After she has counted up to twenty-five, he takes the bar out of her hands and puts it aside. She feels the light has gone out of his eyes, as if he has suddenly remembered something he was trying to forget. He is rubbing his eyes, as if he has seen too much.
“You look exhausted, and I lifted all the weights,” she says, taking the hem of his T-shirt to wipe her brow.
Inspector Malangi had once given him a lecture about how to make women happy; it was the easiest thing in the world. “You don’t need to give her gold bangles, not silk, not flowers. You don’t need to write poetry or massage her feet. Just put a hand on her shoulder when she is least expecting it. Look her in the eye when she is busy chopping vegetables. And she is happy like a child who has seen his first elephant. That’s the easy part. But keeping her happy, any woman happy — and it doesn’t matter if she is your mother or daughter or your Friday whore — that, my friend, is impossible. You can become a clown in a circus and learn to swallow real swords, but it won’t bring a smile to her face. There is a deep hidden well of sadness in every woman, as inevitable as a pair of ovaries, and on certain afternoons its mouth yawns open and it can suck in every colour in this world.”
Teddy knows that this is not that afternoon. He’ll be gentle and patient when that afternoon arrives.
“I have got something for you.” He extends a folded newspaper towards her. She stares at the newspaper in confusion. She turns it around and sees a picture of the famous twins conjoined at the head. A pair of monkey faces with very large eyes stare at her. Only one will live. But which one? asks the caption under the picture.
“Open it,” says Teddy. Alice unfolds the newspaper gingerly, as if the life of the conjoined twins depends on her careful handling of the newspaper. She finds a damp, thorny sapling, one tiny leaf yellow-green and young, another large one almost black and moth-eaten. There is a tiny green bud hidden under the leaf, like a promise made in all honesty but forgotten when the season changed. The newsprint around the sapling is damp and the words seem blurred. Alice realises, and is puzzled, that without any reason, tears have clouded her eyes.
Twenty
When Alice Bhatti finally meets up with Noor, first they talk about a cancer diet, and some tentative ways of delaying the inevitable for Zainab. In between, she tries to make a man out of him.
She walks in with bendy legs, cheeks flushed, carrying a stack of boxes of sweets in one arm and swinging a plastic shopping bag in the other hand, as if she has just been bargain-hunting. “I got married,” she announces, putting the gift-wrapped boxes on the table.
Congratulations. Now we can all become police informers and live happily ever after. Noor doesn’t say that, of course, and keeps quiet, too surprised to speak. Alice Bhatti comes to him and hugs him. Noor doesn’t move, his arms stiff at his sides. He has heard the news many times over, but he has heard so many versions of it that he has decided that it can only be a rumour.
♦
Dr Pereira was the first one who barged in and asked, in a stark whisper, “Have you heard the rumour?”
“Sir, if I were you I would ignore it,” Noor had said without looking up from his register. He had assumed that in his chronically understated way Dr Pereira was referring to the giant banner that had been strung up overnight at the entrance of the Sacred. It accused the doctor, in three rhyming lines, of being an Indian dog, a Jewish agent and a land grabber.
“The rumour about Alice Bhatti. That she has converted. At the hands of that acquaintance of yours, Mr Butt.”
Noor had suspected Teddy Butt of all kinds of police-sanctioned crimes, but he had never suspected that Teddy went around the city converting people to his faith. How exactly did he do that? By hitting the soles of their feet with a stick? By tying their hands behind their back? By dunking their heads in gutters? What was his faith anyway? Last he saw Teddy, getting some attention from Alice Bhatti seemed to be the only faith he had.
Ortho Sir made a rare appearance, his goatee bristling with some private indignation. “So you are a matchmaker now?” He stroked his goatee and fixed Noor with a steady glare. Noor stood up in confusion, wondering what he was being accused of. “No, sir, as far as I know, Alice has not converted.”
“I knew it.” Ortho Sir banged his fist on the table. “These people have turned this place into slutsville.” Ortho Sir said this as if slutsville was a Toronto suburb he had been denied entry into. “All they do is fuck around, and when they get into trouble, they use religion, nay they abuse religion. I’ll make sure that these people are exposed.” Ortho Sir stomped out. Noor sat there wondering why, if Alice had actually gone ahead and married or converted or married and converted, she was trying to hide it. It wasn’t as if there was an army of heartbroken suitors who would take offence. He put the rumours down to their mock shooting lessons in the Sacred compound. Sometimes these things can appear to be more intimate than they actually are.
♦
Now she waltzes in as if she is living her life in a shampoo advert, bringing with her the smells of new marriage and an air of optimism last seen in the hospital when the first colour TV arrived three decades before. There she stands, hugging him, announcing that she has got married. Noor doesn’t ask her who and why; he is more concerned about where. He has heard a rumour that she got married on a nuclear submarine.
Pakistan doesn’t have nuclear submarines, he knows that, he has read it in the papers. “Are you sure you got married on a nuclear submarine? They wouldn’t allow you on it. They wouldn’t allow a non-Muslim on it. I mean, they would allow them if they worked on it, of course, if they had a proper pass and uniform.”
Alice is too busy writing notes on the boxes to take in anything. “Got married on a boat. Yes. Everyone should get married on a boat.”
“Are you sure you didn’t end up on an Indian submarine? Indians do have nuclear submarines. And if you did get married on one of those, I don’t think it would be considered valid here. It’s OK to marry Junior Mr Faisalabad, it’s your choice, mixed religious marriages have their problems, I mean the kids will grow up confused and everything, but I don’t have anything against them per se.” Noor is trying to block out mental images of Alice in a red dress, sprawled on the stern of a white yacht, her head in Teddy Butt’s lap, his hands playing with her hair. “I am just wondering if it’s a real marriage. Because marrying Junior Mr Faisalabad on a submarine that belongs to another country, in international waters, I don’t know what the proper term is, which laws apply. If it had happened on land, then it would be quite simple.”
“Are you going to congratulate me or just lecture me about maritime law?” says Alice. “First Sister Hina Alvi tells me that marriage is some kind of incurable disease, and now you.”
Noor stops rambling and tries to focus on the little plastic bag that she is holding so carefully, as if it contains the secret to her new happy marriage.
Alice Bhatti has brought with her a little brown book wrapped in a polythene bag and a handful of rice that seems to have been soaked in a cheap red dye. “Waiting at the bus stop I found this.” She unwraps the polythene bag with the kind of care she shows only when unwrapping bandages from multiple fractures. Home Cures for Cancer. The title is handwritten. Inside, on the cheapest possible newsprint, is the most indecipherable mumbo-jumbo that the Urdu language could sustain without being confused for a divine language.