‘Mansoor?’ the woman said. ‘He is not rich enough to afford a television, Maulana-ji.’
‘Precisely,’ Maulana Hafeez said, turning his head at an angle. ‘Doesn’t he realise that he is offending God if he has got himself into debt for something like this?’
‘How do you know he has one, Maulana-ji?’
‘There’s an antenna on the roof of his house,’ Maulana Hafeez said coolly. ‘I’ve just seen it from my window.’ And with that he reached into his pocket to show his wife his recent purchase.
Thursday
Alice pushed the door open with her foot. She was returning from the street corner, clutching three enormous bundles of spinach, the turgid leaves spilling over her elbows. The morning was bright, the sunlight almost tangible, as though the walls were draped in sheets of luminous cloth. Alice stopped at the door to the kitchen and, frowning, looked around. Zébun was on the veranda. She had taken down the calendar from the stretch of wall between the two windows and was turning over the new month two days early.
‘What is this smell?’ Alice said from the door.
Mr Kasmi was at the kitchen table. He turned and saw the girl. ‘Coffee,’ he replied, and added in explanation: ‘It’s like tea. You drink it.’
Alice was familiar with the name of the drink. She wrinkled her nose. ‘It smells like stale hookah-water.’
Mr Kasmi smiled broadly. He took a sip from the cup and, after a moment’s pause, said, ‘So it does. So it does.’ Alice gave him a triumphant look. He pointed at the spinach. ‘Is all that for us?’
She looked down at the leaves spread across her forearms and gave a nod. She stepped into the kitchen and, unloading the dark-green leaves on the table, considered them once again. ‘It looks more than we need,’ she agreed, ‘but that is because it hasn’t been cooked yet. At first they’ll fill the pot up to the brim but after five minutes they’ll shrivel and go down to this.’ She held up her left hand, fingers spread to the size of a small bowl, for Mr Kasmi to see.
Mr Kasmi sipped his coffee. Alice cut the twine and began to pick out the unhealthy leaves. ‘I was lucky to get these. It was all they had left,’ she said. ‘Everything else has gone to Judge Anwar’s house. So many people have come since yesterday. There is a row of daigs cooking outside the house.’ She closed her eyes and made a mock shudder run through her spine.
Mr Kasmi watched her across the width of the table. He had often thought that the tiny hairs on her small, dark face looked like the symmetrical patterns of magnetised iron-filings. To keep up with fashion her shirt had been lengthened with new material at the bottom and the seam concealed beneath a strip of lace. On her head she created flimsy ringlets by patiently working twigs and matchsticks and bits of wire into her hair at night and securing them with hairpins.
Alice looked up. ‘The police are questioning my sister today, because she works in the house.’
Mr Kasmi stood up. ‘Well, an insider has to be involved.’
‘If it was a case of simple robbery,’ Alice said, ‘I would question the people who made the cupboards and cabinets, they are usually involved. They tell the robbers what kind of keys they’ll need in which house.’
Zébun came into the room. ‘What are you talking about, girl?’ Her voice was weary. She lowered herself into a chair and fanned herself with the calendar page — it showed a slender woman, an ancient princess, picking flowers from a shrub on whose branches birds sang indifferent to her presence.
Mr Kasmi was smiling as he carried the empty cup to the shelf. ‘I think our Alice-bibi has been talking to schoolboys, sister-ji,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Next she’ll be telling us that to hold loot thieves have extra-deep pockets sewn into their trousers.’
Zébun put down the page and began slowly to undo her hair, picking with her fingertips at the knot of the ribbon. ‘I still can’t believe he’s dead,’ she said, unweaving her wiry grey plait. ‘I saw him walk by the window on Sunday. Little did I know that I was seeing him for the last time.’
Mr Kasmi picked up the small jar of coffee from the shelf. He turned to Alice and said, ‘The woman we had before you used to say on hearing about someone’s death, What is there to a human being? Nothing but illusions.’ Then, including Zébun in his gaze he said, ‘Do you remember, sister-ji?’
Zébun gave a nod. With smooth, flowing strokes she dragged the comb through her hair. Any loose hairs she carefully wrapped around her forefinger and collected in her lap. Alice stretched across the table and picked up the torn calendar page. ‘Can I have it? I told you I liked it a lot.’
The sun was still low when Mr Kasmi stepped out of the house. The heat had not yet begun. The streets were in shadow. Mr Kasmi set off slowly in the direction of the school. There had been just two prolonged showers in the previous two days, but already seeds were beginning to germinate along the edges of the streets and the lower parts of the houses looked as though they had been dusted in a fine, green powder — the beginnings of what would become, within two weeks of the monsoon’s arrival, a pelt of velvety moss.
Azhar was leaving his house. His recently washed hair was slicked back away from his forehead. He saw Mr Kasmi, and raised his hand and smiled. Mr Kasmi waved back from his side of the street. Azhar strode away in the opposite direction. Within the next few minutes Mr Kasmi could see the school, a charmless building. Ten yards further on and he began to catch whiffs of the penetrating odour that the newer parts of the building gave off in the rainy season.
Mr Kasmi had once taught here. In those days the school consisted of one room, serving as headmaster’s office and staff room, and a walled-in strip of level ground where lessons were given by the three teachers to boys who sat cross-legged on the grass. Summer holidays would begin on the day a pupil passed out from the sun. Mr Kasmi’s had been the first bicycle in town, and the sight of his gangling frame riding in through the gate the first morning had caused a sensation. The wheels left behind two wavy lines in the mud, like the path of two butterflies chasing each other in early March. Since Mr Kasmi’s retirement, however, three new rooms had been added to the building. The pond behind the old room was drained and people were asked to dump their rubbish into the enormous crater left behind. Four months later cement was poured over the garbage and the new rooms were built.
Making unsuccessful attempts at breathing through his mouth, Mr Kasmi entered the small corridor at the end of which was the headmaster’s office. Two classrooms faced on to the corridor. The headmaster was not in his office. Mr Kasmi dusted the moulded plastic chair and, propping his small zip-up bag against a leg of the chair, sat down to wait. Opposite him — through the open door and across the corridor — the teacher had returned to the classroom and the monitor, a pale-skinned boy with delicate gestures, was presenting him with the names of boys who had misbehaved in his absence. The monitor returned quietly to his seat, the bench nearest to the teacher’s chair. The names were called out. Mr Kasmi watched, handkerchief pressed to his nose, as two boys got up and walked slowly to the front of the room. Before settling in his chair the teacher said something to the two boys which Mr Kasmi was too far away to catch clearly. They stood motionless for a few moments, facing each other. Then, prompted by a shout from the teacher, the taller of the pair reached out his hand and struck the other boy’s face — the shallow arc of the splayed palm made a sharp sound on impact. Mr Kasmi stood up. The boy who had been hit swung his arm to catch the other’s face. But the blow was foiled — the taller boy dipped his head sideways and, straightening, slapped the other boy’s face once again. Mr Kasmi looked around; he had forgotten the bad smell. Another blow was struck and — perhaps Mr Kasmi had been seen — a boy walked up and closed the classroom door.