Animal's People (32 page)

Somraj opens his eyes, wants to speak, but the doctress puts a finger on his lips. “Be quiet,” she tells him. To Nisha she says, “You are not to worry. Let's just see to your father.” Somraj closes his eyes but Nisha keeps hers fixed on Elli, who's preparing a syringe. As the needle slides from his arm, Somraj gives a deep sigh.

“Now he is relaxed,” says his daughter, but Elli knows he'd begun to relax even before she gave the injection.

“I thought he was going to die, Elli,” which is the first time Nisha's called Elli by her name. Somraj is burning up, sweat's brimming his forehead. Nisha fetches a cloth, wipes his face. He opens his eyes again and says to Elli, “You are a good person. I've tried to make my daughter a fine person.”

“She is a fine person,” says Elli, who has no reason at all to believe it.

“Shhh father,” says Nisha, fully embarrassed. She's bent over and kissed his forehead.

After a while he sleeps, but then begins to cry out in a voice filled with fear. “He has such nightmares,” says Nisha. “Always the same thing. He will not talk about them, but I think they must be very horrible.”

“How do you know they are always the same?” Elli asks.

“Because he shouts out loud. And it's the same things each time.”

“What sort of things?”

“Wait,” says Nisha, “you can hear for yourself.”

The two women sat by his bed and watched. Nisha brought some tea. It was not the way Elli usually took it, this tea was milky, a frothy affair in which she could taste ginger and cardamom.

“God knows what you must think of me,” Nisha said.

“I think you are a kind girl, who loves her father and cares about people in this city. Animal has told me a lot about the good work you do. For example how you pulled him out of the street. So don't worry.”

“What will I say to Zafar, and others? We've stopped people going to you.”

“You will say that this boycott must end.”

Nisha just nods. After some time, she asks shyly, “Elli, will you tell me something about your life? About Amrika?”

“What can I tell you? What would you like to know?”

“What it's like to grow up there? To be young there. Here I think we don't have so much freedom.”

“I am not sure freedom is the right word.”

“I mean,” said the girl, “freedom to fall in love with whoever you choose. Not to worry about what people think, what they will say if he is the wrong caste, or the wrong religion.”

Of course, Elli thought, Zafar's Muslim and she is Hindu. But if anyone disapproved of their romance it was certainly not Somraj. Really he was a most amazing man. She said, “My first great love was when I was in high school. I'd have been about fifteen. He was an Italian boy named Paulo, but we all called him Paul.”

“Tell me about Paulo.”

“Well,” she said, “I got to know him because both he and I would get to school quite early. I'd help him put down the chairs in the lunchroom before school started. At first it was just for something to do.”

“But you discovered you liked him? I can't imagine what he was like.”

“He was a nice boy, not bad looking. We were friends for pretty much the whole year. The strange thing was he wasn't in any of my classes, so I only saw him before school.”

“So how did he become your great love?”

“We had a school dance, just before Valentine's Day, and he asked me to dance with him. It was the last dance of the evening, he probably took the entire night to get the courage up to ask me.” The memory made her want to giggle, but Nisha's face was serious. “It was a slow dance. You have to put your arms round each other. I don't think he dared at first. But slowly slowly we got closer, closer, until at the end of the dance, wow, we were touching chest to chest. I remember being really attracted to him and I think he was to me, because his heart was pounding like a big drum.”

“Did he try to kiss you?”

Elli laughed. “No, he never did, but you know what? On Valentine's Day I made a card for him, saying inside ‘I like you.' I left it in his locker, and of course I didn't say who it was from. Later that day I found a note tucked inside one of my books that said, ‘I like you too.' So that was that. Official.”

“But if you made a card, why didn't you sign it?”

So Elli found herself explaining that Valentine's Day was a day wholly devoted to romance, when people if they were lucky received cards telling them that they were loved, or, if the sender was playing it cool, “liked,” but the cards had to be sent anonymously.

“But then how does the person know who loves them?”

“They don't know. They guess. It's kind of delicious trying to work it out.”

“And if they guess wrong?”

“Well, not many girls would be lucky enough to have lots of admirers. I certainly wasn't. So you have an idea who sent it. But if you started dropping hints to the wrong person, then I guess you could end up a little embarrassed.”

“It seems an odd system to me,” said Nisha. “Here we have something a bit similar, called raakhee, when a girl ties a token around a boy's wrist. It's made of coloured thread and glittery stuff, sort of like a flower.”

“Did you tie one round Zafar's wrist?”

“Oh no!” she said, with a small frown. “If you like someone in that way, you would never tie a raakhee on him, because it's like saying ‘You're my brother.' A sister ties raakhees on the wrists of her brothers to remind them of their duty to protect her and the whole family from harm.”

“Isn't that also what a husband would also promise?”

“Of course,” said Nisha. “But if a woman has no one to look after her then she can tie a raakhee on a man's wrist, and it makes him her brother.”

“Who do you tie raakhees on?”

“Nobody,” said Nisha. “First of all I can look after myself. Second, there isn't anyone. I tried to tie one on Animal's wrist once but he ran away.”

Oh really, thought Elli, amused, I wonder why. With her long hair loose and falling down her back, Nisha looked very charming. Elli relating this whole episode to me later, said she could see why my heart was torn.

Not very many hours later when Elli opens her doors, the lane is full of people. Coughing, lame, ill people in a queue stretching almost as far as the eye can see. At their front stands Zafar. When he sees her, he comes forward, shyly says, “We have done you an injustice. I am sorry. I apologise. These people,” with a sweep of the hand he indicates the crowd, “they would like your help.”

Now comes a time of peace, it's the golden age of my story. Everyone is happy. All our quarrels are resolved. People are coming day and night to Elli's clinic, so busy is she these days we hardly see her, except Pandit Somraj will go over some evenings and then we hear piano music. Used to be me who sat with her, nowadays I find myself at a loose end. Sometimes I will sit with Nisha and Zafar, until they go upstairs. Still I am crumbling Zafar's medicine into his food, sometimes into his tea, but since the dream of the crow I've been giving smaller doses. Zafar still complains of stomach pains but not so much as before and these days I've little heart to go up the trees. Already my life has changed. To tell the truth, I am not so happy about it, plus I am not the only one who's unhappy.

“Animal, am I a bad person?”

“Depends,” I reply, not very clearly because my mouth's full of mango.

“Depends, does it?” says Nisha. “On what does it depend, Animal sahib, down whose chin juice is dribbling?”

“Want to lick it off?” So fickle are the emotions, you'd never know this is the same Animal who was so recently engulfed in despair about the tyranny of the lund. My visit to Anjali seems like ancient history, it no longer has power to shame. Besides, I did nothing, what's to regret?

“Get lost.”

“You and me, sweetheart, it's a matter of time,” I tell her, gnawing at the stone. Just lately I've started this light-hearted banter, it's to make sure she realises I am a candidate, one of these days I will be walking upright. Just to show how casual I am, I've thrown the tooth-scraped seed into the garden, sucked my fingers slowly, one by one, with a little pop at the end of each.

“I feel like a bad person,” says she, ignoring my attempts to flirt.

“The only bad thing about you is you're besotted with Zafar and cannot see the virtues of your humble servant meaning myself who's ready to die for you, so think again please, it's me you should marry.”

“Animal, do you ever listen to anyone else? Talk talk talk, is all you do. How you chunter. Honestly, if talking's what makes people human, no one is more human than you.”

Well this is a dirty dig, but I adore Nisha, and content myself with giving her a reproachful look like one of Jara's, all big eyes. This does the needful, never is she cross with me for long. She sighs, “You idiot, I'm trying to tell you something important. I've just been to Ghanshyam's to have my photo taken.”

Eyes, this Ghanshyam has a shop in Iltutmish Street with pictures in the windows of people with hairstyles from twenty years ago. They've gone yellow, these pictures, and there is flyshit on the corners, but people go to him to have their babies photographed and, oh my god, for wedding pictures.

“You are not getting married?”

She bursts out laughing. “No, fool, I am getting a passport.”

“Passport?” In times of surprise, Eyes, maybe you do it too, I transform to a parrot. “A passport? What for do you need a passport?”

“Going to Amrika,” she says, no longer laughing.

“Amrika? Why are you going to Amrika?”

“Elli is going, she is going with my dad. They are taking me to meet Elli's family.”

“Elli and your dad? But why?” Hardly am I able to breathe, it's like a heavy stone is crushing my chest.

“My dad and Elli, they're going to be married.”

“Animal, won't you speak? Please say something. You were the first to suspect this. Why are you looking so upset?”

Upset? Eyes, I'm gutted. How can I tell Nisha that it was me that was supposed to go to Amrika with Elli? She was taking me for my back, somehow we would find money for the operation. She was going to show me New York, dinosaur museum etcetera. Now she will go with Somraj and Nisha and what's to become of me?

“Nisha, this is very fine news.”

“Is it?” she asks. “I wish I did not feel so miserable.”

“Why miserable? You are going too.”

“I never expected him to fall in love.” She utters the word “love” as if it tastes of dung. “He's told me since I was small that he would never marry again.”

“Twenty years is a long time to be alone.”

“I know, I know,” says Nisha, with her head in her hands. “It is wrong of me to feel this way. I should be happy for them.”

So the story comes out. After Somraj and Elli discovered they were in love, Elli asked him and Nisha to go with her to meet her family. Tickets she has bought for the three of them to travel by plane to Amrika.

“When is this happening?”

Nisha told me they would wait until the big hearing when the Kampani would have to show up in court, then for a month they'd be gone.

“The hearing, it's when?” I'll be counting the days.

“It's about three weeks away. Elli has arranged for some old doctor she knows to stand in for her while we're gone.”

“What does Zafar say?” Strange it's, although I'm jealous of Zafar, plus I've nearly killed him with Faqri's pills, in a crisis I feel it's him we must turn to. Zafar will see what's right, he will tell us what's best to do.

“Oh Zafar's thrilled,” says Nisha bitterly. “He says our case against the Kampani will be strengthened because Elli will report the truth about people's illnesses, it will help us when we get them into court.”

So Zafar has gauged this, as he measures everything, by how much good it will do for the cause. What a selfless man, such singlemindedness is rare, and Zafar shines with it.

“Are you looking forward to seeing Amrika?”

“I don't want to go. Know why they're taking me? My dad's feeling guilty, plus Elli wants me to like her. She says her father will take me fishing.”

This raises a pang, when Elli talked about taking me to Amrika, she had said the same thing about fishing to me. “You should go, Nish. No one can see the future. It might be the best thing.”

“I asked her if she really loved my father. You know what she said?”

“Well, how should I?”

“She said, ‘He has the purest soul of anyone I have ever met.'”

“So that's good. Why does it upset you?”

“I don't know. I'm selfish. It means my childhood is over.” Poor Nisha's dabbing her eyes with a kitchen cloth. “Ever since I can remember, it's been me and my dad, and I've looked after him and the house. Now those days are over.”