The Black Coat

by Neamat Imam

  He dragged his feet towards the door, slowly. I watched him with amazement and anger and waited for him to stop. I counted: one, two, three; expected him to change his mind and sit down, saying he was teasing me, it was a joke, just a joke. Why on earth would he go back to the place that he had most willingly left behind? He did not stop. I rose and then jumped upon him with an inconceivable lunacy. I snatched his bag, threw it on the sofa, ran to the main door and closed it. ‘You cannot leave,’ I said; ‘no way, not now, not until we are done with each other.’ He knew it, but he stood still, more troubled than me, more troubled than ever, and did not find any words to dispute mine. ‘I’ll tell you what to do with yourself,’ I said. ‘I know exactly what you need to do.’ I pushed him back, until he was in his room, on the bed. Then I closed the door and locked it hurriedly.

  He said he felt suffocated and asked me to open the door. ‘Are you listening to me?’ Though he had lived in that room for months now, suddenly it had become too small for him. He could not breathe. There was not enough air there. ‘What a clown!’ I thought. Then he screamed my name and kicked the door.

  ‘Khaleque Biswas,’ he said. ‘Look at yourself. Take a very good look at yourself. What do you see?’

  He was getting desperate to get free. His kicks were getting stronger and stronger, I noticed. But the moment I feared the door would break down, he stopped kicking. A silence descended over the flat. I was exasperated, but I did not move, fearing he might start kicking again once he knew I was there, just outside the door, afraid of him. He got tired, probably, or was planning some trick. Or perhaps he did not notice how close he had come to breaking out. Whatever it was, I was ready for him. I knew exactly what I would do if he came out and attacked me. I had a steel shovel under the sofa. It had been there for a long time. A perfect tool to face an intruder; any intruder, known or unknown, who jumped into my world unexpectedly and shattered my peace; who damaged or intended to damage my property. Intruders are intruders—always enemies, never friends. One hit on the head would do it. I was not afraid to see blood after all the horrible deaths I had seen. Let there be blood. No madness comes to an end without some bloodshed. No stillness is ever achieved without some madness. I would ruin him before he could think of ruining me. If one hit would not do, two would. Three or four, if accurate, certainly would.

  I passed two more hours sitting at the door, then slowly rose, locked the front door and went to the market. There I bought two dozen sleeping pills, a long knife and some rope; then hurried back home. On the way I did not look anyone in the face. I had no idea how my own face looked. I went in, strained to hear any sound coming from his room. He was quiet. And the door was locked, as I had left it.

  I knocked on his door. I was going to remove one of the small blocks of wood in the door, I said, so that we could see each other and talk. We must make a decent effort to close a deal, and I would let him go if he cooperated, if he was not violent. I wanted to say he was sold, there was no point in resisting, there was no point in tears; he could not possibly change the history of a man selling a man to yet another man; it had always happened and it would always happen. But I did not say anything. What was the point? Did I want him to understand something? No. It was better that he understood nothing. That was why the past was better than the present, and that was why we saw a future together. If only he had remained the dolt he was when he came from Gangasagar!

  I knocked a few more times; then using the knife carefully, created a small opening at chest height. He was standing against the door. He tried to snatch the knife by grabbing its sharp end, but I pulled it away quickly. His palm was cut. The blood ran. He pressed his palm with his other palm. ‘God,’ he said. ‘God! God!’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said and ran to the kitchen and from one of the upper drawers found the Zam-Buk box. I almost opened the lock to go in to give him first aid, but stopped myself, remembering our conflict. It would be too dangerous. Suffering and compassion could not bring us together any more. I tossed the Zam-Buk into his room through the small window. ‘Apply the balm,’ I said, ‘right on the cut. Apply it immediately. Then close your fist.’ He collected the round white box, uncapped it and then threw it at me fast. It hit the door; green Zam-Buk splattered on the wood.

  It was a relief that the cut was not deep. Once his anger abated a bit, he picked up the Zam-Buk and applied it. The blood had already thickened. The balm would take the pain away and help the cut heal quickly.

  He looked hungry. I suppose he had not eaten anything even though I had advised him to do so before I went to see Moina Mia. Probably he had been so excited at the thought of going home that he had forgotten to eat. ‘I am coming in,’ I said. ‘I am coming in with food and water.’ Then I passed the rope through the window and told him to move to the end of the room where I could see his feet. He must tie his feet together with the rope and stand with his hands on the wall.

  He looked at me with blazing eyes and did not move. I waited some time, trying to read his mind. I had a deep headache. I pressed my forehead with my fingers and sat on the sofa. He came to the door, looked up at me through the window, and did not say anything, good or bad. The silence became heavier. I tried to stay awake but could not.

  Several hours must have passed, for when I woke up, hearing noises coming from his room, it was the dead of night.

  He had broken everything in his room; the mirror, the bookshelf, the small terracotta vase. The wall clock, books, newspapers, the mosquito netting, the pillow cover, his clothes, nothing was spared.

  There was blood on his chest, on his face and hands; dry blood on the floor, small splotches of blood on the wall, on scattered newspapers and on pages of books. He must have hurt himself on the shards of glass on the floor and cried in pain, but I had not heard anything. I had slept like the dead.

  When he saw me, he did not speak. He got up slowly, went to the rear carrying the rope in his hand, and tied his feet with it tightly without my saying anything. Then he sat on his knees, his back towards me, his hands on the wall, and looked at me before turning his face to the wall again.

  I opened the door, just a few inches, and pushed in a plate with some rice and dal on it, and a glass of water laced with four sleeping pills, while he remained in his position. Then I closed the door and locked it. I knocked on the door several times to let him know he could now untie himself and eat the food.

  What was I doing? What was I doing so arrogantly, so wildly? I asked myself if I could reasonably explain any part of my behaviour. No answer came to mind. I could not even remember where I got the idea of buying the pills. What was I thinking when I ran to the market? Why had I run to the market?

  Minutes went by. How did we reach this stage? I tried to understand it. Did I push it so far? I looked at myself in the mirror, incredulous, puzzled. I was shivering. Had Sheikh Mujib scripted this, too? What was Moina Mia doing now? Were the militia members given any specific orders?

  I opened the door again—only after he had eaten, drunk the water, and fallen asleep on the floor, perhaps wondering why he was feeling so sluggish and why the cut did not hurt any more. I walked cautiously, so as not to wake him up. I tied his feet with one end of the rope and then his hands together with its other end. I had the knife on me; I would slit his throat if he woke up and got clever. With a wet towel I removed the dry blood from his face. I checked the cuts in his palm and on the soles of his feet. I applied a thin layer of Zam-Buk there. Then I cleaned the room, and removed everything with which he might hurt himself and locked the door behind me.

  It was my turn now. I needed some rest. I poured four pills into a glass of water. My hands had no strength left, but I was able to mix the pills with a spoon and raise the glass to my lips. Now there was nothing else to do. He was there in his room, in the bottom layer of his quiet. I was here in my room in my own quiet. There was no one to visit us, except the militia. Abdul Ali would not come any more. The matter was way beyond his negotiating power. It ha
d to be the militia. It would be them. They would appear with the Joy Bangla slogan and exterminate everything instantly.

  24

  The Dream Returns

  ‘What is this place?’ I said. ‘I am in my bed but I can see the sky over me; I can see the rice fields, the pumpkin bush and a kingfisher on it. There, behind the old, timid, wavy, forgotten village path, I can also see some small houses under the green trees bathing in the sweet music of the river. It seems I am in Gangasagar. Am I? What am I doing here?’

  The fierce battle had just ended and Mustafa Kamal had been victorious. There were thousands of Pakistani soldiers lying all over the place, all dismembered and dead.

  He smiled at me. ‘Don’t think so wildly, Confused One. Discovering the depths of life requires endurance and serenity. Fantasy is not all. It is only the beginning.’

  I asked him why he was not coming to the point right away, why he wanted to confuse me with images that made no sense to me, if he already knew I was so confused.

  ‘You want to sparkle all the time, don’t you, Confused One?’ he said. ‘I am not surprised. All those that are in your situation do the same thing. They lie down on their beds, think of me while falling asleep, and when they enter a certain level of stillness, they fly to me for inspiration. I do not sparkle, but they think I do; they want to sparkle like me; they want untroubled moments, an untroubled future, an untroubled last breath, without knowing I have always considered life a trouble, war a trouble upon that, and that inspiration only makes one believe that no trouble is trouble without bound. I hate you, Confused One, I think you are a defeated man; but I’ll tell you why you’re here. You’re here to seek my advice.’

  ‘What nonsense are you talking about?’ I asked. ‘Aren’t you dead? Where is your shadow? What year is this? You died in 1971, I clearly remember; you died here, on this ground; those beaming baby bamboos and those hyacinths grew up drawing nourishment from your blood. Don’t you remember we have adorned you with a medal for bravery? He was a real man, we said; the man who loved us and the man whom we would always love. You should be satisfied with that. What more do you want?’

  ‘I am as dead as you are,’ he replied, sitting next to me, next to my pillow, placing his machine gun on the floor. ‘And I am as alive as you are. But at this moment it does not matter whether I am alive or dead, Confused One. What matters is if you consider yourself alive when you are dead.’

  ‘Don’t try to play with my memory, mister. And don’t you try to trick me. Once I wake up, I will shake you off from my head. You are a hero today only because you have a machine gun in your hand. Though I don’t have a gun with me, I am not afraid of you. You’re dead, dead, dead; I know that. I have walked in the field where I smelt your bones; your thirsty soul whispered to me so many times, said no hero wants to die; so cold, so blind, so fathomless is death.’

  I held on to my bed as if I was falling; I felt like I was passing through thousands of dark bubbles. I thought, let me see what happens if I’m confused; let me be confused for a moment and see my fate; he may be correct, considering the fact that I live in Bangladesh and it was no ordinary time.

  ‘If you’re alive, as you claim you are,’ I said, ‘I mustn’t be myself; I must be dreaming now. If I am dreaming, I might not be asking you the right question to know exactly what you are doing in my bedroom in the middle of the night. Can the confused confuse someone? Can they confuse those that confuse them? Like I confuse Sheikh Mujib, and he does not remember any more what he has recently become, a violent ruler? Can I influence him to protect a nation?’

  ‘You’re asking me how to confuse others,’ he said, ‘but I can see you’ve mastered the art of confusing yourself to the highest degree possible. You’ve so many questions which take you in so many directions; you want to stop somewhere, you can’t; you want to focus, you can’t. I will guide you so that you do not behave like the confused ones when you’re confused. That is what all great confused ones in history, including myself, have done. Instead of asking me so many questions, you ask me the only question which you have come here to ask. I know and you know that you know only one question; you’ve always known only one question to which you did not have a proper answer.’

  ‘I’ve no question,’ I said. ‘I never had a question about anyone or anything, not even about this famine. I am a happy man; I am satisfied with my meagre life; and I know the famine is not here to stay, and eternity is just too long to keep one unfortunate year in mind.’

  At this moment there was thunder in the sky; somewhere a lightning bolt broke the trunk of a palm tree. He asked me if I would like him to remind me of the question, as I appeared to be out of my mind. I told him not to be so smart with me. If I knew I had only one question, as he was saying, I would not have forgotten it, would I? I said I would remember my question myself.

  ‘You don’t have to remember,’ he said. ‘It is so obvious. It has been the only thought you have been thinking. Your eyes, your sighs, your movements speak of that hidden question. You can’t sleep. You feel insecure. You think your plans in life are going to be washed away before you know it, and the only way to stop it is to know how you might answer that question.’ A man with a gun might be the dumbest of all; but I felt he had hooked me already; he was not funny and he could read me very well.

  ‘What is it you think I am thinking?’ I said. ‘Let me see how accurate you are, Soldier Oracle.’

  He smiled again. He took his machine gun on his shoulder and said, ‘Look around yourself, what do you see? The end of an era. I ended it. I’m right here on this Gangasagar battleground today, and I’ll be right until the sun has lost its light and the sky has fallen to the ground.’ The killer instinct can make someone really vainglorious: he was an undeniable instance.

  ‘Tell me, then,’ I insisted, ‘if you are so sure.’ He laughed a little and then began to leave. ‘Don’t leave so selfishly,’ I said. ‘Don’t leave me to guess how pathetic you are. You may not get another chance. I may fly to some other heroes for inspiration.’ He turned back. Another thunder strike. The earth, my bed, shook a little.

  ‘You’re thinking about Nur Hussain,’ he said, bringing his eyes back upon me, his stare too heavy to bear. ‘Your only question is: what to do with him.’

  ‘Probably you’re right.’ I tried to smile, though my breathing was becoming shallower. He knew my thoughts; he was not dead. ‘How brilliant!’ I said. ‘Finally I have met a clairvoyant human being. I have met someone who is aware, who thinks with style.’

  ‘You can’t admit your limitations, can you?’ he said. ‘Why do I even ask? You’re not alone—you must have known that by this time Sheikh Mujib has joined you, the man you despise so much and yet force yourself to love. Don’t worry; seventy million Bangladeshis, equally confused people like you, are with you.’ He looked gloomy; even though it was the day he had attained his ultimate glory. ‘I’ll tell you what to do with Nur Hussain.’ He turned. ‘Kill him.’ Then he started walking again.

  ‘Kill him?’ I shouted. ‘What do you mean by “kill him”?’ The wind began to blow, raising dust. A thin mist came down and gobbled him up. ‘This is not fair,’ I said. ‘Come back; come back here right now. Where are you? You can’t leave me here. You can’t leave without explaining your answer.’

  The mist became thick and then dark. The rice field, the trees, the houses under them were lost from my sight. The kingfisher jumped into the ground and from the heart of the hard soil caught a red fish and flew towards the village. ‘Nur Hussain, Nur,’ I said loudly. ‘Where are you?’ I raised my head looking for him. ‘The whole country is full of traitors. It is a zoo; neither you nor I can live here in peace. Mustafa Kamal has lost his battle today. He has complaints instead of inspiration. He is just a vanished flame. There is no hope. Gangasagar is not an innocent place any more. Don’t go there.’ I left my bed, walked through the black mist, looking for him. ‘Don’t go, Nur. Stay with me; I’ll protect you. I’m the only help you
have got. I am the only one left who understands you.’

  Nur Hussain had woken up before me. How long before I did not know. It could be hours or minutes. I heard coughing. Then the dull, blackened world gradually became clear. The ceiling, the picture on the wall, the door took shape. My fingers moved. I found myself back in the present.

  It was the pain, I believed. A layer of Zam-Buk was not enough for him. It cooled the pain momentarily but finally proved inadequate. Or he wanted to scratch and found his hands tied, like his feet. Then the anger returned in full measure, squeezed his heart hard and overpowered him, and he could not sleep again. The anger lingered, making him more awake than ever. He remembered everything, everything that happened until the last moment when he fell asleep. Or it was some nightmare that visited him immediately after he was settled in the lethargic world of the pills. He woke up and believed the nightmare was real, finding himself tied up in a closed room.

  I watched him through the small window. He sat against the wall, his legs extended, his hands on his lap, and his breathing shallow. He heard my footsteps and looked at me.