The Blue Taxi (16 page)

If Hayaam it was, he thought, braver than expected, then it was time to make a peace. Was that not what he should want? What
if he kissed her clothes to show her his respect? Was that not what he should want? To say, “I know to whom these old, sweet
things belong, my dear. You were very stylish once. You looked lovely, like a star.” Even if she
didn’t
look like the Hayaam he thought he’d known. Even if she wasn’t his Hayaam at all, but someone who’d been sent, a shade on
her behalf. There is an idea in Kikanga and these parts that a supplicant may only be forgiven by the person they have wronged—but
that person doesn’t always come! Then what is to be done? Majid for a moment closed his eyes against the ghost, and, wishing
for a sugary taste—
some sweetness!
—bent to kiss the cloth.

It was the right thing to have done. The way to call up memory, absolutely pure. With the first touch of his lips, beyond
the fust and mold, he smelled Hayaam again, this time, Majid knew,
exactly
as she’d been
, with no time intervening and no meddling from his unwieldy attempts at remembering what-had-she-been-like. Majid almost
yelped. Yes.
There:
a fresh, cool mix of samli, roses, powder, a young woman’s pungent (lovely!) sweat. How could he have wondered for a moment
about lemon and gardenia when
this
, so clearly her own, was right here in the pockets of the very clothes she’d worn? Exactly as she had been. The precise and
veritable-wife-smell made Majid feel faint. He teetered backwards on his heels and, fumbling from the shock, had to steady
himself with his elbow on the wooden steps that led to their old bed.

While Majid’s eyes were closed, a sound came from the shape. A sound as true as the good smell he’d found under the dust—a
sound that had a long, long way to travel, from its source into
this
world. At first there was a sniff. A rumble in the nose. He sensed without needing to see a little shaking in that long tail
of black hair. And there it was at last: a giggle. A precise and perfect neither-nudged-nor-turned-by-memory giggle that was,
he knew in the crevices of his oldest, surest self, exactly how Hayaam—the real one, the living one, the one who’d gone and
died—had laughed. And next? The widower’s last win? He found that he had missed
this
giggle, yes, none other. It filled the gaps between his ribs. In a dear and marvelous way, it hurt. She had not come, perhaps,
as he remembered; she was not as slender, not as heavy-breasted or light-skinned, as his night pictures had been. Perhaps
he’d lost her face forever, the real shape of her limbs.
All right. But she had laughed like this
.

Majid’s very skin rippled in relief. For a pulsing, bruising moment, Majid felt that all the grieving had been worth it—yes,
he’d missed exactly the right thing. No, he hadn’t altered her too much with the years and his forgetting! Was a laugh not
grander than a face, an ankle, breast? For sure, a laugh could harbor all the things a
person was—their essence. So pleased, so accompanied, by this ghost-Hayaam’s high giggle, the smell still wholesome in his
throat, he almost felt prepared to undertake nine more years of same. For this nice sound, indeed, and scent. He had meant
to reach out to the shadow, to tug on that black braid. Had hoped he could laugh with her. But when his eyes came open in
the shadows, he saw nothing. Brown linen, and the pale pool of the floor. Nothing but the room. Majid was alone.

Majid Ghulam remained squatting on the floor for a long time, well past noon, until he couldn’t feel his legs. He thought.
He squinted. He called out his wife’s name. But Hayaam, as she’d not been or had been, did not reappear.
All right
. He paused. He looked at his own hands. He squinted at the windows. He braced himself for what he knew was coming, what he,
fearful and delirious, sensed ashiver and arumble at the far-off, unseen brim of a new, convulsed horizon. And it did. It
came, tiny and unstoppable, shy, enormous, brave: in his chest a small thing snapped in two and its snapped pieces wiggled.
On wobbly legs, Majid stood before the mirror.
I will
—, he thought. He felt all of his teeth swell, his tongue go sharp, then wide. He bit his lower lip and nodded.
I will give these things away
.

He dropped the tunics in a basket. In the morning he would send them to Maria, finally to be washed. He did not need them
anymore. Afraid that he would lose his certainty, he reached for an expression that could steady him.
Clothes don’t make the man
, he thought,
or woman. Hayaam won’t
, he thought,
come back. My old Hayaam is gone
. He walked out of the bedroom. In the parlor where he’d first sat with Mrs. Sarie Turner, beneath the glossy clock, he wept
until his mouth hurt.

That night, in the half-gloom of his bed, he thought of Sarie’s arms. He slept. He woke up in the dark. The air, after yet
another
rain, was chill. He stretched his arms above his head and reached his feet right through the baseboard, where, early in their
marriage, he and his young bride had with their loving ardor kicked a panel out. He rubbed his toes together as if ridding
them of sand. He took a great, deep breath and made his first attempt to firmly lock away an old, known widowed-feeling: a
little twinge, a folding near his eyes. He stared at the black wall. He uncurled and curled his fists and, another Majid rising,
thought at last:
I will see her again. Her daughter will come to play with Tahir. Tahir’s going to walk. He is already sitting up. Habib, Ismail,
and All will take him to the balcony to sit. The clinic will bring crutches. Maria will give these clothes away. And I will
write a poem
.

Seven

W
hile Gilbert had a thirst for knowledge, it was not the knowledge of specific living things, or persons in the flesh, that
moved him. He was therefore as richly unaware of M. G. Jeevanjee’s particulars as he was of any serious changes in his wife.
In Gilbert’s view, the legless boy’s poor father was not more than a local Indian man whose son collided with a bus while
Agatha and Sarie—unluckily, indeed!—looked on from the curb.
Unfortunate. Too bad
. But no more and no less. He had other things to think of Temporarily entranced by a bright hardcover volume called
East Africa Now
, on whose cover robust girls and boys in schoolgear uprooted marigolds with hoes, he was also troubled by an itchy skin condition
that was making—he could feel it—advances on his back.

Sarie, in the bedroom, had pulled all her skirts and gowns and blouses from the cupboard. As though invisibles could don them
and, rising, bring them suddenly to life, she had arranged them into poses on the floor. She was wondering how she
really
looked with some of these things on and was trying to imagine Mr. Jeevanjee’s opinions—as to carwash sleeves, umbrella skirts,
and box pleats. Was he fond of frills? What did he think of Sarie Turner,
par exemple
, in that gray dress with the dots? From the parlor Gilbert called. Fingering the yellowed collar of a once-white linen blouse,
Sarie paused, wished she had not heard him. Gilbert called again.

When she came out from the bedroom, Gilbert had removed his shirt and vest and stood with his back towards her in a humble
pose, as though she were a doctor. “Please,” he said. “See if you can’t tell me what the devil’s going on.” She stood beside
him and he felt her shadow cool his burning arms. “It’s bloody awful, Sarie.” He gestured with the top of his round head towards
the current volume, spine unbroken on the chair. Sarie watched his bald spot shift, did not look where he meant. “I can’t
even read.”

Sarie was not in the habit (nor had she ever been) of treating Gilbert sweetly. Of treating anyone, perhaps, to specific shows
of tenderness at all. But, prepared for ailments of the body, she sometimes cared for him in a practical and reasonable way
that was in its application not unlike affection. She knew her husband’s body better than she wished to and was, she knew
(the Sisters had proclaimed it, like a penance), duty-bound. She kept a bar of sulphur soap for the frequent bouts of dishrag
that left even whiter speckles on his already white skin; clove brews for his muscle pains and chronic indigestion (the last
to make him vomit, which, without fail, it did); cinnamon to boil for the head colds that made an elephant of Gilbert. Confronted
with the skin rash, Sarie felt relieved that she didn’t have to look at him full-on and think about his eyes, or hers, or
what she might see there. She could focus on his back, which was like the back (Sarie imagined) of every other Englishman
on his way into old age: pale, pinkened here and there, flaky where the skin was rough, and, as she had come to think, not
exactly ugly. But not precious. About her husband’s ailment: Sarie knew exactly what it was.

“This condition,” Sarie said, with more enthusiasm than a gentle person should, “will make a red stain like a pine tree up
and down the back. You will…” Here she searched a moment in the air to grasp the needed words, then spoke with satisfaction.
“You will become a little tired, and you will resemble Christmas.” She had not seen Christmas trees herself since she was
three, but the
Sisters (Angélique?) had drawn pictures for her, and Gilbert, too, had filled her in on rootless trees and baubles. She ran
her fingers rather roughly down the pattern on his back and told him that unless he was prepared to spend good money on an
ointment, nothing could be done but see the whole thing through. It would go away eventually, as many ailments do. He might
go out, she said, in search of ice, which he could rub for solace on his back—and he could save some for their drinking water,
which they would all enjoy. Or seek out Aspirin in a packet, which, she thought, she might employ herself. Gilbert rearranged
his shirt and turned to look at her. The attention he’d received had made him feel, already, a little less upset, his skin
a little cooler. “That’s it, then?” He smiled gratefully at her. “Yes,” she said. She didn’t linger there. She went back into
the bedroom, where, except for one white dress with a not-bad quilted feel, she put all the clothes away.

They went again. They couldn’t not. She
had
been thinking of his hands. And the sharp smell of his breath, which was somehow hot and sweet at once (fennel, pepper, juice?).
Would one kiss become another, and another be a tumble? A wonderful free fall? She’d thought of Sister Angélique again, but
each time a bit more slowly, each time with less fear. Would she permit the man to go where none but Gilbert had? Only Mr.
Jeevanjee could tell her.

They stepped into the early afternoon. Sarie, anxious, entertained her doubts (fiercely, as one can only do when one suspects,
in one’s most secret place, that they are all for naught). She wondered: Had she been a fool? Was Mr. Jeevanjee sitting up
in Kudra House ashamed? Had he hardened fast against her? Would he refuse to let her in? Would he insult her at the door?
Had he lied about his wife? If one of these things happened, Sarie did not
know what she would say to Agatha, how she could explain. She looked down at her arms and covered up each elbow with a palm,
purse dangling between. As they crossed the roundabout, she panted. When the bus stand, with its smoke and wheeze came into
view, Sarie almost wept. Unaware of the wild torrents rushing in her mother, Agatha was cheerful, skipped, dragged her feet
and kicked things. Sarie drew a handkerchief from the bosom of her dress and wiped her face with it. By the cane-juice man,
she fretted with her hair.

Upstairs, Majid Ghulam, who’d suffered—yes, was suffering softly still—was nonetheless not in any funk. The night before,
he’d made, he thought, a kind of peace with Tahir’s leg. He’d wondered yet again: Would God really, even at His most wise
or absurd, snatch the lower limb from a clever, earnest boy so as to bring the lonesome dad a large and freckled lover? Could
these things be related? Perhaps and perhaps not. This was not Majid’s business. While Tahir slept, and turned his shoulders
now and then to one side or the other, Majid Ghulam decided that perhaps it didn’t matter. That mysteries were mysteries,
and so forth. He’d moved his fingers lightly over Tahir’s bony chest and felt, in the lining of himself, a little worm of
hope. He’d said a prayer for Hayaam. Might her soul be in sweetness. And that night he had slept well.

In the morning, on her way to market, Sugra had come by. Sugra: the one cousin who still loved him, bright, round, talkative,
and sharp. About Sugra people always said, “Of course
not one of us is perfect
, not even our dear Sugra.” But what they meant was that she was not unlike goodness and charity itself A little brash, a
bit too loud, her effect was wonderful and strange, an impression of ebullience and goodwill, of charm, whatever else was
true; for
everything,
she
could be forgiven. She’d seen Majid through a lot. She would poke at him, she’d tell him to wash up, and say he was a mess.
But she would be a blessing. As she always did, she lifted up the gloom, although there was, on that morning, less gloom than
she was used to. She had looked at him for a moment from the doorway as if she did not know who he was. “You’re looking different,”
she’d said, and, feeling a bit bare, exposed, he’d said, to shrug it off:“Tahir’s feeling better.”