The Blue Notebook (26 page)

I see Iftikhar’s leg go back and I know what is coming. Nothing could have prepared me for the feeling as he kicks Rabbit’s mouth. My body explodes. I am barely conscious; noise fills my head. One of the boys, although I cannot tell which, says, “Well, you still haven’t fucked her.” In seconds that traverse many planes of time, I see Iftikhar walk over to Tiger and lift one of the ornamental swords off the bracket below Tiger’s
face. He carries it over to me. Iftikhar wears the same expression on his face as he did the first moment I saw him: steel resolve.

I feel the tip of the shining sword against Rabbit’s mouth. Just as the steel touches me, showers of electricity flood through me. I spasm in pain, and arch against Andy’s weight. The boys are screaming at him but Iftikhar yells them to silence. I see his face stare down at me over Andy’s back. I see him place the top of the sword handle against his stomach. The tip pushes against Rabbit’s mouth and the pain alone rips me apart. He stares at me and says, “Now who’s fucked, Batuk.” It is the first time he has spoken my name. Tiger roars for the heavens to come to earth and then I feel nothing.

The nurse told me I was in the newspaper, which amazed me, and I asked her to read what was written in the article as I do not speak English (except for a few choice phrases). I could hear the hesitation in her voice as she held up the newspaper. I was pleased for the company anyway. The actors around me appeared to be the hopeless, the moaning, the wailing, and the half dead. This hospital was more crowded and decrepit than the chicken coop I had been in when I was a child, and these patients were older and more helpless. The place reminded me more of the Orphanage, a receptacle for human garbage.

The stage was colorful: the deep red of blood-stained mattress covers and towels, the yellow of urine, some fresh and some years old, the shades of gray of my fellow patients, the
orange of iodine, and the pale blue-brown mixture on the walls where there was less paint than more. There was an opera of sound too: the jingle-jangle of the steel carts, the rustling of the uniforms, the voices of medical hierarchy, and the sublime chorus of the patient choir, some singing their finales. The smell was an invisible but essential part of the atmosphere, a blend of ammonia, decaying human flesh, and unclean mouths all simmering together to form the distinct odor of death.

The nurse started by clearing her throat. She read slowly, as she was translating the English for me.

Carnage in luxury hotel. Today police are investigating the massacre of four young men found slaughtered in the penthouse suite of the Royal Imperial Hotel, Mumbai. One of them is the eighteen-year-old son of Delhi billionaire Purah “Bubba” Singh. Chief Repaul stated that all available leads are being explored to find the guilty ones.

She cleared her throat again.

Bubba Singh was not available for comment, although a source close to the family stated that Mr. Singh’s son was having a party after successfully completing his school exams. He was planning to enter the family business. The tragedy for Bubba Singh was compounded because another of the victims was his son-in-law, Oojam “Andy” Tandor, who leaves a young widow. Sources close to the prominent family revealed that she is pregnant and expecting in the spring. There was only one survivor. A maid, Hita Randohl, discovered the bodies and called hotel security. She is currently being questioned intensively by the police.

The nurse looked up at me. “That’s you they’re talking about.” I smiled. Here in this newspaper, just as when all my bakers return to their wives, I had become anonymous, “one survivor.” She continued:

Police were called to the luxury hotel, which has hosted many celebrities and stars such as Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Margaret Thatcher, U.S. senators, and the Police rock music group. There were reports by hotel guests of loud music and boisterous behavior during the entire evening. A major disturbance was first reported to hotel security around midnight. Mr. Ghundra-Chapur, the manager of the hotel, reported that hotel security guards responded immediately to the maid’s emergency call. He said that when the guards entered the luxury suite and found the bodies, the police were immediately called. “This is a terrible tragedy, and our thoughts and prayers are with the families,” Ghundra-Chapur said.

In Chief Repaul’s statement, he reported that “the four young men were killed by violent means.” Although he denied gunshots, he would not reveal the cause of death at this time. Hotel guests confirmed that they did not hear gunshots. “Just loud music,” one of the guests, Mr. Peter Seville from Connecticut in the USA, said.

The deaths have already rocked the Mumbai business community. “No resources will be spared to find the guilty” Chief Repaul stated.

It was obvious that there was more in the paper, but the nurse shut it. She shouted for an elderly orderly to bring her a towel, and she wiped my sweating brow with a damp cloth and disappeared.

The last few days have not gone well. Whenever they withdraw the pain medications, the pain becomes excruciating. I can still feel Iftikhar’s shoe and the sword’s steel, but when the medications are given back to me, I see gray and sleep. I am having more fevers today. The nurse pushes several types of cream into my bottom to make me go brown, but I cannot go. The doctor in his white coat shook his head while writing on my board earlier; his silent gaggle of attendants looked downward. I even sense that the nurses are giving me less attention, as if their time would be better invested elsewhere. During my high fevers they make sure the old attendant wipes my brow, and when the fevers subside they say, “Try to drink some broth.” I feel tired all the time. When I am not feverish, I must write. All that is left of me is ink.

The policeman has come to see me twice more to ask if I remember anything else about that night—but I do not. The policeman is nice. He has read my writings and looks at me with pity. I never asked for his pity but he gives it freely. I sense
he is desperate because today he was asking me the same questions as before but with greater intensity. He asks me a lot about Mr. Vas. “Was he there?” “Did you see him at all that night?” I have already said no many times to these questions. Now I just shake my head to save the energy of speech. I smile and remember his light blue suit. I know the policeman wants me to say that I saw Mr. Vas that night but I did not. Mr. Vas brought me here to the hospital, he tells me.

Why did Mr. Vas pluck me off the street, clasp me in his arms, and gently lay me on this hospital bed? I have no idea. He has not been to visit me.

The policeman asks me again if I know who carried out the attacks and again I explain that Tiger did.

In my fever I see circles of different colors and different sizes moving forward and backward and to the side—zooming around and sometimes still. The world is circles—or are they hats?—that connect this to that in invisible moving patterns.

Last night was the worst but I will not write of it. There is only a little ink left.

Today there is great excitement in the hospital room because the senior professor is coming to inspect all the patients. The linens are changed; my face and body are washed. I am propped up in bed, cushioned by two pillows. The fevers are worse. The
professor enters, followed by an entourage of doctors in white coats and nurses. He is a gray, slim man dressed in a smart suit, and he wears glasses. He parades from bed to bed as one of the younger doctors in a white coat talks before him. The professor asks a few questions, nods his head in a scholarly way, writes for a second on the board at the end of the bed, and then goes to the next patient. He is getting nearer to me and I feel quite anxious. He comes to me. The young doctor is nervous too. The pockets of his white coat bulge, full of pamphlets and papers, and he has his listening tube hung from his neck like a scarf. The young doctor starts to talk about me but is interrupted. “Oh, here she is,” the professor says, and looks over his glasses at me. I try to smile. The professor continues in a voice that echoes his station in life, “Yes, I have had calls about her … carry on,” he says to the junior doctor, who starts babbling in medical words. The professor listens and asks several questions of the young doctor that sound like a knife stabbing cheese. The young doctor is pouring sweat; it is as though he is being interrogated. “Oh, terrible, terrible,” the professor says, slowly shaking his head. He then says in a voice that will be obeyed, “I would give her maximum doses of the antibiotics … she is young. Her kidneys will be fine … what choice is there?”

He scribbles in the chart and is about to walk on when he halts and comes to stand next to my bed. He reaches his hand down and touches my arm. “What is your name?” he asks in a kindly tone. “Batuk,” I say. “Batuk, that is a lovely name. Now, how are you feeling today?” “Good … Professor … thank you,” I answer. “Well, that is a good girl,” he says. “I want you to do your best to get better.” He smiles at me, a large empty
smile, takes his hand off my arm, and walks on to the next patient.

Even though there is a stack of paper next to my bed, I have not written for days. The policeman seems to have lost interest in my writing too. The times I am in high fever now exceed those in which I am cool. The bent-over old orderly somehow keeps up with my demand for dry towels to wipe my soaking head and body. When I reach my hand across to the little square wooden table that is next to my bed, there is always a dry towel there. The nurses check my temperature all the time but have stopped trying to make me drink the soup.

On top of the intense pain between my legs and the never-ceasing fevers, I start coughing. The trouble is, I am too weak to cough up the thick slime in my lungs. The nurse sits me forward, pounds on my back for a while, waits for me to spit up what looks like congealed yogurt, and off she goes. With each bout of fever, my strength, or what remains, is sapped a little more. I try so hard to cough. Last night I had a terrible incident—I coughed and coughed; some other patient told me to be quiet, but I could not. So I concentrated all my strength and did one huge cough. As the slime trickled out of my mouth I also did brown and pissed in the bed. I was too ashamed to tell anyone and lay in its warmth. The nurse scolded me only gently in the morning before she cleaned me.

The doctor today asked if I’d had TB. I told him I had it when I was little. “I think it has come back,” said the doctor. “Oh,” I said.

They have given me more pain medication with a needle,
for which I thank them. The nurse cleans Bunny Rabbit and tries not to show emotion, but I can see white, smelly cream on the dressings. I look at my piss-bag and there is brown in that. I can also see that the skin of my thighs is bright red. The nurse cleans me up and waits. She is patient and the room is no longer that noisy. The orderly still delivers clean towels but I no longer have the strength to say thank you. I try to mouth to him. He pads my head with a cool towel and pushes a cold glass to my lips. As I sip, I taste sherbet. It is cool and sweet but a flood of warmth courses through my body like the river does in the monsoon, flooding her banks. The black ink starts to dissolve and I feel it seeping away from me. I am a child back on my father’s lap. I smell perfumes and food and sweat on him. He pushes more sherbet in my mouth and I hear my tiny, naughty voice, “Daddy, Daddy … please, please. Go on, tell me.” “No,” he says like a wisp of breeze against my ear. But I know he will bend to my will. “Daddy, please tell me my story.” Then, as his soft voice unfolds, his chest rumbles with each beloved syllable and I inhale not only him, but also the essence of the river that connects us all.