Bombay Time (20 page)

Ignoring his boss’s mutterings, he left work early again the next day. He picked up two bottles of Duke’s raspberry and a full tandoori chicken for dinner. If Mariam was arriving directly from work, she would be hungry.

The dark circles were back under her eyes. In fact, Mariam looked two years older than when she had left for Goa a week earlier. Soli could not help the involuntary start of surprise. “Darling. Have you been sick while on holiday? Did the air in Goa not suit you?

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just fine.” But her manner was agitated and her eyes darted around the room.

She was making him nervous. In an effort to control his own agitation, he got up to pour her a soft drink. “Well, even if you’re sick, luckily for you, the doctor’s in the house.” He grinned. “Here’s some of my own, homemade
dava.
” He kissed her long and hard, and after a few seconds, she relaxed. “Aha. Better already. Here, come sit on this bed and I’ll give you some more medicine. Or perhaps you’d like an injection? Just a few pokes?” he said, grinning lewdly.

Mariam let him pull her on the bed, but he could tell she was distracted. He held her for a few minutes, hoping to calm her down, but it felt as if he was embracing a stranger. At last, he held her at arm’s length for a minute and searched her face. “Mariam, what is the matter?” he asked quietly.

“Something happened while we were in Goa,” she said in a low voice that matched his own. “A decision was made, you could say.” She bit her lip and looked away from Soli’s concerned, anxious face. When she looked at him again, her eyes were red. “Soli, my whole family had decided to move to Israel.” She heard him gasp, but she didn’t stop. “Daddy says there’s nothing left for us in India, that a Jew has no business living anywhere now except in our homeland. What happened during the partition riots really scared him. The way those Hindus and Muslims butchered one another. Almost like what happened in Germany with the Jews. I know partition seems like ancient history to you and me. But Dad remembers it vividly.”

He started to protest, but she stopped him. “While we were in Goa, we met with two other Jewish families,” she continued. “It was my dad’s friend Nizzim, who lives in Goa, who convinced him that it was time to leave. Goa’s a pretty safe place for Jews, but Nizzim still feels that his children would be better off in Israel. All three families have decided to leave at the same time, in maybe two months from now. Dad is already looking for a buyer for the flat.”

His whole world was caving in. He felt as if someone had toppled the planet, so that grass was now growing on the sky and clouds floating on the earth. “Mariam, darling, please. If this is a joke, please stop now,” he beseeched. “See how my heart is racing, like those horses at Bombay racecourse.” But one look at Mariam’s face told him that this was no joke, and his heart turned icy.

“Daddy says he is tired of how much we have to struggle here just to get by. He says that if we’re going to work this hard, let’s do it in a place that’s at least attempting something bold and new. The British have been gone from India for over ten years and nothing has changed, he feels. Just last night, when the electricity went out, Daddy said, ‘Damn it, if we’re going to live in a country of power outages and shottages, we may as well put up with those things in a country where we are working for the good of our own people.’ It just reinforced his decision. And I’m telling you, Soli, the partition bloodbath scared him. He says he’s never been able to look at India the same way since then. It reminds him too much of what happened in Germany.”

“Germany?
You’re comparing India to barbaric
Germany?
How can you even compare that
madaarchot
crazy Hitler with his toothbrush mustache to our decent Oxford-educated Nehru
chacha?
Nehru purs a fresh rose in his buttonhole every morning—that’s how civilized and gentle he is. A man who loves nature, loves children. Nor like that eunuch Hitler, with his silly haircut and a voice that’s sounding like he always has hiccups. And besides, Hitler’s dead. As for partition, that was years and years ago, and that, too, was between the Hindus and Muslims. Let me ask you, Mariam, has India ever hurt you? Was your father not having a big business and fine house in Bandra? Did anyone ever harass you here?”

Mariam looked at Soli over the gulf of history and memory. “Soli, Germany was a civilized country, too. So civilized that they designed gas chambers to fry people in, so civilized that they removed gold fillings from the mouths of the dead, Just think about that. Daddy says that the only way to ensure this doesn’t happen again is to be among our own and to work for a strong Israel. And after all, that is our original homeland.”

Fear and some vestige of national pride made his voice sound harsher than he intended. “What homeland? India is your homeland. This is where you were born, where you were going to school, getting a job, having friends, going to picnics and parties. That way, as a Parsi, I, too, can claim that our original homeland was all of Persia— what is now Iran, Iraq, Israel, everything. Zoroastrianism was the religion of the whole area, you know. We were the original settlers. But do you see us going to the Shah of Iran and asking for our homeland? Do you see us Parsis asking those Arabs to give us a new country?”

“And do you see you Parsis losing six million of your own people in the Holocaust?” Mariam said fiercely. “Six million dead bodies just because one German bastard was sick in the head?”

Soli stared at Mariam. He had never seen her like this. Something had happened to her while in Goa, something that had changed her in a way that put her out of his reach. Suddenly, he was battling for his life, for his future happiness. “Mariam, I’m not arguing with you. What happened in Germany was the worst kind of sin. God will never forgive those Germans, that much, I know. But darling, all those millions who died, how are they your people? You didn’t even know them. Your mummy and daddy and your brothers and me—we are your people. All those who love you. And if you marry me, my mamma and my friends will become your people. And nobody will be hurting you here, I promise. After all, they will have to fight me first. India is your country, Mariam. You are
a pucca
Bombayite, born and bred here.”

“Soli?” she said slowly. “What if I asked you to leave everything and everybody you know here and come with me to Israel. Would you do it?”

He looked shocked. “Now Mariam, be reasonable. My whole life is here. Who will look after my mamma when she is old if I go away? And what would I be doing in Israel anyway, among all those bearded Jews? I’ve never even left Bombay, let alone going to Israel.”

“But you expect me to leave my parents and David and Solomon and stay on. I love you very much Soli, but I can’t marry you. Something happened to me last week that I can’t explain. It’s almost as if my love for you has expanded to include millions of others. And yes, you’re correct, they’re strangers to me, but in a way they’re also my family. We were always raised to think of ourselves as Bombayites first, but Nizzim Uncle says that’s a mistake. That’s how Hitler won, he says, because the Jews thought of themselves as Germans, even when nobody else did. There is a new country being built for Jews and by Jews. I want to be part of it.”

His face turned dark with rage. “And what is India, then, just a dirty handkerchief for blowing your nose and then throwing away? It was good enough for you people all these years. And now that we are finally having our freedom, now that the British have returned to their cucumber sandwiches and fish and chips, now at the most exciting time, you all will leave India.”

“Well, the Jews always were a wandering people,” Mariam said with a sad smile he didn’t understand. For some reason that sad smile, so remote, so timeless in its grief, upset him more.

“The Hindus always complain that the Parsis don’t act like they belong to India, that they are always having their noses up in the air, but you people are the Parsi’s Parsi,” he said bitterly. Then his face collapsed with pain. “But Mariam, if you were leaving, why all this?” he said, his hand sweeping over the bed. “Why all the kissing and hugging and dating? Were you making a
chootia
out of me, or what? You didn’t even give me a hint about what Abe Uncle was thinking.”

“Soli, I swear to you that everything that I’ve told you has happened in the last week. Daddy says he and Mummy have been discussing the move for over a year, but nobody told me a thing. I guess they first wanted to see how David and Solomon would do in Israel.

“As for what happened in this room—I wish I could tell you that I’m sorry that it did, that I regret it. But I don’t. Soli, you are the kindest, funniest man I have ever met. You have made these last five months magical for me. I am sorry that I seem to come into your life only to hurt you. Believe me, there’s no one in this world whom I want to hurt less. And Soli, promise me this. Never forget that no matter where I’ll be, I’ll carry you in my heart. Always. You must believe me when I say this.”

It was over. He had lost her a second time. He felt empty, past the point of rage and accusation. He wanted to say something, wanted to hold her in his arms one more time, but he suddenly felt so shy and awkward around her that he hoped she would leave.

Mariam must have sensed his discomfort, because she said she had to run along. When she stood at the front door with her hand on the knob, he walked over and kissed her lightly on the forehead. Mariam took his right hand in hers, raised it to her lips, and kissed it in such an intense, ritualistic way, that he thought it was some ancient Jewish custom he knew nothing about. It dawned on him how little he knew of Mariam, her religion and her history. He felt ashamed of himself. He should have asked more questions, learned more about her religion. How naive he had been in thinking that love could build a bridge over history.

And then she was gone. His hand still tingled from where her mouth had been. He felt a mad, animal need to rush down the stairs and plead his case with Mariam again. He could not lose her like this, so easily, with so little of a fight. Surely there were some words that he could say that would make her realize what she was giving up. But when he thought of the specific words, nothing came to mind. He felt exhausted and spent. He had a sudden image of being seven years old and at school. An older bully was twisting his hand behind his back while Soli bit his lip from the pain. They were both engaged in a silent contest of wills. Pain filled Soli’s body, but the older boy would not slacken his grip. Finally, bending over until he was down on one knee, his mouth tasting of salt, Soli cried out, “I give up.” Immediately, the grip slackened and he felt better.

He went to the window and opened the curtain. Mariam was hurrying away, without a look back. “I give up,” he whispered to her receding form. Then, again: “I give you up.”

When he turned back to face the room, it seemed shabbier than it had an hour ago. He noticed the peeling paint, the cracks in the floor tile, the frayed corners of the lamp shade. A fly buzzed around where the tandoori chicken lay open and untouched. He heard his own footsteps as he walked toward the bed. He sat down at its edge. The bed still bore Mariam’s imprint, and absently, he ran his hand lightly against it.

Then Soli Contractor put his head in his hands and wept. He wept as he had not wept since he was thirteen years old and he saw his father’s still form laid out in white, knowing that in a few moments this big jovial man would be pecked at by vultures. He cried for himself and for Mariam, for the couple they might have been, for the children they would never have. He cried for his poor mamma, who would go to her grave asking for a daughter-in-law. He cried for the six million anonymous strangers whom Mariam had called her people. He cried for India, for losing a family as fine as the Rubins, and he cried in rage at Israel for stealing them away from him. He cried for the ghosts of history who had entered and destroyed his life in such a visible way.

Thinking back to the previous time he had been in this room, when Mariam and he had transformed it from a run-down apartment into a holy altar, Soli cried some more. He cried for the drops of blood on a blue sheet, which would never be shed again. He cried for the contentment at the sound of running water that he would never feel again. He cried for the singing of the flesh that he would hear no more—for his limp and useless hands, for his passive, tasteless tongue, for his yellow, dulled heart. He cried for the slow, dull trickle of blood in his veins and for his heavy and useless legs, which, disentangled from Mariam’s, could no longer hold him up.

In the distance, he heard something breaking, like fallen china.

It was only the sound of his dying heart.

She couldn’t help herself. For the seventh time that evening, Tehmi Engineer looked hurriedly around, making sure that no one was watching her. Coomi Bilimoria had been talking to her a few minutes ago but had now moved a few feet away, doing that strange thing with her eyes that only Tehmi seemed to notice. Confident that no one was paying her any attention, Tehmi let her right hand travel discreetly to her left armpit. Shifting her sleeveless blouse ever so slightly, she moved her middle finger in a circular motion until she found what she was looking for.

A lump. Probably the size of a small grape, Tehmi reckoned. But unlike a grape, this lump didn’t feel soft and squishy. Instead, it was as though a hard pebble had made itself at home under her skin. She had accidentally discovered it while in the shower, about a week ago. But on that day, preoccupied as she was with shopping for a new sari to wear to Mehernosh Kanga’s wedding, she hadn’t given the matter much thought. But that night, she had accidentally touched it while falling asleep, and this time, the hardness of the lump against her fingers had jolted her awake. Curious, she’d pressed down on it, gingerly poking around its edges, ready to wince if the pressure hurt. But the lump was strangely painless. She racked her brains to remember if she had accidentally injured herself, but she couldn’t imagine how she could have hurt herself in such an inaccessible place.

As the word
cancer
formed in her brain, she froze. That’s impossible, she’d told herself, 100 percent impossible. But then, the second treacherous thought: Why impossible? Her stomach lurched violently at the thought of being sick, but it wasn’t the illness itself that troubled her as much as the formalities of illness: the visit to her grave-faced family doctor, the mammogram, the referral to a cancer specialist, perhaps a biopsy. Tehmi knew of five Parsi women in the past three years who had had breast cancer. It was an epidemic sweeping through the community, like the influenza epidemic that had crippled her hometown when she was a little girl, three years before her family moved to Bombay. Tehmi felt overwhelmed and tired at the thought of spending the next few weeks in the waiting rooms of doctors’ offices. Also, she thought, whom can I ask to go with me when I visit the doctor? Who will be there for me while I wait for the diagnosis? Automatically, Tehmi’s mind leapt back to the dual tragedies that had befallen her over forty years ago. Those incidents had slowly banished her from the community and sense of engagement that the other residents of Wadia Baug took for granted. In fact, Tehmi was the only Wadia Baug resident who did not mind being the target of Dosamai’s gossip, because it was proof that she existed, that she surfaced occasionally in the minds of people living beside her.

Lying alone in bed, her finger rubbing compulsively against the newly discovered lump, the loneliness that Tehmi’s forced exile had bestowed upon her threatened to overpower her. Who would sit with her for long hours if she needed chemotherapy? Who would visit her in the hospital if she needed surgery? Who would take care of her when she returned home? What would be worse, she wondered—if her neighbors continued to avoid her as they had done in the decades since the day she learned that grief had its own peculiar stench, or if they suddenly came to her rescue, their newfound compassion a taunting reminder of the long, barren years when it had been lost? Which would be harder to bear, the sting of pity or the slap of indifference? The pain of continued exile or the pain of a prodigal’s return home?

Then again, it could be nothing. Tehmi also knew of women who’d spent weeks believing they were staring death in the face, only to have death remove its mask to reveal a child’s gleeful grin. It could all turn out to be so harmless, like stepping onto solid ground after a scary Ferris wheel ride.

Toward dawn, she had made up her mind: She would do nothing— yet. She would simply keep an eye on this strange fruit growing in her body, hope that it would disappear as suddenly as it had appeared. And if it didn’t—well, she was sixty-three years old. She had already lived several times as long as Cyrus had. She had taken up space on this planet, drunk its water, eaten its fruits and grains, feasted on its animals, for over six long decades. Enough was enough. No need to be so pathetically invested in life. She remembered seeing Amy’s chest after her mastectomy, the snakelike scar that ran across a chest as flat as the Deccan Plateau. She had forced herself to make one of her rare hospital visits to see Amy after her surgery because Amy had sent food for Tehmi and her mother for a week after Cyrus’s death, and one thing about Tehmi, she never forgot a kindness. But seeing Amy with those plastic drain bottles coming out of her like drooping wings made Tehmi wish she had not gone. And when the sick woman unexpectedly asked her if she’d like to see the scar, some mixture of pity and morbidity made her say yes.

It was a mistake. The scar reminded her of why she had turned away from unpleasant things ever since Cyrus’s death, why she had carefully built for herself a sanitary life, a life minus blood, urine, and pus, a life where children did not enter (because, after all, children get older and sometimes even die), where the tearings and brushings and bruisings of human intercourse were kept at arm’s length. Of course, it made for a lonely life, but Tehmi felt she had ample justification for choosing a clean life. Once a woman has witnessed the human body distorted beyond recognition, once she has smelled the distinct, unmistakable smell of charred flesh from a body that used to smell of rose water and eau de cologne, then that woman has the right to turn away from all things ugly, Tehmi believed. And if that turning away required her to sacrifice most of humanity, so be it.

But some stenches never die. Once inhaled, they stay buried in the guts of the person inhaling them, sending up their ghastly vapors at inopportune times. Thus, Cyrus lived inside of Tehmi even after his death. On one hand, it made her feel close to him, as if he had never really left her. On the other, carrying around a dead man who stunk to the high heavens ensured that few of the living wanted to befriend her. Years ago, she had been confronted with a choice. She chose the dead.

It was a bright Tuesday afternoon in October, two days after Tehmi’s twentieth birthday. She had been sitting in the Elphinstone College cafeteria with her friend Naju when she looked up and saw a handsome young man walking toward them. With a quick glance, Tehmi took in the straight back, the muscled, sun-kissed arms, the big brown eyes. But most of all, she was mesmerized by the mop of curly dark brown hair that shone like a halo in the afternoon sunlight. “Don’t look now,” she whispered to Naju, “but there’s a real lollipop walking toward us.”

As if on cue, Naju promptly looked over her shoulder. She let out a groan as the stranger reached their table. “Oh God, that’s no lollipop, Tehmi,” she said loudly. “That’s just my idiotic older brother, Cyrus. This is my friend Tehmi. Say hello to her, Cyrus, and then tell me what historic occasion has brought you here.” Even as she blushed and returned Cyrus’s greeting, Tehmi could now see the resemblance between her friend and the man who stood grinning at his sister.

“Not even an offer to sit down and have a cup of
chai,
Naju?” he said in an ironic voice laced with laughter.

“If I offer you
chai,
I know I’ll be the one paying for it, you loafer. So first tell me how much money you need to borrow and then I’ll see if I can afford tea.”

Cyrus pulled up a chair. “Such distrust,” he said in a sad voice, although his eyes gleamed with mischief. “A pity, really, in someone of such tender years. Your poor husband is going to have a tough time. …”

“Not to worry about my nonexistent husband. I’m more concerned about my very existent brother, who I know hasn’t come all this way to talk about my marriage prospects.”

Cyrus smiled a slow smile, which made Tehmi’s stomach flip in a way it never had before. Tilting back in his chair, he turned to face Tehmi. “Miss Tehmi, it is, correct?” he said. “Well, Miss Tehmi, I appeal to your sense of fair play. Let us assume, for a moment, that a man does need a small loan. Notice, I said loan, as in something that will be repayed. Let’s say that our man has finished a tough exam at his law college and in order to soothe his weary mind, he decides to take a walk down Colaba Causeway. There, he spots a pair of shoes, made of fine Italian leather. Now, this man could have instead gone to the Gateway of India and stared out at the water for a few hours to calm his tired brain. But fate decreed otherwise. It led him by the hand to a pair of fine Italian shoes. Can you blame the man for believing that it is his destiny to own those shoes? But fate, as we know, is cruel. And so it happens that when the poor, wretched man opens his wallet, he finds he is short by a few measly rupees. Then, inspiration strikes. He remembers that his younger sister—the same sister he has done countless favors for, I may add—is at nearby Elphinstone College. The tug of ancient bloodlines pulls him toward her college. He walks as if in a fog. Only she can help him fulfill his true destiny. Only she can—”

But here, Cyrus’s voice cracked with repressed laughter and the three of them burst out laughing.
“Bas, has,
Cyrus, even for you, this is too much,” Naju spluttered.

However, Cyrus was not quite done. “And so, Miss Tehmi,” he resumed. “I’d like you to be the judge. Is it such a sin for a poor law student to ask his prosperous younger sister for a small loan? Especially when it’s for such a good cause? Tell you what, Miss Tehmi. I’ll let you decide my fate.”

Lust rose like steam within Tehmi. I’d like to decide your fate, you baby doll, she thought. I think you should marry me, myself.

She turned to Naju. “Come on,
yaar.
Give him a few rupees.”

“Bravo.” Cyrus beamed. “Good judgment call, Tehmi. A girl after my own heart. You heard her, Naju. What are you waiting for? Cough up the money.”

Naju grumbled as she reached into her purse.
‘‘Saala beshara?n,”
she said. “Turning my best friend against me. God knows how you do this, but you pulled it off again. Here, this money is just to have you shut up, you rascal.”

“Thanks again,” Cyrus said to Tehmi as he pocketed the money. He turned to Naju, poker-faced. “You know, I do all this for you. Buying good clothes, expensive shoes. All so that you have a brother you can be proud of. So many sacrifices . … ”

Naju rose with a roar. “You ungraceful scoundrel. Give me back my money right this minute. It’s bad enough you buy those ridiculous, expensive Italian shoes, but then to expect me to lick your boots, now that’s the limit.”

Cyrus sat there, shaking with silent laughter, watching as his sister spluttered with indignation. Then, with a satisfied look, he rose to his feet. “Was very nice meeting you, Tehmi,” he said. “You’re a great partner in crime.” He winked at her conspiratorially, and then he was gone. Tehmi felt as if he had sucked all the sunlight out of the room with him.

The darkness that Cyrus left in his wake stayed with her for the next three days. Out of that darkness, his shiny face would rise before her eyes at unexpected times. She was irritated at herself for this sudden infatuation, but irritation did nothing to dispel it. Finally, on the fourth day, she asked Naju if she could scop by that evening to pick up her philosophy notebook. They made plans for Tehmi to stop by at 6:00 P.M., but she deliberately showed up an hour later, when she knew the Engineers would be sitting down for dinner.

Cyrus answered the doorbell. He was wearing blue pajama bottoms and a thin white
saadra,
instead of a shirr. He did a double rake when he recognized his visitor. “Why, hello. Come in, come in, please. We just sat down for dinner. Hey, Naju, it’s your friend, that nice, generous girl from rhe cafeteria.” He winked at Tehmi, a warm smile lighting up his face.

Naju’s mother, Mani Engineer, insisted that she join them for dinner. “Naju, go get an extra plate and set it at the table,” she ordered. Tehmi did the required amount of demurring, but her heart was singing. So far, her plan was working beautifully. Dinner at the same table with Cyrus seemed like bliss.

But to her horror, she found herself dumbstruck and unexpectedly shy during dinner. Each time she caught Cyrus’s eye, he smiled, but she looked away sternly, certain that he could read her thoughts, could see on her flushed face three days worth of lustful thoughts. To make matters worse, Naju was looking at her curiously, even thumping her on the back once and saying, “Why so quiet, Tehmina? Has a great big black
bilari
got your tongue, or what?”

She sat through dinner dumb with misery, angry at herself for having connived this disastrous plan, unhappy at liking so very much a boy who seemed to be looking at his dinner plate with more interest than at her. Tehmi had always been proud of her slim, tall body, her fair skin, her straight, proud nose, but today she felt gawky and ugly.

So that when she saw Cyrus striding toward them as she and Naju sat in the college cafeteria two days later, she made herself look away and then focus on him again to make sure that her eyes were not playing tricks on her. Naju’s groan at spotting her brother confirmed for Tehmi that the smiling man standing beside them was not a figment of her imagination. “Oh no, here comes Mr. Readymoney,” Naju said. “Wonder what he wants from his sister this time—new shoes, new shirt, a vacation in Paris? Go away, Cyrus. You’re going to make a pauper out of me, I swear.”