by Frank Wynne
I once entertained the thought of changing my occupation; is it possible that I am incapable of doing the kinds of work that other women do? Granted that I’m not qualified to be a teacher, a nurse, or a secretary or clerk in an office building, but does that mean I can’t work as a saleswoman in a shop, or sell bakery products, or even be a maid in someone’s home? A woman like me needs only a roof over her head and three square meals a day, so there must be some place I could fit in. Honestly speaking, with my skills I could easily find work as a cosmetician for brides-to-be, but the very thought that lips I was applying color to could open to reveal a smile stops me cold. What would be going through my mind at a time like that? Too many memories keep me from working at that occupation, which is so similar to the one I have now. I wonder, if I did change jobs, would the color return to my pale face and hands? Would the smell of formaldehyde that has penetrated to my very bones completely disappear? And what about the job I have now, should I keep Xia completely in the dark about it? Hiding the past from a loved one is dishonest, even though there are countless girls in the world who will do anything to cover up their loss of chastity and the authentic number of years they have lived. But I find people like that despicable. I would have to tell Xia that for a long time I had done cosmetic work on the sleeping bodies of the deceased. Then he would know and would have to acknowledge what sort of woman I am. He’d know that the unusual odor on my body is not perfume but formaldehyde, and that the reason I wear white so often is not symbolic of purity but a means of making it more convenient for going to and coming from work. But all of this is as significant as a few drops of water in a vast ocean. Once Xia learns that my hands often touch the bodies of the deceased, will he still be willing to hold my hand as we cross a fast-flowing stream? Will he let me cut his hair for him, or tie his tie? Will he be able to bear my gazing intently at him? Will he be able to lie down in my presence without fear? I think he will be afraid, extremely afraid, and like all my friends, his initial shock will turn into dislike and then fear, and he will turn away from me. Aunt Yifen once said: There can be no fear where love is concerned. But I know that although what many people call love is unyielding and indomitable on the surface, it is actually extraordinarily fragile and pliable; puffed-up courage is really nothing but a layer of sugar-coating. Aunt Yifen said to me: Maybe Xia is not a timid person. That’s one of the reasons why I never went into detail with him about my occupation. Naturally, another reason was that I’m not very good at expressing myself, and maybe I’d botch what I wanted to say, or I’d distort what I hoped to express to him by choosing the wrong place or time or mood. My not making it clear to Xia that it is not brides-to-be whom I make up is, in actuality, a sort of test: I want to observe his reaction when he sees the subjects I work on. If he is afraid, then he’ll just have to be afraid. If he turns and flees, then I’ll just tell my sleeping friends: Nothing really ever happened at all.
Can I see how you work?
He asked.
That shouldn’t be a problem.
I said.
So here I am, sitting in the corner of a coffee shop waiting for Xia to arrive.
I spent some of this time carefully thinking things over: Maybe I’m not being fair to Xia by doing it this way. If he feels frightened by the work I do, is that his fault? Why should he be more courageous than the others? Why does there have to be any relationship between a fear of the dead and timidity where love is concerned? The two may be totally unrelated. My parents died while I was still young, and I was reared by Aunt Yifen. Both my younger brother and I were orphans. I don’t know very much about my parents, and the few things I have learned were told to me later by Aunt Yifen. I remember her telling me that my father was a cosmetician for the deceased before he married my mother. When they were making their plans to get married, he asked her: Are you afraid? No, I’m not, she said. I believe that the reason I’m not afraid is that I take after my mother—her blood flows in my veins. Aunt Yifen said to me that my mother lives on in her memory because of what she had once said: I’m not afraid, and love is the reason. Perhaps that’s why my mother lives on in my memory too, however faintly, even though I can no longer recall what she looked or sounded like. But I believe that just because she was my mother and that she said that love had kept her from being afraid does not mean that I have the right to demand the same attitude of everyone else. Maybe I ought to be hardest on myself for accepting my fate from the time I was a child and for making this occupation that others find so hard to accept my life’s work. Men everywhere like women who are gentle, warm, and sweet, and such women are expected to work at jobs that are intimate, graceful, and elegant. But my job is cold and ghostly dark, and I’m sure that my entire body has long been tainted by that sort of shadowy cast. Why would a man who exists in a world of brightness want to be friendly with a woman surrounded by darkness? When he lies down beside her, could he avoid thinking that this is a person who regularly comes into contact with cadavers, and that when her hands brush up against his skin, would that remind him that these are hands that for a long time have rubbed the hands of the dead? Ai! Ai! A woman like me is actually unsuitable for any man’s love. I think that I myself am to blame for all that has happened, so why don’t I just get up and leave and return to my workplace; I have never known anyone by the name of Xia, and he will forget that he once had such a woman for a friend, a cosmetician who made up the faces of brides-to-be. But it’s probably too late for that now. I see him there through the window, crossing the street and walking this way. What’s that in his hand? What a large bouquet of flowers! What’s the occasion? Is it someone’s birthday? I see him enter the coffee shop; he spots me sitting in this shadowy corner. The sun is shining brightly outside, and he has brought some of it in with him, for the sun’s rays are reflected off of his white shirt. He is just like his name, Xia—eternal summer.
Hey, happy Sunday!
He says.
These flowers are for you.
He says.
He is so happy. He sits down and has a cup of coffee. We have had so many happy days together. But what is happiness, after all? Happiness is fleeting. There is such sadness in my heart. From here it is only a walk of three hundred paces before we arrive at my workplace. After that the same thing will happen that happened years ago. A man will come flying through that door as though his very soul had taken leave of him, and he will be followed by the eyes of the curious until he disappears from view. Aunt Yifen said: Maybe somewhere there is a man of true courage who is unafraid. But I know that this is just an assumption, and when I saw Xia crossing the street heading this way, a huge bouquet of flowers in his hand, I already knew, for this was truly a bad omen. Ai! Ai! A woman like me is actually unsuitable for any man’s love; perhaps I should say to my sleeping friends: Aren’t we all the same, you and I? The decades fly by in the blink of an eye, and no matter what the reason, there’s no need for anyone to shock anyone else out of their senses. The bouquet of flowers Xia brought into the coffee shop with him is so very, very beautiful; he is happy, but I am laden with grief. He doesn’t know that in our profession flowers symbolize eternal parting.
DEAD LETTER
Khalida Husain
Translated from the Urdu by Amina Azfar
Khalida Husain (1938–). Born and educated in Lahore, Khalida Asghar studied Urdu at the Punjab University Oriental College. Her first short story, “The Wagon,” was published in 1963. Having published a number of highly-praised short stories, she vanished from the Urdu literary world after her marriage. In 1967, she and her husband moved to Karachi. It was only twelve years later, in 1977 that she once again began to publish, under her married name Khalida Husain. She has since published several anthologies of short stories, some of which have been translated into English and Hindi. Husain has taught in several Pakistani universities and now lives in Islamabad.
1
How should I address you? I thought hard about this, and finally put down the image of
you that I carry in my mind at the head of this letter. What else can one mean to another human being with whom one has spent just a few days? No doubt, when you think of me you too can see nothing but a short blank line. Anyway, it is my duty to inform you that I have arrived, and am looking for a house here. As soon as I have found a suitable place I will send for you; rather, I’ll come and fetch you.
This is a strange city. You could call it an unfeeling city. Everybody is busy with his own affairs. I find this a trait common to all cities; but though they are all busy in their own world, city dwellers also block one another’s path. What are those paths, you would want to know, and you are right to ask that. I have not understood to this day what those paths are on which we move forward, and how others block our destination. No doubt we too blight the destination of others in the same way. Perhaps I too have barred your path—like a black cat. Who knows?
We could learn nothing about one another in the few days we were together. A few days are quite insignificant; people spend a lifetime together and still don’t understand each other’s language. This is what happened with my parents: they lived together for fifty years, yet they spoke different tongues. The thought makes me feel better, for it shows that a few days together may be no different than many years spent in one another’s company: both become just a moment in a lifeless acknowledgement of another’s presence.
And then, we hardly know what to expect from one another. You probably know nothing about my preferences in food, in dress, or my favourite authors. And I? What do I know of your… But let’s forget all that. I’ll inform you when I’ve found a house.
2
I am going to stop getting into this rigmarole of how to address you. Even the short blank line is beginning to fade. It’s my old weakness, perhaps an innate shortcoming, that if I try hard to hold something in my mind it becomes slippery, fades, and eludes my grasp. And anyway, what use would it be for me to try to keep you in my mind when I am hundreds of miles away?
In my last letter I mentioned that looking for a house was a strange experience. Most probably you have never had the experience, because house hunting is a man’s job, not a woman’s. The houses that one sees! Empty houses to which the odour of former occupants still clings, and their shades hang like cobwebs from the doors and windows; the rustle of departed souls obstructs at every step. Who knows who the people were that lived in these houses, how they lived there and why they left; how many breathed their last there and how many drew their first breath within these walls? Those are my thoughts as I look at the dirty or clean walls, at the empty cupboards and at the gaping ventilators.
Either I don’t look like a reliable person, or house rents have soared for no particular reason. But the outcome is that when I hear the sum that is being demanded, I am silenced. I have seen dozens of houses by now. All I do every day I am off from work is to read the house ads in the newspapers and then ply the streets of the city on my scooter. Now it has come to this that I often forget where I am going and for what purpose, and I am left with the feeling that I’ve been wandering on those streets for centuries. And then, somewhere at the back of my mind a faded short blank line comes floating in, and then I think of you. Who are you, I think, and what links you to me? Have you ever thought about our relationship? Your letters don’t reach me because I don’t have a permanent address, I move from one hotel to another. Sometimes, judging me to be a homeless outsider, friends take me to their house and keep me there for a couple of days. Anyway, you probably get my letters regularly since your address will never change.
I think women have permanent addresses which change no more than once in a lifetime. Even if they do change people don’t accept them and keep writing to the same address as before. No doubt all those letters reach the dead letter office. Have you ever thought about the dead letter office? It is a strange department indeed. All those letters which are not addressed to anyone, or whose addressees do not exist, probably lie there rotting. You can think of it as a kind of graveyard for letters.
Anyhow, I was supposed to be talking about the house I am looking for. How far I have drifted from the point! But that is how I’ve become in my daily life as well—I drift far away from my starting point and forget why I am where I have got to.
Sometimes I wonder what I will do on my days off if I succeed in finding a house. Then, I think that if that happened, of course I would send for you. But then what kind of routine would my life have afterward? The truth is that I have never shared my time, activities, my room or my bathroom with anyone, and now I find it very strange to do so. When I spent those few days with you I realized with amazement that one has to share everything with another person. The experience was partly pleasant but mostly sickening. Forgive me, you probably hate what I am saying. But I think you must have felt the same way. We all have our own way of doing things—of falling asleep, waking up, breathing. Those few days I spent reflecting how different your way of breathing was from mine. And the dreams you were dreaming while you lay beside me were inaccessible to me. Nor could you knock and come into the dreams that I was dreaming. But despite this we continued to share our sleep. The fact is that it is impossible to do away with boundaries; because it is boundaries that separate one being from another and allow each to be a distinct entity. Without these dividing lines the whole world would be a mush, a strange runny mush in which you and I, all humanity, beasts, birds and plants, rocks and stones would float around uselessly.
So that is what sharing life is like, and what it amounts to.
3
What shall I write? For a long time I have been twirling the pen between my fingers. Its nib is old and worn out. Yes, so I was telling you that I am looking for a house—a house I can rent, a house in which I can live with you. It seems I’ve been house hunting for a long time because now I forget the purpose for which I keep wandering on the streets. When people in the office ask me, ‘Why do you keep wandering about all day? Haven’t you had enough of sightseeing in all these years?’ I remember that of course it is for a serious purpose that I am out on the streets; I am house hunting. And yes, I haven’t told anyone here about you. No particular reason; I just didn’t feel like telling them. I think that if they knew, the people at the office would ask me all kinds of questions about you, and they would speculate how you and I had lived together. It would be sickening! (Yes, I do tend to use this word a lot these days.) You had said you would send me the photographs when they were developed. But of course since I have no permanent address where can you send them? And then sending photographs is risky, for often they do not arrive at their destination, and do not reach the person (in this case me) they are meant for. And listen, if those people knew about us they might ask me your name. I believe people have fine names. What name can I give you? Often I fall asleep thinking about this. I wonder what your family thinks of me? They probably wonder what kind of a man I am since I have not even been able to find a house to live in. But listen, the truth is that after all these years I have finally found a house.
I am sure you must be happy to hear this, very happy indeed. But I am not happy. As a matter of fact I am in a strange quandary. The way I found this house was quite bizarre. Yesterday was a holiday and as usual I looked up the papers for advertisements of houses to let and rode off on my scooter to look for them. These days I’ve been living in a small room on the eleventh floor of a hotel. When I come back from office in the evening, dusk has already fallen. I look down from the window at toy people, toy cars. All those toy things seem to be running this way and that, and I am amazed at how busy they are. Then the street lights come on, the streets sparkle, and I feel as though I am dreaming. So you see, one way of spending one’s life is to spend it watching others. What do you think? But I know nothing of your views.
Anyway, so I found a house. It happened this way: Yesterday being a holiday, I set out on my house hunt and arrived at this house. When I rang the doorbell a woman looked down from the upper floor. Before
I could tell her why I was there she smiled and said, ‘Come in, the door is open.’ I pushed the door slightly and it opened. It was dark inside and I could just see a staircase leading up. I climbed up, groping at the walls on the two sides of the stairway. Suddenly there were no more stairs, and she stood before me.
‘The bulb here has gone out. This room, up here, is vacant. It has a small balcony, a kitchen, a bathroom, and also a storeroom. I occupy the two rooms downstairs. Don’t worry about the rent. You can give me whatever you can afford.’
When I looked at her in astonishment she laughed. She looked strange when she laughed, like someone in a dark, anguished dream.
‘But I can pay very little,’ I said, stroking my hair out of habit.
‘I said the rent is not a problem. All I want is someone who will look after these rooms permanently.’ And then she asked me an unseemly question, ‘How come your hair has turned gray so early?’
‘Hair?’ I had never thought about my hair. So that’s how long the house hunting had taken.
