She will change your life! comes that echo from before.
“How’ve you been anyway?” Elli calls down.
“Thank you very much, I am feeling fine. I don’t have any pain.”
“Are you in pain often?” she asks, holding open a door.
“Not at all, but many people are.”
“So why did you say you don’t have pain?”
“Because I’m one of those who doesn’t have it. Madam.”
“Should I be confused? And don’t call me madam, call me Elli.”
Good she doesn’t know what I am actually thinking, which is hoo boy I’ve seen you naked. Dirty little thrill is this, like I’ve some sort of power over her, comes joined to shame, I’ve not told anyone what I saw from the tree, hardly was it my fault, how could I know she was taking a bath?
The piano is in a room which I was supposing would look like Somraj’s music room, but fully different it’s. First off there are books everywhere, on shelves, on tables, in piles on the floor. There are fat chairs covered in cloth, plus one such-a-wide one it could seat four to five Khaufpuri backsides. She sees me looking at it. “Stretch out on the sofa if you want, get comfortable.”
The piano I expected to be a flat instrument when it came out of that box, maybe like a santoor, but I see now that the piano is the box itself, which has been raised off the floor and is standing on three legs of polished wood. She lifts a curved flap and there are the keys. I’ve to stand up on the sofa chair to see them, a long row of black and white, far longer than Pandit-ji’s harmonium.
“What would you like me to play?”
Well, I don’t know much proper music, fillum tunes are more my choice, but I don’t want to look ignorant, plus so many times I’ve listened to Somraj talk and teach. “I am quite fond of raga Bhimpalashri.”
She bursts out laughing, “I didn’t know you could play ragas on the piano.”
“Do you know Tum Se Achchha Kaun Hai?” It’s one of my party pieces, from the film Jaanvar, not the Jaanvar movies of 1982 or 1999, but the original old one from 1965 with Shammi Kapoor plus Rajshree, the best Jaanvar. The name means Animal, so it’s my movie, the song name means “Oh, Who Is Better Than You?” but when I sing it I change it to Mujh Se Achchha Kaun Hai? which means, “Oh, Who Is Better Than Me?”
Elli says, “I’ll play something I know.” She’s started tapping the keys and this rumbling music comes up out of the piano box. Deep it’s, like a grumble of thunder, deeper than any instrument I’ve heard except maybe a drum, then she makes her hands skip to the other end, the music becomes high and sweet like bells.
“How did you learn to play so nicely?”
“Well,” she says, her fingers busy on the keys, “we always had a piano in our house. My mother played. She was good. When I was about twelve she became ill, her hands would shake so much she could no longer play. That’s when I took it up.”
“You learned so you could play for her?”
Elli drops her hands into her lap. “It’s cruel to lose a gift like that.” She looks over at me, but I am thinking of Somraj. “Your neighbour across the way, he used to be a singer. Now he’s a music teacher.”
“Tall man, always dresses in white? Has a daughter? We’ve hardly said hello.”
At the mention of Nisha I feel like a traitor because I can’t stop having bad thoughts about Elli Barber. About Somraj I don’t know what to say, the tone in Elli’s voice suggests she thinks he’s not very friendly, and of course I can’t say why. Thinking of them across the road reminds me of what we need to find out.
“Dayanand, your manager, he says you used to work in a big hospital in Amrika.”
“That’s right, I did.”
“Were there many sick in your city?”
“Sure, but not like here.”
“What is the name of your city? I have heard of New York.”
“Not New York,” says Elli Barber. “Nor anywhere so interesting as this. This place is so fascinating. I should write to my piano teacher. Miss Girton her name was, a real old Maine crawfish, she’d be amazed if she could see me in Khaufpur.”
“We are all amazed, and I do not know what is a crawfish.” As she does not reply to this I ask again, “So which city are you from?”
“Nowhere you’ve ever heard of, I grew up in Coatesville, Pennsylvania.” She says this like her mind’s elsewhere.
“That’s an odd sort of name.”
“What’s odd about it?”
“Just sounds odd. How do you spell it?” In this way, Eyes, I’ve tried to make sure of the name of her city.
She’s sitting at her piano looking at me. “Animal, listen to me. The clinic will open soon. Soon’s we’re up and running I’d very much like to examine you.”
“Ghostville? Ghostville Pencilmania?”
“Coatesville,” she says, laughing. “C-O-A-T-E-S…”
Feet first then hands, I’m down the stairs, out of that place.
Farouq says that hiring an internest booth is cheaper than a hotel room so often couples go there to have sex. No doubt this is why people stare when Nisha and I walk in together. I look for a rag but can’t see one. There are two seats, I’ve hauled myself up onto one, Nisha’s slid her neat little bum onto the other. Her fingers are tapping on a flat thing covered with rows of buttons, somewhat like those of a harmonium. First time I’ve seen a computer, a screen there’s, like a tele except instead of movies it shows pictures plus Inglis words.
Nisha asks the internest to tell her all it knows about Elli Barber from Coatesville, Pennsylvania. She waits for an answer, but nothing at all comes. Again and again she tries, there is a Veterans’ Medical Center in Coatesville but the internest knows not a single Elli Barber.
“She’s using a false name,” Nisha says. “Doctor doing an important job in a hospital, her name would surely be on record. You would expect the internest to have that kind of information.”
“How come it knows so much?”
“It just does. Look I’ll show you something.”
On the screen appears a familiar building.
“Well fuck me sideways,” says I. “It’s the Pir Gate.”
“Because this is Khaufpur dot com.” She’s explained that it’s a part of the internest that belongs to Khaufpur. It has pictures of all our famous places.
“Bugger me backwards! It’s Abdul Saliq!” Pigeons are flying up round the huge red arch. Down in the shadows, if you look hard, is the tiny figure of the Pir Gate beggar with his hand out. I had never realised that the internest would know the same people I do.
Nisha’s ignored the bad words, she’s caught my excitement, says she’ll show me more. Next thing the screen’s filled with huge golden letters of Urdu which say Aawaaz-e-Khaufpur, plus there’s someone tall, white-clad, looking twenty years younger than I’ve ever seen him.
“Nisha, it’s your dad!”
“So handsome he was,” says she with a sigh. Taps more. The internest has gathered dozens of pictures of Somraj. Young Somraj with his guru Sahadev Joshi, him they used to call Lajawaab, peerless. With various musicians. With the governor of the state. With other stars at All India Radio. Singing with hands raised in rapture. When Somraj performed he’d get into a kind of trance, he’d utter without knowing what he was singing. Meaningless sounds just for rhythm, such as na ta da da ni odani ta re tanom da ni yayali na ta na yayalom, even these he sang with such conviction that some swore they were poems, or else mystical Persian syllables with the power to summon djinns.