An Unrestored Woman

by Shobha Rao

  When she looked again at the boy, he was looking straight back at her. This time, she slowly came to understand that he was trying to tell her something. But what? Kavitha watched him. And as she did the boy raised his right index finger to his right ear and tapped it. She stared at him. Why was he tapping his ear? Did it hurt? She turned to Vinod, but his attention was fixed on Ahmed. When Kavitha spun back, the boy was pointing toward the guard, the one who was standing by the door. What could he mean? She guessed now that he wanted her to listen, but to what? The guard was silent, unmoving. The only other sound was an occasional scream from another bogie, loud enough to travel through the train. There must be other men, in other parts of the train. She had assumed it: these four could not possibly subdue a whole train. But why would he want her to listen to that? She strained her ears some more. There were a few night sounds that reached her, an owl, perhaps, or a bulbul, but those were infrequent, and could hardly be the reason for the boy’s signaling. She knew he wasn’t deaf or mute, because she’d seen the boy and his father conversing earlier. So what was it?

  Then, there was a lull. A quiet. For a few seconds, a few precious seconds, there was no screaming, no wailing, Ahmed was busy looking through a bag, and even the old couple and the daughter-in-law were restrained, stoic as they gathered their remaining tattered bags. And that was when she heard it. Footsteps. At first, they meant nothing to her. She looked at the boy, perplexed. He had heard them too, and she knew because he nodded. They were what he had wanted her to hear. But why? Kavitha concentrated. Footsteps. She heard them approaching, growing louder. And louder. And then, just as the footsteps passed the guard in front of their door, she arched her neck and saw that it was one of the guards who had come with Ahmed. So he was patrolling the bogie. She had assumed all three guards were standing outside their door, but now it made sense that one of them would have to patrol the passengers in the other berths.

  She sat back and looked at the boy. She hardly had a chance to blink when, in the next instant, the other guard passed the one at the door, going the other way. She nearly gasped. Two of the guards were patrolling. And not only that, since theirs was the last berth in their bogie, one of the guards, at any given time, was probably in the next bogie over. He wasn’t even in their bogie, let alone anywhere near their berth.

  She had thought there were three men outside the door. But there was only one.

  Kavitha had no idea what any of this meant, but she knew it meant something. She nearly reached out and hugged the boy. And he seemed to know it because he smiled.

  * * *

  Kavitha sat back. She held her breath. She knew there was not much time. Ahmed had already moved on to searching the bags of the younger sister and her mother. She mapped out the layout of their bogie in her head. There were eight berths, exactly like theirs, behind them. Those berths were being patrolled just as theirs was, except Ahmed had already looted the other eight berths. In front were the two doors, facing each other, that led on and off the train. Past the doors were the lavatory and the sink. And against this sink the brother still slumped. He seemed conscious, but barely. Between the lavatory and the sink area was a narrow passageway that led to the next bogie. She knew all their hope was in front, where the doors were, but that was all she knew.

  She thought about the layout, and she despaired. There was no way out, not with a guard standing by the door, and two more approaching or within earshot. It would have to be lightning quick, before the two patrol guards could be alerted, but even then.

  She looked at Vinod. It was growing dark outside, and all the lights in the train had been extinguished, but she could still see his face, wary of Ahmed’s movements, watching him as he unpacked the suitcases of the mother and her daughter. Vinod’s body was as it had always been, since the day they’d married, slim, straight-backed, the recent gray at his temples only accentuating his seriousness, his reserve. She wanted, for the first time in the ten years she’d known him, to collapse into his arms. She wanted to weep. She wanted to say, There has to be a way out. “How are you holding up?” he whispered. Instead of answering she rested her forehead against his upper arm and felt the knobbiness of his shoulder bone, its hardness against the hardness of her forehead; she felt in that moment that the answer must lie in the body, in its unquenchable will to live. Her gaze fell on the little boy’s feet; they dangled off the floor of the train and his shoes hung loose around them, a size too big. The end of the piece of twine he’d put in them was visible, near his left ankle. She looked at the piece of twine and then she lifted her head.

  The boy still seemed as though he was listening to the footsteps, and when he noticed her gaze, Kavitha pointed at his shoes and gestured for him to pass her its contents. The boy waited for Ahmed to turn away, just as Kavitha had hoped he would, and quickly handed her the two thin, flat pebbles and the piece of twine. There had been a chit of paper, she recalled, but this he kept for himself. Again, nothing was quite clear in her mind, but never had two rocks and a piece of twine seemed to hold so much promise. The contents of her shoes—a necklace, some rings, and a set of matching bracelets—held none.

  Kavitha waited. She didn’t know what she was waiting for, but she knew she had to wait.

  Ahmed, in the meantime, had found the jewelry in the shoes of the young woman. Kavitha only became aware of it when he laughed out loud and said, “So that’s where they are.” He turned to face the rest of the berth. “Everybody,” he said, swinging his machete, his voice rising at their collusion, “take them off.”

  Kavitha slowly undid the buckle of her sandals; all this time, the hem of her sari had covered them. Her necklace fell out first. Ahmed picked it up with his machete. It dangled off the tip like a lizard, like something writhing, and not meant to be touched. He added it to the pile of jewelry on the bench. Just as he turned back toward her, the old man, standing in the corner by the window, clutched at his chest. He let out a long groan and collapsed onto the seat. “Sasurji!” his daughter-in-law shrieked. His wife was bent over him, pleading, “Kya baat hai? What’s wrong?”

  “Air,” someone said, “give him air.”

  Ahmed’s face bristled. The daughter-in-law rose to take the old man outside, but Ahmed pushed her down. “Stay where you are,” he seethed.

  “He needs air,” she pleaded, “he might die.”

  “You all might,” Ahmed said. He summoned the guard posted at the door. “Get the old man some air,” he said. “And stand where I can see you.” The guard stepped into the berth and led the old man to the door. They stood just outside, in the passageway.

  Kavitha counted to ten in her head. One of the guards went by. Then the other.

  “I need to use the lavatory,” she said.

  The others were busy emptying their shoes. Ahmed took no notice of her.

  “I said, I have to use the lavatory.”

  “Shut up.”

  “It’s female trouble,” she said.

  Vinod gave her a sharp look. Ahmed paused. “Leave your shoes here,” he said, the pile of jewelry rising behind him like a hill of sand.

  The boy looked at Kavitha. She looked back at him.

  * * *

  The brother, the one slumped by the sink, lifted his eyes when she came out of the berth. The bleeding had slowed, it seemed to her, but he was clearly weak. He had gone pale; his clothes and skin were soaked with blood. For a fleeting moment, she thought she might help him, perhaps even by simply lifting him to a sitting position, but she knew there was no room for that. No time. She passed the old man, the guard, both at the window facing the berth, and when she reached the brother, she knelt swiftly next to his ear, shoved one of the pebbles into his hand (his left; the good one), and whispered, “Throw it. Throw it the moment I come out of the lavatory.”

  She jumped up and ducked inside. Had he heard? Was he even conscious? She listened for the footsteps of the guards. She could no longer hear them, not with the door closed, only when they were just outs
ide the lavatory door would she be able to hear. Breathe, she told herself, taking a breath. Breathe again, she said. And she did this over and over and over again, thinking only of the little boy.

  The lavatory had no window. Just a squat toilet, a tap for water, and a handle for grip. The hole was open and showed the gravel on the tracks. She looked through the hole, lined with excrement, and saw the gravel. Every stone the same color, quarried in some distant place, and varying only slightly in shape. The years following the stillbirth had been like that. She had often wondered, during those years, whether she should have named the baby. She decided it was better that she hadn’t. Not because she would have felt a greater loss—there was not, she knew, a loss any greater—but because naming the child, a girl they had told her, would have been an act of bravery, and she didn’t want to be brave. She wanted all the fears and weakness of a dark, unnamed place. And she wanted to love the child in that way, without hope and without a name.

  When both guards had passed and been gone a few seconds, she opened the lavatory door. At the sound of the door, the brother seemed to wake as if from a deep sleep. He looked at the pebble, a little too long, a little too long, Kavitha fretted, then flung it down the corridor. Ahmed yelled, “What was that?” The guard, the one by the old man, took a few tentative steps past the berth.

  This was the moment. This was it.

  Kavitha darted past the brother, reached in, and grabbed the little boy’s hand. They jumped from the train, through the door near the lavatory, and as soon as they hit the ground, Kavitha handed the little boy one end of the twine, shoved him against the door, and said, “Hold it. Tight.” She held the other end, on the other side of the door. Ahmed came racing out, they held on until he tripped, and leapt out of the way so they wouldn’t break his fall. Then they ran.

  It was dark. There were a few stars, not many. The sliver of moon cast hardly any light. They scurried under the bogie, up a few cars, toward the engine, and lay on the couplings, facedown, their arms wrapped tight around them. Neither spoke. Kavitha waited until the guards had run past, checking under the bogies and inside them, then indicated the ladder that led to the roof of the train. They climbed up—the rungs digging into Kavitha’s bare, bleeding feet—and crawled to the middle, if for no other reason than to be halfway in case they had to run in either direction. It was from this vantage point that Kavitha saw a road in the distance, a half mile away, at least; a thin, dark ribbon that she assumed was a road. But it was empty; not a car or a lorry or a bullock cart passed.

  The night deepened.

  She could not have said how much time had gone by when she saw two small lights in the distance, almost pinpricks in the night sky. They grew—slowly, because they were so far away. “There,” she whispered, “look.” The boy raised his head. “What do we do?” he said. They waited. The lights got bigger. Alarmingly fast. She knew there was no way for both of them to reach the road before the lights passed them. She studied the ground. Near the train was a small tree. Farther along was what looked to be a pile of luggage.

  She handed the boy the second pebble.

  She saw, after a time, his small, murky shape moving to the tree. Then the luggage. He had told her, before he’d descended the ladder, that he’d aimed pebbles at moving trains lots of times, in his village. “I never missed,” he boasted. Kavitha didn’t point out to him that the moving light was not a train, but something much smaller. She didn’t tell him, But it’s dark. And she didn’t say, We only get to play this game once.

  She heard a clink. Didn’t she? What else could it be? There was nothing for many, many miles surrounding the train. That was of course why Ahmed and his men had picked this spot. And that’s what she had thought while traveling on the train: that to journey through such emptiness was to invite it inside.

  The light stopped.

  * * *

  The driver of the lorry, a burly Sikh who spoke very little, except to say, “I’m going to Attari, no further,” ignored Kavitha.

  “But we have to get the police,” she said. “The authorities, the military, I don’t know. That train is under siege,” she cried. “My husband is on it, his father. People are hurt.” The cabin of the lorry was dark. She turned from the driver to the boy. He was staring out of the window.

  “He wasn’t my father,” the boy said, falling silent again.

  Kavitha looked at him, as if for the first time. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Mustafa.”

  A Muslim. But why was he going to India? They drove on and on, eastward.

  “You didn’t miss,” she said to Mustafa. Then she said, “Was that luggage?”

  “No.”

  “What was it?”

  “Kerosene,” he said.

  And she too fell silent.

  * * *

  They reached Attari late the next morning. She’d learned from Mustafa that the man she’d taken to be his father was a Hindu friend of his parents’, entrusted to take their son to relatives living in East Pakistan. “But where are your parents?” she’d asked.

  He’d looked away, and said nothing. After a moment he’d turned to her and said, “My cousins are waiting.”

  She knew she would take him there. He refused to take another train, and she was not keen on it, either, so they traveled slowly, overland by road. Mostly lorries and bullock carts, a passing car if they were fortunate. She had silver anklets she’d pushed up her calves, so that Ahmed wouldn’t see, and she traded these for money. It ran out well before they got to East Pakistan. In the presence of other people, the two were often silent, letting them assume they were mother and son. That seemed easiest.

  Sitting for these long stretches of quiet, Kavitha was surprised by how often she thought of Vinod. She knew he was gone, that she was now a widow. The awareness was not startling. Not even frightening. I was widowed long ago, she thought. And she knew that on the train, when she’d laid her head on his shoulder, and had felt the roundness and knobbiness of a bone so funny, so irreverent, so unlike him, she had said her good-bye.

  * * *

  They were on a horse cart, nearing East Pakistan. Maybe a day, no more. It was late afternoon. It was a covered, two-wheeled cart, and Kavitha lay in its shade, dozing. Mustafa lay beside her. The motion of the cart woke her (or was it a dream) and she said to Mustafa, “What happened to us, it’s ours. Yours and mine. Don’t speak of it.”

  And in his half sleep, perhaps also dreaming, Mustafa heard, “You are mine. Don’t speak.” And so he never did.

  CURFEW

  Safia’s earliest memory of her grandfather was of being on a boat with him. Or a ferry. If the rickety, inelegant, swaying raft they were on could be called a ferry. Safia was four years old. She and her grandfather were crossing the Ravi River, northwest of Lahore, and her grandfather, earlier, in a fit of something Safia could not understand, decided to take her on a river excursion. The two sat in one corner of the raft; when Safia looked down she could see the brown of the water between the wooden slats. Every now and then, a small twig or a discarded wrapper would float by and Safia would try to squeeze her tiny hand through the slats to reach for it, but her grandfather slapped her arm away every time. Safia looked around. Also piled onto the raft were a motorbike, numerous bicycles, and bushel after bushel of vegetables, belonging to vendors going back to their homes after coming to Lahore to sell their wares. There was also a watermelon in the middle of the raft. From what Safia could tell, it was positioned in the exact center of it, almost as if the watermelon was the talisman keeping the raft afloat.

  Safia studied the faces of the other occupants. There was another child, but only a baby, and it was crying while the mother tried to shush it by pointing out the river and the tiny island of silt rising out of it and the far shore. Why would a baby be interested in any of that? Safia wondered. Then she looked at the vendors, each in turn; they all looked miserable. They clung to their bushel of vegetables as if they would be lost without th
em, as if they had left behind, on the retreating shore, all doubt as to what they loved most in the world. The oarsman, a dark man, short but muscular, maneuvered across the current with a long pole, lifting and pushing, lifting and pushing. He looked like a nice man but mostly he looked bored. Safia turned away and climbed onto her grandfather’s lap. She reached her hand into the pocket of her grandfather’s kurta and felt something. She pulled it out. It was a pebble, round and black and shiny. Pretty. “Is this yours?” Safia asked.

  Her grandfather nodded.

  Safia stared at it some more then she licked it. She liked how it felt against her tongue, cool and rough, salty even. “Can I have it?”

  Her grandfather—his gray beard long enough to curl in the breeze—shook his head no.

  “But why?”

  Just then, just as Safia was shifting it from one hand to the other, the pebble slipped away and plopped between the slats into the water. Safia gasped. She bent her head all the way down to the opening between the boards and watched the pebble disappear. It sank so fast it was as if a hand had snatched it and pulled it down. She waited for it to come back up, but it never did. When she looked up again they were nearing the shore, and when she looked again at her grandfather, there were tears in his eyes.

  * * *

  Her family had warned her. Her mother, when Safia had turned twenty-five and had announced she was marrying Ethan, shook her head and said, “Grief. It will only come to grief.” Even her ailing grandfather—who’d moved to London to live with them only a year ago—sighed loudly and Safia could’ve sworn he mumbled the word fool under his breath. She swung around in amazement to look at him but he was looking away, out of the garden window.

  * * *

  Grief, grief, grief, Safia chanted softly.