A Golden Age (23 page)

‘I almost did it. T. Ali indicated he was willing to consider remarrying, but that I must allow him to keep the portrait of his wife in the drawing room. He invited me to his house to see the portrait. I wasn’t sure I should go, but I was curious, and I thought, maybe he’s just a sweet old man – a little odd, perhaps

– but if we married, I was just going to ask him straight out if he could give me the money to bribe the judge, the tickets to Lahore.’

T. Ali’s house had been built in the traditional style, one storey with a large central courtyard and a wide veranda with rooms leading out of it. From the road it looked like a fortress, and Rehana had walked in and seen the man crouching over a chair in a dimly lit drawing room. He was wearing a chocolate-brown suit and a deep red bow tie. His hand was pressed against his chest, and at first Rehana thought he might be having a heart- attack, and she was about to curse her luck. But then he raised his hand, and in it was a small oval frame. He was holding the frame in the palm of one hand and stroking it with the other. My Rose, my sweet Rose, he kept saying. The room – the muscular wood furniture, the old carpets, the honey-toned walls, the por- trait that dominated everything – smelt of crumbling plaster and damp, the colours bleeding into one another. Rose was a young woman, so pale her face foretold her death, with delicate hands folded across her lap. She wore a dress and looked like an English woman, the ones who had had worn wide, sloping hats and gloves, even in the warmest weather. Her dress, which reached down to her ankles, was a light pea-green with lace around the high collar and a tight row of buttons from chin to waist.

Rehana thought about what it would be like to have this ether- eal presence staring down at her. She stepped gingerly across the threshold.

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‘Ali-saab,’ she said softly.

‘You have such a kind voice, my dear,’ he said, patting the seat. ‘Come, sit. Would you like some tea? Juice?’

‘No, thank you,’ Rehana said. And then, ‘Your wife is lovely.’ ‘Yes, she was very beautiful. We only had a few years together.’ ‘I’m very sorry.’

A man in a black suit and chappals entered the room with a tray. When he reached the edge of the moss carpet, he removed the chappals and proceeded in bare feet. He set down a tray in front of Rehana. On it were two tall glasses of pink liquid each topped with a spray of froth.

‘Rosewater shorbot,’ T. Ali said, a hint of pride creeping into his voice. ‘I have rosebushes.’

The shorbot was over-sweet and made her jaws tingle. ‘Delicious,’ she said, warmed by the thought of his rosebushes. She allowed herself to imagine his garden, leaning over his plants, the sun at her neck. Maybe she could marry him. The house was certainly big enough. So what about the portrait? The woman was dead, after all.

‘What do you think of her?’ he said lifting his cane in the direc- tion of the portrait.

‘She’s lovely,’ Rehana replied.

He cleared his throat. ‘You see, I had tuberculosis. I was very ill – the doctor told me I didn’t have much time left. And she said, “No, I won’t let him die.” She sat at my bedside and held my hands – I don’t remember it; they told me afterwards. She said, “We never had children.” I remember her saying that. She begged God not to take me from her before we could have children. She prayed all the time, every day.’

Water came to T. Ali’s eyes. He turned his face away from Rehana. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wriggled out of his glasses.

‘By the grace of God, I recovered. It was 1943. And then she died that very year. Tuberculosis. I couldn’t save her.’

His voice grew faint and watery. ‘She was a remarkable woman.’ He nodded and worked his mouth, as though he was

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chewing on the memory. It made him look old. Rehana tried not to guess his age. ‘Here, let me show you.’

He stood up and walked through the memorized room with his cane. His step was light and confident. Rehana felt herself relax a little as she followed him. He held the door open and invited her to pass through. As she brushed past him, she noticed the smell of mothballs, dusty and sweet. A comforting, not-so- bad smell.

He led her through an unlit corridor; then he reached for a handle and turned it. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I’ve left it just as it was.’

He moved through the room with ease, pointing to things. It was as though here, in this house, and especially in this room, he was no longer blind. In the far corner was an upright piano, the lid lifted over the keys like a curled lip. There was chair beside it, with an airy pink dress draped across the back. T. Ali touched the dress and said it was the very last thing his wife had worn. There was a dressing table with a faded velvet seat, its metal bolts black with rust. The table displayed a brush with a silver handle, a jewellery box and a plate of powder with the puff facing downwards, ready to be swept across the lovely Rose’s face.

‘Do you play the piano?’ Rehana asked, approaching the instrument.

‘Me? No,’ he replied.

‘The Well-tempered Clavier’ was written in a curling hand above a sheet of black notes.

‘It’s very pretty,’ Rehana managed, not knowing what else to say. The room was hot and airless. It made her want to whisper. It made her want to comb her hair and rub on some lipstick.

She turned to the mirror and examined her own face. Her cheeks were tawny with the heat. She caught the ordinariness of her looks, the starched whiteness of her dress. Mrs T. Ali, with her satin gown, her pale lips, her floating crimplene, flashed before her.

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She imagined living here, in this dusty and frozen world. She forced out thoughts of the bungalow, her lemon tree, the note of bees around the jasmine. It had to be done. It had to be borne. It wasn’t love, but it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen.

Rehana picked up the hairbrush. It left a gleaming face in the dust, where the polished wood shone through. As she moved to set it down, she knocked it against the plate of powder.

T. Ali swivelled to face Rehana. ‘Please don’t touch that,’ he said. He rushed to take it from her. He collided with her elbow, and then ran his hand up her arm, until he found the hairbrush. He held fast. Rehana shrank from his touch, the intimacy of his rolling, searching hands. She didn’t know why, but she curled her fingers around the handle and refused to let it go. They struggled for a few seconds, until it slipped out of Rehana’s hand.

At that very moment T. Ali was pulling in the opposite direction.

The brush flew out of his grasp and hurtled against the mirror.

It didn’t shatter at first. A swirl of cracks opened like an eye, twisted outwards and spread through the length and width of the mirror. Then the pieces began to fall, slowly, but then in a sudden, violent rush.

T. Ali flung himself at the mirror. ‘What are you doing?’

‘You stupid girl!’

A bead of spittle appeared on his lip as he shouted over to her. Then he was on his hands and knees, picking through the shat- tered glass.

‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’ ‘You’ve ruined everything!’

‘Please, Mr Ali, you must get up.’

‘Get out! Get out of here! This is my Rose’s room!’

Rehana tugged at T. Ali’s hands. He began to cry. ‘I said get out!’

He was ignoring her, mumbling something to himself. Rehana tried again to move his hands away from the broken mirror. Then suddenly she spotted the jewellery box, its mouth open, lying on

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its side in a hail of glass. She picked it up without thinking, the crunch of glass under her feet masking the sound of the clasp fitting into its groove. She tucked it under her arm. Her heart was hammering in her chest. She was sure he could see her, that his map of the room would give her away.

But he was still. ‘Haven’t you gone yet? Leave us in peace, I say.

Leave us. Oh, my poor, my poor Rose.’ Rehana made her way to the door.

He knew. He must know. She thought of leaving the box by the door; it wasn’t too late; better than to be caught with it; any minute now he would climb down from the dressing table and pounce on her; he could see, she knew he could see. But a second later she was out the door and darting across the hallway; through the drawing room, where the rose-shorbot glasses had been cleared; unlatching the front door and out on the street, whose darkness instantly swallowed her; and then at home, where she crawled into her bed and sobbed, and cheered, and sobbed.

‘You stole,’ the Major said. It was too dark to make out his face. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I stole.’

‘From a blind man.’

He was about to hate her; she knew it. But it was too late. ‘Yes, from a blind man.’

‘And his dead wife.’

‘Yes, I just told you. T. Ali’s wife.’

She heard something – was he
crying
? – and then he slapped his knee, once, twice. He cleared his throat. He swallowed.

‘I’m sorry – it’s just—’ ‘What?’

‘You kept this secret all these years?’ ‘Yes, I never told a soul.’

He slapped his knee again. His breath was noisy now, and she couldn’t see, but she could tell his mouth was open and he was trying, with difficulty, to speak. ‘I thought at the very least you’d murdered someone.’

‘What kind of a thing is that to say?’

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He’d given up trying to say anything, and now he was just laughing, heh heh heh – a silly, ridiculous laugh. Rehana felt a tickle at the back of her throat. She coughed it away. It came back. She took refuge in scolding him. ‘You think this is funny?’ ‘No, no. Of course it’s not funny.’ And he snorted. ‘Excuse

me!’

‘Chih! I tell you this dark, terrible thing, and all you can do is laugh.’ She turned away indignantly, grateful that it was too dark for him to make out the expression on her own face. It could have been a smile, or it could have been a grimace. And the tickle in her throat could have been a chuckle or it could have been tears. It was mixed up: sad; funny; unfunny. She didn’t care. And she left him there, with the projector humming in the dark afterglow of the cinema, his head tilted back gratefully, laughing as though she had just given him a prize.

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July
‌

The red-tipped bird

I

t was still only July, not yet August, the month of contradic- tion. In August, mornings were unbearably liquid, the air dense, tempers threadbare; wives and paratha-makers and jilapi- fryers laboured over breakfasts, and children woke from damp sheets and wiped their faces in limp, furry towels. And then, at some mysterious hour between noon and dusk, the sky would hold its breath and the tempers worsen, as the air stopped around people’s throats, not a stir, everything still as buildings, and there was a hush, interrupted only by the whine of the city dwellers, lunching, probably, or just tossing and turning on mat- tresses, debating whether it was hotter to stay still or to move; women with sinking make-up fanned their faces, men with bulging chests fanned their necks. But, after the stillness, after the gathering of clouds and the darkness, there was the exultant, joyous rain, sweet water that jetted violently, and scratchy, elec- tric thunder, and exclamations of lightning. Altogether, a parade of weather, a feast for the hot, the tired; and every day there was