Naim felt her breath quickening. The sound of sobbing came from her.
‘Quiet,’ he said.
Gradually, she became very still. He kissed her.
‘Your neck is very soft,’ he said.
‘In God’s name,’ she whispered, ‘talk quietly.’
‘Do you know how kisses taste?’
‘How kisses taste? No.’
‘Different, one from the other. Like water.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If you are thirsty, they are sweet. If not, they have no taste.’
‘You are strange,’ she said, her hand passing over his flank. ‘Why do you sleep with no shirt on?’
‘Old habit.’
‘You have no hair on your chest.’
‘Nor have you.’
‘Men who have no hair on their chest are faithless.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Naim,’ she asked, ‘you will not go away?’
‘No.’
Suddenly she burst into tears. He wrapped his arms around her, trying to muffle the sound of her weeping.
‘Don’t. Please don’t cry.’
She became very quiet.
‘Why do you cry?’ he asked after a while.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘I feel like it,’ she said, ‘sometimes.’
‘Sheelah,’ Naim said, pressing her to him, ‘you are so young.’
‘If you think I am young, then you are young. If you don’t grow up with women, you never grow up.’
They lay naked under the blankets for a long while. In the dark, he saw the gleam of her eyes and lips.
‘Your eyes have a light in them,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing. I remember a man who had the same light in his eyes.’
‘Who was this man?’
‘A friend.’
‘Was he as beautiful as you?’
Naim laughed quietly. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I should go now,’ she said.
He stayed silent. After a few minutes, she crept out of his bed and went into the other room, noiselessly replacing the plank that separated the two rooms.
CHAPTER 13
IT HAD BEEN three hours since Naim had come and settled under a huge mountain tree on a slope above the railway line. ‘All you have to do is to note whether the goods train has passed and tell us when we come,’ Iqbal had told him. ‘Don’t want to waste the powder on a bloody goods train.’
The train didn’t come, nor did the boys. The time was long past and now Naim, having talked to himself, quietly at times and at times loudly, to keep away the boredom, was cold and hungry. Dark clouds had begun to gather overhead, making the night darker still. He was like a blind man who knew the location of things, the line, the tunnel, the path back to his hut. Just as he swore at them for the hundredth time, he heard the train’s sharp whistle, warning of its entry into the tunnel. The train emerged from the tunnel and thundered away. It was a goods train. Drops of rain began to fall. Now, thought Naim, the passenger train would follow, and where are those idiots, what can I do, I’ve got nothing, they wouldn’t trust me with the dynamite and I wouldn’t do it anyway, I’d throw it away and tell them some story, definitely, I’ve had enough of it, oh my God, what do I do, shall I go back, I am already getting wet.
The wind had come up, driving the rain sideways so the shelter provided by the branches and leaves above him was gone. He heard a voice coming from the other side of the path and felt relief: they were coming, he had done his job and wasn’t going to hang around, he’d go back as soon as they arrived. The voice came nearer. It was a peasant, driving his donkey carrying a load of forest wood ahead of him. In the heavily falling rain the peasant had his head covered with a conical hat he had made out of an empty gunny bag. He had in his hand the donkey’s tail which he was twisting constantly, talking to the beast. ‘Had you not spread your legs and refused to move halfway up, we would be home by now. Look what has happened, all the wood is soaked and what should we burn now, your mother’s behind? You have bad blood in you. No surprise. I bought your mother from a cobbler and she immediately died, leaving you a baby. I have brought you up with these hands and you do this to me. No surprise. Cobbler’s ass, bad blood.’ Talking non-stop, the peasant went up the path, step by painful step in the driving rain. Naim just looked at them with eyes wide with fury until they disappeared. Futilely he cocked an ear to the other side of the path; there were no more voices. A few minutes later the passenger train passed, whistling in and out of the tunnel, raindrops dancing in its big forehead light. Naim got up and started back to the hut. Slipping and sliding over smooth stones in the black rain, balancing himself with the support of both hands and at the same time trying to stop his hand falling off his arm, he was wet through to the skin by the time he reached the hut, his boots full of rainwater, his body shivering with the cold. He found his two companions sitting calmly in the room. A stranger with a short hennaed beard sat with them on a pile of blankets, smoking a hukka.
‘You never came,’ Naim said to them.
‘Rain,’ answered Iqbal. ‘Dry weather job, don’t you know?’
‘You could have sent someone to let me know.’
‘Sent Bannerji,’ Iqbal said nonchalantly and kept playing with his revolver, turning its magazine with flicks of his fingers time after time, as if enjoying the metallic clicks it produced.
‘Nobody came,’ Naim said. He took off his dripping coat and then his shirt, throwing them on the floor. He sat down on the floor to remove his boots and socks, upending the boots to empty them of rainwater.
‘He’ll have gone to the village to get drunk,’ Madan said to Iqbal. ‘Fine people you have collected. They’ll be the end of us one day.’
‘Anything to eat?’ Naim asked Baba.
Everyone looked around blankly without answering.
‘An extra guest today,’ Baba said, pointing to the stranger with the beard, who sat pulling at the hukka as if he had nothing to do with all this.
Baba went out. Naim looked at everyone in turn and couldn’t keep his temper. ‘I was sitting there for over three hours and nobody bothered. All I saw was a donkey like me and a man who was worse than a donkey. I haven’t eaten since this morning. What do you think I am?’
There was a pause for a minute. Then Iqbal said, ‘Yes, tell us, who are you?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Naim.
‘You have been here for more than a month and we don’t know anything about you. What made you come and join us? Who sent you?’
Naim’s anger, as well as the hunger in his belly, evaporated. ‘What are you talking about? I am one of you. All right, I was sent by someone. They are the right people.’
‘Who?’
Naim felt that he had no option but to go where he was led. ‘A man named Kishan Das.’
‘Who is that?’
‘He is the assistant secretary of my district.’
‘The Congress?’
‘Yes, and no.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They have the same aims.’
‘Do you agree with them?’
‘I think they are the right people.’
‘They have nothing to fight with,’ Iqbal said, gathering up the fingers of one hand in the shape of a cone and repeatedly opening and closing them, ‘except yap, yap, yap. They go to the parties given by white governors and eat their food. Yap yap yap.’
‘They have no balls,’ Madan said.
‘They have brains,’ Naim said. ‘What you can’t do with balls you do with brains.’
‘And how do you do that?’
‘By standing up and demanding your rights.’
‘Hah!’ Madan laughed sarcastically. ‘I too read that in books once.’
‘This is not written in books, Madan. It is carved in hands,’ Naim raised his right hand, ‘carved by the labour of hands.’
Iqbal had been quiet, looking at Naim through squinting eyes. ‘That is not our fight,’ he said. ‘That fight is for cowards and cripples.’
‘Shut up,’ Naim shouted in a rage. ‘I lost my hand in open battle, not by creeping up in the dark like you and slinking back to your caves.’
Iqbal did not answer. Fingering his gun, he suddenly raised it and fired. The bullet hit the clay base of the hukka, shattering it, the foul-smelling water splashing out and running all over the floor. Baba rushed in from outside, wild-eyed. ‘What was that? Somebody killed?’
‘Nobody,’ the man with the hennaed beard said quietly, holding in his hand the crooked smoking pipe without its bottom.
Baba looked at the broken pieces of clay on the floor. ‘This is no place for shooting,’ he said angrily. ‘Is this why I have provided you with shelter here?’
Keeping his hand in his trouser pocket, Naim went to his room. He lay down on his bed, removing, with effort, his finger from the trigger of the pistol. After a few minutes the bearded stranger cautiously entered the room through the gap.
‘I have,’ he said, extending his hand before him, ‘some dates.’
Hesitating a moment, Naim took the bone-dry dates from the man’s palm and started munching them. The stranger went back to the other room. After he had finished chewing up the dates, Naim went to the big room to wash them down with a glass of water. On the way back he slid the plank to cover the hole in the wall, isolating himself from the others.
Some time during the night Naim awoke and couldn’t get back to sleep. He knew Sheelah slept directly on the other side of the plank, next to her brother. He listened for sounds; there was complete silence in the hut. He got up. Walking up to the plank in the dark, he took a whole minute sliding it to one side to uncover half the hole. Before he could reach out and touch her, Sheelah sat bolt upright, as if already waiting. She came into his room and the two of them put the plank back to cover the gap before pulling his blankets over them.
‘Did you sleep?’ Naim asked in a whisper.
‘No.’
Curled up like a kitten against Naim, her warm, feverish breath seeped into his skin, making his bones ache. ‘They might have killed you tonight,’ she said.
‘So what?’
She put her elbows on his chest and raised herself on them. ‘I would have killed them,’ she said.
‘Would you? How?’
‘I would put a burning coal on the bag of powder.’
‘That would blow us all up.’
‘The bag’s under his head, he’d blow up more.’
Naim laughed silently. ‘You are a foolish girl,’ he said and kissed her on the shoulder, the neck, the lips.
‘I would have, I’m telling the truth,’ she said. ‘Naim?’
‘Yes?’
‘You should go away now.’
‘Where?’
‘Back where you came from, your home.’
After a pause, Naim said, ‘Yes, I think so too.’
‘Where is your home?’
‘In my village.’
‘Will you take me with you?’
Naim did not answer.
‘I will go with you,’ she said again.
‘All right.’
‘What do you do there?’
‘Work on the land.’
‘We worked on the land too. Other people’s land. But I can do everything, milk the cows and churn the milk to make butter, cut crops, make dung cakes to burn. I can also cook rice. Do you have a mother and father?’
‘Yes.’
‘I will do everyone’s work for them. I will not just sit about. I will be useful.’
Naim was quiet. She shook him by the shoulder.
‘All right?’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently. But in his heart he had a sense of grief, both immediate and distant. After a while, he said to her, ‘Go back now.’
‘Yes,’ she said, kissing him on the chest, and silently went back to her room.
All during the next day, Naim roamed aimlessly over the hills. The clouds had cleared. He sat down under a tree for a brief period in the afternoon and slept in the warm sun. It helped to quieten his heart. He returned to the hut late at night. Baba was sleeping on his cot, wrapped up in his dirty quilt under the thatched awning of his hut. Naim sat down on a corner of the cot. Baba poked his head out of the quilt and asked him where he had been.
‘Just walking.’
‘Where?’
‘On the hills.’
‘Are you going away?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘The girl told me. In secret. She said you were going away this night.’
After a while, Naim said, ‘Yes.’
Sheelah came out of their hut. ‘I heard you talking,’ she whispered to Naim. ‘They are still awake. Don’t go in.’
‘Why?’
‘I heard them talking among themselves.’
‘What about? I can deal with them.’
‘No, please. Just do as I say.’
‘My things are inside,’ Naim said.
‘I will bring them out. They are going to sleep soon. Don’t worry. They don’t know you are here. Stay out.’ She went back. Baba whispered, ‘Perhaps we should go inside. Come.’ He picked up his quilt and led Naim into his one-room hut. He put some dry twigs on the still warm hearth and blew hard on them, bringing a cough to his throat. On the fire he placed a pan and warmed up some milk, which he gave in a clay cup to Naim with a rock-hard maize roti. Naim ate the roti by dunking it in the milk and drank the milk, emptying the cup. The two of them sat near the fire, talking occasionally in low tones.
Some time after midnight, Sheelah came into the hut carrying a bundle of Naim’s blankets in which she had wrapped his bag and his second pair of boots, and she also had a small bundle of her own. ‘Let’s go,’ she said to Naim.
Naim stared at her.
‘I have two rotis for the journey,’ she said, pointing to the bundle of her own blankets.
Naim got up. Gripping his rolled-up blankets under his left armpit, he put his right arm across her body and pushed her gently back. ‘You stay,’ he said thickly, and went out of the hut.
Sheelah ran after him. She put her hand on his arm and said, ‘You said you’d take me with you.’
‘I am not going back to my village,’ he said.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Somewhere else.’
‘I’ll go anywhere,’ she pleaded.
‘No,’ he barked back at her.
‘But you said so …’ She wept.
Naim left the path and went down a long, very steep slope, running and slipping at the same time over wet earth and small stones. Sheelah sat down at the top with her bundle beside her. She kept looking at him blankly for a minute. Then she put both her feet against a huge stone and pushed with all her might. The boulder rolled down the slope after Naim with dull thuds, narrowly missing him.
‘Liar. Pig,’ she shouted. ‘Wood-bound. Cripple.’
At the bottom of the slope Naim saw a small pool of clear rainwater in a depression in the ground and felt a great thirst. He bent down on his hands and knees and put his lips to the still, cold water. He saw his dim reflection in the water against the sky and knew that he had several days’ growth of beard on his face and wild, dirty hair on his head. He stood up and started walking. Up at the top of the slope, Sheelah lost sight of him in the dark night. She dried her eyes, picked up her bundle and turned away. After a few listless steps, the spring came back to her legs and she ran back to the hut.
CHAPTER 14
ON ROSHAN MAHAL’S big lawn a dinner had been held the previous night, hosted by Roshan Agha, in honour of Pervez for having successfully completed various stages of the competitive examinations for the Indian Civil Service. It had been a long hard struggle for the young man. He wasn’t particularly bright but had a talent for applying himself to the job. He had spent three years passing the examinations but n
ot being selected in the competition for the available posts. Finally, on his last allowable chance, he had made it. All of Roshan Agha’s friends, his usual contacts in politics and the high bureaucracy, had been invited. The next afternoon, as the house tradition went, the younger people, from the age of seven to twenty-one, were holding their own party – a very different affair from the grand khana the night before. They weren’t allowed on to the manicured big lawn, which was still being cleared up and tended in the wake of the dinner, so they had all gathered on the smaller side lawn. Most of Pervez and Azra’s relations and friends were there. The area was buzzing with the frantic cries of children and grown-up girls and the booming voices of young men, all of them busy at their games. Except for Azra. She had been among them, trying to organize the girls for the debating contest to be held shortly and at the same time overseeing the arrangements for the food which was being prepared for the guests in one of the kitchens, when Sahibzada Waheed, finding her on her own for a moment, bent over her ear and quietly recited a romantic Farsi couplet to her. It was as if the very state of her being suddenly altered. She smiled politely and moved away from the crowd. She walked around the tall sanatha hedge that ran between her partying friends and another strip of grass bordered by flower beds in that nook of the sprawling house. She picked up the hand-fountain bucket and looked in. There was a little water left at the bottom of it. Upending the bucket, she aimlessly watered a plant that had already been fed. She was hidden from view by the thick hedge. The others’ voices, with which hers had been joined a few minutes back, now seemed to come to her from across a great distance.
Arshad was addressing his side. ‘Gentlemen. Friends –’
‘And countrymen,’ someone interrupted.
‘Be quiet. Friends –’
‘Lend me your ears,’ someone else said.
‘Shut up. Gentlemen, this is not a game, it is a question of our nose.’ Arshad put his index finger firmly on his nose.
‘Rather a matter of –’ a girl said.
‘What?’
‘A matter of nose.’
‘Look,’ Pervez said, ‘don’t poke your nose in our affairs, I mean matters. You attend to your own team … matters.’
The girl – Phoebe Gregson, Azra saw hazily through the fine mesh of the hedge – touched her nose lightly. All the girls laughed.
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