Chef (24 page)

I served her.

Not a single word had been exchanged between us so far. She ate slowly the fish and biryani, and I adopted her speed. Now and then I looked at her but our silence made the
looking
harder. I fixed my gaze on the bottle of Coke on the table. Bubbles at the top were bigger than the ones at the bottom. I wanted to ask her many questions. Instead, I was at a loss for words.

I heard her finish, and looked up. She was staring at me. The steel plate, still in her hand, was shining in the light.

‘More biryani?’ I asked.

She kept staring at me.

‘I know you,’ she said.

My hair was short now, no beard, and I had removed my turban. But she had recognized me.

‘Why did you?’ she asked.

‘Because–’

The dogs were barking louder outside.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ I said.

To prove to her my identity I had walked into the room with Chef’s journal in the bag. But she had recognized me and there was no need to provide more proofs. That is why it was inappropriate to show her an
object
she could not even read.

‘Do you recognize this?’ I handed her the journal.

She seemed indifferent.

Then I said something I shouldn’t have.

‘He is dead,’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘The man who wrote these pages.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

I moved to the edge of her bed.

‘Why did you cut your hair?’

‘Irem, you are for me –’

‘Why did you?’

The next ten or fifteen minutes I told her everything about Kishen. Everything. I don’t know why. Things I found difficult sharing with men in the barracks, I revealed to her in one single breath. At first she paid little attention to what I was saying, lost in some other world. Is she afraid? I asked myself. But somewhere down the line she grew drawn to Chef’s address to the soldiers on the glacier.

‘The biryani you consumed was really out of Chef’s recipes,’ I said.

‘Same to same man who taught you Rogan Josh?’

I liked the way she said
same to same
.

‘Same-to-same man whose journal you
read
,’ I joked.

She was quiet again.

‘No tomatoes in Rogan Josh,’ I said.

Then I opened the journal. I didn’t read everything. I censored many passages. But there were words even I had no control over. Forgiveness is a strange animal: I felt the need to ask her forgiveness. Otherwise I could not sit next to her. Could she forgive me for being from the
enemy
side? I read the journal to her:
Like most Indians I grew up prejudiced against Muslims. But unlike most of my country men I do not believe in caste. My difficult posting on the Siachen Glacier has taught me how tiny and fragile the human body is. It is a waste of time to be prejudiced. A waste of breath.

She walked to the window. There was no window. She pretended there was a window. She stood there as if she was looking at the view outside. I knew what was outside: my cycle leaning against the plane tree, and next to it was the nurse’s cycle. The nurse and I had failed to connect, but our cycles had met and they were making love to each other.

Thinking about the cycles I surveyed Irem’s back, her long hair and its entanglements. She was facing the so-called window. We were six meters apart. Light was dim, same naked forty-watt bulb hanging from a naked wire. From where I sat, she looked healthy and plump. I stared at her hair and feet and back, her entire form. To amuse her, I think, yes, it was to amuse her, or perhaps to ease the tension I said she had grown
fat
, and suddenly her breathing grew heavy, and although I could only see her back I felt she was trying to grasp on to something, but there was nothing around her. She tried again, and again she failed. Then she turned. She pivoted, suddenly uncom-fortable, trying to protect herself from my gaze. The color of her face changed, and then parts of her body convulsed with bleak laughter, as if she was laughing at me. It was only then I realized she was heavy with a child.

‘God,’ I said.

I was at a loss for words.

‘So . . . you are . . . you are not infertile!’

I did not know what else to say.

‘Who?’ I almost whispered. ‘Who did it?’

She did not respond. She was not going to respond. It definitely could not be her husband in Pakistan. Who? Who was I going to report it to?

I was standing not far from the General’s portrait on the wall, and all of a sudden I thought about the nurse’s cycle propped against the plane tree outside. She was in the Raj Bhavan to give medication to little Rubiya. I thought of persuading the nurse to help Irem.

‘The nurse,’ I said.

‘What about her?’

‘She will take care of you?’

‘How?’

‘She will make your body normal again.’

‘I do not want to be normal.’

‘Please listen to me.’

‘I am.’

‘I want to help you. But I will only do so if you agree.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Would you like saffron?’

‘Saffron?’

‘Saffron, I have been told, causes miscarriage, and it works quickly, not causing much pain.’

‘Please go away.’

‘Think about it,’ I said. ‘Please.’

‘Why are you humiliating me?’

‘Humiliating you?’

‘By asking again and again the same-to-same question.’

‘You do not know what is good for you,’ I said.

‘Thank you for the biryani,’ she said.

‘Tomorrow. I will come again. Same time. I will knock on the door, and I will ask the same question. If you say yes, the nurse will help you.’

Then I picked up the empty plates and glasses from the table and stepped out. I felt very disturbed. I remember focusing on her back as I was stepping out. She was looking out of the so-called window. I almost turned, but restrained myself. I stood outside her door for a long time as if I wanted to listen to the sound of the 1.5 hearts beating inside her. I did not know what to do. To tell someone? To tell someone and put her at more risk, and to put myself at risk?

Next day at the same time I knocked on the door and asked her the same-to-same question. But. She said no. I urged her to change her mind. The nurse would do it without telling anyone. The nurse will make you normal again. But she said no. She wanted to keep the child. She told me something women normally tell only their husbands. She told me the baby was kicking inside her belly. The baby was crying and asking her to give her a name. Don’t be so emotional, I said. I have already given her a name, she said. What name? I asked.

Two days later I returned to the room again and begged her to allow me to take her home across the border. She said she did not want to return home. Her family was not going to accept her now. I am damaged, she said. Khuda is punishing me, she said, for my sins. Why did I not die? I should have died. It would have solved all troubles. I am not going to commit any more sins. I am going to keep the child.

There was a long silence. I walked to her and seized her hand. She was sitting on the edge of the bed. Again I urged her to allow me to take her to Pakistan. But the moment I uttered the word ‘Pakistan’ she fell back on the bed. Her whole body convulsed, and her two hands started opening the drawstring of her salwar, and there she was partially unconscious and partially unclothed on the bed, with the naked bulb above us. It was at that point the ayah entered the room. I do not know from where she came and why, but she saw. She saw us together. Then walked in the guard, and then marched in the colonel in his trussed jacket.

Four

26

From the bus I saw the General’s private car. The driver was holding my name written in huge letters. I
am
cancer, and I have arrived in Kashmir. I sat in the front seat and the driver checked with me if I was comfortable there, and I nodded, and asked him to drive slowly. His face looked vaguely familiar. The sun was setting. There were plane trees on both sides of the road. The car sped up as it looped around the army camp on the slopes of the mountain. I turned in my seat and tried to locate the spot where the army had put up the tents to court-martial me.

Schoolchildren were playing there, at the exact same spot. They did not know a thing. Neither about me, nor about the court martial. Troops were marching outside the camp.
One-two-three. One-two-three
. I must have been lost in deep thought because I didn’t notice when the car started winding up the hill to the Raj Bhavan. There was a deep mist in the mountains, not much was visible. I must have looked towards the Mughal garden with longing, and perhaps that is why the driver turned to me and said, ‘Stop first at the garden, sir?’

‘Yes, yes,’ I said, surveying the ruins.

But then I changed my mind, and asked him to hurry to the Governor’s residence. On the way I noticed lots of checkposts and military bunkers and (to my surprise) beauty parlors. Dal Lake had more weeds now, and the signs by the road said that the weeds were being removed by a Swiss company. The golf course, on my right, was deserted. The chenar trees looked ancient, bare, ready to receive snow.

The car passed between the two gateposts and guards, and stopped in front of the Raj Bhavan. The flag of our country was fluttering on the post. The servant who was standing by the entrance saluted me and rushed to the car to pick up my trunk and bag. I told him not to, but he picked up the two items anyway, and dashed indoors. A hospital jeep was parked by the fence. I hit a stone on the way to the house, and stumbled for a while.

‘Where are you going, sir?’ asked a voice. I was heading towards the rear entrance, but the voice made me yield to it. He was the General’s new ADC. Suddenly it occurred to me how much time had passed, and for no reason I touched the stone pillar at the front.

The ADC asked me to wait in the living room. The room looked both strange and familiar with its carpets, fireplace, rashtrapati furniture, and glass cabinets. I occupied the walnut chair in the corner, and looked out the window.

‘Who is that lady with a little dog and a cell phone?’ I asked.

She was standing on the terrace of the Guest House.

‘Her name is Mrs Ramani, sir. She is the previous Governor’s daughter.’

‘Yes, yes, I know.’

Her peace paisley silk was fluttering in the wind. She had climbed up the stairs of the Guest House for a clear cell phone reception, and was yakking away. So this is Bina after fourteen years, I said to myself. Still beautiful but no longer the same one whose wedding banquet I took care of.

‘What is she doing here?’ I asked.

‘Bedding guest, sir.’

‘Bedding guest?’

‘No, sir. Bedding guest.’

‘Wedding guest?’

‘Yessir.’ Sitting in the walnut chair I felt very tired. I felt like my journey had come to an end and yet had come to nothing. I felt like returning to Delhi.

‘Ready-made tea, sir?’

‘Sorry?’ I asked.

His fingers were grubby. He was the new Chef’s assistant.

‘Ready-made chai, sir?’

‘No milk and sugar in my tea.’

‘Sir.’

‘Wait,’ I said.

‘Sir.’

‘What is that white slab in the lawn?’

‘The dog, sir.’

‘When did it happen?’

‘Don’t know, sir.’

He left tea and Marie biscuits on the table in front of my chair. The tea was horrible, no cardamom and excess ginger.

Sipping tea I asked myself if my need to cling to life was so enormous that I had forgotten my morals. I thought of all the people who will attend the wedding banquet dressed in peace silk and paisley, and they will talk as if all was well and all will be well. They will eat tandoori chicken and mint chutney and mango pudding and drink Bailey’s chai. And the things they will say about Rubiya’s choice of a husband. They would have said things anyway, they always do, but this time they will say more as if they were entitled, and the few who will fly in from Pakistan will display their suave French-cuff shirts, and they will wine and dine and dance and repeat the same worn-out phrases – ‘Give us your Bombay actress Madhuri’ and ‘Take our Kashmir!’ and no one will pay any attention to people like Irem. People like her do not matter. Damaged people like her do not matter at all. Even when they leave the hospitals they remain sick. Even when they leave prisons they remain trapped. Their sickness is being alive. Their crime is that they continue to exist.

The wedding guests will say, The curry did not have right enough masala. While others after a few bottles will say, Curry karari thee, bahout khoob sahib, bahut khoob. Gazab ka korma. Subhan Allah, the Hindus will say. Some will speak English with English accents and some will display polished American accents and say, The curry was not done yet, or some other infantile thing, like the curry was fun-tastic, very good hanh. Someone else in broken English will say, Ever since my wife die-vorced me I have not had this kind of curry, and then someone will correct the man, It is ‘divorce’ not ‘die-vorce’. Yes, yes, that is what I meant, the other would say. Why am I here? What am I doing here? I asked myself in the walnut chair.