Animal's People (26 page)

“Harry Barber? Sure I do.”

Which is how I learned what my father's job was. Forty feet below the main control floor, among furnaces that roared like volcanoes, was a tin shack on whose door someone had chalked
HELL HOLE
.

“Down there,” said my dad's friend, “it's so hot it can burn the hairs right out of your nose. There's steel plates, glowing red as the devil's eye, going by on a roller belt. Water's spraying on them but it bangs off, boom! boom! boom! like a stick of bombs. Your dad's job is to step outside of the hell hole and check the plate. Is it good and flat or does it need more rolling? He's got on fireproof gear and a face guard and he's holding four-foot-long calipers, even so he has only four seconds per sheet. Thirty seconds out there and protection or no, your skin is going to start blistering. One slip, you're history.”

It was a job for a skilled man with plenty of guts and a steady hand and my father was proud of it. “We built Amrika,” he used to tell me. “We made the steel for the Walt Whitman Bridge and the World Trade Center.”

Elli pauses and looks around as if expecting a question or a comment, but all are silent, waiting for her next words.

“The world is made of promises.” It's all very well to say such things, but noble ideas don't dull pain, not when you're a teenager and people snigger and make jokes behind your back. When my mother, Martha, was found wandering the town in her nightclothes, my dad had to be called away from his work at the steel mill, I got home to find him sitting with his head in his hands, for the first time ever I saw him cry. My mother was ill with a sickness that affected her mind. There'd be times when she wouldn't know who she was, who we were. One day, on my mother's arm I found red marks, they could only have been made by a man's strong fingers. My father's. The realisation that he'd been momentarily cruel filled me with anger, but not against him. I was angry with my poor mother, whose illness had caused him to lose self-control, also I was angry with myself because I could do nothing to help either of them. In my shame I remembered reading about a doctor who had gone to Africa, he worked among pygmy women who gave birth to the planet's tiniest babies, two small discs of coconut outlined in milk, for some reason that's how I thought of them, I decided I would become a doctor. “To be able to help. To have the power to help.” I became a doctor to save not my mother, but my father.

Before Martha became ill we rented a small house with a view across the railroad tracks to the grey steel mill where my father worked. When he realised that my mother's health would not improve, this was after she'd gone running round town in her underwear, my father decided that she needed a change. He'd take her away to somewhere with trees and fields, where a person could breathe. He could not afford to buy a house, so he built one. I helped him. It was a timber frame house in a small development a few miles out of town. It stood in an acre of land and was constructed in what was locally called “ranch style,” all on one floor, spread out. More prosperous people built “colonial style,” which was two stories, one above the other. My father began the house during the winter, working weekends. When days grew longer he'd return from his job to the little house in C'ville, as we locals called it, and we'd drive in his beat-up old car out to the property. The neighbours came over and helped us raise the frames. My dad climbed a ladder, he sawed and hammered. I climbed nearly to the top and held the nails and handed up tools as needed. He worked late, those summer nights, nine, ten, till the last light was gone from the west. Often he'd carry on by lamplight. When the house was done he landscaped the yard and planted trees. He put in rhododendrons and azaleas, a willow, a mimosa near the house, evergreen trees round the lawn. He was tireless. Whatever the difficulty, he never gave up.

“You're a hero,” I thought, loving my dad, “you made our house.”

The day it was finished, we took Martha out to see the new house. She clapped her hands at the sight of its neat white boards, blue-painted windows. Her illness seemed to fade away, as if the demons feeding on her brain could not survive out of sight and sound and smell of the steel mill. “How I do love this place,” Martha said.

This house of my childhood stood on land that once had been fields. The backyard was ridged by generations of ploughs. Two homes away was a small farm that raised horses and if the wind was right it brought sweet, rich gusts of manure. Of the old forest there still remained patches of woodland, mainly maples and oaks. Honeysuckle, wild raspberries and blackberries climbed on the fences. At night, the stars were brilliant, you could hear frogs and crickets, and the wind running like a river in the trees.

“Oh my, just look at all the little birds!” What Martha loved best about the new place was the wilderness all round, but one day I found her distraught because one of the songbirds was dead. “A hawk got it. I hate them, they are so cruel.” A pair of red-tailed hawks were soaring overhead. Two days later Martha said, “I love the hawks, they are so beautiful.”

I still recall the dismay I felt that my mother's illness could not be cured either by prayer, or by my own force of will and sincerity of purpose. After this I fell out with god, we went our separate ways, he to demonstrate his strange way of loving human beings, while for me began the long process of learning how to heal their broken bodies and minds.

After hearing this story many people go up to Elli doctress to say how sorry they are to hear of her mother's illness, they hope she has recovered, what a truly wonderful thing to be a doctor, etc.

It's Chunaram, he's come up and asked about promises, how come they're so important. Elli says, “I mean that things work when we keep our promises to each other and to ourselves, when we don't keep our promises, things fall apart.” Some folk, including Zafar, are nodding, as for me, I'm thinking that things couldn't be better for Chunaram who's hardly kept a promise in his life.

Last of all's come Pandit Somraj. Says he, “We come from different worlds. Yours is made of promises, mine of music. I wonder if the two are as far apart as they seem.”

“You know what,” Elli says to me afterwards, “I think this is Pandit Somraj's way of making peace. Now at last people will come.”

But next morning, when she opens the doors, the street is still empty.

I have nine days to live, for tonight there's no moon in the sky, it's the first night of Muharram. The ninth night is Ashara Mubarak, the night of the fire walk, the night I will surely die.

Never have I been more scared, I've been dreaming of those cruel coals, the fire pit's no fake. In past years I've watched men with leather bellows blow air onto the fire until the coals glow white. In my dreams I walk onto them and my hands burst into flames, I fall and I'm all burned up.

The fire is part of Muharram here in Khaufpur and will always be, because it's the heat of the desert where the Prophet's grandson, Hazrat Imam Hussein was martyred.

Everyone in Khaufpur knows the story of Imam Hussein. How many times have I heard it from the mouth of old Hanif Ali, he'll rock back on his heels and close his eyes, the cataracts that stop him seeing dissolve away, he's seeing the world of a thousand years ago. “What are these red tulips that bloom in the desert? In Karbala that dreadful place, I see Hussein, grandson of the Prophet, upon whom be peace. Tired he is and thirsty, and all around his companions lie fallen. Alone he defies Yazid the tyrant and his thirty-three thousand men, better it is to die with dignity than to live a humiliating life.”

A great hero, was Hussein, to defy such odds, to stick up for what he believed in, that kind of courage I admire, but do not share.

Even Zafar, who refuses to believe in god, says we must all be like Hussein who never gave up and refused to be cowed by the evil powers that rule this world. When he says this I know he is thinking of the Kampani and its friends who rule countries and cities, who have guns and soldiers and bombs and all the money in all the banks of the world, and that pitted against them he sees us, the people of the abyss, Ma Franci's people of the Apokalis, he tells us that we will win, because we are armed with the invincible power of nothing.

Nine more days. I'll never walk upright. I'll never again hear Nisha sing, for in Somraj's house out of respect for the neighbours the singing and sounds have stopped, for the rest of my life there'll be silence. I'll never marry Nisha. I'll never marry anyone. I'll never know what it is like to fuck.

Nine days to do everything I want to do in my life. I've caught Zafar aside, “Zafar brother, there's something I must do before I die, will you help me?”

“Say, brother. What is it?” he asks kindly.

“I would like to ride on a motorbike at one hundred miles per hour.”

He strokes his beard. “Hmm, on roads like ours, could be deadly.”

“In nine days I will be dead anyway.”

“Why will you die, you fool?” he asks, laughing.

“Because of my bet with Farouq. I have to cross that fire, I swear in my mind it burns like the pit of hell itself.”

“First, there's no such place as hell,” says he. “Second, you won't walk.”

“That I will. I'm not backing down.”

Farouq is also counting, he comes to Chunaram's looking for me, I'm sitting with Zafar and others.

“Eight more days, Animal, until the fire.”

“I'm ready,” says I, meaning I am ready to die.

“Better get a religion quick,” says Farouq. He says that if I reform, become a Muslim, and lead a good life, I'll get to paradise. So I look at him and ask does his religion not forbid him to smoke and drink, plus what of his visits to those houses in the old city?

“You're just jealous,” he says, “because no girl wants to do it with you.” But he's scowling, so I know I've scored a hit.

I tell him that Ma Franci also talks of heaven to me. “Isa miyañ loves you as you are, your soul is as precious to him as anyone's. Take him to your heart and you'll be saved from hell.” I replied that I deserve to be more precious than anyone else because I've already been to hell.

“Wah wah,” says Zafar. “Sixer.”

“Heaven and hell forget, we're stuck on this earth,” says Chunaram, who also believes in life after death, but of a different kind. Chunaram says I should be a Hindu because of all I've suffered in this life, I'm sure to get a better deal next time round, more than likely be a prince or politician or something. Trouble with that way of looking at things is by the same logic my situation is the result of evil things I did in my past lives, some people do look at me as if they're wondering how many children I murdered last time round.

Whoever I talk to, seems the main reason for having a religion is to cheat death and live again, here or in heaven, wherever. Well, I don't want another life, thanks, not if it's anything like this one.

“You wouldn't be crooked in paradise,” says Farouq. “You'd be whole and upright.”

Well, this is also what Ma says about heaven but I don't believe a word. If religions were true there wouldn't be so many of them, there'd be just one for everyone. Of course all say theirs is the only real one, fools can't see this makes even less sense. Suppose people talked of beauty in the same way, how foolish would they sound? Times like this I feel sorry for god's being torn to pieces like meat fought over by dogs. I, me, mine, that's what religions are, where's room in them for god?

I hate to praise Zafar but he is the only one who has a sensible view because not only doesn't he believe in god, he thinks religion is a bad thing. The idea of heaven was invented by the rich and powerful to keep the poor from rebelling. Zafar will dip in his pocket for a beggar but never gives to those who ask in the name of god. He says if he believes in anything it's humanity, that deep down all people are good. I don't know where he gets that idea, because there's no evidence for it in the world.

Zafar and Farouq have this in common, I should cease thinking of myself as an animal and become human again. Well, maybe if I'm cured, otherwise I'll never do it and here's why, if I agree to be a human being, I'll also have to agree that I'm wrong-shaped and abnormal. But let me be a quatre pattes animal, four-footed and free, then I am whole, my own proper shape, just a different kind of animal from say Jara, or a cow, or a camel.

Farouq says if I want to end up in paradise I'll have to turn human.

“Why so, moosh?”

“Paradise is for humans, not for animals.”

“What harm do animals do?”

“Not a question of harm. Do you expect that every ant that gets crushed under a villager's horny heel goes to paradise?”

“Don't see why not. If they have flowers and birds in paradise why not ants? Isn't there room?”

“There are no insects in paradise,” says Farouq.

Zafar hearing this remarks that in that case the Kampani's dead factory must be a kind of paradise because it too has no insects.

“Wait!” I say. “Didn't you tell me that in paradise people will have fine couches surrounded by precious silks and carpets?”

“Surely,” says Farouq.

“And fountains and rivers will come gushing forth and there will be fruit orchards as far as the eye can see?”

Farouq nods, I have got him now.

“And wine, milk and honey will flow?”

“They will.”

“How can there be honey without bees?”

So Zafar starts laughing and says Farouq must admit I have a point.

“Leave bees out of it,” says Farouq, aggrieved as if his mother had been a bee and was being insulted here. “Animal is not a bee. What kind of animal are you, anyway?” he demands. “You've never said what sort you are.”

Well, Farouq thinks he has turned the tables here, because like I just said I am not a cat, or a dog like Jara, nor camel, goat, leopard, bear etc.

“I'm the only one there is of this type.”

“You look a lot like a human being to me,” Farouq says.

“Of course he's a human being,” says Zafar.

“You pretend to be an animal so you can escape the responsibility of being human,” Farouq carries on. “No joke, yaar. You run wild, do crazy things and get away with it because you're always whining, I'm an animal, I'm an animal.”

“And I'm an animal, why?” I retorted. “By my choice or because others named me Animal and treated me like one?”

“You're well enough looked after now,” says Farouq. “We are your friends. Don't we care about you? All this bitterness, it's in your own mind. To be accepted as a human being, you must behave like one. The more human you act, the more human you'll be.” He spoils the effect of this decent speech by adding with a smirk, “Four-foot cunt.”

At this Zafar looks down in the mouth because he's not in favour of making a mockery of those who are otherwise. He says this discussion has gone far enough and that Farouq is a bad loser and also that we are both wrong, because there is a heaven, but in the words of the poet,

“If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this!”

I daren't tell Ma of my problem, first because she will fret, second she is already mad as a leper's thumbnail.

Six nights to go, she leans towards me with a crafty smile and whispers, “The angels, they're already here. They're here among us in the Kingdom of the Poor.”

“What kind of angels?”

She gives me a look, like it's me who's crazy. “The usual sort, of course.”

Well, it is no good arguing, plus I don't want to. There is little enough pleasure to be had from life, if someone is getting a kick from seeing angels, then good for them.

“These angels, you say they're here in the Nutcracker?”

“Of course. I heard a trumpet this morning, before it was light.”

“Would be the Pushpak Express.”

“Always some facile explanation,” says she. “There was another blast not ten minutes later.”

“Hooter at Khaufpur Heavy Electricals factory.”

“Faith is evidence of the unseen.”

“No doubt, no doubt.”

“Listen Animal, I have seen the angels burning inside people's bodies. I'll look at someone and suddenly I'll see the outlines of this other bright being locked inside. Angels I call them, although some may be demons, but they're all alike trapped in this flesh, which for spirits is like being buried in mud. Only their eyes look out and they are so pitiful.”

“Is there an angel trapped inside me?”

She takes a look. “Can't see one, but it might be sleeping, or doing some other business.”

“Very true.” At such times there is nothing to do but humour her.

“We live in hell. You realise that? This is hell.”

“Yes Ma.”

“When you look at the smoky flames that pass for lamps around here, you can understand why I say we're living in hell.”

“Yup.”

“But that's not why I'm saying it,” she cackles. “To be trapped in a human body, that is hell, if you happen to be an angel.”

I can sympathise with these angels. To be trapped in an animal body is hell, if you dream of being human.

I don't want to die. Farouq says the fire can be crossed safely only by those whose hearts are true, which mine certainly isn't, but if I back down he'll never let me forget it. In my dreams I find amazing ways to survive the fire. I leap across in one bound. A downpour comes and puts out the flames. An angelic hand plucks the back of my kakadus and hoicks me clear.

So scared am I, next day I ask Elli doctress what can be done to protect hands against the touch of red hot things. My hands are hard and horny because they're also feet, but I feel they will not survive pressing on coals.

“What on earth's going on?” she demands. I end up telling her about Farouq, how we have a bet.

“Of course you are not to do it,” says she, same as everyone else. I tell her I've never yet seen anyone fall in the fire, or burn, plus Somraj told us that he had once done it as a young man.

“How can that be, Somraj is a Hindu?”

“And I'm an animal. So?” See, Eyes, in Khaufpur it's the custom for people of all faiths to go to this famous Yar-yilaqi fire walk and many have also walked across the coals. “Somraj Pandit said he didn't feel the fire, it was like walking on cool water.”

“Think I'll have a word with that Somraj,” says Elli with a grim set to her face, and I feel sorry for the poor pandit, he has already had it in the ear from Nisha, who went cross-eyed fishguts when I told her the same thing.

Elli looks at me, “My dad risked his life near red hot metal, but he was doing it for his family, what are you doing it for?”

“I am doing it for my honour.”

But this is nonsense, because if I cared for nothing but honour, which is a kind of heart's truth, I wouldn't be afraid.

Eyes, the real reason's Nisha, so jealous have I been since learning of her and Zafar's Ratnagiri plus children plans. I want to impress her, also I want her to keep worrying about me and realise what she will miss if I am roasted.