Season of the Rainbirds (23 page)

The younger man shut his eyes and nodded that he understood.

‘Why so much fuss over a chodhi? Get rid of her to stop people talking.’

Azhar nodded. ‘We’ll see.’

Benjamin Massih sat up. He had spent most of the previous two weeks lying in bed with a dislocated elbow and a broken shinbone. The masseur had aligned the broken bone and reengaged the joint. Schoolboys’ wooden rulers had been used as splints. A little dazed, he gently lowered his feet to the earthen floor. He stood up, and sat down almost immediately. He looked around the narrow low-ceilinged room. Two rope cots were set against the opposite wall. A large crucifix was hanging from a rusty nail driven deep into the mud wall, deep into the wooden frame of the house. A shelf, trimmed with zigzags of newspaper, held a framed religious print: the gold leaf was flaky and the scarlet had faded to a dull pink. Benjamin stood up again, more carefully, and through the open door of the room looked out at the courtyard edged with pots of herbs. He walked stiffly to the door and, once there, called: ‘Tereza.’

His wife came out of the kitchen and was alarmed at seeing him out of bed. ‘Get back on to the cot.’

Benjamin Massih had turned around and was dragging his left leg behind him like a lame animal. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said without turning around.

Tereza Massih was at his side. ‘You shouldn’t be moving your limbs yet.’ Around her neck she wore a silver chain on which hung a tiny Jesus Christ – arms outstretched, legs lightly bowed at the knees. There was no cross behind the figure – it was almost as though the wearer herself was the cross on to which the Messiah was nailed.

Benjamin Massih smiled. ‘I know you’re trying to starve me to death. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that you’ve sent for Father Emmanuel to give me Extreme Unction.’

Tereza Massih smiled. ‘You shouldn’t have got up.’ She helped Benjamin Massih back into bed, doubled the pillow and arranged it behind the invalid’s spine. ‘I’ll bring some soup.’ Her flaxen hair was gathered at the nape of the neck with a rag.

‘What is it?’ Benjamin Massih asked when she returned to the room bearing a clay bowl.

‘Trotters.’ The woman set the bowl on the floor and went back into the kitchen for a spoon and a low stool of unplaned wood.

‘Nothing tastes the way it used to once,’ Benjamin Massih lamented as his wife fed him the first spoonful. The room was full of mosquitoes. The small window admitted the noise of running water and the smell of dung.

Tereza Massih dipped the brass spoon in the bowl and inhaled the warm vapour that pirouetted delicately on the surface of the soup before rising up. ‘Age has mangled our taste-buds.’ She lifted the spoon to the open mouth.

But later – the soup half gone – Benjamin Massih smacked his lips. ‘Trotters make the tastiest soup.’

His wife nodded in agreement.

‘And sheep’s tail, too,’ he said, swallowing.

‘Do you remember what your father-ji, may he rest in peace, used to call a sheep’s tail?’

‘Arse lid,’ the man said promptly, and laughed, invigorated by the food.

The woman tried to contain her laughter. ‘Some people say you can make soup from chicken claws too.’

‘Yes,’ said Benjamin Massih. ‘I have tasted it. Very tasty with a day-old tandoori naan.’

She grimaced. The soup was finished; she tilted the bowl and coaxed the last murky mouthful into the spoon.

‘Some people eat brain and eyeballs. Rich people!’ Benjamin Massih swallowed the last, slightly too salty, mouthful. He was enjoying the distaste on his wife’s face.

She was standing up. ‘Stop right there, Benjamin Massih,’ she said through a smile; she was giving him a fake reproving look. ‘I
know
which part of the body you’re going to mention next.’ She picked up the stool – the Messiah swung back and forth between her chest and chin – and went to the door.

Benjamin Massih was laughing stridently now. ‘And, of course, people eat sheep’s testicles,’ he shouted after her. He heard her laugh in the small kitchen next door. He wiped his lips on his sleeve, unfolded the pillow and, still smiling hugely, lowered his head on to the pillow.

Some minutes later he heard her call out: ‘Stay where you are.’

He raised his head and caught a glimpse of her crossing the courtyard. Someone was at the door. Their door always stood open; a tattered hessian curtain was all that prevented sight of the courtyard from the street. He could hear the woman attending to the caller.

‘Are you Elizabeth Massih’s mother?’

‘Yes.’

Maulana Hafeez folded his umbrella. His face was chafed by the winds that had risen during the evening. He smiled politely: ‘I would like to talk to your husband.’

‘Who are you?’ Tereza Massih had pulled her stole over her hennaed hair.

‘Hadji Maulana Hafeez Bux Bukhari.’

The woman understood immediately. She looked around and, her fingers furiously gripping the edge of the door, invited Maulana Hafeez into the house.

She let down one of the cots and gestured Maulana Hafeez to sit. Then she helped Benjamin Massih to sit up.

Maulana Hafeez asked about the injuries. While her husband talked, Tereza Massih switched on the light bulb that hung from a hook in the centre of the ceiling. The light reached every corner of the room, like spilt sugar. Tereza Massih closed the window and lighted a mosquito-repellent coil. Despite her silence she seemed poised, alert.

‘It’s about your daughter Elizabeth,’ Maulana Hafeez said at last.

‘What about her?’ Benjamin Massih gave a nod.

Maulana Hafeez’s fingers felt along the rosary. ‘How old is she?’

‘She says she’s twenty-one but she’s older,’ said Benjamin Massih. Maulana Hafeez took a deep breath. Tereza Massih left the room and went into the corrugated-iron shack that served as the kitchen. There was no electricity there: as she entered, a draught disturbed the flame of the candle and the diffused shadows cast on the walls swayed.

‘Are you aware that she’s living with someone outside of wedlock?’ Maulana Hafeez realised that his fingers were trembling.

‘Yes,’ Benjamin Massih said in a discomforted tone.

Maulana Hafeez felt lost, at sea. ‘I have to believe that I’m doing the right thing,’ he began at random. ‘Otherwise I’ve wasted my whole life and—’

‘How does that concern us?’

‘They have to get married,’ Maulana Hafeez said abruptly.

‘They can’t,’ replied Benjamin Massih. ‘He’s a Muslim and she’s a Roman Catholic.’

‘She has to convert.’

‘One of them has to.’

Maulana Hafeez stood up; that a Muslim should change his religion was inconceivable. ‘I have not read your holy book—’

‘The Bible.’

‘The Bible,’ Maulana Hafeez said. ‘But I know that it too condemns this sort of behaviour.’

‘Look, sahib,’ Benjamin Massih said, ‘I was explaining this earlier to the other Muslim priest who came to see me about Elizabeth: I’m a church-going man, I’m ashamed of what she’s doing, I can’t look anyone in the face, I’m glad I’m bedridden so that I don’t have to leave the house. But what can I do? What could I possibly do? It’s all up to them.’

Maulana Hafeez sat down. ‘Nothing is that simple. Since they live among other people they have a responsibility, a moral obligation, towards those people. We
must
make them see this. They cannot ignore the wishes of the rest of us and still continue to live among us.’

‘I have talked to her but she won’t listen.’

Maulana Hafeez sighed. ‘They are foolishly proud. It is a fruitless rebellion.’

The icy blue smoke of the fumigation coil was filling up the room and the drone of the mosquitoes had faded.

Tereza Massih came in from the kitchen with a cup for the Muslim priest.

‘Your daughter has to convert,’ Maulana Hafeez appealed to her as she bent down to offer the tea.

‘I won’t allow it,’ she said. She had gone to sit by her husband’s side. ‘She’ll remain a Roman Catholic till the day she dies.’ And pointing to the tea she said: ‘The cup has been washed, sahib.’

Maulana Hafeez nodded. He raised the cup to his lips and took a sip.

Mother and Father sit in the circle of light. He is eating rice and tindé. Above them, attracted by the smell of Kala-Kola hair tonic, clusters of mosquitoes whine, their paths a mess of tangles and knots
.

Father says, ‘Don’t send her to work tomorrow.’

‘She was crying when she came back’
.

‘They’ll send someone to ask after her, and then you can talk to them about it.’

‘What if no one comes?’

‘They’ll come. She has always been good with their little boy. He has grown to love her, you told me that.’

The lamp hangs from the hook, swaying. Their shadows go round in circles. I change sides and Mother looks towards my cot
.

She lowers her voice. ‘The boy’s uncle hit her and the mother pulled her hair.’

‘Well, when they send someone to fetch her you can talk to them. They are good people. They gave her new clothes for Eid.’

‘And we need the money she brings in.’

He nods. Inside its glass bubble, the flame is like the bud of a yellow rose. Father says, ‘And you must ask her to be more careful, too. They hire her to mind their little boy. It’s her job to look after him properly.’

Mother gives a nod. ‘She says she only left him unattended for a second. A new toy vendor had come into the street and all the girls had gone to look at the things.’

‘Is the little boy badly hurt?’

‘They’ve taken him to hospital.’

‘Well, when they send someone round to ask why she hasn’t showed up for work, you can talk to them. Tell them they’re not to slap her again, no matter what she does. If they have a complaint they should come to us. She’s just a child herself.’

I close my eyes, and try to sleep
.

Friday

The rain was so fierce that water from the eaves fell in continuous threads, like a beaded curtain. Alice was on the veranda pounding cinnamon in a mortar, her face tensed with effort as she brought down the pestle. Her knees were splayed out and the mortar was clamped between the undersides of her feet. She changed arms when she tired, or began to grind in a circular motion instead of pounding. And all the while she talked chirpily. Zébun sat on the rope cot and listened. Occasionally she nodded, causing her gold earrings to swing towards her cheeks. To ease the burden on her earlobes the heavy earrings were supported by lengths of black thread attached to the hairpins.

Alice was describing a recent visit to the cinema. ‘And then a baby started crying in the audience, so loud you couldn’t hear anything. After a while, from near the front, a man shouted, Shove a tit in its mouth, sister.’ She gave a broad laugh. But Zébun merely nodded. Alice lingered a moment and then began to pound the spices again.

‘It doesn’t feel like a Friday,’ Zébun said. Alice stopped; looked up for a moment, like a deer at a water-hole, and then set to again. It was a long and empty morning. The sky loomed dead above the courtyard. The jasmine bush cresting the far wall swayed in the rain, doors creaked, window panes rattled in the frames and curtains swelled into the rooms like ship sails. Above them, from one wall of the veranda to the other, clothes were drying. Zébun’s underclothes were concealed beneath other, neutral clothes, or beneath towels and sheets, away from Mr Kasmi’s eyes. An unbroken line of salt ran along the edge of the veranda like a miniature mountain range.