Monique leant across him and reached for her blow-dryer. Turning back to his own face, Arzee saw that –
Was that he? Could it be? His thatch was completely transformed, and in turn it transformed the face beneath. Monique’s hair-dryer whooshed across the expanse of his head, blowing warm affectionate gusts at it, and then she squeezed out a little pomade from a tube and worked some of the front zones of his hair into fancy spikes. In half an hour his hair had moved from the nineteen-eighties all the way into the new millennium! The eighties now lay about them in pieces, soon to be swept up with a broom, but forming for now a circle inside which only the two of them stood.
Monique pumped the chair down, down, down again, drew off the sheet, and dusted him off with a brush. ‘Okay?’ she said.
‘Okay!’ croaked Arzee.
It was time for him to go.
Something had changed within Arzee since the time his feet had last touched the ground. As he paid Tony and prepared to leave, he glanced back and saw that, although Monique had her back towards him, she was observing his departure in the mirror. Arzee bowed ever so slightly and smiled, and she saw that and smiled back. And then the door closed slowly upon that smile, and Arzee was left standing outside Tony’s.
How deeply even a mirror-reflected smile pierces the soul! From the next day Arzee’s heart was not in his work any more. Suddenly the charms of the Noor seemed jaded. How many years could a man keep doing the same thing day after day? Nor did his feet keep to the old routes. He took to handing over the show to Sule and hanging around the salon in the evenings, waiting for the moment when Monique came out. He saw how she walked upright towards the bus-stop, her black bag on her shoulder, oblivious to the gazes of leering men. Sometimes she dropped a coin into the palm of a beggar, or fished out a little box from her bag and popped a mint into her mouth.
For many days Arzee watched, and was happy to watch. Then one evening he crossed the road and stood at the busstop. The bus arrived as soon he appeared, and so Monique didn’t notice him. Two days later he got onto the bus, but the bus was so crowded that she still did not note his presence. Arzee became aware of just how many people there were in Bombay meaninglessly performing petty tasks, or whiling away their time on streets and buses, getting in the way of others. And so the next day, elbowing and pushing fiercely, he took care to climb on right after her, leg after leg, step upon step. And then she – had she – could she have – noticed, and yes! Their gazes, which had last met angled through the medium of glass, met once again. Monique raised one eyebrow and gave the slightest smile as if to say, ‘Hello, what a coincidence’ before quickly looking away – that meant she remembered who he was! – and the next day she smiled in a slightly different, surprised and amused way, as if to say, ‘Hi, maybe this is not such a coincidence’. And then the next day when she fished in her bag for change and he quickly gave the conductor a tenner and said ‘Two to Central’, she did not demur, and then – after a break for Sunday – he let her pay for her ticket and his on Monday, and they even talked a bit about this and that in the six minutes between the stop and the station. And when Arzee told her he was a projectionist at the Noor she raised her eyebrows and said, ‘Really? How exciting that must be!’ But even being a clerk, or being without a job, would have become exciting if Monique said so.
So – so – so. So inside a week these bus meetings became a routine, but just then the accursed Sule came down with jaundice, and so Arzee couldn’t take any time off for the next ten days. His love affair could have ended right there! But the interruption turned out to be good in its own way, because the day Arzee appeared again Monique smiled in a new way – he had an expanding catalogue in his head now of all her different smiles – as if she had missed him. And so, to make up for lost days, Arzee accompanied her not only on the bus but also on the train home. She got into the ladies compartment and he into the gents, and though they could not see each other on the journey he knew that she was there, not far away, and that, across the jostle of hundreds of bodies piled up against each other like fish in baskets, they were in the same compartment of thought and feeling.
And before Monday ticked over to Friday he’d gone further, all the way home. Monique had a small apartment in Khar with one room and a kitchen, a cat, and a neighbour with his television set always on MTV. She made a cup of tea for him in the kitchen, and opened a box of cookies. And one thing leading to another, and surprise following surprise, and imagined things for a change turning out to be for real, three days later the tea she made for him lay untouched on the kitchen table. It was not a time for tea. Tea could be had any time.
Greedy mouth upon mouth and fingers thrilled by skin, the fan creaking over their heads and the calendar on the wall flapping and the cat sitting upon the cupboard washing itself with eyes half-shut, kisses raining upon the hills of breast and buttock and stomach and the valleys of throat and armpit and the triangular bush, the light changing and the universe turning and objects going in and out of focus, and dreamy looks and secret smiles, and gooseflesh and roused hair standing on end and giddy pleasure without end and the wall clock ticking away the time, ruffian thought arrested and all memory dissolved by the wonder of the present, and pauses, hushes, rising by degrees into the rolling and lurching of limbs sweatily intertwined, and then suddenly the rush into speed, and the boards of the bed creaking and threatening to give way, and something else giving way and a falling and a falling and a falling, and then cries of pleasure and the crest of a wave and the surge of the sticky ooze and in the brain the colour bright pink….
And when Arzee strutted into the theatre the next day, a new man, his shirt tucked in for a change and his thumbs hooked into his pockets, why did it seem as though every one of those beauties on the walls of the first-floor gallery was looking at him slyly, knowingly, as he passed? Did they really know so well the secret language of the body? It seemed as though, although he had been friends with them for years, today was the first time that they were all on the same level.
And so…. On long afternoons in the projection room, the sun’s rays a bright rectangle upon the stone floor inside which snoozed the dog Tyson, Arzee’s fingers would rest upon the beautiful black curves of the Babur, and recall the wondrous shape of Monique’s waist. Drifting away thus, he sometimes forgot to change the reel in time, and was made to scramble by the hooting and whistling of patrons below. And, studying new releases through the shutter as they played for the first, second, third, fourth and fifth times, Arzee realized for the first time that the new lot of leading ladies was so shrill, so dressy, so annoying, all cheap glitter, floozy charm. Was there even a single one amongst them who had the elegance and mystique of Monique? She was dignified, while they were merely coy. While they let loose torrents of words, she spoke only when she had to. Their cleavage was brazen, hers was discreet. They were always in overdrive, fluttering their eyelashes and wringing their hands, but she could make her point just by raising her head for a second or looking at you a certain way. If Monique ever reached the pitch of any one of these women, the whole world would come crashing down! Drinking tea at the stall outside the Noor, Arzee remembered Monique’s tea with ginger, and her box of crumbly cookies which far outstripped biscuits. And eating greasy omelettes in pav for dinner, he thought wistfully of the yellow plains of egg specked with small habitations of tomato and mushroom she whipped up in her kitchen at night, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows to expose the dragon tattoo on her wrist. At every small break in his duties he would hurry down the road and pop his head around the door at Tony’s, to sit for five minutes on the couch opposite grouchy Tony, observing his ladylove as she went about her work, and receiving acknowledgements only fractions of a second long, but long enough. When she unexpectedly put three sentences together in conversation he laughed, and later he remembered the quick unexpected words in her distinctive accent, like bird-talk, and laughed again. But in truth there was not a great deal of talk between them, for the zone they we
re in was like a quiet zone of mutual understanding in the great noisy city of human dealings.
And Arzee no longer had to go to Tony’s now for his haircut, for now he was in possession of that rare luxury, a private hairdresser. In front of Monique’s long oval dressing table he would sit, naked except for a white towel around his loins, on a chair boosted by copies of haircutting manuals and the Bombay Yellow Pages. The floor would be covered with newspaper, and, walking all over the news of the day in her heels (for she always wore her heels when she was working), Monique would make her way slowly through his hair, resting her fingers on his shoulders when from time to time she stopped to inspect her work in the mirror. Also lurking around was the cat, streaking across the field of the mirror as it leapt from curtain rod to floor to bed to shelf. Languorous music would be playing on Monique’s stereo – some French Edith woman with a last name full of huffs and puffs, her delicate syllables overlaid with the sound of pigeons cooing in the skylight, and the silences between words sometimes filled in with sounds from the neighbour’s television set to create a new Indian mix. Monique was a great one for keeping mirrors clean. Every day she swabbed them with spray and a soft cloth. As a consequence, things seemed strangely brighter and sharper in her mirror than in real life just opposite. Moving slightly left and right in her mirror against the static objects of her room, the expression on her face changing almost imperceptibly and her thin voice occasionally escorting the song a word or two of the way, Monique seemed like a figure in a painting come to life from its own radiance. The mirror made it seem as if there were two of each of them, and this was true in a way, for (Arzee thought about this carefully) she was both the Monique that she was and the Monique he took her to be, and these two were similar but not the same, and he was both himself and the Arzee who belonged to her. And in the gaps and linkages between these real and reflected beings, all kinds of meanings and suggestions seemed to be lurking.
And now Arzee did not fret over his own body any more, for at long last it had been accepted by someone, and that someone was none other than Monique, who was an expert in bodies! And it was Monique who first told him that he was really not so short as he thought, for inside him there was a tall man waiting to get out, expressing himself constantly in gait, glance, and gesture. Inches on a tape measure were not the only reality of bodies, else why did some fat people seem fat and other fat people just right, and some tall men tall and others the same size somehow not so? When he came to a stop at the bus-stop and turned to look left and right, eyes smouldering under hooded brows, or when he scratched his craggy chin and looked up at the sky as if to read signs in it visible only to himself – these gestures of his were inches! The way he ran his fingers through his hair, or the slight cording and stooping of his shoulders as he walked, as if he were conscious in fact of being too tall, or the way he pawed at the ground with his foot like a horse when he was impatient, or lay down with an arm beneath his head, showing off the marvellous lines of his arms and chest – who wanted a few more inches of limbs and bones and tendons when he had these? He never quite smiled even when he smiled, there remaining in his eyes a trace of something watchful and wary, and never quite laughed even at the funniest moments, allowing only one throaty chuckle past his voice box. He was always rapping his fingernails on surfaces around him, communicating sonically the energy of the powerful motor he housed. He himself admitted that people often stared at him, so why then was he not prepared to believe that it was all these things they were staring at? Dogs followed him everywhere, and pigeons pooped on him far more than on others; he kept finding coins on streets and landings, and twice in his life he had seen a shooting star. All these things could only have one possible meaning – that he was not solitary, but special.
One thing to note about Monique (he said to Renu) was that although she had Sundays off, she never took any holidays other than that. Even the sun and moon sometimes took the day off, but not Monique. She was Tony’s star stylist, and many customers came just to get their hair cut by her, so she had to be around all the time. In six years she had come down with the flu only twice, and strangely enough once it had been over a Sunday, and the other time it was a Bombay strike. But on his birthday she decided, of her own accord, to take half a day’s leave, and suggested a trip to Mandwa for the morning. Monique really did love him!
Meeting at sunrise at the Gateway of India, they boarded a catamaran bound for the opposite coast. Soon they were chugging away over the blue-grey waters. Monique had packed sandwiches with egg, cheese, and chicken, and from the counter on the deck they bought warm over-sweet tea. Thin silvery fish were flitting beneath the waters, and they passed one or two abandoned ships, ghostly in the morning light. What might it be like to board and secretly live upon one of these ships? They both began to think of points. They wouldn’t have to pay rent then, and once you got around that problem in Bombay you could really live well. In the mornings they could drink tea and eat biscuits upon the deck as they watched the sun come up over the buildings of the hazy and crowded city, and through the day they could observe from the port-holes of their rooms the coming and going of passengers on catamarans such as this one. The reception on TV would be great because there would be no interference, and they could knock balls about all day long on the pool and ping-pong tables that were probably still there in the games room. Their eyes, no longer bounded on all sides by walls, would grow used to scanning the horizon, and their cheeks would grow rosy with the fresh air, like those of the children in English films. Here Monique pointed out, by way of objections, they would need to shampoo their hair daily because of their saline and sticky environment. Also, sea fish were more smelly and fishy than freshwater fish. In this way they built up a story until the ships became specks and they were out into the unmarked sea. Arzee put on his silverrimmed blue-tinted sunglasses, which he wore only when he was feeling very bright, and they got a passenger to take pictures of them on Monique’s mobile phone.
At Mandwa, while everybody else hurried down the long jetty to board the connecting bus to Alibagh, they stopped and dawdled and looked, and took more pictures, and fed scraps to stray dogs, because they were going no further. Mandwa beach was not like Chowpatty beach. On the long stretches of white sand on either side of the jetty there were no horses, no camels, no bubble-blowers, no balloon-sellers, no pav-bhaji or bhelpuri stalls, no masseurs, and no youths selling handkerchiefs and herbal remedies. There was nothing at all but beach. The objects sticking out of the sand were real seashells, not groundnut husks and bottle caps, and the waves were not streaked with oil and muck. They left their shoes on the sand and, rolling up their trousers, went out hand in hand to wade in the water. The waves, already warm in the morning sun, ushered all the hair on Arzee’s legs into neat downwardpointing rows. Monique’s legs of course were absolutely smooth because she waxed, but she had a prominent scar on her knee, from when she’d fallen down as a child. The waves, retreating after touching the shore, carried away the sand beneath their feet. For a moment Arzee felt uncertain about everything, and he squeezed Monique’s hand tightly. She felt the pressure of his fingers on hers, and gave him a quizzical look. Their gazes met and seemed to melt into each other and, looking at her face against the cloud-specked blue sky, a little ringlet of hair trembling against her lightly rouged cheek and the cross around her neck lying slightly askew on her black top, Arzee knew that he would remember this moment forever.
Almost from the beginning Monique had wanted to see the projection room of the Noor, as Arzee was always talking about Phirozbhai or the dog Tyson, the wonder of Babur and the beam, or just the flaking walls and the coolness of the stone floor, and all the ineffable magic that hovered inside that space. But it was not until a couple of months had passed, and he felt certain that all this was for real, that Arzee felt confident of taking her to the cinema.
And what a stir was created when on the street leading to the Noor there appeared on a Monday afternoon the familiar everyday fi
gure of Arzee, but with – with a beautiful woman walking alongside! He was no longer single! Eyebrows inched upward all around, over eyes that met other eyes across the street. Conversations froze in mid-sentence, and everything fell so silent that people cloistered in their offices sprang to their windows to see what was wrong. The sun came out all of a sudden from behind a cloud, and as they passed Mobin’s garage an old Beetle idling in neutral hiccuped and bumped into the wall. As they approached the door of the Noor, Tawde the gateman quickly dusted off the seat of his pants and jumped to attention, and noted resentfully that Arzee gave him a small wordless nod as he passed, of the kind that dons give when they enter their dens. They proceeded through the grand lobby, turning round and round in wonder, and mounted the stairs, stopping to admire themselves in the large mirror. They went up to the projection room after a tour of the gallery of heroines, many of whose names, especially the older ones, Monique didn’t know, as she was more into Hollywood movies. Phirozbhai heard the footsteps coming up, and was about to say something to Arzee, but Monique’s head appeared first, and Phiroz jumped and – it was worth giving up ten years of your life for this moment – the words died away right there upon his lips. But he recovered quickly and mumbled his name when he was introduced, and then he was silent for a while, and then he suddenly said, ‘I’ve been working here for more than thirty years.’ And Monique smiled and said, ‘That’s a really long time, Mr Phiroz, that’s so wonderful.’ And she looked at Arzee, who shrugged and stretched out his hands, and Monique looked all around and said:
‘It’s just as I thought it would be.’
Arzee the Dwarf Page 13