The Blue Taxi (6 page)

Thirty years of heavy rains had soured that first green, and now that Kudra House was owned no longer by the Jeevanjees but
rather by the State, no funds were left for painting. As if a gigantic woman’s eye had with its weeping bled mascara down
the walls, the outer face was streaked with sooty black. The few remaining patches of a sweet, inviolate color battled now
with water stains and diesel grime and dust. From gouges in the house-face strange tufted grasses grew. Here and there, the
shutters had come loose and, gone to kindling for clever passersby, could not be retrieved. At this window dingy curtains
hung, in that, a homely gloom. The wooden balcony had lost many of its slats. If a woman were to sit there, Bibi had once
said, a bad-news boy, if he was smart, could look up from the sidewalk and right into her skirt.

But still. As Nisreen had promised, Kudra House was not far from the clinic. Beyond the bus stand’s clang and rattle, past
the sweet smell of a table where a bearded man made cane juice at a creaking metal press, Agatha and Sarie crossed a narrow
alley littered with old things and reached their destination. Sarie coaxed the slip of paper from her purse. At the foot of
that once-glowing house, she and Agatha looked up towards the roof and saw the name embossed, which they both read aloud:
Kudra House, 1932
. Squinting at her mother’s note, Agatha said, “It’s on the second floor.” They found the chipped black doors ajar, and, Sarie,
nervous but determined, and Agatha, exceptionally calm, stepped carefully between them.

They found themselves in a neatly private place. The courtyard was so quiet, the air in it so fresh, that indeed it seemed
to Sarie as if the busy streets outside, with Hisham’s Food and Drink, with cool Kikanga Clinic and the dusty ashok trees—with
Bibi at her balcony, though Sarie didn’t know it—and even with their own dim flat on Mchanganyiko Street, were very far away.
Another world entirely. And although Sarie was accustomed in the courtyard of their building to seeing unknown neighbors’
clothing dangle in the wind, and chickens, and an ancient taxicab that never moved and maybe never had, and wire coils that
vanished and appeared, this, a house meant for a single family (a dynasty, in fact, and Sarie, to her credit, vaguely knew
that this was so), was something rather different. Closed.

As in most Kikanga courtyards, there was washing and the waxy, yellow smell of soap. Somewhere, water dripped. Nothing special,
then. But perhaps because it served few people, these details seemed to Sarie evidence of comfort and a privacy she could
only envy. On a sagging length of twine, two undershirts, bright white, surrendered to the breeze. An orange gown with ruffled
sleeves swung lightly to and fro. A violet skirt, with pleats. There were also modest signs of care: flowers growing out of
tins; ten o’clock roses, crimson, that had already closed; violet brinjal blooms; a slender pepper plant. In the gutter just
along the wall, a breadfruit seedling toiled, twin leaves, new and languid, just starting to unfurl.

A white cat with a tufted coat and several bald spots stepped into the courtyard from the street, which Sarie had already
forgotten. Attracted by its sores, Agatha bent to touch it and it fled, a wary glow in its pale eye. From up above, in the
still and quiet air, a parrot hollered, “Who’s there, who’s there, who?” Agatha, with her sharp ears, imagined that she heard
a scurrying of feet. In her mind’s unformed eye, she saw girls with blue-black braids move
swiftly to a kitchen where they would ably squeeze up juice. She thought she heard the soft, seductive scrape of a brand-new
biscuit tin being taken from a shelf. But Agatha, unlike Bibi, was not yet on the verge of discovering a gift. She was wrong
about the girls. As Nisreen could have told her, Kudra House had none.

Sarie, stepping backwards, caught her flip-flop on a stone. She stumbled, tilted her strong chin towards the roof The parrot
cried again. “It is Mrs. Turner here!” Sarie called, long neck arched, and waited. At first more swollen silence and a thickness
in the air. Then came a response. A lean boy, bright-eyed and bare-shouldered, hair ashine with dressing even in that dusty
light, leaned out over the windowsill and grinned. He spoke quickly, brightly. Sarie did not understand. The ground uneven
at her feet, she almost fell again. She swooped both hands towards her hips and up, found her balance for a moment. “We’ve
come to—“ she began. But when Sarie had stood tall, smoothed her dress, and looked up to him again, the boy had disappeared.

There was a scuffling in the stairwell, one soft thud then another—the hot sound (Agatha imagined) of a boy pulling on a cotton
shirt and buttoning it up as he moved down the steps. And then, beaming, smelling of fresh aftershave (lemons, pepper, glue),
Ismail Majid Jeevanjee—the oldest of the sons whose birth had caused no grief—stood expectantly before them. Sarie thought
to introduce herself again, but with a graceful sweep of a long arm, the boy showed them up the stairs as if he already knew
exactly who she was. (He did. Words travel, after all.
This
must be the woman who had braved the road in her cheap shoes and whispered spells into his brother’s ear while that little
girl of hers sat fooling on the sidewalk with the sorry, severed limb.)

They did have biscuits, in the end. Majid’s big boy number three—heavy, slow Habib, with great sad eyes and a soft gut—was
sent out to the shops to fetch a roll of Nanjis. The downstairs neighbor (Maria, loyal, Christian, sour, owner of the vivid
orange gown) was dispatched to make tea by Majid’s second son: thin, sharp-tongued Ali, who called down to Maria from the
balcony (“Oh! Maria,
weh!
”) without so much as a please. Smooth Ismail, who as number one was wiser if not better than the rest, dutifully took charge
and went to rouse his father. Next, yawning in a singlet, Majid Ghulam Jeevanjee emerged to greet his guests.

Mad Majid in the flesh. How would Bibi have reacted, presented with this body? This waker did not look emphatically unhinged.
Not quite the debauched crazy. Rather, he looked tired. Majid Ghulam, or Mr. Jeevanjee, as Sarie called him for a time, was
not as mad, not anymore, at least, as Bibi had made him out to be and not as helpless as Nisreen had thought. Their theories,
founded principally in any case on hearsay, had not kept up with the times. Oh, he had grief and fury in him, yes, in pounds,
in pishis and frasilas, many hundredweight. Majid had
not
been lucky. But, while the first few years of widowhood had certainly entailed the ravages that Bibi could recall—Rahman,
the insults, the wild waving of arms, the giving-up-on-bathing, the shouting in the street, and other things, and more—long
grief had also, finally, brought a quietness in him, something like a dullness, which neighbors with a taste for stories full
of action did not think to bring up (quiet, after all, was not much good discussing). This Jeevanjee was tired. Widowhood
and failure had snuffed the brightest of the glow he’d had as a poem-peddling youth, as the owner of a rag; and the loss of
little Tahir’s leg-below-the-knee had been a wild and unexpected blow, smarted every time he passed the bedroom where the
recovering boy still slept, every time he woke. How could such a thing not further test a hopeless, brooding pa? Even Sarie
noticed that the man seemed pretty glum.

He’d just risen from a nap, and, scratching dumbly at his chest, Mad Majid was just then neither dangerous nor mad, but a
tired picture of great sorrow. He came out from his bedroom slowly, an old and rumpled dress shirt trailing in his hand. He
stood bleary in the hallway for a moment, pulled one sleeve up clean, and struggled with the other. His long, bare arms were
bony. He did not quite understand who the woman was, not yet, and he did not look Sarie fully in the face until he had buttoned
up his shirt (not well, not ably: second button at first hole). Before raising his head, he rubbed his stubbled chin and cracked
his square, hard jaw, eyeing the chipped floor with a dazed air, as if remembering a stain.

Sarie briefly felt that they should not have come. The strange man had been sleeping, after all, and deeply, so it seemed
from how his eyes looked narrow and his mouth a little caked. And surely he was worried for his youngest son. Sarie swallowed
lightly, dryly, and her lips twitched taut and back a moment, like a person who has privately become aware of making a mistake
and hopes no one will see. Perhaps the boy was worse, not as well as the receptionist had promised.

In another room, the unseen parrot squawked. Majid Ghulam, looking up at last, could not suppress a yawn. In bed, he had been
dreaming a sharp dream—a dream with a blue rainstorm, a brass coffee set with cups, a fountain pen. A doctor without arms
had been hopping over puddles. In sleep he had acquired the impression of himself in a costume, in a cumbrous, feathery suit,
trying something, trying. Ankle-deep in water, he’d felt tiny creatures slither round his feet. A sucking at his knees. Watching
the pale woman in his hallway (a nervous presence, polka-dotted, pearly in
the frowsy light), Majid Ghulam, not yet abandoned by the dream, felt confronted by a beast. Part giraffe, part camel. How
single-toned this woman was, and tall! A foot taller than he was, at least. Was the woman real? He had to tilt his head. A
view: Sarie’s dappled skin brought him closer to the world; he was startled by her freckles. Majid Ghulam passed a wrist bone
hard against his mouth, then, unexpectedly, gave Sarie a smile.

It might have been a grimace, but it made Sarie feel more confident, and hardy. She plucked once at the fabric of her dress
to right the narrow skirt. She took a preparatory breath of chalky, windless air and leaned in towards the man, ardently extending
her right hand, which Majid Ghulam took and then, dismayed by its heat, perhaps, by the fact that it was real, let go rather
quickly. She thought:
I am intended to be here! I will make this a success!

They spoke at the same time. Sarie’s voice was earnest, loud. “We came—”

Majid Ghulam, remembering as though from another long-gone dream the gestures of respect, placed two hands flat against his
breast and bowed his head politely. “Welcome—”

Sarie, unsettled by the elegance of Mr. Jeevanjee’s address, lost her train of thought. She shifted all her weight from side
to side and back. She said, “I am Mrs. Turner.” And then, “Your son.” She was glad she’d written the names down. “Tahir.”
She did not know what to say next.

“Mrs. Turner. Ah,” Majid Ghulam said. Sarie said, “The clinic.” Majid Ghulam now understood that she had come about the boy.
His heart rose for a moment—had she come about the crutches? Was it still too soon for that? But Sarie said, “The accident.”
Behind her, she felt Agatha’s cool shape atwitch. She gestured to her child. “My daughter.” Agatha frowned up at him, then
bit her lip and smiled. Sarie’s big eyes widened. “We were there, you understand?”

Majid Ghulam squinted. He looked down at Agatha and nodded slightly, not unkind. “Ah, yes.” His mind was coming clear. He’d
heard about her, too. “Thank you. Yes.” And, “Good,” he said. Then, “Grateful.”

He shuffled to the parlor. With a sense that things were moving to some second stage, Sarie followed him. Agatha came, too.
Ismail and Ali hovered in the hallway. They eyed each other, shrugged, and, quiet, leaned against the wall to watch. Majid
Ghulam asked Sarie to sit. He took the chair across from her, on the other side of a long, low, broken table. Sarie noted
its carved feet, the nice curve of the legs.
A coffee table
, Sarie thought.
Antique
. As pictured in old magazines. As Sultans must have had. Agatha settled on the floor.

Elbows planted on his thighs, clasped hands hanging in between two bony, trousered knees, Majid Ghulam Jeevanjee looked at
her and waited. Tense but almost beaming, tight, like a man unused to company but eager to behave. His scrutiny made her shy.
She squirmed. Her legs were too long for the space between the blue settee and table. She twisted her big hips, now this way
and then that, trying to get comfortable. Agatha looked up at her and Sarie had the feeling that her daughter thought her
too big and ungraceful. She frowned and rearranged her hair.

Awkwardness. It is through just such times, of course, that certain seeds are sown: without intending to, Sarie showed Mr.
Jeevanjee her upper thigh, doughy, muscular, dimpled at the flank. Did he notice it for what it was? Was he alert enough by
then, awake enough to see (
A thigh!
)? Or did it simply seep into his consciousness somewhere and shift a shadow in his head, as weighty flesh can do?

His head. Above it, brassy pendulum at work, an old wall clock from America or Switzerland glinted in the light. Sarie by
and by stopped twisting. She sat instead sidesaddle, her knees high and
together. She watched him. Yes, the man looked tired and unkempt. Perhaps even dirty. But there was something fine about him,
too. With the clock atick behind him, just above his head, she thought that Mr. Jeevanjee, in slightly different light, might
look particularly important.
A man with things to do. A man who thinks of time
. It struck her that she would not have been surprised to see a man like him—shaved and better dressed, of course—managing
a railway station or a restaurant or working at a desk. And while her husband had once had a rather large desk of his own,
it occurred to her to ask herself,
Ces jours-ci, does Gilbert have a watch?
Sarie didn’t think so. She sucked idly at her cheek. There passed between Majid Ghulam and his guest a solid silence, heightened
by the parrot’s intermittent squawks.