Where the Air is Sweet (3 page)

When business is slow, Raju sits with Prem on the curb and traces stick people into the dirt: long-limbed figures with giant heads and small rounded hats. Prem, the tip of his tongue peeking through his pursed lips, his brow knitted in concentration, carefully draws smaller versions of the stick people beside Raju’s. As they sit back and examine the work, they laugh at the child’s flawed but determined imitations of the elder’s creations. One day, after weeks of practice, Prem’s drawings are almost exactly the same as Raju’s. When Raju looks closer, he sees that the circles Prem has drawn are more precise than his own, his people more symmetrical. As Prem leans forward to wipe the figures so they can begin again, Raju pats him on the back with the flat of his large hand. He pats him firmly but the boy’s back does not collapse under the weight.

For one year, Prem works for Raju and offers him the only companionship he will have in his time in Kampala. Then, one day, it comes abruptly to an end.

Early on Saturday morning, the boys who live with Prem are playing in front of Raju’s
duka.
They are laughing loudly and tossing a small canvas satchel back and forth, shouting,
“Chor! Chor!”
Normally, Raju would not take the time to glance at them, but because they are shouting “Thief! Thief!” he and the other shopkeepers look up. When it becomes apparent the boys are only playing and no thief is on the loose, Raju pays no more attention to them.

A howl fills the air. It is a sound Raju has never heard and a sound he can compare to nothing. Later, he will describe it to himself alternately as the sound of rage and the sound of pain.

Prem is running across the road, towards the boys, his fingers clutching at his hair, his mouth wide, his throat emitting the sickening sound. When he reaches the smaller of the two boys, the one with the satchel in his hand, he tackles him to the ground. Seconds later, the bigger boy is on top of Prem, yanking him by the hair on the back of his head and beginning to punch his face. Continuing to hold a fistful of Prem’s hair in his hand, the boy lifts him to his feet. Before Raju can reach them, the second, smaller boy has stood up and is sinking his knee into Prem’s midsection. Raju slaps the bigger boy across the side of his face. He immediately releases Prem. The two boys, panting, look at Raju and appear to absorb his full height. They turn and run, presumably towards their flat, but Raju does not look to see where they have gone. He is trying to help Prem stand up. But Prem will not let him. He pulls away from Raju, stumbles backwards and begins to pound his
fists into his own bloodied face and head. Raju grabs his wrists and holds them at his sides, against his small hips, but Prem responds with a swift knee into Raju’s groin. Stunned by the pain, Raju falls doubled over onto the ground. Unrestrained now, Prem continues to beat himself, hitting his head and scratching at his cheeks with his fingernails. Raju, lying on the ground, his body made momentarily immobile by pain, is watching him.

Prem’s father arrives, shirt untucked, feet bare, and runs towards Prem, grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him. “You animal!” he screams. He shoves the child to the ground, where he lands flat on his back. “You cursed creature!” Spit is falling out the sides of the man’s mouth. His face is flushed. He kicks Prem repeatedly in the side of his chest until he curls into a small ball, his arms shielding his face, his knees pulled up to his belly. Raju is moving towards them; he is screaming.

In a moment, Raju’s voice is the only sound on the street. In the next moment, there is no sound. The silence presses down on Raju’s head, on his shoulders and he drops to his knees in front of Prem. He is lying on the ground on his side, unmoving, one arm lying limply over his face, only his jaw visible. His father is standing behind Raju. Raju can hear him breathing, heavily, like a dog. A handful of people, who were drawn by the commotion, stand around them. Prem’s father brushes past Raju, roughly lifts Prem up and throws him over his shoulder as though he is a sack of rice. Then he walks up the stairs to his flat.

The next day, Prem does not come to fetch the tiffins. The Crow does not come to deliver them either. Instead, a young African woman arrives in their place. Days go by and still Prem
does not come; the Crow does not come. The woman, the family’s servant, nods politely to Raju each time she arrives, but she keeps her eyes lowered and, once she has the tiffins in her hands, runs up the stairs. Once, Raju grabs her elbow, stops her, asks her where Prem is.
“Prem wapi? Wapi mtoto?”
It is basic, simple Swahili, but she shakes her head and shrugs her shoulders. She doesn’t know where Prem is or she doesn’t understand the question. Raju is relieved. He chooses to believe that Prem was sent away, perhaps to live with his mother’s relatives. No one tells him otherwise and he does not ask. He will never see Prem again.

At the end of the month, just before Raju is due to pay her, the Crow places a necklace of ten-cent coins on the counter of Raju’s
duka.
He stares at it: a string threaded through the holes of each coin and knotted tightly together to form a circle.

“What is this?” he asks.

“It’s the money we owe you. The money Prem stole.”

Raju feels his body become heavy. Quietly, barely finding the energy to speak, he explains why Prem had the money.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, when he is finished. “It’s best he is gone. He was unmanageable. It was like living with a wild animal. You saw him. How he was with his brothers, with you. An animal.” She begins crying. “I did the best I could. What else can I have done?” She wipes her tears with the
cherho
of her saree. “I’m just an old woman.”

Raju sits in silence.

“What was in that satchel his brothers had? This money?” he asks, finally, pointing at the copper coins lying in a pile on the counter.

She nods.

“It was his,” Raju says, his teeth clenched, his words a whisper. “He earned it. How did you expect him to act?” But the Crow isn’t listening. She is already walking towards the stairs.

In the passage of time, of years, Raju will forget the details of Prem’s face, whether his jaw was square or rounded, whether his nose was small or large, his eyebrows thick or thin, but he will always remember, as though he heard it only a moment before, the heart-stopping sound Prem made when he fought to regain what was his, and the look in the child’s eyes as he beat his own already battered, tortured body, unable, any longer, to bear his pain.

3

A
NARROW BEAM OF SUNLIGHT IS REACHING
into the room through a small crack in the door. Raju sits on a
charpai
bed, watching the dust particles dancing in its light. Grace is standing in the corner of the room, undressing. He can see her in the periphery of his vision.

Hussein brought this woman to Raju, for Raju. “You have been in Africa for two and a half years. This is a long time to be without a woman,” Hussein said when he first suggested companionship for Raju. “Especially for a young man.”

When Raju resisted, Hussein pressed him. “Many of us have sought comfort in our loneliness. This is normal. You do not need to feel ashamed. These women, they are not on the level of our women. They are solely for our needs. Nothing more.”

When Grace arrived to meet Raju here, in Hussein’s one-room servant’s shack, she was wearing a long wrap that was tied in a knot just below her collarbone. Her hair was cut short. No jewellery adorned her ears, her nose, her neck.

She stands before him, naked now. Her breasts are small and firm, her waist narrow. Her hips and thighs are full. Raju blinks
and turns to the wall. She steps towards him and sits down on the end of the bed. When he stands and begins to unbutton his trousers, she lies on her back, her body extending the length of the bed.

Whenever Raju and his wife would have sex, it was quick, perfunctory. She would lie back, still and silent, using her saree to conceal as much of herself as she could. Each time he would press into her he would feel her body stiffen, as though she were steeling herself against something brutal.

He climbs over Grace, inhaling the smell of the earth. Another scent washes over him. Slightly sweet but not flowery. It is the scent of something new, something he has never known. Her legs wrap around his torso. He feels the muscles in her thighs grip him, pull him towards her, deeper into her.

After she is dressed and standing before him again, he asks her to say her name. He knows what it is—Hussein told him—but he wants to hear her voice and he doesn’t know what else to ask her. Raju does not trust her silence. It is incongruous with the power of her body.

Her voice is low. She pauses on the r, her tongue vibrating. She swallows it, the word, her name.

She walks to the door and opens it. Light pours into the room. Raju closes his eyes. When he opens them, she is gone.

The next time they meet, when he is on top of her, she caresses his body with her hands. He did not know he wanted her to do this, that he ached for her to do this, until she did it.

Raju meets Grace in this shack sporadically, sometimes twice in one week, sometimes not for two weeks. The frequency of the meetings is determined by the schedule of Hussein’s household.

Raju is watching Grace dress. “Your sister works for Mzee?” he asks. “She is his family’s
ayah
? Yes?”

She expertly ties the knot of her wrap and nods.

Hussein has explained to Raju that
sister
has a broad meaning among Africans. It rarely means the women in question share parents. More often a sister is someone from the same village or even an acquaintance.

“Is Mzee your brother?” Grace asks. Raju is startled. He has never known a woman to be bold enough to ask a question like this of a man, and he has never known an African to speak without being asked. But the question is simple and, under the circumstances, fair.

“He is from my village,” Raju says. “He is my cousin.” He nods. “Yes. My brother.”

She is looking at him, directly at his eyes.

“I earned money working in his
duka
in Kampala for one year and then he sold it. For two years, I have been here, in Mbarara. I own a shop with a Munyankole.”

“You work beside a Munyankole?” she asks.

“I run the shop alone. He finds suppliers. He has taught me to speak Runyankole.”

“What do you sell?”

Her direct questions amuse Raju. “Hardware and groceries,” he says.

“You live with Mzee?”

Raju shakes his head. “I live above my
duka
in a flat.”

“Alone?” she asks.

“My wife will come one day. Soon.”

“Then your children will be born here,” she says, her
expression, her tone, unaffected by the mention of Raju’s wife. “Your children will not be of your land. They will be of this land.”

“Do women enjoy this?” Raju asks, gesturing towards the bed. He is standing at the open door of the shack, smoking.

Grace’s head is lowered, her eyes focused on her wrap, which she is adjusting. “Sometimes,” she says. “Yes.”

Earlier, after undressing, Grace walked towards Raju, placed her hands on his shoulders, gently pushing him back on the bed, and climbed on top of him. Raju had never been underneath a woman; he had never allowed a woman to control his body, to give him pleasure in this way. He had never believed it to be possible.

Hussein’s young son appears at the door. Grace rushes towards the toddler. She bends down so that her face is level with the boy’s and smiles broadly, her face forming an expression Raju has not seen before, exuding a light to which he has never been privy. Raju hears the boy’s
ayah
calling out to him. “I will take him to her,” Grace says, brushing past Raju as she walks out the door, her hand tightly gripping the boy’s.

“Do you have children?” he asks her when she is again inside the shack.

She shakes her head, looks at the floor near his feet.

“A husband?”

She runs her hand over her hair as she walks past him towards the bed.

“What about your father?” he asks. “Does he know what you do?”

“My family lives far.”

“But you are Munyankole,” Raju says.

“No,” she says, turning to face him. “I am not from Ankole.”

“But you speak Runyankole.”

“As do you.”

Raju feels foolish. It did not occur to him she was not a local woman. He does not speak the language well enough to detect an accent. Nor has he perceived any differences in physical features among Africans. They are all Blacks.
Karias.
But she is not black. There is nothing black about her. Not even her hair, which shares with the African earth a tinge of red. Her skin is dark brown, very dark. But it glows, as though a steady fire is continually burning somewhere below it. He realizes now as he looks closely at her that her nose is smaller, wider, than the noses of the Banyankole women he has met, her eyes set closer together and deeper in her head.

“Why didn’t your father look after you?” he asks, angry now at this man’s failure to protect her. “Why must you do this work?”

She looks at him, at his eyes. She smiles. It is beatific, this smile. It does not suit her circumstances.

“You could work in a house, clean, look after children,” he says. “Would it not be better than this?”

“Am I better than this?” she asks, still smiling.

“Every woman is better than this.”

“You need me and I am here. When you need water, you drink it. You don’t ask it to be something better.”

Raju smiles, then laughs, tossing his cigarette to the ground.

In the end, Raju needs Grace for little more than six months.

“The shop has been busy. I finally have enough money to send for my wife,” he tells Grace. “I will meet her train next month.”

Grace is standing at the foot of the bed, next to where Raju is seated. He cannot tell by her expression whether she understands what he is telling her.

“I will not meet you again,” he says.

She turns away from him to face the wall.