Animal's People (11 page)

So I'm stuck up the mango.

She comes to the window and looks out. There's a bright bulb behind it's outlining her shape, light is splashing the leaves in my tree. I am holding my breath hoping she can't see in the dark. Man, this thing in my pants is hot and rigid, jutting that far it's I'm thinking it'll catch in the branches.

The light goes out. A whisper comes from below. “What can you see?”

What can I see? Are they mad? She's still there. I'm sure of it, although my eyes are playing tricks. For the first few instants after the light's doused all I can see is the ghost of the bulb, it's burning violet with a green edge. Then a black square appears, which is the window, there's a pale shape swimming about in it. She's leaning out, taking a good look left and right.

“Hey Animal, what's there?”

How come she doesn't hear them? They're not getting an answer, but what can I do? I'm stuck on the branch trying not to move. Breathing, what's that? There's a fishbone caught in my throat. I can't drag my eyes away. I'm thinking any moment she'll see two hot coals glowing in the tree. A whole dark age of the world passes before she leans back inside. Still I daren't stir. What if she is still there in the darkness? Suppose she calls the cops? Spying on a naked woman, won't the bastards be thrilled to see who they've caught? That Fatlu Inspector, at Habibganj police station, it'll make his day to find me in this windy tree. He'll drag me down and if this pole's still sticking out the front he'll break the fucking thing off and beat me round the head with it. But Fatlu Inspector does not come and after some time as the window stays dark I realise that she has gone. It takes me a full ten minutes to get down that tree, a dick-scraping slide every inch to the ground.

They all want to know, “What did you find out? What did you see?”

I said, “I'll tell you later,” because at that moment Nisha came out onto the verandah. Nisha didn't know what we'd been up to. Probably thought we were taking the night air. Enjoying the frangipani scent. It got me out of a difficult spot, didn't want to tell Zafar & Co. what I'd seen.

When we get into the light, on the verandah, Nisha says, “Animal, you've scratched yourself.”

Sure enough, there are big scratches running down my chest where I've slid down that tree.

“My god what has happened to you?”

Well, there's one thing I can't do, which is lie to Nisha, so it's, “Je suis monté dans cet arbre-là.”

She gives me a look. “What does that mean?”

I start mumbling some shit about mangos.

“But it's not mango season,” says Nisha. She turns to Zafar, who's looking harassed. “What happened to Animal?”

A frown appears on that high forehead of Zafar's. He pushes back his specs like when he's about to make a speech, but before he can say anything, Farouq chips in and says, “Oh he just slipped.”

“Slipped?” She's looking at me with concern, I swear. That girl is sweeter on me than she realises. It comes out in moments like this, you can't hide it, if you really care for someone.

“How did he slip?”

“Tripped,” says Farouq.

“How could you trip?” she asks me. “You're four-footed.”

Then she's staring at my shorts. I nearly die. Let that damn thing not be showing. “You need proper clothes. You're always wearing those filthy old things. I'll buy you some new ones.”

“Don't want new ones,” I mumble. “These are my kakadu shorts came from the jarnalis, name's Phuoc, from a crocodile place. Special hero shorts, two side pockets, two gusset back pockets, two front patch pockets, useful for stashing stuff like my Zippo,” this kind of thing I'm babbling.

Zafar says, “Leave him, we have things to do.”

But Nisha takes me aside and brings some neem ointment, yellow it's plus smells bitter, to put on my scratches.

“I can't reach under there,” she says, meaning my belly, because I'm still on all fours. “You'll have to sit. Or go on your side.”

I roll over like a big dog, like Jara does to have her belly tickled, Nisha starts rubbing the ointment on my stomach. Her fingers touching me, I'm afraid my thing is going to come to life again, maybe she's sensed, because she traces the scratches down to the belly button then gives me the tin and tells me to do the rest, plus to hurry up because they're waiting for us inside. They are about to have another of their endless meetings. Then she says she'll hang around to make sure I do it properly.

“You go. It's you they're waiting for.”

“Not just me,” says Nisha, watching me apply the stuff. Plain she might be but's looking good. Once you've seen it in someone's face it's always there, I won't say beauty, but whatever you might call the thing you love. It's the way the hair hangs across her face. She was chewing her lip, which she does when she's thinking and which is that thing of hers that gets me.

“So sweet, you're,” I say, before I can stop myself.

“Silly Animal,” says Nisha, now smiling, “your hair's all jungli, it's matted up full of dust, there are twigs in it. Come, I'll brush it.”

So I am sitting there while she runs her fingers through, teasing out the tangles, then she starts to brush it, aaa aa aiiiee, catches here, aiiieeaaaa, tugs there. Zafar comes out to look for us, I'm looking at him, I'm smiling.

“Ça va, Animal?” he asks, who has learned it off me.

“Si heureux je vais mourir.” But this he didn't follow.

Dying of happiness, was I? Not for much longer, for after the meeting they went to her room, leaving me grinding my teeth below. I was obsessed with what they were doing together. Imagining you-know-what led to my voices having a great argument. One said it had foreseen that things would come to this. Another held that Zafar would be mad to do ghuss-pussy stuff in the same house as Pandit Somraj, who has the hearing of a bat, can strain his ear to hear an ant fart. Bollocks, said a third, a man's a man, with a thing between his legs and a man's deep urge to plant it in something moist and willing.

Of course this was no excuse for poisoning him.

Last night I dreamed of Zafar. He was heading up Paradise Alley into the heart of the Nutcracker. Nearly double he was bent, his long nose pointing sorrowfully at the ground. On his head was his favourite red turban, his beard was untrimmed, on his back he carried a shining world, blue as a flycatcher's wing, criss-crossed by tiny lines. The sun's heat was falling down on him. Heavy must the world have been, Zafar was staggering, his arms reaching up behind his back could hardly hold it, but he was taking one step at a time, like he did everything with careful patience. A small child walked ahead of him, going to school I suppose, he had a slate on which some abc and 123 were written. Nisha was in the dream too, tagging along behind Zafar, begging him to let her share his heavy burden of the world's pain, but I don't think he could hear.

My battle with Zafar was hotting up. Grim animal living without hope, that's how I saw myself. I asked nothing, expected less and was filled with anger at the world. Zafar was always giving me chances to prove what a good-hearted trustworthy guy I was. It had turned into a kind of contest. He deliberately placed more and more trust in me, I did the tasks he gave me with greater and greater contempt. Often I'd take on big tasks for which I was unsuited. One of these days, I thought, preferably when your life depends on it, I am going to let you down.

One day Nisha brought to one of our meetings a woman called Pyaré Bai. Pyaré sat on the floor with her sari draped so it was covering her face, in a sad voice she told us her story. Eyes you should hear it, because the story of this one woman contains the tale of thousands.

Pyaré Bai was married to Aftaab, he worked in the Kampani's factory, and he told her how dangerous were the chemicals in there. If by chance you got any on your hand, Aftaab said, the skin would blister. On that night he was at home off duty, when the stinging in the eyes began, the burning chillies, unlike most people he knew what to do. He covered the faces of Pyaré and their two young daughters with wet cloths then led them, walking not running, out of the wind. In this way they escaped where most of their neighbours perished. All were nevertheless damaged by the poisons, Aftaab the worst, because he'd taken less care over himself, he was coughing foam tinged with blood, his eyes were nearly shut. When they returned home all objects of metal, like cooking pots, had a green crust. Aftaab would not allow Pyaré and the children into the house. He cleaned everything, washed every corner before he let them in.

At first Aftaab seemed to recover, but his old job was gone, he was too breathless to be able to do physical work. His condition grew worse. His eyes suffered, he got rashes all over, plus fevers and pains in his joints. Pyaré bought medicines. Aftaab told her not to waste money on him, for he would die. She said, “How can I not?” “Think of yourself and the children,” he said. “When I am gone, what will you live on?” She replied,
“Har ek warak mein tum hi tum ho jaan-e-mehboobi, hum apné dil mein kuch aaisi kitaab rakhté hain.”

“Wah wah,” says Zafar. He's taken off his glasses and is wiping them. Blinking, he's. What does he think, this is some fucking poetry recital? Eyes, what she said means this, “On every page there's you and only you, oh love of my life, it's this book I keep in my heart.”

When her husband got really ill and could no longer work, they ran out of money and had to sell their small house. They moved to a rented place with half a roof. It was the only place Pyaré could find, right by the stinking naala, in the monsoon the rain came right in. The small girls were always hungry. At night they cried. She would bind cloths round their waists and give them water to fill their empty bellies. She found a job carrying cement on a building site.

“When I started work,” said Pyaré Bai, “my husband apologised to me for putting me through all this. How often did he tell me not to spend money on him and his illness? Don't waste your money, he said, I'm going to die anyway. And he did…he left me alone.”

She began to cry, Nisha sat next to her and hugged her. After this Pyaré Bai showed us pictures of her daughters. The younger one was beautiful and wild, looked much like her ma. She passed round a picture taken when she was a new bride, it showed a young smiling Aftaab miyañ, next to him was a girl dressed in short kurta with two plaits and curls plastered round her cheeks. Nisha said, “I saw this at your house. One of your girls said, ‘Ammi looks like Mala Sinha.' ‘No,' said the other one, ‘like Sadhna.'”

Again both were in tears. I couldn't understand why Nisha was so moved by this particular story, all of us worked every day with people with awful tales to tell. The wedding picture gave the answer, the happiest moment in the love affair of a Hindu woman and a Muslim man. Like Nisha and Zafar.

After Aftaab's death the moneylender sent his goons after her. These were guys whose eyes were red from drinking, mean miserable mother-fuckers, they carried Rampuri flick-knives and wouldn't hesitate to use them. They stood in the gulli outside her house and called in loud voices. “Ohé bitch, are you in there?” “Whore, have you forgotten the money you owe?” “Have some pity,” she told them. “My husband has just died.” They walked into her house and took things. They took her cooking pots. They wheeled away her husband's bicycle. “Well, he won't be needing it any more.”

At the end of this narrative all are in tears, except me who never cries and for each story as tragic as this can narrate ten that are worse.

When Pyaré has gone, Nisha says, “We have to do something for her. We've got to get those goons off her back.”

“There is a problem,” says Zafar. “How can we help one and not others? If we help Pyaré, where does it end? How can we say to her neighbours who also have suffered terribly, we've helped her but we can't help you?”

“Zafar,” says Nisha, “I don't know the answer, but I know that if I do not help that poor woman and her daughters, I myself will die.”

“You shall not die,” he said. “This is what we'll do. We will ask twenty friends to start a fund, I'll here and now put in a thousand rupees.”

“And me,” said Nisha.

“I too will give a thousand,” said Somraj.

“And I,” said Farouq. They looked at me but I looked the other way.

“Animal?” asks Zafar. See? He's determined I should have the opportunity to show the generosity of my spirit.

“Twenty,” I mumble.

“When we've paid Pyaré's debt,” said Zafar, “we'll begin a new work, a trust to give low interest loans so people are not driven to these scum.” Thus spoke Zafar bravely, but I caught his groaning thoughts and knew that another heavy burden had just been added to the world he carried on his shoulders.

The money when it was collected was a lot more than twenty thousand rupees. It could not be given to Pyaré Bai because the moneylender might trick her. It needed to be given direct plus a receipt obtained.

“I'll take it.” This is me.

Says Zafar, “I think better not this time.”

“What, don't you trust me?” This time I've got him.

“You're right, I don't. Not your honesty, your big mouth it's I don't trust. These are bad guys.”

“I'll take it,” I repeat. “Trust can't be cut. You either trust or you don't.”

Zafar fiddles with his beard, ponders. “Okay then, you take it, but Farouq will go with you.”

It was the most money I had ever carried, enough to buy a house.

The moneylender was P. N. Jeweller, shop's in Iltutmish Street, in the Chowk. Farouq and me, we've wandered up there slowly through the noise and smells, pakoras frying, crowds, money's in the bag round my neck.

“Her arse man,” says Farouq, “it's like two sweet juicy melons, wouldn't I love to sink my teeth into that?” Guess who he's talking about.

“You have a disgusting mind,” I tell him. “Even a gutter born person like me doesn't talk that way.”

“Doesn't talk, but thinks,” says he, laughing. “I've seen you looking at her, plus at Nisha too. You four-footed bastard wander the city with dick dangling, in secret you wear out your fist.”

Well, there's truth in this, Eyes, I won't deny, but don't tell me he doesn't do the same, or you for that matter, can you honestly say you've never touched yourself, so what's the big deal?

“Trouble with you, Animal,” continues Farouq, we're passing the Hanuman temple where the milkmen gather each morning, “is you think because you've a crooked back and walk with your arse in the air no one should dare to criticise you. I'm an animal, always you're bleating, I'm an animal, I don't have to do like the rest of you, laws of society don't apply to me because I'm such a fucking animal.”

It really irritates him that I choose to be an animal not human, it's like grit in his eye. “Wasn't me who gave myself the name of Animal,” I reply. “Plus who was it just now called me four-foot? Oh, I do believe it was you.”

“Don't whinge,” says he. “This is Khaufpur. In this city if a man is lame he's called Langda. If he's cross-eyed he's Look-London-Talk-Tokyo. These are just fucking words, call him Raju or Razaq, doesn't change what he is.”

Not very bright, is our Farouq. Really, he should have been a mechanic, or a goonda in a criminal gang like his two brothers. First he does not realise that everything's just fucking words, second this edge he misses, that when I say I'm an animal it's not just what I look like but what I feel. “Your name should be Hypocrite,” I tell him, “because in front of people like Somraj Pandit you act respectable, at Muharram you'll walk across hot coals to show how pious you are, three-sixty-four other days you do not set one foot in the masjid, nor do you say daily namaaz, behind the backs of the mullahs you are up to all kinds of dirty adventures.”

I say this because of him visiting the houses near Laxmi Talkies.

Eyes, till now I've not told you much about Farouq, except that he's Zafar's number two. You must be wondering, what's a roughneck like him doing mixed up with Zafar and Nisha, how come he does a caring kind of work in return for next to no pay? Hardly the type he's, his uncle is Afroze Khan Yar-yilaqi, a big gangster in Khaufpur, mixed up with transport scams, smuggling, liquor, all kinds of stuff. Farouq's dad is the younger brother of this godfather but the two of them had quarrelled. Two years ago Farouq's father fell seriously ill, he could not get proper treatment, it was Zafar who fixed it, since that time Farouq worships Zafar, he came to work with him, for Zafar and Nisha he'll do anything, but me he treats like shit, he says it's what I deserve.

Farouq's people are Yar-yilaqis. They came to Khaufpur from Yar-yilaq, it's a region near Samarkand. This happened a long time ago, maybe three hundred years, Farouq told me about it once, guess I wasn't listening. There's a whole Yar-yilaqi quarter of Khaufpur, the women in that district wear high heels under their burqas and lipstick under their veils, but if you upset one of them with some Eve-teasing type of remark she's liable to out with a knife and stick you, this too Farouq told me, in which case it's a shameful miracle that he has lived so long. Always though there's hope that one day he will burn to death. Each year at Muharram, it's tradition for Yar-yilaqi men to show their purity of heart by walking with bare feet over a bed of hot coals. Farouq does this every year, he's proud of it.

Any mention of the firewalk is bound to cause trouble between Farouq and me, in past years like others I've gone to see it, to get any kind of view I've had to shin up something, last time it was scaffolding where they had put a TV camera, my jumping about was making it shake. Farouq yelled at me, “Animal, get down, what are you doing here anyway, little shit, don't even believe in god?”

“Since when do jungli creatures have to believe?” I yelled back.

“Get a religion and learn some respect.”

So I've informed Farouq that with us animals, our religion's eating, drinking, shitting, fucking, the basic stuff you do to survive.

“You dirty fucker,” he said, “all this animal crap, it's just an excuse for behaving badly.”

Now, when I mention Muharram, which is drawing near, he gets hot under the collar and says that this year I had better not try any such tricks or he will personally throw me in the fire.

“Think I'm afraid of the fire? Go across fast enough it doesn't have time to burn, otherwise a filthy-souled person like you would burst into flames.”

“If it's so easy, why don't you do it?” he challenges.

“Well, maybe I will.”

“Big fucking mouth you have, you won't dare.”

“Want to bet?”

“Bet,” says he, so he bends down, we shake hands, cut, and it's done.

The jeweller's sat on a cushion, talking with a friend. We say why we've come, I remove the money from the bag and count it out before him.

“It's the debt of Pyaré Bai. Zafar brother says to tell you this is a complete end to the matter, you should now return her belongings.”

The guy's checked the money with a look on his face like he never really wanted to see it again, this is the way these moneylenders work, lend a small amount, interest of ten percent per month, who'd want the money back?