Arzee the Dwarf

by Chandrahas Choudhury

  But Father had forgotten that his bag, stuffed with a new day’s supply of Sunshine, was sticking out behind him! Just as Arzee saw what was going to happen and opened his mouth to scream, the truck honked as if gored and nudged the bag, thrusting Father straight into the path of the bus.

  Father’s long, stricken shriek trailed away slowly into silence. Arzee ran back as fast as he could, screeching.

  He rounded the bus and there, lying on his back in a pool of blood, was Father. All around him were packets of Sunshine detergent, lying split open in their own contents.

  It was all a blank after that.

  And because all his life Arzee had believed in portents and omens, hidden meanings and correspondences, it seemed to him as if it was the spirit of his long-dead father that had led him to these peculiar days – these days of reverie in which he floated through worlds far removed from his daily round, surveying his own life as if from upon a bridge.

  What could be the meaning of these Father-like journeys? It seemed to Arzee that he was being shown that he must leave the city. Arzee had been thinking about it from the very day he had been unhoused, and now it was as if his legs were furthering the work of his mind. The green and ghastly suit, in which he seemed to forget himself, was telling him something about himself. There was nothing left in the old life but dregs. But if he could make a break with the past, begin again in some new place, a stranger to others, he would be new even to himself, and might make a life for himself again.

  ‘It’s the city!’ he thought. ‘It’s the city which made me, and it’s the city again that’s squeezing the life out of me. But the city’s not the world, and that’s what Father is telling me. If I stay here, I’ll wallow every day in a pond of regret and misery and go under. But once I’m gone, and I wake up under another sky, and the Noor isn’t in front of me from every angle, then – then for how many days will I mourn this drowned life of mine? Phiroz, Abjani, my friends, these streets – in time they’ll become like characters and places from a story. I’ll go far away, I’ll leave it all behind. There’s a new Arzee waiting for me on the other side. East, west, north, south – all directions beckon me. I’ll be on the road, and see what else is there to life. These are the last rains in Bombay that I’m seeing, that’s for sure.’

  On the ninth day of his bottlehood, Arzee found himself in Jogeshwari, where a new mall had just come up, and more generally, out of the red, for he no longer owed the syndicate a penny. In fact it could be said that, despite the hard times he was facing, he had donated five thousand rupees to the syndicate, because the money they’d marked against his name had never existed in the first place. Deepak surely owed him something in return, but Arzee had had enough of Deepak’s tall talk.

  ‘How he boasted!’ he thought as he walked through Jogeshwari. ‘The sands of Kutch – ho ho! The ravines of the Chambal valley – ha! Either he was in a good mood that evening, because someone had rolled him a nice joint, else he was just setting me up with a show of sympathy so that I’d fall into his trap, and that way the syndicate would be off his back. That’s why he sat talking to me for hours, and asking me all kinds of questions, and agreeing to all my requests. And now that I’ve toured every square foot of land in this city roasting inside a bottle suit, and paid off my debts, he doesn’t even bother to answer my calls. I’ll remember his treachery, and pay him back someday in double measure. You don’t know who it is you’re dealing with, Deepakbhai. You just wait and see.’

  And a different sort of rage was building up inside Arzee too – a rage and need that began in his groin. That morning Mehndi had given him a thousand rupees as an advance against the last two days of work, and now the ten banknotes were burning a hole in his pocket, asking to be let out. Every day Arzee had been buying himself a drink before he started work, but today he felt in the mood for more than just a drink. He felt like having a bit of company to go with it, and today he had the money for it. A bit of company was what he’d been missing all this time, but now he could buy it, just like soap or samosas. Of course, at these places he wouldn’t be allowed to touch, he knew that. But to look at girls, to inhale the scent of girls, to talk to girls…these things too were a kind of touching.

  An afternoon, two Augusts old. He’d been walking on a street just like this on his day off, and on the first floor of a building on Lamington Road he’d seen a sign saying ‘Tony’s Hairdressers’. And he’d stopped to look at his reflection in a shop window, particularly his unruly hair. Arzee had never been to a salon – not when the open-air barber near his house charged only fifteen for a haircut. But these days everybody, from schoolchildren to grandmothers, was getting something fancy done to their hair. What was the harm in trying? And so he’d gone into the building, up to the first floor, changed his mind and come down again, then gone up again, and hesitantly pushed open that frosted-glass door that said TONY’S, and –

  No, he wasn’t going to allow himself to enter that frosted-glass door! The mind – how it wandered! It could not be still, any more than air could be still. Just as the body was always breathing and the world always spinning, so the mind was always pursuing something, fluttering away from the mild weather of the moment towards the storms of pleasure and pain, past and future. Dashrath Tiwari was so right with his thoughts about the mind.

  Arzee raised his head towards the sky. A yellow leaf had just freed itself from the branch of a tree and was floating down towards him, doing slow yellow pirouettes. It landed on the road, and was crushed by a car tyre. Beneath a scooter parked on the pavement, half a dog was sticking out, legs flailing. It was as if someone was strangling it, but probably it was only fleas. Arzee prodded the animal’s pink stomach with his foot, and the legs stopped kicking. A woman was watching him from the first floor of a building. Arzee could see her eyes following him, and he felt himself growing warm.

  He came to an establishment that seemed promising. A fat doorman was leaning against the door, lost in thought, but when he saw Arzee pause he saluted and peeled himself off the wood. Arzee nodded, and went in. The door closed behind him, and he found himself at the bottom of a staircase.

  As soon as he set foot on the first step, a light came on above his head. His heart began to beat faster. Behind another door at the top of the stairs, fig-coloured lights were on, and music was playing.

  Halfway up the steps, Arzee heard the frantic screams of women and stopped, alarmed. This wasn’t the kind of experience he was looking for! As he stood there, the door above flew open, and a large rat was evicted from the premises by a waiter’s broom. The rat seemed to twist grotesquely as it flew towards Arzee, and then it landed and shot past him as he leapt to one side with a shriek. When he looked up again, many painted faces were staring down at him, as if through a chute. They swiftly composed themselves and retreated. The grinning waiter held the door open.

  ‘Very sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘Please come now.’

  ‘You scared me,’ said Arzee, holding his hand to his heart.

  The room smelled of alcohol, peanuts, and perfume. Pillars interrupted the view of shabby sofas arranged on either side of low tables. Inside an aquarium lining one wall, translucent blue and orange fish were nonchalantly flicking their tails and puckering up their mouths as if to kiss. The caked and gaudy women he had just seen were standing by the aquarium talking to each other with their hands behind their backs, sizing him up discreetly. Arzee’s eyes went from one face to the next. He was disappointed. These were dull, plain girls. Only one looked like she might have a spark in her.

  The waiter led Arzee to a sofa. Arzee sat down, and tried to make himself look bigger. A second waiter now came forward from the shadows, and Arzee ordered two whiskies with soda, one for himself and one for the girl in the blue – or whatever she liked. The waiter nodded, and stopped to whisper in the girl’s ear as he headed for the bar. She came forward shyly and sat down on the sofa opposite him with her eyes lowered and her arms on her lap. The music was turned down. Arzee cou
ld feel the eyes of all the other girls upon him. ‘Don’t be nervous,’ he told himself. ‘Take charge of the situation!’ He fixed his gaze on the girl and asked loudly:

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Renu.’

  ‘Ha! And where are you from?’

  ‘Durgapur…in West Bengal.’

  Arzee couldn’t think of anything else to ask, so he kept staring at her, because he was allowed to – he was paying for it. Already he felt somewhat disoriented in this lurid haze, and there was a curious knocking in his groin that refused to subside. Renu’s arms and cheeks were on the plump side, and her red lipstick was slightly smudged. Her hair was tied up, revealing her loud ears, from which silver-coloured hoop earrings hung like chandeliers. Her top was open to reveal a hint of cleavage, which hummed unsettlingly at the periphery of Arzee’s vision even when he tried to look straight at her face.

  The waiter came and set down their drinks in front of them. Arzee raised his glass to his lips. He felt the whisky tracing a fiery path down his throat and chest. When he set the glass down again, Renu was looking at him with big, innocent eyes. Arzee felt as if he was on the cusp of some transcendent moment. All kinds of thoughts were pressing themselves upon him, and he found it hard to organize them into a queue: his mind was a full house. He set his glass down and examined the spotty surface of the table. Then he began to speak in short snatches, as if the sips he had just taken were turning into words:

  ‘I’ve often thought that…I’ve seen that…there’s no sympathy in this world…no kindness. We call ourselves human – we do. But humanity is exactly what we’re struggling to achieve! All through life we keep asking…“Where is my friend’s home?”…And sometimes we search for that friend in God…and sometimes in love…and sometimes in a place… and sometimes in a…in a friend!’

  ‘We search for friends,’ repeated Renu.

  ‘That’s right! And then…and then there’s the matter of the body. Every person has a body. But sometimes the body, and the soul within, have a quarrel – a grouse that can never be settled. Unless it’s by a third party. And that’s another body. Another’s body!’

  ‘Another’s body! That’s so true,’ said Renu. And she reached forward and placed her hand on Arzee’s bare arm.

  Her fingers were so warm! Nobody had touched Arzee like that in ages. He had to look away. He stared into his glass, saw his own reflection in it. Down below, he’d already kicked off his shoes. He felt as if he wanted to cry, but he rose around his sadness and held it in.

  ‘This is just the meaning of the story. I haven’t told you the story yet,’ he said. ‘But I’ll tell you now, if you’ve got the time.’

  ‘Tell me all about it,’ said Renu, and her eyes were like shimmering pools.

  ‘Did you see how I walked in just now?’ said Arzee. ‘One day, I walked into a door just like that…’

  TEN

  Hours with Monique

  The wonder of it all! Arzee pushed open the frosted-glass door at Tony’s salon, and instantly his face was blasted by waves of warm air, his ears were assailed by a droning and drilling like that in Mobin’s garage, his nose was tickled by fumes and fragrances, and his eyes almost gave up their partnership, such was the frenzy that greeted them. He thought he was being driven out, but when no one paid him any attention he realized that this was how it always was in here.

  All around the green-walled room, enlarged by mirrors, lined with shelves bright with tubes, sprays, and bottles, men and women were sitting still in chairs, while a posse of workers in green tunics trailed ribbons of activity through the air. To his left, a big man with a vaguely Chinese face – presumably the Tony who was the boss – had wedged himself between the wall and a desk, and was reading the gossip section of a newspaper.

  And without moving his head an inch, Tony now looked at Arzee from top to bottom, and raised his eyebrows.

  And Arzee took a moment to find his voice, which then piped up: ‘Haircut!’

  And then Tony looked in the other direction and pointed the way with his hand, and Arzee looked that way too. And then he was netted, and he could not look anywhere else.

  Standing by a hairdresser’s chair, indifferently studying her red fingernails, was Monique – only of course he didn’t know her name then, though once he did, it became clear right away that she couldn’t have been anybody else but a Monique.

  And now Monique herself looked up, and the cool brown eyes above that snub upturned nose and that red mouth met his, and that very moment something that was at the top of his chest seemed to fall all the way into his stomach. He’d never had his hair cut by a woman before. But there was no way of escaping it now, not with Tony looking at him like this, and Monique looking at him like that.

  And so he approached her, and she motioned to him to sit down. He put a foot up onto the step of her high chair, and raised himself up with some difficulty. He sat there uncomfortably with his legs dangling in the air, looking at his tight, drawn face in the mirror.

  ‘How would you like your hair cut?’ asked Monique, barely audible.

  ‘Hair? Cut?’ said a voice – it was he!

  ‘How would you like your hair cut?’ In exactly the same tone.

  ‘Oh – however you like! Whatever you think looks smart. A bit long at the sides and the back – how about that? Actually you’re the expert – whatever you think looks good.’

  And without even a nod, or a smile, or any other sign by which one human being acknowledges the existence of another, Monique set about her work.

  And now her two hands with their red, red nails were around his neck, undoing the top button of his shirt, and now they were wrapping him up in a clean green sheet. And in the mirror his own confused face was regarding first itself and then her serene detached visage with darting glances. And finding that his head was too low, she put her foot on the pedal of the chair all of a sudden and hoisted him up, up, up, and at the same time many things that were down, down, down – feet, locks of hair, wads of used cotton, a black cat padding around with arched back – appeared before Arzee in the mirror. Spzz spzz spzz – a spray began fussing over his hair. And now time was slowing down, and everything was becoming hot and bright, and all his senses were logging data excitedly and relaying it to a central station, where each bit was being pasted into a Tony’s scrapbook that he could revisit later. As still in his seat as the nymphs of the Noor on their pedestals, Arzee was acutely aware of the tips of his fingers resting on the chair arms, and his toes fretting inside his shoes, and specially an ant which seemed to be crawling up his thigh and towards his crotch. And were the tops of his ears slowly turning red? It seemed so.

  Yet in this mirror, which seemed specially designed to flatter, the best features of his face seemed to stand out, more than the small round one in the bathroom at home or the big gloomy one in the Noor. So he wasn’t really like that – he was like this! And as his head was turned up and down and left and right by Monique’s slender fingers, Arzee had the opportunity to observe himself from all angles, and he was not too dissatisfied with what he saw. Yes, Mobin might have the height, but he, Arzee, had the looks. Mobin’s face was too fleshy, and his eyes were too wide set, and his hair was a messy mop of curls. But his own cheeks were taut, and his eyebrows were bushy crescents, and his nose was in a class of its own, neither his father’s nor his mother’s but a new line altogether. His hair, which he oiled every day and lemoned once a week, and which Monique was now examining, was universally regarded as having an enviable sheen and volume. Monique was now examining this hair.

  ‘It’s too oily,’ she said. ‘Use less oil.’

  ‘Oh.’

  His hair had been reprimanded! Arzee felt very small. Why did he oil his hair so often? It was his mother who’d taught him to do it, and Mother was wrong!

  Monique was clad in black from head to toe, in a figure-hugging blouse and slacks. Her blouse was open at the neck, showing off her splendid collarbones and the tiniest hint
of cleavage. And what was she thinking as she worked? The expression in her eyes was inscrutable – her eyes were barred streets, neither letting anything out nor in. Arzee’s nose drew in, and held for as long as it could, the heady whiff of her perfume. He watched as her scissors and comb whirled around each other on the ballroom of his head, now drawing closer and meeting, now stepping back and turning away. He was never so tidy and economical with his movements when he worked! He made so much noise, and said so many things even though he was all alone. Snipped, his hair fell in bits and flecks around him, and even on Monique’s top. When she moved to one side of him to attend to his sideburns, her stomach came into contact with his arm. Every bit of him seemed to rush towards this arm, as if he was a bottle that had just been tilted, and he froze till she moved again. She coughed. What she was thinking, Arzee still could not tell, and what he was feeling, there was no describing either.

  And what a festival of corporeal life was unfolding all around him – serious, devout, unselfconscious. What a temple of the body was Tony’s! The body one was given was a matter of chance, like a card from a pack, but at Tony’s they took the skin, hair, and flesh you brought in and breathed a new life into them… they babured these things into bright life. These workers in green tunics were all tending the garden of the body, rubbing, pruning, soaking, shaping. Arzee saw how the body was broken down here into parts, and even such outreaches as toes and nails and knees were granted their dignity and standing. Hands kneaded limbs, faces were pasty with masks, hair was being worked through curlers or wrapped in foil strand by strand, and steam from basins of water rose to reveal pampered feet. One woman, her head inside the glass bulb of a hair-dryer, seemed as if she was going to be shot off any moment to the moon; another, her face tented by a towel and steamed, was making happy noises as if it wasn’t just steam in there. At the sight of all these bare legs and whispering arms, these speaking hips and jutting breasts, Arzee’s own body seemed to wake up, like an exile hearing once again his native language. Every pore of him thrilled to the music of the body, to the promise of membership in a world from which he had always felt barred.