The House that Spoke

by Zuni Chopra

  Just before entering the library, I stopped, hand on the doorknob. I had heard a most curious noise coming from—could that be right?—the walls. Now, living here, I was quite used to odd sounds, but this was entirely different. This sounded like . . . a voice. An unfamiliar voice. I pressed my ear to the wall where it hid, listening hard. I jumped when I heard it again, much louder then as it vibrated through the wood, like an old woman’s rasp through a dense forest; I couldn’t understand a word. The consonants were stretched to unrecognizability, the vowels stressed and deformed. After what seemed to me like no more than a few seconds, the walls became silent again.

  Confused, I stood still for another minute, until it occurred to me that I was wasting precious time. Whatever this mystery or imagining was, it’d have to wait.

  I continued on to the library.

  I carefully shut the heavy wooden door behind me, pausing to make sure I didn’t slam it too hard. I heard a pitter-pattering against the windows. Raining again so soon?

  The books rested, quiet and peaceful, against the shelves, a deceiving air; they were so often rambunctious.

  I knew that in a moment they would burst into chatter, but just then, in that moment, in that warm, cosy library, they were quietly content. They were my friends, each one of them, and they’d been keeping me company for as long as I could remember. A conversation with them brightens any day immensely. Oh, I don’t suppose I’ve mentioned this yet, have I? Well, it’s the house itself that is my closest companion, home to not just my family, but to my oldest and dearest of friends. I was not as brave as I’d have liked; I did not wish, at least not just yet, to bring them back to a cold and miserably complex reality with such alarmingly terrible news.

  ‘Hello!’ came the voice of one of the bookshelves. It was deep and rough like an elephant’s, rousing his fellows. They stretched against the ceiling, as though they would burst through it at the slightest excitement. The books began to wake as well, some quickly, some excitedly and others, grumpily.

  ‘What do you suppose I should do on such a rainy day?’ I began.

  ‘Aren’t we quite enough for you to amuse yourself with? Honestly, you should be quite grateful you’ve got us at all!’ said the history book crankily.

  ‘Calm down. She’s just bored,’ soothed the book of Jataka Tales. ‘After all, boredom is natural.’

  ‘How about you go play in the garden? It’ll give you some much-needed fresh air!’ suggested Ma’s gardening guide.

  ‘Not a chance,’ I replied. ‘It must be a mud puddle by now.’

  ‘Well, rain is very helpful to plants, you know, and especially good for their roots. It’s so full of essential minerals, you could hardly imagine it. They’re also . . .’

  At the same time, the dusty notebook had begun to moan in the corner. ‘Write something in me . . . something meaningful . . . all I’ve got inside me is a grocery list and some unfinished games of tic-tac-toe . . .’

  ‘You know,’ interrupted the fortune-teller’s guide, a large, electric-blue evil eye stamped on her front, ‘you seem to me to be in danger of a troubled mind.’

  Ma’s scrapbook of newspaper clippings began yelling something about delivering newspapers, while the book on insects chirped, ‘You had a bug-catching net, didn’t you? Now, where’s that at?’

  ‘Fancy a chariot race?’ called the Mahabharata, while the wooden bookshelves continued to roar their unintelligence.

  I couldn’t get a word in until the sturdy armchair spoke in a deep, commanding voice. They all quieted down when he told them they sounded like donkeys braying for hay. Then he asked me whether the house was going to be sold or not and everyone stiffened.

  The temperature in the room seemed to drop considerably, and with it, the laughter and playful sleepiness. A thick, heavy, crushing silence followed these words, as the idea of the sale turned itself over and over in my mind.

  After walking over and seating myself in the armchair, I cleared my throat to speak.

  For nearly a quarter of an hour I spoke into rapt silence, telling them about the stuck-up realtor and how Ma had yelled at me. The books joined in, theorizing, arguing, shouting suggestions.

  The armchair ended up having to call all to order again. He hated things being out of place—he was quite like my mother in that respect—but he sorted them out in an almost fatherly fashion, so that you couldn’t help but listen to him and like him for it. This was a bit funny considering he was the newest piece of furniture, added by my grandfather so he’d have a comfortable seat in the library while he read. The books often liked to joke about how much better off their lives had been when he was good and silent, and how frustrating the initial stages of his speech had been. ‘We tried,’ the history book was fond of saying. ‘We tried to keep him quiet. But we couldn’t . . . and now look at him.’

  After he managed to get the books down to a soft murmur, the closest I suppose they could’ve got to silence under the circumstances, I spoke again.

  ‘So of course . . . you all understand . . . we have to find a way to stop this sale. Ma isn’t likely to be any help at all, as you might have guessed. We’ll have to find a way to get the realtor, and his merry customers, all out of here at once.’

  The books immediately erupted again. They suggested I trick him, fence him, pelt him with sticks, attack him with crystal balls, and a great many other things.

  Unable to stay sombre, I laughed, not bothering to stop their clamorous bickering.

  I turned around to the armchair to speak to him properly. He really was the only sensible one in this library.

  ‘What do you think I should do?’

  He was quiet for some time, considering his response as if it were his next move in a heated game of chess. ‘I think there is one thing you should have done already, and it is unimaginable to me that you could’ve forgotten.’

  ‘What?’ I breathed.

  ‘Go see Tathi. Go see her at once. Tell her everything. Perhaps, once she backs you up, you’ll be able to put a halt to this business.’

  I was so exuberant at this forgotten course of action that I could’ve hugged him.

  ‘Yes! Of course! I’ll go see her straight away, right after breakfast.’

  ‘For yet another breakfast?’ the armchair suggested slyly.

  I giggled. Yes, that was exactly what I was thinking.

  Then all at once, the armchair became pensive. His fluffy stuffing, light as cotton, seemed to grow dense within him.

  ‘You know, they do not truly understand. Or perhaps some do, and do not wish to scare the rest. Or even you, for that matter.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m saying that they do not all understand what will happen when this house is sold.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to put up with some crazy strangers and I’ll never see you again!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you mean, no?’

  ‘Your mother won’t sell every piece of furniture in this house, Zoon. In fact, she’s likely to keep a great deal of it. And then what will happen?’

  I tried hard to focus.

  ‘You’ll all have to come with us to the . . . new house?’

  ‘Exactly. And what will happen to us there?’

  Dread sank low in my heart, searing through the rest of me, sinking within my veins, erupting in a sudden jolt of fear. It must have shown on my face, for the armchair nodded and spoke again.

  ‘Slowly, little by little, the magic will flow out of us, just as it once flowed in. We’ll die, Zoon.’

  I imagined the library still.

  Silent.

  Empty.

  ‘The house,’ I gasped, like a bird flung through a frosty cloud, ‘will die?’

  The armchair paused to reflect.

  ‘Well . . . no. The house’s magic will be as strong as it was before we were brought here. But each of us—parts of the house, I mean—will eventually become detached from this magic.’

  The heavy rain was al
most sinister in its silence.

  Suddenly clumsy, I blustered about, getting up, saying, ‘I’m leaving right away, Tathi must be told, this is utter . . . I mean . . . it’s absolute . . .’

  ‘You think your mother will let you go out in this weather?’ began the armchair.

  ‘Without breakfast?’ put in the cookbook.

  ‘Wearing that?’ giggled the fashion magazine.

  A boisterous roar of laughter came from the books, the bookshelves and the armchair, and I couldn’t help but grin.

  ‘You just wait!’ I chuckled. ‘I’ll buy you all the ugliest, thickest bookmarks in town!’

  They hated bookmarks, all of them, and said that having a bookmark stuck between your pages was like having a straw jammed up your nostril—dreadfully uncomfortable. They shuddered at the thought.

  The books had been right, of course. As I trooped downstairs, announcing that I was off to visit Tathi, Ma gripped me by the collar and pushed me into the chair by the desk.

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t!’

  ‘But Ma! I need to go visit Tathi!’

  ‘Not when it’s raining as hard as this. Quit your whining and wait.’

  She gave me the kind of glare that stings.

  So I waited. And waited.

  Ma bustled about, frequently looking over at me as though to make sure I didn’t teleport out of my seat.

  I stared dazedly out of the window. The world formed itself all over again with each cool drop of rain, a palette of greys used to create a masterpiece of a gentle and firm sky, almost like a mother to the quiet, muddy landscape. The drops swam down the glass of the window, merging and fusing with one another, creating tear-shaped shadows against the quill’s pearl-white feather.

  ‘Perfect for picnicking. I’m hungry,’ he muttered.

  I watched the dust motes beside the window float dully about, bored and lazy.

  I watched the sun fight fiercely to burst through the glaze of water sheathing it.

  I watched each thread of the carpet rise up to catch a piece of the blue light dancing in from the window, before shimmering back to its black and red once more.

  I tuned out the chatter of the desk and chair, then arguing about whether or not pigs really could fly, and how it was all just a conspiracy against the public. They are the best of friends, but get into frightfully trivial and tiring quarrels. Though I must say, in this case, the desk had a fair point.

  At last, the rain began to thin, easing first into a light shower, and finally, into a drizzle so fine you might not have noticed it if you were wearing a hat. Leaping up from my chair as though pricked by a pin, I flung open the door. I heard Ma click her tongue impatiently, but she hadn’t made to physically restrain me in any way, and I took that as a sign to leave before she changed her mind.

  I patted the bark of the chinar, just to say good morning. It hummed pleasantly under my fingers, life beneath rough, firm wood.

  It was pleasantly cool. Before closing the gate, I snatched a small cherry from one of the trees in our garden. I bit into it, and tasted the rain. It was a perfect blend of crunchy, sour, sweet and fresh. I shut the gate behind me.

  It became a little frostier—as it always does—when I walked out, but I was well used to that feeling by then. I began my march towards Tathi’s house. She lives at Dal Gate, closer to the lakeside.

  The trees wafted gently in the breeze, a bright orange leaf often coming to rest at my feet. They looked like a towering wall of a thousand suns, each burning brighter than its neighbour. I crossed a sudden break in the shade, momentarily exposed to the sky, so that a raindrop splashed down on my nose, and autumn’s chill seemed to seep through my warm blue cotton shirt, icy and reviving against my skin.

  I waved as I passed the chana stand, its posts teetering dangerously, its surface scraped to near scrap, its tilting sign left with nothing but a single, faded C. The chana vendor waved back. To me, his greetings are as refreshing as the crunch of the snacks he sells. He’s a bit on the short side, his limbs verging on chubby, his smile crooked as his workplace, his brown hair giving way to sudden flashes of white, betraying that his years here have taken their toll. I have never known his name, but whenever I pass I wave, and he waves back. It’s a sort of code between us, a secret we take childish joy in sharing, our oasis of undeclared unity in these deserted streets.

  My chappals squelched noisily against the muddy dirt road. A few miles ahead, I could see the first military check post, barbed wire against its pointed tip and soggy footprints made by heavy boots on every side. A man sat rigidly within it, unsmiling, clutching at the handle of a large, heavy automatic as though it were a part of him. A large red sign extended from the edge of the post, slicing Kashmir in half.

  I scowled. These horrid posts did disturb the view. Around back, I heard noises of a commotion. An old man, his hands wrinkled and twisted nearly to the point of being broken, was protesting weakly as he was shoved in the chest by a tough, gruff military guard whose neck was the width of my whole body. Their voices were garishly loud and laced with growing fury. I hurried along. I’d seen this too many times before, and I didn’t want to be around when those boys with filthy handkerchiefs tied roughly around their matted hair and hollow cheeks arrived. I did not want to watch as they began throwing stones at the military men, their eyes wild with the unquenchable flame of vengeance. I didn’t want to be around when the men fought back with unceasing gunfire, and Kashmiri boys fell to the ground, clutching an arm, a knee, a chest.

  The sound of lapping water began to grow clearer.

  Soon I crossed the corner of the road, humming to myself, and saw the lane that led to Tathi’s house. It was almost hidden by prickly bushes, and I often thought that at one time, when she was healthier and did not have the pain in her knee, she would come out and push them aside, inviting people in. I pressed past them, a single thorn grazing my right thigh, before I managed to trip on to the soft-soiled lane leading to Tathi’s. The gentle orange light danced playfully before me, and I looked up at the canopy of tangerine trees forming a sanctuary in the small path of Srinagar. Her house lay cosily sunken into the ground, latticed windows flung wide open to catch the wind. Behind it, glints of deep blue lake water shone through gaps in the trees.

  Once I reached the door, an old, worn thing of light brown wood, I knocked exactly four times, counted to five, and then knocked once again. That was the signal; now that she knew it was me, she’d open the door. We’d come up with this after a young girl had badgered her for a week, trying to get her to buy a walking stick. It reached its peak when she invited herself in and began setting up shop in the living room.

  Moments later, Tathi flung open the door, a beaming smile across her face, her thick, round glasses planted firmly on her nose. Her soft, black eyes gleamed brightly as ever, filling me with a familiar glow, and I always expected to see a scattering of stars within them. She pulled me into a warm yet crushing hug. I tried hard to get my arms around her, but I couldn’t, of course, as usual. She was as squat and round as the thick, white bun upon her head. As we trooped in, I took in the smell of a spicy curry mixed with the warmth of a motherly fire and the chill of the sneaky air that had rushed in playfully while the door had been open.

  ‘Ah,’ I murmured softly, throwing myself into the beanbag by the fire. Tathi had made it for me on my ninth birthday out of an old bed sheet and some dried peas from the market. She came to join me in her rocking chair, and asked me how my birthday prep was going. I let my feet press against the heated marble of the fireplace as we chatted and laughed.

  Without warning, the sound of gunshots came as clearly through the walls as if the bullets had gone straight through them. The unmistakable animalistic roars of a mob followed, their demands for freedom and equality and blood ringing sharply through the room, declaring, as always, that the humiliation had gone on long enough.

  This one seemed different from the others, though . . . much closer somehow. I thought of the fight
I’d seen on the way there, and how it had done me good to hurry. I felt disgustedly angry and sickened for a moment, as I always did, but neither Tathi nor I seemed to think that speaking of what was occurring outside would make it any better. We paused briefly, then pressed on, determined not to let anything intrude on our bliss.

  Tathi chuckled that I’d put on weight. Grinning, I admitted having dreamt about her rogan josh, and she laughed while poking me in the belly and saying that my father and I were just the same.

  Eventually, I could no longer keep the sale away from my mind. It had been eating away at our conversation, a gluttonous maggot, until it was pushing against the inside of my heated forehead, bursting to be acknowledged.

  But where should I start?

  I waited for that familiar lull in the conversation when a joke has just been told or a memory just relived, before beginning.

  ‘Tathi, there’s something I came to tell you about.’

  ‘Yes, Zuzu?’

  ‘It’s a rather upsetting thing to say, so I just kept putting it off, but I really can’t any more.’

  Outside, the rain had stopped, and the afternoon slept tiredly against the valley, drowsy from the downpour.

  ‘Ma has decided to sell the house.’

  Tathi’s smile seemed to shrink until her lips were pressed together. Her eyes flickered away, painfully thoughtful.

  ‘She didn’t tell me. I didn’t know till the realtor arrived,’ I went on.

  ‘The realtor?’ Her eyes flashed.

  ‘Yes. His name is Mr Qureishi. He came to see the house yesterday, and he’s frightfully superior and smug.’

  ‘Did he say who would be buying it?’

  I looked up at her. She looked worried, certainly, and quite out of sorts, but I had expected her to be as enraged as I’d been.

  ‘Well, no one, if we have any say in it!’

  She stared at me.

  ‘Well, we can’t just let someone buy it! They would die!’

  I bit my lip ruefully, realizing what I’d said. I didn’t know if Tathi had ever spoken to any of my friends. She hardly ever came over to our house. And I’d given up telling people about them after that disastrous attempt when I was six. I had tried my best to get Chandani Auntie to speak with the fireplace, and to see why I found him so likeable. But she’d merely stared at him blankly despite my warm introductions and his (unusually quiet) greeting. She had later had a talk with me about imaginary and real friends. I’d asked the fireplace why he’d remained so stoic and silent, and his answer was that he was ‘really disinclined to speak with such a dislikeable woman’. I didn’t attempt to introduce her to any more of them, or even speak to them in front of anybody again after that. I didn’t need her or anyone else thinking I was cuckoo.