Losing Touch

  Eat sandwiches, eat noodles, eat pasta

  I like pars a lot

  I like pears a lot

  Occasional accounts about his grandchild’s progress in pre-school are enough. Arjun is content to love from a distance.

  More buttons: one to release the brake, one to start the chair rolling forward, and a small handle to direct the chair through the doorway. He remembers to tear off some sheets of paper before he uses the horizontal bar to help lift himself onto the seat.

  How long has it been since he was indignant about having to sit to urinate? Now he is merely relieved to sit instead of having to stand.

  What importance he used to attribute to small things: his perfectly ironed shirts, the knife-like crease in his trousers, the well-tailored jackets and suits, his meticulously folded socks and underwear, his Kiwi-polished shoes, his leather wallet. These details made him feel a little taller, a little better prepared to face the hostile country he had moved to.

  It was Tarani’s job to lay the table, but she never did it properly. He remembers that he would make Tarani straighten knives, move glasses over an inch or two so they were correctly aligned, refold the napkins properly. A well-laid table brought a kind of grace to the meal.

  Murad’s job was to wash the dishes while Tarani dried. Murad was methodical. Tarani was careless, swiping at plates and rubbing handfuls of cutlery together in the towel and jumbling them into the drawer. How many times did Arjun have to order her back into the kitchen where she angrily redried plates and pans, or disentangled the spoons and forks and knives, throwing them into their dividers?

  It all meant something, some sense of striving for decorum and order, some sense of fitting in to the middle-class neighbourhood whose ideals he’s never quite grasped.

  But their neighbours are now used to them. They’ve been there for fifty years; they’re the old-timers. He’s seen nearly all the houses on the street change owners at one time or another.

  Now they are the sweet old couple at number four, Oriole Drive (ah, bless). Sunila greets everyone with a friendly smile and wave, invites them in for tea, hands out biscuits to the children on their way home from school. She has achieved her coveted position of being accepted. She is harmless and old.

  Her high heels no longer strike static from the pavement as she busies to work and back home again with carrier bags of groceries. The children are gone; there is no one to scream at in the evenings. She can’t even scold him for long without becoming breathless.

  He used to laugh at her as she retreated to the kitchen coughing and angry. But now he sees that this is how she stays alive. This is the vigour that allows her to dress him, cook for him, wash him, help him to the bathroom in the day, turn the TV on or off, fetch his photograph albums, take them away when they are too heavy to hold, fetch down books for him and reshelve them when he can’t remember the page he wants.

  Now he becomes anxious if she coughs too much. He urges her to rest, to take more time watching her soap operas on her bedroom TV. Like him, she also can no longer tolerate the news. What has happened to ‘England’s green and pleasant land’? It is so far outside his and Sunila’s comprehension that it’s best to shut it all out. They enquire after each other’s health almost tenderly. Did she sleep? How many hours? Was he restless? Did he have to get up more than twice in the night?

  Another button to flush and he transfers himself back into the wheelchair, finds his way back without bumping into the door. As he shifts gingerly from wheelchair to bed, he has the impression that someone else is in the room. Perhaps Sunila heard the toilet flush and came downstairs.

  He leans back against the elevated bed, catches his breath and says, ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘You might have done, you took that long, you stupid old git.’ The voice is young, male and cold. A flashlight is shone directly at his face. There is a crash and swearing as the flashlight is dropped and a chair is overturned. He expects a blow to the head; he must die now. He hopes he will have enough breath to say that they have very little money in the house, but to take whatever there is down here. There is nothing upstairs. Perhaps he can save Sunila from this final shame of being humiliated and hurt by a maniac child.

  But the blow doesn’t arrive. There is heavy breathing and the voice says, ‘You’re Indian, intcha?’

  Arjun manages, ‘Take what we have. I’ll tell you where it is.’

  ‘I can’t take nothing from you, you old bhenchod.’

  Arjun flinches at the language. Even now he cannot accustom himself to the casual way that young people swear. And then he realizes the boy is Indian, hence the swearing in Hindi.

  ‘Beta, don’t hurt us.’

  ‘Shut up. Don’t say anything.’ A pause. ‘Madarchod.’

  ‘Beta, please don’t swear.’

  ‘Don’t call me son. I’m not your son.’

  Arjun tries to slow his breathing down before the panic attack starts. The words are coming with difficulty but at least he can deliver short sentences. If he has to explain anything, he is done for.

  ‘What the fuck am I meant to do now? I mean, I come all this way to break into your bhenchod house and you’re fucking Indian.’

  ‘Son, could you put the light on?’

  ‘Oh yes. Rub it in. Not only can I not smash your madarchod head in and take your money, I have to turn the light on so you can make a positive ID for the police. Well, why not? Why fucking not?’ There is patting and slapping as the young boy feels his way around the room. More swearing as he contacts the sharp edges of the cupboard. Then the light is turned on. Arjun doesn’t move.

  The intruder comes around to him. He is a large boy dressed in a black tracksuit and a black balaclava that obscures his nose and mouth. The holes for the eyes are large and Arjun can see that he has thick eyebrows that are bunched together in anger or, perhaps, anxiety.

  As Arjun blinks against the light, the boy’s eyes come into focus. ‘So young.’

  Slightly muffled by the wool, the boy says, ‘You don’t know how old I am, do ya?’

  Arjun considers. ‘Sixteen? Seventeen?’

  ‘You’re wrong. I’m fifteen.’

  ‘Such a big boy.’

  ‘My mum’s side. We’re all big. You should see my sister. She’s huge.’

  Arjun has a vivid picture of a teenage girl crammed into a tracksuit wearing a similar balaclava and tries to dismiss it before he starts smiling. This is no smiling matter. Despite the fact that the child is so young, he could easily do a lot of damage. He takes a careful breath.

  ‘I’ll tell you where the money is.’

  A sigh. ‘Nah. I can’t take your money, Uncle.’

  ‘But you went to all this trouble.’ He breathes in and out. ‘Breaking in and what-all.’

  ‘How come you’re Indian? Me mates said no one’s Indian over on this side.’

  Behind the balaclava, Arjun thinks there may be a ferocious sulk going on.

  ‘No other Indian families moved in this side. What to do?’

  ‘How long you been here, then?’

  ‘Almost fifty years.’ Breath. ‘We’ve seen so many people leave and new ones arrive.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I didn’t come here to listen to all that.’

  ‘Son, that cupboard over there.’ Breath. ‘There’s money. Take.’

  The boy pulls the cupboard door open, squats down and pulls out a few envelopes. He leaves them on the floor. ‘If only I’d hit you like I was planning. Then I could’ve taken the money and run.’ He pushes at the balaclava. ‘It’s like Samar says. I’m rubbish at this.’

  ‘But if you’d hit me first,’ breath, ‘I couldn’t tell you about the money.’

  ‘Yeah, but I hit you until you tell me.’

  Arjun imagines the boy sitting enthralled in front of a TV show. ‘Son, that hitting is for stronger fellows.’ Breath. ‘One hit, pachaak, and I’m gone.’

  ‘Yeah. You can’t even breathe properly. You’re really old, innit. No offence
, like.’

  ‘Seventy-five.’

  ‘Fuck me. Sorry, Uncle.’ The boy sighs. ‘I better go.’ Ah be’uh go. The glottal stop swallows the words, turning them into some peculiar dialect. The young have no patience with language.

  Arjun is curious. ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘Your front door, mate. You want to change the locks.’

  Alert to the noises of the house, he hears Sunila moving upstairs. ‘Son, go quickly. My wife is upstairs.’ Breath. ‘She has the red emergency button.’

  ‘Shit. I’m off. Listen, Uncle, get a deadbolt.’ He hesitates, snatches up one of the envelopes and exits through the front door, slamming it behind him.

  Arjun listens for the running feet, but there is nothing. Despite his bulk, the boy is light on his feet. He admires the ingenuity. He must be experienced at breaking in to deal with their lock so easily.

  ‘Sunila. Come down. He has gone.’ His voice is so weak he is certain she can’t have heard.

  ‘Arjun? Are you all right?’ Her voice is shaking.

  ‘I’m fine.’ His heart rate is returning to normal but he cannot project enough force into his voice to send it up to her.

  ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here.’ He is frustrated with this upstairs-downstairs business. Must they shout for the whole neighbourhood to hear?

  ‘Has the robber gone?’

  ‘He’s gone, you deaf old cow.’ He is shocked into coughing at his bad language, but there is a small pleasure in the fact that she can’t hear him.

  ‘I called the police.’

  The flashing blue lights reflect through the curtains and he knows he will not tell the police that the thief was just a child.

  The police enter, check the premises, ask him questions that he is now almost too tired to answer. No, he didn’t hear the thief enter. No, he didn’t get a look at the thief’s face. No, the thief didn’t talk much to him, other than make vague threats. No, the thief didn’t harm him.

  ‘You’re lucky, sir. You could have been badly injured. It’s mainly kids. They’re after drug money. You know how it is.’ Arjun doesn’t know how it is, but he nods anyway.

  Sunila is brought downstairs. She can barely walk and when she sees him, she clings to the policewoman and weeps. ‘Arjun… Arjun.’

  He suddenly realizes she thought he was dead and was terrified of having to see his body. She continued to call to him because she didn’t want to believe he wasn’t dead. He imagines her crouched beneath the windowsill, believing she was finally alone.

  Her eyes are puffy from crying and she is leaning against the policewoman. He has a moment of sympathy for the officer. Sunila is not a lightweight.

  Another policewoman is patting her shoulder. ‘Mrs Kulkani, everything is all right. Your husband is fine.’

  But she weeps noisily. ‘I thought he was dead! I thought he’d been killed!’

  Really. There is something indelicate, this shouting about his death with such gusto.

  One of the officers speaks to him. ‘Mr Kulkani, I’m sorry to take up so much of your time. You must be very tired. I wonder if we could send someone over to talk to you tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes. That’s fine.’

  The officer collects the others, but not before someone has brought Sunila a cup of tea. The tea-bearing policewoman looks over at Arjun. ‘Can I get you one?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Sunila stands up, in charge again. ‘He must get his rest. He’s not well, you know.’ The officers pat her as though she is a well-behaved dog. She smiles up at them and sees them to the door.

  ‘Arjun, are you all right?’

  ‘I’m tired, Sunila. I want to sleep.’

  ‘But we must talk about it, isn’t it? Did you see the robber? What was he like? I heard all the banging and thumping. I crept to the top of the stairs and saw the light go on and someone in black moving around. I thought he was beating you.’ Is there a kind of relish in her voice? ‘Did he steal anything?’

  ‘He wanted money.’

  She sees the open cabinet door. ‘He took our money?’

  ‘Not all. Just one envelope.’

  ‘But that was for the poor people in Chad. I was going to send it to the mission. And now it’s gone. What am I going to tell them? They’ll think I just spent the money on myself.’

  ‘Sunila, no one will think that.’

  She is sorting through her envelopes and stacking them neatly back in the cabinet. How often he has told her not to leave money there, but she won’t listen.

  ‘Of course, he would take the one with the most money. They’re like that, you know. And now those poor people in Chad will have to do without.’

  She closes the cabinet door and stands up. ‘Well, that’s it. Nothing to be done. No good crying over spilt milk. Are you hungry?’

  I’m not hungry: I am exhausted from nearly being killed by a foolish child. How can you stand there babbling about money for Chad?

  And then he realizes: he is hungry.

  ‘I’ve got some of that chicken curry. We can have with pilau, yes?’

  She bustles off to heat the food and he feels the anger subsiding. The comfortable noises of plates and silverware, the thunk and ka-thunk of the microwave door opening and shutting. The hum as it starts heating the food. The water from the tap streams into the sink and she fills the kettle for tea. The fridge is opened and he hears the tuk of Tupperware being opened. She must have found the cucumber and tomato salad and his favourite coriander chutney. He imagines her arranging it all on the plate and putting the plate on a tray to bring to him.

  Now that it is too late, he has come to love her. Even if he could find some adequate language to tell her, she would dismiss him, would think he was trying to manipulate her, would think he was becoming sentimental as the old often do. She would never understand what it has taken for him to reach this point.

  It doesn’t matter. He loves her ignorance, her wide-ranging prejudices, her quick judgement of other people, her feelings of inadequacy, her suspicion of those who she feels are somehow ‘better’, her inability to follow a simple argument or even clear driving directions, her instinctive dislike of anything artistic, including art. He loves her sad walls of exclusion, including those that shut her out from anything that might demand a little understanding outside of the terrible moral code by which she attempts, and often fails, to live.

  In the early mornings, while he is meant to be asleep, she sits in the least comfortable armchair near the gas fire, bent over her Bible. His belief is less regimented. His god, that bumbling, gentle, distracted librarian, is not the fire-breathing, vengeful Old Testament God. He is still amazed at her bottomless belief in all of it. She claims it is her refuge and her strength. Her lips move over the verses that spell out her failure in stark formulaic King James prose with its emphatic italics. Thou shalt not.

  But she shall, she does, she cannot help herself. And worse than her voice raised against him, the words that ricochet out of her mouth, the fists clamped against her sides, is that sudden recognition, I’ve done it again. I’ve done it again. And she abruptly turns to the kitchen, to vent her despair on the clanging pans.

  It is then he longs to tell her, I know you’re angry. It’s all right to be angry. She would not believe him. It isn’t Christian to be angry. Even Christ, famously angry in the temple, got over it. Her anger has lasted all her life.

  He can’t move from the edge of the bed. He sits, leaning over the walker, his legs unresponsive.

  Sunila comes in. ‘I’m making some tea. Oh.’ She stops. ‘Let me help.’ She puts her arm under his and eases him upright so that he can lean on the walker. Together, they shuffle to the armchair and she helps him sit, plumping the cushions behind him so that he is propped forward.

  ‘Thank you, Sunila.’

  ‘I’ll bring your food, shall I?’

  He smiles at her. ‘Yes, please.’ There is gentleness in his smile. He wants her to see t
hat he loves her. He wants her to see that he understands how strong and generous she is. She just gets on with the next thing and the next. After they eat, she will clear away the dishes and wash them. She will help him back into bed. And tomorrow, she will go on, cleaning and washing and cooking and helping him write his letters and reading to him when he is too tired to read for himself.

  And after, as he listens to her climbing the stairs, quietly closing the bedroom door, he will pray for her. Please give her the strength she needs so that she can keep on doing the next thing. And the next.

  ‌15

  ‌Dysphagia: Difficulty Swallowing

  September 2005

  Nothing works any more. His hands, that used to function enough for him to lift a handkerchief to stem the eternal nasal drip, drip, can no longer push back the blanket to find the square of folded cotton. Some days his head feels too heavy to lift up.

  He cannot even rock forwards and back to ease his sore back from the pressure of sitting in the same position in the same chair all day. The back of his head constantly itches. The nasal drip has turned into an embarrassing stream. He will not see visitors any more. He wishes to be left alone with his disgusting, defeated body. Is this his body’s revenge on his younger, stronger, careless self?

  Sunila and Tarani have been talking on the phone to Murad. The three-way phone conversation lasted a long time. They said hospice. Well, so be it. There was a time when he would have resisted. But what is the point of resisting? What power does he have, anyway? And does it really matter where he dies?

  Perhaps it is better to lie in a bed, to be given mashed-up food, taken to the toilet and emptied, put back into the bed and left alone to lie there, staring at the ceiling. Maybe they will let him look out of a window. Maybe there will be a garden. Maybe the nurses will be kind, unlike the ones who were so cruel to Pavitra.

  Pavitra. It has been a long time since he sat in front of her, trying to calm her terrible gasping for breath, unable even to reach forward and touch her poor thin hands. Was it last year? The year before? Anyway, she’s gone now.

  And he’ll be next, after he’s tucked away in some hospice where, they say, no one can hear you scream. He has heard the horror stories. They wait until no one is looking and they twist your arms and pinch you where no one can see. They say that they even touch you on your privates.