In Other Rooms, Other Wonders Read online

‘This is Husna,’ K. K. said to the woman, who had taken a seat on the sofa beside the young girl. ‘Husna will graduate soon and is looking for a teaching position.’

  ‘How interesting,’ said the woman.

  They had been speaking in English, and Husna exposed her poor accent, saying, ‘It is very good to meet you.’

  Two servants carried in a tea trolley and placed it before the newcomer. The butler, Rafik, brought two whiskeys on a small silver tray.

  ‘Cheers,’ said Husky, taking a sip and very slightly smacking his lips. ‘How nice to have a fire.’

  Riffat Begum poured out tea, offering a cup to Husna. The conversation wandered, and Riffat looked meaningfully at Husna once or twice. When she went out in society with Begum Harouni, Husna was not a guest, not even really a presence, but a recourse for the old lady, to fetch and carry, to stay beside her so that the Begum would not be left alone. Unable now to meet the occasion, Husna followed the conversation from face to face, the skin around her mouth taut as if frozen. Abruptly she stood up, catching a foot on the tea trolley, rattling the cups and saucers.

  ‘Thank you, Uncle, for your help and your kind advice,’ she said, although K. K. had given her no advice whatsoever. She meant this as an opening to him, at least as a reproach.

  ‘Let me have the car drop you.’ He followed Husna onto the verandah, while the driver brought the car. ‘First of all, you need to develop some skills,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you learn to type? Come tomorrow and I’ll arrange for Shah Sahib to give you lessons.’

  As she got in the car he gave her a fatherly kiss on the cheek.

  When he returned to the living room, Riffat raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips. ‘Naughty naughty,’ she said, exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke.

  K. K. took a sip of whiskey. ‘At my age, my dear, she’s in no danger.’

  Husna came every few days for typing lessons. She would sit in the dark office off the living room, inconveniencing Shah Sahib, the secretary, who could not continue his own work until she had abandoned her weak efforts. He tried to show her the correct technique, but she refused to learn, and insisted upon typing by hunt and peck, getting through her daily half page as quickly as possible. One of the servants would bring her a cup of tea, which she drank with Shah Sahib, who also at that time received two slices of grilled cheese toast, a treat that made his stomach growl, and one that he ensured by being of service to the cook, passing his bills without question.

  K. K. Harouni, who had been a polo and tennis player until he suffered a heart attack seven years earlier, took a walk morning and evening, totaling exactly four miles each day. Usually he went from one end to the other of the serpentine back garden, but a few days after Husna began her lessons, a winter rain wet the grass. Mildly enjoying the break in routine, that evening he walked on the brick-paved front driveway, looping around a circular lawn and through a carport in which a misplaced glass chandelier cast a friendly yellow light.

  At dusk he heard a rickshaw enter the drive and park at the far end, next to the gatekeeper’s shelter, its two-stroke engine crackling. After a moment a figure stepped from the door of the secretary’s office and tripped rapidly down toward the gate. Lengthening his stride, K. K. came up behind her.

  ‘Hello, Husna,’ he said.

  She stopped and turned. As before, she wore too much makeup and clothes that were too bright. She carried her large white purse on a long chain over one shoulder, and had covered her hair with a dupatta. ‘Hello, Uncle,’ she said, her face involuntarily stretching into a broad smile.

  ‘You’re very cheerful. And how are your lessons?’

  ‘Thank you, Uncle,’ she said.

  ‘Why don’t you walk with me?’

  ‘My ride is waiting.’ She spoke timidly, for she felt ashamed to be seen taking a rickshaw, which only the lower classes used. ‘Tell him to go, and later the driver can take you.’

  They began walking, Husna taking two strides to every one of his, clicking along in her heels. Her feet began to hurt, and whenever they came to a puddle he would step aside and allow her to go first, so that she had to hurry awkwardly in front of him.

  ‘Those shoes aren’t good for walking,’ he said, looking at her from behind as she skirted a puddle. ‘Your feet are hurting, aren’t they?’

  ‘No, it’s fine, really it is.’ She didn’t want to lose this chance of his company.

  ‘Why don’t you take them off. Don’t be shy, there’s no one here.’

  ‘You’re joking with me, Uncle.’

  Hesitating for a moment, she reached down and undid the straps, her hand resting tentatively on his shoulder.

  When they came to the next puddle, he stopped, amused. ‘And now that you’re barefoot, let’s see you jump over the puddle.’

  Quickening, she glanced at him sideways, still a girl at twenty, still playing tag with her cousins in the courtyard of her parents’ home; and yet aware of men’s eyes flickering over her as she walked through the lanes of the Old City.

  He took her hand and swung it. ‘One, two, three, over you go!’

  She hesitated for moment, refusing the jump, then leapt, landing just at the edge and splashing.

  ‘Try again, the second one!’ he urged, and she jumped the next puddle, clearing it, then turning to face him, laughing.

  ‘Well done! I’ve had ponies that couldn’t do as well.’

  ‘Now you are joking with me.’

  Rafik came out of the house and reported a telephone call from K. K.’s youngest daughter, Sarwat, who was married to a tremendously wealthy industrialist and lived in Karachi. K. K. went inside, walking unhurriedly, and Husna sat down in one of the chairs placed on the verandah for the petitioners who came each morning, asking the old man for letters to government officials or for work on his farms.

  Rafik stood next to her, relaxed, looking out into the night. He glanced at her bare feet but made no comment.

  ‘So, Husna Bibi,’he said, ‘how are the good people over at Begum Sahib’s house? How is Chacha Latif?’

  Chacha Latif played the corresponding role of butler in the house of K. K.’s estranged wife, and Rafik maintained cordial relations with him. As a matter of comity they kept each other informed of household gossip.

  Understanding this oblique reference to the fact that Chacha Latif treated her with little ceremony, as an equal, Husna sweetly replied, ‘He’s well, Uncle, thank you.’

  AS SHE RODE home in the back seat of K. K.’s large if old car, looking at the back of the chauffeur’s immense head, Husna’s complex thoughts ran along several lines. Given to fits of crushing gray lassitude and then to brimming moments that approached hysteria, she had always believed she would escape the gloominess of her parents’ house. She would escape the bare concrete steps, layered with dust, leading up into rooms without windows, the walls painted bright glossy colors, as if to make up for the gloom, the television covered with an embroidered cloth. She had spoiled herself with daydreams, until her parents were afraid of her moods.

  She despised them for living so much in the past, retelling the stories of their grandparents’ land and money, and yet at the same time she felt entitled to rejoin that world and felt aggrieved at being excluded from it. Taking service in an ambiguous position with Begum Harouni had been the greatest concession she ever made to her mediocre prospects, and having made this concession increased her determination to rise, although she had no idea how to go about it.

  Husna knew that she could never hope to marry or attract a young man from one of the rich established families. Wearing clothes just better than those of a maidservant, she saw them from a distance at the weddings to which she accompanied Begum Harouni. At that time, in the 1980s, the old barons still dominated the government, the prime minister a huge feudal landowner. Their sons, at least the quick ones, the adapted ones, became ministers at thirty, immaculate, blowing through dull parties, making an appearance, familiar with their elders, on their way to somewhere else,
to cool rooms where ice and alcohol glowed on the table, those rooms where deals were made; she imagined them gliding through foreign airports, at ease in the European cities that she read about. She would even have sought a place in the demimonde of singers and film actresses, bright and dangerous creatures from poor backgrounds, but she had neither talent nor beauty. Only determination and cunning distinguished her, invisible qualities.

  The chauffeur, knowing without being told that Husna would not wish to be seen going home late at night in the old man’s car, dropped her just inside the gate of the house in fashionable Gulberg. K. K. had given this house to his wife when, finally and uncharacteristically, he made a firm decision and told her she must leave. Unable to keep Harouni’s attention, barely out of purdah, Begum Harouni had tried amulets, philters, spells – he joked to his friends that she would end up poisoning him by accident. But one day she came onto the verandah off his bedroom, where he was having tea with a lady friend and innocently playing rummy. She stood, her back humped, spitting in Punjabi, ‘Leave my house, leave my husband alone, you witch!’ And Harouni’s friend, a convent-schooled society woman who barely spoke Punjabi and had only a vague idea who this lady might be, kept asking, ‘But what’s she saying, K. K.? Should I leave?’ He had not, however, divorced his wife, having no intention of remarrying and no desire to humiliate her. Old Begum Harouni thereafter lived in a state of suspended equilibrium, hoping to be recalled to her husband’s side.

  Husna cautiously walked up the straight, long drive, bordered with bougainvillea and jasmine. She went to the back, where the servants lay under blankets in the courtyard, and slipped through an open door, through the filthy kitchen, which smelled of garlic and curry, and into the heavily carpeted dining room. Over the fireplace, which had not been lit in years, she saw her face in a mirror. The irregularity of her features, her straight, dry hair, her small mouth, all caused her to cringe inwardly and suddenly to feel vulnerable. She felt the immensity of her encounter with K. K. Harouni. The old lady didn’t wake when Husna crept in, but just before dawn she called her, saying that she couldn’t sleep, and told the young girl to massage her legs.

  Husna continued going for lessons, and thrice in the first weeks walked with K. K., who then sent her home in the car. She tried to limit these encounters, fearing that Begum Harouni would discover the growing relationship and would send her away, back to her parents.

  On the days when she allowed herself to see him, Husna would stay in the office after the secretary left, gazing out of a window that overlooked the long garden where K. K. walked. She didn’t read, but sat at the desk surrounded by books in both English and Urdu, her chin resting on her hands. She did not even plan, but floated through images.

  Whenever she saw a girl her age stepping from a large new car in Liberty Market, among the expensive shops, or glittering in a pair of diamond drops at a wedding, Husna’s mind would hang on these symbols of wealth, not letting go for hours. She sensed that all this might come to her through Harouni, if she became his mistress. In the Old City where she grew up, the neighborhood pointed with shaming fingers at women from less than respectable families who were kept by merchants. The eyes of these creatures glided over the crowd as they rode on tongas, emerging untouched from dark streets where sewage flowed in the drain, as prominent as targets in brightest red silk, lipstick, gold. Husna’s mother ground out remarks of the price to be paid, broken relations with family, broken old age.

  The young girl’s fear of Harouni had dissipated, and she let herself be seen, critical, quick-witted, sensual, and slightly crude. Not despite but because of his sophistication, he found her manner piquant. She did not behave or speak like the women he normally met, for she had always inhabited an indefinite space, neither rich nor poor, neither servant nor begum, in a city where the very concept of a middle class still found expression only in a few households, managers of banks and of the big industrial concerns, sugar and textiles and steel. As a boy Harouni had slept with maidservants, lost his virginity to one of them at fourteen. Husna evoked those ripe first encounters.

  Six weeks after Husna’s first walk with K. K., Begum Harouni announced a pilgrimage to the holy places, in order to perform the umrah. Husna decided to bring the Begum’s impending departure into the conversation that afternoon, before any guests arrived and interrupted them.

  When Rafik brought his afternoon tea into the living room, K. K. could hear the typewriter clacking in the background. It stopped, and then Husna knocked. She opened the door, showing her head without entering.

  ‘Come in, my dear.’

  Husna’s cultivation of the butler Rafik had progressed, to the point that he included an extra cup on the tea trolley. She drew herself forward and made K. K.’s tea exactly as he liked it. A boy passed a plate of biscuits, while Rafik stood back on his heels by the door.

  ‘When I’m here,’ said Husna, ‘everything is so nice and everyone is pleasant. These biscuits, the tea. Shah Sahib tries so hard to teach me the typing, though I can’t seem to learn.’ She held out her hands and spread the fingers in front of him, like a cat stretching. ‘My hands are so tiny, I can’t reach the keys. But then all of me is small.’

  She wore a fitted kurta, showing the cleft of her breasts, which jutted out from her muscular youthful torso. Their eyes met; they both saw the joke, and he allowed himself a tight-lipped smile, his normally placid expression becoming avid and boyish.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been telling you about,’ Husna purred, putting her hand on his arm. ‘Your crocodile smile, the one I like.’

  After pausing for a moment, she lowered her eyes and said in a meek voice, ‘But soon I won’t be able to come here. The Begum is going on umrah, so I’ll have to be in charge of her house.’

  ‘Not umrah again!’ said K. K. ‘It’s becoming a vice with her. But darling, don’t be ridiculous. If she’s away you can come even more regularly.’

  ‘When the Begum is gone they don’t cook any food at all, just the servants’ food. I sometimes go into the bazaar to eat. And Begum Sahiba doesn’t like me to use the electricity.’

  ‘You poor thing,’ said K. K. ‘And you ask so little.’

  Husna’s eyes became moist. ‘Yesterday Begum Sahiba had gone out when I got back to the house, and she had locked all the doors and taken the keys with her. I stood under the trees in front for three hours. And if I eat anything from the refrigerator she becomes angry at me. And when she’s gone on umrah the servants will take liberties; they’ll make jokes and want me to sit with them. She won’t leave me any money.’ She wiped her eyes with her dupatta, head cast down. ‘When Begum Sahiba is harsh, what can I do?’

  ‘Come, little one,’ said K. K., patting the sofa next to him. ‘Come sit here. Don’t cry.’ K. K. Harouni avoided unpleas antness at all costs, for he lived in a world as measured and as concentric as that of the Sun King at Versailles. He did not like to see her cry, because it upset him. She slipped into the place next to him and nestled under his arm, still tearful, but muffling her face in his sweater. He stroked her hair.

  ‘Now stop,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come stay here while the Begum is on umrah? I’ll have them fix up the rooms in the annex.’

  Husna looked out from under her eyelashes and smiled weakly. ‘Oh, I would like that too much. Then I could keep you company when you’re alone and make your tea for you. And I would practice typing every day for a long time. And I’ll study for the M.A. exams.’

  K. K. cared nothing for what his wife or the servants thought. He ordered the annex to be prepared, a suite of rooms built over some garages at the far side of the compound. The rooms had been refurbished several years earlier, when important guests from India had come for a long stay, and so Husna would live in better quarters than ever before in her life, with uninterrupted supplies of good food, servants who more or less did her bidding, and the occasional use of the car. To Husna it felt like a validation, almost like revenge, and yet with the bitterness of
triumph after humiliation.

  She simply disappeared from the house in Gulberg. Begum Harouni learned of her departure from the servants. The old lady stormed over to see her husband but found him impervious to her outrage.

  ‘I’ll never take that little ... thing back into my house,’ said Begum Harouni. ‘Imagine! I picked her from the dirt, from nothing, and I fed and clothed her.’

  ‘It reflects well upon you, my dear,’ responded K. K. placidly.

  Husna brought her shabby luggage to the house on Aikman Road, a brown suitcase bulging and strapped. She had clothes and shoes, not much else, had arrived in a rickshaw – the facts soon communicated through the house by the snickering community of washermen, drivers, sweepers, household servants. After Begum Harouni had gone on the pilgrimage, Husna asked K. K. for the use of the car, and went back to the old lady’s house. At first the butler, Chacha Latif, would not let her in, but Husna raised her voice and became abusive, and the servant, knowing that she might later be in a position to injure him, let her do what she wanted. All the closets had been locked, but she found a few of her things – a pile of Indian movie magazines, a little dish with an image of the Eiffel Tower that her grandfather had brought home from a European tour in the 1920s. When she went out, she discovered K. K.’s driver speaking with Chacha Latif.

  ‘What does he say?’ said Husna to the driver as they returned along Golf Road, driving in and out of shadow under flame-of-the-forest trees.

  ‘Nothing, Bibi,’ said Samundar Khan.

  ‘Nothing? Not anything at all?’ replied Husna, speaking in sharp Punjabi. And then, leaning back in the seat, added, ‘You drivers are always the clever ones.’

  A week after she moved into the annex, Husna slept with K. K. Harouni. He had visitors for lunch, an old civil service friend, a State Bank governor, and his cousin, the retired General Karim, along with their wives. They took lunch in the room known as ‘the White Verandah,’ shaded by a pipul tree and overlooking a side garden. Already, in early April, the ceiling fans barely kept the room cool. Husna remained in the annex, trying to read a dull and badly printed history of the Sikh Wars, in which K. K.’s ancestors had fought. Though she wanted to make herself interesting to the old man, reading serious books, she never finished what she began, lapsing instead into daydreams or reading secondhand magazines that she bought from a used-book stall. A servant boy brought her a tray of food, the same food that the cook was serving to K. K. and his guests.