She remembered rain falling outside the window, the dampness of their skins in the twisted sheets; how afterward, before she’d had time to register shock or shame, they’d sat up and looked at each other and laughed incredulously at what had happened. He’d drawn her toward him, the light slatted through the wooden blinds, and held her face in his hands, and he’d looked at her. Twisting and turning in the dark she thought of how his smile began with a gleam of mischief in his tawny-green eyes, spread to the two dimples in his cheeks and then just dazzled her with its beauty. And how hard she tried to close herself down, it was too overwhelming. Let other women fall for it; she, special old Viva Holloway, was far too clever for all that.
The thought made her grimace in disgust. What a fool she was. What had the poor man done wrong in the end, except step across some line she’d drawn too many years ago to make any sense now?
Well, there was an admission, especially since friends like Rose and Tor thought her so adventurous, so mysterious. Frank had liked what she was and tried to help her on her way. He’d made love to her straightforwardly, like a man.
Her mind was leaping around now. Yes, yes, yes, that was it: life unconditional. He’d stepped out of his clothes and left them on the floor, he was hungry for her and she for him. Why had she said no in the morning?
“Frank,” she whispered into the dark. All she wanted was to hold him. She’d missed her chance.
When Mr. Azim arrived the following morning, she’d decided what to do.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “There is one house in Byculla where I think Guy could be hiding.”
He looked at her suspiciously. “Why are you are telling me this now?” He had large circles under his eyes and looked as if he’d slept as badly as she had.
“I was thinking about your brother last night,” she said. “How much you must have looked forward to seeing him again and the shock of seeing his face like that. It must have been horrible.”
“It was,” he said.
She leaned her head toward him and made herself look into his eyes.
“I’ve been thinking about the children’s home, too. I am not a particularly religious person either, so this has nothing to do with God, but I wondered how I’d feel if a group of Indian men came to our country and tried to teach our children their ways. I’d feel suspicious, angry even…” Was she talking too much? Azim was looking at her with deep skepticism. He fiddled with a ring on his little finger. He was waiting. “I’m tired,” she said. “I’m hoping after I’ve led you to him you’ll let me go.”
“He’ll be angry with you. He is not a gentleman.”
“I don’t care. I want to go.”
He looked at her again and pursed his lips.
“This is not in your dispensation,” he said after a long silence. “It’s mine.”
“Of course,” she said. She forced herself to smile. “I just thought if I could help it would be silly not to.”
From the corner of her eye, she watched the smart English brogues tapping nervously on the floor. He stood up and heaved a shuddering sigh.
“Where is he living in Byculla?”
“In a flat near the fruit market,” she said. “I can’t remember the exact address, but if you take me there I will be able to find the way.”
His eyes brooded over her, hooded and suspicious.
“I’ll come back at half past five,” he said.
He came back again on the dot of five-thirty, this time with a tunic and a Kashmiri shawl, which he flung on her lap. He had changed again into his shalwar kameez, a snowy-white one with fine pearl buttons through which his stomach strained.
“Time is running out.” He sat on the chair in front of her, legs akimbo.
“Where are we going?” She hated hearing her voice tremble like that.
“Out in the streets to see if your memory is jogged.”
She looked at him. “I think that’s a good idea,” she said. “I’ll try my hardest.”
He looked at her suspiciously. “Why are you trying now? What has changed?”
“I’m tired,” she repeated. “I don’t see why I should take the blame.”
He was not convinced. “He will make you pay for this.”
“I don’t care. I want to go.”
“I keep telling you,” he said. “This is not in your dispensation: I decide. You could still run straightaway to the police. It would be my word against yours, and guess who would win.”
“Of course,” she said demurely. “I just thought if I could help, that it would be a chance worth taking.”
He gave one of his monstrous nose snorts, as if trying to clear his head of all matter. “Tell me again where he lives in Byculla,” he said eventually.
She closed her eyes, pretended to think.
“It was either near the fruit market or a small flat near the Jain Temple on Love Lane,” she said at last. “I’m a gora,” she used the Hindi word for foreigner, “so you’ll have to be patient with me, everything looks so different during Diwali.”
His eyes swept over her coldly. “Not that different,” he warned. “And Byculla is not a big place. If you try and give me the slip, I am going to kill you.” He said something in Urdu she didn’t understand, maybe a curse or a prayer.
“For me,” he said, “it would not be a sin but an honor. I don’t like women like you. You bring shame to us and our children.”
She tried not to flinch when he brought a vicious-looking knife toward her.
The sliced rope left three deep red marks on her wrists.
“Don’t move,” he said when she tried to rub them. All pretense of friendliness had gone. He put the knife back in a leather holster he wore on his belt.
When he left the room, she got dressed, supervised by the older woman who watched her with no expression whatsoever. She was given a chapatti to eat, a drink of brackish water, and then, suddenly, she was led downstairs and out into daylight again.
When they got out in the streets she was bundled into a rickshaw. She sat thigh to thigh with Mr. Azim, which terrified her. Before they had left, he’d shown her a gun. He said, “If you make things difficult for us, you will be sacrificed.” A phrase that made her think of the skinny goats she’d seen outside the butcher’s shop on Main Street being fattened for the Muslim festival or Eid. It really would be that easy.
It was six o’clock now, not cold but dull and damp with all light bleached from the sky. Apart from one or two painted doorways, and lights on in some poor-looking house, Diwali celebrations seemed sparse in this area of town.
“I normally drive a car,” Azim was anxious to tell her, “but this is better for us.” His brogues were tapping impatiently on the rickshaw floor. He clearly didn’t like slumming it. He rattled off some orders to the rickshaw driver, who looked cowed and terrified himself, and then he turned to her.
“So where does he live?”
“I think it’s near the Jain Temple.” She was determined not to stammer. “Please be patient with me. I’ve only been there twice.”
He glanced at her sharply and she heard him sigh. He took out his gun, laid it on his lap, and then covered it with the flap of his kameez.
The grim street they were passing through was empty, apart from a mother kneeling on the steps, with two little girls who were drawing what looked like Diwali patterns on their doorstep.
“When we get out of the rickshaw, pull your scarf over your head,” he said. “And if I am telling you something, answer back in a normal way. I am telling you that tonight Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, comes to Byculla. So maybe we’ll all be luckier.” He gave a false laugh, and she laughed back.
This is what a beaten wife must feel like, she thought, aware of every gesture, weighing every word. But she must play the game: stay calm, converse with him in as pleasant and friendly a way as possible. If she let the bully out, she was sunk.
They crossed a road into Main Street where the evening sky was mottled and bruise
d-looking. To their right, in the middle of a row of dilapidated houses, she saw a small temple lit up like a fabulous jewelry box with hundreds of small candles around the shrine.
She took a deep breath.
“Mr. Azim,” she said, “how many more days will the festival go on for?”
His eyes flicked toward her. He moved his leg away.
“Too long around here,” he said. “Diwali is for people who think like children.”
The street was starting to fill again with the holiday crowds. “It’s for children,” he repeated, looking at them.
Viva understood loneliness and she felt it now. He was as much a stranger in these streets as she was.
“So you never celebrated it in your house?” she asked him.
“I am telling you,” he said impatiently, “my brother and I were educated by you British people. We learned English history and poems. We were beaten—what’s that saying?—regularly as gongs.” His voice had risen. “Until I left that school, I did not know one Indian poet,” he said after a pause. “Imagine that in your own country.”
Before she could reply, he put his hand up. “Stop,” he told the rickshaw driver. “Turn right here. Don’t talk anymore,” he told her. “I need to concentrate.” His face had begun to pour with sweat.
“I was going to say that’s a shame,” she said a few moments later. “There are wonderful Indian poets.”
He sniffed loudly to signal the end of this conversation and started to shout at the rickshaw driver, who had got stuck in a minor traffic jam with a bullock cart and a group of holiday makers.
“Where is he?” he said to her suddenly.
“I’m not sure yet,” she said. “Could you tell me where we are?”
“Fruit market is there,” he said. He pointed toward the vast sprawling building, almost unrecognizable tonight under its weight of lights and tinsel. The crowds were getting thicker and now she could hear, indistinctly at first but getting louder, the whooping, shouting noise of an excited group, the braying of a trumpet. A skinny street boy ran alongside the rickshaw trying to sell them some flyblown sweets. When Azim shouted at him the child shrank away.
Now they were forcing their way down Main Street where the stall keepers were lighting their lamps, and the skies had started to glow with the reflected light of thousands and thousands of candles. A small crowd forcing a lurid-looking papier-mâché goddess above their heads was slowing them down and making Azim angry.
“Understand this, madam.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the din. “I know you chaps all think that we sway in the wind of all this idol worship, but I don’t. I think it’s killing our country. I think it’s time to fight back.”
She watched his fingers close around the gun.
“Gandhi will kill us, too,” he said. “With kindness. We’ve been too polite for too long.” When he turned to her she felt hate coming off him like fog.
“What happened to your brother must have been the last straw,” she said, as calmly as she could, for she knew with absolute certainty now that he would shoot her if he had to.
“I need to find Glover tonight,” he said. “I’ve been told he might leave India tomorrow on another ship.” He mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. His hands had started to shake.
“Here’s what I remember,” she said. “The two times I went to his flat I took a short cut across the market and then—I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I’m going to have to see it again.” When he moved his head to look at her, she was sure he had seen through her lie. She saw him freeze momentarily while he thought, then his eyes blinked and he shrugged.
“I shall be walking right behind you,” he said. “If you try to run away, I will shoot you, not now but later, and nobody will ever know what happened to you. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
He barked at the rickshaw driver. The little carriage stopped.
“Get out,” he said.
A firework went off about ten feet from her as she stepped out into the street. He prodded her in the back and they walked through the doors and into the market where she was deafened by the sound of bleating sheep and goats and the screech of caged birds.
She was starting to panic. The taste of metal in her mouth was fear. The sounds inside the building seemed to swell unbearably. She scanned what felt like a solid wall of sounds and faces with no plan yet apart from escape.
Two young girls were walking very slowly ahead of her. They were dressed up to the nines in their saris and jewelry, thrilled with their new clothes and nattering happily to each other. When they blocked her passage down the aisle, she felt she could have throttled them. Azim couldn’t see them; he was prodding her in the spine with his gun. “Jaldi, jaldi,” he said.
“I can’t go any faster,” she said.
Now she could see the vast door at the end of the market open beneath rafters where pigeons sat. Beside the door were the caged birds: each cage lit tonight with Diwali lights.
Outside the door, she saw another crowd, moving swiftly in the direction of another teetering pandal surrounded by musicians. In the crush, she felt the strong tug of the crowd, like an undertow, and then the hardness of his gun in her back warning her not to run, but she had no choice now, nor did he. She heard someone laugh and then a scream. The smell of smoke in the air, someone else shouting, “Jaldi!” and then she fell, and a scuffed shoe kicked her hard in the teeth and she heard a sharp crack. A jarring pain in the side of her head, thousands and thousands of feet thundered through her brain, and then nothing.
Chapter Forty-seven
She woke up with the taste of old fruit in her mouth and then thought all her teeth must have been kicked in because of the pulpy feeling around her lips. She was lying under a table, her left elbow jammed in a chicken crate with a few soiled feathers inside. A million feet were rushing by her, inches from her head—feet in sandals, bare feet, hennaed feet with complicated patterns on them, large black men’s shoes, some with no laces. The sight of them made her so dizzy she fell back into the dirt, trying to hide herself in an old sack.
Moving made something trickle down her temples and brought a sharp pain. She touched the pain, looking at the blood on her fingers as if it belonged to somebody else.
More feet rushed by; voices piercing her skull and bringing sick into her mouth.
She made herself wait, first five minutes and then ten. Judging from the racket above her, the crowd that had swept her away from Azim was still thick, but she could not risk him coming back. Wait, wait, wait, she told herself wearily, feeling herself come and go.
It was dark when she woke again. She was somewhere else, lying on a lumpy mattress. When she touched her head it was bandaged and she had the most excruciating pain in the roots of her teeth as though they’d all been pulled. Her eyes flickered open, but the light hurt too much. A young Indian woman with a calm, gentle face was bathing her forehead.
“Mi kuthe ahe?” Where am I? she asked. When her eyes flickered open again she saw, in one brief bilious flash, a slatted roof, a dirty window. She was in a slum or chawl.
“Kai zala?” What happened? she said.
“You were knocked and kicked,” the woman demonstrated. “Don’t worry,” she added in Marathi, “you’re all right now, they are coming to take you home.”
Coming to take you home. She fell on the soft words like a mattress. Home soon, home soon. Daisy will come.
She opened her eyes again, a new ceiling: sticky, yellow. Above her was a naked lightbulb, some dead insects, a low beam covered in cobwebs. When she touched the side of her head, she felt the stickiness of old blood through the bandage. The pain in the nerve endings of her teeth was still excruciating, but when she checked gingerly with her tongue, her teeth were still there.
From behind her bandage, she heard a door open, voices, the creak of wooden floorboards.
“Daisy?” she said.
Nobody answered.
“Daisy
, is it you?”
When she tried to sit up, she felt a hand close around her wrist. A mouth came close to hers, so close she could smell something sweet and stale.
“It’s Guy,” he said.
She closed her eyes so tight that more blood trickled underneath her bandage.
“Guy,” she whispered, “why are you here?”
“I don’t know.” His voice sounded jerky and hard. “I can’t help you; I don’t know why I’m here.”
“What’s happened to me?” When she tried to sit up bright lights went on in her skull.
“Some stupid person in the market found you knocked out. They said an English girl was hurt. I wanted to help, but now I don’t—you’re frightening me like that.”
“Calm down, calm down.” Her mouth felt frizzy and distended as if it was packed with cotton wool. “All you need to do is to go to the home and get Daisy Barker; she’ll help me.”
She heard his bark of frustration, the thud of his own hand hitting his head.
“I can’t, they’ll catch me. I’m in too much trouble myself.”
“Guy, please, that’s all you have to do.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow, I told you that. Ask someone else to do it,” he mumbled.
He was drumming the pads of his fingers on a tabletop and humming in the way he had on the ship when he felt most agitated. She heard the scrape of a match. Her mind felt swollen, unreliable, but she must speak.
“Guy, why did all this happen to me? What did you do?”
No answer. While she waited she forced herself to remain conscious.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Yes, you did,” she said. “I know you did now.”
“I wanted to get you out of the home,” he whispered at last. “It was bad for you there.”
When she tried to shake her head, she moaned, “No.”
She felt his mouth draw close to her again, smelled the acrid smoke on his breath. “Listen,” he whispered. “Listen very hard.” She felt his hand brush her temples. “You’re my mother. I chose you.” The faint mist of his spit on her cheek.
East of the Sun Page 42
