Don't Let Him Know (10 page)

‘Yes,’ said Sultan calmly. ‘This is supposed to be air-conditioned, isn’t it? Look, that’s what it says.’ He gestured towards the door. ‘New Modern Saloon for Gents (Air-Conditioned).’

Harish-babu slowly lowered his scissors. In all his years at the saloon he had never encountered such insolence. And in front of the customers too.

‘Well,’ he said quietly, ‘do you know how much it costs to run the air conditioner? Perhaps I should take it out of
your
salary. Perhaps then you’ll understand that money doesn’t just grow on trees.’

‘Well, then you shouldn’t say air-conditioned,’ said Sultan evenly, pausing to admire his handiwork on the fat man’s head. ‘I mean, if you don’t run the AC in the middle of summer, what’s the point?’

Harish-babu put down his scissors. Avinash was afraid he might drop them on his head. Then he turned round to face Sultan who was still snipping the fat man’s hair as if nothing had happened.

‘The point is that we have an air conditioner,’ said Harish-babu, his voice so tightly controlled it seemed to twitch. ‘And it is
my
decision as to when we want to run it.’

‘But don’t you think it makes sense to run it on a hot afternoon like this?’ said Sultan, cocking his head to inspect the fat man’s pate. ‘I’m sure your customers would agree, wouldn’t you?’ Now he looked straight at Avinash and raised one eyebrow questioningly. Trapped between them Avinash squirmed. He felt Harish-babu’s lightly laid hand on his shoulder tighten its grip.

Sultan’s eyes held his with easy familiarity.

Avinash flushed and swallowed.

‘Well?’ said Sultan smiling, ‘Isn’t it hot?’

‘Yes,’ Avinash replied. ‘Yes, it is.’ His words came out as a squeak. But with those words, Avinash had a feeling that he had just taken a huge hatchet and hacked away the ropes that tied his boat to the shore and he was now floating away, uncontrollably, into the ocean. Harish-babu’s fingers clenched tighter.

‘Yes,’ chimed in the fat man. ‘After all, you charge three rupees more than Prince Saloon across the street.’

Harish-babu let go of Avinash’s shoulder and stalked over to the air conditioner. He turned it on and as it grumbled into life Avinash looked up into the mirror. He caught Sultan’s eye as he bent over the fat man’s head. There was a half-smile on his lips and when he saw him looking Sultan grinned and winked.

Avinash blushed and looked away. Harish-babu returned to his chair and said icily, ‘I trust the little sahib is feeling cooler now.’ Then he turned to Sultan and said, ‘When you open your own saloon you can keep the air conditioner running eight hours a day if you like. But here I make the rules.’

‘Of course I will,’ said Sultan. ‘Why eight? I’ll run it twenty-four hours a day.’

Then he started humming a hit song from the latest Hindi film. Avinash looked at him several times excitedly, hoping he would accord him new respect as a fellow-rebel, a comrade-in-arms. But he seemed to have forgotten Avinash was there.

That night Sultan appeared in his dream. Avinash did not remember anything of it except that he woke in the morning with his image graven in his head and he knew he had been in his dream. He closed his eyes and tried to go back to the dream, to see what they had been doing together. But it was gone. But he knew whatever it was, it had been painfully pleasurable in a way that only truly secret secrets are.

The next time, Avinash went for his haircut with an eagerness that surprised his mother. She had wanted to take him to the fancy Ennis Ladies and Gents Saloon near his father’s office because she wanted her hair trimmed as well. But Avinash insisted on going to New Modern.

‘That boy just never ceases to amaze me,’ she complained to her husband. ‘For years he fusses about going to New Modern. And now when I offer to take him to Ennis he only wants to go to New Modern.’

‘It’s that age,’ said his father soothingly. ‘He just wants to be contrary. Why don’t you start offering to make him tea? Maybe then he’ll suddenly want his milk too.’

But the moment Avinash walked into the shop his heart sank. The air conditioner was turned off. Lakshman-babu was back. There was no sign of Sultan. Avinash didn’t know how to find out where he’d gone. He didn’t want to show that it mattered to him, that he even remembered that there had been another barber named Sultan. He sat down on the chair and let Lakshman-babu tie the sheet around him.

‘So,’ Avinash said redundantly, ‘you are back.’

Lakshman-babu just knotted the sheet tight behind his neck.

‘Hmmm, so what happened to the other barber?’ Unable to stop himself, Avinash plunged on recklessly. ‘Ummm, what was his name?’

‘Sultan,’ said Lakshman-babu shortly. ‘He’s gone.’

‘Oh,’ Avinash said. ‘Was he from your village?’ Avinash ventured.

‘Of course not. We don’t have smart-alecs like that in the village. Our village has honest hard-working men of the soil. He was a city boy, that Sultan. Too cocky for his own good. Will come to a bad end, mark my words.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘No respect. Just shooting off his mouth like this was his own property. Harish-babu told me everything.’ Lakshman-babu shook his head in dismay. Then he leaned forward so that his mouth was almost in Avinash’s ear. ‘Young people these days. No discipline. No discipline at all.’

‘But,’ Avinash said, undeterred, ‘where did he go?’

‘Hell, for all I care,’ said Lakshman-babu. ‘What would you want with the likes of him? You are a good, well-mannered boy. Your parents are bringing you up with so much care. You are so lucky. Not like that Sultan. If he was my son I’d have straightened him out long ago.’

Two days later, Avinash bumped into Sultan just like that. Avinash was out shopping with his mother when he saw him at the street corner with a group of other young men. A couple of them were from his neighbourhood. Sultan was smoking and talking animatedly. He was wearing a black shirt and and had the same thin gold chain around his neck. Avinash wanted to run up to him. Instead he just stood there unable to move. His mother was bargaining fiercely over the price of tomatoes. Avinash stood by her, clutching the bag of groceries, sneaking looks at Sultan. Avinash wondered if he would remember the air conditioner and how they had fought Harish-babu together.

He looked at the cigarette between Sultan’s fingers and suddenly imagined him turning around and asking him if he wanted a drag. The image was so sudden and so vivid it shook him. Sultan looked up to hail the boy from the tea-shop across the street. For a moment their eyes met. Avinash opened his mouth to say something.

‘Who are you gaping at?’ said his mother. ‘Put these tomatoes in the bag.’

‘Look,’ Avinash said. ‘That’s my barber.’

His mother glanced over and said with a frown, ‘Him? I didn’t know they had people like him at New Modern. How can he give a haircut? He doesn’t look like he ever gets one!’

Sultan looked over. Avinash smiled uncertainly. And then, plucking up all the courage he had, he said what he already knew. ‘You don’t work at New Modern any more.’ He meant it to be a question but it came out more as an accusation.

Sultan’s friends turned around to look at him. His mother, who had been examining some green chillies, suddenly looked up with a frown. Avinash felt the whole street teeter and he felt hot with embarrassment.

Then Sultan laughed. ‘Oh no – not with that old miser. Now I have my own place with my cousin Aziz. It’s called Badshah, right on Lake Avenue across the street from the temple. It doesn’t have air conditioning yet, though.’

‘Let’s go,’ said his mother, abandoning the chillies.

As they went off Avinash looked back to see if Sultan was looking at him. He was not, but at least he had remembered.

It doesn’t have air conditioning yet, though
. He remembered.

‘Well, good for Harish-babu,’ said his mother, marching down the street. ‘Once you let people like that in, business goes downhill. You go in for a haircut, you’ll come out looking like a two-paisa film star.’

Barely a week later, Avinash decided that his hair was too long and he needed a haircut.

He walked by the Badshah saloon three times to make sure that Aziz had a customer and Sultan was free. Then glancing around to see that no one was looking he walked in as nonchalantly as he could. Sultan was reading the newspaper and looked up as Avinash came in. If he was surprised to see him he didn’t show it. He just put the paper down and said, ‘Haircut?’

Avinash nodded, not quite trusting himself to speak.

Sultan was wearing a dark blue shirt and brown pants of some slightly shiny material. Avinash could see the blue straps of his sandals. The shirt was not tucked in and the first two buttons were, as usual, undone. Inside he wore a white vest. Avinash could see a few strands of chest hair peeping over the top of his vest and for some inexplicable reason that made his heart pound. Avinash had seen the hair on his father’s chest many times but it had never made his heart go faster. He wondered if Sultan would notice that he too had left one button undone on his own shirt or that his pants were a little too tight. But Sultan did not say anything.

‘Sit down,’ he said pointing to a chair.

Avinash sat down and then said, ‘Oh, I must not spoil the shirt with hair. Can I take it off?’

‘Yes, but you’ll get hair all over yourself then.’

‘I know, but my mother will kill me if I get hair all over the shirt.’

Sultan shrugged and handed him a hanger.

Avinash started unbuttoning his shirt, sure that his ears were bright red. As he sat down on the chair again he saw in the mirror his scrawny body, the flat chest with all the ribs showing through his white banian and wished he’d kept his shirt on. But it was too late. Sultan was preparing to drape the big white sheet around him. Avinash felt Sultan’s fingers knot it behind his neck and then his hands patting the sheet down over his body. His heart was racing like an express train.

Sultan opened his drawer and took out his scissors and clippers.

‘So how do you want it – short?’

Avinash wanted to say, ‘Like yours.’ Sultan’s hair was brushed up in front and carefully styled at the back so it just curled over his collars. His sideburns were long and angled. But Avinash knew that was never going to work as long as there were hair-checks.

‘Yes, short,’ Avinash said, resigned.

Sultan started humming a song as he began to snip the hair on the back of his head. Avinash sat there watching him through the mirror as if memorizing him, – the packet of cigarettes that showed through his shirt pocket, the watch with its stainless steel band, the golden chain always around his neck. Avinash tilted his head slightly to get a better view of him.

‘Hold still now,’ Sultan said holding him in place. The touch of his hand was warm and rough, almost electric against his skin and Avinash suddenly had a vision of holding his hand to his nose. What would it smell of – tobacco and hair-cream? He was acutely aware of his bare body under the sheet. Though there was no air conditioner, Avinash could feel goosebumps on his arms.

‘Sultan, I am going to get some tea,’ Aziz said.

‘Okay, can you get me a cup too?’ Then he looked at Avinash and said, ‘Do you want some?’

‘I don’t drink tea,’ Avinash said without thinking and then instantly regretted it.

‘Oh, are you still drinking milk?’ said Aziz laughing. ‘You are getting a moustache now – when will you start drinking tea?’

‘Let him be,’ Sultan said. ‘Look how skinny he is. He needs milk.’

Now Avinash wished he had never taken off that shirt. He watched Aziz leave the shop, the swivel door swinging behind him. Sultan was standing beside him now his body turned towards him as he cut his hair. His chest was at the level of his eyes. Avinash could see every strand of black silky hair pushing past the confines of Sultan’s vest. Avinash wondered what it would be like to touch them. Would he get hair on his chest too? His fingers itched to play with Sultan’s chest hair. Avinash edged his hands forward so that his fingers were almost touching Sultan’s leg.

Sultan moved forward and Avinash’s clenched knuckles grazed his pants. Sultan made no attempt to move his leg away. His heart beating with some delectable fear, Avinash left his hand there. As Sultan leaned in to trim his hair his legs pressed against Avinash’s knuckles. Avinash found himself wondering if his legs were hairy too. He felt he was sweating. And then he felt cold. Sultan raised his arm to hold his head firmly and Avinash could see the dark half moon of the shadow of his sweat in his armpit.

‘Oh, you are very fidgety,’ Sultan said.

Avinash looked up and he was smiling. His teeth had tobacco stains. Avinash smiled back. He was so very close to him. His hand pressed even more firmly against his trousers. Sultan smiled and his hands rested lightly on his shoulders. Very gently he started pressing Avinash’s shoulders, kneading the muscles through the cloth.

Then Avinash felt him go behind him and his hands unknotted the white sheet. It drifted down his body and settled on his lap.

‘Look at all the hair on your chest,’ Sultan laughed. ‘It’s almost as hairy as mine.’

He was rubbing him with a towel now brushing away the hair.

‘Oh, it’s not as hairy as yours,’ Avinash protested. ‘How old were you when you got hair on your chest?’