by Bapsi Sidhwa
Slavesister is too sedated from her bath to react. Oozing moisture, she moves about gathering the ingredients for the omelettes and begins chopping the onions and green peppers.
Dr. Mody, anxious not to miss the chatter, bursts into the kitchen in his striped pajamas. And as if his loud voice were not enough, he claps hands to gain attention: “Where’s breakfast? Where’s breakfast? I’m so hungry I could eat Rodabai! Such a pity Lenny’s here...,” he says, grinning from ear to ear—and nicely fanning banked fires.
“If Bathing Beauty didn’t take hours wallowing in her bath like Cleopatra, you’d have breakfast! Come on. Come on. Move your fingers!”
“Yes, Mini! Move it. Move it,” says the doctor, putting his short arms round Slavesister’s heavy shoulders and hugging her affectionately.
“Mind you don’t cut yourself,” cautions Godmother.
“It’s not the first time I’m using a knife, Rodabai,” says Aunt Mini reasonably.
“I said ‘mind.’ I have enough worries without your adding to them!”
“Yes, yes! Mind you don’t chop off your fat little fingers,” says Dr. Manek Mody, echoing Godmother.
“Now, don’t you go joining hands with her,” says Mini Aunty.
“Her? Her?” asks Godmother, looking confusedly at her brother-in-law and at me. “Who’s her? Where’s her?”
Slavesister chops the tomatoes silently.
“Yes? Who’s her?” asks her brother-in-law.
Oldhusband emerges from the bathroom. He is, as always, dry and brittle, and irritated.
“His Sourship’s had his bath. Manek, you’d better take your turn before Cleopatra decides to settle down to her business on the commode.”
“Really, Rodabai ... I hate to say it, but you really are going too far,” says Slavesister.
“Oh? Where to? Where am I going?”
“Don’t make me say something you’ll regret ... ”
“Come on. Out with it! I’d like to know where I’m going... and where I stand!”
“Yes. Out with it! Where are you packing my Rodabai off to?”
“Manek, you’d be wise to keep out of this,” says Slavesister solemnly. “Don’t aggravate the situation... It’s bad enough without your encouraging her.”
“Is that so?” Godmother is in good form. “May I ask who you are to tell Manek not to meddle? Are you somebody? Queen Cleopatra of Jail Road, perhaps?”
“You know! I’m nothing... nobody...”
“Then who does your Nobodyship think she is ordering about? You meddle all you want, Manek! You are married to our sister. You have every right to encourage whom you wish to in this house!” Godmother turns to face her stoic kid sister. “And he’s only asking what I wish to know! How far, exactly, am I going?”
“I hate to say it... but, you are becoming... vulgar!”
“Oh? Is that so? And what do you think you are becoming... when you loll on the commode all morning spreading perfumes?”
“Chi, chi, chi!” says Dr. Mody, holding his fleshy nose.
“I’ll chop off your nose, you chi-chi-chiwalla!” says Mini Aunty. She often acts the spoilt sis-in-law with him.
“No wonder Mrs. Pen asked the other morning if the garbage cart had been to us. No wonder! I feel so embarrassed...,” says Godmother batting her eyes.
“If it’s constipation, I can help her out,” says the professional medicine-man.
“Is that what it is?” asks Godmother, all intelligent and alert and concerned. “Is she constipated, do you think? Could you prescribe her a strong purgative?”
“I can give her a horse’s dose, if you wish.”
“So good of you, Manek,” says Godmother. “People will stop taking us for the neighborhood manure dump.”
Slavesister wipes her face on her sleeve. Her lips are moist and flattened: they appear to be moving.
“Are you muttering?” demands Godmother. “Kindly permit us to share your mutters.”
“No... it’s just the onions...,” Slavesister manages to say. “The omelette masala is ready. Where do you want me to make the omelette?”
Slavesister has wisely elected to sound docile and matter-of-fact.
Oldhusband shuffles out of the kitchen and settles with his prayerbook in the bentwood chair. The white stubble on his cheeks quivers as he silently mumbles his prayers.
Godmother has invited four students from the King Edward Medical College dorms to tea. Their parents, who have at some point in time known either Godmother or one of her kin, have requested her to keep an occasional eye on them.
Godmother invites them whenever her brother-in-law visits Lahore. She feels it is good for the fledglings to be in the company of a full-fledged doctor. Though, as far as I can tell, they diligently compete in setting each other a bad example.
Only two students, Yakoob from Peshawar and Charles Chaudhry, an Indian Christian from Multan, show up that evening.
“Prakash and his family have migrated to Delhi,” says Yakoob, explaining the absence of the Hindu boy.
We are sitting in the drive in a rough circle; Godmother in her easy chair and I on her lap.
“Roshan Singh left for Amritsar only last Monday,” says Yakoob, explaining the absence of the Sikh student. “Some goondas from Bhatti were after his sisters. We escorted them, and the whole family, to a convoy.”
Slavesister, sitting on her low stool with her podgy knees spread beneath her sari, clucks mournfully and shakes her head.
“It’s to be expected, I suppose,” says Godmother, sighing.
“Pretty girls?” enquires Dr. Manek Mody. “Sikh girls have beautiful eyes,” he states, airing his eye fetish.
“Oh yes!” says Charles Chaudhry with bated breath. “Light eyes. Hazel. Greenish ... You can get lost in them, man!”
Ayah helps Mini Aunty serve tea.
“Your a-y-a-h has the most enormous eyes I’ve ever seen,” says the doctor to me in English. “Gorgeous! Ravishing!”
People spell out the letters thinking Ayah will not understand the alphabet. This occurs so frequently that she’d have to be a real nitwit not to catch on.
Ayah, aware she is the star attraction, rolls and slides her thickly fringed eyes to glamorous effect as she passes the tea. She goes in and fetches a plate of almond fudge and sweet lentil ladoos.
“Look out! There’s a fly on the ladoos,” says Dr. Mody.
Being a doctor he is more agitated by the fly’s presence than we are.
“Are you bothered by such a little fly?” says Ayah, peeking at the bald doctor from the corners of her teasing eyes. “Let it be: it will hardly eat anything.”
Dr. Mody looks at her, surprised: too taken aback to comment.
Then he springs out of his chair and flutters his small hand over the ladoos, saying: “Shoo, shoo!” The disturbed fly lifts sluggishly and the doctor, in a swift brown movement, catches it in his fist. He puffs up and surveys us as if he’s caught a lion.
“Well done!” says Mini Aunty: ever the sycophant.
“Why don’t you eat it,” I tell him. “You’re always hungry!”
Dr. Mody slaughters the fly with a loud clap. “No, I’ll save it for you,” he says, stepping up to me and shoving his hand with the dead fly towards my mouth.
I scream and bury my face in Godmother’s blouse. She fends him off with one hand and holds me protectively with the other. I feel her movements as she chuckles and flays.
Dr. Mody sits down laughing; and when I turn to look at him he makes a straight face and pretends to eat the fly.
“You’re a pig!” I say.
But once launched, Dr. Mody cannot be distracted long from his fetish. He peers at me acutely: “Why do you have such an unfortunate pair of eyes?” he enquires. “You’re a bit cross-eyed, aren’t you?”
“No. I’m not!” I protest loudly.
“Not cross-eyed,” says Slavesister, and treacherously adds, “She only squints.”
“No!’ I shout. ”I do
n’t!”
“Don’t shout,” says my traitorous aunt, covering her ears. “We’re not deaf.”
“I don’t understand it,” says the spiteful cannibal. “Your mother has such sweet chinky little eyes—such a pity her daughter’s eyes are like this.” He crosses his index fingers.
I ignore him.
“What about your Rosy-Peter’s American mother? How is she?” the doctor suddenly asks. It’s hard to keep track of his abrupt shifts in conversation.
“They left long ago,” I say. Caught off guard, I’m civil.
“Another set of green eyes gone!” laments the doctor, sadly shaking his head. “I’d follow them to the ends of the earth!”
If one keeps his single track in mind the doctor is not so hard to follow after all. The woolly, ruminative silence that succeeds the doctor’s soulful sighs is abruptly shattered by Oldhusband.
“What’s all this business about eyes! eyes! eyes!” he explodes. “You can’t poke the damn thing into their eyes!”
Slavesister gasps, shocked out of her hostess smile. The boys titter sheepishly. Dr. Manek Mody looks completely confounded.
I have never seen Oldhusband so awesome—not even when he thundered Longfellow at me.
“He’s quite right!” says Godmother, standing by her matter-of-fact spouse.
Oldhusband has been hauled through the book, zombielike, in his cane-bottomed chair, white-stubbled, unprepossessing... He has been dragged, disgruntled, from the earliest pages to sit mute on the drive with Godmother and Slavesister while they chatter and fight and clap hands and sing: “Lame Lenny! Three for a penny!” He has been compelled to snore at our feet—and to spout verse and shuffle his feet. All so that he may in the end confound the carnivorous doctor with his testy outburst!
Now that he’s had his say, he can peaceably pass away...
Of course, I only appreciated what Oldhusband had said years later.
Chapter 22
Mother develops a busy air of secrecy and preoccupation that makes her even more remote. She shoots off in the Morris, after Father drudges off on his bicycle; and returns late in the afternoon—and scoots out again. Electric-aunt often accompanies her, her thin lips compressed in determined silence, her efficient eyes concentrated on inward thoughts.
Our bewildered faces again grow pale as we ponder their absences. We eat less. We are fretful.
They aren’t the least bothered.
“What can they be up to?” wonders Cousin on a warm April afternoon, lying face down on the cool living-room floor of the Singhs’ empty rooms.
“Why don’t they take us?” I say, hurt at being deprived of drives while my mother and my aunt gallivant God knows where.
“I know where they go. I know everything,” says Adi, with a transparence that convinces us he knows absolutely nothing.
Ayah, almost as mystified as us, volunteers an intriguing bit of information. “Get a look in the car’s dicky sometime.”
“Why?” I demand, surprised.
“Because it is full of petrol cans!” she confides. And on this dramatic note attempts to slip away.
But Cousin grabs the end of her sari. And I jump up to block her exit. And as she tries to escape, the sari unravels. Giggling, turning giddily on the balls of her feet like a gaudy top, she wraps herself back in and bounces down among us. “Toba, toba!” she says, and touching the tips of her ears in quick succession saying, “I’ve never seen such badmash children! Who’s going to iron your mother’s sari? You?”
Mother and Father are going out to dinner later. Four hours later! The sari can wait. Matters of more moment—like the dickyful of petrol—have to be considered first.
The car dicky is always locked. I accept Ayah’s statement on faith, but cousin is suspicious. “How do you know about the petrol?” he asks, permitting mistrust to shade his voice.
“I know!” says Ayah, buttoning up.
Cousin can be silly sometimes. Here we are, on the brink of a revelation, and he insults Ayah.
“If Ayah says there is petrol in the car’s dicky, there is petrol in the car’s dicky!” I say.
Adi holds Ayah by her ears and, shaking her head like a coconut, says: “Come on, tell more. Please, please!”
“We won’t tell anybody. I swear!” I say. And to establish faith, pinch the skin on my throat.
“I swear I won’t either! You know you can trust me,” says my mistrustful cousin, adequately humbled and at his most adult and charming. He too pinches the skin on his Adam’s apple, and on his knees moves closer to Ayah.
Ayah turns her head this way and that and rolls her eyes about the room. Cousin quickly gets up and peers into the other uninhabited rooms of the annex to make sure there are no eaves-droppers.
When Cousin returns, Ayah says: “If your mothers get to know I told you this ... Hare Krishna! They’ll kill me!”
Again we take an oath of silence, and further reassure her by our solemn faces.
“Look into the godown next to my quarters sometime,” she says. “It’s full of gallons and gallons of petrol!”
We are stupefied. Petrol is rationed. It is an offense to store it.
“Your mother brings the cans in the car,” she says, guiltily removing her eyes from mine, “and takes them out again! I help her carry them in ... and I help her carry them out!”
“Doesn’t anyone else know about it?” enquires my stupefied, mystified and circumspect cousin.
“Only your mothers,” says Ayah. “We do the loading and the unloading when everyone’s asleep. We cover the cans with sheets and tablecloths.”
I am so shocked that my jaw drops. I look at Adi and Cousin. They, too, have been struck by similar thoughts. Their eyes are crossed in dismay and their jaws, too, are unhinged.
“What are you gaping like that for? Close your mouths!” says Ayah sharply—looking bewildered—sensing that we are incriminating our mothers. “If they do something we don’t understand, they have a good reason for it!”
I’m astonished she has not caught on. We clam our mouths shut.
We now know who the arsonists are. Our mothers are setting fire to Lahore!
Back and forth, back and forth, go our mothers on their secret missions, carrying their sinister freight in the dicky of our Morris Minor. And the more they absent themselves, the higher rise the flames in the walled city, and all over Lahore—and the quicker they return, the closer swirl the angry billows of sooty smoke.
And by our silence we commit ourselves to complicity. We’re sure Father knows. Why else would he leave the Morris for Mother?
My heart pounds at the damnation that awaits their souls. My knees quake at the horror of their imminent arrest. In ominous dreams they parade Warris Road. In high heels; in chiffon saris; escorted by soldiers; in single file: handcuffed, legcuffed, clanking chains ... Their mournful eyes seeking us as they are marched into Birdwood Barracks.
For the first time, unbidden, I cover my head with a scarf and in secluded comers join my hands to take the 101 names of God. The Bountiful. The Innocent. The Forgiver of Sin. The Fulfiller of Desire. He who can turn Air into Ashes: Fire into Water: Dust into Gems! The angle of the walls deflects the ancient words of the dead Avastan language and the prayer resounds soothingly in my ears. Often I notice Cousin with his skullcap on his head lurking in locked bathrooms and I feel my concern is shared. And at night when Adi whips the darkness with his kusti, as he goes through the ritual of the sacred thread, I know what evil he prays to banish from our mother and aunt’s thoughts.
At the end of the month when Ayah conducts her biyearly search for nits on our heads, she discovers we have each sprung one white hair!
I’m surprised our hair hasn’t all turned white.
Himat Ali holds my school satchel, and I hold his finger, as we walk down Warris Road to Mrs. Pen’s.
At the Salvation Army wall I tug on Hari-alias-Himat-Ali’s finger to cross the road. I have become increasingly fearful of the tall brick
wall with its wire-veined eyes. Today the slit vents emanate a steely reek that sets my teeth on edge—and fills me with a superstitious dread.
Himat Ali, too, is uneasy. He pulls back saying: “Stay here. There is something on the other side.”
But my fear of the wall and my congenital curiosity prevail. It is only a bulging gunnysack. We cross the road.
The swollen gunnysack lies directly in our path. Hari pushes it with his foot. The sack slowly topples over and Masseur spills out—half on the dusty sidewalk, half on the gritty tarmac—dispelling the stiletto reek of violence with the smell of fresh roses.
He was lying on one side, the upper part of his velvet body bare, a brown and white checked lungi knotted on his hips, and his feet in the sack. I never knew Masseur was so fair inside, creamy, and his arms smooth and distended with muscles and his forearms lined with pale brown hair. A wide wedge of flesh was neatly hacked to further trim his slender waist, and his spine, in a velvet trough, dipped into his lungi.
The minute I touched his shoulder, thinking he might open his eyes, I knew he was dead. But there was too much vigor about him still ... and his knowing tapering fingers with their white crescents and trimmed nails appeared pliant and ready to assert their consummate skill.
Himat Ali, trembling, suddenly buckles and squats by Masseur as if settling to a long vigil by a sick friend. He removes his puggaree, revealing his shaven bodhi-less head, and placing it on his knee wipes a smudge of dust from Masseur’s shoulder.
“Oye, pahialwan. Oye, my friend,” he whispers. “What have they done to you?” And he strokes Masseur’s arm with his trembling hand as if he is massaging Masseur.
Faces bob around us now. Some concerned, some curious. But they look at Masseur as if he is not a person.
He isn’t. He has been reduced to a body. A thing. One side of his handsome face already buried in the dusty sidewalk.