She tries to remember something about Teddy’s job, the name of his boss. If she could remember the name of that inspector with the walrus moustache, the one who patted her head and gave her a digital Quran in a velvet wrapper and said no modern home is complete without it. She wishes she could remember a title, work timings, pension plan, a salary, and she realises she doesn’t know any of these things. She remembers Teddy’s long days in the gym, evenings watching National Geographic, his nightmares when he mutters in his sleep and says: “We are going for a walk, we both need fresh air, don’t worry, don’t look back, they don’t like it when you look back.” And then wakes up and shudders and looks at her as if it’s all her fault.
She is familiar with the routine by now. At first there are hints at a one-on-one meeting with the new police chief, a lot of repeated ironing of clothes in anticipation. But after dressing up properly, he disappears in a Hilux that turns up to pick him up and returns him in the morning covered in dust, his hands bruised, as if he has been fighting wild dogs all night. He breaks his six raw eggs into a glass, gulps them down, makes a face as if he has just shot himself and then falls into bed. The first couple of times she removed his shoes and tried to unbuckle his trousers, but every time she touched him, he curled up into a ball and whimpered, as if the people in his dream were trying to break his bones.
But since he lost that boy and brought home his posters, he has hardly ever been home.
So who is this man Teddy Butt? She wanders through the markets as if she is hoping to find an answer advertised in a shop window and will get it after haggling it down to a reasonable price. She goes through Empress Market, where Pathans sell tomatoes and baby hawks in the same shop, women with bangles up to their elbows peddle pink chicks perched on baskets full of guaranteed desi eggs, a blind man brandishes money plants in used Chivas Regal bottles that don’t require earth to grow in, and a Burmese-looking man sells a plastic device that carves onions, carrots and turnips into roses. Why would anyone want an onion cut up like a rose? she wonders.
What kind of woman marries a man who cries over melting glaciers and comes back from his job with sand in his hair? She looks at a cage full of chickens trying to climb over each other as one of them is caught and its throat gets slit to the soundtrack of looped God-is-great playing on a cassette player.
She turns away and starts walking back towards the bus stop. The cackle of the caged chickens and the soundtrack of their death follows her for some distance. She catches a bus bound for the Sacred, as the conductor is giving a last thump on its side and shouting at the driver to move on. She knows that she should do all her waiting at the Sacred.
A motorcycle stops next to her bus. She thinks she recognises the boy but is not sure where she has seen him. She moves towards the window to get a better look when another boy wearing a long coat comes from behind and stands next to a car with his head in the window. The boy on the motorbike watches him impatiently, then looks up towards the sky, and she realises that it’s the boy on the poster. She tries to get off the bus in a hurry, the traffic signal turns green and the bus lurches forward but stops again. Alice watches the commotion at the traffic signal; around her a chorus of impatient horns is performing a crescendo.
Thirty
Zainab’s mouth is agape, her eyes are open but Noor knows that she is gone. A fly sits on her lower lip, then goes inside her mouth and comes out. Noor doesn’t have the strength to shoo it away. His good eye is dry; the one under the bandage throbs as if his eyeball wants to spring out of its socket again.
♦
Soon after her arrival at the Borstal, Alice Bhatti gave Noor a plastic syringe to play with, without the needle of course. For months it was the only toy he had; he used it as a water pistol, pretend weapon and pen. He also injected many magical fluids in Zainab’s arm to cure her blindness. One day he caught a butterfly that had wandered in through the bars. It was a big one, and covered half of his palm. Its yellow and black tiger stripes glowed brightly. He had a brilliant idea. What if he made butterfly juice with it? He rolled the butterfly’s wings and inserted it into the cylinder. He imagined that when he squeezed it, he would get a liquid the colour of gold with black stripes, and if he squirted that on to Zainab’s eyes, she would get her eyesight back. When he thrust the plastic plunger in the syringe, what he got was mud-brown goo. He never played with that syringe again.
♦
He pulls the sheet over Zainab’s face and walks out. He has always wondered how he would feel, what he would do, where he would go first. Now he knows. He needs to go to the medico-legals office to get a death certificate, then inform the mortuary and book the funeral bus. He isn’t really sure why he needs a death certificate, but he starts to walk down the steps leading to the compound with a clarity of purpose, knowing that it is the only thing he needs right now.
He sees Alice Bhatti under the Old Doctor and waves towards her. He doesn’t know why he is waving. Is he saying hullo to her? No, he is saying: Hullo, Alice, my mother is dead. But Alice is not looking at him; her eyes are fixed above his head, above the rooftop. Then he realises that all the other patients under the Old Doctor are also looking at the horizon. He turns around to follow their gaze and bumps into someone. He is curious to see the face of the man he has bumped into. The only thing he remembers is that the man’s arm is in a cast and he is carrying a small gunnysack.
♦
Teddy Butt barely manages to stop the bottle falling from his hand. “Are you blind?” He curses the boy who bumps into him and then rushes past without apologising. He can see Alice Bhatti under the Old Doctor. She stands in her white coat, oblivious to her surroundings, looking up into the sky. Teddy moves forward and stumbles again. This time, it’s the legless beggar woman on the skateboard who grabs his right leg. “God has blessed you with such a beautiful wife, buy me some Xanax. The nights are becoming longer.” As Teddy rummages through his pocket for some change, he wonders why everyone is looking up at the sky.
Epilogue
An Open Letter to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints
The Vatican
From Joseph Bhatti
French Colony
Our Holy Mother appeared on the fourth of September last year above the roof of the Out Patient Department of the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments after the gates of the hospital had been shut because it couldn’t take in any more patients. The residents and workers at the hospital didn’t recognise the Holy Virgin in the beginning as her face was covered in a veil and the infant she carried was making a ruckus. The onlookers were most fascinated by a beam of light that fell on the OPD and bathed it in a milky glow. It was the ward boy, a long-term resident of the Sacred, Noor, son of Zainab, who pointed out that the sky was clear and there was no moon. And then above the roof people saw a silver throne hovering, held aloft by a flock of peacocks on which sat a likeness of our Holy Mother.