by Bapsi Sidhwa
Feroza spent a full ten minutes hovering about the Moghul miniatures and, like a besotted lover, settled on a wooden bench to ogle an intricately woven hunting scene on a Persian silk rug.
“There we go!” groaned Manek, eyeing with disgust the lions with their uplifted paws, the decapitated deer, the trailing vegetation, and the turbaned men aiming spears.
“Oh, Manek, you’ve no eye for beauty. These are priceless treasures. Look at the clear lines in the detail.”
An attractive young woman, holding a little redheaded girl by the hand, turned and gave Feroza a discreet smile of complicity.
“I appreciate treasures also,” Manek said in a reasonable and convincing manner, playing to the gallery.
However, the minute the alluring gallery stepped out of earshot with her daughter, Manek moved closer to Feroza and hissed, “But I don’t sit down like a lump and turn into a pillar of salt every time I look back. If you don’t move in the next ten minutes, I’m going.”
Manek wandered through the two remaining rooms and came back in a little over ten minutes.
“You’re still here?” He was surprised. “Come on. You’ve seen the rug, you’ve seen the lions, you’ve seen the trees. That’s enough. Come on.” Manek took her arm.
“Oh, Manek!” Feroza shrugged away his hand and turned her rapt and reproachful face to him. “You’re nothing but a local yokel, after all!”
“And you? What’re you? A fat obstinate mule. Don’t expect me to carry you out. Come on.”
Feroza ignored him.
“I’m going,” Manek warned.
“Go.”
Dark shadows crept into the green afternoon outside. The crickets started their strumming. Feroza, cocooned among the rugs and miniatures, sat oblivious.
Some time later she heard a door shut and gave a start. She looked at her watch. It was 4:30.
Feroza went through the rooms looking for Manek. There was hardly anyone about, and her footsteps echoed in the empty halls. She became acutely uneasy. The light coming in through the windows lengthened the shadows.
“Can I help you?” It was the guard. He looked as she would have expected a museum guard to: tough, middle-aged, and gray. Even his hair looked strong.
“I’m looking for my uncle,” Feroza said shakily.
“What does he look like? I’ll keep a look out for him.”
“He’s got curly hair, and he wears glasses. He’s dark,” she added — rather unnecessarily, she thought at once. The guard would hardly expect her uncle to be white.
“I’ll wait where my uncle left me,” Feroza said and retreated to her perch on the bench. She didn’t once glance at the fine hunting scene that had absorbed her attention all afternoon.
At 4:45 Feroza heard the doors being bolted, and a moment later the guard came into the room, jangling an enormous bunch of keys that looked more lethal than the gun he wore on his hip. Not bothering to conceal the suspicion his inflection conveyed, he asked, “Hasn’t your uncle turned up?”
Feroza shook her head and instinctively tried to appear as stupid, innocent, and unlike an international art thief as she could.
“Sorry ma’am, I’ve got to lock up. The museum closes at five.”
Feroza looked at the man pleadingly, artlessly adopting the helpless, hurt-puppy expression practiced by her grandmother.
“You can wait outside,” the man suggested, at once kinder, less suspicious.
The guard locked the doors and, hitching up his navy trousers, adjusting his gun belt, sat down next to Feroza on the museum steps.
“How long will your uncle be, you think?” he asked, scanning the parking lot.
Feroza turned her nervous face to him. “I don’t know.”
In a little while the burly man stood up, readjusted his trousers and gun belt, and said, “Come on, we’ll go through the parking lot. It’s no use just sitting here. D’you know the license number?”
Feroza shook her head. “No, but I’d recognize the car. It’s an old Ford. Blue.”
They went through the parking lot in front of the theater and past the ice-cream parlor and a liquor store. The lot was full of out-of-state cars from the Boston area. Feroza remembered that Manek had planned to buy beer. They went into the liquor store but found no uncle.
The security officer and Feroza settled down on the museum steps to wait again. He removed his uniform cap and passed his hand over his ironlike hair in an apologetic and weary gesture. “I have to go,” he said. “But I can’t leave you sitting here. I’ll call the police, they’ll help you find the car and look for your uncle. Will that be all right?”
“I guess so,” Feroza said. She was close to tears.
The man called the police on his cellular phone.
Almost instantly two patrol cars rolled up, one behind the other, their blue-and-yellow lights blinking in the eerie Salem dusk.
The guard went up to the first car to explain the situation. The policeman from the other car sauntered up to join them and held the front door open for Feroza. He was very young, tough, and mean-looking. He shut the door and got into the back.
The museum guard looked in the window at Feroza. “You’ll be all right now.” He indicated the policeman in the driver’s seat. “Ben’ll look after you.”
They cruised around the parking lot several times and then drove up and down the narrow, run-down streets leading from the mall.
There were no signs of a 1970 Ford.
The night was darker here than in Cambridge, probably because Salem was a small town and had fewer lights, Feroza reflected. Perhaps the witches preferred to do whatever it was they did in the dark.
“Where do you live?” the policeman in the driver’s seat, whom the guard had called Ben, asked, jolting Feroza out of her reverie. He was a little older than the officer in the back. Feroza’s heart skipped a beat. He was handsome.
“In Gulberg, in Lahore.”
“What’s that again?”
“In Pakistan.”
“In Pack-iss-tan!” Ben pronounced the word the American way, obviously surprised and hugely amused. “Did you hear that, Jack?” He looked at his colleague in the rearview mirror. “This young lady here says she lives in Pack-iss-tan!”
Feroza liked the way he said it. She glanced at him when they stopped at a traffic light. He had a high-arched nose, an elegant sweep to his cheeks, and a wide chin that jutted at a commanding angle beneath his cap. The friendly, cheerful officer made her feel less afraid.
“I mean, where do you live in America?” Ben asked.
“In Somerville.”
“That’s in Massachusetts!” Again he sounded surprised, though less so. “We can get you there if we hav’ta, but we sure can’t get you back to Pack-iss-tan!” The man laughed and raising an eyebrow, glanced at Feroza flirtatiously. He was really quite young. “D’you have the address in Somerville?”
“I think so,” Feroza said.
Her vaulting, susceptible heart distracting her, Feroza rummaged in her leather sling-bag for the white card Manek had given her. The cop switched on the light. Feroza tipped the bag and emptied its entire contents on the seat. She could not find the card with the address.
“Sorry, I think I’ve lost it,” she said.
“Is that all the money you have?” Ben looked inquisitively at the few crumpled dollar bills among the strewn contents of her bag.
Feroza nodded.
“Do you know anyone near here?”
“No.”
“Any close relatives in the United States?”
“Only my uncle.”
“Do you have any phone numbers at all?”
“No.”
“Do you have your passport or ticket or anything?”
“No.”
Although Feroza felt utterly foolish and was scarlet with embarrassment and shyness, still it occurred to her how different this interrogation was from the grilling she had been put through at Kennedy Airport.
“Do you
know where the nearest Pack-iss-tan Consulate is?”
“No.”
They once again drove slowly up and down the narrow streets. Ben pointed out the famous house with the seven gables and the Witches Museum where, he explained, innocent women were burned at the stake only a few hundred years earlier.
The policeman turned into a narrow street and parked the car alongside the curb. He turned his face to Feroza. The light inside was still on.
“Lemme get this straight. You have no money, no passport. You don’t know where you’re going, and you have no address. You have an uncle who appears to have abandoned you, and no phone numbers. What’re we to do with you?”
He looked at Feroza for a long, disconcerting moment and, as if drawing inspiration from her bewildered, nervous, and apologetic face, announced, “We’ll cruise around the parking lot again, and if your uncle isn’t there, we’ll go to the police station.”
Feroza turned helpless eyes to Ben and nodded her agreement.
The officer in the back, Jack, had not said a word all this while.
Ben drove slowly up the narrow streets and once more entered the shopping center parking lot. They cruised up and down the lanes and drove up to the museum.
Feroza spotted the old Ford almost at once. Even in the dark, it was unmistakable. It rolled up from the opposite direction and came to a stop at the driver’s window. Feroza saw Manek’s face turned to them in the flashing light.
Speaking as if nothing had transpired in the interval he had been away and as if it was quite normal for him to locate Feroza in strange police cars, Manek said, “Come on. Get into the car.”
The mean-looking young cop in the back got out. Moving with the aggressive, thick-muscled gait of American police officers, he swaggered over to Manek. “What happened?” he asked.
“Nothing, officer,” Manek said matter-of-factly. “My niece is very stubborn. I was only teaching her a lesson.”
The policeman was incredulous. He placed his hands on the car’s open window and, leaning forward, brought his face on a level with Manek’s.
“Teaching her a lesson? In a strange city, with no money, no passport, and no address?”
“I wasn’t going to lose her, officer.”
In the driver’s seat, Ben turned his pale and shocked face to Feroza. He pointed his thumb over his shoulder and asked, “Do you want to go with him?”
“Do I have a choice?”
The policeman was looking at her in a way that made her blush. She quickly lowered her eyes and, turning her face away, fiddled with the handle. Ben leaned across her to open the door.
She was quite out of breath. She thanked him. The other policeman escorted her to the Ford. Feroza got in and pulled in her coat.
“You sure you’re gonna be all right?” the young officer asked. He sounded doubtful.
“Yes, of course, officer,” Feroza said. Jack shut the door and said, “Now, you take care.” He gave Manek a long, intense, warning look.
They drove along the dark highway silently. The headlights were not as bright as they should have been, and Manek needed to concentrate on the winding roads. The lights swept past the trees, lighting up the front ranks and making the area behind appear dark and densely forested.
Manek was the first to speak. “So, boochimai, you lost the address. Typical Third World carelessness.”
Silence.
Five minutes later: “You did quite well, you know. You didn’t lose your head.”
“Really?”
Manek chose to ignore the sarcasm implicit in her tone. “Yes, you did all the right things. You didn’t panic, you didn’t approach strangers for help, and you got the cops to help you. You also seemed to be getting along with them quite well. That’s pretty good.”
“You bastard! You left me alone in a strange city, in a strange country, at the mercy of strange people. You knew I had no money. I didn’t even know the name of the state. Anything could have happened to me. Anything!” Feroza was by now screaming. “Wait till Granny hears about this! Wait till Mummy and Daddy hear about this! Wait till Rohinton kaka and Jeroo kaki hear about it. They’ll never speak to you. I don’t believe you did this. I can’t believe —”
“Stop making such a song and dance about nothing. I was keeping my eye on you …”
“My left foot! If this had happened to you … Oh, don’t speak to me. Don’t say one more word! And you had the brazenness to tell your sister, all goody-goody and sweetie-sweetie, ‘Don’t worry,’” Feroza made a face, savagely impersonating a grotesquely simpering Manek, “ ‘I’ll look after Feroza.”
“Some looking after! And you’ve the nerve to say I’m doing a song and dance? Granny will show you what a song and dance really is! She’ll straighten you out. She’ll cut you off without a paisa. She’ll kick you out of her house!”
“You’ll thank me for this one day.” Manek’s voice carried a becalmed, syrupy inflection that thickened it. Feroza felt a chill creep into her body. Her recollection of the incident was vivid.
Manek had helped her up a tree. She couldn’t have been more than three or four. She had found herself straddling a scratchy branch sixteen feet from the ground, and, terrified, she had shut her eyes. The limb she clung to was not very thick, and it dipped slightly with her weight.
“Just hang on,” Manek said, slowly backing away from her. “Come on, open your eyes, don’t be frightened,” he said. “See? You can look into everybody’s houses. I’ll be back very soon. I’ll show you a trick.”
An unaccustomed calm and sweetness had washed his voice, soothing her, inducing a feeling of affection and trust. Unable to handle her terror after Manek disappeared, Feroza had frozen into some kind of a trance.
Manek had reappeared at the fork of her branch with a hand-saw.
“I want to get down. Get me down,” Feroza bawled, feeling the ground sway and fall away from her.
“Don’t cry.” Again that tranquilizing voice quieting her. “I’ll get you down in just two minutes if you stop making noise.”
Manek began sawing off the branch she was sitting on.
The cook, on his way to the servants’ quarters, heard Feroza whimper. “What’re you doing up there?” he yelled.
Only then did he notice what Manek was up to.
Feroza’s childish mind had absorbed only the logic of Manek’s actions and his comforting voice. He’d said he’d get her down, and lopping off the branch was as quick a way of getting her down as any.
In the subsequent hullabaloo, Feroza had realized her danger.
For the first time, driving on the night road winding through a faraway country, viewing the incident from the perspective of her young adulthood, Feroza recognized the enormous treachery. How he must have hated her, she thought, suddenly confronting the issue.
Feroza had never, despite everything, acknowledged the darker side of Manek’s nature. She had known it in her bones, but she had not allowed it the sanction of consciousness. To acknowledge it would be to accept that she was the cause, the irritant, the inducer of the evil.
“I’ve taught you a very important lesson: how to look out for yourself.” Manek’s insinuating voice was superimposed on her thoughts. “You’ll have to cope with all sorts of unexpected situations. This has taught you more about America than six months of pampering. You’ll see, you’ll gain confidence. You can’t rely on anyone but yourself if you want to live in this country — not even on me!”
“Who wants to live in any country with you in it? Who wants you to teach me anything? I’d be better off with a goonda than with you!”
“One day you’ll thank me for this,” he said again. Still that ominous sweetness, that glacial calm.
Feroza became quite hysterical. And by the time they entered their driveway, so was Manek.
“Look, you fool,” he shouted as he got out of the car and waited for Feroza to slide out across his seat. “I’m only trying to prepare you for life!”
Manek slam
med the door shut after her; the heavy car swayed with the impact. “You have to learn to listen to others — to be more considerate of their feelings and wishes. You can’t keep people waiting. You can’t have everything your way. If you don’t understand that, you’ll just have to learn to obey and respect your elders and betters.”
“Do you listen to your elders! Look — you can prepare yourself all you want, but let me live my life! I know you tried to kill me when I was a child! You bastard!”
They were climbing the stairs, and Manek had to skip out of reach of Feroza’s sudden kick. He pinned her to the bannister and held her hands as Feroza furiously tried to pummel him.
Bruised and battered they went straight up to the attic. Neither switched on the light. They sat silent, brooding in the dark, Feroza on the stuffed chair and Manek on the bed, breathing heavily.
“Why did you try to kill me?”
It was that kind of a night for Feroza. She was surprised by how belatedly she had understood the past that Manek’s voice had unexpectedly recalled. And almost simultaneously with the understanding had come the sorting out, the acceptance.
“You’re a cat. You have nine lives.”
“You must really have hated me.”
“Yes.”
Feroza didn’t ask why. Although the answer seemed to come to her only now, she sensed she had known it for as far back as she could remember.
Instead she asked, “Do you still hate me?”
“Of course not, silly,” Manek said.
Then he said, “My mother shouldn’t have spoilt you like that. I was a child myself; I couldn’t handle it. Don’t worry, I got over it long ago. Those were childhood reactions.”
Feroza believed him. His voice was normal again.
At least, she thought after a while, the dying fish had distracted them from each other.
Chapter 13
Manek’s mailbox bulged with information from the colleges he had written to. After going through various brochures and catalogs, assessing the courses, and calculating the fees, Manek thought it would be best if Feroza went to Boston College. She could live in the dorms and visit him over the weekends. He would be near enough to assist and advise her.
