City of Ghosts (8 page)

‘The pain is deep,' she continued. ‘And there is nothing that you can take to stop it.'

He nodded.

‘But you do take something . . .'

Bissen's eyes fell. ‘
Pheme
,' he admitted. ‘To take away the pain of the injuries.'

The woman nodded. ‘I understand your need,' she told him. ‘But be careful that your love for opium does not outgrow your love for Lillian.'

It took a few seconds for her words to sink in. ‘How can you possibly know her name?' he asked.

But when he looked up, the woman had disappeared.

Just past midday Bissen made his way to the post office, just as he did every day. On his return he stopped to buy food from one of the many street vendors in Hall Bazaar. He was served up a small earthenware pot of thick
dhal
which he ate at a counter top made of ancient blackened hardwood. Beside the pot sat a cup of steaming hot tea, made from the dense, treacly milk
of a water buffalo. Along from Bissen sat a group of young men, all of them eyeing the soldier with distaste. He had grown used to such reactions. He was just one of a number of men who had fought for the British and had now returned to the city. Resentment towards the
Engrezi
was often taken out on those whom the militants saw as traitors: the police, civil servants, ex-soldiers and even some teachers bore their wrath. Instead of reacting, Bissen simply ignored the young men and quietly ate his lunch.

Once he'd finished, he made his way to the Golden Temple and sat on a low wall, watching the light as it reflected to and fro between the golden walls and the deep blue water that surrounded them. Bissen often sat in the same place watching the worshippers enter the temple. There were people on the stone steps by the water, watching as others bathed in it. The water was blessed – a pool of holy nectar called
amrit
– and most of the worshippers cleansed themselves there before entering the
gurdwara
. Bissen found himself gazing longingly at a stout, curvaceous woman washing herself some fifteen yards away. She held up a towel to cover her modesty but the curve of her mocha-coloured breast was more than apparent. Bissen, feeling ashamed, looked away.

‘She'll come and clip you round the ears!' he heard a young voice say from behind him.

He turned and saw Gurdial and Jeevan standing together, grinning at him.

‘Her husband will be after your blood!' added Gurdial.

Bissen shook his head. ‘I wasn't looking at her,' he replied.

‘Why
not
?' asked Jeevan. ‘Is there something wrong with you? She is beautiful.'

Bissen smiled. ‘Are you still playing with onions?' he said, changing the subject.

Jeevan held out the fresh onions in his hands. ‘I'm getting better,' he boasted. ‘Look!'

As Bissen and Gurdial watched, Jeevan proceeded to throw the onions into the air. One by one they fell to the dusty ground.

‘A monkey could juggle better than you,' teased Bissen.

‘I'll try again,
bhai
,' replied Jeevan, picking up the onions.

Gurdial made a face. ‘We saw a man being killed yesterday,' he told Bissen, hoping that he'd be impressed.

‘
Killed?
'

Gurdial nodded.

‘He was running from a patrol,' added Jeevan. ‘They shot him—'

‘Where was this?'

Gurdial gestured with his head as he replied. ‘Hall Bazaar.'

‘I was there earlier,' Bissen told the boys. ‘No one spoke of it.'

Jeevan came and sat next to Bissen on the wall. To the
boys, Bissen Singh was more than just someone they saw every day in the street; he was a hero. He had done so much in his twenty-four years, much more than either of the orphans could even imagine, despite being only eight years older.

‘Did you kill many people when you fought for the
Engrezi
?' Jeevan asked.

Bissen nodded. ‘I was only a boy when I went to fight,' he told them. ‘I did many things . . .'

Each time he met the boys they asked the same questions, and each time Bissen answered patiently.

‘In that country you told us of?' asked Gurdial.

‘France, yes.'

The idea of the outside world was difficult for many Indians to grasp. Boys such as Gurdial and Jeevan would probably become old men and never travel further than the next large city. Most of the people Bissen knew were insular without even knowing it.

‘What did it feel like to kill people?' asked Jeevan.

Bissen shrugged. ‘It was my duty. I didn't think of it properly until afterwards. When we were fighting, we just thought about staying alive.'

The boys were staring at him now, engrossed.

‘I can't even remember the first one,' added Bissen. ‘They say that you always remember, but not me. I find it easier to forget.'

Jeevan began to ask another question but Gurdial, realizing that Bissen's last reply had held a message for them, nudged his friend in the ribs.

‘
Ow!
' moaned Jeevan.

‘Tell me more about what happened in the bazaar,' Bissen said.

This time Gurdial shrugged, unconsciously apeing the soldier, whom he regarded as an older brother. Bissen's talk of things being easier to forget had turned on a switch inside his own head. Gurdial had lost his family at a very young age, and the memory of them grew less clear as each year passed. The image of a small house encircled by plants and bushes that were bright with flowers seemed to have lost its vibrancy. What had once been the faces of two people was now just separate pairs of loving eyes, looking down on him. And there was the smell of citrus, neither orange nor lemon but a sharp infusion of both. The recollection made him happy and sad at the same time: there was a vast, empty hole that he carried in his soul; a void that could only be filled when he found himself a new family. Tears welled in his eyes, and with a sense of shame he turned his head away from Jeevan and Bissen.

‘The soldiers shot him,' he told Bissen, hoping that he wouldn't see the tears. How stupid he felt, crying in front of his friends. But thinking of the emptiness he held inside always brought tears to his eyes. It wasn't something he could control.

‘Why?' asked Bissen.

Jeevan sighed. ‘He was hiding a gun,
bhai-ji
.'

Gurdial wiped his eyes, then turned back to his friends. ‘The dust is always getting in,' he lied.

Bissen and Jeevan said nothing. All three were lost and longing to find some sense of belonging. That was the nature of their friendship. It was why they were brothers. Not that they had ever discussed it. It was just something that was there between them, as silent as a ghost, and as loud as thunder too.

JEEVAN WATCHED AS
the couple who ran the orphanage hugged Udham Singh with unconcealed delight.

‘You have returned!' cried Mata Devi, her eyes streaming with tears.

Mata-ji was a large woman, and as she sat on a stool by the open fire, the overspill from her buttocks obscured its legs. Her dark hair was scraped back and tied into a ponytail. Her face was warm and generous and her eyes still held the mischievousness of the young girl she had once been.

‘It has been so long,' added her husband, Sohan Singh.

Sohan was as thin as a cane of sugar and his clothes were tatty and torn. His greying turban was loosely tied and seemed too big for his head. Grey whiskers spread across the lower part of his face and his brown eyes danced with intelligence. His skin was
the colour of sheesham wood and seemed parched.

Udham Singh, who was a few years older than Jeevan, seemed a shy, quiet man. He stood only a few inches taller but his frame was stocky with it, whereas Jeevan was reedy and waif-like. Udham's arms were thick with muscle, his hands like clubs, covered in dark hair. He wore a thin moustache and had jet-black hair and his eyes were as black as coals. Compared to Udham, Jeevan felt like a little boy.

‘It has been too long,
chacha-ji
,' Udham replied to Sohan. ‘Are you both well?'

The couple nodded.

‘And who is this?' he asked, nodding towards Jeevan.

‘Another one like you,' sighed Mata Devi. ‘There are so many boys whose lives are empty.'

Udham smiled at Jeevan. ‘You look like you could use some more of Mata-ji's food,' he joked.

Jeevan, unsure of himself, shrugged. Udham was well known to the boys at the orphanage. He had been sent there as a boy, along with his brother, who had died soon afterwards. But despite the hardships he'd faced, Udham became a hard-working member of the group, and to some of the boys he was a role model. At the age of sixteen he'd left for Basra in Iraq to work as a carpenter for the British. But he was soon sent back to India, although he'd never fully explained why. Now he found work in and around the city and had yet to turn twenty years of age.

‘Do you have a name?' asked Udham.

‘Jeevan. You used to call me and my friend Gurdial monkeys when we were younger. We annoyed you all the time.'

‘Ah! I remember you two! Well, in that case, my brother, would you kindly pour me some tea?'

A smile burst onto Jeevan's face. ‘Yes!' he replied, pleased that Udham remembered him.

‘And perhaps you'd like some food?' Mata Devi added. ‘I've just made
aloo gobi
.'

Udham nodded as Jeevan brought him some tea. ‘Thank you,
bhai
.'

Jeevan stood for a moment before remembering that he had arranged to meet some friends. ‘May I go out now, Mata-ji?' he asked.

The old woman asked him if his chores were complete.

‘Oh, let the boy alone!' Sohan told her. ‘He has done enough chores for five young men.'

Mata Devi sighed. ‘Be careful,
beteh
,' she warned. ‘There is danger in the air nowadays.'

‘I won't be long, Mata-ji,' replied Jeevan.

‘See you around,' Udham said to him.

‘You too,
bhai-ji
.'

Gurdial was busy chasing after Gulbaru Singh's daughter so Jeevan made his way to the railway bridge to meet some other friends. He arrived well before time, and wary of the army patrols stationed at each end of the bridge, he found a patch of grass and sat down,
careful not to stare at the soldiers. The grass was slightly damp and smelled of the rain. Jeevan turned to face the tracks and wondered whether he would see a train pass by on its way to the station. To his left were tall poles carrying the telegraph wires that allowed the British to make contact with each other. And across the tracks, outside the old city, was the British quarter; and beyond this, the heavily defended fort.

The houses in the British quarter were much larger than those in the old city and the roads and lanes around them much wider. Each house had its own walled compound, the walls painted in pastel shades of yellow, blue and pink. A large variety of trees and bushes filled the gardens. From where he was sitting, Jeevan could make out the trailing bougainvillea hanging from some of the compound walls, the flowers cream, purple, pink and crimson. Wild caper bushes with thick, sharp spines grew from cracks in the ground, and teak trees stood tall, their whitish-grey bark shimmering like silver in the sunshine.

The caper bushes took him back to his own childhood, to the days before his mother had been killed. Her scent, a mixture of lychees and ripened sugar cane, seemed to reach out to him across the years, and he could picture her smile. He thought back to all the stories she used to tell him at bedtime, to the
mooliwale paratha
she'd make each Sunday morning before they visited the village
gurdwara
. As a widow with no other family, she had lived a hard life but she had
never let her troubles discolour his day, not even once.

And then he saw himself cowering in the corner of the room they had called home as the blood began to thud in his veins, making them bulge. The bandits had come during the cold of a winter's night, seven of them, carrying rifles and machetes. They had thick facial hair and none had any semblance of light or life in their eyes. They were soulless and evil and they carried with them the stench of carrion. While he'd looked on helplessly, those animals had used his mother, one after the other.

‘Don't look,' his mother had begged him. ‘Please turn away!'

But Jeevan had frozen, his eyes wide with shock. The last of the bandits, once satisfied, had turned to him.

‘Now you are all alone,' he'd sneered before cutting Jeevan's mother's throat from ear to ear.

The bandits raped and killed four women in the village and murdered several men before night gave way to dawn, but only one of them had mattered to Jeevan. And she had been taken away from him. Had he been blessed with a father, with a gang of strong elder brothers, his life would have turned out so differently. But there had been no one to help him save his mother; no one to defend her from men who had the hearts of jackals.

Now, as he sat alone watching the railway tracks, Jeevan wondered how it might feel to have a family. Mata Devi and Sohan were wonderful, kind souls, but
they had many orphans to fend for. Jeevan was just one of the many. What he longed for more than anything in the world was to feel special. That was what had drawn him to Gurdial: they were the same age and each of them had an emptiness that they held inside. Gurdial had been at the orphanage for a few years when Jeevan arrived and had taken him under his wing. Before long they became like brothers, looking out for one another and telling each other what they held back from everyone else. When Gurdial shed tears, Jeevan thought no less of him because he knew what the tears represented.

But now Gurdial had found Sohni, the merchant's daughter, and Jeevan felt his place being taken. Not that it was unnatural, for what else was a young man to do but find a woman to take care of him? Jeevan felt no anger towards Gurdial and his secret love; he longed for his brother to be happy. But he no longer felt special, and that was hard to take. And then there was the small matter of Sohni's father, Gulbaru Singh. He would never allow his daughter to marry a penniless orphan. But Gurdial was blinded by love and could not see reason, and each time Jeevan tried to open his brother's eyes, Gurdial grew cold and sulked.