In Other Rooms, Other Wonders Page 8

  He carried the chair across the room and sat down, his elbows on his knees, looking into the little girl’s face and at Zainab’s hair, which fell over the baby.

  For several months Jaglani had been feeling unwell. A few days after this little scene with the baby, Jaglani learned that he had bone cancer, and that he would be dead within six months. When he didn’t visit the village for a week Zainab went to see her brother Mustafa, who spent each Friday night with his family in Dunyapur.

  ‘You’d better come inside,’ said Mustafa. He took her into a neat room, adorned with the fruits of his petty thefts, his inflated bills – a television and video player, a sewing machine covered with an embroidered cloth, a large garish clock with a plastic figure of a shepherdess that moved back and forth across the face – for like everyone else on the farm Mustafa trimmed out money where he could, a few rupees on the petrol, a bit of padding when he bought spare parts.

  ‘What?’ she said, as soon as her brother closed the door.

  ‘He’s dying.’

  She sat down, almost falling, and hung her head. ‘Oh my God. Of what? And now what do I do?’

  ‘It’s cancer. You’d better be sharp.’

  ‘He hasn’t come in a week,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t count on anything anymore,’said Mustafa. ‘His family’s all around him now. He’ll get weak fast. Don’t forget, he owns twenty squares of land, just as a start. You’ll be lucky to see him again, at least to see him alone.’

  ‘He’s tied to me,’ she said, looking Mustafa in the eye. ‘He’ll come.’

  Mustafa sat down and ran his hands over his face. ‘What a mess. He’s going tomorrow to Lahore. He’s trying to make sure that Shabir wins the by-election. That won’t happen, the boy barely has enough spine to stand upright. The big guys around here will eat him up once Jaglani’s gone. No one reaches out very far from the grave.’

  ‘You know what that means for me,’ she said. Brother and sister understood the enormity of her loss, the failure of her preparations against abandonment. ‘They’re going to take Saba away from me, aren’t they? She’s too young, in a year she won’t remember me. I’ll get nothing.’

  Jaglani faded away. Knowing how vulnerable his family would be to the enemies he had made in the course of a life in politics, he went to Lahore, seeking a sure seat in the Assembly for his son, the one who gave a daughter to Zainab, in the by-election that would follow his death.

  The provincial party chief, a ward boss from Lahore who held the office of Punjab Chief Minister, received Jaglani just after sunset at his house, a large shabby building constructed on public land, formerly a park, which he had condemned and appropriated as soon as he attained office, throwing a wall around it.

  Jaglani waited in the anteroom with twenty or thirty other supplicants, mostly provincial politicians from the business classes, who gathered in circles or huddled together on grimy sofas, speaking in undertones and puffing cigarettes. Two pictures hung on a wall of the dirty, smoky room, one of the country’s founder, the Quaid-e-Azam, and next to it, just slightly lower, a photo of the party’s leader.

  Entering the immaculate office, ushered in by a sleek-looking steno, Jaglani approached the Chief Minister, who sat behind a desk covered with green baize, reading a file. He looked up, narrowed his eyes, and rose.

  ‘Hello, hello, Chaudrey Sahib.’

  He walked from behind the desk, his Western clothes, a pinstripe suit and gold cuff links and English shoes, distinguishing him from Jaglani and from most of the supplicants waiting in the anteroom. Taking Jaglani’s hand, and holding on to it, he sat them down next to each other on a sofa.

  ‘You’re looking well,’ said the Chief Minister insincerely.

  ‘Thanks to Your Honor.’

  ‘And how is Mr. K. K. Harouni?’

  They began speaking of the political situation in Jaglani’s district. The Chief Minister spoke little but listened, his face set in a shrewd expression, looking at the opposite wall and occasionally asking questions.

  After ten minutes he looked at his watch.

  ‘And how’s everything else?’

  ‘I’ve come with a request, sir. I regret to say I’ve been diagnosed with cancer.’

  ‘Well, well, I’m so sorry,’ said the Chief Minister, who knew all about it.

  ‘Sir, I request that the party support my son in the by-election.’

  ‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said the minister. ‘You’re healthy as a horse. These doctors kill everyone off, everyone. You’ve still got twenty years ahead of you, bulling Dunyapur.’

  ‘If something does happen to me, however, will you support the boy? He’s capable, he knows the area, and he knows all the people. I’ve served the party for twenty-five years, in one way or another, and I’ve always voted in the Assembly the way you asked me to.’ He played his only card. ‘We go a long way, Shujaat Sahib.’

  ‘We’ll have to put the boy forward. We’ll plan that. Don’t worry, it’s done.’

  ‘Will you call a meeting of the people from my area? We’ll need to get them in line.’

  The Chief Minister rose. ‘Yes, yes. We’ll have to do that.’ Walking Jaglani to the door and ushering the dying man out, the minister said, shaking an upraised finger, ‘Now remember, no more about this illness. You’ll outlive us all, I know how you country people are, it’s the food, it’s the food.’ He had this habit of repeating himself when telling lies.

  Jaglani walked through the anteroom, down the dirty steps, and out the gate. Mustafa stood in a line of cars parked along the sidewalk. He had failed. He went back to Dunyapur without seeing any of his old friends and allies.

  The city house in Firoza, with antimacassars and sofas covered with plastic liners and the constant smell of fried onions, depressed Jaglani, and yet its gloominess and air of resignation and finality seemed consistent with the great change coming over him. He felt the cancer as a tension in his stomach, a breeding knot that hurt sometimes but that never went away. He longed for the country and for Dunyapur, where he had been born and where he achieved all the successes that mattered to him now. He remembered the day when he became a manager, appointed by K. K. Harouni, who at that time still looked rich and clean and strong, different from anyone Jaglani had ever known. Jaglani once went with him hunting ducks along the river, floating on a barge, and he remembered still the softness of the landowner’s white shirt and the way in which his collar touched the brown hairs on his neck. Harouni had carried a beautiful shotgun, very light, slim, almost like a toy, but deadly.

  Yet Dunyapur had been spoiled for him by the presence of Zainab. He minded very much that he had given his sons a stepmother of that class, a servant woman. He minded that he had insulted his first wife in that way, by marrying again, by marrying a servant, and then by keeping the marriage a secret. His senior wife had never reproached him, but after Jaglani told her she quickly became old. She prayed a great deal, spent much of her time in bed, stopped caring for herself. Her body became rounded like a hoop, not fat but fleshed uniformly all over, a body thrown away, throwing itself away, the old woman sitting all day in bed, dreaming, muttering perhaps when left alone. He reproached himself for taking his eldest son’s daughter and giving her to Zainab, transplanting the little girl onto such different stock. Secretly, and most bitterly, he blamed himself for having been so weak as to love a woman who had never loved him. He made an idol of her, lavished himself upon her sexual body, gave himself to a woman who never gave back, except in the most practical terms. She blotted the cleanliness of his life trajectory, which he had always before believed in. She represented the culmination of his ascendance, the reward of his virtue and striving, and showed him how little it all had been, his life and his ambitions. All of it he had thrown away, his manliness and strength, for a pair of legs that clasped his waist and a pair of eyes that pierced him and that yet had at bottom the deadness of foil.

  One morning in April, three months after he had been diagnosed and
condemned to die, Jaglani woke feeling better than usual. Walking now with a cane, his face gaunt and improved by it, he went to the verandah and without telling any of the people in the house ordered Mustafa to drive him to Dunyapur. They arrived in the dera just at the time when the sun began to pour down over the roofs of the sheds onto the bricked threshing floor. Chickens walked about picking at spilled grain, and the odor of burnt oil that had soaked into the dust added to the sleepiness of the scene, a heavy baking scent.

  Only a few people sat in the sun, two accountants, a watchman, and one or two others, loafers sitting around drinking tea. On the far side of the large open square an old woman with bare feet hunched over and swept the brick threshing floor, throwing up a cloud of dust in the sun. When the people sitting there saw the car they jumped up, saying, ‘Chaudrey Sahib, Chaudrey Sahib,’ as if they had something to hide.

  Mustafa ran around to open the door, and Jaglani stepped painfully out, took his cane, and after receiving their obeisance went into his own house, without pausing to discuss business. The men had approached him not less deferentially than before but less fearfully. They knew he had come for the last time, and already their feelings about him were becoming sweeter and more genuinely respectful. With him an entire generation of men from Dunyapur would pass.

  Jaglani had lived an opportunistic life, seizing power wherever he saw it available and unguarded, and therefore he had not developed sentimental attachments to the tokens of his power, land, possessions, or even men. Walking into the silent dark house, he felt, for the first time, that he would regret losing a place, these whitewashed walls, the little windows. He had aged greatly in the past weeks as the disease bit into him. He had never loved his wife, his children were fools, and he had no friends. For him there had not been any great leave-takings, no farewells. He had spent his life among the farmers and peasants of the area, or among politicians. He liked some of them, liked their stories or their intelligence or cunning. Although he didn’t laugh often, he played a part when the politicians or the strongmen from around Dunyapur gathered and talked. In the early years, Jaglani sat to one side, dark and acute, and in quiet moments added his shrewd remarks. Later, when he became important, he still mostly listened, but signaled to those around him that they could unwind and speak freely by making brief and slightly witty comments, speaking through lips almost clenched, resisting a smile. His social life had not extended beyond these diversions. He worked in concert with other men, or used them, or struggled against them. The rest did not interest him.

  Going into the small living room, Jaglani saw a light in Zainab’s room, and thought that she must be there with the baby. He wondered if someone in his household at Firoza had called and informed her of his arrival. He knew that she must have contacts among his servants in the city. She would want him to find her there, caring for the child. The darkness of the house, its dampness, the expectancy of the salt and pepper shakers carefully aligned on the table and the sadness of the toothpick holder, its pink plastic cover gleaming softly, waiting for his next visit and his next meal, reminded him of the days when he first realized that he loved Zainab, and she sensed that he loved her, and began to smile around him, to play as she served him dinner. He walked quietly to her bedroom. She lay on the white divan, with the baby next to her. He expected her to jump up, to make some reproach at his not having visited her for so long, but she put a finger to her lip, and then with gentle hands covered the baby with a tiny knitted blanket. She disengaged herself, rolled away, kissed the baby, and stood up, smoothing her hair with one hand and arranging her head scarf.

  ‘Salaam, Chaudrey Sahib,’ she said quietly. ‘Let me bring you some tea.’ She showed no surprise at seeing him.

  Without waiting for an answer she went out. He leaned on his cane, looking down at the baby lying splayed on its face, dressed too warmly, in socks, a sweater, and a crocheted hat. Tiring, he sat down heavily on a chair. He loved her still, he realized, noting it, as if painfully writing something into a notebook. (Lately he often found himself doing this, inscribing his experiences and thoughts, his final rec ord, in an invisible notebook, never able to find a pencil, holding the pad in the air and writing shakily, illegibly.) He had come here to abjure his great love, and he found just this – just a small room lit by a single bulb, chilly despite the sun outside, and the woman he loved sitting alone, putting to sleep this stolen child that he gave her. He finally understood that she lived a simple life, and a wave of pity came over him. He had imagined her moving quickly from task to task, and only now did he perceive how lonely she might have been, waiting for him in the past years, never knowing when he would arrive. She had made so little of his coming that it had not occurred to him that all her days must have been directed toward that moment.

  She carried in the tea things, the milk in the pitcher steaming, the sugar bowl covered with an embroidered cloth. From the smugglers’ market in Rawalpindi he had bought her this flowery tea set, kept unused on a shelf with her other good dishes. She was the only woman for whom he had ever brought presents. She placed the tray on a table by the bed, then sat down on the floor, at the edge of the carpet, with her knees drawn up and enclosed in her arms. She looked up at him, holding her chin on her knees. He noticed the kohl on her eyes.

  ‘They tell me that you’re dying,’ she said quietly, as if smoothing it away between them.

  ‘Probably.’

  She rose up on her knees and poured him tea, sweetened it, and handed him the cup. Watching her settle back on her compact haunches, seated on the carpet, he understood that he would never again make love to her, never again hold her nor see her face when she woke in the morning. They talked of nothing, she told him of the baby’s little tricks, asked him about the farm. It surprised him that she didn’t ask about her own future, about property or money. Finishing his tea, he rose, making an effort not to lean on the cane.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said, looking at her. As he reached the door, leaving her sitting on the floor, he realized that he couldn’t do this, that he must say more, although he had told himself that he wouldn’t. He remembered the morning when he married her, quietly signing the papers while sitting under the mulberry tree in the little courtyard of this house, with the sounds of the village in the background, goats and a radio playing a song and tractors driving down the street.

  ‘I’ve told the boys to give you something after I’m gone,’ he said, without looking at her.

  ‘Fine,’ she replied, in a clipped voice.

  Both of them knew that this meant nothing.

  He walked out under the big banyan, where Mustafa toiled over the jeep, polishing it. The managers stood to one side, not speaking to each other. Jaglani got into the jeep and offhandedly said goodbye forever.

  In the next few days Jaglani intended to do something for Zainab, to put a house in her name, for he had several in the city, or to give her a square of land. His children would anyway have so much, and after his death Zainab would be attacked from all sides, by the villagers and by his family. But his illness progressed very quickly, and the constant pain kept him from acting. He chose the path of least resistance, and his family ensured that this path always led to them and to the gratification of their interests. The papers ensuring their inheritance readily appeared whenever he had the impulse to sign them, whereas other documents, those that did not suit the two sons, were delayed indefinitely. The sons had agreed not to fight among themselves, but to divide the property equally. They also agreed to prevent their father from making any other disposition.

  The servants moved Jaglani’s bed into the living room of his house. They removed the furniture, except for one sofa, placing the bed in the middle, with a table covered with medicines next to it. On the floor stood a tin bucket, and then, contrastingly, two thin oxygen cylinders almost as tall as a man, with dented steel bodies, nickel fittings, and a profusion of clear tubes feeding him air through a cannula pinched onto his nose, the apparatus setting him apart fr
om those who now surrounded him. Day and night, one or another of the servants would press his arms and legs. Jaglani grew angry with the servants, making cruel and untrue accusations, that they were hurting him, that they had always stolen from him. One of Jaglani’s patrons, Makhdoom Talwan, paid a visit, a great landowner of the district, toward whom he had always been deferential. Now, when this man entered the room, Jaglani started up and told him to go to hell, began shrieking about stolen votes and stolen water, until he couldn’t speak and lay panting. The family bustled the great man away.

  Every day, at some moment when the room stood empty except for the servant on duty, Mustafa would come to pay his respects, one of the few people whom Jaglani looked on with kind eyes. Mustafa would remove his shoes and stand just inside the door with bare feet. Jaglani would call him forward, to stand beside the bed, and would say a few inconsequential words, asking about Dunyapur. Mustafa answered the questions very briefly and would stand beside him until he fell asleep.

  Jaglani became weaker and angrier, until everyone wished he would die. One day he heard a commotion in the anteroom, raised voices and doors slamming. Zainab had come, taking a tonga from Dunyapur and then a bus, walking solitary up to the house, past the gatekeeper, who had become slack and who watched her without bothering even to get up from the chair where he sat smoking a hookah. He knew her, for like all the servants Jaglani had chosen him from the village.

  The sick man heard her in the anteroom say to Shabir, the son, who had rushed to intercept her, ‘Get your hands off me, you little piece of shit. I’m his wife. Don’t touch me.’ Jaglani reached painfully and rang the bell on a cord that lay by his pillow. Shabir came in, locking the door behind him.

  ‘Tell her to go away,’ said the dying man. ‘I don’t want to see her.’ She had spoken in the most vulgar Punjabi, like women screaming over the common wall of their village huts.