East of the Sun (39 page)

“This is my younger brother,” said Azim. “Your friend Guy did that.”

“I knew about it,” she was forced to admit. “But I had no part in it.”

“So why not tell the police? Because he was a nignog?” He smiled at her unpleasantly.

“No.” She looked at him. “That’s a horrible word. I never use it. What I was told was there were special circumstances and that everybody wanted it hushed up.”

“What circumstances were these?”

She looked at her hands. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

“Did you know Guy Glover was a thief?”

“I did.” Her mouth was so dry she could barely talk. “And so did your brother. Why didn’t he press charges?”

He squished his mouth between his fingers and looked at her for a while.

“Because,” he said, “we were able to persuade Mr. Glover to work for us instead, and now we are very angry with him for giving us the slip. We hear he may be going back to England. He may even be on his way now. As soon as you can help us find him, we will let you go.”

After he’d gone the guard put a blindfold around her head. Through it she heard the sound of Azim’s shoes clumping downstairs, then the whoosh of the geyser again, the rattle of the pipes. Straining to hear other sounds in the street outside, she caught the rumble of wheels and the cry of the water man. But she dared not shout back. She was frightened of Mr. Azim now. He meant business.

Before he’d left he’d said in a voice of deadly calm, “My brother is a fine man. A peaceful man. He didn’t want me to do this. He doesn’t believe in your eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth business. But your young friend left him deaf in one ear. You can still see the marks on him. I should have killed Mr. Glover then, but I thought he might be useful to us. He has
not been useful to us. He has betrayed us. Now, it is my duty to avenge him.”

On the fourth day, after a breakfast of dhal and chapatti, the woman arrived and allowed Viva to wash in a trickle of rusty water and then to use the bucket while she averted her eyes. Viva hated this bit. When this was done she was tied up again and heard the descending tinkle of the woman’s bangles as she walked downstairs. She’d begun to associate this sound with a pounding in her heart, a dryness in her mouth—after it, Azim would appear.

He frightened her, but she was beginning to see a kind of insecurity in him. He seemed like a man who has raided a theatrical wardrobe department without any clear idea of what part he was required to play. Sometimes he’d arrive in one of a number of beautifully tailored, expensive, and hot-looking English suits that he’d wear with an embroidered Muslim flat cap, twice he came to her in his soft cotton native clothes but wearing a monocle that kept popping out of his eye.

The pattern of his interrogations was just as unpredictable, and she began to think the clothes were the outward manifestations of some kind of mental crisis; sometimes he would lecture her softly on his personal beliefs: “I am first of all a Muslim, then an Indian,” he told her one day. “The Koran teaches us we have a right to justice, the right to protect one’s honor, the right to marry, the right to dignity and not to be ridiculed by anyone.” The next day, he told her that he was a man who believed only in progress, not religion: progress and reform. It was time, he said, for the people of India to stop being grateful for every crumb that fell at their feet, and to rise up against the bloody British. To stop being their servants: “Oh yes, sir,” he’d mimicked a minion. “I am running, jumping, fetching for you.”

On the fourth morning, he returned to a familiar obsession of his.

“What do you do on Friday nights at the children’s home?”

“Nothing very special,” Viva replied. “We have a meal with the children who are boarders, and we sometimes have readings afterward.”

“What kind of readings?” Mr. Azim asked suspiciously.

“I’ve told you: poetry, Bible readings, sometimes the children will tell us a story from the Mahabharata, or some local fairy stories—it’s a way of understanding each other’s cultures.”

He gave her a look of deep disgust. “So how do you explain this to the children?” He shoved a book near her face. “Do you understand what this is?” He was trembling with barely suppressed emotion.

“I do. It’s a holy book—the Koran.”

“And this.” His hands were shaking with emotion as he riffled through the pages. “This is a great insult to a Muslim.” He grabbed her hair and shoved her face toward the book. There were torn pages in the middle of it.

“I know.” Her lips were so dry she could hardly speak. For the first time she wondered if she would get out of here alive.

“We found it in your room.”

“I—We didn’t do that, Mr. Azim,” she said, trying to keep as still as possible. “None of us would—we’re nonsectarian.”

“Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes, Miss Viva.” He was shouting so loud he was spraying her with spit. “My own father died in the 1922 riots in Bombay, so I know what happens when you British get involved with our religions, and you had nothing to do with that either—oh, these naughty natives.” His voice had risen to a hysterical high-pitched squeal. “So wild and out of control, but your people started them to prove to us how much we needed you. What you have done
to my brother…same thing! What you are doing at your school…same thing! And still you think you are a great wonder helping those poor Indians.”

“I didn’t do it,” she screamed, and then with an enormous effort of will calmed herself down.

“Mr. Azim,” she said, as he sank back into his chair, “I am truly sorry about your father.”

“Don’t talk of him,” he said stiffly. “You disrespect his name.”

“And your brother,” she went on, knowing that this might be her only chance. “But I didn’t help hurt him, and I’m not a spy.”

He gave a soft snort and licked his lips.

“You may not believe this,” she continued, “but we have tremendous admiration for Gandhi at our home; we believe the time has come for India to rule itself. We know we have made terrible mistakes but we’ve done some good things, too.”

“I don’t like Gandhi,” he told her. “He is only for Hindus.”

“Well, there’s something else I must tell you, too,” she added. “My own father died in Cawnpore in 1913. I was nine years old; he’d gone there to work on a new railway. It had nothing to do with politics. I was told he was killed by bandits, seven local Punjabi men who he worked with and respected were killed, too. My mother died a few months later. Englishmen are not the only ones with blood on their hands.”

There was a silence in the room. When he looked at her his eyes were so blank she wasn’t sure he’d heard her, perhaps he’d been thinking again about his own father.

“I have forgotten how to pray,” he said, almost to himself.

And she felt for a moment perfectly cocooned, as if she was some fly caught in amber, or a speck of matter inside a block of ice.

His chair scraped on the floor as he moved it closer to her. He closed his eyes and gathered his thoughts before he began to speak to her.

“I am a member of the All India Muslim League,” he said. “Some of your lot, British peoples, have been collaborating with us behind the scenes. I gave your friend Guy the chance to help us, too. Your friend Miss Barker at the school is well known by us to be a close Gandhi supporter—we think it goes further than this. Can you help us?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“No?”

“No.”

He stood up. “That’s a shame,” he said. “Tonight is the last night of the Diwali Festival. It’s time for us to decide what to do with you.”

“I’m not a spy,” she said monotonously, although she really didn’t care at that moment what happened to her. “None of us are.”

“Don’t bother to tell us your lies anymore, Miss Viva,” he told her and closed the door.

V
iva tried to sleep to blot out the fear but woke half an hour later frozen and with a crick in her neck. The last night of the Diwali festivities must be nearing. Last night she thought she’d heard from a few streets away the muffled thuds, and then the screams and fizz of fireworks. The idea that there were people out there leading normal everyday lives—laughing, eating, hugging their children—made her feel even more alone, like someone in a boat lost in the middle of the ocean who sees pinpricks of light from a distant shore.

Now she wondered if she would leave here alive. If Guy had been blackmailed to spy on them all at the home, God knows what he might have told Mr. Azim about her.
Who would miss me if I died tonight?
she thought.
Who would care?
She imagined her funeral: Daisy would be there, and maybe Talika and Suday; some volunteers from the home, maybe Mrs. Bowden, maybe Clara, the Irish nurse who had never really liked or trusted her, out of some Catholic sense of duty. Tor, she was sure of it, would make the trip from Amritsar, and Rose, miles away in Bannu, with the new baby and everything else. She
saw more clearly than ever before what a fragile bubble they all lived in and how much she had needed their laughter and their love.

And Frank. How painful to think of him now. He would come. She was almost sure of this now. He had tried to get close. Damaged people like herself and Mr. Azim were always protecting themselves, their families, their religion, their pride, their secret wounded selves. Frank had opened his heart to her, made no secret of his feelings. How brave that seemed now.

In the darkness she thought about that wonderful day in Cairo, when they’d all laughed so much, quite oblivious to the storm brewing back on the ship. The guest house at Ooty. “Don’t you dare be ashamed of this,” he’d said.

She remembered rain falling outside the window, the dampness of their skins in the twisted sheets; how afterward, before she’d had time to register shock or shame, they’d sat up and looked at each other and laughed incredulously at what had happened. He’d drawn her toward him, the light slatted through the wooden blinds, and held her face in his hands, and he’d looked at her. Twisting and turning in the dark she thought of how his smile began with a gleam of mischief in his tawny-green eyes, spread to the two dimples in his cheeks and then just dazzled her with its beauty. And how hard she tried to close herself down, it was too overwhelming. Let other women fall for it; she, special old Viva Holloway, was far too clever for all that.

The thought made her grimace in disgust. What a fool she was. What had the poor man done wrong in the end, except step across some line she’d drawn too many years ago to make any sense now?

Well, there was an admission, especially since friends like Rose and Tor thought her so adventurous, so mysterious. Frank had liked what she was and tried to help her on her way. He’d made love to her straightforwardly, like a man.

Her mind was leaping around now.
Yes, yes, yes,
that was
it: life unconditional. He’d stepped out of his clothes and left them on the floor, he was hungry for her and she for him. Why had she said no in the morning?

“Frank,” she whispered into the dark. All she wanted was to hold him. She’d missed her chance.

When Mr. Azim arrived the following morning, she’d decided what to do.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “There is one house in Byculla where I think Guy could be hiding.”

He looked at her suspiciously. “Why are you are telling me this now?” He had large circles under his eyes and looked as if he’d slept as badly as she had.

“I was thinking about your brother last night,” she said. “How much you must have looked forward to seeing him again and the shock of seeing his face like that. It must have been horrible.”

“It was,” he said.

She leaned her head toward him and made herself look into his eyes.

“I’ve been thinking about the children’s home, too. I am not a particularly religious person either, so this has nothing to do with God, but I wondered how I’d feel if a group of Indian men came to our country and tried to teach our children their ways. I’d feel suspicious, angry even…” Was she talking too much? Azim was looking at her with deep skepticism. He fiddled with a ring on his little finger. He was waiting. “I’m tired,” she said. “I’m hoping after I’ve led you to him you’ll let me go.”

“He’ll be angry with you. He is not a gentleman.”

“I don’t care. I want to go.”

He looked at her again and pursed his lips.

“This is not in your dispensation,” he said after a long silence. “It’s mine.”

“Of course,” she said. She forced herself to smile. “I just thought if I could help it would be silly not to.”

From the corner of her eye, she watched the smart English brogues tapping nervously on the floor. He stood up and heaved a shuddering sigh.

“Where is he living in Byculla?”

“In a flat near the fruit market,” she said. “I can’t remember the exact address, but if you take me there I will be able to find the way.”

His eyes brooded over her, hooded and suspicious.

“I’ll come back at half past five,” he said.

He came back again on the dot of five-thirty, this time with a tunic and a Kashmiri shawl, which he flung on her lap. He had changed again into his
shalwar kameez,
a snowy-white one with fine pearl buttons through which his stomach strained.

“Time is running out.” He sat on the chair in front of her, legs akimbo.

“Where are we going?” She hated hearing her voice tremble like that.

“Out in the streets to see if your memory is jogged.”

She looked at him. “I think that’s a good idea,” she said. “I’ll try my hardest.”

He looked at her suspiciously. “Why are you trying now? What has changed?”

“I’m tired,” she repeated. “I don’t see why I should take the blame.”

He was not convinced. “He will make you pay for this.”

“I don’t care. I want to go.”

“I keep telling you,” he said. “This is not in your dispensation: I decide. You could still run straightaway to the police. It would be my word against yours, and guess who would win.”

“Of course,” she said demurely. “I just thought if I could help, that it would be a chance worth taking.”

He gave one of his monstrous nose snorts, as if trying to clear his head of all matter. “Tell me again where he lives in Byculla,” he said eventually.

She closed her eyes, pretended to think.

“It was either near the fruit market or a small flat near the Jain Temple on Love Lane,” she said at last. “I’m a
gora
,” she used the Hindi word for foreigner, “so you’ll have to be patient with me, everything looks so different during Diwali.”

His eyes swept over her coldly. “Not that different,” he warned. “And Byculla is not a big place. If you try and give me the slip, I am going to kill you.” He said something in Urdu she didn’t understand, maybe a curse or a prayer.

“For me,” he said, “it would not be a sin but an honor. I don’t like women like you. You bring shame to us and our children.”

She tried not to flinch when he brought a vicious-looking knife toward her.

The sliced rope left three deep red marks on her wrists.

“Don’t move,” he said when she tried to rub them. All pretense of friendliness had gone. He put the knife back in a leather holster he wore on his belt.

When he left the room, she got dressed, supervised by the older woman who watched her with no expression whatsoever. She was given a chapatti to eat, a drink of brackish water, and then, suddenly, she was led downstairs and out into daylight again.

When they got out in the streets she was bundled into a rickshaw. She sat thigh to thigh with Mr. Azim, which terrified her. Before they had left, he’d shown her a gun. He said, “If you make things difficult for us, you will be sacrificed.” A phrase that made her think of the skinny goats she’d seen outside the butcher’s shop on Main Street being fattened for the Muslim festival or Eid. It really would be that easy.

It was six o’clock now, not cold but dull and damp with all light bleached from the sky. Apart from one or two painted doorways, and lights on in some poor-looking house, Diwali celebrations seemed sparse in this area of town.

“I normally drive a car,” Azim was anxious to tell her, “but this is better for us.” His brogues were tapping impatiently on the rickshaw floor. He clearly didn’t like slumming it. He rattled off some orders to the rickshaw driver, who looked cowed and terrified himself, and then he turned to her.

“So where does he live?”

“I think it’s near the Jain Temple.” She was determined not to stammer. “Please be patient with me. I’ve only been there twice.”

He glanced at her sharply and she heard him sigh. He took out his gun, laid it on his lap, and then covered it with the flap of his
kameez.

The grim street they were passing through was empty, apart from a mother kneeling on the steps, with two little girls who were drawing what looked like Diwali patterns on their doorstep.

“When we get out of the rickshaw, pull your scarf over your head,” he said. “And if I am telling you something, answer back in a normal way. I am telling you that tonight Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, comes to Byculla. So maybe we’ll all be luckier.” He gave a false laugh, and she laughed back.

This is what a beaten wife must feel like,
she thought,
aware of every gesture, weighing every word.
But she must play the game: stay calm, converse with him in as pleasant and friendly a way as possible. If she let the bully out, she was sunk.

They crossed a road into Main Street where the evening sky was mottled and bruised-looking. To their right, in the middle of a row of dilapidated houses, she saw a small temple lit up like a fabulous jewelry box with hundreds of small candles around the shrine.

She took a deep breath.

“Mr. Azim,” she said, “how many more days will the festival go on for?”

His eyes flicked toward her. He moved his leg away.

“Too long around here,” he said. “Diwali is for people who think like children.”

The street was starting to fill again with the holiday crowds. “It’s for children,” he repeated, looking at them.

Viva understood loneliness and she felt it now. He was as much a stranger in these streets as she was.

“So you never celebrated it in your house?” she asked him.

“I am telling you,” he said impatiently, “my brother and I were educated by you British people. We learned English history and poems. We were beaten—what’s that saying?—regularly as gongs.” His voice had risen. “Until I left that school, I did not know
one
Indian poet,” he said after a pause. “Imagine that in your own country.”

Before she could reply, he put his hand up. “Stop,” he told the rickshaw driver. “Turn right here. Don’t talk anymore,” he told her. “I need to concentrate.” His face had begun to pour with sweat.

“I was going to say that’s a shame,” she said a few moments later. “There are wonderful Indian poets.”

He sniffed loudly to signal the end of this conversation and started to shout at the rickshaw driver, who had got stuck in a minor traffic jam with a bullock cart and a group of holiday makers.

“Where is he?” he said to her suddenly.

“I’m not sure yet,” she said. “Could you tell me where we are?”

“Fruit market is there,” he said. He pointed toward the vast sprawling building, almost unrecognizable tonight under its weight of lights and tinsel. The crowds were getting thicker and now she could hear, indistinctly at first but getting louder,
the whooping, shouting noise of an excited group, the braying of a trumpet. A skinny street boy ran alongside the rickshaw trying to sell them some flyblown sweets. When Azim shouted at him the child shrank away.

Now they were forcing their way down Main Street where the stall keepers were lighting their lamps, and the skies had started to glow with the reflected light of thousands and thousands of candles. A small crowd forcing a lurid-looking papier-mâché goddess above their heads was slowing them down and making Azim angry.

“Understand this, madam.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the din. “I know you chaps all think that we sway in the wind of all this idol worship, but I don’t. I think it’s killing our country. I think it’s time to fight back.”

She watched his fingers close around the gun.

“Gandhi will kill us, too,” he said. “With kindness. We’ve been too polite for too long.” When he turned to her she felt hate coming off him like fog.

“What happened to your brother must have been the last straw,” she said, as calmly as she could, for she knew with absolute certainty now that he would shoot her if he had to.

“I need to find Glover tonight,” he said. “I’ve been told he might leave India tomorrow on another ship.” He mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. His hands had started to shake.

“Here’s what I remember,” she said. “The two times I went to his flat I took a short cut across the market and then—I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I’m going to have to see it again.” When he moved his head to look at her, she was sure he had seen through her lie. She saw him freeze momentarily while he thought, then his eyes blinked and he shrugged.