Calling the head servant, she told him to make several pitchers of fresh orange juice, to chill bottles of white wine for mimosas – Murad had sent a car to Islamabad for alcohol from his bootlegger, cases and cases of it.
‘Let’s do it right,’ Lily had said. ‘Full-blown. That way we’ll get a name for hospitality. You need a river of booze if you’re dragging people halfway out between Bahawalpur and nowhere. We’ll have a Christmas party next and get people to stay through New Year.’
Since last night Lily had experienced a kind of clarity about everyone, Mino, the others, her husband. She felt in tremendously high spirits, her perception wiped clean as when one is getting a fever – brittle and soul-sightful. All of them were types, all had their little motivations, the jewelry designer, unable to resist the force of Mino’s personality, his liberties and expansive world, his money. Zora Fancy, a blunt strong-looking woman with a butch haircut and disconcerting green eyes, brusque to the point of rudeness, who had very evidently joined the excursion in order to add Bumpy to her list of lovers. Despite her plainness, people said about her, ‘Zora always gets her man.’
As for Bumpy, Lily reflected that he and Mino were opposite sides of the same coin, but whereas Mino liked to watch, Bumpy liked to be the protagonist, what Mino would call ‘the brute,’ in the little dramas that took place around him. Belonging to a certain type, who are almost involuntarily successful with women and spoiled by women, Bumpy indulged himself, had a richer life than most, had a private life, spent months at a time in Paris, where he owned a garret apartment, and where he supposedly worked long days on the great Pakistani novel – though no one had ever been allowed to read it. Lily saw that both Mino and Bumpy understood her in a way that Murad did not. They were feminine in their perceptions, could follow her braided impulses and desires. Murad was wholly masculine, so that he experienced as a mystery Lily’s indecision, her instinct when confronted with two choices to reach for both.
Murad, who had kept up with Mino glass for glass right until they all staggered to bed, nevertheless had woken early and slipped out, leaving a note on the bedside table explaining that he had been called to Multan and would be gone all day. Scanning the note, Lily observed that he was jealous, and that he was removing himself from the scene to demonstrate his trust, perhaps not so much to her as to himself. The previous evening Lily had found herself caught up in a little conspiracy of flirtation with Bumpy. He was solicitous, but lightly, invisibly, and if she spoke he listened, responding, joining her perspective. If there had been any malice against the others Lily would have pulled back – out of loyalty to her husband, to Mino – but in the safehold of Bumpy’s blithe nature she became the instigator, leading him apart, brushing against him, imbibing and sharing his droll or witty comments.
Murad of course had observed this flirtation. When they were alone the night before and undressing, he said to Lily, drunk but still keeping it together, ‘This Bumpy is pretty smooth,’ and she replied artlessly, ‘He’s harmless. It’s just a game, he can’t help it.’
By the time Murad returned from Multan they were all on a tear, the living room thick with smoke, Mino in top form. Murad came into the room as Mino finished a story.
‘Oh my God, and there she was, the baby stuck to one hip, and making that same stew, stirring it with a huge spoon, with her boobs hanging down to her waist, completely drunk. She looked like some kind of depraved Mother Earth.’
All of them erupted into meaty vodka-tonic laughter.
Standing up, Mino said, ‘Come on, Murad, if you’re going to stay, you have to drink a few glasses by yourself. A forfeit.’
He didn’t say it particularly insistently, and Murad replied, ‘No, I’m going to bed. You people keep at it.’
‘We’re leaving in the morning, we’re on the ten o’clock flight. I hope you don’t mind, I sent one of your managers to get tickets. Zora says she needs to get back.’
‘Well, if you must. You’ll have to leave at six. Can you wake that early?’
‘We’ll stay up. But we haven’t seen much of you, Mr. Talwan. It’s too soon in the marriage for your wife to play the man of the house.’
‘Oh, I don’t worry about that,’ replied Murad, disregarding him. ‘I’ll see you in the morning. I keep farmer’s hours.’ Saying a general goodbye to the others, he left.
‘I’ll be right back,’ said Lily after a few minutes.
‘The devoted wife!’ called Mino. ‘Don’t forget the rest of us!’
In their room she found Murad writing in his journal, as he often did before going to sleep, a drink on the table next to him.
She felt shy, as if she had done something wrong. Standing behind him, she put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Is it okay? Why don’t you come sit with us, if you’re having a whiskey?’
He rubbed his cheek against her hand, but doing it consciously, as she observed, to show that he wasn’t upset. ‘No, it’s all right, it’s fine. Your guests are there. It’s not fun when everyone else is more drunk.’
‘Would you like me to stay with you?’
‘If you want to, I’d like it, of course. You could have one drink with me.’
‘All right.’ She went to the bathroom, peed, feeling trapped with Murad sitting quietly by the fire, when the others were pounding hard. When it got late, she always kept up with the guys.
Coming out, she said indifferently, ‘It’s just that it’s a bit rude. It’s their last night.’
‘That’s true.’ Giving her dispensation, he stood up and kissed her. ‘You go. I’ll be in bed in a minute anyway.’
Very late in the evening, with Zora asleep on a sofa under a shawl, with Mino and the boy murmuring to each other by the dying fire, almost asleep himself, Bumpy said to Lily, ‘Come on, someone has to get in the pool before it’s all over. Let’s do it.’
They walked across the lawn to the pool, stood at its edge, the water illuminated by underwater spotlights and very blue. One of the dogs came out of the darkness, wagging not just its tail but its whole rear end, sniffed at Bumpy’s leg, and then went over to the steps in the shallow end and waded partway into the water, lapping at it, then standing and watching them. Bumpy’s clothes fell cleanly from him, as if the buttons had been sliced off by an invisible hand. Lily pulled her blouse over her head, unzipped her jeans, placing a hand on Bumpy’s bare shoulder to steady herself as she stepped out of them. In the cool November night she felt her skin tighten, shivered, anticipating the water and not wanting to get into it, and that shivering graded into her anticipation of what she knew would come next, her hand still on his shoulder. He became still, like a well-trained horse when the rider puts foot to stirrup, this stillness encouraging her. Not shy, Lily felt the shocking intimacy of their entire bodies touching, his face bending to hers. They lay down on a soft canvas-covered chaise longue. He didn’t press her – if anything, she folded toward him. Hesitating just for a moment, she gave in. She even guided him inside her, the entry and movement satisfying, opening her eyes and looking up at the stars among the tree branches, until he finished, sooner than she wanted him to.
She held him inside her, legs around his waist, and then the emotion passed, desire crushed entirely. Pushing him off, annoyed with him, his weight on her, the cold, she whispered, ‘Come on, get up, we have to go back quickly.’
They held hands walking up from the pool – she allowed it, as if the romantic gesture would mitigate the banality of their coupling – until they came around to the front of the house, and then without looking at him she pulled her hand away and walked toward her room. ‘Tell Mino and everyone goodbye. I’ll see them in Islamabad. I have to go to sleep.’
He whispered, ‘Hey, wait. Are you okay?’
‘Forget it.’
Going into the bathroom, past her sleeping husband, she cleaned herself as well as she could, in case he reached for her in the night. She sat on the toilet, trying to pee, as the horror of what she had done struck her. Married just three m
onths, to a man who loved her, whom she loved, she had fucked a man she barely knew and cared nothing about. I didn’t know Murad when I married him, she told herself. He didn’t know me. We’re still learning.
Why should it matter so much?
Lily kept forcing herself back into sleep throughout the morning, until past noon, expecting Murad to come and ask if she was okay. Finally she called on the intercom and told the servants to bring her tea and fruit. When the servant knocked she asked where Murad had gone, learned that he was in Multan, would again be late. The vegetables were just being planted, the servant explained, and they were having trouble getting the right seed.
She remembered that he had been writing last night in his journal and, against the weight of her apprehension and shame, needed reassurance that all had been well, at least before he went to bed. When they first came to the farm he had shown her where he kept the journal. ‘You wouldn’t, I know, but I’ll say it. Don’t read this. I need one place where I can put down whatever’s on my mind, things that I don’t even mean.’ And she had promised.
Now she went to the drawer, took out the black notebook and read the last entry, his precise handwriting perfectly legible. It spoke for a few lines about his worries over the farm, then turned to the visitors, noted their behavior with disparagement. Finally:
Worst of all, I feel as if this house is soiled, and Lily soiled, and our love soiled. Her shrieking laughter at Mino’s vicious jokes and the affected way she holds her cigarette, drunk and sort of tapping it nervously, everything sped up – and I’m standing there like the dull host who has to be put up with – because it’s his whiskey you’re drinking. That’s not the deal I made with her. I won’t ever again be made to run away from my own house. We agreed to live decently and honorably and in peace. She says she wants all that, but I don’t think she knows how – to live in peace. For her, chaos and willfulness are the same as independence, the way to a vivid life. And then – admit it! – there’s too much genuflection in my attitude to her. Maybe I can’t be any other way, but by God and my strong right arm I will bloody well try. I’ve got to fix this right now, at the beginning.
She replaced the diary back under some papers in the drawer, as if by putting it quickly away she lessened the guilt of her spying. A flash of anger overwhelmed her – so that’s what he thought and kept hidden – and then gave way to an awareness of her husband’s right intentions and his intelligence, cooler than hers. She thought of the story he had told her early in their relationship, of seeing her for the first time beside the swimming pool at the party in the mountains, finding her there, recognizing her. It pained her to acknowledge how accurate he was in this appraisal, how correctly he identified her desire for decency and honor and peace. She thought of Mino, his world, a lakeside party with a beach made of sand brought in on a convoy of trucks, washing away in the next storm, filtering down to the depths of the lake. And what of her epiphany in the hospital room in London, the forgiveness she received, with the snow falling steadily all day? That at least was false, there was no moment of forgiveness, no renewal, just a series of negotiations, none of them final.
Lily was waiting on the roof that evening, drinking her second vodka tonic, when Murad came briskly up the stairs. She had been sitting with her stomach in a knot, dreading his first words, which would tell her the state of things. When he arrived she did not get up from the chair on which she had been stretched out, wearing sweatpants and a baggy sweater.
‘What a god-awful day. I finally ended up going to Sipahi’s farm and forcing his guys to load the seed in my jeep. I swear, it’s impossible to get anything done in this country. We just sit around scratching our fleas and telling lies. The British should come back.’
‘I’m sorry, babe.’ Relieved, she went over and kissed him on the forehead, put her arm around him.
The sunset call to prayers, the azaan, had just finished reverberating from the twin minarets of the Jalpana mosque, which towered above the village a few hundred meters away, hidden by trees. Far away across the flat countryside other maulvis were in mid-cry – they began at different times in each of the surrounding villages, making a chorus, until the last one died away and the night fell.
Sitting down again, she took an unlit joint from the table next to her and tossed it to him. Lighting one herself, exhaling a cloud of smoke, she said in a bright voice, ‘There you are. That’s my signature joint, the Zeppelin.’
Neatly catching the joint, he put it on a side table.
‘Not for me, my friend. I’m going at six tomorrow morning to meet old Mian Kachelu about that missing Dashti girl.’
‘At least have a drink then.’ Whenever he called her my friend, it signaled irritation or disapproval. ‘I’ll have another one too.’
‘All right, just one.’
Returning upstairs after ordering the drinks on the intercom in their bedroom, he began, ‘Darling, I know we’ve already been through this ...’
‘Let me guess.’She deepened her voice, mimicking him. ‘We need to think about what we’re going to do, about making a family. About work. About partying.’ She had decided to meet him straight on, she felt defiant. He knew nothing about Bumpy. This wasn’t the time for confessions, and anyway she must clarify her own intentions first.
Above them crows gradually settled in the tall eucalyptus trees along the wall of the compound, squabbling, settling, then rising up in pairs, arranging themselves again.
He narrowed his eyes. ‘It’s true. But honestly, this is serious. What are you on, third drink? fourth? Let’s take a couple of days off. It was fine when the guests were here.’
‘You can do what you want. I don’t want to.’
‘Come on, Lily. What have you done since you got here? What happened to reading or running the house? Or setting up your collective with the village women? Remember that? I’m on your side. But you’ll go crazy like this, you’ve got to engage.’
‘You like me when I’m tied up with a pink bow around my neck like a kitten. I’m not the type to be dutiful. I’m messy and willful and self-destructive. You knew that before you married me. That’s the way I lived my life, you knew that.’
He spoke coldly. ‘Yes I did.’
‘How dare you! Either get over it or tell me you can’t.’
‘I meant your dresses, your shop. Your friends.’And then, ‘Remember, we promised never to say unforgivable things when we fight.’
They sat in silence for an uncomfortably long time, Lily fighting down the anger that washed through her, bitterness in her mouth, the vodka.
Finally, he looked up at her, with a gentle smile on his face. She couldn’t for months forget his look, earnest, serious, severe, loving, penetrating.
‘Do you know the saying? At the beginning of a love affair, and at the end, the lovers can’t bear to be alone together.’
It hit her with a crack, so that her response came out in a gasp. ‘And you warn me about saying unforgivable things?’
‘I was joking, darling. Leave it. This is a marriage, not a love affair, it’s different. Marriage is process. Love gets knocked around.’
‘No, I won’t leave it. I can’t live like this.’ She felt injured by him for adding to her troubles now – perversely, knowing the blame lay with her. Breaking into tears, she stood up and went quickly downstairs. Taking both drinks from the tray carried by the startled servant, who shrank back in alarm as she stormed past, she drained both glasses one after the other, then went into the living room and took a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard. Crossing the small back lawn, she found her way outside the compound, leaving through a door that led directly into the fields.
She had never been outside the perimeter walls after dark, never been outside alone, now was in the mango orchard that surrounded the house, each tree aligned with the next, the full moon casting thick shadows. A watercourse ran past her in a concrete channel, making little gulping sounds, the orchard fading into blackness at the limits of her
vision. No other sounds, no footsteps, no pursuit. Murad must think that she had simply gone to their bedroom. She wanted him to chase her, yet knew that he would be sitting calmly on the roof, indulging her in his thoughts. He always expected that she would come around to his view of things; and in fact, she usually did, because it was to his life as much as to him that she had attached herself.
Behind her stretched open fields – there she might be seen and would easily be found – but ahead lay the orchard, hundreds of acres. She feared walking in the alfalfa under the mango trees. Murad had warned her about the snakes, kraits, vipers, especially cobras, which will attack instead of retreating as other snakes do. A few days after they arrived at Jalpana a gardener killed a cobra at the far end of the garden and brought it to show Murad, claiming a reward, the snake a dull black, smaller than she expected, its hood folded in death, a little dab of blood as red as nail polish smeared around its mouth.
Nevertheless, she withdrew among the mangoes. Away near the canal that flowed into the property she heard voices, one man calling to another, and then murmuring as they walked along. She approached one of the trees, bowed her head, and climbed under the canopy. Scrambling onto a thick branch running parallel to the ground, she settled comfortably, leaned against the trunk, took several pulls of the whiskey, and then exhaled hard, fighting back the nausea. Holding the bottle between her thighs, looking up into the dark branches, her mind wandered, thinking of the sounds around her, a tractor working in a field – it must be one of her husband’s – the workers were hurrying to plant the wheat, as he had told her, explaining why he came home so late one night. The land stretched away around her, the villages, the fields of wheat and trees in lines along the boundaries of fields, the tractors bumping along the roads, water running through channels all night. None of it had reference to her, she controlled nothing here.
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders Page 20