“Love can only survive if it comes with a ration card.”
♦
On the big night, the G Squad have made an effort. They have hastily thrown a black silk bedsheet on the mattress, its price tag still attached. On the sheet they have strewn some rose petals and in the middle sits a teddy bear the size of a class-five boy, in its lap a red box of sweets from Fresco. Teddy picks it up and thinks he should offer some to Alice, but then its extremely light weight puzzles him. The time spent with the G Squad has taught him to be suspicious about things that don’t measure up; there is something unusual about the box. He opens it and shuts it immediately, embarrassed. He opens it again and picks out a slip of paper nestling on a pile of used condoms from the warm-up night.
“We’ll pick you up at four in the morning.” Inspector Malangi’s handwriting is like that of a child trying to fake a sick note. Getting to work is Teddy’s own responsibility. Whenever he is offered a ride, he knows that they really need him. It means they have got someone special to deal with, or someone really nervous. He hates dealing with the nervous ones. He also thinks that it is a nice reminder that the business of life must go on despite marriage, despite a wife, despite a house full of crockery and vague expectations. Despite his new life, he will be able to pay regular visits to his old life.
He also realises that tonight he is the nervous one. He has dreamed about it for so long that now, finally faced with the object of his fantasies, he feels short of breath. It reminds him of how he feels before big competitions, a certain hesitance, not knowing whether this is what he really wants in life. He feels like one of those lion cubs who manage to corner their first prey but then don’t know how to kill it, can’t yet find the jugular vein. As he waits for Alice to come out of the bathroom, he wants to be with the G Squad racing down a highway with some deadly criminal squirming in the back of their van. Or just hanging out in the office, making a list of dangerous criminals who might one day end up in the back of their van.
Now he feels as if he himself is in the back of the van.
He realises that Sister Alice is standing just behind him, very close. He still thinks of her as Sister. Alice. He feels her hand on his shoulder. He turns around in panic as if she has read his thoughts. He finds himself in her arms. She nuzzles his nose with hers, wedding-night drunk.
“I didn’t expect all this. You planned it. For how long have you been planning? How did you know this would work out? What if I had said no?”
Teddy’s body is limp against hers. He puts his arms around her and he cracks his knuckles. He knows in that moment that he probably hoped that she would say no. That he had never thought about the life that would follow if she said yes. He was mentally ready for a lifetime of yearning and mournful songs but he had never actually planned for a woman, any woman, and Alice is suddenly nothing but a woman who has come to live in his apartment. Now he knows how it feels to be one of those criminals in the back of the van; they are shorn of their deadliness, squirming and pleading, promising a lifetime of innocent compliance. He knows what happens to them.
“My friends from work. They did it all. I don’t know where to buy flowers and teacups. They are all married, so I guess they know.”
“So you have a job as well?” Alice runs her fingers along his spine. Teddy squirms, then stops himself and pretends he is ticklish. “Such a responsible man. What more? Now do you want to tell me the names you have chosen for our babies?” She holds his face in her hands and makes to kiss him on his lips. Confused, Teddy turns his face away and her lips end up on his ear. Both his hands grip her buttocks, but then he realises that there is no need to hurry, she is not going anywhere; they have the whole night, hell, their whole life in front of them. He moves his hands up and holds her by her waist. He has an unannounced, almost sickly erection.
“Do you want some tea?” he asks.
“I’ll make it,” she says, holding his arms and putting them by his sides, patting them, as if reassuring a hypochondriac.
In the kitchen she finds a tea set still wrapped in old newspapers, tears open a family pack of Lipton tea bags, scrubs a kettle that has fungus on its lid, puts it under a tap that has more fungus growing in its mouth, and waits for a few seconds, for a thin dribble of water to fill the kettle. After spluttering and hissing, the flame from the stove almost licks her nose, and it is only after she has put the kettle on the stove and found a lid to cover it that she stands back and thinks that this is her new life. And she hasn’t told Joseph Bhatti about it yet.
She tries to imagine a conversation with him that’ll never take place. “If he is not a Choohra, it doesn’t matter. You have married outside French Colony, it doesn’t matter. What does it matter if he is a Yassoo man or a Musla? What does it matter who he is? Welcome home, memsahib. But always remember, wherever you go, you won’t be very far from French Colony.”
Alice Bhatti puts two empty cups on saucers, smiles as they sit side by side and comes out of the kitchen.
Teddy stands just outside the door with his heart beating. She comes to him with open arms. Teddy Butt is accustomed to a certain amount of coy bargaining from women in these situations. I’ll take my shalwar off but you have to promise you won’t touch my bra. Or sometimes breathy cooing in the ear used as delaying tactics. You big man, first tell me about your life. Or, Look, you can do anything you want, just don’t spoil my hair. Can you at least wash your hands? You have to wear two of those, they look too flimsy. Hurry up, the last bus is in one hour. Or, What’s the hurry, I am not running away with your money. Or sometimes just glacial passivity and silent tears, as if they were homesick for a place that has been obliterated in some obscure war.
But the way Alice embraces him is the way men are supposed to embrace each other, open-chested, arms around each other, loins locked.
There is no warning, no build-up, he hasn’t even kissed her properly yet. He just touches her, shudders, and a wet patch spreads in his starched shalwar like spilt ink. A few drops dribble down to his ankle. Teddy is the type of man who hates nothing more than his own seed. He has a separate set of towels for this very purpose on his bedside table. But surrounded by strings of plastic flowers, real rose petals on the bed and Alice breathing heavy in his arms, he has to pretend that nothing has happened. He tightens his grip around her, as if trying to block this scandalous information from reaching her.
“I know this happens sometimes,” Alice says, and snuggles his neck with her chin.
“What happens? What has happened?” Her knowledge frightens him. How does she know? he wonders, and then suddenly it dawns on him. What else does she know? After all, there is not much he knows about her. How has she come upon this knowledge? And now she stands there cuddling him in mock sympathy. She knows that it happens to other people. How does she know that? She has never been married before. How can he be sure? Has she been with other men? Suddenly he feels that she is complicit in every premature ejaculation in the city.
“So this has happened before? To you? I mean to someone with you?”
“Not really.” Alice tries to evoke the coyness she thinks she is entitled to as a bride. And then adds by way of explanation, “But I did go to school.”
“So this is what they teach you there?”
“I went to a nursing school, remember.”
“But still, what kind of class do you go to, to learn this? Do they draw pictures? It’s not really an illness. Or is it an illness?”
“Of course it’s not an illness. They don’t teach it there. I just know. I also know what happens after that.” She reaches into Teddy’s trousers and gropes around, and finds that his thighs and groin are waxed.
“I need to go to the toilet.” Teddy grabs a towel from the bedside table and rushes away. “And where’s that tea you promised me?”
♦
At three in the morning he sits on the edge of the bed, washed, changed, wrapping and unwrapping a handkerchief around his hand.
“Come t
o bed, go to sleep,” says Alice.
“I need to go to work.”
“At this time? What kind of shift starts at three in the morning?”
“It starts at four, actually. It’s police work. It can start any time.” He feels he has already said too much.
“This is not the kind of work you can bring home with you.” He remembers Inspector Malangi’s advice. “This is not the kind of work you discuss over a family meal.”
“I’ll be picked up.” He feels that should be explanation enough. It should also tell her that it’s not some lowly job where you have to take a bus to work. It’s official. There is an official vehicle on its way. To take him to work.
But it’s only 3:15 a.m. He wishes it were already four. Or at least that Alice was properly asleep. His heart sinks at the thought that from now on not only is he responsible for his own sleep, he is responsible for hers as well.
He watches her face closely. She is back in some dream, smiling. He thinks that this married life is not fair. He is responsible for her sleep but has no control over her dreams.
∨ Our Lady of Alice Bhatti ∧
Fourteen
By the time the G Squad Hilux screeches to a halt in front of the Al-Aman apartment block, Alice Bhatti is fast asleep, with her head in Teddy’s lap. She is not one of those girls who grew up dreaming of various scenarios about their married life, but this is one of the things she had imagined herself doing: sleeping with her head on her husband’s lap.
Teddy has been staring at her face, and panicking every time her eyes twitch and a smile spreads. She seems to be in a dream where there are things to smile about. Teddy has an urge to keep sitting, keep looking, until she wakes up and tells him about her dream. But he can hear the Hilux revving its engine downstairs. If you have a job to do at four in the morning, there is a reason that it needs to be done then. It’s not the kind of job that would fit into a nine-to-five routine. It is obviously not the kind of job that can be done after sunrise or before sunset. It needs to be done at four a.m.
Teddy puts his right hand under her warm neck and slips a pillow under it. Alice shivers in her sleep, smacks her lips, then smiles as he pulls a light blanket over her. “Lord be with you,” she mumbles in her sleep, her fingers gently scratching his spine. Teddy is startled and looks at her as if he has woken up with a stranger whose name he can’t remember.
There is no time to wake her and ask her what she means with this lord business. Is this what she has been dreaming about? A lord? Her Lord? He has never really given religion much thought, but this is his house and if there is going to be a lord around here, it has to be him. I’ll talk to her when I come back home in the morning, he thinks. He doesn’t like to leave home with unanswered questions. His shoulders feel heavy. He tries to think of an excuse to escape from the mission, but then looks around at his new life – strings of macrame hanging from the roof, the new bedsheets, the Chinese blanket – and knows that he can’t escape from this. One night of married life and it seems he is already trapped, weighed down by his new demands. He shuts the door gently and races down the stairs. The driver has switched off the headlights on the Hilux but its engine is still running, its red and blue flashing lights playing quasar with the new minaret of the neighbourhood mosque. The old crumbling minaret has been refurbished with thousands of little irregular-shaped mirrors, probably leftover shards from a mirror-shop wreck. He doesn’t see Inspector Malangi before he appears from the shadows, puts his arm around Teddy’s shoulders and starts walking him towards the Hilux. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back before she wakes up.” He points vaguely towards the upper floor of Al-Aman. Inspector Malangi never jokes during one of their pre-dawn missions. He becomes polite and methodical and caring, like a devoted father getting his children ready for school: uniforms, homework, pocket money, a loving pat on the back.
“We are taking him to meet his mother for half an hour because of his good behaviour. To Buffer Zone. Then we are taking him to Central Jail, and then it’s up to the lawyers and the judges.” Inspector Malangi pauses to light a cigarette; his walrus moustache needs a trim, his eyes look tired. “But he just won’t stop crying. I haven’t even touched him for the last two hours. Do something.” He gives Teddy a friendly slap on the back, hands him a TT pistol and a flashlight. Then he produces a tiny perfume bottle, Teddy extends his palm and he pours a few drops on it. Teddy rubs his hand under his nose. Inspector Malangi believes that bad smells are disorienting, not good for your focus.
“I don’t know how you do it, Teddy.”
Teddy Butt ignores the compliment. He needs to preserve all his communication skills for the job at hand. The Hilux takes off as soon as he climbs into the back. A huddled, shawl-wrapped figure in the corner stirs, and after great effort and clinking of chains, a face looks up. Teddy switches on his flashlight. He can usually tell the value of the target by looking at the weight of metal on them. This one seems pretty heavy. A chunky pair of handcuffs, a nylon string around his ankles; this arrangement is reinforced by a set of iron rods that join his handcuffs to iron rings around his knees. It’s unfathomable how this creature can stay in any human position for long: if he sits, his knees are around his shoulders, if he tries to lie down, the iron rods threaten to pierce his loins; he can’t even roll himself into a ball and lie on the floor of the Hilux. These arrangements are usually made for the kind of people who tend to jump out of speeding jail vans, or for the sort of prisoners whose friends and comrades ambush police vehicles or barge into courts with RPGs blazing or blow up bridges to take back their man.
Teddy removes the shawl from the prisoner’s face and holds his flashlight close to it. The face is boyish and covered in tears and snot. One eye is a reddish, swollen mound. The lower lip is broken, and behind it a couple of teeth have probably been knocked out. He whimpers like an animal that has been half slaughtered with a blunt knife and is now waiting for its soul to leave its body. He is in that sad state where a swift death seems like a reasonably better option.
Teddy takes a corner of the boy’s shawl and starts to clean up his face. The whimpering gets louder.
“We’ll take these off when we get to your mother’s place,” Teddy says in a casual voice, not reassuring, just explaining standard operating procedures.
The Hilux honks at a donkey cart with spinach piled high and the driver asleep stretched out on top. The donkey, used to early-morning speedy traffic, swerves and makes way for the Hilux. A streetlight flickers on a small signboard, the kind that have cropped up all over the city. It depicts a wooden coffin: Say your prayers before prayers are said for you.
When asked to do this duty, Teddy feels like one of those ancient fabulists he has heard about on National Geographic. When men still lived in caves, they sat around fires and told each other stories so that they could stay awake and not get devoured by wild beasts. Teddy feels he is doing the same thing, in a slightly different way: keeping them awake, comforting them, cajoling them through the night, making them feel alive till such a time when they are not alive and don’t need to hear any more stories to stay awake.
The boy raises his head with a great deal of difficulty, looks into Teddy’s eyes and sobs. “I know you are taking me away. I know you won’t bring me back.” Teddy gets up from his seat and sits beside the boy, putting his right arm around him. That is usually half the job, developing a physical bond with them, holding their hand, being their family. You just need to tell them a story, any story, preferably something unexpected. “I gave them all the names.” The boy’s sobs get louder. “Everything I know. They said if I gave them all the names, they’d send me to jail. But you are not taking me to jail.” He starts bawling like a child who has just realised that his favourite toy is broken beyond repair and he won’t be given a replacement.
Teddy gets them all the time. I didn’t do it. They made me do it. I was told I was doing it for my country. I was at home asleep. My uncle is a lawyer. He knows how to deal with them.
/>
“I got married last week,” Teddy says. “Tonight was my first night with my wife. And here I am at four in the morning being dragged out to Buffer Zone.” He looks at the boy’s face to see if he is interested in his story. If the mention of Buffer Zone has brought back any memories. “I know what you are scared of,” he whispers in his ear. A whispered word of kindness in his trade can be as effective as pliers in a police investigator’s hands. “We both know that they do those things. But why would they drive so far out? Any open sewer in the city centre would do. Do you know why they have brought me with you? Because they don’t want your family to see their faces. See, I am not even in the police. Would they drag a policeman away from his new wife? I am just somebody they want to use so that your family doesn’t come after them. I am not saying you’ll live happily ever after. Who knows what will happen tomorrow, or when they take you out next time. They don’t always bring me with them. But you know, tonight we are all right.” Teddy shrugs his shoulders, challenging the boy to share his meagre optimism. He switches off his flashlight and whispers, “If I were you, I wouldn’t trust them. I would note down their names and remember their faces, their ranks. See the number on their belt buckles? That’s their ID number. I would drag them to court after this is over. If I were you, I would go and talk to the media, name names. I know a crime reporter, but you must not mention me. This is my livelihood, and now I have got a family to support. Did I tell you that I just got married?”
A truck with its lights on full beam speeds past them on the wrong side. Teddy catches a glimpse of skinned buffaloes hanging in the back on rows and rows of hooks, their heads intact, horns curled and eyes wide open. He moves forward to block the boy’s view. He doesn’t want him to see dead buffaloes hanging upside down at this hour of the night. Teddy doesn’t want the boy to get any hasty premonitions about what lies ahead.
“So I got married last week. Guess where the wedding took place? I can bet you’ll never be able to guess. Come on, three guesses. But who would have thought that I’d be spending the first night of my married life with you? My new wife definitely had no idea that I’d go to sleep with her but by the time she woke up I’d be with a pretty boy like you.” Teddy slaps the boy’s thigh and laughs. He notices that the boy is not whimpering any more. He is trying to say something. That is always a good sign. Teddy wants to encourage him. “You must be someone important? You must have really impressed someone. They wouldn’t put so much metal on a pickpocket. Are you married?”
Our Lady of Alice Bhatti Page 11
