Wrapped inside my painkillers and the shell of my scars and bruises like a slow-growing larva, I wait.
She comes in with her palms pressed together, fingers touching lips, wide eyes above a prayer or a shush so forceful it requires both hands.
‘What happened to you?’
‘Don’t ask.’ The words whistle through the gap in my teeth, tickling the raw hole in my gum.
She takes my good hand in both of hers and strokes it with her cheek, runs her fingers over my face, over my bruises, my cuts, the train tracks of my stitches.
‘Who did this?’
I shut my eyes and reenter the dizziness that spins inside my head like two drinks too many too fast too strong. I can’t vomit it out. I’ve tried. I can only hold on to myself in the whirlwind, staring up at Shuja’s father, crying, begging. The barrel of his shotgun pressing against my abdomen like a needle, suddenly sharp. Gasping as my skin rips, as the needle slides into my body, pushing muscle and tissue aside, tearing through me, snapping my back, pinning me to the ground, mounting me like an insect on a board. And the nausea grows stronger, pulling me into itself, twisting me, wrenching at my guts, becoming unbearable.
I open my eyes. I want to kill him.
She sits down on the bed beside me.
I protect my rib cage with my arm.
‘Where’s your family?’ she asks.
‘I haven’t told them.’ I don’t want to explain, don’t want to see them until I’ve recovered and there’s no reason for questions. But that won’t happen, not in a lifetime, not with a dead finger and a crushed nose and a smile that can’t hide the darkness inside my head.
‘How will you pay for this?’
‘I don’t know.’
She slips her arm around my shoulders and cradles my head against her breast.
We breathe together. Slowly.
Time passes, flowing, a long, less and less painful sigh. And I shut my eyes.
Pain becomes only physical again.
Fear recedes.
Anger flickers for a moment longer, gas in the pipes after the stove has been turned off.
She says, ‘I’ll take care of you.’
And I feel gratitude and happiness rise up inside me: old friends, long-forgotten and yet much missed.
When the doctors tell me I can leave, she drives me home in my car. Its windows have been smashed, even the little triangles above the rear doors, but when the engine comes to life I smile, feeling unfamiliar muscles in my face flex.
In my room she lays me down on my bed, pulls the curtains shut, and undresses me.
Then she finds a bucket of cool water and a soft cloth and a bar of Pears soap. And she bathes me.
She begins with my eyes, stroking them shut. She follows my throat down to my collarbone, to the inside of my arm, to the skin between my fingers. To my chest, avoiding my broken rib, to my stomach, the bones of my pelvis. My feet, my shins. My thighs.
Then I feel her mouth and I exhale, slowly.
And after, she takes off her clothes and bathes herself. Touches herself. And then she lies beside me and watches me sleep.
When she leaves I’m alone. Completely alone. I’d hoped Manucci might be there, but he hasn’t come back. It frightens me to look at myself, and it frightens me even more to run my good hand along the broken rib curving around my soft innards, a gap in my body’s protection more shocking than the gap in my teeth.
That night I lie on my bed with my badminton racquet, tapping moths ineffectively, because it hurts too much when I move fast enough to kill them.
It’s more difficult to bear the pain when I’m alone. I know it’s good for me, a sign of life reasserting itself after the damage I’ve sustained, but it’s hard to put up with when there’s no one watching, no reference point, no sign that the struggle will lead anywhere but to more struggle. I can smile as a doctor sews stitches into my skin or a nurse slides a needle into my rump, but who can smile at a headache as he lies in bed in an empty house? I can’t. I haven’t that much strength.
The pain gets worse as the night goes on. The painkillers help, and the joints help as well, but what helps most is the heroin.
I find the stuff in my bedside table drawer, where it’s been lying untouched since the night of my first try, and I know from the second I see it that I want some. It’s wonderful. It doesn’t kill the pain exactly, but after an aitch the pain doesn’t seem to matter. Pain without hurt, as though I don’t understand what my nerves are telling me. Or don’t believe them.
I tell myself not to use it again, unless I really need the release. Hairy’s serious, after all. Wouldn’t want to get in the habit.
Mumtaz comes in the morning with halva poori for breakfast. Feeds me with her own hands, the halva still hot. Kisses the crumbs from my lips. And she brings me lunch and dinner: omelets and parathas, wrapped in greasy newspaper. Also candles. Matches. Mangoes. Toothpaste.
I don’t tell her about the hairy.
When I look in the mirror, when I see what’s been done to me, rage lifts my eyelids and twists my reflection. I cherish the anger, center myself in it, draw power from it, strength for my healing. Because I will heal. And then it’ll be my turn at the crease. And I won’t be gentle with my bat.
She understands how I feel. Knows how to calm me.
When I tell her how my body was broken, fury comes, and I start screaming until I exhaust myself, panting from the pain in my rib cage. She wipes the spit from my chin and cradles my head, somehow corking my anger, bottling it up. And after a while I do feel better. Bottled, starved for air, even anger can’t burn.
The longer she stays, the more I hate it when she leaves.
One evening she says, ‘You look less monstrous every day.’
‘So do you.’
‘How do you feel?’
‘Stronger.’
‘Good, because Ozi’s back. I won’t be able to come as often.’
I’m silent.
‘You look disappointed,’ she says.
‘I am.’
‘Well, I can’t blame you. I wouldn’t mind being fed and bathed by you every day, either.’
‘It’s not that. I want to see you.’
‘I’m here.’
‘I want to see you as much as Ozi sees you.’
‘I’m best in small doses, believe me.’
My rib twinges, but she slides her hand under my shirt and onto my chest, and then I must breathe more softly, because I can’t feel the pain.
We lie naked in bed, a small chocolate cake with a red-and-white sparkling candle balanced between my nipples, fizzing and smoking merrily. Two weeks out of hospital. Two months without electricity. Three months since I lost my job. Twenty-nine years since my first smack on the bottom, the first time I cried.
Today is my birthday. My family has already been by, honking at the gate until the neighbors started shouting and they had to go away. I’m not ready to face them yet. And I wanted to be alone with Mumtaz. She tells me to make a wish. I wish for work and money and air-conditioning and a healed rib and a new tooth and ten good fingers and my ex-best friend’s wife. Then I blow out the candle. It takes two tries, and makes me wince.
‘Don’t tell me what you wished for,’ she says.
‘It would take too long,’ I say. And I grin, because at this moment, with her beside me and an undisturbed afternoon ahead, I feel almost happy.
She takes the plate off my chest and strokes my hair.
I shut my eyes. ‘What would you wish for?’ I ask.
She thinks. ‘Perfect foresight, a little courage, and a time machine.’
I smile. I like the slow rasp of her voice, the way she draws out her words. ‘Why?’