A Moment Comes

by Jennifer Bradbury

  “Maybe this is a bit like that,” Daddy says, his voice going soft, like he wishes it were true.

  After a beat, Tariq clears his throat.

  “Sorry, Tariq, nearly forgot you were there.” Father leans forward, scrawls a reply confirming that he’ll amend his itinerary. Tariq takes it, then slips it into the pocket at his breast. He clears his throat again.

  “Sir?”

  “Hmm?” Father looks up.

  “With your permission, may I stop in to visit with my family for luncheon after sending the telegram?”

  He speaks slower, with more care than when we first came. I wonder if I make him nervous. I sort of hope so. It would mean he thinks about me. Is aware of me. But then he’s guarded and careful with everyone, not just me.

  Father nods his assent. “Don’t take too long, though. I’ve need of you this afternoon.”

  “Certainly, sir,” Tariq says, a grin breaking across his face. For an instant I get a glimpse of him—the real him—smiling, happy, unguarded. And he’s even better looking for it. Really, with a smile that deadly, I’m relieved he’s so bloody serious all the time. “Thank you, sir.” He bows quickly, and when he lifts his eyes again, they fall on me, and the smile falters a tic. He looks away, suddenly shy again.

  Well, then.

  Tariq bolts out the door. I watch him leave, longing to go with him, and not just because I’m desperate to get out of this house.

  I sigh and turn so the fan can cool the backs of my knees, and rest my bum against the desk.

  “Can I go out too, Father?”

  “What for, Meggie?” he asks, reaching for his fountain pen.

  “A bit of a shop, I think,” I say. “I wonder if they might have some clothes ready-made that might be more suitable to this heat.”

  He inspects the nib of the fountain pen, looks up at me. “Not by yourself, of course.”

  I shake my head. “Mother might come,” I offer. “Anupreet would, certainly.”

  He takes a deep breath and sighs. “I’m sure we can just send out for what you might—”

  “Please, Father, let me go. Only for an hour. Nothing will happen. And we’ll just pop into the market across the way. Close enough that even the guard from the front gate could come with us if you wanted.”

  He pulls a clean sheet of paper onto the blotter. “One hour. Be back in time for lunch.”

  I pop to my feet and bend over to kiss him on the cheek. “Thanks ever, Daddy!”

  He pulls open his desk drawer and fishes his billfold from the mess. “I’ve no idea how much you’ll require,” he says, counting out the notes into my hand. He gives me four hundred rupee in soft, rumpled notes.

  I kiss him again and run out the door to find Anu before he can change his mind.

  Anu looks stunned when I tell her that Father is sending us out shopping. At first I think she simply doesn’t understand me, the way they shake their heads here to mean both yes and no, the confused look in her eye. But then I show her the money, point at the market stalls out across the lane from my window, her eyes growing wide like she’s afraid, but that doesn’t make sense. I reach for the pink tunic she’s wearing over her matching pink pants.

  “I need something to wear that won’t make me feel like a boiled potato,” I say.

  “Ah,” she says back, but I’m still not sure she understands.

  I roll my eyes and pull her by the hand with me down the stairs and out the front door.

  The porter sees us coming and stands taller, thrusting out his chest. The salute, I suspect, is only partly out of respect for my position as the daughter of his employer. I’ve noticed men have a hard time not reacting when Anu appears.

  “We’re going to the market,” I tell him.

  He cocks his head sideways but doesn’t reach for the latch that holds the gate shut.

  I point at the stalls in the distance again, “Shopping?” Damn this language.

  He smiles apologetically, showing off a gleaming gold tooth. I throw up my hands, turn to Anu. “Tell him, would you?”

  Anu nods once but doesn’t speak at first. She looks back to the house, as if expecting someone to run out and fetch us back inside. Then she looks at me. “Go on,” I say, smiling. “It’s all right.” I know she understands English better than she speaks it, but I don’t understand why she’s hesitating.

  She smiles back shakily and then faces the guard, speaking in a stream of Punjabi so rapid and lovely it’s like one of Schubert’s arpeggios.

  The porter’s smile falters; he looks back and forth between our faces and behind us to the house, as if he too is looking for someone to tell him that this is all some kind of mistake. But after a second more he unlatches the gate and lets us pass into the street.

  He calls out something to Anu.

  “Haan ji,” she says back, without turning round.

  “What did he say?” I ask.

  She gathers up her words, thinking them out before speaking them.

  “This market only,” she says.

  I nod. This market will be plenty. I’m almost skipping as we cover the half a block between our front gate and the spot where the market begins. The outermost stalls face the street, selling such an assortment of items that Harrods might claw off and bury itself out of shame.

  Each stall displays its wares proudly. We pass by one holding thousands of odd little slippers, another with pyramids of fruits I’ve never seen, another with towering stacks of brightly colored fabric. There is a paper seller, something like a drugstore, a jeweler, a bookshop, a toy shop, a spice merchant, and one selling cooking tools. And it goes on and on, more of the same goods mixed in with unexpected ones here and there, each turn revealing more makeshift lanes and corridors between the merchants.

  I am so busy gaping and grinning that I don’t realize how tightly Anu is squeezing my hand.

  I look down at it, see her knuckles showing white where she’s woven her fingers into mine. “Anu?” I ask.

  She cuts her eyes away from the long alley of shops ahead of us and looks at me. She forces a smile, but she doesn’t seem herself.

  “Anu, what’s the matter?” The girl has been acting funny all week. But she won’t tell me why, and she won’t explain why her family didn’t show up to collect her on Sunday.

  She tries to shake me off, pulls me inside the market proper, but something is the matter. I plant my feet, make her stop walking.

  “Anu, are you all right?”

  She takes a breath. “Yes, miss. Sorry, miss.”

  “Don’t bloody apologize—”

  “You want salwar-kameez, miss?” she interrupts, gesturing at her outfit.

  I sigh. “I suppose so,” I say, giving up on figuring out her trouble for now. “But where do we start?” From where I stand, I can see three different shops selling clothing. I cast about looking for something to distinguish one from another, but my eye lands on a pile of brown bumpy things tumbled in a bin in front of a grocer’s. “What is this?” I ask, lifting one up.

  “Imli,” Anu replies, though she barely glances at it. I lift it to my nose to sniff the rough hull, but get no sense of what might be inside. The shopkeeper has been watching us, and he reaches for one and splits it along some invisible seam. It falls open like a peapod, revealing fruit the size of small apples inside. He pulls one out and hands it to me, grinning. I sniff it, look at Anu, who is still scanning the market stalls. I nibble a bit off the fleshiest side and my mouth immediately contracts in spasms. The flavor is at once sour and sweet. Almost smoky. The grocer laughs; Anu turns and looks horrified at what I’m eating.

  “Nahi!” She frowns, casting her eye at the shopkeeper. She scolds him in Punjabi before slipping back to her halting English. “For cooking—pastes,” she explains. Her eyes light up as she reaches past me and pulls out another fruit, a scaly-looking thing that fits nicely in her palm, the pinkish-orange color a match for her tunic.

  “Lychee,” she explains. “For eating.”r />
  The grocer hands her a knife, which she uses to expertly pull back the leathery hide. Inside lies flesh so white and pure and gleaming that it’s like a giant pearl. She cuts off a sliver and hands it to me. The fruit is slippery in my hand, so I pop it into my mouth before I drop it. And the flavor is wonderful. Sweeter than strawberries, but similar. And the aroma of it is even stronger than the flavor, like a perfume, almost, as it lingers in the air, enhancing the taste.

  I close my eyes and sigh with bliss. Anu laughs and helps herself to a slice. She negotiates a price with the vendor as I grab the lychee from her hand, take a bite straight from it in a way that would make Mother cringe. I give Anu the smallest of the notes Father gave me. She collects back several coins and we go on our way, nibbling at the fruit, the sweet sticky juices running down my wrist.

  By the time we settle on a clothing shop to try, I have to resort to wiping my hands on my skirt. But even then the fragrant stickiness lingers as we sit on cushions inside the shop and two men and a woman parade different outfits before us.

  There are so many of them, and I’m so dazzled by the colors and the variety that I haven’t even begun to think about choosing.

  “Miss?” Anu asks gently as the pile of options grows past my knees. “Your father wants you back?”

  “By lunch.” I nod. If I’m late returning this time, he likely won’t let me out again at all.

  “Show me that blue,” I say, pointing at one near the top of the stack. The clerk pulls out a blue salwar-kameez like the set Anu wears, the shade a bit more subdued but still a lovely turquoise. At the neckline a yoke of embroidery in gold and silver thread forms a collar of sorts, the pattern repeated on the cuffs at the three-quarter sleeves and near the ankles of the trousers.

  “Does it come in my size?” I ask Anu. I’m considered tall at home, but I feel even more a freak here in India.

  She looks confused for a moment, then her eyes light up. “They sew,” she says, pantomiming stitching a seam with her hands. “To fit you.”

  I nod, wondering how long that might take, but pick out another set in the same lightweight fabric, this time in a pearly green. This set has beading instead of the embroidery.

  My decisions give the shopkeeper confidence, and his wife, for surely she is his wife, goes to another shelf and pulls out a fold of purple silk. She unfurls it, letting it cascade across the other piles of clothing like a wave breaking on the shore. I can’t help but reach out and touch it, sticky fingers be damned. The silk is so luxuriant and light, the pattern of fine silver and darker purple woven into it in swirls and paisleys, all changing with each shift of the fabric like it really is the surface of some deep, wonderful sea. Marvelous.

  “It’s just fabric, though,” I point out to Anu.

  She smiles. “Sari,” she explains. “No sewing. Here.” She pulls me to my feet and she and the woman together fold and tuck the fabric around my body, starting at my waist to create a floor-skimming skirt, the pleats so sharp and perfect as they fold that I can scarcely believe this is the same long run of fabric. Then they twist and tuck the rest of the silk up and over my body.

  “Sari.” Anu beams.

  I look at myself in the small glass at the rear of the shop.

  “I’ll take it,” I say.

  Anu looks surprised but doesn’t argue, chattering with the shopkeeper, who looks delighted. She pulls the sari off my body, revealing me in my plain, sad, sweaty dress, and then produces a string that she uses to measure my waist, bust, hips, upper arms, and inseam of my legs, calling out the numbers to the younger of the men. I’m a little mortified to have my measurements broadcast this way, but no one else seems to notice.

  “They make blouse and petticoat for under sari,” Anu says, “and alter salwar-kameez. Then send to the house.”

  “Should I pay them now?” I ask.

  She looks at them. “Kitna hai?”

  They call out a number.

  Anu makes a face, shakes her head sadly. Then she calls back another number.

  The wife looks at her husband, nods once.

  “Two hundred rupee . . . all three,” Anu says.

  I reach for the fold of money and count it out into the man’s palm. Anu gives them our address, though they probably have a decent notion of where the only blond girl in all of Jalandhar is living at the moment, and we are on our way.

  “Hurry,” she says.

  I follow her toward the edge of the market where we entered, but that sound—the same instrument I heard that day we arrived in the car—catches my ear again. I stop, grab her arm. “Do you hear that?”

  She looks at me, concerned.

  “The music?” I beg.

  She gives that nod/non-nod of her head that tells me nothing. “This way,” I say, following the sound deeper into the market.

  The music grows louder as we barrel past the stalls and slip between the shoppers. They all stare as we rush by, but this time I don’t care. I only care about finding the source of that music. Finally we are in a darkened corner of the market, far from the more necessary items of food and clothing and cooking pots.

  An old man who looks like he’s been carved out of wood sits in a stall playing a small sort of piano. It rests on the floor in front him, the keyboard about half the length of my piano at home. And instead of pedals, there are knobs and pulls along the front below the keys. At the back of the thing a bellows is attached, folding in and out as he plays.

  It bleats, sort of, or whines, I don’t know which. The bloody thing is like the product of some tryst between a church organ and a set of bagpipes, what with all the stops and things. It’s amazing, really, like a cat with wings. It shouldn’t be so pretty, but it is. And the tone . . . the tone of the thing is hypnotic, one note or chord yielding to the next one, no one waiting its turn to be heard. It makes me almost laugh to hear it, to imagine the sheet music for it, all the notes crowding up against each other, like the way people here won’t queue up for love or money.

  The old man’s eyes are shut, his lips moving as he plays, the sound droning on in the nicest possible way as his right hand drifts up and down the short keyboard, the left patiently working at the bellows, pumping steady breath into the thing as if it’ll die if he stops. And I instantly know I have to have one.

  I look up to see the other instruments arranged in the shop—drums and a couple of those long-necked guitar jobs I’ve seen before. There are a few more of the pianos there as well, one lacquered in a shiny red with pearly elephants inlaid on the sides.

  “What is that?” I ask Anupreet.

  “Harmonium,” she says, smiling, shoulders moving slightly, as if the music makes her want to dance.

  “Kitna hai?” I point at the red one, repeat the phrase Anu has used every time she’s needed to ask the price of something. The shopkeeper stops playing, says something in Punjabi.

  Anu’s mouth falls open.

  “Well?” I ask.

  “Three hundred rupee,” she whispers.

  “Tell him we’ll pay him when he delivers,” I say.

  Anu’s eyes widen. She knows Father hasn’t approved the purchase of a harmonium, but I know he’ll understand.

  The man bows his head as Anu translates, pointing in the direction of the compound. He says something back, and she turns to me. “It will arrive this afternoon.”

  I smile, clap my hands together, already eager for the feel of those keys beneath my fingers.

  We hurry back through the market and are almost across the street when a small cluster of children appear in front of us.

  They hold their empty hands up to us and gesture feeding themselves from those barren palms.

  Their message couldn’t be clearer.

  I think with guilt about the fruit I’ve just eaten in the market, about the lunch I’ll tuck into soon. About the hundreds and hundreds of rupees I’ve just spent.

  Anu speaks to the children, waving them off, but is unable to muster any real annoyance for
them. He is among them—the little boy in the green shirt. I reach into my pocket. I’ve still got money left. I wonder if it is enough—

  Anu’s hand clamps down tighter on mine. I look up and find her shaking her head, warningly.

  I let her drag me through the throng and back inside the gate. The porter begins shouting at the children in earnest, his voice blaring and barking like a guard dog. The beggars scatter, giggling, bare feet carrying them in all directions.

  “So sorry, miss,” Anu says to me as we reach the front door.

  I shake my hand free of hers, cross my arms. “What harm can it do to give them something?” I demand.

  Anu looks for all the world like she doesn’t have enough words to explain this to me. “It is not the way,” she says finally.

  I don’t want to have the same argument with her that I’ve been having with my parents. “Bugger all,” I say churlishly. Anu looks pained, though I’m dead sure she doesn’t know what “bugger” means. How I wish she did. She’s the nearest thing I’ve got to a friend here. Shopping with her was such fun, so easy, that it felt almost normal, that I hate to end it this way. Hate that she doesn’t understand me, hate that I don’t know if I’ll be here long enough to understand the rules, to know why it’s so bloody awful of me to give a few pennies to some children. And I hate that when I say “bugger,” she doesn’t know enough to be shocked or amused, hate that she thinks my pique has to do with her. But maybe it does. She’s convenient for it, after all. I’m a bit muddy about it myself, but it strikes me that I can like her so much one second, be so glad for her company, but the next I’m annoyed with her for not understanding me, or jealous of her for being so gorgeous.

  Why must I be so awful?

  Old Shibani appears in the door and calls to Anu to come in and serve the luncheon.

  “I don’t mean to take it out on you,” I manage, reaching for her arm.

  Anu’s eyes soften. “All fine,” she says. And like that we’re friends again, I guess.

  She goes into the house, back to her work, and I’m alone, the rupee coins and notes heavy in my pocket, where they do no one any good.