“She trusts you,” he says, ignoring my remark. “She has a real soft spot for you. You must look after her.”
“Me? How can I look after anyone?”
“Because you care for her.” Once again his arid tongue fails to moisten his mouth. To watch it is painful. “That is the main thing, Animal, that you care, but there’s this too, you’re clever, you’re gifted. You’re the brightest guy I know.”
“Come on, don’t try to sweet talk me,” says I. Never did I guess he thought such things about me.
“If some untoward thing happens,” says he, closing his eyes, “if it happens, she’ll need someone she can trust, who can lift her spirits. You’ve such a wicked sense of humour. You must get her through.”
I cannot believe he’s talking like this. “She loves you, arsehole. If you die, what will I do? Crack jokes to lighten her mood?”
“I envy you,” he says. “Seriousness is a curse. I wish I’d laughed more. Been more like you.”
“Stop!” I say sharply, seeing him beginning to slide to some dark place. “Never did I think to hear you say such things. You are our hero, you are our leader, we need you. Now come back and fight.”
He says affectionately, “Fucker, you pretend you’re an animal, and in this much you resemble one, you keep your nose to the ground and your tail up.”
“Fucking fishguts. Who says I’m pretending?”
His eyes open, a slow smile tears at his mouth. “See? Such an ironist. You have understood something worthwhile, my friend, in the end the only way to deal with tragedy is to laugh at it.” His dry tongue scrapes the smile away. “How I wish I had some water. I’ve had to tell them, don’t drink in front of me. It makes me crazy.”
“Who drank in front of you?”
“A friend. Yesterday. I saw her drinking out of a bottle. She didn’t know I was watching. The bottle was frosty.” He closes his eyes, swallows, you can almost hear his throat cracking. Poor bastard, every word is costing him. “I was imagining, no, I was longing for, the sensation of cold water going down the throat. The image of that bottle would not leave me, it just got worse. Last night all my dreams were about water, I woke with such a thirst.” He falls back, the long speech has exhausted him.
All of a sudden I am ashamed to my depths of what I have done to Zafar. “Zafar brother, forgive me. I came to tell you one thing, but first I must tell you something else.”
“Go ahead.”
“I have been jealous of you.”
“I know.”
“How can you know?”
“Nisha told me,” he says.
“You don’t know. Not how bad it was. It was like your fire, burning me up from inside. You know what, I thought of every way to split you up. Hindu girl, Muslim boy? I even considered fomenting communal troubles so your marriage would be impossible.”
“So what happened?” he asks, something like a gleam returning to his eye.
“Pointless, this is Khaufpur, na?” So many times the politicians have tried to stir trouble between the communities in Khaufpur. Always the Khaufpuris say, we have suffered together, we will not be divided.
“Fucker.” He’s still holding my hand and gives it a squeeze.
“Zafar brother, I have something else to tell you. It’s bad. Very bad.”
“Tell me, my brother.”
“Zafar bhai, I am afraid that I have poisoned you.”
Confession is like puking, you can’t stop till you’re empty. So I tell him about the pills, how Faqri had assured me they were for one purpose, which was the derogation of his sexual urge, Nisha vis-à-vis. Plus I wasn’t to know they contained datura.
“Datura?” he says. “Fucking datura. No wonder I felt so bad.”
Then I confess to climbing the tree, once, to spy on him and Nisha. He doesn’t need to know about the other times, only once can you be executed no matter how many murders you commit. I am expecting he’ll be livid, but he lies on his rug looking at me out of his reddened eyes.
“Aren’t you going to get angry?”
He sighs. “Animal, brother, I’m too tired to be angry.” Then he reaches out and taps my head. “So all this turmoil, chaos, this churning rage against the world, has been going on in here?”
“Anyway, no need to be cross,” says I, “for I did not see anything. You did nothing of that sort.”
An odd snort escapes him, and his chest is palpitating. I’m thinking oh shit the shock of this is killing him, but turns out he’s laughing. It’s a dried up kind of laugh, somewhere between coughing, sobbing and snotting.
“Animal, you are too much. By god in whom I refuse to believe there are limits, but you exceed them all.”
“Nothing that I saw, anyway.”
“Yes, I know that. Such things can wait till marriage.”
“What, not even a kiss?”
“Maybe a kiss.”
“Bastard.”
“Well,” says he, pushing up on one elbow, “at least it proves one thing, that you’ll look after Nisha. I can trust you to keep her honour safe.”
“Don’t joke, yaar. I am too ashamed.”
“Definitely, you are the right man.”
“I am not a man.”
“Well my brother,” says he, “definitely the right animal.”
Someone suggests that I should not keep Zafar talking any more, but Zafar says not to worry. “Old friends, it gladdens the heart to see them, and this bastard, with his impudence and his lopsided grin, he makes me laugh, and by god in whom I don’t believe I feel better for it.”
So then it’s time to give him the real news. Leaning right down to his ear, I whisper, “Zafar, the thing I came to tell you, it’s bad. I have proof that Elli doctress is working for the Kampani.” So I start telling him about what I saw at Jehannum, how I’d hidden under the table and caught Elli with the foreign lawyer, how he said she’d done a fine job and could go home, and then how he’d kissed her. Zafar listens to all this with no expression. When I’ve finished he says, “Animal, you have done right to tell me, but I already know. Last night, Elli told Somraj. I’m afraid it will be bad for her. Try to see she too is okay.”
After these puzzling words he says, “Brother, I’m burning up. Ask them to fetch ice. Crush it in a cloth and put it on my skin, please do the same for Farouq.”
TAPE TWENTY
“No deal! No deal!” The second demo in a week, here we are again, the paltaniyas of the Apokalis, the people’s earth-shaking platoons. This day, which is the seventh of the Nautapa, it’s the fiercest heat yet. Not yet ten in the morning but the steps outside the courthouse are like bars of hot metal. We’ve all arrived full of excitement because the Kampani’s deal has not been signed and the hearing’s about to begin. Zafar and Farouq are there, so weak that people must stand beside them and steady them. Zafar’s staring out of eyes that already look dead. “Sit, don’t stand,” someone says. Zafar says he’ll wait until they are inside. Then he will sit. Ten minutes are left before the court opens its doors and the hearing begins, but when the appointed hour comes, of the judge is no sign. We are used to their lateness, but people are saying the milord should have made an effort, he must know that some here are half dead with their fasting, and still refusing to touch water? After twenty minutes a court official comes out and mumbles a few words. People nearby exclaim in anger. “What’s happening? What’s going on?” The news spreads like fire in dry grass. “The hearing has been postponed. They’ve postponed the hearing.”
“NO DEAL! NO DEAL, NO DEAL!”
The chant begins again. People are furious. The judge, it seems, has been transferred, already he has left Khaufpur for some other court, they forgot to inform us.