Chef records a long string of dialogue in bad handwriting at the bottom of the page:
She: ‘We slept on separate beds in the bunker. Nothing happened.’
Me: ‘What about the tattoo?’
She: ‘How many times do I have to tell you – tattoos on the belly get distorted with time.’
Me: ‘It was abortion.’
She: ‘Not true.’
Me: ‘What has the General paid you to keep quiet?’
She: ‘You are mad.’
Me: ‘If the General is innocent, then I know who did it.’
She: ‘Who?’
THE GENERAL’S RATION
No questions asked.
AN OFFICER’S RATION
Wheat flour/rice/bread 450g, sugar 90g, oil 80g, dal 40g, tea/coffee 9g, salt 20g, porridge 20g, custard powder 7g, cornflour 7g, ice cream/jelly 7g, condiments 600g/month, vegetables 170g, potatoes 110g, onions 60g, non-citric fruits 230g, citric fruits 110g, eggs 2, chicken 175g, meat dressed 260g, milk 250g, milk (for those who do not eat eggs) 1250g, cheese 50g.
A SOLDIER’S RATION
Wheat flour/rice/bread 620g; sugar 90g, oil 80g, dal 40g, tea/coffee 9g, salt 20g, condiments 600g/month, vegetables 170g, potatoes 110g, onions 60g, fruits 230g, meat dressed 110g, milk (veg) 750g, milk (non-veg) 250g.
I wish I were young again, he writes. Pretty Kashmiri girls, beautiful army wives, nurses – they all fall so easily for the boy. He doesn’t even have a full beard. Yet. He is fucking around that lun, that prick. Kip.
Perhaps the words were written under the influence of rum. But rum is no excuse.
None of it was true. General Kumar had not done it. Chef had no proof. Sahib was a man of highest morals. I, on the other hand, had yet to be with a woman. Other than my erotic reveries I had no experience. My body was simply going to waste. Chef was – that bloody bastard was simply writing lies about Sahib and about me.
Despite his lies I continued to cook for him when he was in hospital. I served him my ration of rum. I fed him his own recipes. I would take the tiffin-carrier to the hospital on bike. He never spoke. He did not speak to anyone. He looked so frail on that metal bed I could not hold anything against him. He lay on the white bed, wrapped in a blanket, his tattooed arm jutting out, stitches on his wrist, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. He was thinking life had ended before it began. The glacier had sucked him dry, that field of snow and ice, that hazaar thousand ton of snow, layers on top of each other, had sat on top of him and demolished his erections. He could no longer get it up; it had become a bonsai. On his tongue clung the taste of a woman’s body and the smell of its hollows, but the glacier had numbed him, and he and his bonsai had even forgotten what it felt like to drown in a woman’s fluids. No, up there, twenty thousand feet high, his brain, his organs, were drowning in his own blood. He was thinking there was no justice in the world.
Something fell from his hospital bed. His wallet in which he kept his wife’s photo. I picked it up and placed it beside him, and noticed he did not bat his eyes and he kept looking at me with bitterness. His breathing grew heavier, but he did not blink. He was thinking here is a young man, a tall cedar, and he is sleeping around with women twenty-four hours. Kashmiri women were delicate beauties, and the little ‘virile Sikh’ boy was sleeping around with them, and now and then older army wives, the memsahibs, invited him to their residences and made advances. I felt he wanted me to tell him about my sexual experiences. He wanted to listen to it all but he hated to talk to me. What he did not want to hear from me was the truth, I thought. I was twenty and still a virgin. Me, Kirpal, a virgin.
Outside the sun was brightening the plane trees, and fresh wind was blowing in the valley, and I realized it was time to head out to the bazaar. The streets were red, and on the way I saw women sweeping the leaves into huge piles, filling their big sacks with leaves, and I knew why. They made charcoal in their homes, mixing leaves and sawdust. They used the charcoal in braziers in winter to keep warm. On the way to the bazaar I slowed down my bike and watched the women sweep the leaves. Their breasts alive inside beautiful pherans. I felt empty. I felt like a one big nothing. I was not even worth a soldier’s ration.
16
Forgiveness is a strange animal, I say to myself. Not many people on this earth know how to ask for forgiveness, and very few know how to truly forgive. I returned to the hospital to ask for forgiveness. I did not really need a bandage, the cut I had on my finger was minor. Some of the wards were absolutely dark. One or two were lit up with emergency lights. There was no power in the hospital, and the whole place smelled of dead cockroaches and chloroform. I waved at her. She ignored me; the sound of her heels clicking throughout the ward was unbearable.
Finally, I stopped her in the corridor.
‘Nurse, I have been meaning to say “sorry” to you.’
‘Say it quickly.’
‘I was wrong. The way I used to look at you was wrong. It will never happen again.’
She held my arm and I felt she had already forgiven me. I like you a lot, she said, and immediately after saying that she entered the dimly lit ward. The guard saluted her. I lingered until she took a cigarette break and stepped out on the lawn. Only then, when she was gone (and the guard was looking in the other direction), did I step into the ward.
There was a blanket on his face. The only light came from the window in the corner. The blanket heaved up and down. Chef stirred, but did not flap it open. This made my task easier. In a low voice I apologized on two counts. First, for reading his journal, and second, for liking his woman. Nothing happened between us, Chef. I just told her that I liked her. I did nothing.
I do not recall exactly the words I used, but I apologized and placed the red journal by his pillow and quickly made it to the door. The guard looked at me suspiciously, but didn’t utter a word.
Outside in the corridor a man was tapping the floor with his crutches. A thin boy from the Madras regiment in a wheelchair was playing with his saliva, slowly shaking his head left to right and right to left like a machine. The nurse was standing with two or three other nurses. They eyed me curiously.
‘I was only trying to have a word with Chef,’ I explained.
‘Who?’ she asked.
‘Kishen.’
‘But he is not here,’ she said.
‘Not here?’
‘Gone.’
‘He left?’
‘He put in a request with the colonel for a return to the Rose Glacier.’
‘Why did they let him go?’
‘Because no one else wanted to go.’
‘So who is on the bed?’ I raised my voice.
I rarely raise my voice. Perhaps that is why the power returned in the hospital.
There was a commotion in the corridor. Officers are coming. Officers. There I saw the colonel and his platoon marching in. The doctor was walking parallel to the colonel in his trussed jacket. The colonel was carrying an inspection stick, and the doctor was smoking a Marlboro.
‘Power is very unreliable, sir,’ said the doctor to the colonel. The others followed them to the ward. The officers took a long time inside and ordered tea and pakoras.
Half an hour later the hospital orderly stepped out of the ward with an empty tray.
‘Major, what tamasha is happening inside?’ I asked him.
‘We really live in a foreign land, Major. They are dealing with an enemy.’
‘An enemy?’ I asked.
‘Yes, Major. They need an interpreter inside, and no one knows Kashmiri here.’
‘I do.’
I knocked on the door.
‘Permission to enter, sir?’
‘Kip… Kirpal?’
‘If you do not mind, sir, I know the language. I took lessons, sir.’
‘Shahbash,’ said the colonel.
He beckoned me inside.
The officers, in proper uniforms and black boots, looked at me in relief as if I had just saved them. The captive lay on the bed. He was a she. The first enemy I ever saw was a she, and already I had apologized to her moments ago on two counts. The first thing I noticed was the unconscious movement of her head. Rapid breathing. Terror in eyes. Peasant feet. The toe ring gleamed in flourescent light. There was a cut on the left foot.