She listens carefully as I pour out my story.
“Ma, what should I do?”
“Be a dear and fetch my name. I had it just a moment ago, I must have put it down somewhere.”
“Your name?”
“Yes, dear, I seem to have lost it.”
“Where did you have it last?”
“Well, I was reading, by the lamp there.”
“I shall have a look for it.” I make a show of hunting round, lifting things, looking in corners. “Oh look, here it is, it’s in your book. You must have used it to mark the place.”
“Are you sure?” she says, peering at me with milky eyes. “I don’t see it.”
“It’s here.” I’ve picked up a leaf from the floor and blown it towards her. “Your name is Ma Franci.”
“That’s not my name, that’s a leaf,” she says, getting cross. “What have you done with my name? Have you taken it?”
“What would I do with your name?”
“Well, you need a name, don’t you?”
“My name is Animal.”
“Oh look, it’s all right,” cries Ma. “Here it is. It was keeping my place in Sanjo’s book.”
Sleep is impossible. Talking to Ma solves nothing. She informs me that there are a lot of angels operating in the Nutcracker, they seem to be planning something big. “All’s arranged,” she says. “Isa’s on his way.” What kind of world is it where you have to ask advice of the insane?
The dog, as if sensing my turmoil, comes to the foot of the ladder and whines, but she can’t climb up. Out of the darkness comes Ma’s voice singing.
Qui vient là frappant de la sorte
Qui vient là frappant comme ça.
Ouvrez donc j’ai posé sur un plat
De bons gâteaux qu’ici j’apporte.
Toc! Toc! Ouvrez-nous la porte
Toc! Toc! Faisons grand gala
After some time she says, “Animal, are you awake? Aliya is not well. I told Huriya to take her to the doctress, but of course the mad old fool didn’t understand a word, you must make sure she goes tomorrow.”
Tomorrow, tomorrow, I want to cancel tomorrow.
Above my head there are holes in the roof, through them I see the moon a silver ball and I think of all the people in this world who are also looking at the moon and I wonder what they are thinking.
TAPE EIGHTEEN
I wake to earth’s shivering. It’s vibrating like when a train goes by a mile away and you can feel it under your hands and feet but you’re not really sure what’s happening. If you put your ear to the earth you can hear it as well, a kind of growling. Only today it’s not a train and it’s not the platoons of the poor on the march and it isn’t me, if you are crazy enough to put your ear to the earth today you will regret it because the earth is shivering not with fear but with fiery, blistering heat. The Nautapa has begun.
Eyes, Nautapa is nine days of heat so fierce it fries any part of you that touches the ground. You know how air shimmers over hot ground, well during the nine days, the air dances so violently you can’t see straight, it’s like looking through rippling water, but water is the one thing there isn’t. Bang, it’s gone. Being out in the Nautapa is like breathing inside a clay oven. They say that when these nine days arrive the rains are just around the corner, which is just as well because suffering this bad can’t last long. Things crack, wilt, start to give up. The air is sucked from the sky and out of people’s lungs.
On this first morning of the Nautapa I get to Huriya’s and Hanif’s place to find that Ma was right. Aliya is coughing, her forehead is virtually glowing.
“Could Elli doctress come?” the anxious old people want to know.
What can I say? Can’t tell them I don’t want to face Elli the Betrayess, besides she’ll be busy. Nobody but me knows the truth about her so things will be going on as normal, the clinic will be full of people waiting to be seen.
“Aliya will have to go there,” I say. “I’ll take her.” I can’t see how I am going to do this. Autos, which need paying customers, don’t bother coming to this part of the Nutcracker, anyway, there’s no money to pay for one. I could go to the Chicken Claw and look for Bhoora but he might not be there plus it would take a long time. Neighbours who could have taken Aliya on a bicycle are not at home. There’s a rusting bike a few doors away but even if it works it will be no use to Huriya, and Hanif’s blind. As for me, despite my boasting this Animal can neither ride nor push a bicycle.
“I can walk,” says Aliya, but outside is wicked, the best part of a mile to the railway crossing and the road past the factory, however there is no other plan, so we set off.
As we step outside the heat hits. “Lean on me,” I tell her, “we’ll stop if you get tired.”
“I can’t hold your hand,” she says. “You’d fall over.”
“True. So hold just here.”
Yip! The ground burns like hot metal. I’m wanting to dance, skip from shade to shade, but the poor kid is gasping, her mouth is wide open and her hand on my neck is a flame, hot and angry like when my back began to twist.
“Listen Aliya, and I’ll tell you a story I heard from Ma. Once there was a man called Jacotin, who had a massive nose. He was a lonely fellow and lived all by himself.”
“Wasn’t he married?” asks Aliya, brave she is.
“No, he never found a wife. He was a bit simple, you see.”
“Like you.” She’s limping. The earth is biting our feet with fiery teeth.
“Me? What crap. There’s nothing simple about me. The older this Jacotin got the lonelier he became.”
“Granny says you’re a bit touched.”
“Does she now? He could hear music, could Jacotin, that no one else could hear. He called it the music of angels.”
“Yes, she does. Because you talk to people who aren’t there.”
“It was a sweet music beside which human music seemed dull.”
“Animal, I’m all dizzy.”
“Aliya, listen.” I’m very afraid for her. “I am going to be a horse and you shall ride on my back.”
We stop in the shade of a wall and look for a foothold from which she can scramble onto my shoulders. “Aliya, wrap your arms round my neck, hold tight to my hair.” Thus, with her small burning body on my back I’ve started again, thinking it won’t be long before we meet someone who’ll help.
It gets to be a question of counting steps. When you are a human you can count left right left right, but with four feet left hop right hop, it’s not so straightforward. For the next hundred paces I’ll think of water. There’s no water. A hundred is too many, do twenty at a time, think of soft grass. The grass in the factory is by now long and dry, the grass at Jehannum last night smelt of earth, the kind of rain that comes from rich men’s hosepipes. Last night, how I wished last night had never happened. How will I break the news? I don’t have the guts to face Somraj, so I should tell Nisha, but I don’t want to upset her, so I must tell Zafar, because he will know what to do.
By god how each step hurts. Aliya is whimpering, I’m afraid she’ll slip and fall off. Still the track is empty. I can’t really lift my head to see how far away the road is, her fingers are wound in my hair, I might send her tumbling. She’s pressed so close, I can feel her heart thudding. It’s racing. Farouq told me once that the heart is made to beat a certain number of times, the number for each is different, but the heart keeps count, when it has done its stint, it stops, not one extra beat will it give. He said it was best to make the heart beat slow, that way a lifetime can be stretched and I said some might ask why anyone would wish to stretch a life like mine? Meanwhile Aliya’s small heart is rushing her life away and never will I reach the road.