“But it’s not mango season,” says Nisha. She turns to Zafar, who’s looking harassed. “What happened to Animal?”
A frown appears on that high forehead of Zafar’s. He pushes back his specs like when he’s about to make a speech, but before he can say anything, Farouq chips in and says, “Oh he just slipped.”
“Slipped?” She’s looking at me with concern, I swear. That girl is sweeter on me than she realises. It comes out in moments like this, you can’t hide it, if you really care for someone.
“How did he slip?”
“Tripped,” says Farouq.
“How could you trip?” she asks me. “You’re four-footed.”
Then she’s staring at my shorts. I nearly die. Let that damn thing not be showing. “You need proper clothes. You’re always wearing those filthy old things. I’ll buy you some new ones.”
“Don’t want new ones,” I mumble. “These are my kakadu shorts came from the jarnalis, name’s Phuoc, from a crocodile place. Special hero shorts, two side pockets, two gusset back pockets, two front patch pockets, useful for stashing stuff like my Zippo,” this kind of thing I’m babbling.
Zafar says, “Leave him, we have things to do.”
But Nisha takes me aside and brings some neem ointment, yellow it’s plus smells bitter, to put on my scratches.
“I can’t reach under there,” she says, meaning my belly, because I’m still on all fours. “You’ll have to sit. Or go on your side.”
I roll over like a big dog, like Jara does to have her belly tickled, Nisha starts rubbing the ointment on my stomach. Her fingers touching me, I’m afraid my thing is going to come to life again, maybe she’s sensed, because she traces the scratches down to the belly button then gives me the tin and tells me to do the rest, plus to hurry up because they’re waiting for us inside. They are about to have another of their endless meetings. Then she says she’ll hang around to make sure I do it properly.
“You go. It’s you they’re waiting for.”
“Not just me,” says Nisha, watching me apply the stuff. Plain she might be but’s looking good. Once you’ve seen it in someone’s face it’s always there, I won’t say beauty, but whatever you might call the thing you love. It’s the way the hair hangs across her face. She was chewing her lip, which she does when she’s thinking and which is that thing of hers that gets me.
“So sweet, you’re,” I say, before I can stop myself.
“Silly Animal,” says Nisha, now smiling, “your hair’s all jungli, it’s matted up full of dust, there are twigs in it. Come, I’ll brush it.”
So I am sitting there while she runs her fingers through, teasing out the tangles, then she starts to brush it, aaa aa aiiiee, catches here, aiiieeaaaa, tugs there. Zafar comes out to look for us, I’m looking at him, I’m smiling.
“Ça va, Animal?” he asks, who has learned it off me.
“Si heureux je vais mourir.” But this he didn’t follow.
Dying of happiness, was I? Not for much longer, for after the meeting they went to her room, leaving me grinding my teeth below. I was obsessed with what they were doing together. Imagining you-know-what led to my voices having a great argument. One said it had foreseen that things would come to this. Another held that Zafar would be mad to do ghuss-pussy stuff in the same house as Pandit Somraj, who has the hearing of a bat, can strain his ear to hear an ant fart. Bollocks, said a third, a man’s a man, with a thing between his legs and a man’s deep urge to plant it in something moist and willing.
Of course this was no excuse for poisoning him.
TAPE SEVEN
Last night I dreamed of Zafar. He was heading up Paradise Alley into the heart of the Nutcracker. Nearly double he was bent, his long nose pointing sorrowfully at the ground. On his head was his favourite red turban, his beard was untrimmed, on his back he carried a shining world, blue as a flycatcher’s wing, criss-crossed by tiny lines. The sun’s heat was falling down on him. Heavy must the world have been, Zafar was staggering, his arms reaching up behind his back could hardly hold it, but he was taking one step at a time, like he did everything with careful patience. A small child walked ahead of him, going to school I suppose, he had a slate on which some abc and 123 were written. Nisha was in the dream too, tagging along behind Zafar, begging him to let her share his heavy burden of the world’s pain, but I don’t think he could hear.
My battle with Zafar was hotting up. Grim animal living without hope, that’s how I saw myself. I asked nothing, expected less and was filled with anger at the world. Zafar was always giving me chances to prove what a good-hearted trustworthy guy I was. It had turned into a kind of contest. He deliberately placed more and more trust in me, I did the tasks he gave me with greater and greater contempt. Often I’d take on big tasks for which I was unsuited. One of these days, I thought, preferably when your life depends on it, I am going to let you down.
One day Nisha brought to one of our meetings a woman called Pyaré Bai. Pyaré sat on the floor with her sari draped so it was covering her face, in a sad voice she told us her story. Eyes you should hear it, because the story of this one woman contains the tale of thousands.
Pyaré Bai was married to Aftaab, he worked in the Kampani’s factory, and he told her how dangerous were the chemicals in there. If by chance you got any on your hand, Aftaab said, the skin would blister. On that night he was at home off duty, when the stinging in the eyes began, the burning chillies, unlike most people he knew what to do. He covered the faces of Pyaré and their two young daughters with wet cloths then led them, walking not running, out of the wind. In this way they escaped where most of their neighbours perished. All were nevertheless damaged by the poisons, Aftaab the worst, because he’d taken less care over himself, he was coughing foam tinged with blood, his eyes were nearly shut. When they returned home all objects of metal, like cooking pots, had a green crust. Aftaab would not allow Pyaré and the children into the house. He cleaned everything, washed every corner before he let them in.
At first Aftaab seemed to recover, but his old job was gone, he was too breathless to be able to do physical work. His condition grew worse. His eyes suffered, he got rashes all over, plus fevers and pains in his joints. Pyaré bought medicines. Aftaab told her not to waste money on him, for he would die. She said, “How can I not?” “Think of yourself and the children,” he said. “When I am gone, what will you live on?” She replied, “Har ek warak mein tum hi tum ho jaan-e-mehboobi, hum apné dil mein kuch aaisi kitaab rakhté hain.”
“Wah wah,” says Zafar. He’s taken off his glasses and is wiping them. Blinking, he’s. What does he think, this is some fucking poetry recital? Eyes, what she said means this, “On every page there’s you and only you, oh love of my life, it’s this book I keep in my heart.”
When her husband got really ill and could no longer work, they ran out of money and had to sell their small house. They moved to a rented place with half a roof. It was the only place Pyaré could find, right by the stinking naala, in the monsoon the rain came right in. The small girls were always hungry. At night they cried. She would bind cloths round their waists and give them water to fill their empty bellies. She found a job carrying cement on a building site.
“When I started work,” said Pyaré Bai, “my husband apologised to me for putting me through all this. How often did he tell me not to spend money on him and his illness? Don’t waste your money, he said, I’m going to die anyway. And he did…he left me alone.”
She began to cry, Nisha sat next to her and hugged her. After this Pyaré Bai showed us pictures of her daughters. The younger one was beautiful and wild, looked much like her ma. She passed round a picture taken when she was a new bride, it showed a young smiling Aftaab miyañ, next to him was a girl dressed in short kurta with two plaits and curls plastered round her cheeks. Nisha said, “I saw this at your house. One of your girls said, ‘Ammi looks like Mala Sinha.’ ‘No,’ said the other one, ‘like Sadhna.’”