Waiting for the Monsoon (56 page)

Madan, focused on the fitted blouse he's taking in, is initially unaware of the upheaval on the stairs. When the people begin to charge into the room, his first instinct is to protect his machine. He bends forward and throws both arms around the Singer. But the destitute men and women are not interested in Madan or his sewing machine. They have just caught sight of widow Sethi's collection of saris. Greedy hands pull the colourful garments out of the cabinet. As more and more people crowd into the room, Madan feels the wooden floor begin to give way. He sees shirts and trousers being torn apart. He hears the screams and the creaking noises. He sees the cabinets start to topple. A cry of distress forms in his throat. He screams. The swarming mass of people suddenly fall silent, and they all look around in shock, searching for the roaring lion they expect to see. But there is only a man with a sewing machine in his arms.

Then they hear the clear sound of something cracking, and the floor caves in. Dust, splinters, scraps of wood, people, and clothes . . . everything comes crashing down. Madan hears a scream . . . a scream he heard once before, years ago in the prison, when Ibrahim the murderer grabbed Mister Patel by the throat because he didn't like his face.

THE CARS WITH
their wailing sirens, a sound that has become familiar in recent months, arrive in front of what was once the house of Mister Patel and widow Sethi. There is nothing left but a few broken beams and a pile of roof tiles. All the clothes are gone, snatched up before the arrival of the ambulances and police cars.

Holding his sewing machine, Madan stares at the stretcher carrying the body of Mister Patel. His pen is still in his hand. The ambulance drivers are in no hurry. The sirens are silent. Madan wants to cry, but the tears won't come. He feels nothing. All he sees is the bloody face of the old man as he is shoved into an ambulance while the drivers discuss the final score of a cricket game. One of them picks up a piece of paper from the rubble and lays it over the disfigured face. Through a tear in the drawing of the paramecium, Madan can still see the terror-­contorted mouth of the man he had come to call
Father
.

EVERYONE IS GONE
,
and a harrowing silence descends upon the street. Only Madan is left, standing in front of the collapsed house, with his sewing machine under his arm. He gazes at the closely written snippets of paper wafting away in the wake of their creator.

“Hey, you!”

Madan turns slowly in the direction of the voice.

In the door of the greengrocer's shop opposite the house stands the proprietor. He waves to him. “Come with me.”

In front of the door there are large crates of apples. They're just as shiny as the apple he was given by Mister Patel's nephew. He hesitates, but then walks over to the shopkeeper.

“Don't you want his bicycle?”

Madan looks at him inquiringly.

“You're his son, aren't you?”

The man dashes into the shop and comes back with an old men's bicycle.

“Take it, please. It's been standing in the way for years.”

THE MOON WAS
almost full and shone down on the eager mouths of the buckets in the garden. There was as yet no sign of the clouds Charlotte was hoping for. However, it was not the heat that had kept her awake, but rather what had happened that evening.

They were standing at the bottom of the stairs, exhausted, when Isabella came dancing down the stairs with Father's chamber pot, belting out “Singing in the Rain” like a full-fledged Fred Astaire. She grinned at the invisible dark clouds overhead and made it clear that the “sun was in her heart and she was ready for love!” The old chamber pot became her dance partner: she paraded from one side of the broad, once stately stairs to the other, as if she were starring in a real musical.

Hema chuckled, Madan laughed his soundless laugh, and Charlotte found herself regretting that her niece hadn't paid them a visit before.

After the last sentence, the girl placed the chamber pot at the bottom of the stairs, looked up into the sky, and called out in a loud voice: “Now you can piss as hard as you want!” She looked cheekily at the adults in front of her. “If it doesn't come now, then I give up,” she said triumphantly, wiping the perspiration from her forehead.

“Thank you, Miss Isabella,” said Hema, who was convinced that, as the “house on the hill,” they had done more than their duty when it came to enticing the monsoon to burst loose. If the rain didn't come now, it wasn't their fault. “My name is Issy!” she called out, and made a pirouette. Charlotte didn't know if it was deliberately or by accident, but suddenly she stopped in front of Madan and pointed to his neck: “What did you do to your neck?”

Oh, it's nothing.

“It's nothing,” said Charlotte, who could tell that he was startled by the sudden attention.

“Nothing? Look.” Issy's finger pointed at the scar on his neck.

It's very old.

“It's very old,” Charlotte repeated his words.

“How do you know it's old?”

Since Charlotte didn't actually know what her niece was talking about, she realized that she should have kept her mouth shut. Now, following Issy's glance, she looked at Madan's neck.

Madan wanted to turn away, but Issy stopped him.

“Did you have an accident?”

For the first time, Charlotte realized that the line on his neck was a scar.

“Is that why you can't talk?”

Embarrassed, Madan shrugged and hung his head.

Hema, who was not pleased to see the tailor suddenly attract the attention of his Miss Isabella, announced that the tea was almost ready, although he hadn't even started, and Charlotte diverted her niece's attention by asking her about her special telephone, since she felt it wasn't appropriate to discuss a person's handicap in his presence.

THE GLEAMING BLACK
Rolls-Royce stops in front of their house.

“They're here!” Charlotte calls upstairs. There is no answer. She runs up the stairs. “Peter, they're here. Are you coming?” She goes into their bedroom, but he's not there, or in the bathroom, or in the lavatory. “Peter!”

Downstairs the doorbell rings. The servant opens the door and she hears their visitors entering the hall. She looks for Peter in the guestroom and the laundry room. The servant invites them into the drawing room. She hurries down the stairs and checks the sunroom opening onto the garden, the dining room, the kitchen, and the scullery. She even goes into the garden, to the shed, and the servants' quarters, but she can't find her husband anywhere.

“Welcome to Bombay,” Charlotte says as she walks into the drawing room. “It's lovely to see you again. Couldn't your father come?”

“No, the minister of Public Works paid us a surprise visit. Father is hoping to build a canal, but he hasn't been able to get permission, and now it finally looks as if it's all going to work out.” Chutki sits down on the sofa and begins to tell Charlotte about the problems in the palace and the long journey to Bombay. Her baby brother, who's sitting next to her, looks around with interest. Behind them stand two nurses wearing white caps, one tall and the other short. Both are staring at the floor.

The boy has grown since she saw him a year ago, Charlotte thinks. She listens to his sister's stories, but her eyes are constantly drawn to the boy. There's something unusual about him, something she's never seen in a child before. She can't decide if it's his eyes, his smile, or his presence, but looking at him, a calm comes over her and she almost forgets her concerns about Peter.

“Would you like something to drink?”

“Juice,” says the boy, and he begins to cough.

“We'd like tea,” replies his sister.

The boy looks disappointed.

Charlotte rings and asks the servant to bring tea and a glass of mango juice. The boy grins in between bouts of coughing. The daughter of the maharaja is chatting away about the inconveniences of travelling by car in comparison with a train journey, when suddenly Charlotte sees a foot sticking out from behind the sofa near the window. A foot that she immediately recognizes. Chutki hasn't noticed her startled expression, nor have the nurses.

“We have a new grand piano,” says Charlotte, and gets up. “Would you like to see it?” Chatting away, she succeeds in guiding Chutki and her little brother into the sunroom. The nurses do not budge from their post until Charlotte tells them that biscuits and tea are being served in the kitchen.

As Chutki plays various pieces on the piano, Charlotte steals back to the salon and kneels down by the sofa, where Peter has taken refuge behind the curtains. Gently she strokes his back, and he begins to relax. “If you don't want to go through with it, I'll send them away.”

“No.” His reply is barely audible.

“I can say you're not feeling well,” she whispers.

“I have to go through with it,” he moans. “I owe it to the maharaja.”

She draws the curtain aside. The sound of Chutki's unpractised piano playing is audible. Charlotte's hand slides through his hair. She sees the grey streaks that weren't there a while ago. He groans like a wounded animal with its leg in a trap. But she has no idea what part of him is caught in a trap. She cannot find it, no matter how hard she tries. “Can you stand up?” She helps him to his feet slowly, like a limp marionette. It's only then that she sees the little boy standing in the door.

“Did the doctor lose something?” he inquires in a worried voice as he fiddles with the gold chain around his neck.

“Yes,” says Charlotte, “but luckily he's found it.” She hopes that one day she will find out what it is that he has lost.

~~~

THE HOSPITAL CONSISTS
of long, high-ceilinged corridors devoid of people. The sound made by the heels of the two nurses reinforces the uncomfortable sensation that came over her when they entered the building. Charlotte doesn't see why the operation has to take place now, why it cannot wait until tomorrow morning. But Peter is adamant. He's already called an anaesthetist friend who's a known cricket-hater, and with two extra nurses there to assist, it should be a piece of cake.

The elderly doctor at the first-aid station also agrees that there shouldn't be a problem. “I can guarantee that no one will fall ill before the end of the match,” he jokes as he turns up the volume on his radio.

The enthusiastic voice of the cricket announcer echoes throughout the waiting room: “
India
zindabad
!”

“I just hope Pakistan doesn't win,” sighs the old doctor. “Then it could get extremely busy here.” He closes his eyes, leans back in his chair, and listens to the game with rapt attention.

Peter, the anaesthetist, and Chutki are already in the operating room. Charlotte waits in the corridor. She toys with the gold chain the nurse took from the boy's neck when he was placed on the mobile bed. She has never waited in a hospital corridor before. Suddenly she realizes how a father-to-be feels when his wife is about to give birth to their first child. In the background, the radio commentary is audible, along with the cheering of the fans in the stadium.

“The doctor has changed,” says Chutki, who sits down next to her and pulls her coat tighter around her.

Charlotte wishes she could say that things were improving, that it just happened to be a bad day. Although she can't remember when he last had a good day.

“Doesn't he want children?” Chutki asks cautiously.

Charlotte wishes she'd stayed home. She hates questions like this. Doesn't the daughter of the maharaja understand that there is no way she can raise the subject? She doesn't dare. She knows that she won't get an answer, that he'll roll into a fetal position, deaf and dumb to his surroundings.

ALL IS QUIET
in the operating room. The anaesthetist and the nurses follow the hands of the surgeon, who performs the necessary procedures inside the boy's throat, intently and with great precision. He sees that there is more damage to the larynx than he had expected. He is happy that he found the strength to get up and to persevere. He sees that the boy's eyelids are quivering slightly. He casts a worried glance at the anaesthetist, who nods that everything is in order. Why are the eyelids quivering? Eyelids are not supposed to quiver. The patient must lie perfectly still. Otherwise he cannot continue to operate.

“Increase the dosage,” he hisses.

“It's just right,” says the anaesthetist.

Peter feels rivulets of perspiration running down his back. Can't his colleague see that the child is waking up, that life is returning to the boy's body, that he's not finished with the operation yet, nowhere near finished? His hands begin to quiver. The anaesthetist mumbles that everything is as it should be, that it's normal, that sometimes the eyelids do quiver. Peter grasps the scalpel in an effort to control his trembling hand. It is not normal, he's never seen it before, he knows that someone who is unconscious does not move. They're like the dead, they no longer feel anything. They rot away like cadavers, they don't feel pain when someone kicks them, they don't feel the bullets entering their body, they are devoured by insects and vermin, but they don't move, they cannot move.

The door flies open, the tall nurse calls to them to follow her, and Charlotte and Chutki are in the operating room before she's finished her sentence. The anaesthetist stares in desperation at the other nurse as she bandages the throat of the young patient, who is still unconscious.

Peter is standing between them, his whole body is trembling, and his eyes are focused on an imaginary horizon. “It went wrong,” he murmurs, “the operation went wrong.”

THE SHORT NURSE
picks the boy up from the aluminium operating table. The tall one is crying. Chutki wants to know what happened, but no one will tell her. The anaesthetist pushes Peter out of the operating room and pulls the blood-stained sheets off the bed. Through the open door, the voice of the cricket announcer echoes through the corridor: he has lost his sense of decorum and he is spitting and yelling in his enthusiasm now that India is on the winning hand.