In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (9 page)

‘Why do you care?’ he asked. ‘Are you afraid the other villagers will find out?’

She laughed humorlessly. ‘The villagers! They knew the first night. They leave me alone because they’re afraid of you. It’s nice, it’s a proof of just how much they do fear you. If you dropped me they would call me a whore out loud as I walked down the street.’

‘Then why not spend the nights?’

‘Then I
would
be your whore. At least now we still pretend. Leave it alone, I’ve already said more than I wanted. Please.’

In July the monsoon began, a strong monsoon, with rain and enormous clouds towering over the flat desert that fell right to the edge of the river. It had rained all day and all night, and Jaglani came to the farm in order to oversee the pumping of water from the cotton fields. Where the fields lay low the young cotton stood under four inches of water. Mechanics removed the turbines from the tube wells and powered them in the fields by shafts run from tractors. If the sun shone on the plants while they stood in the water, the reflected heat would kill them.

That night, late, the watchman from the
dera
knocked on Jaglani’s door. He rose quickly and took his revolver. ‘Sir, may we use the jeep? Loharu’s son just got bitten by a snake.’ Putting on his clothes, Jaglani sent for Mustafa and went to Loharu’s house.

Lowering his head to walk under the lintel of the small door, stepping carefully in the slippery mud, he approached the family, an old woman and her husband Loharu, who had worked on the farm as a laborer since he became old enough to be useful. They were standing in the little single room by the light of a lantern, the woman quietly sobbing and dabbing at her eyes with her head scarf. A crowd of villagers stood around, some inside and some outside the hut. When Jaglani entered they murmured, ‘Chaudrey Sahib.’ Even in his grief the father fell into a posture of deference, taking Jaglani’s hand and reaching to touch his knee.

The boy lay on a
charpoy
in one corner, very thin, just developing a mustache. Although still alive, his body had softened and lost all tension. A bit of white foam sat in each corner of his lips. Jaglani knew he would be dead soon, as did the villagers, who had seen this before. Only the parents refused to accept that their son would soon be gone. They heard the jeep coming along the muddy street of the village, splashing, whining in first gear. No one made a move to lift the boy, and after a few more minutes he died, curling now, his throat rattling, and then becoming limp.

The mother fell onto the body, quietly saying, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’

Jaglani went outside. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘A cobra came through the window, the water must have filled its hole. The boy’s hand hung over the edge of the
charpoy,
and the snake brushed the hand.’

‘Did they kill the snake?’

A man went inside and brought out the cobra, black, three feet long, dangling like a hose over the stick with which he carried it. It slid off into the mud, making a soft slapping sound.

Back in his house, Jaglani found that he couldn’t sleep, that he wanted something, tea or some food. He hadn’t known the boy, though he had seen him about. The father had worked on the farm for twenty years, since childhood. Now he was a heavy-featured man with a few days’ muzzle of graying beard, his teeth almost gone, rather stupid, so that the other men made good-humored jokes about him.

Jaglani pushed the bell button, which rang out in the
dera
where the watchman could hear it.

‘I’m not feeling well,’ he told the watchman. ‘Call Zainab and tell her to make me some tea. I’ve got a fever.’

‘Shall I send Mustafa for medicine?’

‘No, in the morning I’ll go back to Firoza. Just tea.’

Zainab came into the room, walking quietly as always. ‘I’m sorry you’re not well.’

‘Come here,’ said Jaglani. He took her by the wrist and pulled her down onto the bed. She didn’t resist, but instead, with a single motion removed her
kurta,
pulling it over her head. As she came onto the bed she kicked off her shoes.

Rolling on top of her, he searched her face.

‘I need you to be here in the house whenever I’m here.’ He looked directly into her eyes.

‘I told you, I won’t. I’ll go away.’

‘Where can you go?’

‘My husband has written three times. He says he’ll take me back. I’ll go there.’

Jaglani lay staring at the ceiling, his emotions tightened up almost unbearably.

‘I’ll marry you,’ he said.

‘What about my husband?’

‘I’ll arrange it.’

She turned and began kissing him, looking down on his face. He closed his eyes.

Jaglani knew that his wife, who was also his first cousin, would try to turn their common family against him if he took another wife. In the next few days he didn’t mention his offer of marriage again, although it lay between them. Zainab became harder and more emotionally inflexible than before. She did what he asked. Again and always in bed, sexually, she opened and became almost vicious, pliable, biting him, on his cheeks, his neck; but after they finished she withdrew into herself. Only sometimes, when they lay in bed, she would cough or feel cold and he would offer to do something for her, to bring water or to find a blanket, and she would say, ‘Yes, please,’ in a girlish voice that wrung his heart. Finally he could not deny to himself that he had fallen in love, for the first time in his life. He even acknowledged her aloof coldness, the possibility that she would mar his life. And yet he felt that he had risen so far, had become invulnerable to the judgments of those around him, had become preeminent in this area by the Indus River, and now he deserved to make this mistake, for once not to make a calculated choice, but to surrender to his desire.

In the beginning of September, after the monsoon, the immense Punjabi heat began to subside. One morning when Zainab brought his breakfast he said to her, ‘Your husband comes today.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve called him. He needs to sign the divorce papers.’

‘He won’t do that.’

Jaglani looked up at her as she leaned forward placing the tray of food on the table in front of him. ‘You still don’t know me, do you?’

In the late afternoon Zainab’s husband, a peasant named Aslam born in Dunyapur, entered the
dera,
a small figure advancing through the whitewashed brick gates, having walked from the main road, where the intercity bus dropped him off.

Jaglani sat under the banyan tree, signing cash vouchers passed to him by an aged accountant wearing spectacles mended with wire.

Aslam approached, said his
salaam,
and touched Jaglani’s knee.

‘Hello Aslam,’ said Jaglani. ‘I’ll call you, go sit.’

Seven or eight men sat in chairs under a verandah, all waiting to see Jaglani, with petitions of various kinds – a stolen ox, water issues, begging for jobs, needing letters to local government administrators.

Jaglani saw Aslam last of all, several hours later. The sky had darkened, and the
maulvi
in the plain but large marbled mosque built by the Harounis had finished the
maghreb
call for prayer, standing on a platform, his voice reedy.

‘Aslam, you can’t seem to control your wife,’ began Jaglani, without any preamble.

‘No sir. She ran back to the village. I’m here, and I intend to take her home.’

‘I’m told she doesn’t want to go. You’d better divorce her.’

‘Sir, no. My house is empty, every night I come home and it’s empty.’

‘Why don’t you have children?’ asked Jaglani. ‘Didn’t you live with her as her husband?’

‘In the beginning we tried. We had no luck.’

‘That’s grounds for divorce. I suggest you divorce her for being barren.’

‘Please, Chaudrey Sahib, you and I grew up together in Dunyapur, we played together as children. I beg you, don’t take what’s mine. You have so much, and I so little.’

‘I have so much because I took what I wanted. Go away.’

The husband said, ‘Take her and be damned with her,’ but Jaglani ignored him.

The next morning one of the farm accountants presented Aslam with some papers. Knowing the husband to be illiterate, and wishing to spare him further humiliation, the accountant assured him that the papers simply gave Zainab permission to live apart. Aslam left Dunyapur with a letter to the manager of the bank where he worked in Rawalpindi. In the letter Jaglani requested that the manager, a dependent of the Harounis, give Aslam a raise and watch over him.

A few weeks later Jaglani secretly married Zainab. The
maulvi
from the mosque came quietly into Chaudrey Sahib’s house one morning, bringing with him one of the old managers to act as a witness. The villagers bullied the
maulvi,
a timid man with a scrawny beard. He blushed when he spoke, and would ask the cook in the
dera
for little treats from the common pot to take home for his wife, as his pay barely covered their thin monthly expenditure. The manager, by contrast, cuffed his men about and had a voice like a baying hound. Coming across the courtyard of the
dera,
under the blowing trees, the
maulvi
turned to the manager.

‘Won’t Jaglani’s sons blame us for this?’

‘Don’t worry,’said the manager, ‘there’s not enough blood in their livers to clog the foot of a flea. Even when the big man dies they’ll be afraid to cross him. And she can take care of herself, she’s like a hatchet.’

When they entered the courtyard of the little house they found Jaglani sitting on a
charpoy
smoking his hookah. The two men sat down, and while the
maulvi
watched, Jaglani and the manager spoke of the September cane sowing, just completed, and of the cotton just then developing bolls. The manager picked at a callus on his foot. After a few minutes the register of deeds, a man who owed his posting in the area to Jaglani, and who had collaborated in numerous dubious land transfers, entered with the marriage papers in a big ledger under his arm. He took from his pocket a gold pen worth several months of his official salary and began filling out the forms, writing in an elegant hand, and with a look of satisfaction on his face. He loved these forms, loved consummating rich transactions. Jaglani signed, the single witness signed, and then the
maulvi
rose and said a prayer, his hands cupped, speaking rapidly and with perfect memory. The other three required witnesses would sign later, if the need arose – the register of deeds had urged that they leave the document incomplete to this degree. Under the trees and with the birds calling, Jaglani felt extremely moved, felt his emotions to be like clear glass. He took the papers inside and Zainab affixed her thumbprint, leaning against him as they sat on the bed, her face soft. When he had insisted upon keeping the marriage secret she made only one stipulation – that they no longer would use birth control.

Zainab now slept the night in Jaglani’s bed. She brought many of her things, clothes and jewelry, her makeup, and put them about the house. Seeing these little tokens of her presence made him happy, made him feel that he possessed her. She asked him to buy a buffalo, and twice a day, at dawn and at dusk, the villager who cared for the animal would bring a pail of the rich milk and leave it just inside the courtyard, covered with a cloth. She made
ghee
and butter, and if some was left over she sent it to Mustafa’s house, or to the house of one of the poorer neighbors who couldn’t afford to keep a buffalo. Only in the mornings, when Jaglani wanted to hold her, to lie in bed with her and talk quietly, or perhaps to make love, she still would not stay with him, but became restless and would get up, saying that she needed to begin the day. Although she did not like being touched, except when in bed, he found that now she tried to accept his caresses, tried not to be cold to him. When he came into the house and approached her from behind as she stood doing some household task, cupping her breasts in his hands, she became still and turned her head, smiling, and only after a moment would she disengage from him. Even then she would hold his hand and lead him outside, seating him on the
charpoy
and bringing his hookah. He became familiar with the smallest aspects of her body. She cut her toenails one day, but cut too far, into the quick, an inverted half-moon, until one of the nails bled. He loved this wildness in her, evidence of hardness toward herself, contained violence.

She developed a urinary infection, and he took her into town. She rode in the back of his jeep, and as always her brother Mustafa drove. None of them spoke. She kept her head covered, and didn’t look out of the window. Even this trip, their first together, became for him a significant memory. He wanted to take care of her, but often she would not allow him to. When he returned to Dunyapur after spending a few days in Firoza with his senior wife, as he drove toward the river he would feel a weight on his stomach. He feared Zainab, strangely enough, although he had made a career of fearing no one and of thereby dominating this lawless area. Sometimes he thought that it would be a relief to be rid of her, and yet his love kept increasing.