After she has counted up to twenty-five, he takes the bar out of her hands and puts it aside. She feels the light has gone out of his eyes, as if he has suddenly remembered something he was trying to forget. He is rubbing his eyes, as if he has seen too much.
“You look exhausted, and I lifted all the weights,” she says, taking the hem of his T-shirt to wipe her brow.
Inspector Malangi had once given him a lecture about how to make women happy; it was the easiest thing in the world. “You don’t need to give her gold bangles, not silk, not flowers. You don’t need to write poetry or massage her feet. Just put a hand on her shoulder when she is least expecting it. Look her in the eye when she is busy chopping vegetables. And she is happy like a child who has seen his first elephant. That’s the easy part. But keeping her happy, any woman happy – and it doesn’t matter if she is your mother or daughter or your Friday whore – that, my friend, is impossible. You can become a clown in a circus and learn to swallow real swords, but it won’t bring a smile to her face. There is a deep hidden well of sadness in every woman, as inevitable as a pair of ovaries, and on certain afternoons its mouth yawns open and it can suck in every colour in this world.”
Teddy knows that this is not that afternoon. He’ll be gentle and patient when that afternoon arrives.
“I have got something for you.” He extends a folded newspaper towards her. She stares at the newspaper in confusion. She turns it around and sees a picture of the famous twins conjoined at the head. A pair of monkey faces with very large eyes stare at her. Only one will live. But which one? asks the caption under the picture.
“Open it,” says Teddy. Alice unfolds the newspaper gingerly, as if the life of the conjoined twins depends on her careful handling of the newspaper. She finds a damp, thorny sapling, one tiny leaf yellow-green and young, another large one almost black and moth-eaten. There is a tiny green bud hidden under the leaf, like a promise made in all honesty but forgotten when the season changed. The newsprint around the sapling is damp and the words seem blurred. Alice realises, and is puzzled, that without any reason, tears have clouded her eyes.
∨ Our Lady of Alice Bhatti ∧
Twenty
When Alice Bhatti finally meets up with Noor, first they talk about a cancer diet, and some tentative ways of delaying the inevitable for Zainab. In between, she tries to make a man out of him.
She walks in with bendy legs, cheeks flushed, carrying a stack of boxes of sweets in one arm and swinging a plastic shopping bag in the other hand, as if she has just been bargain-hunting. “I got married,” she announces, putting the gift-wrapped boxes on the table.
Congratulations. Now we can all become police informers and live happily ever after. Noor doesn’t say that, of course, and keeps quiet, too surprised to speak. Alice Bhatti comes to him and hugs him. Noor doesn’t move, his arms stiff at his sides. He has heard the news many times over, but he has heard so many versions of it that he has decided that it can only be a rumour.
♦
Dr Pereira was the first one who barged in and asked, in a stark whisper, “Have you heard the rumour?”
“Sir, if I were you I would ignore it,” Noor had said without looking up from his register. He had assumed that in his chronically understated way Dr Pereira was referring to the giant banner that had been strung up overnight at the entrance of the Sacred. It accused the doctor, in three rhyming lines, of being an Indian dog, a Jewish agent and a land grabber.
“The rumour about Alice Bhatti. That she has converted. At the hands of that acquaintance of yours, Mr Butt.”
Noor had suspected Teddy Butt of all kinds of police-sanctioned crimes, but he had never suspected that Teddy went around the city converting people to his faith. How exactly did he do that? By hitting the soles of their feet with a stick? By tying their hands behind their back? By dunking their heads in gutters? What was his faith anyway? Last he saw Teddy, getting some attention from Alice Bhatti seemed to be the only faith he had.
Ortho Sir made a rare appearance, his goatee bristling with some private indignation. “So you are a matchmaker now?” He stroked his goatee and fixed Noor with a steady glare. Noor stood up in confusion, wondering what he was being accused of. “No, sir, as far as I know, Alice has not converted.”
“I knew it.” Ortho Sir banged his fist on the table. “These people have turned this place into slutsville.” Ortho Sir said this as if slutsville was a Toronto suburb he had been denied entry into. “All they do is fuck around, and when they get into trouble, they use religion, nay they abuse religion. I’ll make sure that these people are exposed.” Ortho Sir stomped out. Noor sat there wondering why, if Alice had actually gone ahead and married or converted or married and converted, she was trying to hide it. It wasn’t as if there was an army of heartbroken suitors who would take offence. He put the rumours down to their mock shooting lessons in the Sacred compound. Sometimes these things can appear to be more intimate than they actually are.
♦
Now she waltzes in as if she is living her life in a shampoo advert, bringing with her the smells of new marriage and an air of optimism last seen in the hospital when the first colour TV arrived three decades before. There she stands, hugging him, announcing that she has got married. Noor doesn’t ask her who and why; he is more concerned about where. He has heard a rumour that she got married on a nuclear submarine.
Pakistan doesn’t have nuclear submarines, he knows that, he has read it in the papers. “Are you sure you got married on a nuclear submarine? They wouldn’t allow you on it. They wouldn’t allow a non-Muslim on it. I mean, they would allow them if they worked on it, of course, if they had a proper pass and uniform.”
Alice is too busy writing notes on the boxes to take in anything. “Got married on a boat. Yes. Everyone should get married on a boat.”
“Are you sure you didn’t end up on an Indian submarine? Indians do have nuclear submarines. And if you did get married on one of those, I don’t think it would be considered valid here. It’s OK to marry Junior Mr Faisalabad, it’s your choice, mixed religious marriages have their problems, I mean the kids will grow up confused and everything, but I don’t have anything against them per se.” Noor is trying to block out mental images of Alice in a red dress, sprawled on the stern of a white yacht, her head in Teddy Butt’s lap, his hands playing with her hair. “I am just wondering if it’s a real marriage. Because marrying Junior Mr Faisalabad on a submarine that belongs to another country, in international waters, I don’t know what the proper term is, which laws apply. If it had happened on land, then it would be quite simple.”
“Are you going to congratulate me or just lecture me about maritime law?” says Alice. “First Sister Hina Alvi tells me that marriage is some kind of incurable disease, and now you.”
Noor stops rambling and tries to focus on the little plastic bag that she is holding so carefully, as if it contains the secret to her new happy marriage.
Alice Bhatti has brought with her a little brown book wrapped in a polythene bag and a handful of rice that seems to have been soaked in a cheap red dye. “Waiting at the bus stop I found this.” She unwraps the polythene bag with the kind of care she shows only when unwrapping bandages from multiple fractures. Home Cures for Cancer. The title is handwritten. Inside, on the cheapest possible newsprint, is the most indecipherable mumbo-jumbo that the Urdu language could sustain without being confused for a divine language.
Noor counts three couplets in the first chapter, two in Urdu, one in Punjabi. The first one praises Allah, the second reminds the readers that they are all doomed and worms will eat their innards, and the third eulogises a variety of herbs that He has created. “Are we going to sit here and recite poetry? Zainab has never shown any interest in poetry. She doesn’t even know what poetry is.” Noor looks at Zainab, who has been in a slumber for thirty-six hours, waking up only to suck on an orange. He hasn’t slept for thirty-six hours. He feels delirious, like a seventeen-year-old who has to keep vi
gil at his mother’s bedside while watching out for his own untimely bouts of lust. He tries not to think about Alice taking off her red dress. And if the wedding really took place on a boat, was she wearing a sailor’s white shirt? He tries not to think about Alice Bhatti’s shirts. He achieves this by conjuring up Teddy’s upper torso, taut and slippery and smelling of mustard oil.
“No,” says Alice, grabbing the copy from his hands. She flips some pages and turns to Chapter Two: Growing Your Cures in Your Back Garden.
She starts reading aloud, at first haltingly, then with the confidence that comes from being married for three whole days. There are too many words that Noor doesn’t understand, exotic plants that he has never heard of – banafsha, ajwain, nazbo – and seasons that he doesn’t even know exist: towards the end of spring collect the blooms that have only withered for three-fifths of a day. The text blurs the distinction between gardening and the growth of cancer, as if the lump around Zainab’s liver isn’t a poisonous tumour eating her innards but a lump of wet earth about to sprout end-of-winter gardenias.
Noor listens as Alice reads. She asks him to jot down strange ingredients for strange concoctions. He makes circles around the ingredients whose names he can’t recognise.
They seem like two travellers lost in a desert who have just stumbled upon a treasure map and for a moment have forgotten all about their thirst and lack of direction.
If Noor had been a bit experienced in these matters, he might have seen through Alice Bhatti’s heroics. He might have noticed that she was dreamy-eyed and saying things like river of life and fresh beginnings and balancing your personal universe. Noor himself doesn’t know what he wants or what he wants first or what he is willing to swap for what he doesn’t yet know he wants. He wants to save his mother’s life, but failing that, he wants her to die without pain – or maybe he just wants Alice, newly married Alice or the old, not-converted, not-married Alice. He asks himself trick questions at night: what if Zainab is saved but he can never see Alice again? What if Alice leaves Teddy but Zainab has to suffer more? He knows this is not logical. But are three types of cancer logical? Is it logical for him to sit at his mother’s bedside and wonder if Teddy Butt is doing all those things with Alice that he claims he has done with a variety of other women?
When Alice Bhatti assumes the role of Zainab’s saviour, Noor is grateful, but she assumes the wrong role. He doesn’t want her to be a saviour. He wants her on his lap. He is at that age where he could even be on her lap. The hormonal rage is such that he could make love to that chair warmed by her, the latex gloves she has discarded; he could live happily ever after with that stethoscope she has snaking around her neck.
In the confusion caused by his raging hormones and impending grief, he doesn’t remind Alice that they have no back garden to grow their cures in.
♦
An oncologist on a charitable visit from Houston stops by Zainab’s bed, looks at her latest reports and says, “Six weeks. I think you should probably take her home.” Everybody around the bed looks down. Nobody wants to tell the charitable oncologist that this is her home. Alice Bhatti escorts him to the next patient and Noor hears the good doctor from Houston cooing, “What an interesting case, what a rare strain of non-Hodgkin’s.”
Alice Bhatti returns later and tries to reassure Noor. “Who does he thinks he is? A TV doctor? Did you see his teeth? So white.” They don’t mention six weeks again.
With Dr Pereira spending more and more time with patients who are not on six weeks’ notice, Alice Bhatti elevates herself to the role of oncologist and cancer diet specialist.
Noor marks dates on a mental calendar, but he can’t really tell what the doctor from Houston meant when he said six weeks. She is there, suffering, in pain but still there. She goes to sleep, she wakes up, she takes her pills, she pees and she drools and feebly scratches the dry patches on her legs. How could it get any worse? Will she die a little bit every day, until the last day of the sixth week, when nothing will remain of her? He wants to ask someone.
Noor can’t ask Alice Bhatti any of this. They talk about uncooked food instead, which Alice’s manual tells her is the best way to fight cancer. “It’s feeding on you, so you feed yourself what cancer doesn’t like,” Alice Bhatti reads out from her book.
“What if we give her uncooked vegetables only?” Noor says to Alice, who has her rubber gloves on and is picking syringes from a stainless-steel tray and putting them into recycled cellophane sheaths. The top button on her white shirt has come off and it’s held together with a safety pin. Noor catches a glimpse of her skin-coloured bra, its lace frayed on the edges. “Or pomegranate juice. I read somewhere that pomegranates are full of antioxidants. That will be good for her. Yes?”
Alice starts to unpeel her gloves. “It will not cure her,” she says, unfolding the gloves carefully and turning to throw them in a bin.
Noor wonders if her panties are also skin-coloured. His cheeks become red and he starts to massage Zainab’s feet. “But it will stop it from spreading,” he says. “Her cells will resist, fight back.”
“Good idea,” says Alice. “You fetch pomegranates and I’ll get this ready.” She takes out six Leukeran generics from a packet, puts them in a little white stone bowl. Then she opens a drawer, produces a cylindrical black pill pulveriser and starts pounding the pills. Noor looks at her hand around the stone pestle and blushes again.
♦
As the days go by, they start thinking of themselves as a team that will find a cure for cancer and defeat the inevitable. But they are going through the motions, playing a part written for them. In his heart, Noor knows that despite the luxury bed and an abundance of very expensive painkillers sourced by Sister Alice, Zainab is slowly moving towards her six-week deadline.
If you have spent most of your life in hospital, you know that there is only so much all the scanners and antiseptics and radiation machines can do. The injections that Zainab and Noor could never have afforded are administered regularly. But Zainab seems to be slipping into longer and longer comas.
When she wakes up, Noor slips a little piece of sweet in her mouth. She chews it slowly, then a smile spreads around her lips as if she has just recognised a long-forgotten flavour. Noor sees her smile and gets excited. “Alice,” he tells her. “She got married. Our Alice from the Borstal. She is married now. She brought these sweets.”
“Why are you shouting? I am not deaf,” Zainab says. “I know all about marriages. I got married once. Is it a love marriage?” She doesn’t wait to hear his answer and slips back into sleep, as if all those happy memories have tired her out or she doesn’t want to think about what happens in a marriage necessitated by love and made public with things made of milk, flour and sugar.
♦
The boxes of sweets that Alice distributes are meant to bring the rumours to an end, but people want confirmation. They come to her, congratulate her and then ask: so what is your new name? “Why should I have a new name? Don’t you like my name? I like my name.” Alice tells everyone the same thing and they leave whispering a bit more: See, she has not converted. For all we know she is not even married to that Butt man. Were you invited to the wedding? Was anyone invited? Even her lapdog Noor wasn’t invited. What kind of wedding is this where the only evidence is a box of cheap sweets? They are probably living in sin. People touch their ears and sigh as they imagine all the sinful things that Alice and Teddy are doing in private, and hiding behind a few boxes of sweets.
They don’t even notice Alice’s devotion to her new cause. Zainab may not survive her cancer, but her cancer will be fed the best food and medicine that Alice can scrounge from around the hospital. She walks the corridor, goes on her rounds, smooths a sheet, cleans dribble from someone’s face, thrusts an unnecessary thermometer up someone’s rectum. But she always comes back as if there is only one patient who matters.
Zainab’s breath rattles like a lumbering train as she gets closer to her destination, and Noor’s work s
uffers. His reports become erratic. He mixes up headaches with hepatitis, brain tumours with tuberculosis, fractured ribs with spontaneously bursting gall bladders. All references to real people start getting deleted, pages go by without any reference to Dr Pereira. In the ‘Time of Report’ column, every one is reported at 1200. With his register open, Noor keeps staring at Zainab’s pale face, her shrinking limbs, hoping for some sign of improvement, listening out for the approaching footsteps of death. He doesn’t hear anything except Zainab murmuring in her sleep.
Their home cures only seem to have left her more dazed. She reaches into her past and tells him how her mother once beat up her father in the village square and her father laughed out loud at every blow as the whole village stood by and applauded.
If a woman can’t drag her man to the middle of the square and thrash him once in a while, the marriage is doomed, she advises Alice.
Dr Pereira throws the register at Noor. He actually slams it on the table, and then plays drums on it with his knuckles. He works himself into a rage in these situations, but today even his anger seems distracted. “Is this what I told you to do? Where is the truth? Where is the rhythm? I asked for a straightforward recording of the facts. Just a simple description of what goes on in this place. Who does what. I don’t want a misery list. All I am getting is a list of names, ailments, people admitted, discharged, expired. If somebody was to read this in a few years’ time, all they would learn is that there once was a hospital that had a lot of sick people suffering from every possible disease humankind has ever known. A child could have told you that. A hospital by definition is full of sick people. What about the others, the attendants, the workers?” He is basically asking Noor, how come I am not here? If there is all this toil and trouble, where is the saviour? Who runs this place?
Our Lady of Alice Bhatti Page 15
