Fireproof

by Raj Kamal Jha

  (A pause, BOOK is uncharacteristically still, so is TOWEL, as always. Even the wind has stopped. The glare of the overhead light falling on WATCH makes the ripples of the water on the stage sparkle.)

  BOOK You there, Watch? We are listening, we are waiting.

  WATCH (Still silent, a drop of something falls from its strap that hangs over the edge of the chair. It makes a noise when it drips onto the water below.)

  BOOK Come on, Watch, don’t tell me you are crying.

  WATCH (Silent.)

  BOOK You, made of steel, glass, leather, you with an electronic battery, why do you cry? It’s all over, we are only trying to recall now. We are among friends, we have water, we can always hide. Just get it over with. The more you delay, the more difficult it becomes.

  WATCH I know, Book, I know, but the next bit is difficult. They entered the room and Father went down onto his knees, Father was praying, my dial now pressed to the floor, they forced him to get up and they asked him to undress, I felt myself against his trousers as he unbuttoned them, I closed my eyes, I prayed for my hands to move faster, so I could not see, I heard them say, yes, he is the one we are after, then they told him to get up and open his mouth and hold his tongue with his left hand and there I was, on his wrist, I was there, I was right there, inches away from Father’s tongue, I was there when they brought out the knife, I was there when they cut it, I had blood all over me, and it was then that one of them pulled me off, didn’t even unbuckle the strap, pulled hard, tore me away from Father’s wrist and all this while I could see Shabnam standing in the room, I saw her crying, I saw her shivering as if she was sick, I heard Mother screaming from the kitchen and then they got to her, they told Mother to do that, too, to undress and to show her tongue. Then they threw me out of the window. Still in the air, I looked down, I saw Father’s auto-rickshaw was already on fire, the windscreen had gone, so close was I to the flames that I thought I would land on the roof of the auto-rickshaw, that my end had come. But when I landed, I felt stone, I felt the street, it shattered my glass but yes, I was alive. Through my dial-face, shattered, I saw the fire, I saw Shabnam running. And later, much later, I saw you, Book, not far away.

  BOOK Thank you for noticing me but did you see them, Watch? You saw their faces? Through the blood on your dial?

  WATCH I saw them. I cannot forget their faces. B looked at me, A held the father, C fetched the knife, D went for the mother.

  (Once again, the overhead light is switched off, it’s dark. This time the pause is longer, almost thirty seconds, in which you can hear the sound of water dripping – tears from WATCH. The third light switches on, this one over TOWEL.)

  MISS GLASS (Off stage.) Towel, you are our last speaker. And, Book, please listen, Towel didn’t interrupt you.

  TOWEL (Speaks in a woman’s voice, softer than either BOOK or WATCH, a pause in between each word as if someone was taking notes and she was dictating.) I have been listening to both of you carefully, Book and Watch, although it has been difficult. You see, as I told you, I am folded all over, there were times when the folds muffled your voices, but I think the hole helped, the hole burnt in my middle. Through that I could hear.

  BOOK Why didn’t you say so, Towel? Miss Glass could have raised the level of the wind, that could have carried our voices better. But you have been unusually quiet. Even on the street, when we were all lying in a heap, you were the one quietly crumpled in one corner.

  TOWEL Because unlike you, Book and Watch, I didn’t just watch, I helped them kill. I am a murderer, I have blood on me, the blood of a woman, of a young mother, of Abba’s daughter-in-law. (The water splashes.)

  BOOK You are being too dramatic now, just tell us your story and we shall decide.

  TOWEL I was lying on the floor, in the kitchen, just beside Daughter-in-law as she was peeling the potatoes when they walked in. They hadn’t seen her but Daughter-in-law could hear everything. She got up, walked to the kitchen door and without stepping out, of course, she listened. They were talking to Abba. In fact, he was the one doing most of the talking. She heard him beg, she heard him plead, implore. Abba is a proud man and never talks like that so she knew something terrible was about to happen. And all that she could do was to pick me up, tie and untie me in knots, wrap me around her fingers, unwrap me, run to the window to see if there was anyone she could call for help but there was no one. And she would run back to the door to listen some more. When she realized they wouldn’t listen, she tried to hide in the kitchen, but as you can see in the picture, there was no place to hide. So she pressed herself against the wall, near the dish rack, and watched two men walk in. Next to them, Daughter-in-law looked like a child, little more than a girl. One man said, let’s get it over with before the fire spreads. The other man laughed and said, I don’t think you can last longer than that. One man picked me up from the kitchen floor, the other grabbed Daughter-in-law. Yes, she fought, Daughter-in-law fought, she tried to get away but she was very weak, she had a baby inside her. I saw Daughter-in-law slide down the wall to the floor and the man going down with her, I saw her close her eyes and the man unfasten his trousers with one hand while holding the other over her mouth. But she didn’t scream, she didn’t even bite, she just closed her eyes. The other man took me to her, sat down at her head. As the man holding her down removed his hand from her mouth, I was the one who replaced it. It was my job to muffle her scream, I was pressed flat against her face and then I was pushed inside her mouth, I felt her lips, her tongue, her teeth. After the first man was done, it was the other’s turn. Then they both used me to wipe themselves.

  (TOWEL stops. BOOK listens, all his pages closed, still.)

  WATCH (Softly, so softly that those in the audience have to strain their ears to hear.) You don’t have to tell us everything if you don’t want to, you know.

  BOOK Are you stupid, Watch? If you can’t take it, slip down from the chair into the water. Continue, Towel, yes, you are right, yours seems to be the most difficult story to tell, but we are here to speak the unspeakable. We aren’t humans, we are objects, we don’t have to follow their rules.

  TOWEL I helped kill Daughter-in-law. (Loud and clear, a distinct pause between each word. The wind is now blowing hard making BOOK’s pages flap, TOWEL shudder, the water is rising up the legs of all three chairs.)

  BOOK You were used as a gag, Towel, no one died because of you, no one dies because a little hand towel is stuffed inside their mouths.

  TOWEL I helped kill Daughter-in-law, Book, I helped kill her. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. Because I wasn’t just used as a gag, I was then used as a noose. Because when they were done with the rape, when they had wiped themselves in my folds, they got down on the floor again. Daughter-in-law’s sari was bunched near her waist, there wasn’t a word from her, no scream, no cry and then they tied me around her neck, both of them, they used me to strangle her, to bang her head on the floor. Then they took a knife and cut her open, they wiped the knife in my folds, they then slit her womb, took the baby out, the baby still not formed, not ready to emerge, they cut almost everything the baby had grown so far, even its tiny arms and legs. It didn’t take long. By this time, another man had walked into the room and when he saw what had happened, when he saw the blood, when he saw the flesh, he threw up, they laughed at him, gave me to him to wipe his face but he took one look at me, saw the blood, dropped me on the floor.

  (The water on the stage is now moving, in ripples that start from around the chairs and reach the end of the stage. As if someone has dropped a huge invisible boulder into the water without making the slightest of noises.)

  BOOK You saw them, Towel? You saw the faces?

  TOWEL I saw them. I cannot forget their faces. A chewed his lip, B blows into the air, C looks around and D fixes his hair. But, wait, I haven’t told you the most important thing in this, about the baby. The baby was alive.

  BOOK You just said they slit Daughter-in-law open, they took the baby out.

  TOWEL
I told you, the baby was alive. I saw it.

  WATCH Come on, Towel, it’s like me saying I am still running tick tock tick tock. How could the baby live in all that fire, after all that blood?

  TOWEL The baby was alive.

  BOOK Towel, sorry, I didn’t want to have to say this but you are making me say this. I am the one with the stories written inside me, I am the one with questions and answers, I know reason better than any one of you here. Watch is right, how could the baby have lived?

  TOWEL The baby was alive. The baby was alive, the baby was alive, the baby was alive.

  BOOK OK, Towel, so if the baby was alive (let’s assume it was, let’s take you for your word), what did it look like? Did it look like the Farex Baby, its soft hands wrapped around the baby-formula tin? Or did it look like the baby in my book, with a pink face and blue eyes, a London baby?

  TOWEL This was a baby like I have never seen before. I told you it wasn’t fully formed, its time had not yet come, it was not supposed to be brought out into the world. I couldn’t see the details except for a black strip of flesh running around its tiny forehead and waist, as if it had caught the heat from the fire. And, this you won’t believe but I saw it, it had eyes and these were blinking. Blinking through the murder, the smoke, the men throwing up in the kitchen.

  (TOWEL pauses, the wind is now silent, the water calm, hardly any ripples. The overhead light falling on TOWEL is now softer, more yellow and orange than white. BOOK is uncharacteristically quiet, stunned into disbelief. WATCH breaks the silence, softly.)

  WATCH And?

  BOOK Yes, and? Now you will say that the baby had wings and it flew? You are making things up, Towel, I think the fire’s got to you. (Flaps his pages.)

  TOWEL I understand, Book, I perfectly understand, I would have reacted the same way. What happened later I don’t know, I was kicked by someone, just like you and Watch, kicked repeatedly until I was out of the house on the pavement not far from both of you. By then, though, I had caught some of the flames, you can see what that did to me. And until Bright Shirt came and picked me up, I lay there just thinking of the baby. The baby was alive. I am sure of that.

  WATCH So what happened to the baby? Did they take it away? Did you see them take it away?

  BOOK Or did this baby crawl away on its own? I won’t be surprised if it did, you have made it sound like a Superbaby.

  TOWEL I don’t know, Book, I don’t know. I told you I was out on the street by then, with all of you. But Miss Glass knows, she will tell us what happened to the baby.

  (The overhead light begins to dim, the noise of the wind is now loud enough to be distracting, there are murmurs in the audience. Someone is crying. The stage is dark again, just as it was when the curtains went up, the chairs visible only in their outlines. There’s a stir in the audience, the sound of people getting up, promptly silenced by a familiar voice, again off stage. )

  MISS GLASS Thank you, Towel, for that story. And, yes, I know what happened next. That’s for the last act, ladies and gentlemen. Once again, please join me in thanking all of these three special characters.

  (There is loud applause; the stage is now pitch dark except for a pale flood of light in the wings. The water is still again, I sit in wait, Ithim no longer by my side. It’s so quiet that I can’t even hear the faintest sound from behind me, from the gallery, it’s as if all of the people there have frozen, turned to stone.)

  23. The Last Act – II

  THIS beam of light is so weak, diffused, that at first it seems not to be a part of the show. Perhaps there’s a room in the wings where a door has opened and the light’s coming from there. By accident, not design. It’s enough to reveal the water, though. And you can see that while all the three objects were talking, its level has risen until with each ripple, some of the water now spills over the wall that skirts the edge of the stage. BOOK, WATCH and TOWEL are still seated, silent just as they were when the curtains first came up. The light beam then gets brighter and brighter until it’s a dazzling, shining arc spanning the two ends of the stage. Like a rainbow spanning the three chairs and the black water. Someone claps in the audience. This rainbow, from wing to wing, stays on for the rest of the act.

  MISS GLASS Towel is right, the baby was alive. And to tell us about this, we have our last speaker of the night, Bright Shirt. Thank you for filling in most of the blanks, Book, Watch and Towel. Now Bright Shirt will take it from here, he will do the rest. I know all of us want to get back to The Hideout before the sun rises. That’s why I have told him to take it easy with his rhyme, just stick to reason.

  (At one end of the stage where the bright, white arc of light begins, there is a commotion. BRIGHT SHIRT appears with a loud splash of water and colour. Just as he had in the railway station, he walks onto the stage, prancing and twirling, waist-deep in the water.)

  BRIGHT SHIRT (Stands next to the chair, to the left of TOWEL, so all four are in a straight line. His movements stop, he stands as if to attention.) Just like the three of you, Book, Watch and Towel, we too were together last night after we were killed. We, the people. There were many of us, I am losing count. And just like you on the pavement, we were piled up as well. In heaps in hospitals. I found myself in the Burns Ward of Holy Angel. Miss Glass was there, too, what a privilege. A nurse was there, along with two doctors, all of whom once worked in the hospital before they were killed, there were some guards, there was Abba’s daughter-in-law with her baby. There was the newborn, there were the newdead. As for Tariq’s mother and Shabnam’s parents – we are still looking, they must have been sent somewhere else. We were all shaken but Abba’s daughter-in-law kept crying and crying saying she was sure her baby was alive.

  TOWEL See, I told you so. Thank you, Bright Shirt.

  BRIGHT SHIRT You are welcome. So there we were, all of us at Holy Angel, lying on the floor, trying to see through the white cotton sheets that covered our bodies (brand-new white sheets, by the way). And here was this young woman crying. She kept saying she wanted her baby to experience the world of the living. Even if just for a day, an hour, even five minutes. She wanted someone to hold him, just as she would. She said it was very unfair that he would come into our world straight from the world of the unborn. She said her baby had to know what it was like to be the living. And then the strangest thing happened. You won’t believe it. Even you, Book, with all your stories and your pages, you haven’t heard this one yet.

  BOOK (Evidently thrilled that the attention is back on him.) Surprise me, Bright Shirt, I have been waiting. In fact, I’m a bit tired of children’s stories set in London.

  BRIGHT SHIRT Through the white sheet that covered her face, I saw Daughter-in-law shiver and tremble. At first, I thought she was crying about her baby again but when the shivering didn’t stop, I asked her what was wrong and she said she was frightened, she was very frightened. I told her there was nothing to be afraid of, it was all over. And she said, no, it wasn’t, because when they were carrying her up the stairs, she had seen a gentleman walk into the hospital with his pregnant wife. She said she was sure he was one of the four who had come to her house earlier that evening.

  BOOK, WATCH, TOWEL (All together, in one shout, almost a scream.) Who was it? A? B? C? D? Tell us, tell us, we need to know, we remember the faces. Each one of them.

  BRIGHT SHIRT Please, let me finish. I mentioned this to Miss Glass. Miss Glass, Miss Glass, Miss Glass. The angel, the saviour, the one with the dazzling intelligence, the flashing brilliance, the one with grace, the one with kindness . . .

  MISS GLASS (From off stage.) Enough, Bright Shirt, continue. If you wish, you can praise me later; we have all the time in the world. How many times do I have to tell you that?

  BRIGHT SHIRT Sorry, Miss Glass, I had to get that off my chest given it will soon be submerged; the water’s rising. Well, I told Miss Glass what Daughter-in-law had just said and right there, that very moment, in a second, she didn’t even stop to think, the brilliant Miss Glass, she and the nurse and
the doctors went into a huddle after which she called out to me: ‘We have some work to do, are you ready?’ I said I am honoured, I am at your service, I couldn’t be more blessed, I . . .

  BOOK (Shouts.) Careful, I see a rhyme coming, I can see a rhyme coming. Stick to reason, Mr Shirt.

  BRIGHT SHIRT Sorry about that. Well, Miss Glass had a brainwave. The doctors had said that the baby didn’t have even a day to live – each blink, in fact, was a miracle. And the woman who had just been admitted to the Maternity Ward would be in labour for at least a day or two. So Miss Glass said why not see if the gentleman takes this baby as his own. Let’s not tell him anything, just approach him with the bundle. Let’s see if we can fulfil a young mother’s dead wish. Let the baby be held, be loved, let the baby be in the world of the living. And who better to do this than the gentleman himself? He is ideal, he watched over our deaths, now he waits for birth. Such fearful, graceful symmetry, she said.