by Zuni Chopra
Chapter Six
The chana man had fallen asleep, leaning tiredly against the post of his stand in the sun’s gentle gaze. I waved at him anyway, wondering what he was dreaming of; perhaps of when his son would grow up, so he’d have some company in his stall . . .
The path home seemed unusually short that day.
The chinar tree seemed to leap out at me in desperation when I reached the creaky gate. My mouth fell open of its own accord. It was looking rather the worse for wear. Its leaves, a faded, sick shade of green, were droopy, and some were interspaced with holes. Its roots were jutting out of the ground, fighting to be released. I walked right over and hugged its massive trunk, as I used to when I was younger. It felt rough and scratchy, like jute, beneath my fingers.
‘Hang in there,’ I muttered. ‘I promise I’ll figure out what illness you’ve caught . . . I’ll fix it, I’ll set it right, promise.’
My first thought was of the fireplace. He was the oldest member of the house; surely he’d know what had happened to the chinar and how to set it right! Buoyed up by this thought, I let go of the tree.
The front door slammed with unnecessary force the moment I entered, as though admonishing me for being out too late. I hadn’t. I’m not the sort to be irresponsible with time. I’m never out after dark, just like everyone else.
I could hear Ma’s swift chatter from the living room. Despite a growing drowsiness, I was impressed—that telephone hadn’t worked in years. It still kept cutting off, and occasionally I heard her honey-coated tones abruptly warp to some sort of snarl before immediately switching back the moment the phone began to work. I’d surely have to wait till she was done to speak to the fireplace. With no desire to know whom she was talking to or what they were talking about, I dragged my grating, bone-tired feet upstairs.
Just before I reached the top of the stairs, I froze, suddenly tense. I had heard a hurried, frantic whisper, in the same croaky voice that I’d heard before. I stood still, listening hard. The whisper echoed softly, as though caught within an endless tunnel. It seemed to be coming from my right; I turned and stared straight into solid wall.
I heard it again, coming from directly in front of me then. The voice was strained and panicked, yet so quiet I could barely make out that it was fighting to form words.
I knocked at the wood to see if it sounded hollow. But the beats of my knuckles were steady and firm, and no one spoke again.
Finally, I was forced to try and convince myself, as I had before, that I was just imagining things as a result of all this stress.
Collapsing on the bed seemed like an excellent idea, but I’d just realized that my feet had turned a shade darker, caked in a repulsive layer of filth that I couldn’t escape. Looking in the mirror, I saw a few flecks of dirt sprinkled across my face like a dessert topping. I trod down the short hallway to reach the library. Tripping over a book thrown down against the carpet, I stumbled into the warmth of the armchair.
Before my skin even touched his smooth leather I sensed the tension oozing off him.
‘So, how’d it go? Was it fun at Altaf’s?’ he asked, too quickly.
‘It was fine, but . . . but . . . look—are you okay? You seem . . . I don’t know . . . wait a minute . . . how did you know that I was at Altaf’s?’
He fell silent, then tripped over words in his haste to respond, a juggler at the market who’d come dangerously close to dropping a prized egg.
‘Well, we saw you. Through the window.’
‘You’re not even near the window. And I’m sure none of the books would have told you.’
‘Of course, but . . . the . . . um . . . the desk and chair saw you. From downstairs. Of course, they argued for a while about whether it was really you or your long-lost twin, but—’
‘So how did you get to know?’
Abruptly, he seemed to lose some of his nervousness in favour of squinting at me like I had just displayed the most supreme form of idiocy since Ma dusted down the whole house on a Sunday, before realizing it was Monday and she had to be at work.
‘We’re all one house, aren’t we, Zoons? You think just because the fireplace and I are in different rooms I can’t hear everything he’s saying? Even though I may not . . . necessarily . . . agree with what he’s saying . . .’
I peered at him.
‘Anyhow, how was it at Altaf’s? He seems nice. A bit off sometimes, but nice.’
I leaned backwards, exhausted.
‘Oh, it was fine, you know, it—’
With a crash like a frying pan clattering against a bumpy floor, I flopped to the ground.
‘Hai! Zoons! You okay?’
The books, who had been disrupted from their nap by my fall, began to chime in like an off-key choir, beginning with my grandfather’s handwritten book of Kashmiri fairy tales.
‘Of course she’s not okay! Probably got a concussion! Police! Doctor! We need help!’
‘Can we all just take a moment to review the facts of the case?’
‘Anyone got some type of nut? We need to get some food into her.’
‘No, no, what she needs is a good laugh. Provided by me. Humour is medicine. But there’s nothing humorous about medicine! Ha, am I right?’
‘Tut, tut. Look at her. This is a learning experience for all of you—she fell all wrong. If you fall, you must—’
‘Can you stop acting like a first-aid manual? Just because you’re the only sports magazine here . . . acting like you aren’t YEARS old and deserve to be serving as some lady’s tablecloth . . .’
‘Now, look here, if you think that being Shanti’s favourite romance novel means that you can be rude to everyone else—’
‘I don’t think it, darling. I know it.’
‘All of you monkeys be quiet!’ burst out the armchair, as usual.
I would have cut in earlier, perhaps rapped my knuckles on the bookshelves as I normally do, but I had been distracted by a curious glint, appearing as sunlight off water, coming from behind the last bookshelf. Whatever it was, it had been tucked away carefully, hidden yet not crumpled, nor hurriedly thrown, like an only child born out of wedlock. It was as though I had fallen into precisely the space needed to see it from; its placement was such that I doubted you could see it from anywhere besides directly behind and below the armchair.
I moved closer, tuning out the armchair’s chastisements, the books’ complaining and clamouring voices, and the insistent clatter of the bookshelves.
I crawled forward, as I’ve often seen people do when moving into the line of gunfire. Reaching forward, my fingers brushed against the fabric. Incredible! It was so soft it felt as though it had been made of clouds, for royalty . . . or for those in a happier place than this.
I stretched out further, gripped the jutting-out corner tightly and tugged so sharply that the armchair gasped. I turned. I hadn’t realized he’d been watching me. It was then that I looked up and saw that the entire library was fixated on my actions. It was so quiet that you could nearly hear the sobs and sighs of our next-door neighbours.
I returned to my attempts to yank out the cloth, all the more focused then. There is something about having people watch you; the more people there are, the more ways you find to fail, no matter how simple the task.
With a final tug, it came tumbling out of the bookshelf, allowing the books near it to thud sharply against the hole it left behind. It shone brightly in my hands, despite being the deepest of blacks. Holding the rolled-up cloth under my arm, I pulled myself out of the crevice and back on to the armchair. My elbow was throbbing mildly from the fall, but I was too intrigued to care.
I rolled it out on the floor, pushing against the large bundle, then stepped back . . . and gasped. The entire thing had begun unfolding itself, as though it had been lying dormant, waiting, for years. I envisioned a criss-cross of unused, rusty railway tracks brought back to life. There were odd, sharp slaps when the ends of the cloth fell against the floor. I almost felt like I could hear t
he clicking and whirring of tiny gears within the cloth. Finally it seemed like it was finished. It was laid out before me in the grandest of fashions, almost as large as the library floor itself.
Upon it was a spidery network of silver and gold, and within it, myriad sharply stitched portraits. The cloth seemed to ripple against the ground, a darkened sea, and the portraits, a school of powerful fish.
‘It’s a . . . painting?’ I whispered to myself, at a complete loss for any comprehension.
‘It is a tapestry,’ said the armchair, his tone heavy and serious, as though the inevitable had finally happened. ‘A tapestry that tells of your family tree.’
In large, golden, sprawling letters, my last name—Razdan—was embroidered on the fabric. I knelt down, bending closer. Just beneath the family name, at the very top of the tapestry, there was a portrait of an aged man, seemingly a Pandit, his white hair a single tangled tuft. From him erupted four golden web-like lines moving downward, connecting him to four other portraits—three young men and a young lady—all staring up at me, unsmiling, the ghosts of the past lurking in their eyes. A silver strand on her side connected the young lady with a young man whose bushy eyebrows and hooked nose marked him as separate from their bloodline, yet whose place upon the tapestry marked him as part of the family.
My eyes began to race over the cloth, skittering over generations, over hundreds of years, before they were glued in place by a single portrait. There, shining up at me, stood Tathi, young and strong. No one had embellished the tales of her beauty. Around her, there were shifting beams of golden light, as though she was the sun of the portrait. Beneath her, I could make out a faded word scratched so lightly that one could tell that, unlike the others, this was not meant to last forever.
Rakshak
And from her ran a single golden link to—my heart skipped—my father. Tathi was not wrong; his nose was shaped exactly like mine. His hair was dark as Tathi’s had been, his eyes wide-set and his mouth thin. It pained me that his portrait, like all the rest, was missing a smile. He looked up, unseeing and invisible; here, strong and whole, in reality, ravaged to charred flesh and ash by the heart of the devouring flame.
I wiped away the tear that had fallen against his face. My eyes skipped across to the portrait of my mother, connected to him by a bold line of silver, and then widened at the sight of her smile.
Hope surged in my heavy heart at the idea that hers, my mother’s, was the only smile upon this tapestry. But then my spirits sank again. How did it matter if her portrait was smiling? She hardly smiled any more.
And there, growing from the two of them, like some sort of revolting tapeworm, was me. It was strange, how unfamiliar I looked.
I started. Around me, growing every second, was a beam of sunlight. Beneath me was a blurred word, becoming clearer by the moment. The light, like liquid gold, was slipping towards me from Tathi.
My heart had begun to race, so that it became impossible to tell one beat from the next, all thrumming together as a frantic ringing in my chest. My palms were so sweaty I could barely hold the tapestry.
I stood up, shaking. When I spoke, my voice came out rough and hoarse, whittled down by recent events to near nothingness. ‘What is this?’ I called out, my voice unusually shrill. ‘What does it mean?’
The library was, for once, quiet.
Such was the silence that the fluttering of a few stray pages seemed magnified in the room. The books shuffled about, avoiding my gaze.
‘Someone,’ I said again. ‘Someone explain this.’
One of the bookshelves coughed.
My patience, melting like the last layer of ice in summer, began to thin dangerously.
I turned towards the armchair, fuming at his sudden lack of support.
‘Tell me. What have you been hiding from me all this time? Why didn’t I know about this?’
Still he remained mute.
‘Did anyone know about this at all?’
His silence, finally, infuriated me.
‘If you don’t tell me . . . I will leave this house today.’
They gasped. I would do nothing of the sort, of course, but that sort of anger is not easily overcome; it takes over your decisions. I sucked in a deep breath and felt my voice grow louder.
‘I will call the realtor. I will allow Ma to sign the papers. We’ll leave here right now.’
‘Calm down,’ came the voice of the armchair. At this moment, his steady, fatherly voice was fuel to the destructive flames of my fury. How dare he patronize me, sitting there and speaking to me as though I was in the wrong, as though my outburst was nothing but a tantrum? He had known this, he had known what it meant, and he hadn’t bothered to tell me for fifteen years. I nearly shouted at him. But then again, I needed him to speak. So I held myself back as much as I could bear.
‘Fine,’ I spat out, forcing my tongue to move. ‘Tell me. Now.’
The armchair sighed then, all of him inflating and deflating as he did. A voice echoed from the living room, so firm and bold that at first I did not recognize it as the fireplace’s.
‘Just tell her. We couldn’t have kept it from her forever. We were stupid to try. She’s old enough now; she’s almost fifteen. We can’t put this off any longer, armchair,’ he said, bellowing through the wood as I’d never known him to.
‘Is he crazy?’ I hissed, and found myself whispering. ‘This is your method of communication? Ma will be up here any minute! Why is he being so lou . . .’ My voice grew weaker, sapped by entirely unwelcome revelations. ‘She can’t hear any of you, can she? Not even when you’re screaming? Not even when you move? I’m the only one who even knows there’s something different about this house, aren’t I?’
The armchair seemed to hesitate, weighing his response against absolute truth. When he spoke, he spoke so deliberately that he sent my mind into overdrive; I was trying desperately to find meaning in each word he uttered.
‘Yes—you are . . . as far as we know.’
‘What? Why didn’t you just tell me?’
‘You discovering and questioning this crucial oddity could have been your key to uncovering a terribly twisted past—one we never wanted to reveal to you! But I’m telling you now.’
I nodded slowly.
‘Zoon, she cannot hear us because she is not from your bloodline.’
‘She’s my mother!’
‘True. But she is not a descendant of the Kashmiri Pandit who first created this house, so long ago, in the hidden valley of Kashmir. He was the one who gave us our magic. He was the one who first realized what was causing misery in Kashmir, and how to stop it.’
‘And what was it?’
I was not, for once, entirely sure I wanted to hear the answer.
‘Kruhen Chay. The darkness.’
I shivered. The room seemed to grow colder and smaller as the armchair spoke.
‘He is the cause of desolation in every country, in every human. And he had rooted in the once happy land of Kashmir. He is made up of our grief, of our suffering. It defines him. And he can kill viciously. He need simply engulf any human, consuming them, and it saps the magic and life right out of their blood, making him more powerful.’
He paused but then, as though already knowing this could in no way lessen the horror, went on.
‘We cannot see him without a fire.’
‘Does he fear it?’
‘No. Not the flames themselves, not any more. But in his greatest form, he becomes visible in the smoke. And, more importantly, he is trapped by steam.’
‘How?’ I croaked hoarsely.
‘It is water, Zoon,’ the armchair replied gently. ‘Being the diabolical, manipulative creature he is, he cannot come in contact with so pure a substance without it causing him harm. Have you never wondered why water is the most prominent element of any ritual in worship? Water dissolves shadow; water combats his parching, torrid form. And when water becomes steam, it has the power to engulf him, capture him and weaken him as nothing
else can.’
He took a deep breath before continuing.
‘The learned Pandit, your ancestor, was the first to realize this. He battled the darkness for years, seeking him out where he was strongest, forcing him back with water and flame, using ancient magic to diminish his pulverizing strength. The Pandit mapped out his weaknesses—steam, scriptures, confined spaces that restrained his slippery movement—and used the teachings passed down seasons of sun and rivers and wind to unearth chinks in his dark armour. He finally succeeded in trapping him in a cave, deep within the recesses of the earth. He created a room above that cave, a room that was filled with, and would, he hoped, always produce steam.’
‘So . . . he’s gone? He’s not near here any more?’
‘Zoon, listen. Panditji trapped him within that hollow and surrounded it with steam, but he knew that wasn’t enough. So he built a house on top of it, and he poured all his magic into the house, and there he kept the darkness for hundreds of years.’
‘And that house . . .’
He did not reply.
I was shaken. So Kruhen Chay was beneath us as we spoke.
‘However,’ he continued, ‘the owners of the house were not careful enough.’
My heart skipped a beat, barely managed to catch the second, and thumped too loudly on the third.
‘He escaped?’ I whispered, in such hushed tones that I doubted the armchair had heard me. But he had.
He nodded gravely. ‘The darkness was let out from the hammam. And in 1752, the Afghans began the rule of tyranny and oppression against the Pandits. They were taunted, abused, beaten, drowned . . . the seeds of misery began to swell within Kashmiri soil. The darkness regained his shape, and some sort of sustainable lifeline. Muslims weren’t safe either . . . those that stood by the Hindus were deemed equally guilty. Families were torn apart. Religion became law. And their children, once pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, were dragged into a whirlpool of bitterness and blanketing rage, fuelled by humiliation and death. By around 1857, he was as powerful as he had been before he was imprisoned. And in 1931, he had enough control over Kashmir to inflict pain more acutely and fiercely. His hold on the people was almost unbreakable. A mob of Muslims . . . well, let me just say that it’s astonishing what he can do to people when he’s aided by helplessness and hunger.’