A Moment Comes Page 6

  “We tried to get a message to you,” Papaji says, shutting the door, sliding the trunk back against it.

  “What’s going on?” I ask him, my eyes adjusting to the darkened room. The windows are shuttered, the curtains drawn. Only the light from the kitchen and the cooking porch in the back of the house filter into the sitting room. Two women—I don’t recognize either of them—move about in there, speaking softly, their Punjabi seasoned with the rougher accent that comes out of the north and west.

  “Who are they?” I ask Papaji, wondering if we are hiding them for some reason.

  He sighs. “Two of your biji’s cousins. They turned up this week.”

  “From where?” I ask.

  “The Kashmir,” he replies. “Near Srinigar. They left with their husbands on foot. But they arrived here alone.”

  I don’t have to ask what happened to the men. The women, my aunties, I suppose, look up from the doorway, study my face. They nod; one smiles a little. When they turn away, I hear them whisper something about my scar, one drawing a line across her cheek.

  “They will stay?” I ask.

  Papaji tells me they will, tells me they have no place else to go and that we will make the room, even with Uncle and his family arriving by train two weeks from now. It will be crowded, but we cannot let family go elsewhere. I haven’t seen the camps, but I’ve heard about them and saw how rattled and quiet Margaret and her mother were when they returned from their outing to the one near Jalandhar this week.

  “Where is Biji? Why didn’t Manvir come for me?” I ask suddenly.

  Papaji takes my hand, leads me to the door of my brother’s room. Biji is there at his bedside, her back to me, leaning over my brother in his bed. At first I think he must be ill and worry that it might be something awful if it came on so quickly that no one had time to send word to me.

  But then Biji shifts to the side, dips a cloth into a bowl of water waiting there, and the water that runs from her hands as she squeezes out the rag is a rusty red-brown.

  And then I see my brother’s face.

  If he were not in his own bed, with my own mother bending over him, whispering prayers, I would not know him.

  One eye is so swollen that the skin stretches tight across it, the slit in the middle swallowing up his eyelashes. The other is half-open, but it too is crusted with blood. The skin around his left ear is torn, ripped ragged and still seeping. He will need stitches, and I wonder if Papaji will be able to do them himself. Manvir’s arm lies awkwardly across his chest, his wrist bulging with what looks like a nasty break.

  I rush to Biji, who hugs me quickly. I study Manvir over her shoulder. How can it be him?

  “What happened?” I whisper. I can’t stop the tears. Can’t stop watching his chest rise and fall just to make sure he is alive. Not Manvir, not my brother. . . .

  “His friends brought him home to us this way.” Papaji’s voice is edged with something hard. Anger, maybe? Biji still doesn’t speak.

  “His friends did this to him?” I ask with shock.

  “Nahi,” Papaji says.

  Biji speaks for the first time. “They might as well have,” she says bitterly. “Leading him off to trouble that way.”

  I stiffen, look at Papaji, whose eyes are stone.

  “Manvir made his choice,” he says, and I know what he means.

  Oh, Manvir. None of his friends, not Balwinder or Mahinder or Navdeep or any of the rest did anything without it being Manvir’s idea first. It had always been that way. And only Biji could not see it.

  He’d been so angry the last few times he walked me home. Worse even than that day we were followed. I shouldn’t be surprised that he did something stupid. Something dangerous.

  “Tell me,” I demand as I wipe away a tear and move around to the other side of the bed.

  Papaji crosses his arms. “We do not know how it started. But they were near the old mosque, the one with the school nearby—”

  He pauses. I lower myself onto the bed, take up Manvir’s uninjured hand.

  “They were boys brawling,” Biji says defensively, “and got carried away.”

  But I know she is making excuses. If it was near the mosque, if the others were Muslim, it couldn’t have been an accident. Try as I might, I can’t think of any reason Manvir and his friends might have for going to that neighborhood.

  No reason other than doing something terrible.

  Papaji’s voice is quiet. “Balwinder said there were three of them on your brother at once. But they all managed to get away somehow.”

  I can hear the doubt in his voice. Papaji doesn’t think Manvir’s friends told him the whole truth. But looking at Manvir, it doesn’t seem likely he’ll be telling any of us anything soon.

  Stupid, Manvir! Stupid men with their stupid fighting! I’m so angry with him. So angry that he let this happen to himself. That he wanted it to happen!

  But then I remember that he wasn’t so angry before I got cut.

  My eyes burn as I realize this. It wasn’t my fault I was attacked. Maybe Manvir’s trouble wasn’t his fault either. He could have just been walking by and gotten drawn into a riot.

  I want it to be true. But somehow I know it’s not.

  No. He wanted this. He’d wanted to track down the man who attacked me. He wanted to fight those boys that day we were chased through the market. I remember what he said: Sick of running. Sick of it.

  And now I feel sick that maybe he did this because of what happened to me.

  At least he’s alive. Thank God he’s alive. “Has he been awake?”

  “Some,” Papaji says. “We’ve sent for the doctor.” I take the rag from Biji’s hand as she rises to fetch a bowl of clean water. I dab it across my brother’s brow. He looks so different to me now, and not only because of his injuries. I see him differently too. See the same disease in him that seized that young man in the shop that day, the one who cut my face. How different can they be? I wonder.

  No. No. Manvir would never do anything like that.

  “He will be all right, Anu,” Papaji says, placing a hand on my head.

  All right so long as they can keep him indoors. As long as he can’t get out of bed, he will be. Because he can’t fight and brawl and let his anger lead him if he can’t walk, can he?

  So I pray. A silent prayer that my brother’s wounds will take a long, long time to heal.

  CHAPTER 10

  * * *

  MARGARET

  Damned cholera.

  We haven’t been back to the camp since that first time. Mother got word that the outbreak had spread and then, just as they seemed to be getting things in hand, the hospital tents were raided, some of the residents there beaten up even worse than when they came in, and all the supplies stolen.

  I take another drag on the cigarette, try to make it last, know I’ll be out by the weekend if I keep up at this pace. Inside I hear Mother on the telephone again, trying her hardest to find some other way to make us useful, some other way to get the pictures of us looking righteous to send back to London. The other photographer she hired never did turn up, and we haven’t printed the snaps Tariq took that day. Mother reckons he couldn’t have gotten near enough to secure any keepers. I hope it means we get to try again. Not because of the pictures themselves. And not just because it might mean another morning out with Tariq.

  I want to do something to help. Truly. Anything would be better than wasting my days, burning through my cigarettes too quickly. Even the garden and my hiding spot out here seem too small now. I’m not doing any good around here. I’ve tried to help Daddy, but I’m mostly in the way. And I’ve written half a dozen letters every day, some to the girls at school or my grandmother or anybody else I can think of. But even that gets tired, what with not having anything new to write about.

  I want to do something.

  I haven’t been able to forget how kindly the people looked at me as I dressed their wounds, or how good it felt to be helping. I expect that’s
a bit vain, but I can’t help it. And I can’t forget the children. So many of them. Not just in the camps, but everywhere. Every time I’ve been anyplace in the car and the driver has to stop and wait for the road to clear, their little hands tap on the windows, begging.

  And it dawns on me—how could I have been so thick?—that we don’t have to go so far as the camp or even out into the city to find people in need. I drop the cigarette—it’s close enough to singe my fingers now, anyway—into the dirt, grind it out with my toe, and kick it into the weeds.

  I cross around to the back of the house, the little door that leads to the alley. From the back windows, I’ve seen the staff hauling the rubbish out here. And I’ve seen the people who come and pick through what we throw out. I’ve watched them—old women, younger men, all manner of folk, but mostly children. And one boy—shoeless and barelegged, his long green shirt-thing falling almost to his knees—is there every day, sometimes more than once a day, pawing through the garbage for treasure.

  I told Father about him, asked him if we couldn’t do something for the boy, maybe ask one of the household staff to talk to him on our behalf. But Father said no, said we mustn’t get involved with disrupting the way of life here, and that our help could actually hurt him in the long run. When I said that didn’t make sense, Mother said what if we did help him, what would happen to him after we left? And then I said maybe you could take a picture of me giving him some shoes and then she snapped her cap at me and sent me to my room.

  So that was that. But he’s still there, every day, and he’s caught on to me watching him now, looking up to wave when he arrives at the heap with his cotton sack thrown over his shoulder.

  I could do something, I think. For him. All I’d have to do is open that door.

  But I saw him already today, early in the morning. He won’t be back. So I wander inside, take my time on the stairs, and make my way back to my room. At home, when Mother confined me, I always had my piano. I could play like a dream even before the whole Alec debacle, but I improved loads when I was shut up in the house after everything went to sixes and sevens. Mother was terrified I’d fall in love with another GI given half a minute out of doors, so she didn’t even bat an eye when I moved on from Mozart and Debussy to teaching myself Cole Porter tunes from the radio. So long as I stayed in the house. So long as she knew where I was, I guess.

  But without the piano, I’m bored. Bored. I’d love to pop out and explore a bit of Jalandhar. I think I would, at least. It’s a bit overwhelming, even just watching from my window. All the people constantly moving, the noises, the voices ringing out in words that are meaningless to my ears.

  Mother and Daddy would never let me go out alone, but they’re too busy to run me about. Mother keeps putting me off, saying not until Daddy has a moment to escort us. But he’s either rushing out to meetings at Governor Jenkins’s house or cloistered in his study room, the tables spilling coiled maps like brittle bolts of linen towering on the racks at Bennison’s back in London. Which makes me wonder if there’s even a decent dressmaker’s anywhere in this city, someplace I can get something to wear that won’t make me feel like I’m roasting alive.

  Because God in heaven, I am. And there’s precious little relief from it. Even at night I sweat through my sheets. The only respite we get are short, heavy downpours. It cat-and-dogs it for a good hour or two, every other day or so, but when it stops, it’s even hotter and steamier and stickier than before. Father says all the locals are worried at how late the monsoon proper is in arriving this year, and I for one wish it would bloody hurry up and come.

  I ooze across the hallway to Father’s study, sure if I were barefoot I’d be leaving wet footprints behind me on the tile. My dress sticks to my back.

  “All right, Daddy?” I ask, leaning over to kiss the top of his head as he sits at his desk. It is cooler in here, kept shadier by the veranda roof so the study never gets the direct sunlight. Though it still swelters like hell in July, there is a bit of a breeze owing to the extra sets of windows. And Daddy has a small brass fan set up by his feet—he can’t have it any higher where it might blow all his precious maps about. He’s promised to find me one, but I’m not holding my breath.

  Besides, it gives me something to do, coming down the hall to have the fan blow the breeze up my knickers. He doesn’t even take particular notice of me when I wander in here and look over his shoulder at the map spread wide on the table.

  “How many maps of the Punjab can there be?” I ask, lifting up the end of one of the stacks.

  Father straightens, stands, stretches, and finally looks at me. “They’re all different. Maps showing historical boundaries between villages, before the Raj. Maps showing water and mineral resource deposits. Maps showing sacred sites. Did you know that half the holy places in the Punjab are claimed at once by Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs?”

  I shake my head.

  “Damned tangle, if you ask me. Mountbatten’s asked the impossible—that August fifteenth deadline. Just over a month left to divide a country thousands of years old. Four or five weeks to finish sorting out thousands of years of shared mythology, geography . . . ”

  He shakes his head.

  I still say nothing, but move closer to study the map on the table. I hadn’t considered carving up the subcontinent might be so difficult.

  “Why don’t you do what Mother used to make Cousin Lucy and me do when we had a sweet to share? Have one of us cut and the other choose which half they want?”

  Father snorts; his shoulders give one short convulsion of laughter. “A fine idea. But such an arrangement relies on the concerned parties gathering in the same space together without devolving into a pack of screaming monkeys.”

  I nod. He forgets that Lucy and I could outdo howling monkeys any day.

  “And it would take away the one tiny thread of unity these people seem to share. A hatred for the crown. And a mutual desire to have us to blame for the outcome when both Pakistan and India feel shorted by the boundaries. If they don’t have us to rail against, even when we’re gone, they’ll go at each other even more viciously than they already are. Mountbatten may not understand much, but he knows that. Knows how important it is to give them another target for their rage—”

  “But the people love him, don’t they?”

  Father shrugs. “Well enough. He’s the face of the British secession from the Jewel of the Empire. How could they not?”

  He’s right, I suppose. Even I managed some affection for the most horrid teachers back at boarding school when term was up. Sometimes the gladness that you soon wouldn’t have to see a person again got twisted into a kindness before you were even rid of them.

  “At any rate,” Father says, returning to his chair and the set of pencils he’s been using to mark this map, “we’re as responsible as anyone for making these people hate each other. When it served the crown to divide them, to favor one group over another, we did it shamelessly. Only fair that we do our bit to clean up the mess, and look defeated in the bargain. Least we can do.”

  Tariq appears, hovering in the doorway. The breeze from the open window seems to blow warmer through the room. He somehow seems shyer now about looking at me, even after he was so gallant in the camp. But I think I see him glancing my way at times. Though maybe that’s only on account of how much I find myself staring at him.

  “Sir?” he says softly. Father looks up, eyes lighting on the note in Tariq’s hand.

  “Bring it here, please,” he says, beckoning him forward.

  Tariq gives a quick nod, crosses round to the other side of the desk, and hands the note over. Father breaks the wax seal with his thumb and unfolds the paper. The letterhead bears the stamp of the governor general.

  I study him while my father reads. Tariq really is good-looking, I have decided. Shoulders nearly as broad as Alec’s were, and skin like perfectly browned toast. He is not sweating, not like Daddy and me, and I suppose that makes him even more attractive. He stands there,
watching my father read, waiting for him to say something, hands folded behind him, the long white shirt I’ve learned they call a kurta skimming the tops of his thighs, his pants—something like the riding jodhpurs folk wear back home—loose above the knee but tapering to a snug fit around his calves.

  “Ah,” Father says.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  He holds up a finger, reads for another moment, then says, “They’re extending the reach of the survey trip Tariq and I are to make next week. We’ll be gone a few extra days.”

  “Can I come?” The words fly out of my mouth before I can stop them.

  He shakes his head. “Afraid not, pet. All business, and hours in the car. They’re intent on me getting all the way up to Himachal Pradesh in the north. Radcliffe needs some current surveys of the area.”

  “Why doesn’t the tosser go himself?” I grumble.

  “Don’t say ‘tosser,’ ” Father snorts, but he doesn’t mean it like Mother does. “Anyway, Radcliffe’s too much of a lightning rod. He’ll stay sequestered in Delhi. His is the final say, and his will be the name history signs across this canvas,” he says, nodding at the map.

  “Is that fair?”

  Father mops the back of his neck with his handkerchief. “This isn’t necessarily the kind of work that you want history remembering you for,” he says quietly.

  “But Mother thinks—”

  “I know what your mother thinks,” he says in a clipped sort of a voice, in a way that makes it clear he believes she’s wrong.

  “Did you know Michelangelo didn’t do all the painting on the Sistine Chapel?” he asks suddenly. “That the design was his, but he had apprentices who completed portions of the frescoes? Their names are lost, but their work is still there for everyone to see.”

  I’m only half listening as I glance at Tariq, trying to make him look at me. He’s just standing there like butter won’t melt in his perfect mouth, as if he’s not hearing a word we’re saying. But I know his English is good even if his accent makes everything sound all queer.