Arzee the Dwarf

by Chandrahas Choudhury

  ‘Shall I drop by for a quick game?’ he thought. ‘No, I won’t, else I might speak too much again. I’ll let them be in my thoughts, where they seem best.’

  And the wonder of this moment was just the same as yesterday’s, when, after hearing Monique’s voice, thin as a cat’s mewl, he’d been unable to speak – unable to think, to speak, to act, to breathe, just Unable. He’d stood with his ear to Deepak’s phone, dumb as a statue. He only sniffed once. And then he heard her draw in her breath, and she spoke into the silence:

  ‘Arzee?’

  Arzee! Even after all this time, she could tell it was him just by the sound of a sniff! And merely the sound of those two syllables had spirited him out of his days of fracture and agony, had made him human and operative again. ‘It’s – it’s me!’ he’d croaked, standing in that garbage and those weeds, while in front of him Deepak bent over double, pointing at his crotch and trying to stifle his laughter. Everything was a joke for Deepak.

  And somehow, with these few awkward sounds, like those of children learning to speak, the bitter silence of a whole year was dissolved, and now words, frequently interrupting each other’s progress like jousting swords, flew forth. A new picture emerged incoherently. Monique was in Goa, just as he’d thought. But her father was no more. He’d been finished five months ago by a heart attack. After that she’d been living all by herself in her little house by the sea. She had just set up her own salon in Panjim.

  So the coast had been clear all these months, but Monique hadn’t called! Arzee knew why. After the manner in which she’d left, it couldn’t be she who called, or made any kind of sign. Only he, Arzee, the small one, could restore their connection, if his heart was big enough, if he could swallow his resentment, if he could find a way through the maze. And that he’d done – despite being on the rack in every possible way, he’d been big enough to do it! And what had Monique’s plan been meanwhile? Where was she heading all by herself? Would she have married someone else if he had never showed up, and would she have thought of him after that? There was no knowing. Everything was so mysterious with Monique.

  He’d been so excited that he’d said, ‘I’ll come right away – I’ll take the next train,’ and she’d said, ‘Okay, but will you get a ticket?’, but then he’d remembered what day it was and said, ‘I can’t – it’s Phiroz’s daughter’s wedding tomorrow, and if I don’t come he’ll never forgive me.’ And perhaps the interval of a day was the right thing, for in that time he could speak to Mother, and have his way with her while she still felt she owed him for all his suffering. He knew Mother well enough to understand that, even though he’d been a Christian to begin with, she wouldn’t easily approve of him returning to his roots through an alliance with a Christian girl. Oh no! But on the other hand, his real parents – they’d have been so happy with Monique. And he was from so many places that he couldn’t please everybody.

  ‘And it’s not like Father wouldn’t have been pleased too,’ he thought. ‘Three out of four isn’t bad.’

  And time had relinquished its stranglehold over him and he had kept talking and talking, saying the same things first in this way and then in that, and he’d only said goodbye to Monique when Deepak ran out of patience and reminded him who was paying for this conversation. But then he kept calling Monique from his own phone every half an hour through the rest of the day, like a man who wants to make sure he is not falling out of a dream.

  Arzee looked up and saw the sky turn into a Goa blue, felt that his shoes were sinking into sand. Her face came into view again. Would Monique have put on weight, or changed her hairstyle? Would her skin have tanned in the Goan sun? Did she still wear the same perfume? And these were just the exterior things! When one met people after a break in time one always expected them to be exactly as they were in memory, but of course they’d always changed in some way. He’d reach Goa tomorrow carrying one image of Monique with him, but at the station he’d meet a different Monique, and the first few days would go just in updating his records. And it followed that he too, standing in the footboard of a bus here in Bombay, wasn’t the same Arzee with whom Monique was carrying on a conversation right now, as she looked out of her window at the sea view or snipped Goan locks in her salon. He’d been through so much – how could he be the same? And he didn’t know about her, but he had certainly put on lots of weight. Deepak hadn’t been exaggerating that much when he said his cheeks looked like a bulldog’s.

  ‘And if I’ve learnt anything from life, this time I’ll be cautious,’ he thought. ‘I feel good today, but not as good as yesterday, and there’s something in that. There’s rage and pain in me yet, and I don’t know what’s going to happen. And that’s what I must always tell myself: “I don’t know”. I’ll go be with her for a few days, and then I’ll see. Perhaps she wants to come back to Bombay. But there’s nothing in Bombay for me, so then we’re going nowhere. Perhaps it’s Panjim for her now. But what am I to do there? Perhaps what I saw that night, what I said to myself, was right: I must be on my own. In that case I’m actually going to Goa to say goodbye to Monique. But at least it’ll be a goodbye that’s decided by us, not a goodbye forced on us by someone else. And if I have to leave this city and go away I’ll say goodbye to Bombay in the same way – with love and thanks. Without curses and resentment. Goodbye my home! The life you gave me I’ll always remember. This cinema…I’m only Arzee the dwarf, and not even properly that, but without it I wouldn’t even have been whatever it is that I am.’

  As he jumped off at the Noor bus-stop, Arzee looked at his late father’s watch and calculated that he had exactly eighteen hours. Eighteen hours to figure out what was the first thing he was going to say when he saw Monique.

  There was nobody in the courtyard of the Noor, because the morning show had already begun. There was no Tyson either. Arzee knew exactly where the dog must be sleeping, curled up on the floor in between the two arms of the Babur where it was warm. There was only Tawde by the door, and Kaputkar behind the ticket window. Tawde gave a long whistle when he saw Arzee and exclaimed:

  ‘The sun has risen from the west! I thought the only projectionist’s face I’d see today would be Sule’s, but the first show’s not even halfway through, and already Mr Arzee –’

  ‘I don’t have the time for your nonsense,’ said Arzee, and gave Tawde a shove as he went past.

  He went past the nymphs on their pedestals, looked up at the great impassive lights embedded in the ceiling, and stopped irresolutely at the foot of the staircase. Then he turned and headed towards the stalls. Abjani, looking up from his newspaper, saw Arzee’s shoes pass by under his swing door, and came out to ask him if there was a dress code for the function that evening. But by the time he reached the door Arzee was gone.

  Although he’d been peering down into it six days a week for the last ten years, it had been so long since Arzee had been inside the auditorium of the Noor that when he pushed past the moth-eaten drapes and entered, it was if he was doing so for the very first time.

  As soon as he left the dim corridor behind he was overwhelmed by the vast, vertiginous darkness, and it felt as though he was falling, especially because he was standing on a gradient. Arzee groped for something to hold on to, but there was nothing in this world but the picture on the screen and the blackness all around. Where were the seats? He edged forward, unable to see even the hand with which he was reaching out. His fingers alighted on something that seemed like the padding of a chair, but then, moving upwards, they came upon something so soft and warm it could only have been a neck or a cheek. A hand slapped him sharply on the wrist, and a mouth swore. Arzee blurted an apology, and stumbled into another row. He reached forward and found what was certainly the base of a seat, then felt the air all around, and established that no one was near. Even so, when he sat down it was like dropping himself into an abyss.

  He sat down, and all his boyhood memories came flooding back. The sound squalling in his ears was screechy and harsh, but all the gr
ains and specks of the picture were beautiful and so was its slight flicker, as if the illusion of reality had been generated only with great labour. Arzee laughed at a joke in the dialogue, and pushed his feet up against the seat in front. Slowly forms began to take shape in the darkness, as if emerging through mist. He saw that the row in which he had found a place was completely empty. But here and there, all around him, were men as still and intent as statues, while in some places the backs of the seats themselves had fallen forward or back, looking eerily like bodies. The darkness was alarming only for a few moments. Then one sank into it, into silence and anonymity and diversion, and this state was so comforting he had no trouble understanding why so many people sought refuge here. It had been so long since he had seen a movie from an aperture wider than that of the projection-room shutter that the screen seemed especially vast to him. He craned his neck backwards and saw the thousand discrete motes of the great beam arrowing down from above. During breaks in the sound he could hear the threshing, constant and rhythmic, of the Babur.

  Suddenly he jumped up in shock. But whatever it was that had run over his foot was already gone. Rats – there must be hundreds of them in here! He sat down again, and it was then that he heard the sound.

  What was it? A low moaning, a sobbing on the very edge of silence, like the sound of a ghost’s grief. He turned around, alarmed. He could only hear the crying now, not the crackle of the soundtrack nor the hum of the Babur.

  That’s where it was coming from! At the end of a row, where the view was the poorest, was one of the largest men Arzee had ever seen, squeezed so tightly into his inadequate seat that it seemed as though he had been incarcerated there, and was crying because he could not get out. His great mass rose out of the seat like a mountain, and the curve of his stomach rose and fell, rose and fell, as he breathed heavily. His head was bent, and he kept rubbing his eyes with his hand, then looking at the screen for a few moments, then rubbing his tears away again.

  But the film was a comedy! Arzee could make no sense of it.

  ‘He’s dressed well, so clearly he’s not poor,’ he thought. ‘Shall I go ask him what’s the matter? But he’s clearly come here to be alone! So no, I’ll leave him be. Or no, I’ll ask him, and if he doesn’t want to talk, I’ll go away just as I’d come. It’s horrible when someone cries.’

  He got up and made his way into the row behind him, a head bobbing over the seats. The closer he got to the man, the bigger the man loomed in the dark, and the smaller he himself felt.

  ‘I’ll stay out of his range, because he might just be mad. If for some reason he strikes me, then I’m finished,’ he thought, and spoke up in a low murmur: ‘Excuse me! Excuse me, sir. Why do you cry?’

  The big man looked at Arzee, and seemed both surprised and astonished.

  ‘I was sitting there,’ said Arzee, ‘and I heard you.’

  ‘How small you are!’ wheezed the man, in a soft, refined voice. ‘Are you a man, or something that I dream?’

  ‘I’m a man,’ said Arzee, ‘but I’m small, and that’s how I am. Why do you cry, sir? Aren’t you interested in the movie?’

  ‘I am,’ said the man, ‘and I’m crying because the first time I came here was more than fifty years ago, and I was only nine years old. More than fifty years have passed! And I was only nine! Look at me now. Can you imagine that one day I was only nine years old, and – don’t take this badly, my friend – as small as you are?’ He wiped his face again. ‘What days those were! The red carpet, the lights, the smell of the leather on the seats! The kind of people we used to see here! I love this theatre, my friend. I love it in a way no one will ever understand – not you, and not anybody else around me. You’re young. You don’t know what it is to be old…not just to be old, but to see the world that you knew passing away. I’m crying today for my memories. I’m crying when I think of that happiness. I want to be nine again.’

  ‘Then we’re in the same boat, sir,’ said Arzee, ‘because I love this theatre, too. I’m not here to watch a movie, sir. I work here, right upstairs, as a projectionist.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I do! I just came down here for a bit. It’s a great place, sir, a grand place…even though you love it, you mustn’t have seen even half of it. There’s nothing like it in all of Bombay.’

  ‘There’s nothing like it,’ the man agreed.

  ‘And you’ve come at the right time, sir, because very soon they’re going to shut this place up and tear it down, the wretches! And there’s nothing I can do about it. You’re crying for a time that’s gone, sir, but at least the place is still there, isn’t it? If it were gone, you wouldn’t be able to remember anything at all. If only there were more people like you. Then we could have had a shot at saving it. But nobody cares.’

  ‘No, nobody does.’

  ‘Do you want to come up and take a look at the projection room, sir? Our machine is over fifty years old too! I could take you on a tour – if you don’t have difficulty climbing, that is, because there aren’t any lifts here.’

  ‘I don’t do so well with staircases,’ the man admitted.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I haven’t introduced myself. My name is Arzee.’

  ‘Arzee. Arzee what?’

  ‘We’ll let that be, sir. That’s a complicated question! Everyone here knows me just as Arzee the dwarf.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you,’ said the man, and offered his big, damp hand. ‘My name is Sharma. Rajneesh Sharma.’

  Rajneesh Sharma! It was him! Rajneesh Sharma himself in the Noor, without anyone knowing!

  ‘It’s – it’s you!’ said Arzee. ‘After all these days!’

  ‘What was I to do?’ said Rajneesh Sharma. ‘I haven’t been keeping well, you can see. And I don’t like dealing with people. People upset me. They want all kinds of things from me.’

  Arzee was silent, and stood there, half-respectful, halfresentful.

  ‘And perhaps they’re wrong,’ said the big man.

  ‘Who, sir?’

  ‘My sons.’

  ‘What do they say, sir?’

  ‘Perhaps they’re wrong when they say this place must be shut down. Maybe memories mean more than money. Maybe the past means more than the future.’ Rajneesh Sharma began to breathe more heavily. ‘They can do what they like when I’m dead, and that day can’t be far. But while I’m alive…my word still counts. It’s my signature that goes on the papers.’

  ‘And a long life to you, sir,’ said Arzee in a quavering voice. ‘And a long life to you!’

  ‘And now, my friend, I’ll be going,’ said Rajneesh Sharma, and with every word he seemed to grow even bigger, as if he was sucking up the darkness around him. ‘But your kindness is noted, in this time when no one thinks of their fellow man. And it won’t go unrewarded, God willing.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say, sir,’ whispered Arzee. ‘But – but follow your heart, sir, not your head. And everything will be all right. Love is never wrong.’

  ‘Thank you. Will you hold this seat down? I am going to get up.’

  And as Arzee held down the arm of the seat Rajneesh Sharma raised himself up unsteadily, stood looking at the screen for some time, then raised his hand and lumbered out.

  Arzee sank down into the seat he had vacated, and which was warm. He stared blankly at the screen. The movie went on. A minute passed. The conversation seemed to fade away.

  ‘Did that really happen, or was it a dream?’ thought Arzee. ‘It was a dream! I’m going mad. It’s all Monique’s fault. Or it’s this place – it’s difficult to believe anything in here! But it happened – I could swear on it. Shall I run out after him and check? He can’t have gone far. No…I’ll ruin it all by doing so, and regret it for all my days! If it was a vision, let it be one. But smells don’t lie, and I can still smell him. The seat’s still warm! But that could be me. Yet I was sitting there ten minutes ago, so how could I be here, if not for him? Did I speak to Monique yesterday, or did I dream that? Am I going to
Goa this evening? I’m losing it! Another minute in this darkness and I won’t be sure of my own name! I should leave. I’ll go up to the projection room and tell Sule what a rotten job he’s doing of handling the focus.’

  He hurried out into the corridor and back into the lobby, and the farther out he went from that confounding blackness, the more it seemed plausible to him that what he had just seen and heard was a hallucination, a vision that his brain, never too stable to begin with, and unhinged first by steepling grief and then by intense love, was eminently capable of producing. But then he saw Tawde at the door, and Tawde was clutching a twenty-rupee note.

  ‘A fellow just gave this to me as he walked out,’ said Tawde. ‘And my god, he was big!’

  As Arzee stood on the street in front of his building that evening, his suitcase between his legs, the last streaks of day had just disappeared. Three birds were wheeling around a gibbous moon rising fast in the twilight. He looked at his watch. He’d been the one with the most tasks to finish, and yet he was ready well before his mother and his brother, just as at any gathering of friends, the ones who live furthest always arrive first. He didn’t know what could be taking them so long in there, but if they didn’t come down in two minutes, he’d have to go up and get them, because he’d already stopped a taxi.

  He recalled the look on Abjani’s face that morning when he’d asked for a whole week’s leave, and chuckled. ‘He thinks I might not come back, but I will,’ he thought. ‘Because for once the world knows less, and I know more. Rajneesh Sharma left without meeting him. I was the only one he spoke to – me, Arzee! And it’s not just Abjani – so many people don’t know anything. Mobin – he doesn’t have a clue about who I am, and that’s how it’s going to be. Let him keep his height and his ignorance both. And Monique…I want to be able to take a photo of her reaction when she finds out I was actually a Christian just like her, and that I’ve already seen off three parents in this life. Four, if you count her father! He shouldn’t have messed with me.’