The End of Innocence

by Moni Mohsin

  ‘No, I don’t,’ shouted Fareeda. ‘How did she end up in the canal? How long had she been dead when they found her? How did she die? I know nothing.’

  ‘Keep your voice down. The colonel thinks she was murdered.’

  ‘Murdered?’ Her face paled. ‘What do you mean, murdered?’

  ‘She had been beaten savagely. The military doctor had done a brief inspection, but he thinks she didn’t die of drowning. There was no water in her lungs.’

  ‘Who could have killed her? And why? For God’s sake, why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is that all you can say? That you don’t know?’ she hissed.

  ‘Yes, that’s all I can say.’ Turning to face her, Tariq said carefully, ‘For the last two hours, I’ve been looking at the broken, abused body of a girl scarcely older than my own daughter. The whole time I was there, I was thinking of what to tell her mother and her grandmother. I’ve been thinking of what I could have done to prevent her death. So excuse me if I can’t supply the name of her murderer or his motive at your command.’ Picking up his shoes, he marched into the dressing room.

  When he emerged a few minutes later in his pyjamas, Fareeda was still sitting up in bed. Tariq walked over to his side of the bed, got under the covers and turned his back on Fareeda. Fareeda switched off the lamp and lay back on the pillows, staring up at the ceiling. After a few moments, she spoke out.

  ‘I’m sorry. It must have been harrowing for you to see her like that.’ Her voice was husky. ‘I don’t understand what’s going on. When the colonel called, I couldn’t believe it was Rani. When you confirmed it, I thought she must have committed suicide. And then you told me she was murdered. I … I don’t understand. I could have saved her,’ she continued, her voice breaking. ‘More than you, I am to blame. Had I listened, Rani would have been alive today. It’s my fault that she’s dead.’

  Tariq was silent for a long while, but when at last he spoke, his voice was flat. ‘It’s not your fault. You didn’t even know she was pregnant. Had she wanted you to know, she would have come to you herself. No one knows what actually happened. Until we find out, it’s pointless to speculate. Try and get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.’

  Fareeda asked, ‘Where is Rani spending the night?’

  ‘At the cantonment. Luckily it’s the winter, but still they can’t keep her for long. We’ll have to get her body over here tomorrow.’

  Before the girls awoke the next morning, Tariq and Fareeda drove over to Kalanpur to tell Kaneez and Sardar Begum. They decided to tell them the truth, because Kaneez would probably want to bathe the body herself. And if she enlisted the services of the woman who normally performed the ritual funeral bath in the village, rumours were bound to seep out like blood from a wound.

  The two old ladies were in the haveli courtyard when Tariq and Fareeda arrived at Kalanpur. Sardar Begum took one look at her son’s grim face and, grasping her maid by the arm, drew her down gently on the divan beside her. In halting, disjointed phrases, Tariq told them what had happened. Kaneez appeared not to have understood. She looked in confusion from husband to wife. Unable to meet her eyes, Fareeda looked away.

  ‘Quick, someone get some water,’ Tariq was shouting over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. He was down on his knees, beside the daybed on which Kaneez had crumpled. She looked lifeless, her face the colour of chalky dust. Sardar Begum had her head in her lap, and stroked her grooved brow.

  ‘Kaneez,’ she called softly. ‘Kaneez, my dear, open your eyes.’

  Even through the mist of tears and the red haze of pain that seemed to tinge the world, Fareeda was struck by the gentleness of Sardar Begum’s manner. This was a side to her that Fareeda had never seen before. She watched her martinet of a mother-in-law comfort Kaneez while choking back her own tears.

  ‘Shall I call a doctor?’ Tariq asked his mother.

  ‘No doctor, shoctor,’ muttered Sardar Begum, dashing off her own tears. ‘Let her at least grieve in private.’

  Fareeda fetched a glass of water. Sardar Begum wet her fingers and dabbed them over Kaneez’s temples and lips.

  ‘Can you hear me, Kaneez?’ The maid’s eyelids flickered. She rubbed her tongue over her cracked lips and her eyes opened. For an interminable moment, she stared unseeingly at Sardar Begum’s face bent over hers. And then a tidal wave of pain seemed to wash over her face. A scream rose from the pit of her stomach and echoed round and round the courtyard. Arms flailing, Kaneez tried to rise from the bed, but Sardar Begum held her down.

  ‘Forbearance, fortitude,’ she murmured over and over to the maid. ‘It is Allah’s will.’

  Kaneez was beside herself. She tried to fight off Sardar Begum, but her mistress’s grip was too strong. She had Kaneez’s arms pinned to her sides. Arching her body, Kaneez threw back her head and howled, but still Sardar Begum held on. Finally, the maid’s head slumped against Sardar Begum’s shoulder and deep, quaking sobs wrenched her frame. Sardar Begum stroked her head and rocked her in her arms like a baby. Looking at Fareeda and Tariq over Kaneez’s shoulder, she mouthed at them to fetch Fatima.

  The road to Dera was a pot-holed, bumpy track bordered on either side by a thick growth of thorny bushes. The village was a cluster of mud huts around a stagnant pool. Fatima’s hut was much like the rest, except for the mulberry tree in its front yard. She was draping the washing on some bushes outside her house when the Azeems drove up. Fatima had been beautiful once, with large lustrous eyes and finely etched features, but years of hardship had extinguished her beauty. Now, her cheekbones elbowed out of a gaunt, weary face. Her welcoming smile faltered when she saw their faces.

  ‘What has happened? Is my mother all right?’ she asked, wiping her damp hands on her shawl.

  ‘Yes, she’s fine, but can you come with us for a little while to Kalanpur?’ asked Tariq.

  A crowd of curious onlookers, consisting mainly of Fatima’s neighbours and their many children, had gathered around them. A small boy of no more than five years detached himself from the crowd and came to stand close to Fatima, slinging an arm around her leg.

  ‘Yes, but can I bring this little one with me?’ she gestured to the child half hidden behind her. ‘The older ones will be all right till I come back. I won’t have to stay long, will I?’ She looked nervously at Tariq.

  ‘Of course you can bring him,’ said Tariq. ‘You can take along the older ones too if you want. There’s plenty of room in the car.’

  ‘No, they’ll be fine here. Sakeena here will keep an eye on them till I come back. Won’t you?’ Sakeena, who had a baby balanced on one hip, nodded.

  ‘What about Mashooq? Where is he?’ asked Fareeda, looking around.

  ‘He’s not here,’ replied Fatima quietly.

  ‘Shall we go?’ asked Tariq.

  They spoke little on the way to Kalanpur. From his perch on his mother’s lap, Fatima’s child gazed solemnly at Fareeda. His elongated amber eyes reminded her of Rani.

  Staring fixedly out of the window, Tariq seemed to be unwilling or unable to talk. Fatima tried to speak a couple of times but checked herself. Fareeda was thankful for that. She reached across the seat and grasped Fatima’s thin, brittle hand, holding it tight till they reached Kalanpur. They escorted the mother and child into the haveli.

  Tariq and Fareeda emerged ten minutes later, dismissed by Sardar Begum.

  ‘You go home to your children,’ she ordered. ‘I will look after these two.’ She flicked her chin at the mother and daughter, howling in each other’s arms. ‘You’ve done your bit. Now they are my responsibility.’

  As soon as they reached home, Fareeda and Tariq called the girls and Bua to the sitting room and broke the news to them. They told them only that Rani’s body had been found the day before in the canal. She seemed to have drowned. Even as Tariq spoke, Fareeda knew that Bua and the entire village would learn the whole story soon enough. Fareeda thought she might tell the ayah herself, but not just yet. Sh
e was too exhausted. Bua wept into her shawl, but the girls took the news in stunned silence. Laila’s mouth trembled, and Sara stared down at her shoes, fiercely blinking back her tears. Fareeda tried to gather them to her, but while Sara stiffened, Laila broke away and ran out of the room. Bua made to follow her, but Fareeda called her back.

  ‘Leave her be, Bua. She probably wants to be alone for a bit. I will go to her in a little while.’

  Laila ran into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her. Dragging a stool to the door, she reached for the bolt and shot it home. She did not want anyone to find her, to comfort her with lies about how everything would be all right. She knew that nothing would be right any more. She slumped down on the bed. Her eye fell on the carom board propped up against the wall. Something was missing. The poplar switch that Rani had made for her and which usually stood by the board was gone. Suddenly it became imperative to find it.

  She leapt to her feet and, throwing open her toy chest, began to toss out teddy bears, a skipping rope, dolls, a globe, a tattered kite, plastic dolls’ crockery. She got to the bottom and still didn’t find the switch. She flung open her wardrobe and pulled out all the clothes. It wasn’t there either. She looked under the bed and behind the curtains. She swept all her precious Enid Blytons off the shelves, but still no switch. Furious, she lifted the carom board above her head and hurled it to the floor with a deafening crash. But there was no slender little poplar switch behind it either. She had lost it. She had lost that beautiful switch that Rani had made for her that day at the picnic.

  Walking slowly, Rani had followed her back from the stream. Laila had been sitting on the car bonnet, lifted up there by Barkat. On seeing Rani approach, Laila had turned her face away in a deliberate snub. From the corner of her eyes, she had seen Rani’s tremulous smile flicker and die on her face. Bua and the two chauffeurs had looked reproachfully at Laila, but she had told herself that she didn’t care. They didn’t know how horrid Rani had been to her. Wordlessly, Rani had held out the switch to Laila. But Laila had sat on her hands and tossed her head. Rani had handed the stick to Bua.

  ‘I made it for Laila,’ she’d said in a husky voice. ‘But I don’t think she likes it.’

  ‘Of course she likes it,’ Bua had assured Rani. ‘She likes anything you make for her. And this is such a pretty stick. So nice and smooth and light.’ Noticing the elder girl’s quivering chin, Bua had told Laila off.

  ‘When someone gives you a gift, you take it nicely. You don’t turn up your nose like a memsahib.’

  Though Laila knew she was in the wrong, she had been too proud to apologize. Later, at home, Bua had stood the switch by the carom board. Turning her back on Bua, Laila had pretended indifference. The minute Bua had left the room, however, Laila had leapt out of bed and picked up the switch. Bua was right. Like all the things Rani made, it was beautiful, light and silky to the touch. When Laila had gone to bed that night, the switch had been clutched in her hand.

  Now, surveying the devastation in her room – mounds of toys, clothes strewn all over the floor, scattered books, the gaping doors of her empty wardrobe – Laila sank to her knees. Pressing her face into the side of her bed, she wept for her lost friend.

  Rani was gone. Never again would Laila hear her throaty chuckle or see those arrow-straight brows shoot across her forehead. Laila would not wear bracelets fashioned from jasmine or splash her bare feet in a cold stream. No one would tell her stories of warrior princesses or mend the broken wings of fallen birds. The lame chick would die under its upturned crate, and the single surviving bed sheet would moulder in its tin trunk, unseen, unused. Rani would never visit Lahore, never taste a tutti-frutti or see the royal mosque with the golden domes. She would not go anywhere or see anything again. Her curiosity had been extinguished, her laughter silenced. Rani was gone.

  Laila’s tears were salty, splashing down her face and on to her lips. Her chest ached and her eyes burned. She felt hot and hateful. Rubbing her arm across her nose, she reached into her pocket for a hanky. She found the wishing horse instead. Sara was right. The horse was just a toy after all. It was as powerless, as ignorant, as she was. It had let her down. As had her parents. They hadn’t found Rani. She felt the tears rise again, like bile, in her throat. The amber horse slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor.

  She had failed Rani. She had not been a good partner. Partners looked out for each other. They never let the other get lost. Or die. She had betrayed Rani. Broken her promise. Told her secrets to Fareeda. And instead of herself dying, as she had hoped – cross my heart and hope to die, she’d said – Rani had died. Rani had paid the price for Laila’s perfidy. She wished her mother hadn’t forced those confessions out of her at the convent. She wished Bua hadn’t lied to her. She wished Fareeda would tell her why Rani had been so upset, why she had died. She hated her parents, she hated Bua. She wished someone would explain.

  But Laila knew she would get no explanations in her home that day. They were all too fraught, too raw, to offer consolation, let alone clarification. And then she remembered. There was one person who was outside her home, who knew what had ailed Rani. She would go to her. She would demand an explanation from Sister Clementine.

  Laila climbed up on to the stool once more and undid the bolt. She tiptoed along the corridor. She heard Fareeda’s soft murmuring voice and Sara’s sobs from behind the closed door of the drawing room. Hurrying through the dining room, she let herself into the pantry. She encountered no one. Opening the pantry door that led into the yard, Laila stepped out into the afternoon. Her heart thumping and eyes cast down, she crossed the empty yard. She walked unobserved past the vacant bench where Mashooq had lounged, past the open garage where the now dusty car was parked, past the clothes line, heavy with washing, past the vegetable patch, with its rows of lettuces, carrots and cauliflower.

  Once she got to the bend in the drive, she broke into a run. She raced by the hedge where she had encountered Mashooq, past the guava orchard and up the steep incline on to the canal road. She didn’t spare a look at the canal, didn’t stop to toss a stone into its murky depth, or marvel at the swirls and eddies near the banks. She sped down the road, the thud of her feet and the rasp of her ragged breath loud in her ears. She encountered just a single goatherd along the way, chewing on a long stick of sugar cane. He took one look at her and hurriedly shooed his alarmed goats out of her way. She ran past him without a backward glance.

  By the time Laila got to the church, her temples were pounding. At the church gate, she stopped. Doubling over, she clutched her aching sides and took huge gulps of air. She unbuttoned her damp cardigan and looked down at her socks wrinkling around her ankles. She heard Bua’s voice echo in her head, ‘What will the sisters think, eh, Lailu?’ Defiantly, she ignored the voice and, pushing open the gate, went through. The church door was ajar, and she could hear the murmur of voices within. She wondered if it was prayer time.

  Now that she was here, she had no idea how to find Sister Clementine. Nor did she know how to approach her. Could she ask directly like Fareeda had, or must she sidle up to the question, like Bua usually did? Would she have to wait till they were alone, or could she ask in front of anyone who might be there? How would Sister Clementine take it? Now at the door, she was tempted to turn back, but then she thought of the Terrific Two and stepped in.

  It was dim within. She could see a couple standing at the far end by the altar – a nun and a man. The man was speaking in a low voice. The nun was silent but, every now and then, she would toss her head and snort. Just as Laila was screwing up the courage to call out, the nun turned and saw her. It was Sister Clementine. She had a pile of books in her arms.

  ‘Ah, Laila, come in, come in. Has your mummy sent you with news for me?’ She placed the books on a table and beckoned her over.

  Laila walked up the aisle. The man, she saw now, was Mr Jacob.

  ‘Hello, Miss Laila.’ He was snug in a woollen scarf and checked jacket, which Laila recognize
d as once having belonged to Tariq. ‘What brings you here today? And no Bua?’ He looked over her shoulder. ‘Is she following?’

  ‘Er, y-yes,’ stammered Laila. ‘I raced her and got here first.’ Uncomfortable with the lie, Laila looked away. Without the congregation, the church was just a big empty room. She was standing by the blue-painted niche that housed Mary’s statue. Up close, Mary had blank, shallow eyes and thin, blood-red lips.

  ‘Babu Jacob found me here, sorting out the hymnbooks.’ Sister Clementine put an arm around Laila’s shoulder and drew her into her side. Laila got a whiff of stale sweat smothered under talcum powder. Sister Clementine was addressing Laila, but she was actually watching Mr Jacob, who stood in front of her with his hands folded and eyes cast down.

  ‘Babu has come to me with a special request today. And you know what that is?’ She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘He wants me to ask Sister Clara to teach his daughters to play the piano, so they can be proper English memsahibs. Isn’t that right, Babu?’

  Mr Jacob cleared his throat. ‘Not memsahibs, Sister,’ he mumbled.

  Sister Clementine ignored him.

  ‘First, I was thinking I’d say no because Babu wasn’t very nice to Sister Clementine the last time we met. Now were you, Babu? Ignoring Sister and taking side of others. Sitting comfortably when Sister was made to stand. Hmm?’ Babu Jacob shuffled his size eleven feet. ‘But how can I refuse anyone anything these days, with me being so happy about going home and all? So I thought, even if others are unkind,’ she jerked Laila’s shoulder, ‘and disloyal,’ another tug, ‘I would forgive and forget, like a good Christian. No, Lailu?’ Now she looked at Laila and laughed. ‘So I’m saying yes.’

  Mr Jacob thanked the nun. Reaching behind him, he produced a box of sweets. It was wrapped in 7-Up-green crepe paper and tied with a tinsel bow. He hurriedly removed the wrapping, flipped it open and offered it to Sister Clementine.