The Blue Notebook

by MD James Levine

  After the policemen ripped his brown hole, I thought that once he recovered, Puneet would finally be ready to run. The opposite transpired, perhaps because they ripped his mind apart too. He seems happier now than he ever has been. He is puffed up, bedecked in his scarlet, gold-trimmed sari, his pale blue eye makeup, and his cherry-red lips. I watch him draped against the entranceway of his nest welcoming a novice as if he were an old friend. I hold my breath waiting for him to lash out, but somehow he does not. Puneet’s beautiful boy body has melted into his nest. Like a piece of used furniture, he belongs there, but he forgets that used furniture can be cast out in a second to be replaced with the new.

  That was last night. The world can change in a day, or even a second.

  While Puneet was recovering from the policemen’s assault, Master Gahil and Mamaki had engaged in a series of quiet conversations, most of which I overheard, as neither of them has the capacity to speak softly. Although most of the talk related to the lost earnings due to Puneet’s illness, one late night, after business, when Gahil came for the night’s takings, he spoke for a long time with Mamaki about Puneet. It was clear to Master Gahil that Puneet’s advancing puberty could prove problematic, although Mamaki was less concerned.

  The outcome of these meetings became clear last night. Just before dawn, I was awakened by headlamps shining into my nest. Puneet yelped as he was thrown into a dark blue van. It happened in seconds. I understand that his castration also only took seconds.

  Puneet returned five days later, an empty vessel. Destruction hung over him like Father’s khukri knife poised over the swirling head of a snake trapped under his foot; the end was upon him. He had bandages wrapped across his groin. I knew, now, that he would never run away.

  Puneet always used to laugh at me when I called what a man did “making sweet-cake.” He would throw open his mouth and laugh out loud. He would taunt me, “So what’s in the oven, princess?”

  The expression was born two days after Father left me at Master Gahil’s house. The moment I arrived there was the moment I left Father’s. The old woman, Kumud, put me in what she called “my room” and started to close the door. She leaned into the room and spoke so quietly that I had to stop weeping to hear her. “When you have control, I will feed you.” I knew that this moment was a break point between my past and my future; my screams and sobs were rather like a full stop ending one sentence at the same time it starts another. I had begun to adapt to my abandonment the moment I left the village, and by the time I reached this room, I was in some way prepared to be left there. Even now, I recognize that the young adapt fast. Inexperience or purity is a blessing, since a virgin-white picture has never had shapes, shade, or color painted on it. It is far easier to paint on a blank canvas than on one that has already been painted on.

  I became transformed as I lay on that bed, which was the most luxurious I had ever felt. When clay dries in an oven, it is changed from a soft, malleable form to a solid, defined one; once baked, the hardened clay can never be molded again, only broken. A few hours earlier I had entered Gahil’s house as a soft glob of warm clay. I would leave there a hardened, useful vessel.

  After I had channeled enough energy into crying and screaming, I was hungry and so I stopped crying. In my silence, I looked around me; the bed was large enough for all my brothers and sisters to sleep on, and it was so high off the ground that to reach the floor, I had to jump. Covering it was a blanket sewn with flowers. It remained light outside but two electric lamps were switched on, both of which had ornate, pale pink lampshades, so the room’s light had a tinge of gentility. Bolted to the ceiling was a slow-turning fan with five large white sails, and I could feel the soft breeze on my cheeks. If you stared at it for long enough, the fan could hypnotize you. There were several pieces of wooden furniture in the room: two chairs, a chest of drawers, and two bedside tables. All the furniture was so well polished that it shone and reflected the light beams. The window was open and I could hear the sounds of the street outside: the cars, the cries, and the barks. It was the first time I had ever seen bars across a window.

  I heard the lock in the door click, and the door gradually opened. In shuffled the old woman. Were it not for the fact that she moved forward with excruciating slowness (pshhh, pshhh, pshhh), I would have taken her for dead. She did not blink, she did not say anything, and her face was stiff like the leather of a worn saddle. When she did eventually speak, I could have sworn that her lips did not move and her voice sounded like the speaking dead. Dead or not, she carried a tray of food.

  She placed the tray on top of the chest of drawers. I pretended to be uninterested but could not stop myself from peering at it. There was fruit, a tan curry, a bowl of dahl, and sweet-cakes like you have never seen. The sweet-cakes were green, blue, and red, oval, flat, and cone-shaped. I inhaled the entire plate of sweet-cakes and with a little less self-control I would have eaten the plate as well. I did not touch the curry or dahl until all the sweet-cakes were gone, and then I ate those too. While I fulfilled my hunger, the old woman disappeared (or had I eaten her?).

  Pshhh, pshhh, pshhh—she returned a few minutes later with a white towel. “Come with me,” she croaked. Then I did, in retrospect, what any nine-year-old would do: I threw a bolt of defiance. I sat down on the floor, plump, brought my knees to my chin, and gave the old woman a look of absolute resolve. “No,” I said, “I will not move until you bring me more sweet-cakes.” She did not engage my gaze, or appear to have heard my demand. Her only response was to kick me.

  Part of getting old is that you become scrawny, which must be why when they kill a goat at the last moment before its natural death, it tastes like wood. The old woman did not have a single ounce of flesh on her leg. It felt as though I were being kicked by a human table leg. What is more, Table Leg kicked with venom and it hurt like hell.

  She bade me follow her for a second time, and this time I obeyed. We shuffled along the corridor and entered a room, in the middle of which was a large white container filled with steaming hot water. When she told me to get into it, I assumed she was going to cook me. I had never been immersed in hot water before, having always cleaned myself in the river. The heat was scalding but it was a different heat from lying on the rocks by the river. My fears were heightened when she started to pour fragrant oil into the water—I immediately started looking for the rice. She pushed her sari off her arms and grasped, in her thin, talonlike hands, the hugest tablet of soap I have ever seen. She leaned over the steaming tub of water and started to clean me.

  Of course I had been cleaned by my mother or an aunt, but never like this. The old woman had remarkable strength in her bony hands. With the soap and a scratchy yellow cloth, she scraped a layer of skin off every part of my body. Each time I screamed, she scrubbed harder, until I realized the folly of crying out. I think she was quite disappointed not to find any lice in my hair, because she inspected my head twice. When she was satisfied she told me to climb out of the tub. I stood naked before her, expecting her to offer me the towel she held in her hands. She did not do so immediately, though, but allowed me to drip on the floor. Under her folded eyelids I saw her gaze move. Her eyes were small and dark blue; the whites of her eyes had yellowed like milk aged into cheese. She looked me over from hair to hand, from breast to knee, and from groin to foot. Her eyes covered every inch of me. At that moment, with no understanding of what was to befall me, I felt connected with this decrepit sadist. We were equally trapped in our roles; I as a victim and she as the oppressor. Neither of us had chosen our paths and in another life our current roles might be reversed. Nonetheless, we had both gravitated to this moment together.

  I walked back into the room draped in a towel. The door behind me locked. I went to bed naked, my hair only half dry. I was clean.

  Last night I had my dream again. I rarely dream but when I do, the dream is often the same one. It is about a hat vendor. I can never work out why some nights I dream and some nights I do not. I always eat the
same food, work the same work, live in the same space, but sometimes I dream.

  In my dream I am walking through a roofed market, along a corridor of pale yellow stone that extends downward as far as I can see. On both sides of the corridor are stalls that sell everything you would expect: vegetables, dresses, toys, spices, and devotional carvings. However, there are other stalls that sell strange items, such as pieces of people’s bodies desiccated by the sun, the carcass of our old cow somehow miniaturized and preserved (nothing else is sold in that stall), severed but moving hands and feet, and clothes that speak. The market is crowded with people of all different sizes pushing against one another. Along the entire length of the rooftop, descending down into the market, is my hair.

  I enter the market from the top and walk down the middle of the path. As I walk, my hair falls from the ceiling and curls on my head like a growing, shining black turban. The people divide as I walk through the market and everybody touches me as I pass them. Some hold out their hands to brush against me; others strain just to touch me with their fingertips. Still others grope my breasts, my belly, and my legs. No one touches my face, and I feel that as I breathe out, they inhale as one giant being. My breath becomes the finest mist of rain, and by inhaling it they fill themselves with me.

  As I walk down through the market, at first I feel brilliant. As I walk further, though, I feel increasingly weakened and thirsty. My throat sometimes feels so parched that I have to resist waking up. Then, on my right, I see a hat stall. The hat stall sells only the straw hats of the field that the men wear all day long to farm. They are neatly stacked in many piles to form a wall from the floor to the ceiling. The hat vendor is behind the wall of hats and cannot be seen. Although I am thirsty, I cry out, almost as if I am singing, “Honored sir, can I please buy a hat from you?” He replies from behind the wall, “But they are not for ladies of your station.” I beg, “Please, please, my lord, sell me a hat.”

  Suddenly, the wall of hats is pushed out at me and the piles of hats flood over me. “Help!” I cry. The hats are falling everywhere. They are tumbling down the market street. The other people keep walking downward through the market and stomp over them. I cry out in panic and scurry on the floor, desperately trying to pick up all the hats. The hat vendor starts to laugh, a deep-pitched, joyous laugh. He calls out to me, “Run, Batuk, gather them up. Oh look, another one has fallen—grab it.” My arms are constantly full of hats, but as I reach down to pick one up, two spill out of my arms back onto the floor. I bend over to pick up the fallen hats, but then more fall still. I fear the wrath of the hat vendor. But he is laughing; what is more, his laughter is taking on a musicality and is gaining a rhythm. Finally, I have all the hats balanced in my arms and I turn carefully so as not to let them fall. Just as I come face-to-face with the vendor, I awaken.

  This morning I woke up with the early light pushing through my nest’s curtain. It is cloudy overhead and the light is a diffused orange and the air is cool. I lie on my throne listening to the tumbling of the barrows going to the market and to the rumbling of cars and trains starting the day’s traffic. I think of the brother and five sisters with whom I share my life here. I think of how unfair I have been to Meera, for she is so new to the family and very young. I think a lot about Puneet and know that he is forever of the street and that hope has been cut from his body. My mind drifts to my fantasy that one day a cook will want me to bake sweet-cake with him alone and forever. I pray to whoever listens that he will bring a leash to my neck and that I will be led from here to serve him. I pray that he will let me take my pen and my book with me. I am not sure why I write but in my mind I shudder that it may be so that one day I can look back and read how I have melted into my ink and become nothing—become his. You can never fully straighten bent metal; you can only make it less bent.

  All of us on the Common Street remember our induction, which gave us the right to call ourselves “a taken one.” When I woke up the first morning after I was left with Master Gahil, I was disoriented, but only for a couple of seconds. I immediately remembered where I was. The old woman had scrubbed my skin so hard that I felt raw lying naked on the soft sheet. I can still remember the softness of those sheets.

  I could also hear the activity of the street below. I jumped out of bed and ran across the room naked. I dragged a chair over to the window, stood on it, and stared out. It was early in the day; the gray of the night was being burned away by the morning sun. Cars and trucks drove past, people were milling on the streets, and store owners were preparing their shops for the day. The bakery was already open. My hands held the cool iron bars of the open window; I did not think to cry out. I looked for Father and he was not there.

  Hours passed and I started playing “bouncy-bouncy” on the bed. It was the springiest bed I had ever come across and I leaped up and down repeatedly. Sometimes I would leap up high, touch the ceiling, and flop down on my belly and then spin onto my back. It seemed forever before the old woman unlocked the door and came in with a man who carried a small, light brown case shaped like a thumb.

  “Dr. Dasdaheer is here to visit you,” said the woman without a morning greeting. The doctor was a thin graying man who was not as old as the old woman. He wore a crumpled shirt, brown trousers, and a fraying black leather belt. His shoes were filthy with dust. He spoke quietly. He was someone who said whatever he needed to say to get his bill paid. “Hello, little girl,” he said, “I am Dr. Dasdaheer and I am here to check you because your uncle wants you to be well.” I was standing naked on the bed, flushed from the jumping. The doctor sat me on the bed. He asked all sorts of questions I had no idea how to answer. He did not seem concerned or angry with my lack of knowledge as to whether I had survived this illness or experienced that ailment. I told him that my birthday had been three weeks earlier. He proceeded to touch me carefully, prod me here and there, and listen to my chest briefly through his ear tubes. I think he was a little disappointed with how well I was.

  I was fed more sweet-cakes—two plates full—and warm milk with honey. I was led back to the bathtub, where the old woman left me to soak in more hot water, but this time she did not scrub me.

  That afternoon the old woman brought me crayons and paper. I was drawing a house and a cat when I said to her, “Can I please go home now?” She was sitting asleep in one of the wooden chairs and half opened her heavy eyes, looked at me, and said, “No. That will not be possible.” I drew for a while longer and then asked, “Can I see my father?” She said, “No.” Just like that. I wanted to ask when he would come to visit, but I did not. Lunch was dahl and sweet-cakes but now I was losing the taste for sweet-cakes and time was starting to hang. The old woman fell back asleep.

  An eternity later the old woman woke up and left. After a short while she returned carrying a pile of folded clothes. I had been naked all day. When I wanted to pee, the old woman told me to squat over a white porcelain bowl, which she then carried out and brought back empty. I imagined her tripping and spilling the pee all over herself. I had not needed to do brown but assumed that the process would be the same if I did.

  The old woman then dressed me. I put on small undergarments that were so white they must have been painted because I never got anything nearly as white when I used to wash clothes in the river. She sat me down in front of a wooden table with a mirror on it and seated herself next to me. She first applied makeup to my eyes and red to my lips. She rubbed dye on my cheeks and painted henna on my palms like a bride. Her frail, bony hands were incredible to watch; they never wavered or trembled. When she painted a swirl, it was perfect the first time. Her fingers moved with beautiful efficiency. The feeling of the wet paintbrush on my skin was exquisite. When she was done, I stared in the mirror and barely recognized myself under the facade. My cheekbones were as defined as mountain ridges, my eyes shone from black frames, and my lips were full. I gasped at my own vision. I was as beautiful as a human could be.

  Brushing out and oiling my hair, the old woman looked a
t me with a proud emptiness, as if she were finishing the decoration of an ornate piece of pottery. When my eyes caught hers she did not look away; instead her eyes invited me to probe deep within her. Deep, deep inside her all I could see was rubble.

  After she finished my hair, for the first time in my life, I was wrapped in a sari. It was orange and red with white and silver threads sewn into it, was as light as a feather, and smelled the same as the oil in the bathwater the night before. I was complete; I felt wrapped like a precious gift. The old woman left me and locked the door behind her. I stared at myself in the mirror. It took a moment to realize that it was me. I tilted my head, raised my wrist, and fanned my fingers; I placed a subtle smile on my face. The image before me changed. I spoke out loud and heard a voice I was familiar with emanating from a face that was foreign. I started to perform animal faces in front of the mirror; the lipstick gave them added comedy. I was halfway through my repertoire when the old goat returned. She only half opened the door, leaned through it, and said, “Come.” Her tone was different from her previous orders. It was as if she were offering me an invitation rather than commanding me. I got up, said goodbye to the frog in the mirror, and left the room with her.

  The old woman led me through several corridors before arriving at a large pair of dark wooden doors. She did not knock but turned the door handle and pushed the right-side door open. She indicated with her hooded eyes and a nod of her head that I should walk in.

  The first thing I noticed when I entered the room was its smell. It stank of incense and made me feel sick. The room was enormous and dark. In its center sat five men spaced around a rectangular table covered in a white cloth. The table was loaded with silver trays of food, glasses, silver cutlery, and white plates with painted gold rims. Smoke was rising from the table like steam off the river. The men were engaged in loud conversation but as soon as they noticed me they instantly hushed. I only recognized one, Master Gahil, who sat puffing on a cigarette. He spoke loudly from across the room, “May the heavens be praised, you are truly a divine princess … my sweet.” He smiled at me, beckoning with his jewelry-weighted arm. “Come in, come in. Divine princess, why don’t you show us a little dance?”