Waiting for the Monsoon Read online

  “Mukka?” Abbas opens his eyes slightly. He licks his lips and tries to say something. “Will you . . . will you tell . . . me the story . . . ?”

  Madan doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Abbas knows he cannot speak. He’s never told a story in his life. The only story he knows is about the day his sister in her blue coat disappeared into a group of cheering men. Everything that happened before that has gone clean out of his head, as if he’d been born in the midst of those shouting legs. All he remembers is worrying about how to satisfy his hunger and how to find a safe place to sleep. And, of course, there’s also the story of his friend Abbas, who’s not afraid of anyone or anything, except the police. Outside of those, he doesn’t know any stories.

  “Tell me,” Abbas whispers.

  I don’t know any stories. A series of hoarse sounds come out of his mouth.

  “Yes . . . tell me . . .” Abbas gasps.

  “I’m telling you: I don’t know any stories,” Madan barks shrilly.

  A blissful expression appears on Abbas’s face when he hears his friend say: ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A BOY . . .

  Madan sees that Abbas expects him to go on, although he still doesn’t know what he wants him to do. His stomach is growling and he’s thirsty. He picks up the bottle, but there is panic in Abbas’s eyes. Again he starts to shake and tremble. Madan quickly puts the bottle down. He wishes that Brother Augustine with his glasses with thick lenses was here, so he could put his upside-down spoon in Abbas’s mouth and give him a pill that would make him better. Then they could go off together again. They’d compete to see which one of them was the best “limper.” But Brother Augustine is much too fat. He’d never be able to squeeze through the narrow slit. Even his head is too big. Then Madan sees the skulls he swept into the corner. They look a bit like the skulls on Brother Augustine’s shelf. Their noses are pointing at each other. They look like two friends. He picks them up.

  I’m a rat, he has one rat say. And I’m another rat, the other skull replies.

  Abbas begins to beam; he knows exactly what his voiceless friend is saying. What his hoarse, shrill noises mean: THE BOY LIVED WITH HIS FATHER AND MOTHER IN A LOVELY LITTLE VILLAGE.

  Madan plays with the rats as if they were two puppets in a puppet theatre and has them walk alongside each other as he continues his story. They were very strong little rats, and they weren’t afraid of anyone.

  THE FATHER WAS A FARMER AND HE HAD A COW AND A GOAT, Abbas translates his words.

  They had promised each other that they would stay together forever.

  THE MOTHER MADE THE BEST CHAPATIS FOR MILES AROUND.

  Because they were both all alone.

  THEY WERE HAPPY AND THEY WORKED HARD ON THE LAND.

  They always took care of each other, and they shared all the food they found.

  THEN ONE DAY THE WELL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE VILLAGE DRIED UP.

  Sometimes an apple just happened to be lying on top of a crate.

  THEN THE POSTMAN DELIVERED AN OFFICIAL LETTER.

  Or there was a big pear that no one wanted to buy.

  THE SCHOOLMASTER READ THE LETTER ALOUD.

  One warm day they stole a mango.

  WHERE THEIR VILLAGE WAS, A DAM WAS PLANNED.

  It was deliciously sweet.

  EVERYONE HAD TO MOVE.

  Sweeter than the sweetest sugar.

  BUT NO ONE GAVE THEM A NEW HOUSE.

  They would start a mango farm.

  THE BOY’S FATHER STOPPED TALKING.

  Together they would have one huge tree.

  ALL HE COULD DO WAS THINK, ALL DAY LONG.

  Full of luscious mangoes.

  THEN HE REALIZED WHAT THE SOLUTION WAS!

  A hundred million mangoes.

  Madan licks his lips at the thought of their big tree full of mangoes: the two of them would sleep under the tree, so that the mangoes would fall straight into their mouths. Abbas also licks his dry lips. He shivers. A jolt of icy cold shoots through his body, slashing his muscles into useless pieces of string. He gasps for water, but the mere thought of water makes his throat contract. His lips fight for air, but the opening is closed for good. His throat, which had allowed him to shout and sing, is blocked. A shock goes through his body and he stretches his head and neck, as if searching for space, fighting for air, for breath.

  With a start, Madan drops his rat heroes. He pushes his friend back onto his bed, but Abbas shakes and lashes out with his arms. Every sinew, every tendon, every muscle in his scrawny body convulses. He begins to drool, a foaming, colourless saliva. “What . . . what . . . ,” he moans.

  Madan shouts for help, someone has to come, he can’t leave his friend alone. Why doesn’t someone come? Can’t they hear him?

  Abbas throws his head back, desperately gasping for air. His arms point toward the sky. The strip of blue above does not move. Only Abbas moves. One last time.

  MADAN HAD CLEARED away all the shards and laid his friend down as best he can, stretching his arms and legs out. He’s closed his eyes and mouth. He’s taken off his own shirt and rolled it into a kind of pillow, and he’s spread the cloth from around his waist over the body of his friend, which is getting colder and colder. He’s decided to go to Brother Francis and ask him to help get Abbas out of here.

  One last time, he looks at his friend. Then he takes a deep breath and squeezes through the slit to the world outside.

  No one takes any notice of the boy, grimy and barefoot and wearing only a pair of torn pants. He doesn’t look to the right or the left. His legs move mechanically. He doesn’t hear the angry clang of the tram when he dashes across the tracks, he doesn’t see the handcart that almost knocks him down, he doesn’t smell the aroma of freshly baked bread coming from the open doorway. He feels only the cold inside of him.

  HE CAN’T REMEMBER where Brother Francis lives. He doesn’t know where Ram Khan lives either. He’s even forgotten where the harbour is, where he left Abbas behind. He keeps walking, on and on. He can’t stop walking, even though his legs are tired and his feet hurt. It’s nothing compared to the pain that Abbas suffered. He walks down unfamiliar streets, but he doesn’t see them. He passes houses that keep getting bigger and then smaller. He doesn’t notice that the trams have disappeared and the buildings are now farther and farther apart. He doesn’t hear the call of the raven or the bleating of a goat. He goes on walking.

  He keeps going, on and on. The houses along the road are now huts and hovels. Everywhere he looks, children are playing and animals are rooting around in the piles of garbage. He keeps walking. His legs won’t stop. No one can stop him. The sun has long since set. The cool that evening brings has also descended on the outskirts of the city. Small fires are burning, and mothers are fixing the evening meal. He keeps on walking. No one asks him if he’s hungry. He’s forgotten about food. He wishes he could crawl into the tiny crate and hear Ram Khan lock him in. He wishes he could duck under the covers of his bed in the brothers’ dormitory. He wishes he could hide in the passageway under the station. He wishes that Abbas were there. Next to him, like he was every day. He wishes the two of them were limping along now, and earning money. He wishes he could curl up alongside Abbas, as he’s done every night, and then fall asleep. He wants to share an apple with his friend.

  Beneath the light of a gas lantern he sees a stall full of fruit and vegetables. The pile of apples is huge. He grabs the prettiest apple and walks on. It’s a large red apple. Its scent is soft and sweet. The salivary glands in his dry mouth spurt into action, but he doesn’t bite into the juicy fruit.

  “That’s him!” a voice says. He feels someone grab him from behind and push him into a car. He doesn’t see the agitated stall owner. He doesn’t feel the policeman shove him into the car. He doesn’t hear the car door slam shut. He clutches the apple. The apple for
Abbas.

  1995 Rampur ~~~

  “MA’AM, THE GENERAL says you must come.” Hema was standing in the doorway of the drawing room, with a bowl half full of yogurt in his hand. He knew that for some time now memsahib preferred not to be left alone with her father, but in the kitchen supper was simmering, and it would burn if he didn’t go back to check on it. If memsahib didn’t go straight upstairs, then the general would start to stamp, and the dust would sift through the cracks in the floor and the ceiling. Tomorrow he’d have to dust everything again, and since that darzi had moved into the house he’d had almost no time to dust, which is why he repeated the general’s request, in a more beseeching tone.

  Going to see her father alone was one of the things she had come to dread during the course of the past year. As long as there was a man in the room — regardless of whether it was a plumber or an electrician or Hema — he kept himself more or less under control. But when she was alone with him, he became downright vicious. Sometimes he was so filled with rage that she feared he might tear the leather straps to pieces.

  She made her way up the stairs. It was unusual for him to ask for her these days. In the beginning it was a daily occurrence. She’d have to race up the stairs — sometimes as often as thirty times a day — to keep him from smashing things to smithereens. But this past year he had become more manageable. On occasion he was even quite sweet, revealing sides of himself she hadn’t seen before.

  Charlotte opened the nursery door. He was sitting in his wheelchair in the middle of the room, with the fan whirring directly over his head. He wore only an undershirt and his pyjama pants. Hema had forgotten to remove his bib. His slender, useless feet were encased in old sandals, which were screwed to the footrest. This was a contrivance devised by Hema after the general had tried to stand up and took a nasty fall. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be asleep. His breathing was regular and his hands lay motionless in his lap. She was about to turn around and leave when she caught sight of the large wardrobe. If he caught her looking inside the wardrobe, he would be so furious that he might do himself harm: although he had long been confined by the leather straps, he often forgot they were there. She knew that she needed no more than a few seconds. A quick look would suffice. All she wanted to know was whether or not the lengths of fabric that had been transferred from her mother’s bedroom, which was now her room, to the nursery were still there. During the early years when she shared the house with her father, Charlotte had displayed little interest in the objects that were stored all over the house. But recently they had both become more and more aware of the fact that their pension had not increased in twenty-five years. She had recently taken stock of the contents of the house, and now she saw to it that no new pieces were purchased as long as the old ones were still serviceable. Slowly she walked over to the wardrobe.

  The wooden floor creaked. She was surprised that her father didn’t awaken with a start and make a scene. He continued to breathe calmly as she walked across the room.

  “I need to pee,” said a voice behind her. It would have been pure luck if her first attempt to look inside the wardrobe had been successful. She turned around.

  “The chamber pot is underneath your chair, Father.”

  “I don’t want you in the room when I pee.”

  “You had me called.”

  “I did not have you called. I have to pee and I don’t want you here.”

  “Then I’ll go, Father.”

  “You were planning something. I could tell by the way you were walking.”

  “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “I wasn’t asleep.”

  “I thought you were. That’s why I was being so quiet.”

  “You weren’t being quiet, you were being furtive. You were going to steal something from my wardrobe.”

  “No, Father, I was simply afraid of waking you up.”

  “Why did you come here in the first place?”

  “You called for me.”

  “I did not call for you.”

  “Then I’ll leave.”

  “No, stay. I didn’t tell you you could leave.”

  “I thought you wanted to pee.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “That means you want me to go.”

  “Tell me, have you ever seen a man pee?”

  “Father!”

  “That husband of yours, did he ever mount you after that one night?”

  Charlotte stared at her father in dismay. “He . . . he was a fantastic husband, and you know it. And a very good doctor. It’s a shame that he’s no longer alive. I know he would have taken good care of you.”

  “Him? That schlemiel! Who couldn’t even operate properly, who lay there shaking like a reed when someone said the word “war,” and who cried himself to death! You mean him?”

  “I’m going downstairs now. Do you need anything?”

  “Right, you go back downstairs, go back to playing lady of the manor.”

  “Goodbye, Father.” Charlotte closed the door with a bang and then locked it. She felt like throwing the key away, so that no one would ever find it again.

  1976 Rampur ~~~

  Dear Patricia and Donald,

  What wonderful news you just told us on the telephone — at last! We were expecting to hear days ago, and began to wonder if it was really going to happen. A girl, and one with such a lovely name: Isabella! Did you hear that name in Portugal? Here’s a little cape I knitted especially for your baby. It’s made of angora wool from the Himalayas. I hope that you like it and that Isabella will wear it for a long time. A kiss for my dearest, dearest niece, from her proud Aunt Charlotte.

  P.S. Please send a photo!

  1952 Bombay ~~~

  THE SUN CASTS its morning rays and a tram bell tinkles. Peter doesn’t know if it’s the sun, the sound of the tram, their new house, or the new clothes Charlotte bought for him yesterday, but he feels calm. And he isn’t plagued by his usual urge to rush off to the hospital. The coffee he ordered is delicious and the view of the harbour reminds him of the first time he saw his wife. It was a good idea to move house. Here in the city on the peninsula, with the sea on all sides, the soothing sound of the waves, and the cool evening breeze, he senses that some of the vigour he enjoyed before the war has returned. On the quay a little girl is jumping rope. Her braid jumps with her, and her striped socks keep falling down. She smiles in his direction when she sees him. For years, his old desire to have children has lain dormant, but as he watches this little girl at play, he doesn’t understand why he was so fearful of becoming a father. The fact that Charlotte hasn’t raised the subject recently doesn’t mean that she no longer wants children. He knows that it is one of her most fervent wishes. He’s seen how her gaze is drawn to mothers pushing baby carriages or women placing their hands protectively around their swollen bellies. For the first time, he considers the possibility that a child could change everything. His agitation, his melancholy moods, and his sleepless nights. A sensation of warmth fills his underbelly. He wonders what it’s like to be a father. A child — his and Charlotte’s — suddenly becomes an ardent and overpowering longing. He smiles back at the little girl jumping rope, and feels a blush coming to his face. Then he feels the blush on his cheeks spreading to the rest of his body. His heart begins to pound frantically and he starts to sweat. The smile on his face freezes into a terrified grimace. He is no longer aware of the girl smiling at him. The insidious plague that led to their decision to leave New Delhi has tracked him down. For an instant he thinks it’s the ground that’s shaking, a heavy truck passing by, perhaps, or even an earthquake. The smile on his face becomes an expression of panic. Then the cup slips out of his hand and falls to pieces on the marble floor.

  ~~~

  HE DOESN’T REMEMBER how he got to the hospital or who helped him into his white coat. He’s stan
ding at the operating table with a scalpel in his hand, and a patient is lying in front of him. The man groans. He hears the sighs of the jungle: the dripping trees and the rustle of the leaves. He sees wisps of mist that obscure his view until well into the afternoon. He is conscious of eyes that are spying on him from their invisible hiding places. He puts the instrument back on the stainless steel tray alongside the others and, without a word, walks away in the direction of the large swinging door.