China Room

by Sunjeev Sahota

  Suraj smiles, very deliberately. ‘Why can’t you go?’

  There’s a controlled look of difficulty on Jeet’s face, a sharpening of his triangular jawline. ‘Don’t be a child. Now go.’ He starts to walk away, towards the back chamber.

  ‘Got what you want, didn’t you?’ Suraj blurts. ‘Mother and son sewed it up so it all worked out nicely. For you.’

  Jeet turns but doesn’t meet his eyes. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘What does she look like, anyway?’

  ‘That’s no way for you to speak about her.’

  ‘That was no way for a brother to behave.’

  Jeet groans angrily, then steps to the gate, where the cumbersome process of unlocking it sounds obscenely loud at this hour.

  ‘The swamp flooded so maybe go via the lower market,’ Suraj advises, as Jeet takes the bicycle from where it rests against the wall and rides shakily off.

  One hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred, he counts, barely working his lips and standing unmoving in the yard, in the moon. The sun in the moon. He looks about him, from the quiet of the barn to the charpoys stowed upright under the veranda, their long round legs like rifles, all the way across to the china room, shuttered in silence. He’d skipped over the double-doors at the rear of the porch. Now, he walks towards them, applies his hand to the flaking paint and steals inside, to where Mehar has been instructed to wait for her husband.

  * * *

  *

  She is careful not to display her joy when, for a change, he doesn’t sit up and leave in the moments after he has finished. Instead, he lies there, and she imagines his nape snug against the tubular cushion, his eyes open and fixed to the ceiling. Sorrowful eyes, she remembers. He has one hand in his hair and the bony point of his elbow is right by her forehead, not quite touching. She convinces herself she can see it.

  ‘Mujhe tumse kuch baat karni hai.’ I’d like to have a word with you. And so formal!

  She feels her eyes widen. She smiles. ‘I’d be honoured.’

  There’s a shifting in the darkness as he turns on to his side, towards her. She waits, eyes lowered, her wrist starting to ache under her cheek. When he finds and touches her face, by her chin, lightly, tenderly, with just one finger, in a way she never thought her husband would ever touch her, she feels her lips part and hears her own breath, warm and thick. She wonders if he can hear it too, and he thinks that he can, and then he is sure of it, of the feel of it on his wrist as he strokes her face, her eyes, the skin around her nose-gem, opening up his hand to take in the full sweep of her beautiful lambent cheek. He trails his thumb down her arms, releasing her hand from under her face and kissing her palm, licking it. He can feel the rush in his blood, the clamour and the desire, and knows he can’t say anything now. The baat, the word, will have to wait. And he is gorging on her brown-tipped nipples and her hands are tugging at the loose turban of his hair and their ache for each other is like a real thing that can be touched and smelled and, it must surely be said, heard.

  16

  The sun lances in through the slats and Mehar leans her hip on the stone slab of the counter, her face held in the heel of one hand and her elbow cupped in the other. She looks asleep, and she might be, or might have been, but she seems aware of Gurleen’s fidgety intemperance. The kettle is put down too hard. The carrots sliced too deliberately. Dreamily, Mehar pushes her mind past all this and to the sound of the teacher humming on his way home. She must have seen him before, walking the track behind their room, because she is sure of his large stomach, of his spectacles and blue turban and scruffy beard, the brown satchel of exercise books hooked over his shoulder. She listens to his lovely humming until she can no longer even imagine that she can hear it. She opens her eyes. Gurleen hauls a large rattan basket up on to the counter and impales one of the aubergines with her knife. Mehar, swallowing a smile, makes a start on the evening dough.

  After the men have been fed, she collects the last of the dishes from the courtyard, and though behind the house the sun is sinking, under her veil everything is light-filled, the air full of that exquisite sense of a long day falling towards its end. Inside the china room, Gurleen is squatting on the floor, running the dirty plates through a tub of sudsy water.

  ‘Some more, sister,’ Mehar says, adding to the pile.

  Gurleen, her face set hard, slaps down the wet rag and leaves, claiming she left some chillies on the roof.

  Mehar takes over at the tap. ‘Is she okay? All day she’s been cross.’

  Saying nothing, Harbans brings a cleaver down on a frantic mouse that’s been ravaging their grain. She winces as the warm blood spurts, then, lowering her veil, she foots open the door and casts the two grungy pieces into the field. She hears them land in the reedy grass, sees a kestrel already circling overhead, then lets the door swing shut, nudging Mehar aside to wash the stringy blood from her hands.

  ‘Can’t you do that at the pump?’ Mehar says, annoyed.

  ‘Her husband. He’s not been asking for her,’ Harbans says, in a measured tone, as if choosing her words carefully. ‘She’s worried.’

  Mehar offers her a cloth to dry her hands. ‘You know, I thought it might be something like that. Poor thing. They never think of us.’

  ‘Were you visited last night?’ Harbans asks, accepting a bowl that needs putting away. ‘By your husband?’

  ‘Hmm? Yes. Why?’

  ‘No reason. It’s nothing. You know what a fool Gurleen can be. But last night she overheard two of the men talking.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Then one of them cycled away.’

  ‘They come and go as they please. Barely a care to their name.’

  Mehar hands across the last plate, but when she stands she sees that there are tears on Harbans’ cheeks.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Nothing. I feel for her, is all.’ She pulls Mehar close, and holds her as though she fears never seeing her again. ‘I’m sure it’ll sort itself out.’

  17

  By then, in the high summer of 1929, there was talk throughout the state that revolutionaries were going from village to village, farm to farm, taking by force valuables that weren’t offered willingly. Some said to give to those made destitute by British foreign policy. Others to fund the purchase of ammunition for the Free India movement. Either way, Mai decided she’d better make her annual pilgrimage to Amritsar while she could, before men on camels blocked the roads and things got too dicey to travel. She would take Jeet and be away for six days.

  On each of these nights Mehar steals away to the fields, where the wheat is now tall, where Suraj waits. It is his idea that they leave the farm and meet underneath the stars.

  One night, she brings the pearls and holds them high against the black sky, as if placing a garland around the moon. How small it all is, she thinks. What a brocade we make of life.

  ‘Why fetch them?’ Suraj asks.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’ve got used to them. You got them for me.’

  He releases her from his hold and rolls on to his back. ‘Mumbo-jumbo rubbish. Put them away.’

  She lies there quietly, defying him, watching the patterns above. Then she shakes her salwar and slides it back on.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, I think I will.’ It is their third night in a row like this and she knows she can get away with saying all sorts of things now. Knows also that she enjoys some control over her husband.

  ‘Once more?’ he says.

  She laughs. ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he repeats, sighing.

  ‘We’re lucky we can be together.’ She wants to say something more. She wants to share something of her own world with him, to draw him closer into her ordinary concerns. ‘Not everyone is blessed. My poor sister – she is so upset.’

  ‘Upse
t?’ he says, turning his face away.

  ‘It’s Gurleen.’ She wonders whether to carry on – might he think her trivial, in some way? – and then she does: ‘Your brother hasn’t wanted her company for many days now. Perhaps he’s going elsewhere. To the city.’

  Suraj nods. The dark. The bats snapping through the dark. The whole wide and dark world.

  ‘She may well speak to Mai as soon as she’s back.’

  Let that day not come, he thinks. Asks: ‘And when is she back?’

  He says ‘she’ with such heavy distaste it makes Mehar smile. He can be such an old woman sometimes. ‘Two-three days? Is it six temples she’s visiting?’

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘I guess He’ll be hearing her prayers for grandsons.’ Then: ‘I hope children come but not too soon. Don’t you?’

  He doesn’t know. Doesn’t want to speak or think about anything any more. Wants only to enjoy these next few days with her and then he’ll confess. Somehow, somehow.

  ‘Which of your brothers is hers?’ She feels able to ask this extraordinary question now. He won’t mind. He knows the question conceals nothing sinister about her wifely character. But mind he does:

  ‘What business is it of yours to think about other men?’

  He speaks with such anger that it ignites a flame of injustice inside her. She stands and he flips to his knees, reaches for her wrist and coaxes her back down. He hasn’t expected to have poured so much of himself into her hands.

  ‘So tomorrow?’ he asks again.

  Her front teeth rest on her lower lip and moonlight breaks over the parting in her hair. Even her ears are beautiful. How can ears be beautiful? She was made for him, for him to own, of this he is certain, and certain too that he would trample over his own grave to possess her.

  ‘I’d like that,’ she says and the simplicity of her words, the way they connect to the honesty of her face, rouses a shame that stokes his desire and forces his heart to augment, as if it were making room for a new kind of emotion.

  She doesn’t veil her face and they talk in a low, laughing undertone all the way home, until Suraj hangs back behind the gate and she continues through.

  ‘Sisters!’ Mehar whispers, slipping inside the china room. ‘You asleep?’

  ‘Just get in,’ Harbans replies, and Mehar lowers herself on to the charpoy, checking that the noisy anklet bells she’d taken off are still there, under the pillow.

  18

  There was a moment when Mehar had been about to tell Harbans that the brother sitting on the chair was her husband. But before she could get the words out, Harbans covered her ears, saying she didn’t want to know, didn’t need to know.

  ‘So you know which is yours?’ Mehar asked.

  ‘Please. Stop. It’ll all be fine. It’ll all be fine.’ Mehar nodded, turned back to the slatted window, perplexed. She assumed Harbans must be having marital difficulties, but when she tried to talk to Gurleen about this, she too turned immediately away.

  ‘Don’t talk to me about the men,’ she said, blustering off with an armful of kindling. Mehar, shaking her head, followed with the patties and together they got the mud-oven going, for Mai was returning from her pilgrimage and everything had to be made fresh.

  ‘But are you going to speak to her about your husband?’ Mehar asks, tentatively, and when Gurleen doesn’t reply, Mehar touches her arm and tells her not to worry.

  * * *

  *

  That evening, once Mai arrives with Jeet and her younger sons have touched her feet and everyone is fed and out of the yard, Gurleen approaches her mother-in-law, asking for a word alone. Mehar watches from the window as Mai reluctantly rises from her charpoy and leads Gurleen into her room. Left with the empty courtyard, where the moon on the ground glimmers brokenly, like a shoal of ghostly fish, Mehar feels confusion pulling her under. She never thought Gurleen, or Harbans, or any of them, would be brave enough, brazen enough, to criticise Mai’s son directly to Mai’s face. That Gurleen is doing exactly this unnerves her, as if the rules of the cosmos are being challenged. When Gurleen returns, Mehar asks, ‘How did she take it? Will she tell him to treat you better?’ But once again she doesn’t respond. There has undoubtedly been something strange in her sisters’ behaviour of late. A certain atmosphere in the room, an exchange of freighted glances. Mehar explains away these moments – distant husbands, the struggles of conception – and almost wills herself to leave the matter be.

  * * *

  *

  It is long past midnight when Mehar is woken by what sounds like anger, and when she rises to the window and pushes down the slat, she sees one of the brothers emerge from Mai’s room and stand in the porch, hitting the wall again and again. Ah, Gurleen’s husband, Mehar thinks unsympathetically. He must have got a lashing from his mother.

  19

  Suraj had not confessed to Mehar, the night before Mai’s return. As Mehar shook the crud from her slippers and stood to leave, he had stood up too, full of a sudden energy he didn’t know how to dispense. She’d looked surprised.

  ‘You’re like a bag of weasels.’

  ‘It’s nothing. I’m just thinking.’ On some level, he seemed to realise that if he were to confess now it would be the end of it, her trauma and rage would ensure that nothing salvageable could remain; but if she found out in the house, surrounded by the rest of the family, she’d have to submerge her anger and perhaps, in its stead, whatever grew might be more likely to bend towards him. ‘When will I have you again?’ he asked despairingly.

  She smiled, a look of puzzlement that seemed almost maternal in its affection. ‘Back to normal.’

  He nodded and didn’t say much on the walk home. Yes, better that she works it out for herself, but better for whom, he doesn’t dare wonder; he just waits. He lies on his charpoy at night and he waits, for as soon as she is told that her husband wants to spend the night with her it will all be over. He imagines her lying in the back room when Jeet enters. Will she know from his first touch, now she’s become so familiar with his own? Will she push him away, demanding he get out at once? She will not shout; of that he is certain. She will not draw attention to this aspect of life. He prays she does not say anything that might reveal their secret, for her own sake. That thought he finds unbearable. So he lies there wide awake, night after night, in silent and dreadful anticipation, waiting to hear his brother rise from his charpoy, which is mere yards from Suraj’s own, and cross the courtyard. Except that he doesn’t. His brother only sleeps, his dark form curled away towards the wall. Twice Jeet did get up, on consecutive nights, and each time Suraj stared at the damp ceiling, his stomach a torrid knot as he swallowed with difficulty and refused to let the tears slide out of his eyes. But Jeet only ever went as far as the water pump, taking a drink before returning to their room, and as he lay back on his bed, Suraj could have hated him for not putting him out of this misery. So it is almost a relief when, one morning, Mai calls him from where she is fanning herself on her charpoy, enjoying the shade of the wide porch. In the barn, Suraj removes his dhol from around his neck and comes out into the yard.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘My pet,’ she says, beckoning, and he crosses the dusty square, stopping a foot or so away. ‘Sit. Sit with your old mother awhile.’

  Warily, he does. She must want something. His head is lowered, his long fingers threaded loosely together to bridge the thin struts of his knees.

  ‘Why is my boy so sad these days? Is that any way for a man of this family to behave?’

  ‘Would you prefer it if I got drunk, gambled half our land away and then hanged myself?’

  ‘You remind me of him in so many ways.’

  ‘And you never miss a chance to tell me.’

  ‘How angry!’

  She is spinning the fan so fast, the flies at their feet seem to be playing in its breeze. They hover, then land across her
toes. Hover. And land. Hover. And land. Her smile brings out the fine embroidery of her face, the delicate wrinkles glistening with sweat.

  ‘You’ve got to go to the city and order me three salwar kameez. Make sure they’re in the Patiala style. And saffron-khalsa colours. In case those thieving revolutionaries come. We want to look pious, no? You know Munim’s store, in Anarkali?’

  ‘What do I know about women’s clothes? Stick your arse in a cart and go yourself.’

  ‘Happily, if I could trust my daughters-in-law to manage things here,’ she says, loud enough for them to hear in their room. ‘A few days I was away and I’m still sorting out the mess. Who leaves flour out uncovered, I ask you, eh, who?’ Then, back to her son: ‘Off you go. The cart’s free, take it.’

  ‘Talk sense, woman.’

  ‘You’ll be back in time for roti.’

  ‘I’m not doing your shopping!’

  ‘My days! Normally fires in hell can’t keep you from the city. Take your wife, then. Go on.’

  There is a commotion in the china room, which soon dies down.

  ‘Take what?’ he says, the breath falling out of him.

  ‘Why, your wife, child, who else? Take her. But don’t pay him.’ She points the fan at Suraj; the flies all land at once. ‘The scoundrel will keep us waiting months otherwise.’

  He stands and moves to the gate.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘The cart.’

  ‘Take your wife, I said. Even better, if she’s with you, you can get one or two more things. For their room. Bowls and whatnot.’ Then: ‘There’s no need to look like someone’s shat in your shoe. I’ll explain it all to her. Go fetch her, go on.’

  ‘I’ll be fine on my own. Quicker.’

  ‘You won’t know the stores. Just go and call her.’

  ‘On my own. I’ll be fine.’ Heat prickles up his neck, horribly.