The Blue Notebook (25 page)

“Why don’t you get that pretty dress off?” he whispers in my ear. I oblige. He then fiddles a little to remove the bra and I feel a little depleted, remembering the huge offerings of the ugly girl. I realize that I am still young but know that I will never become that generous in my body. He starts to kiss my breasts and then he pushes his hand between my legs. I lie and stare at the bathroom door. I am thinking to myself that one day I would like to write a story about the tiger. I call out “Tiger” with my under-voice. Bhim’s teeth nip my left nipple and I flinch; I wince in feigned pain, as many cooks love to hurt me. He carries on kissing my breast. I think of Tiger asleep in the next room.

Bhim says, “Oh, you are all wet for me, baby,” as he wedges a hand between my legs. “Yes. You are very handsome,” I say. Has he forgotten that I have Jay-Boy’s spill in me?

“Wake up, Tiger. I am going to write a story about you one day. I need you to tell me about your mummy and daddy and the other cubs. Tell me about the jungles you ran through and all the deer you hunted. Wake up, Tiger!”

Bhim is kissing me between my legs on Bunny Rabbit’s mouth. Can he taste Jay-Boy? I find this thought pleasing and
rub his hair as he licks and partakes of Jay-Boy. He wants me to roll on top of him. He wants me to stare down at him as I move on him. I oblige. The bhunnas is not excessive in size and I pitch to and fro. He closes his eyes, only to open them to ensure that I am looking at him, which I am. How you pace a man is important; too fast and he deflates (Iftikhar’s limitations were not by my design), too long and he burns out. It is like baking a cake. I am concerned that since Ugly Girl has just worked him, Bhim will take forever. I need not have worried; with seven or eight twists of my hips as I descend on him, Bhim gives himself to me. He is delighted with his sweet-cake. I smile at him amorously and politely excuse myself. I close the bathroom door shut, pull my bundle of paper from behind the sink, turn on the bathtub faucets, and write. I feel a growing desperation to melt within my ink.

The room is steaming up. There is a violent knocking at the door which then flies open.

Plain white paper

I will never be able to explain exactly how this sheet follows the last. Words come to me with far greater effort both mentally and physically. I sit in bed with my back against a steel frame. On awakening, I did not immediately realize that I was in a hospital, probably because of the medication, which I think is also making me feel woozy and sick. The pain is returning and so the medication must be weakening.

My memories of the events that brought me here are, like my words, only sketchy. It has taken me a couple of days to patch together the events that took me from the bathroom to this hospital bed.

The police sergeant is interested in my account of what happened and has asked me to write down everything I can remember. He was dumbfounded when he learned that I could write. He went and got my blue notebook from under the mattress in the Tiger Suite and took away all my other writings. Lying here, I have been told that I have nothing to fear from the police. I think that I may have much to gain by aiding them; the doctors will certainly not forget me with the police coming every day to talk to me.

As best as I can recollect, here is what happened.

The urgent knocking on the bathroom door was only Gee-Gee, the pretty girl, who had to clean out Jay-Boy from inside her. He had apparently dealt with her on the armchair in the
main room while I had been baking with Bhim. She agreed with me that he was easy to please. I remember we giggled like schoolgirls after I told her how amazingly beautiful I thought she was. She was naked below the waist, which made the moment between us even more sisterly. “So what are you doing in here?” she asked. “I am writing,” I answered after some hesitation. “What are you writing?” I showed her the sheet of paper I was writing on and the whole pile of my writing that rested on my lap. She took hold of the pile and fanned through it in silence. The sheets of blue script blurred into one; I knew she could not read but did not want to offend her. “It is just my silly thoughts,” I say. She looks at me with a pure smile of sunshine and says, “You are so pretty and so clever …” She fans the pile of paper again, looking at it in awe. She asks, “How old are you?” “Fifteen,” I answer. “Did you come from a brothel or are you private?” “Brothel,” I say. I am ashamed to tell her that I come from the Common Street, as it is the lowest level. Girls from brothels are far higher, and private girls the best. “How about you?” I ask. “Private,” she says. I am not surprised as she is so beautiful and poised. She would have known the foreigner hotels well. “You make good money?” she asks. “Mamaki keeps my share for me for when I am older.” Gee-Gee bursts out laughing. “Oh darling, are you being serious?” “My name is Batuk,” I say. She looks at me, pauses a second, and she understands, for she too is nameless. She says, “Batuk, you will never see a rupee of that money! You need to get out while …” She is interrupted by Bhim, who has silently appeared at the bathroom doorway. “Get your asses in the main room,” he says.

After issuing his command, Bhim halts. He looks at the pile
of papers in Gee-Gee’s hand and pries them from her. I watch him and hold my breath. The second I see his eyes scanning the lines I know he can read. “No,” I scream and instinctively throw myself at him, grasping for the papers. What a terrible mistake. He pushes me back. I come at him again but he kicks me to the floor with savage thrusts of his right leg (not so gentle now). He takes a couple of steps backward out of the bathroom, brandishing the papers high above his head. “Now what is this?” he asks. “It is just my silly scribbling,” I say beseechingly to him. “Please give them back to me. They are just my silly stories.” I run at him for the third time but he sees me coming and swats me away with the back of his left hand. He shouts, “Jay-Boy get in here right now.” Jay-Boy runs into the bedroom and Bhim tells him with a huge grin on his face, “Hold her back.” Bhim is the beggar who was just handed a glass of water to find it full of diamonds. Jay-Boy grabs me round the waist, twists me away from Bhim, and I start kicking. Gee-Gee slinks into the main room. Jay-Boy takes my wrists and pins them against the bedroom wall; he presses his body into mine so that I am stuck. I stop struggling altogether.

Bhim sits on the bed and reads. I can hear the television in the main room but nothing else. Bhim starts to laugh. “You have got to hear this,” he says to no one in particular. He starts reading to Jay-Boy in a melodramatic voice and I start to cry.

I placed my palms on the outside of his thighs again and gently started to stroke up and down. I lowered my head and started to kiss the inside of his right knee. I could taste the remnants of soap on his skin. I heard him moan and then felt his thighs contract on my head. He cried
out. I looked up and saw that he was emitting his essence skyward. It had taken seconds. They were short little white squirts, six of them. His bhunnas must have been slightly angled to the right, as some of the juice splashed onto his right thigh and then slid downward. The remainder was in my hair. I hesitated and then drove my head deep between his thighs and started hungrily kissing both his legs. I pushed my head into him so that his thighs divided and I started to kiss his scrotum. I moaned, “Oh master … oh master … thank you.”

Jay-Boy hoots like a baboon. “How about this?” Bhim says, and reads aloud,

I sense that intellectual pursuit arouses Iftikhar.

“Wait until his father hears that. Iftikhar failed so many exams this year that even Bubba can’t afford him anymore.” He and Jay-Boy burst out laughing. I feel Jay-Boy’s body bounce against mine as he laughs.

Bhim carries on and says, “You have got to hear this …”

I shuffle and sit on the edge of the bed and open my legs. He steps between them. His little candy stick winks at me through the cotton. I start to slide his briefs off over his hips. I only get them a few inches down when I see the first tiny pulsation and then the throbbing as he empties. A dark, wet patch spreads before my eyes into the cotton of his underwear. He stares down as if there were a foreign object taped to his groin.

“It looks as though math and chemistry aren’t the only things our friend Iftikhar fails at.” They are doubled up with laughter. Jay-Boy repeats
“little candy stick”
in hysterics.

Bhim walks into the main room brandishing my papers. Jay-Boy follows, half dragging me; he has me tightly gripped around the waist. I am kicking and screaming, “No, no, no.” As we enter the main room, Iftikhar looks around. Initially, Ugly Girl was concealed by the back of the sofa but now I can see her kneeling in front of Andy, who has his trousers crumpled around his ankles and his underpants stretched across his knees. Her head is bobbing up and down on Andy’s groin. She does not miss a beat even when the three of us enter (she is a professional). Bhim starts to read the same passages with the same theatrical tone. Ugly Girl now stops and resorts to swirling hand actions on Andy; she is all ears. As Bhim finishes the first excerpt, Iftikhar looks over at me; I am now flaccid in Jay-Boy’s arms. Even though I cannot think of anything to say, I know it will not make a difference. What is more, I feel no regret. The second piece that Bhim reads out roots Iftikhar to the spot and the third piece annihilates him. I see his entire being tighten like a drawn bow. Then he snaps.
Twang!
He leaps for me. Jay-Boy sees him move and spins me away from Iftikhar but does not release me. Bhim is doubled with laughter and Andy is smiling.

Iftikhar has spun to the other side of the room and screams so loudly that Ugly Girl drops Andy’s bhunnas, which flops down like a fallen battle standard. Iftikhar yells, “Shut up. Bloody shut up, Bhim.” Bhim turns to him. “Heh, Ifti, don’t shoot off your mouth at me.” There is a moment’s silence before Jay-Boy and Andy get the joke and burst out laughing; Ugly Girl got it right away but knew better than to laugh. I watch Iftikhar implode. Then he turns his gaze to me, half shielded by Jay-Boy’s body. Iftikhar says, looking straight at me,
“So you all want to see me fuck her, and hear the bitch scream as I do it? Is that what you all want?” Bhim answers, “Will I miss it if I blink?” Iftikhar turns to him and in naked hatred spits the words, “I said, do you want to see me fuck her? Yes or no?” “Iftikhar, I would love to see it—perhaps during a TV advert,” Bhim says.

Iftikhar’s voice is loud but controlled as he speaks over his friends’ laughter. “Boys, pin her down on the floor for me. She is going to scream to hell when I am through with her. Bitch,” he says as he looks over to me, “you will feel my love for eternity.” Iftikhar is past the point where he can regain himself. He topples the low glass table aside from where it was located in the center of the sofas and chairs. The sound of the glass breaking is deafening, as if to invoke silence from the onlookers, who no longer speak or laugh. Iftikhar says to Jay-Boy “Bring her over here.” Jay-Boy hesitates and Iftikhar tosses his head and screams, “I said bring that little whore over here.” He obeys and pushes me toward Iftikhar, who stands where the table has been. I do not resist. I look within Iftikhar’s eyes and see where the rats have gnawed away at his inner remnants. He walks up to me, holding my gaze, and in one action punches me across the face. I do not lose consciousness but the impact and the pain disorient me. I shake my head, look within, and laugh.

I feel the happiness that the insane feel when they are released from the confines of the ordinary world. “Get her on the ground,” Iftikhar says. “Andy, sit on her chest.” Andy replies,
“Ifti … this isn’t a great idea. We all know the little whore made it up. You told me you fucked her crazy, like ten times … we don’t need to see you … right, Bhim?” he asks Bhim, almost begging. There is silence. I notice that the girls have disappeared. Bhim is silent for several seconds. He eventually says, “Actually, Andy, I do want to see Iftikhar fuck her. I just hope I don’t sneeze and miss it.” Bhim continues with a soft smile on his face, “Andy, sit your ass on her chest like he told you.” I start kicking like a crazed animal as Jay-Boy pushes me down, in part by kicking me at the back of my right knee. Andy lowers his globular mass onto my chest so that all I can see is his back; there is sweat soaking through his shirt and glistening on the back of his neck. These boys are now a herd.

Iftikhar says, “Jay-Boy, Bhim, take a leg and spread her wide.” Jay-Boy kneels below my feet, grasps my ankles, and spreads my legs apart. I start clawing at Andy’s back. He cries out. Bhim grasps my wrists, drags them over my head, and sits on my arms. I feel my dress pushed up my legs. Then I see Iftikhar standing between my legs. I feel him pushing his shoe onto Bunny Rabbit’s mouth. Eyeing me, he says, “So, little whore, you think Iftikhar can’t fuck you, huh?” I say loud enough for Tiger to hear, “Ifti baby, you couldn’t fuck a cabbage.”