‘The bones in my hip grind against each other like a mortar against a pestle.’ Yusuf Rao had measured out two generous pinches of the coffee grounds on to a sheet of yellow typing paper and was wrapping it up, folding the paper into a compact diamond shape.
The sun was climbing fast. The patch of sunlight which was on the floor when Mr Kasmi arrived had crept on to the desktop, illuminating the crescents of dried tea left by cups and saucers. The heat in the small, cramped office was intense. The small pedestal fan set on top of the filing cabinet, its lead disappearing under the rope cot, spun noisily. Mr Kasmi wiped his brow. ‘Not for me,’ he gestured towards the coffee. ‘I have to go to the post office before it closes to draw my pension.’
But Yusuf waved his objection aside. He walked to the door and shouted for the boy at the tea-stall across the street. He was supporting himself against the doorframe with one hand and brandished the packet of coffee above his head to attract attention.
After giving the boy detailed instructions on how to prepare the drink he came back and, with a grimace of discomfort, settled in the swivel chair. ‘In 1951, the prime minister was assassinated in exactly the same way. The man who fired the shot was beaten to death then and there. The newspapers said it was the enraged crowd but the whole country knows that that was not the case.’
Indifferent to the shouts of protest and working free of the arms that tried to hold him back, the old man detached himself from the group of men wedged in the door and entered the room. He advanced towards the desk behind which the overseer and the clerk sat and began cursing in a loud voice. The men behind the desk watched him calmly through narrowing eyes. The clerk folded his arms over the ledger. Ranged on the desk in neat stacks were coins and bundles of banknotes. The words increase productivity appeared on the coins and the notes of lower denomination.
‘What’s the matter?’ The door at the rear end of the room opened and Mujeeb Ali stepped in, followed by Azhar. The crowd at the street door fell silent. Both the overseer and the clerk struggled to sit up straight.
The old man, covered in sweat, turned to Mujeeb Ali. ‘I’ve been standing in the sun all day because he refuses to pay my wages,’ he said in a gravelly voice. Beneath the wrinkles on his neck the cartilage rings of his windpipe could be made out.
‘Wait for your turn,’ Mujeeb Ali said. ‘It can’t be long now.’
‘My turn has come and gone,’ protested the old man. ‘He says I’ll be the last one to get paid because I’m impertinent.’
Mujeeb Ali glanced at the overseer. The clerk had turned back several pages and was searching feverishly for the old man’s name.
The old peasant took two steps towards Mujeeb Ali. ‘He didn’t want me to sit in the shade. He said I’d ruin the grass in your garden. So I asked him if he thought I had a sickle for an arse. That’s all I said.’
Azhar threw back his head and let out a laugh. ‘Sickle for an arse. That’s good,’ he said to the old man. But the peasant, debilitated by hunger and the heat, stared in silence.
After making a thumbprint in the ledger and collecting his wages the old man went towards the door. At the threshold he stopped, took off his turban and wiped his face. A few dishevelled strands of silvery hair stood on his otherwise bald head. Then he turned and looked boldly at Mujeeb Ali. ‘I’ve worked on your lands since the days of your grandfather,’ he said and stepped out on to the street.
As the overseer and the clerk leafed back to their former place in the ledger, Mujeeb Ali led Azhar to the other end of the room. It was the only room in the large house that faced the street. The entire length of one wall was given over to the framed photographs, large and small, of several generations of the Ali family’s male members. It was said that when Sher Bahadar Ali, Mujeeb’s grandfather, died his two sons had divided the inheritance — silver and gold and money — using shovels and a balance from the stables. Mujeeb Ali and both his brothers had inherited the powerful shoulders and arms of their father. In several photographs Mujeeb Ali’s youngest brother appeared, at various ages, with a bird of prey perched on a fist. And there was one photograph of the three brothers together, arms around garlanded shoulders, taken on the day following the last general election.
Azhar and Mujeeb Ali stood by the open window. Mujeeb Ali asked Azhar about the investigations into the judge’s death. Azhar confessed that the police did not have a single piece of evidence which could suggest a line of inquiry. When the police were called in, shortly after dawn the day before, the inspector had stationed sergeants in all the principal streets; and at daybreak volunteers had combed the long approaches into the town, but the murderers had left behind no clues. ‘Do you remember the murder last month when the woman’s secret yaar broke in and killed the husband,’ Azhar said, and without waiting for an answer continued: ‘Well, last night the police inspector had to intervene when the judge’s wife’s brothers beat up a man who suggested that perhaps the two cases were similar.’
Azhar had, he said, appointed himself the examining magistrate, which meant that as well as exercising the familiar judicial prerogative of putting people in jail, he was responsible for collecting evidence and conducting investigations. In principle he had to gather all the facts relating to the death, weigh them up with proper objectivity, and determine whether a case should proceed. And he had decided to start by looking at some of the recent cases Judge Anwar had presided over, and interviewing the relevant people.
At the other end of the room the clerk had begun setting the desk in order. The overseer crossed the room towards Mujeeb Ali and Azhar. Mujeeb Ali took out a bunch of keys from his pocket, his thick index finger looped round the brass ring.
‘Everyone in the world, it seems, is talking about the judge-sahib’s murder,’ the overseer said as he drew close, ‘and those letters.’ He carried a stack of ledgers, narrow and thick, balanced on the top of which were rolls of banknotes secured with orange rubber-bands and several packets of coins. Now that his task had been completed he appeared less tense. ‘Most of these people’ — he nodded towards the street door — ‘have never received a letter in their lives, but today even they mentioned them.’
Azhar turned his back to the open window. ‘I have heard a journalist is coming from the capital in a day or two to write up the story of those letters.’
Mujeeb Ali and the overseer were walking away from him. The overseer said over his shoulder to Azhar, ‘A woman whose son ran away from home twenty years ago says she dreamt last night that one of the letters is going to be from him.’
Azhar lit a cigarette and turned back to the window. He glanced across the vast backyard paved with chessboard tiles. The town was at the confluence of two of the province’s five rivers and Mujeeb Ali’s house stood in sight of the eastern branch. The interfluvial plain was considered the richest agricultural land in the country. And here most of it — orchards, vineyards, cornfields, rice-paddies — belonged to the Alis. On three sides, Mujeeb Ali had reminded a gathering during the run-up to the last elections, you are surrounded by water and on the fourth side is my family’s land; so if you won’t support us I will drive you into the water.
Azhar flicked the cigarette on to the baking tiles and walked over to the other side of the room. The overseer and the clerk had taken their leave. Mujeeb Ali turned the key in the armoured cupboard embedded in the wall; a portrait of the Founder of the state hung above it.
‘I’ll start looking into the files when the courts open on Sunday,’ Azhar said. ‘I’ll be away till Saturday.’