The Year of the Runaways

by Sunjeev Sahota

  She had her eyes closed, her long lashes resting on her cheeks. Her necklace swung out, the kandha suspended in the air, and he allowed himself to imagine kissing her neck. She sang well, with feeling. He could see the strain on her face, as if she was working hard to dig right into the hymn, either to pull meaning from it or to force some back in. For a whole hour she sang like that, hymn begetting hymn, and when the last chords were played she bowed her head towards the book and picked up her songsheets and stood to leave. That was when she saw Tochi, watching from the back.

  They walked home together in silence. The wind still contained grits of rain. As they turned up their road he said, ‘The puddles in my village when it rains, some of them are as wide as this street.’

  She could hear the effort he was making. She should respect that. ‘In the monsoons?’

  ‘Not only then,’ he said, after a pause, and she wondered if she’d said something wrong. Did they not have monsoons in Bihar?

  ‘You sing really well.’

  ‘Thank you. And thank you for coming. I hope you got something from it?’

  He said nothing. At the edge of his sight she looked beautiful, tired but beautiful. Her eyes were soft, her lips slightly parted. The wind turned her chunni into a sail behind her, exposing the small carriage of her breasts, the river of a back that flowed into the gentle roundness of her hips. More than anything he wanted to be with her tonight. They were nearing the house.

  ‘I’ve enjoyed this walk,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m singing for someone’s akhand paat on Sunday. Perhaps you’d like to come? It’ll be busy.’

  He stiffened. ‘I don’t think so.’

  She didn’t try to persuade him as he’d expected her to – perhaps wanted her to. She just turned and made for the side gate.

  He’d done it once for her. That was enough. She was expecting too much, he thought, as she came through the beads, putting on her coat.

  ‘The paat starts at nine. Do you think it might snow?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She picked up her gloves, quickly tugging them on. ‘I’m guessing from your tone that you’re not joining me.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  She came to him. ‘Please. I want to help.’

  ‘I don’t need your help.’

  She put her hand on his shoulder. ‘It would mean a lot to me.’

  She’d been gone some half an hour and he could still feel her hand on his shoulder. Shaking his head, he put on his jacket and locked the door behind him.

  It was busy, as she’d said it would be. Guests were filing out of the langar hall and heading up the stairs and into the darbar sahib. He joined the queue and sat at the back of the chamber, as far from the granth as was possible. She was kneeling at an angle to the palki, her harmonium in front of her, a tabla player on either side. Her head was bowed. Hands together in her lap. For now, all was silent save for the granthi’s quiet reading.

  The akhand paat was to celebrate some girl’s upcoming marriage – three years ago, the granthi said, this girl’s parents had come into this very gurdwara and vowed to hold a service if their handicapped daughter was blessed with a husband. And how God had listened! A boy from India, no less! Tochi had heard of these marriages. A marriage of desperates. As the ardaas ended, he watched Narinder lift her fingers to the keyboard, lean towards the microphone and begin the opening raag.

  Afterwards, a vague sense of relief ran through the room. It was all over. Some started to leave; others milled at the back of the hall, chatting. He could see Narinder packing the harmonium into its large leather case. He started towards her. She hadn’t noticed him yet; there’d been too many present for that. He was coming up past the canopy when he saw someone who seemed familiar. A very tall, very thin man with an oversized turban that tapered to a tight point. Instinctively, Tochi took a pace backwards. Better to assume trouble than wait to figure it out. Then he knew. It was the man from the shop. The one with the divorced daughter. Tochi made to walk behind him. The man spoke: ‘It’s you, is it? And who are you trying to deceive today?’

  Tochi said nothing.

  ‘Any more families you’re trying to ruin?’

  He turned round, started to walk away.

  ‘Liars always run,’ the man bellowed, so loud Tochi could feel the whole room turn and stare, conversations dwindling. ‘Remember his face, everyone. He’s a chamaar who pretends he isn’t so he can marry our daughters and get his passport. Isn’t that right? Come on, which poor girl have you got your eye on today?’

  He felt Narinder at his side, whispering that they should go. He shrugged her off, violently, and barged through the embarrassed crowd.

  He wasn’t there when she got home. The lights were off and his room empty. She tried calling him but he didn’t pick up. She waited all day in the kitchen. In the evening, she moved upstairs.

  It was gone midnight when she heard him enter. She sat up in her bed, listened. A tap was running, and now he seemed to be climbing to his room.

  She knocked once, then opened the door. He was lying in the squashed centre of his mattress, an arm across his forehead. Even in the dark she could see that his eyes were open. She remained in the doorway.

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  She didn’t move.

  ‘Don’t you ever ask me to go there again.’

  She nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Can I just ask you a question?’

  ‘Please,’ she said, but in a voice full of anguish, as if she knew what lay ahead. And yet still she had come. She knew what was going to happen to her and still she’d come.

  He spoke evenly, as if detached from every word. ‘Where was God when they set me on fire?’

  ‘Please, Tochi.’

  ‘When they knifed my sister’s stomach open?’

  ‘Tochi.’

  ‘When they cut off my fifteen-year-old brother’s balls?’

  Her tears were falling. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’

  ‘Where was your God when I couldn’t even tell my parents’ bodies apart?’

  She carried herself down the stairs and into the kitchen. She tried the switch – she needed light, this darkness was plugging up her throat – but nothing happened. Water, then, and she gulped down a glass, breathing hard as she chucked the last inch down the sink. She turned round, tentatively, as though afraid of what awaited her. The room was still. The clock said it was a quarter past midnight. The blinds made a cage on the wall. She checked the silver tin in the cutlery drawer: empty. She fumbled about under the sink and found a box of candles, lit one straight from the hob and stood it on a red saucer in the middle of the table. She sat down. The candle cast the room in antique grace. She closed her eyes and bowed her head and brought her hands together on the plain wood of the table. She could feel her breath shaking inside her. I am the dust at your feet. I am the dust at your feet. She couldn’t hear Him. I am the dust at your feet. I am the dust at your feet. No. No Him, him, no one, nothing. Only black silence and dead space. Her hands were trembling. She tried again. She couldn’t. Birds flew past her shoulder and crashed through the wall. A river rushed out of her chest. The words dried away.

  She raised her fingers to her head, to her turban. She lifted it off and put it on the table. She eased out the hairpin down by her neck and placed that on the table too. And then the pin above that, and then pin after pin and clip after clip and all the while her hair was coming down in ribbons, loosening, uncoiling, falling. She heard him on the stairs, and now he was holding aside the beads and standing in the doorway. She stared at him, her arms arranged over her chest as if she were naked. Candlelight on her long hair. He came forward and knelt beside her and put his head in her lap. He felt her hands lightly touch him and they both wept for all they had lost.

  14. TOGETHER AGAIN

  Avtar hauled his face out of his palms and tried to remember what he should have been doing. The mirrors, he thought, standing up, tak
ing the cloth from his belt. He used a separate cloth for the basins and a third for the urinals. Lastly, he wiped down the cubicle doors and checked every toilet roll dispenser was full. Then he had to sit on the floor again. He slipped a hand under his T-shirt and pressed it against his stomach. That helped. But as soon as he let go the pain blazed.

  Outside, he knocked on the window of the truck.

  ‘What?’ his boss said, as the glass slid down. ‘I know I paid you right.’

  ‘I need a doctor. I’m not feeling very well.’

  The man lurched back. ‘What you got?’

  ‘Nothing. Just a pain in my stomach.’

  ‘Hm. Well. You’ve got visas. Go to the doctor’s like anyone else.’

  ‘But I’m supposed to be studying. In London. Will they ask questions?’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ he responded, shoving into gear, eager to leave. There were about six mobiles on his dash. ‘Not my problem.’

  Avtar checked with some guys at the gurdwara and they seemed to agree that there was nothing to worry about. ‘Janaab, you’ve got a visa on their computers. If I were you, I’d get everything done. Medicine, teeth, eyes. Everything.’

  The woman behind the desk was young, with large teeth and a heavy fringe dyed purple. Avtar shook a hand through his own hair, flattening it at the back, and waited to be acknowledged. She seemed busy on the computer.

  ‘Hi!’ she said, beaming, as the printer started up beside her. ‘Sorry Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘I would like to see the doctor, please.’

  ‘You’ve come to the right place. Are you a patient with us?’

  Avtar had rehearsed his response: ‘I am visiting for a few days only. Normally I live in London, where I study. Could I see him, please?’

  ‘Her,’ she corrected, a little pointedly. ‘So you’re a visiting patient.’

  She fished out a form from a two-tier rack bolted to the wall and placed it on the counter before him.

  ‘Just fill this in, signing it here, here and – ’ she flipped the form over – ‘here. And then we can look to make you an appointment.’

  ‘But I need to see the doctor today. Please.’

  ‘What seems to be the problem?’

  He hesitated. ‘I am having pains. In my stomach.’

  ‘OK. Well, we are booked out but if you fill the form in I can get you registered on a temporary basis, and then I’ll slot you in between appointments. Does that sound fair?’ She held out a pen.

  Without really thinking, he did the little Indian wobble of his head – perhaps kindness had disarmed him momentarily – and he took the form and the pen and found a vacant orange seat in the busy waiting room behind him.

  He sat there with the pen poised, writing nothing. Address. Current doctor. Non-UK national status (if applicable). Medical card number. He didn’t know what to put for any of these. He returned to the kind woman behind the counter.

  ‘I am sorry. But could I see the doctor only? I need bas five minutes.’

  She glanced at the form in his hand. ‘You do need to fill the form in first. Perhaps I can help?’ Gently, she took the paper from him. ‘They can be a bit confusing. We’ll go through it together. Name?’

  ‘Nijjar. Avtar Singh Nijjar,’ and he wondered if already he’d gone too far. Said too much. They knew his name. They’d discover he wasn’t anywhere near where he ought to be. That he was here working illegally. Fear began to rage.

  ‘Address?’

  Avtar gazed at her.

  She smiled. ‘Was it London you said?’

  He shook his head, then ran down the escalators, tripping over at the bottom, and he didn’t stop running until he was back behind the station and walking to the cabin.

  He rang Lakhpreet. He thought it would help, hearing her voice, but when she answered he didn’t recognize it. It sounded different. He kept the phone to his ear. She was talking. About what, he didn’t understand.

  ‘Jaan?’ she said.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘I said we’ve not heard from Randeep for ages. Is he all right?’

  ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘Can I speak to him?’

  ‘He’s asleep.’

  ‘Oh. OK. Tell him to call, will you? Mamma’s frantic.’

  He thought of his own mother. He imagined her being thrown onto the street. ‘I need to go.’

  ‘Wait! Can’t we talk for a bit? How are you? Missing me?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You sure? You don’t sound yourself.’

  ‘Don’t I?’

  He could see her frowning. ‘Anyway, what have you been up to? Anything fun?’

  He opened his mouth but no words came out. He had nothing, absolutely nothing, to say to her.

  He couldn’t sleep, and, the next day, he couldn’t walk either. He sat up on the floor of the cabin, lifted his T-shirt and tightened the strap he now kept belted around his stomach. He had to get to work. Twice last week he’d arrived late and not once did he finish the job on time. ‘Last chance, capiche? I got places to be, man. I’m losing money with every second,’ his boss had said, clicking fingers. Avtar leaned in to the side of the cabin and with enormous effort heaved up onto his feet.

  He’d be fine, he told himself, as he arrived at the club. Once he got his head on the job he’d forget about the pain. There was nothing to worry about. And after his boss drove off Avtar opened the broom cupboard and laid out very neatly the bottles and sprays and disinfectants he’d need. He went round and picked up all the litter, then raised the chairs onto their tables and vacuumed the entire hall, going right into the corners. He mopped away the standing piss in the toilets, polished up the urinals something pretty, and made a start on scraping the shit off the toilet bowls. He’d be finished soon. Then he could rest. The stains just needed a little more work. They weren’t quite coming loose. He scratched harder, digging the scraper in. It made no difference. The pain was coming back. Nothing was going right. Why wasn’t anything going right? He closed both hands around the wooden handle and started stabbing the ceramic bowl, chipping enamel. And then he was charging around the club, slashing the seats and smashing the mirrors.

  At work, she was misfiling things – the wrong books on the wrong shelves – and several times she forgot that new library cards needed to be countersigned before they were laminated. She had to discard them and start again.

  ‘You seem a bit preoccupied,’ Jessica said.

  ‘No, no. Just tired.’

  On the wooden counter her phone rang, its incessant vibrations absurdly loud. The immigration inspector: she recognized the number. He’d been calling every day. She stared at the screen, at the shrieking telephone icon, and killed the call. Later, she rang her father, if only to hear his voice – as a comfort against the howling wilderness inside her.

  ‘Is everything all right, beiti? I can hardly hear you.’

  ‘I was – I hope people are treating you well? I hope they’re not being hard on you because of me.’

  ‘Let them say what they want. I know my daughter, I tell them. She’ll be back soon. She’d never do anything to shame me.’

  As she heard those words, words she’d heard all her life, she wished she’d not rung him after all. She said goodbye, quietly, and closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself weightless, without such expensive burdens. It was impossible.

  Over dinner that evening, Tochi said, ‘I fixed the oven.’

  ‘Yes. I noticed. Thank you.’

  ‘It should last us through the winter.’

  She nodded. ‘The winter. Of course.’

  He looked across. Her hair was twisted up into the nape of her neck and he thought how, without her turban, she looked like a different woman altogether. Her eyes and mouth seemed smaller, as if the turban had amplified everything. ‘It must feel strange, not wearing it.’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, yes. Sorry. I’m not very good company tonight. I was just thinking. You know, if you could go anywher
e in the world, where would you go?’

  He took another roti.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m eating.’ He lifted the side of his plate, the better to scoop up the sabzi. He could feel her waiting for an answer.

  ‘You could go anywhere,’ she said. ‘I think that must feel wonderful. To have the freedom to go where you want. To do what you want.’

  ‘If you’re lucky. If you have the money.’

  ‘But it’s not about money,’ she said, betraying a slight vehemence.

  ‘Everything’s about money.’

  She frowned, as if he’d thwarted her attempt to get at something deeper.

  ‘Courage, then,’ he said. ‘If you have the courage you can go anywhere. Do anything. Be with anyone.’ He fixed her with a look. ‘Just have the courage.’

  She flushed and picked up her roti, signalling the end of the topic.

  As they cleared the table, her phone rang, and again she cut it off.

  ‘The inspector?’ Tochi asked.

  ‘He won’t stop. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Keep ignoring it. They can’t do anything if they can’t find you. And then it’s for him to sort out,’ meaning Randeep.

  ‘It’s been a year already. This should be over by now. He should have his stamp and I shouldn’t be here.’

  He moved to the sink and started to fill it with water. He didn’t look across as he asked, ‘What will you do when it’s over?’

  She took her time answering. ‘I’ll go back home.’

  He nodded. ‘To your family?’

  ‘I have to.’

  She sat at her window, looking across the identical roofs of the houses opposite. Each slate was edged neatly under the one above it, and they all looked damp, lined with dew. She didn’t let her eye wander too far above them. It was easier that way. If she looked up at the sky the loneliness was too large for her to carry. She heard Tochi standing in the doorway behind her. She turned away from the window. She seemed to know what he was going to say.