Alice shook her head. She had picked up the cup of coffee — cold and more than half full. ‘You didn’t finish your drink.’
‘It smells of turpentine. You must have forgotten to wash your hands properly.’ Mr Kasmi had the taste of whitewash on his palate. Cautiously, Alice raised the cup to her nose. Mr Kasmi asked her where Zébun was.
The goose wing lay on the shelf. Alice had begun making the bed. ‘She’s downstairs in her room,’ Alice answered from behind the billowing bedsheet, ‘reading your people’s holy book.’
Walking lightly on the balls of his stockinged feet Mr Kasmi came to get his shoes from under the bed. ‘The Qur’an, girl,’ he said as he stood up. And reasserted gently, ‘The Qur’an.’
She smiled sweetly and shrugged. Her cheeks were smudged with cheap lali rouge, gaudy and bright. When she finished the bed she made a noise at the back of her throat to attract Mr Kasmi’s attention, then straightened and with a playful gesture towards the clean sheet free of wrinkles and the elegantly arranged pillow said, ‘Five extra marks for neatness, teacher-sahib?’
Mr Kasmi responded with a smile. He picked up his leather bag, collected the umbrella hanging from the wrought-iron S by the door and, crossing the small landing overlooking the courtyard, went towards the staircase. He descended the worn steps slowly, with both hands held gently against the wall. The steep flight of stairs had been crammed into one corner of the courtyard to give access to the top storey — Mr Kasmi’s room, the landing, and a bathroom — which was added some time after the original house was built. At the bottom of the stairs Mr Kasmi paused as though getting used to the ground extending far beyond his feet.
The rain had thinned into drizzle, and there was a weak sun. A group of people — men, women and children — was on its way to the other side of the town where a goat had given birth last night to a kid on whose pale-brown hide the name of the Prophet appeared to be inscribed. The holy word — black and grey — was clearly discernible amongst the other markings. On turning the corner Mr Kasmi heard the clang of the butcher’s cleaver. Zafri the butcher’s shop was in one of the two rooms alongside the mosque. The shops were topped by a colonnaded balcony; the bubble-like dome above the main body of the mosque was out of sight but the tips of the two minarets could just be seen. Rent from these shops went towards the upkeep of the mosque.
On the raised platform outside his shop the barber stood leaning against the glass window. In the space below the platform were the open drains that originated in the mosque. During summer the shop would be resonant with the buzzing of the flies beneath the floor. On seeing Mr Kasmi, the barber went into the shop and began dusting the cumbersome chrome and leather chair: everyone in the town knew that Mr Kasmi used a shoehorn to ease his heels into shoes. Working the crank, the barber adjusted the head-rest to Mr Kasmi’s level.
But Mr Kasmi did not come in. Raising a hand from the doorway, he said, ‘I’ve only come to take a look at the newspaper. They say that the news of Judge Anwar’s death has appeared in it today.’ It was more a question than a statement.
The barber took a stool from under the shelf, wiped it clean, and offered it to Mr Kasmi. In the small wooden cubicle by the window someone was whistling while they took a shower.
‘Gul-kalam is mentioned in it,’ the barber said with a smile and handed the newspaper to Mr Kasmi. ‘He’s been going around all morning telling people that his name’s in the paper.’
Mr Kasmi arranged the pages in order. The General had threatened the death penalty for any ‘wayward’ journalist who dared ‘denigrate’ his regime. A deaf and dumb boy had been found murdered; he had been raped repeatedly before being bludgeoned to death. The monsoon had caused floods in Bangladesh.
‘Page three,’ the barber told Mr Kasmi’s reflection in the mirror.
‘He left behind seven daughters,’ said Mr Kasmi. ‘What will the poor widow do?’
The barber was polishing the white tiles of the shelf. ‘They say he was hoping that Azhar would marry the eldest,’ he said without interrupting his work. Mr Kasmi did not make a reply — he had found the news item. The barber spoke again, ‘But Azhar obviously has other plans. I had often wondered why a man of his rank would want to live in a town like this.’
Mr Kasmi looked up. ‘The man has to live somewhere.’
The barber shook his head. ‘We never saw the last deputy commissioner, did we? All we ever heard about him was that he’d been found face-down in a stream with stones in his stomach. But this one comes to visit the Alis a few times and then decides to stay for good. Now we know why.’
Mr Kasmi rattled the newspaper derisively. The barber, however, was adamant: ‘He controls the whole district. He controls all branches of the local government, is in charge of the administration of revenue, and on top of that — and I know because I read the paper every day from cover to cover — he is the district magistrate. No, no, Kasmi-sahib, he should be living somewhere much grander than this.’
Suddenly the whistling from the cubicle stopped and the man inside swore loudly. ‘The water’s gone off.’
The barber looked at Mr Kasmi apologetically and thumped the cubicle door with his fist. ‘Have some shame,’ he shouted, ‘we’re practically inside the mosque.’ Then shaking his head gravely he went to adjust the levers on the tank.
Mr Kasmi folded the newspaper. ‘It’s only a few lines,’ he said, picking up his umbrella.
‘No one wants to know about us,’ the barber said. ‘It’s taken three days for the news to reach them, and even then they get some of the facts wrong.’ He raised his eyebrows behind his tortoiseshell spectacles.
‘Yes,’ Mr Kasmi said. ‘It says that they made off with fifteen thousand rupees’ worth of gold jewellery.’
Maulana Hafeez appeared on the other side of the street. The optician had today set up his stall — complete with his transparent, jellyfish-like umbrella — on this side of town. Maulana Hafeez had finished talking with him and now stood facing the barber shop.
Mr Kasmi stopped cold.
Maulana Hafeez crossed the street diagonally and went into Zafri’s shop next door. Only then did the barber dare to look at Mr Kasmi. He was wiping sweat from his brow and in turn fixed the barber with his steely gaze. ‘You missed out one of the deputy commissioner’s functions,’ he said through a weak smile to conceal his nerves. ‘He also controls the police.’
The barber remained at the window until Mr Kasmi, his usual somnambulist’s tread leaving momentary footprints in the rainwater, disappeared around the corner. Then he waited for the customer inside the cubicle to finish before going next door to Zafri’s shop.
Sitting on a straw mat, his legs folded under him, Zafri was talking — protesting about something, it seemed — to Maulana Hafeez. He wore a look of incredulity. On a thread around his neck was a thick brass talisman. All about the mat were large sections of sheep carcass, wrapped in muslin. There were knives of various widths and lengths and a cleaver; and there was a dried palm leaf to wave at flies. Yellow spheres of offal bobbed like buoys in a bucket of water by his elbow.
‘I can barely keep up with the rent, Maulana-ji,’ he said, his arms open wide. ‘What makes you think I can afford luxuries like a television?’
The barber raised his arms and rested his hands on the beam above the door; smiling, he looked in.
‘There’s an antenna on the roof of your house,’ Maulana Hafeez said in a low voice. He was sitting to Zafri’s left, in the only chair in the room.
Zafri became exasperated. ‘That is a perch for my pigeons.’
Maulana Hafeez remained motionless for a few moments, then he looked up. The barber dropped his arms and, entering the shop, handed Maulana Hafeez the rent for the barber shop.