The House that Spoke

by Zuni Chopra

  ‘When you give all inside you to darkness,’ the fireplace replied, ‘it leaves you nothing but an empty shell. He left his life in the hands of a creature known to deceive and betray. ’

  We were silent for a moment. I hadn’t thought I cared for that man. But I did. How horrific it had been to watch him descend further into the darkness and his maze of thorns, into manipulation and madness, into his own shrivelled heart. I imagined him as a younger man, seated at dinner with his family, happy and hopeful and whole. Somehow, death is always painful, no different for your greatest enemy than for your closest companion—and he was somewhere inexplicably in between. It leaves a bitter taste in the air; a taste of sickness, sudden fear and lost opportunity.

  Just then, I heard the grating twist of a key in our lock.

  ‘Ma’s home.’

  Chapter Ten

  Something was wrong the moment she entered. The air came in, and it was too chilly. Too brutal.

  Her shoes were soaked with something thick and dark.

  Her dupatta, her best dupatta, was torn. Right down the middle. Dimly, I registered that it had been torn there before, and the house had mended it. Or rather, hadn’t mended it well enough.

  And then my eyes travelled up to her face.

  Her eyes were brimming with salty waves, as sincere as a sailor’s song begging the winds to guide his ship back home.

  I sat down suddenly, veins flooded with blood. I did not need to hear her say it. I did not want to hear her say it. For her to confirm what I already knew would make it somehow inescapable.

  The chair, I then noticed, was still overturned. There were splinters sticking out of the ground. The walls I couldn’t fix were yet burst open, pipes hanging out at odd angles, steam still smoking forth from some of them. A fine layer of dust settled about us. In the other room, the last embers of the fire spluttered loudly and went out. And yet neither of us spoke.

  Every part of me was a piece of scrap metal left out in the rain; I had rusted, and was scraping at the slightest movement. A large brick with sharp, grated edges had been dropped inside my aching head and was proceeding to throw itself about with as much force as it could muster.

  For once, the house was quiet.

  I wished they would speak. I did not want their sadness, their sympathy, their silence. I was desperate to distract myself in any way I could.

  ‘Zoon,’ she began.

  ‘No,’ I whispered. ‘Ma, please, please, don’t, don’t say it, don’t . . .’ I continued, louder then.

  She took in a great breath of air.

  ‘How?’ I asked, begging as the hawkers beg for sales, begging as the people beg for peace, begging as Kashmir has always begged, has always been forced to.

  ‘Heart attack.’

  Her voice was choked; the words were a crushing row of chilled, dead fingers in her windpipe.

  ‘Because of the bomb.’

  She was wrong. It was something I simply knew, as though someone had carved it against the inside of my skull. But it was no longer a startling revelation so much as a dull ache for a happier time, a happier place, a happier way to die.

  Slayed every other useless Guardian . . . His words began like a forest fire in the quiet meadows of my mind, destroying everything in their path. I buried my eyes in my hands to fight the pain.

  But I was tied to Tathi’s death as I had been to her life, and my grief collected in my bones like steaming pools of acid.

  Ma moved to lean her umbrella against the wall.

  I froze. I could not tear my gaze away from that umbrella, from that mouldy, ripped, old, brown umbrella, that bent, broken, useless umbrella that she’d just put in its proper place.

  And it was then that I knew we’d go on. We’d go on, shattered, perhaps, miserable, of course, broken, without a doubt . . . but we’d go on.

  Because in all that had happened in just one day, in all that we’d been through, in all that we’d lost, and in all the misery we were yet to face, it was still important that the umbrella was put back against the wall.

  The radio lying wearily in the corner, clearly worse off for the battle it had witnessed, abruptly crackled to life. Ma walked over and began twiddling with the lifeless dials, trying to switch to the news channel. I gazed dazedly out of the window. The dusty brown streets were deserted. An old newspaper bearing near-black tyre tracks was sunken into the centre of the road, unfluttering. Curtains were drawn, doors were shut, curfew was obeyed. My home, I realized, was very much like the moon: bright and mesmerizing, a favourite of painters, yet covered with craters on every inch of land.

  ‘Currently no news on the arrest and capture—’

  ‘Zoon!’ Ma implored. ‘Listen, this might be important!’

  I didn’t want to listen. I knew it wasn’t important, any of it. We’d all heard it as many times as we’d taken a breath of life. But any distraction from my mind was welcome.

  ‘The bomb was triggered at exactly forty minutes past seven in the evening by a band of militants calling for aazadi.’

  I felt sick to my stomach.

  Freedom.

  Was that what Tathi had got?

  I tried to tune it out. I didn’t know why it should suddenly make me nauseous; it was my childhood lullaby, this constant refrain of these bloodstained houses that I’d learnt to recognize as a war cry.

  For some reason, my ears seemed bent on staying sharp and alert, picking up the whoosh of every gust of wind, fighting to find a way out.

  ‘As of now it is unclear as to whether or not they were acting on behalf of a larger extremist organization. Indian troops moved in to restore order and have, we can confirm, fired directly at the militants responsible for the violence. However, this only seemed to have worsened conditions as riots continued and the legality of weapons used against the protesters and indirectly the wounded has come into question.’

  Did the radio know what it was blaring out? Or did it just speak as commanded, on and on, day after day, with no understanding of what its words actually meant?

  ‘The chaos has now begun to recede, although authorities are offering no comment on the identities of the perpetrators. The Indian prime minister has, in the last half an hour, delivered a statement declaring imminent negotiations.’

  ‘Ma, can we shut it off?’ I burst out. She nodded, staring at the carpet. I doubted she’d even heard.

  ‘This just in, the chief minister soon to visit—’

  A sharp click pierced the cool air, and the voice was cut off immediately.

  For a few moments, no one said anything. The light around me came on too quick, in fragmented flashes that I couldn’t prepare myself for.

  ‘Zoon,’ Ma said, and I didn’t need to look up; I could hear her tears in her cracking voice.

  ‘Let’s say a prayer. For Tathi. All right?’

  I nodded, feeling my cheeks grow chilly and wet.

  I took in a great, sickly sniff before beginning.

  And we sang. Softly, perhaps, but the song rang through the walls, and the cracks in the walls, and I hoped that somehow, no matter where they were, the people of Kashmir could hear it.

  When we were finished, Ma rose to move towards the cooking range. ‘I’d been saving this for tomorrow,’ she muttered.

  From one of our oldest, creakiest cupboards, she took out a rough earthen pot. All along the side, carved women danced together in one unbroken line, the occasional face disfigured by a drop of water. After removing the lid, she offered it to me.

  The sweet scent of boiling rice and sugared milk wafted up around me, and my aching head seemed to grow light with the aroma. Despite how heavy and useless I felt, sitting there like a rock, the corners of my mouth began to twitch upwards.

  ‘You made kheer!’

  Ma wiped her eyes on the back of her torn dupatta, but not before I’d caught a glimpse of her quietly growing smile.

  ‘Happy birthday, Zoons.’

  We sat together on the bottom step, gradual
ly emptying the chilled pot, content to take comfort in the mundane, even if for just a moment. The kheer felt frosty against my tongue, the crunch of almonds like the hatching of an egg inside my mouth. It was a most welcome feeling . . . An uncomfortable warmth yet lingered in the air.

  Finally, when we were beginning to scrape the glinting white off the bottom of the bowl, what with the weight of the dessert in our stomachs and the veil of prayer against our grief, I felt that it was the time to ask her what I’d been meaning to ask since the moment she entered the door.

  ‘Ma,’ I began, ‘I know that this may not be the best moment for you, but I really need to ask—will you still insist that our house be sold?’

  I expected a flow of well-practised, ready answers to tumble down immediately from her sure lips.

  But she was quiet. Thinking? Considering? I hoped so.

  After what seemed to me like the reign of an entire dynasty, she replied.

  ‘Well . . . I’ve really no idea where Mr Qureishi has gone. Or even Mr Bhukhari, come to think of it. Or—’ She gestured wildly around her. ‘What on earth happened here? He was in the living room, wasn’t he?’

  I opened my mouth, begging my muddled brain to come up with some sort of a reply.

  ‘Oh, but you wouldn’t know,’ Ma cut in. ‘You were in your room with the door shut . . . weren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah of course I was.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad you stayed safe. It wasn’t smart of me to leave you home with a stranger as it is,’ she sighed.

  ‘So . . .’ I continued, trying to put the pieces together to form a clear image, ‘if you don’t know where they are, especially now since we need all this repaired, it’ll be much harder to sell. Right?’

  She nodded bleakly. ‘And now I’m sure the number of buyers will have collapsed, given what’s just happened,’ she added.

  ‘But it’s okay,’ I put in, trying to comfort her while simultaneously hiding my selfish glee. ‘I mean, we just heard it on the radio. The violence won’t be that bad any more.’

  She gave a light laugh.

  ‘These things happen all the time, Zoon. How are you suddenly so sure that this time will be different?’

  Her words reminded me of something else. Something now locked so deep within the earth that his cries would turn to stone before they reached the surface.

  ‘Oh, I’ve just got a good feeling about it.’

  ‘Right. Sure.’

  She pulled me into a tight hug. I buried myself within her, almost wanting to be a baby again, locked safely within someone else, separated from the torture of emotion by a thick layer of flesh.

  I inhaled deeply. She smelled of lavender, of fresh grass, of rows of apple trees against the mountains, of home. Whatever home meant any more.

  ‘Besides,’ I heard her whisper, so softly that I wondered whether I was even meant to hear it, ‘it’s not what Tathi would have wanted.’

  In the days that followed, life was no longer distinguishable from a dream. Everything was a gentle haze, like a shikara ride from one bank to the next, when the lake is still and the waters a navy blue. Thoughts were short and singular, never scratching beneath the surface, for those that did, inevitably led to pain.

  I cleaned often. It didn’t take me much—an hour, a daydream, a little bit of magic—but it was a great comfort to Ma. A clean house to her meant a fresh start, a tranquil heart, a tidy mind.

  The street was quiet and still, waiting patiently for tomorrow, when they hoped the weather would improve. A few boys tossed an apple back and forth down the road. Their chappals slapped against the mud, upsetting little puffs of dirt and sweeping them away.

  People came to mend the roads, the houses, the hearts. Life began to flow again, just as it always had. But haltingly, carefully, cautious then of pain.

  We received scattered flowers, kind words and the occasional hug of greeting.

  We seemed to give them away as quickly as they came.

  Noise was unbearable, and silence even more so.

  The funeral was held in a small, overgrown clearing near Shankaracharya temple. Over the tops of the thinning trees, its gold-and-red flag flapped wildly in the wind, reminding us that had we been more fortunate, we could have been standing under its silver roof rather than beholding it.

  She deserved more. She always had. But I didn’t know what else to give her; and if I did, I didn’t know how else to do it.

  Before the others began to arrive, I’d walked round and round the same track in the clearing as though it had been marked out for me, pointing my fingertip at the occasional weed or tall stem of grass, shrinking it down to something respectable.

  The prasad and other snacks had been laid out against a pure white tablecloth, courtesy of Rani Auntie, who was, for the first time, painfully purged of yellow. Picnic mats and bed sheets had been spread out across the field.

  A small wood-fire, lit in some sort of iron pan, was at the centre of it all. We could not cremate her body because we were not yet allowed access near the bomb site; currently, the area was flooded with quick-tempered policemen and still brimming with unspoken unrest. It had not been openly declared, of course, but what with one thing and another, we’d decided it was better to be safe than shot.

  People began to trickle in, slowly at first, then steadily, confidently, like a leaky tap, till, finally, every mat was filled. Voices came hushed and delicate, like nightingales in the woods. It was all a blur—names, faces, tears.

  I could smell incense from the black sticks shoved roughly into large potatoes. They stood like ancient rocks over the grass. It twisted horribly in my nose, and I coughed, brushing it away. The smoke had brought back memories that I was not yet ready to face.

  A man I had never seen before was reading out prayers from a thick sheaf of pages clamped in his right hand, cramming her name in here and there so people wouldn’t forget who it was they mourned.

  The pages seemed almost charred with age. I wondered if the book was made simply to avoid too much hassle at such events—a compact, time-efficient farewell.

  The sky had become a tender blue. It seemed like the deepest ocean, expanding ahead of us, with enchanting and bizarre creatures lurking beneath its murky surface, waiting to be discovered. I did not know whether it would last.

  Kehva was passed around in small, plastic cups that did nothing to keep the heat from biting into my palm. The almonds inside had grown soggy and limp; they slid down my throat like wriggling, squishy bugs.

  I saw my mother, forbidden tears dripping down her flushed cheeks, and I realized that her hair swept in an undisturbed sheet around her shoulders, waving lazily at me from across the clearing. Her three friends stuck to her side like persistent vendors, offering free words of comfort with every hug accepted.

  I walked closer, dropping to the grass and leaning against her knees. I felt her palm run through my frizzy hair.

  Every sip of kehva seemed to light a flame within me, the blaze eating away at the pulsating sickness I felt inside my chest.

  Chandani Auntie spoke in her usual exuberant tone, though slightly dulled to suit the occasion, like a bedside lamp at bedtime. I heard, but I did not listen. I did not think that she would ever say anything that could make me listen then.

  It was nearly offensive, how wrong I was.

  ‘I know how it is, Shanti. I know you feel as if they’re not with you any more. But she is. Just as my son is with me.’

  I turned so sharply my neck cricked painfully. She caught sight of my shocked, confused stare and leaned down so I could hear her better.

  ‘My son, Arshad. He’s gone now.’

  ‘Gone?’ I croaked. I seemed to have lost my voice. I wondered where it could have wandered off. Perhaps it had been washed away with the tears.

  ‘Gone,’ she repeated softly. ‘They took him about two years ago. I suppose they must have seen him in too many protests to pretend he was just one of the crowd.’

  I’d n
o idea how to respond. At another time, I might have given my condolences. But then, in the thick of mist and sadness, all inside me silent without searching for thought, I simply sat there and gazed at a patch of brown grass, turning this news over and over in my mind, as a gold miner examines a patch of shining dirt.

  Chandani Auntie—the boisterous, loud-voiced Chandani Auntie, who always had a laugh in her throat, a smile on her lips and lipstick on her teeth—our Chandani Auntie, had seen pain greater than anything I’d ever dreamt her capable of withstanding.

  ‘How?’ I rasped again. ‘How do you manage it?’

  ‘Manage what, dear?’ she murmured absent-mindedly.

  ‘How are you so . . . so . . .’

  ‘So happy?’ she suggested, smiling gently at me.

  I nodded vigorously.

  ‘Sometimes I’m not,’ she replied. ‘Sometimes I feel as though I’ve sobbed away everything inside me, and there’s nothing left to make me go on. I go to bed thinking I’ll never find it in myself to wake up in the morning and carve. But you’ll soon see, as I have, that time has an uncanny habit of passing when you least expect it to.’

  I stared, rapt with attention, into her glowing brown eyes. Dimly I registered how strange it was to think you had known someone all your life, and then wake up one day to find you’d never known them at all.

  ‘On those days when happiness does not come to me,’ she continued, ‘I discover happiness in what I can.’

  I nodded slowly.

  ‘I find it in the fields. I find it in my friends. And I find it in my son.’

  I had forgotten to blink, and my eyes were beginning to water. But I refused to close them, even for a moment.

  ‘Do you understand, Zoon?’

  She wiped away the wet on my cheek.

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘I think so.’

  After yanking me up and into a crushing hug (she was still Chandani Auntie, after all), she rose once more with her hands clasped in front of her, eyes on the roaring fire.

  The flames had begun to flicker madly, rippling the darkening air around us. Through the distorted evening, I saw a familiar sunny face, familiar except for the lack of a smile.