O my darling child let me wrap you up warm
your little nose, your flowerbud mouth, I’ll hide from harm
and though my heart’s breaking I must lay you down
and never shall we meet again till this world’s overthrown
After a while the night is filled with silence and no more stars fall.
Out of the darkness comes a screaming that makes my hair stand on end. Instantly I’m awake. Not yet dawn. Another howl, it’s the call of a train coming through from Delhi. In the gloom I hear Ma Franci whimpering. For Ma the hooting is not the 2616 GT Express rumbling through the Nutcracker, it’s an angel in a sooty robe blowing the last trump. Ma’s eyes are open, but she’s fully asleep, how often have I heard her shriek in her bed, it’s of that night she dreams, lying on her mat, so many years has she lain there the soft earth is moulded to her shape, the bumps and hollows near the hearth, they’re made by a bony old bint who sees in dreams the moon turning to blood, the world curling up like a leaf in the palm of her hand.
TAPE SIX
Elli appeared the way a spider does, from nowhere. Catch a movement in the corner of your eye, it’s there. We were all in Nisha’s house, which is her dad Somraj’s house in the Chicken Claw. Who’s we? Nisha of course, Zafar, he virtually lived there. Farouq I’ve mentioned, he was Zafar’s right hand man. As well as these there were some other cronies, plus me and Jara. We’re on the verandah, talking about the thing that had happened in Amrika, and Farouq’s chafing me because I’d thought it was a movie.
“It was you who talked of movies. Just love making me look stupid, I hate you second-most in the world.” I could not say who I detested the most.
“Animal, take your head out your arse, I mentioned movies because movies show how they live over there.”
All’s set for one of our rows, but Zafar intervenes, “We know zilch about their lives, they know nothing of ours, that’s the problem.” How does a person become so fucking wise I don’t know. I’m trying to think of some ploy that will make me look good in front of Nisha simultaneously making Farouq look bad in front of Zafar when suddenly this racket kicks up in the street, kids are shouting “Aiwa! Aiwa!” Stopped outside in the slush of the Claw is a car, not an auto or even a taxi mark you, a full four-wheel car it’s, driver in uniform, everything. This foreign woman has climbed out, she’s stood with tilted hip, looking at the building opposite. Some man’s with her, he’s pointing at the building and talking, she’s listening and nodding. Hardly have they arrived, but already she’s gathered a small crowd. In addition to “Aiwa, Aiwa!” the kids are calling out the other things they shout whenever they see a foreigner.
“Hello!” “What’s your name?” “Baksheesh,” etc.
This foreigner is tall, taller than Nisha, plus to my mind très baisable, wah, what a sexy. Midriff’s bare, she carries herself like someone who knows what she’s about. Like in the song, zulfein hain jaise kandhon pe baadal jhuke hue, dark hair rests like a cloud on her shoulder, in the sun it’s giving off bright flashes, like gold. The main thing I notice about her is that her blue jeans are so tight you can see everything. I half close my eyes and it’s as if she has naked blue legs. She sees me watching her with my eyes screwed up and gives me a smile. I’m just about to wink back when Farouq nudges me with his foot and says, “Look who’s got his hopes up.”
“Just his hopes?” asks some other wag.
So then they’re all laughing at me and Farouq says in a loud voice, “Oy baba, must hurt going up the crack like that.”
Zafar was livid. “Shut your filth!” None of them can stand up to Zafar, they hold him in some kind of awe because of how he’s given up everything in his life for us Khaufpuris. Farouq starts mumbling that the woman won’t understand, being a firangi, Zafar says, “I was thinking of Nisha.”
The woman begins gupping with the kids, the moment she opens her mouth it’s obvious she can speak Hindi. Farouq starts blushing but if she’s heard what he said she’s giving no sign. As soon as she and the man go into that building we’re all over to the driver, it’s who is she, what’s going on, but he doesn’t know fuck all except she is Amrikan. When she comes out we’re still roaming around in the street. She stares a long time at me, I am hoping she doesn’t think it was me that said that thing about her crack, although I can’t deny I was thinking along the same lines.
Later Nisha’s dad comes home from one of his meetings and tells us that she’s bought the place.
All our lives we’d known the building across the road. It was dirty, in need of attention, none of us could think why an Amrikan woman would want it. It had once been a bicycle-repair shop, kept by a surly fucker called Ganesh. After that it became a sweet shop, rasgullas and gulab jamuns were fried there in big pans and we kids hung around hoping for treats. Next it was a carpenter’s, turning out chairs and items like massage rollers. Then it was a tailor’s place, where women from the bastis ruined their eyes doing gold and silver zari embroidery. I think one reel of gold thread was worth more than those women earned in a month. The tailors moved to a better part of town, a smart arcade where their saris could hang outside filling with wind like coloured sails and the arses waddling past took twice as much cloth to cover. After that the place stayed empty, until the blue-legged Amrikan.
What would bring an Amrikan woman to Khaufpur of all places? None of Zafar’s contacts could tell us a thing about her. Labourers came, gutted the building, threw out its rotting wooden frames, burned them right there in the street. Next, carpenters arrived and Somraj came out of his house to listen to the music of their saws and drills, the drumming of their hammers. They were bossed by an old bugger in a lungi who chain-smoked two bundles of beedis a day.
“Health laboratory,” he told us, in a croaking voice.
Right off Zafar’s suspicious. “Why does an Amrikan come to do medical experiments in this town?”
“Son, why jump to conclusions?” says Somraj. How I hate to hear Nisha’s dad calling Zafar son. “What better place for a health laboratory than a town full of sickness?”
Zafar shakes his head. “It’s the timing that’s strange.”
His frown deepens when a few days later a van arrives bringing mashins various and plural, such as are found in hospitals. “I can just smell the Kampani,” says Zafar.
“Some keen nostrils you’ve,” says I because he irritates me.
“Okay so figure it yourself. Since Bhoora’s chicken day barely six weeks have passed, we’re awaiting the judge’s decision. Let’s say he finds in our favour. Then if the Kampani bosses still won’t come to court, their other businesses could be seized. That they can’t risk, so right now they are planning how they’ll fight if they are forced to come to the court.”
“Sorry boss, still don’t get it.”
“Think like the Kampani. Thousands of people say that for twenty years their health’s been ruined by your poisons. How do you refute this? We say that the situation is not as bad as alleged, that not so many people are ill, that those who are ill are not so seriously ill, plus of whatever illnesses there are, most are caused by hunger and lack of hygiene, none can be traced back to that night or to your factory.”