Season of the Rainbirds (9 page)

The moment Azhar opened the door the short skinny man standing on the portico straightened to attention. His extremely dark skin was the first thing Azhar registered. An umbrella was still open above the man’s head, a drop forming at each angle of the octagon. On the floor by his feet was set a small cardboard suitcase tied with a rope. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you so early but I need some directions,’ he said, searching in his pocket with the free hand.

‘Look …’ Azhar raised a hand.

‘I’ve been knocking on doors and windows for the past three hours, but no one opened up to help me.’

‘We’ve had a death in town,’ Azhar said; and then, to avoid any time-consuming questions, he quickly asked, ‘Who are you looking for?’

The man smiled a broad scatter of brilliant white teeth, and produced a neatly folded piece of paper from one of his pockets.

The ink was beginning to dissolve. ‘I don’t know him,’ Azhar said. ‘I haven’t lived here all that long myself.’ And handing back the address he suggested: ‘Either wait for the shops to open or go to one of the mosques. One’s this way and the other is at the end of the next street.’

The man moved closer. ‘Actually, it’s this man’s wife I’ve come looking for.’ He said with a smile of complicity, ‘She’s beautiful. All of us used to say that her mother must have given birth to her after eating a handful of pearls.’

The rain was falling hard now, big clear drops that exploded on impact into spider-like shapes. Azhar looked up at the sky drained of all colour. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently, ‘but as I said, you’ll have to talk to someone else.’

‘She’s an angel,’ the man said, kissing lightly the tips of his fingers and letting them blossom in the air as though suggesting an aroma. ‘Or, at least she was nineteen years ago.’

The number of years caught Azhar’s attention. ‘Does this have anything to do with those letters?’ And without waiting for the answer he asked the man where he was from.

The stranger said he had come from one of the neighbouring towns and told Azhar how at the age of nineteen – some twenty years before – he had run away from home to become a film star. On reaching Lahore, the provincial capital and centre of the country’s film industry then as now, he posed for a large portfolio of photographs which he financed by working as a labourer. In it he appeared in various get-ups: a sufi, a Chicago gangster, a she-rat hermit from Shah Dola’s mausoleum, a Tarzan. Nothing, however, came of his fantasy: after being turned away by every film studio he went back home vowing never to make another journey to the cruel city. He kept the promise he had made himself for almost nineteen years; then, a fortnight ago – on becoming the recipient of one of the lost letters – he had gone back to Lahore. As a labourer he had lodged above a cheap wayside tea-house. The cook, a large woman who smoked constantly and used language more coarse than any man, had a daughter – an illegitimate child, many said, but no one had the courage to ask. The letter – a confession of love – was from this girl. A number of inquiries in Lahore had led the stranger to this town where, he believed, the girl – now, obviously, a grown woman – lived as someone’s wife. A truck on its way to the North-West Frontier Province had agreed to carry him and had deposited him on the outskirts of the town in the early hours of the morning.

‘I never knew she loved me,’ he said. And showing his teeth again he reached into his pocket. ‘
It rains on my soul all night
. Would you like to read what she wrote?’

Azhar took a step backwards. ‘No,’ he said forcefully, repelled by the offer. ‘You’ll make trouble for whoever she is,’ he said, and in a different tone he added: ‘You should forget about the whole business and go back.’

To the stranger who had spent ten days travelling across the province the advice appeared insensitive. ‘The roads are under water,’ he said wearily, ‘and there are no buses. I’ll
have
to stay.’

‘What about your own wife?’ Azhar asked. ‘Are you married?’

The man grinned. ‘I have fourteen children.’

Azhar agreed to take him to one of the mosques.

Maulana Hafeez was getting ready to return home.

He received the traveller with a vigorous handshake and, learning that he had spent the night on the road, immediately set about improvising a bed in one of the more secluded corners of the hall. The traveller meanwhile set his suitcase in one of the alcoves – arched like the base of a flat-iron – and took out a set of dry clothes. When he went out to the baths Azhar too turned around to leave.

‘Azhar,’ Maulana Hafeez called as he finished making the bed. The word echoed in the space bounded by the empty walls and the high ceiling decorated with complex patterns of interlacing clubs, diamonds, spades and hearts.

‘Yes, Maulana-ji.’

Maulana Hafeez approached and placed a hand on Azhar’s shoulder, but remained silent – hesitating.

‘Is it something important, Maulana-ji?’ Azhar asked politely. ‘It’s just that I have a lot to do today.’

‘It’s nothing,’ Maulana Hafeez said softly. ‘It can wait. It can wait.’ He patted the young man’s shoulder and smiled. ‘Go now. May God be with you.’

The song ended. The stylus crackled for a few seconds and then the singer spoke her name. The machine clicked off.

‘Malika Pukhraj.’ Alice repeated the singer’s name as she entered the room. Mr Kasmi had just placed the small round mirror on the shelf. Alice had been waiting outside the bedroom for Mr Kasmi to finish clipping the tiny hairs on his cheekbones; somehow she knew that it would embarrass them both if he was seen to be doing this. ‘Her daughter too is a singer now,’ she said, ‘Tahira Sayad.’

Mr Kasmi eased the little scissors off the knotted joints of his fingers. ‘I didn’t know Tahira Sayad was Malika Pukhraj’s daughter.’

The girl nodded. Using a large goose wing she began to dust the surfaces in the room. Mr Kasmi crossed to the gramophone. For years he had lived with the handful of complimentary records that came with the machine, forcing himself to appreciate the songs which he would not have otherwise listened to. Then one day he found out that records could be bought separately – that a favourite song too could be owned. That very day he took a trip to Lahore and that night, even though shattered by the two-hundred-mile journey by arthritic buses, he stayed up late tapping his feet gently and shaking his head from side to side in time to melodies that were more in keeping with his romantic soul.

‘It wasn’t too loud, was it?’ Mr Kasmi returned the record to its sleeve. ‘There
has
been a death in town.’ He inserted the record in its alphabetical place on the shelf.

Alice shook her head. She had picked up the cup of coffee – cold and more than half full. ‘You didn’t finish your drink.’

‘It smells of turpentine. You must have forgotten to wash your hands properly.’ Mr Kasmi had the taste of whitewash on his palate. Cautiously, Alice raised the cup to her nose. Mr Kasmi asked her where Zébun was.

The goose wing lay on the shelf. Alice had begun making the bed. ‘She’s downstairs in her room,’ Alice answered from behind the billowing bedsheet, ‘reading your people’s holy book.’

Walking lightly on the balls of his stockinged feet Mr Kasmi came to get his shoes from under the bed. ‘The Qur’an, girl,’ he said as he stood up. And reasserted gently, ‘The Qur’an.’

She smiled sweetly and shrugged. Her cheeks were smudged with cheap lali rouge, gaudy and bright. When she finished the bed she made a noise at the back of her throat to attract Mr Kasmi’s attention, then straightened and with a playful gesture towards the clean sheet free of wrinkles and the elegantly arranged pillow said, ‘Five extra marks for neatness, teacher-sahib?’

Mr Kasmi responded with a smile. He picked up his leather bag, collected the umbrella hanging from the wrought-iron S by the door and, crossing the small landing overlooking the courtyard, went towards the staircase. He descended the worn steps slowly, with both hands held gently against the wall. The steep flight of stairs had been crammed into one corner of the courtyard to give access to the top storey – Mr Kasmi’s room, the landing, and a bathroom – which was added some time after the original house was built. At the bottom of the stairs Mr Kasmi paused as though getting used to the ground extending far beyond his feet.

The rain had thinned into drizzle, and there was a weak sun. A group of people – men, women and children – was on its way to the other side of the town where a goat had given birth last night to a kid on whose pale-brown hide the name of the Prophet appeared to be inscribed. The holy word – black and grey – was clearly discernible amongst the other markings. On turning the corner Mr Kasmi heard the clang of the butcher’s cleaver. Zafri the butcher’s shop was in one of the two rooms alongside the mosque. The shops were topped by a colonnaded balcony; the bubble-like dome above the main body of the mosque was out of sight but the tips of the two minarets could just be seen. Rent from these shops went towards the upkeep of the mosque.

On the raised platform outside his shop the barber stood leaning against the glass window. In the space below the platform were the open drains that originated in the mosque. During summer the shop would be resonant with the buzzing of the flies beneath the floor. On seeing Mr Kasmi, the barber went into the shop and began dusting the cumbersome chrome and leather chair: everyone in the town knew that Mr Kasmi used a shoehorn to ease his heels into shoes. Working the crank, the barber adjusted the head-rest to Mr Kasmi’s level.

But Mr Kasmi did not come in. Raising a hand from the doorway, he said, ‘I’ve only come to take a look at the newspaper. They say that the news of Judge Anwar’s death has appeared in it today.’ It was more a question than a statement.

The barber took a stool from under the shelf, wiped it clean, and offered it to Mr Kasmi. In the small wooden cubicle by the window someone was whistling while they took a shower.

‘Gul-kalam is mentioned in it,’ the barber said with a smile and handed the newspaper to Mr Kasmi. ‘He’s been going around all morning telling people that his name’s in the paper.’

Mr Kasmi arranged the pages in order. The General had threatened the death penalty for any ‘wayward’ journalist who dared ‘denigrate’ his regime. A deaf and dumb boy had been found murdered; he had been raped repeatedly before being bludgeoned to death. The monsoon had caused floods in Bangladesh.

‘Page three,’ the barber told Mr Kasmi’s reflection in the mirror.

‘He left behind seven daughters,’ said Mr Kasmi. ‘What will the poor widow do?’

The barber was polishing the white tiles of the shelf. ‘They say he was hoping that Azhar would marry the eldest,’ he said without interrupting his work. Mr Kasmi did not make a reply – he had found the news item. The barber spoke again, ‘But Azhar obviously has other plans. I had often wondered why a man of his rank would want to live in a town like this.’

Mr Kasmi looked up. ‘The man has to live
some
where.’

The barber shook his head. ‘We never saw the last deputy commissioner, did we? All we ever heard about
him
was that he’d been found face-down in a stream with stones in his stomach. But this one comes to visit the Alis a few times and then decides to stay for good. Now we know why.’

Mr Kasmi rattled the newspaper derisively. The barber, however, was adamant: ‘He controls the whole district. He controls all branches of the local government, is in charge of the administration of revenue, and on top of that – and I know because I read the paper every day from cover to cover – he is the district magistrate. No, no, Kasmi-sahib, he should be living somewhere much grander than this.’

Suddenly the whistling from the cubicle stopped and the man inside swore loudly. ‘The water’s gone off.’

The barber looked at Mr Kasmi apologetically and thumped the cubicle door with his fist. ‘Have some shame,’ he shouted, ‘we’re practically inside the mosque.’ Then shaking his head gravely he went to adjust the levers on the tank.

Mr Kasmi folded the newspaper. ‘It’s only a few lines,’ he said, picking up his umbrella.

‘No one wants to know about us,’ the barber said. ‘It’s taken three days for the news to reach them, and even then they get some of the facts wrong.’ He raised his eyebrows behind his tortoiseshell spectacles.

‘Yes,’ Mr Kasmi said. ‘It says that they made off with fifteen thousand rupees’ worth of gold jewellery.’

Maulana Hafeez appeared on the other side of the street. The optician had today set up his stall – complete with his transparent, jellyfish-like umbrella – on this side of town. Maulana Hafeez had finished talking with him and now stood facing the barber shop.

Mr Kasmi stopped cold.

Maulana Hafeez crossed the street diagonally and went into Zafri’s shop next door. Only then did the barber dare to look at Mr Kasmi. He was wiping sweat from his brow and in turn fixed the barber with his steely gaze. ‘You missed out one of the deputy commissioner’s functions,’ he said through a weak smile to conceal his nerves. ‘He also controls the police.’

The barber remained at the window until Mr Kasmi, his usual somnambulist’s tread leaving momentary footprints in the rainwater, disappeared around the corner. Then he waited for the customer inside the cubicle to finish before going next door to Zafri’s shop.