to stand up to someone like you,’ he laughed, showing off two rows of yellowing teeth.

  ‘I am at your service,’ he said, ‘for you are the father, you are the one who took care of Ithim, follow me, sir.’ And as quickly as he had clambered up th
ere, he jumped down from his makeshift lectern, folded it back into his pocket, and broke into verse again:

  ‘Forgive my looks, for

  I am just a clown,

  My job is to cheer you up,

  Whenever you are down.

  You look very tired, sir,

  You look quite beat,

  So let’s sit down for a while,

  And get something to eat?’

  Then he turned, with a flick of his heel, a stamp of his foot, like a soldier in a parade, and was off.

  He walked as if there was no crowd, barging right into people, banging against their suitcases and their bundles, almost knocking his head against their knees. This strategy of his seemed to work, though. For the crowd was parting for him, easily and spontaneously, and he was walking, running, jogging, as if this were a playground and he were a child.

  In fact, from a distance, he did look like a child if you, for a moment, ignored the white hair on his head, his baldness, his girth – and at first I tried to maintain this distance, to signal to whoever was looking (although no one was, I have to admit) that I had nothing to do with this strange character. Several times, I lost him in the moving thicket and tangle of the crowd’s legs but then he would resurface, within seconds, his shirt blooming with colour, his trousers slapping against his shoes, his scarf trailing, causing passers-by to sidestep lest they trip. And so purposefully did he move, unmindful of any obstacle that came his way, that I had to run finally to catch up. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  He stopped, seemed to freeze as if he had been hit in the back, a hard blow. And, then in an exaggerated gesture (he must have been a performer, I had little doubt about that), he raised himself on his toes, swivelled until he was facing me, brought one finger to his lips and said in a loud whisper: ‘You are with Bright Shirt, you are happy, you are safe, don’t worry.’ And then added, this time louder: ‘Here, give me your bag, sir, you have been carrying it all day. Rest, let me take the burden for a while.’

  He leapt up, right from where he was standing, in one loop, so quickly that before I could move (before even instinct kicked in to make me duck) the bag was with him; how he had managed to get the strap over my head I had no idea. Realizing the bag was almost as tall as him and would touch the floor if he carried it the way I had, he shortened its strap by tying a double knot, his fingers moving so fast they were almost a blur. And all along he kept whistling, looking inside the bag, cooing baby prattle: ‘Beautiful baby, beautiful baby, just as I had thought. Sir, we are indebted and grateful to you for taking care of this child. I can’t wait to play with him. Baby, baby, beautiful baby, our baby.’

  I reached out to snatch the bag away from him but it was too late, he had turned and was off again, the bag swinging, the crowd rushing in, like water, to fill the distance between him and me.

  What the hell was this, who the hell was this?

  Who had Miss Glass sent?

  This clown, this outrageous buffoon, this two-bit jokester, what did he know about Ithim and where was he leading me to?

  Was Ithim safe with him? What did he mean, ‘our baby’?

  What if he gave me the slip right now? Deformed Baby Kidnapped by a Dwarf; guess how that would make me look if I had to complain to anybody.

  But then watching him in the crowd – he had now slowed down as he kept checking on Ithim, looking inside the bag, making baby faces – made me, for the time being, at least, suspend my concerns. For he was the first person in this city who had looked at Ithim and displayed neither disbelief nor pity, who had reacted as if there was nothing wrong, as if this was only a baby like any other in the station in the city that day, or even more than that perhaps – a special baby, a child he had been looking forward to meeting. And this, together with the fact I had recovered from my initial shock, helped me take a more charitable view of this clown, as I saw him enter the railway cafeteria.

  Here again, another surprise.

  Bright Shirt made a grand entry, strutting in, then stopping, holding on to Ithim’s bag, he performed a jig, twirled around on his toes. ‘Special guests, today,’ he shouted, ‘there is my table, let’s go.’

  And no one noticed.

  Not one of the customers, not one of the men behind the counter, the waiters clearing the dishes, the boys sweeping the floor, walking in and out of the tables and the chairs, not one of them stopped to look as Bright Shirt strode across the huge dining hall in a blur of movement and noise, making his way to one corner where I saw his table.

  It had to be his table. It was split into two levels, one at least a foot lower than the other, with two chairs corresponding, one tall, the other short, all made of a rich, dark wood that seemed freshly varnished. This odd arrangement had been set up evidently with more care and luxury than any other seating in the hall because a white lace cover was spread across the table and the chairs had matching cushions.

  ‘I have a baby with me,’ Bright Shirt shouted to no one in particular, sliding past the lower leg of the table, ‘so first, get me some boiled water and milk for him and then get us your special of the day. For Sir and for me.’

  I didn’t realize how hungry I was until the food arrived; it was my first meal in so many hours I had lost count. It was railway-station food, bland and tasteless – served in a steaming steel plate with compartments marked out for rice, dal, vegetable curry, a piece of chicken, curd, pickle, salad, in its journey from the counter to our table in the hands of an impatient, clumsy waiter, all these items had merged into each other, the compartments serving no purpose – but that didn’t matter at all. And so unabashed was I in attacking what lay in front of me, it was only when I was halfway through that I realized I hadn’t even bothered to check on Ithim, far less, Bright Shirt.

  I looked up from my plate, looked down across the table, there was no reason to worry.

  For Bright Shirt had cradled Ithim in his lap and was feeding him, his own plate untouched on the table. While I had been busy eating, he had unwrapped and cleaned Ithim, taken out the baby formula, got the cafeteria staff to sterilize a cup in boiling water, had prepared the feed, taken the dropper out of the bag, settled Ithim in his lap and was now feeding him. And Ithim?

  His eyes blinking, Ithim stared at Bright Shirt, swallowing every drop, not one rolling off his slit-lip. Every half a minute or so, Bright Shirt would lean forward and kiss Ithim on his head, his brow, his ear. To any one looking it would have seemed that Bright Shirt was the father and I, just another customer sharing the table. That I was there by accident. So natural he appeared, so calm and composed, patient and efficient, so caring that it seemed Bright Shirt and Ithim had made their acquaintance long before I had ever met my child.

  ONCE Ithim had been fed, cleaned up again and was resting, in Bright Shirt’s arms – he had said let him stay outside for a while, get some air, he’s been in the bag the whole day, logic to which I had no counter-argument – I waited for Bright Shirt to finish his lunch and then I began with the first few of the countless questions that I had: Where are we going? Which train are we taking? How long is the journey? Where is Miss Glass? Who is she, what is her real name? Who are you? What will happen to Ithim?

  Without raising his head from his plate, Bright Shirt listened to all this, paused, drank some water, glanced at Ithim in his lap and then returned to his food.

  So I pushed it.

  ‘Give me my Ithim, and we will go back,’ I said, my voice rising, ‘if you don’t start giving me some answers. I have had enough of this, I have been strung along all this while.’

  Bright Shirt looked at me, right into my eyes, not a hint of sheepishness or defensiveness on his face. ‘Go on, Mr Jay, go on,’ he said, ‘let it all come out, anything else you need to ask, or say? And don’t worry if you want to shout, shout as loud as you wish, no one here will even hear. Just remember that I am here on Miss Glass’s instructions.’

  He returned to his food.

  The tone of his reply surprised me,
so different was it from what I had heard and come to expect all this while; his voice had acquired a more serious, heavy edge as if suddenly, behind that crude exterior, that outlandish attire, the joking and the kidding, there lurked a maturity, even a certain sophistication.

  ‘How do I know you are who you say you are, that you aren’t lying to me?’

  ‘Ask me a question,’ he said, without looking up from his plate.

  ‘What question? I just asked you several.’

  ‘No, not those questions.’ He pushed the plate to one side, wiped his hands in a towel the waiter had brought him. ‘Ask me about the call you got last night, I know about that. I know what Miss Glass told you, I know about the message she sent you, the pictures, I know about Tariq, about Shabnam, about Abba. I know you are carrying that message in this bag, what more do you want to know?’

  He got up from the table, still cradling Ithim, gone was the cloying smile on his face, in its place a determined, almost triumphant look as if he had silenced me, had just proved his credentials, once and for all.

  ‘But I didn’t imagine meeting someone like you.’

  ‘What do you mean, someone like me, Mr Jay?’

  I tried to be polite: ‘Just the way you are, Mr Shirt, your clothes, the way you talk, the way you walk. I can’t figure this out.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I can’t change that, can I, the way I look? I am not like Ithim, unfinished. I am old, I am finished, I am over. I am the way I am and I know that when I don’t make you laugh, I make you cringe. And if I am not the person you imagined, wait until you see where we are going, wait until you meet the others.’