China Room

by Sunjeev Sahota

  * * *

  *

  When I arrived back at my uncle’s house, I could hear Jai on the terrace but see only his shadow mounting the concrete wall. He was on the phone and appeared to have his hand cupping the back of his head, or maybe his neck. I carried on into my room and pulled out my rucksack, the empty bottles of Bagpiper rattling about inside. There was barely half a plastic tumbler’s worth between them. I heard Jai coming down the stairs.

  ‘How’s the family?’ he asked, as I zipped up the rucksack and kicked it back under the bed. He looked excited, full of impatience.

  ‘Good. Everything’s good. I might get myself something to eat in a bit.’

  ‘There’s some carrot-thing in the fridge. Help yourself. You do look better.’

  ‘I’m sorry for worrying you, Uncle. Thank you for taking care of me.’

  He batted the gratitude away and said all he’d done was give me a roof under which to beat the fever. ‘But I need to nip next door and then go see a client in Kapurthala. Finally some proper responsibility!’ He jiggled his wrist to get a look at his watch. ‘Your aunt’s out shopping . . .’

  I said nothing. Though I knew I should, I didn’t want to keep an eye on my cousin Sona. I wanted to head to the liquor store.

  ‘She’ll be back any minute now, I’m sure. Just sit with him?’

  I smiled. ‘Of course.’

  ‘You’ll be okay?’ He sounded uncertain himself now, which goaded me.

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ and after seeing him out the gate, I ascended the stairs, heel to toe, heel to toe, flinching with every step, and found my cousin sprawled across the huge bed in the living room, absorbed in a Hindi-dubbed version of Scooby-Doo. The fan stirred the hems of his camo-shorts.

  I sat on the end of the bed, which was high enough to leave my feet dangling, and I kept drumming my heels together, anxiously, impatiently. She’ll be back any minute now. Any minute now. Any minute. Now. She wasn’t.

  ‘Don’t make noise,’ Sona said, eyes tight on the screen, and I apologised and brought my knees up to my chin, tidying my feet away underneath myself. But that flared up some of the joint pain from the previous week and all at once I stood up.

  ‘We’re going out.’

  As promised, I gave him a piggyback, but within a couple of minutes he became as heavy as a horse and I had to persuade him to walk. He wasn’t fat, far from it, I simply had no strength. The bazaar was busy, mazy, and I felt his hand slip into mine as I tunnelled through. He didn’t say anything. He was quite an inward child, inevitably, perhaps, in the unhappy atmosphere of that house. Once through the bazaar, the ferocious heat hit us and the sun smashed into the white dome of the Sikh temple. I felt it as shards of painful light. The asphalt of the road was giving off rags of steam.

  ‘This way,’ I said, already pulling him along the sandy verge.

  ‘Are we nearly there?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I told him, though it was still several minutes of walking away. All the liquor stores were commanded to keep to the village boundary, away from ordinary decent folk.

  When we arrived I seated Sona on a concrete step in the thin shade of the wall, promising him an ice cream on the way back. I approached the grilled window, where the string-vested owner, I’ll never forget, was blinded in one eye. The eyeball was entirely white, pearlescent, save for two streaks of a very delicate red, like crosshairs. I asked for a peg of his cheapest and he handed it to me through the hatch. It smelled of vinegar and tasted worse, but it blunted my edges and slowed down my running, jerking mind.

  ‘Englandia?’ he said, when I asked to buy three bottles of the stuff.

  I nodded.

  ‘Where from you? I have family in Madeyhead.’ Maidenhead. I thought it strange that he’d switched to English when I’d been speaking smooth Punjabi to him beforehand. It was only later that I realised my speech during my entire withdrawal had been kicking off with a stammer, the sounds of a man whose body is in sharp revolt.

  ‘The north.’

  ‘Manchester?’

  ‘Aberdeen,’ I lied, to make the conversation stop.

  ‘Oh, I know Aberdeen! I work in Torry little time. Where you live?’

  I mumbled something about being near the football ground and before he could ask me which one, I grabbed my bag of jangling bottles and turned down the side of the store, where Sona had nodded off.

  ‘Come on, dude,’ I said.

  His arms were crossed over his small knees, and his head rested in the cushioned bend of his elbow. I put the bag down and lifted his face to mine, saying his name. His face had paled, he seemed floppy, wavy, his features zoned out and puddled. I screamed for water, for help, as my heart raced in an awful way.

  * * *

  *

  All evening, shut away in my room, I could hear my aunt shouting and my uncle trying desperately to calm her down, or at any rate to get her to lower her voice. The whole bazaar could hear.

  ‘Let them! Maybe someone out there can be the man you’re not. I knew I’d been married off to a fool, but I thought even you would have the sense not to put your son in danger.’

  ‘Kuku, please be sensible. What on earth will my sister think if I ask him to leave?’

  ‘Come look, everyone! Pity me, the wife of a eunuch! My foot slipped into the grave when I was married off to him!’

  ‘Kuku, you’re reaching my limit. Now please stop.’

  ‘Don’t you dare put your hands on me! Don’t you ever touch me!’

  ‘I’m your husband. I demand you show me that respect.’

  I flinched then, hearing a crack, and a collective gasp from onlookers gathered at the mouth of the bazaar. She would have slapped him, I knew that.

  By the time he came down the stairs, I’d packed my suitcase and had it ready at the foot of the bed, my rucksack resting on top.

  ‘You don’t have to go anywhere.’

  His eyes were the scrubbed red of someone who’d been crying and, dear lord, I wished there was something else I could do. I hooked up my rucksack. ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t look after Sona. I don’t know what else to say.’

  ‘Duggal says he’ll be fine. Mild sunstroke, nothing more. But don’t go, son. Please. She’ll calm down by the morning. I know what she’s like.’

  ‘I’ll call home tomorrow and let them know where I am. I’ll explain everything. Don’t worry.’

  ‘But where will you go? This is silly!’

  ‘I thought the farm? If it’s okay with you, can I go there?’ I’d been thinking about the place ever since he’d reminded me of it.

  He scrunched his brow, as if it took him a moment to work out which farm I meant. ‘Of course you can’t! There’s nothing there. On your own! How will you even eat?’

  I moved past him, wedging the door open with my foot as I waggled my case through, wheeling it across the uncovered passageway. I stopped at the gate to hug him.

  ‘Let’s call your parents,’ he said, breaking off the embrace.

  ‘I’m going to the farm.’

  ‘But why!’

  ‘The quiet. It’ll help me get better.’ I was craving solitude. ‘It’s only a few weeks. I am eighteen, you know.’

  ‘Old enough to be beyond this stubbornness. So much like your mother.’

  I had made it out into the bazaar, wondering who to ask for directions, when he called my name. I waited, making a visor of my hand, and watched him approach, his face growing more resigned with every step.

  ‘Once you’re over this fever-thing, you come straight back, yes?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  He shook his head. ‘Let me get us a car.’

  * * *

  *

  He borrowed a bank colleague’s battered white Maruti and sat in the passenger seat, directing me on to the back road, past the Hindu shrines and
the swamp, and out to a narrow and gruelling path through some wheat fields. The car had zero suspension and I worried for my bottles in the rucksack. The family farm, he told me, over the rattling havoc of the air-con, was nearly three kilometres from the house and had lain empty for many years, ever since they’d built the house in the village proper.

  ‘Stop here,’ he said, and I braked, though we were still on the path, with no farm – or any other building, for that matter – in sight. ‘Walking time,’ he explained, which was no real explanation.

  A little up ahead, we took a turning into such deep red sand that my trainers sank an inch with every step. I started to see a building, at first obscured by large plane trees, but then slowly, with a quality almost of shyness, it crept into view. It looked silent, neglected, all exposed yellow brick. The wheels of my case trailed snake-lines behind us, which disturbed me strangely, a feeling as if I was being followed, even watched, but when I turned back to face the house I felt an intimation that something here had been patiently waiting for years. Getting closer, I noticed patches of pale pink clinging to the yellow brickwork, and a blue barrel hovering as if in mid-air that had maybe once been a water tank. We came to a warped iron gate secured by a metal chain and a brass padlock as big as my palm.

  ‘But anyone could climb over, right?’ I said, moving to the wall, which was no higher than my head.

  I stood on my case and pulled myself up, my arms shaking with the strain. The drop on the other side was broken into two easy steps thanks to a large stone bath, empty and carpeted in soft green moss. I was in a courtyard of hard, compacted earth, the colour of peanuts, and in front of me the homestead curved round like a horseshoe, with its flat roof and its pillars of peeling paint. There looked to be some rooms at the back of the porch. I could make out darkened door-shapes, and to the sides as well, the left one seemingly a barn leading on to whatever was at the rear of the house. The room to my right, sitting apart from the main building, had a window, iron-barred. Jai landed beside me, just missing the water pump.

  ‘I’ll call a locksmith over tomorrow.’ He glanced around, looking depressed by what he saw. ‘Change your mind? It’s not too late.’

  ‘Let’s see how it goes.’

  He took a step forward and became animated, spreading his arms out wide. ‘I used to play cricket in this courtyard, you know. When I was little. All the time!’ By degrees, his grin dwindled. I imagine he felt a pang, a sadness for the dreamy boy who knew nothing of the sad little man he would become, because suddenly he seemed desperate to leave.

  ‘I should give the car back. Or shall I show you round?’

  ‘I’ll be fine. Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll send a boy round with a tiffin each day. If you want to get hold of me, just let him know. Is there anything else you need?’

  In one corner of the yard, pointedly away from the house, was a lopsided wooden cubicle. ‘Is that the toilet?’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, yes. But,’ he went on after a moment, perhaps remembering the constant shitting of the previous days, ‘we should have picked up some toilet paper. I’ll send some with the boy tomorrow. But it’s an old-style one, this toilet. Hand-flushing.’

  I worked the water pump, which still drew, albeit fitfully. ‘No worries.’

  ‘If it dries up, maybe try starting the well?’ He sounded unsure; he was a man with no practical ability, and I didn’t want to embarrass him by asking how I’d actually do that, so I simply nodded, and said I was sure it’d be fine. He seemed to sense my pity, because he said, a little viciously, ‘Surely a lucky foreign boy like you can work it out?’

  He climbed back over the wall, fumblingly threw my case over to me, and without much of a shout goodbye he got into the car. I heard him stall the engine twice, then finally get it going, and I stood there, my ears full of the car withdrawing, long after Jai would have reached his house, parked up and rejoined his wife.

  * * *

  *

  Night came all at once, like a cupboard door shutting, and I heaved out a charpoy, its frame cracked and loose and showing signs of woodworm, its weave so slack that it was more hammock than bed. I couldn’t find any utensils, no beaker or plate, and I didn’t want to drink neat from the bottle. I needed to make it last. So I unscrewed the top with its desi logo, poured a thimbleful of whisky and added water from the pump. It felt totally incongruous, trying to subdue my body’s cravings by sipping whisky with such daintiness, thumb and forefinger only, like one of those Chinese emperors and their miniature cups of tea.

  The moon was out, a button of light, and the stars shone dully. I’d switched my jumper for a T-shirt and felt a small breeze crawl off the surrounding fields and across my skin. I was sitting awkwardly, my elbows bent on my knees in a way that hid the undersides of my forearms. Beyond the wall, the plane trees were black and frighteningly tall. My phone was at my side. There was no signal, of course, but the green light was useful. I wasn’t sure how I’d cope once it died. And maybe it was the light that attracted the mosquitoes, because soon enough they came for me, one by one at first, and then a near swarm biting my legs. They find foreign, whiter flesh sweeter, I’d been told many times, as if I were an apple beneath their keen little teeth. I stood, slapping at my arms, my neck, scratching at my calf with the heel of my other leg. They forced me into the porch, and there I sat with my back against a pillar, the bottle on the floor.

  I drank five more thimblefuls, neat, then, fortified, decided to see what was beyond each of the three doors. None of them were locked and I went from room to room: charpoys strewn here and there; an old-looking cupboard, the oval mirror cracked, the whole silver-webbed and filthy. Empty metal chests. More charpoys. Some earthenware inkpots. A hookah with a deflated balloon attached to its pipe. A child’s cot, one side of it broken. A few tins of Ovaltine and a small pile of animal bones. There was a hole smashed low into a wall and, tilting my phone face down, I saw that the greenlit floors were splattered with animal shit.

  Back outside, I dragged my charpoy-hammock from the courtyard and dropped it under the porch. I’d just have to stay here. I didn’t think I’d need any more alcohol. Things felt nicely muddled, though complicated by waves of guilt over Sona. How stupid. Selfish and stupid. I lay flat on my back and the muscles in my stomach strained, a hurt that felt closer to pleasure because the cramps had started to soften out. I thought I might even get some sleep, that perhaps the new surroundings were helping. But just as my eyes were beginning to close, bats flared out of one of the rooms; I covered my face and felt a rush of furred and flapping air as the excited colony swooped over me. Shaken, I got to my feet and had another swig of whisky, this time straight from the bottle. No, I didn’t want to sleep in the porch. A toad croaked somewhere in the fields. Was there anyone between me and the main village? How far was it – about as far as the town centre was from the shop back home? Not that far, but enough to feel very alone; enough to feel as if that was all the world there was and would ever be. I considered my options. The barn stank of peat and sulphur. The only other room was the small one with the iron-barred window, adjacent to the porch but not part of it. Three bolts, deep in rust, ran across the top, middle and bottom of the door, and however hard I tried they wouldn’t give. Behind the room, though, a set of stairs led to the roof. I carried my charpoy and my cheap whisky up and stood there, alone, on the roof of a nameless farm beyond the outskirts of a village that was, in turn, at least a twelve-hour drive from the nearest city anyone would have heard of.

  * * *

  *

  I got some sleep to begin with, that night, though I wasn’t sure how much because at some point my phone died. The cramps and the dry heaving and the shin pains then restarted, not debilitatingly, nor even painfully compared with what had already passed, but enough to prevent any further rest. I hauled myself from the sagging well of a bed and swung my legs on to the ground, which was still warm with heat. I’d just have t
o push through these nights. There couldn’t be many more of them; surely soon my body would let me be? For the hell of it, I stretched myself out along the very rim of the charpoy’s frame, balancing my long, thin body in line with the wooden beam, pushed up on to my hand, and counted. It was a game I’d played on previous trips to India, when the noonday sun would compel us all inside. Back then, I could count to well over 100, but now I hadn’t even made it to double digits when my strength gave and my elbow buckled and I and the cot collapsed. Laughing, I moved to the low wall that edged the roof. What was I doing here? This place held the kind of silence that could send a man mad. A brooding, hot, paranoid, creeping silence, full of imagined sounds and nothing noises: was that the creak of a tree or a tiger’s low growl? A gurgle of the water tank or a viper’s approaching rattle?

  As the night started to lift, it left a lead-grey mistiness hanging over the unhedged fields. In the distance, among the wheat, were greener shapes; I knew them to be rectangles of paddy and local rice but from where I was standing they appeared as green and as flat as any field in England. I could see myself running through those fields, twelve years old; I could see the green on my estate and myself running to my friend’s house with fluttery excitement in my stomach. I wore a lilac Ben Sherman shirt, which I untucked as soon as I exited our shop, and in my hand was an enveloped birthday card with ten pounds folded inside it. At the pub, I turned right on to the main road and up the steep hill. I hated walking up this road, or up any road round here. I was always being stared at, my presence noted and remarked upon for its rarity in this town. My head was down. I refused to look up. I can’t remember ever looking up as a child without immediately feeling as if I had no right and should look away. I turned right again, down an alley, and a few moments later walked up a concrete path and knocked on a side entrance of corrugated plastic, because no one ever used their front doors. I checked my collar – look neat, look neat – and saw a big shape approach, blurred as a bear until the door opened. It was Spencer’s dad. I’d never met him before but over time I came to learn that he was a former miner who now stacked shelves in Morrisons. He only did nights, because he couldn’t face the public shame of being reduced to that line of work. Every other Saturday he forwent his own lunch and dinner so he might still afford to take his sons to the football. A deeply proud man brought to his bitter knees. Fifteen years later, dementia-raddled, all he’d talk about were his friends down the pit. But none of that could mean a thing to a twelve-year-old boy horribly aware of what was signalled by the change in this man’s face when he pulled open the door.