Cracking India (37 page)

And Godmother, unable to bear my confusion and anguish, and guilty because of her own deviousness, says, “Lenny, have you noticed how busy your mummy's been all year? Going out all the time?”

I nod.

“I'll tell you a secret,” says Godmother, “but I want to be sure you won't tell anyone. It could get your mother into real trouble.”

I draw back and permit Godmother to search my solemn face and my honorable eyes. She trusts what she sees because she says:

“Mummy and your aunt rescue kidnapped women. When they find them, they send them back to their families or to the Recovered Women's Camps. She arranged for Ayah to be sent to her relatives. She didn't want you to know. She felt you had accepted her absence—you'd only start fretting again.”

Don't I know they went on futile Ayah hunts? Or were they just pretending to look for Ayah, using it as a cover for more sinister activities? Doesn't Godmother know about the petrol in the dicky? Doesn't she know that Electric-aunt and Mother were dashing off armed with petrol cans and tinted glasses long before anyone had even heard of kidnapped women?

Obviously Godmother does not know. I'm dumbfounded. Godmother, who makes it her business to know everything about everybody, doesn't know about the arsonists! I still live in dread of my mother and aunt's imminent arrest. Hand-and-leg-cuffed and jangling chains! And Godmother's naivety compounds my fear. She is slipping dangerously, just when her capabilities are most needed. I am tempted to tell her the truth, but I bite my wretched truth-infected tongue just in time. One betrayal is enough. I, the budding Judas, must live with their heinous secret.

It is getting quite dark. Already the dew is settling on our clothes. I shiver on Godmother's lap. Godmother says, as if musing aloud: “Come to think of it, we haven't seen that popsicle-man in a long time.”

Mini Aunty calls from within, “You'd better get in, or someone will be sneezing her head off tomorrow.”

Cousin, too, binds me to secrecy. Crowding me into a corner of Rosy-Peter's still deserted room he whispers into my ear: “Want to know why Ayah was all made up?”

I respond with a breathless nod.

“Because she has converted her profession!”

“She's become Christian?” I enquire tentatively, not knowing what to make of the revelation.

“Not her religion, silly! Her profession. D'you think Virgin Mary'd be caught dead wearing all that makeup?”

“I don't know,” I confess. What does Virgin Mary have to do with Ayah?

“She wouldn't!” declares my knowing Cousin. “Ayah has become the opposite of Virgin Mary. She's become a dancing-girl!”

“An actress!” I exclaim, enthralled. That would explain the makeup. The only dancing-girls I've seen are in Indian films.

“Well,” says Cousin, a trifle uncertain. “Dancing girls do grow into actresses sometimes ...”

“Oh?” I say, and wait patiently.

“Ayah is just a dancer in the Hira Mandi ... The red-light district.”

Hira Mandi means Diamond Market. Cousin is being deliberately obtuse. He knows how important any news of Ayah is to me. I would like to shake him. Instead, like stepping on egg-shells, I ask, “Where is this Diamond Mandi with the red light?”

“Behind the Badshahi mosque. It's where dancing-girls live.”

“And the diamonds? Who sells the diamonds?” I prod gingerly.

“There are no real diamonds there, silly. The girls are the diamonds! The men pay them to dance and sing... and to do things with their bodies. It's the world's oldest profession,” says Cousin as if he's uttering profundities instead of drivel.

My patience is wearing thin. Still, “What things?” I ask.

Although I'm cautious with Cousin, wary of surprises, the gullibility that made me climb a stool to insert my finger into the AC current remains.

Ever ready to illuminate, teach and show me things, Cousin squeezes my breasts and lifts my dress and grabs my elasticized cotton knickers. But having only the two hands to do all this with he can't pull them down because galvanized to action I grab them up and jab him with my elbows and knees, and turning and twisting, with my toes and heels.

Becoming red in the face, Cousin lets me be. And standing apart, and with exasperation, says: “How do you expect me to tell you what? If you don't let me show you how?”

And Cousin starts all over again to show me, and pulling my kicking feet from under me, succeeds in de-knickering me. And putting his hand there, trembles and trembles ...

Until I punch his ears and shout: “You're breaking your promise!”

“Who told you all this?” I demand, pulling my knickers up and scowling, my sharp elbows bristling like dangerous quills as I settle down warily in the comer.

“My cook told me.”

“Which men do such things to her?” I demand to know.

“Oh, any man who has the money... My cook, wrestlers, Imam Din, the knife-sharpener, merchants, peddlers, the governor, coolies...”

If those grown men pay to do what my comparatively small Cousin tried to do, then Ayah is in trouble. I think of Ayah twisting Ice-candy-man's intrusive toes and keeping the butcher and wrestler at arm's length. And of those strangers' hands hoisting her chocolate body into the cart.

That night I take all I've heard and learned and been shown to bed and by morning I reel dizzily on a fleetingly glimpsed and terrible grown-up world.

I decide it's time to confront Mother.

I hound Mother with a mute and dogged sullenness. It is Friday, the day to invoke the great Trouble Easers, the angels Mush-kail Assan and Behram Yazd. (In troubled times they are frequently evoked by the Parsees.) As Mother prepares for the ceremony, spreading a white sheet on the bedroom floor and placing the small fire altar and photographs of the saints on it, she casts perplexed eyes my way. The less I am able to speak out, the more turbulent grows the temper of my pent-up accusations. Mother kneels on the floor and strikes a match to light the joss-sticks. She arranges the
sandalwood shavings on the fire altar and places a criss-cross of small sandalwood sticks on top of them. She holds out the box and says: “Here, Lenny, would you like to light the fire?”

I whip my hands behind my back as if she has offered me a scorpion. I shake my churlish head.

“What's the matter?” she enquires, on her knees before the unlit altar.

In a harsh, squeaky rush of words I can hardly believe are issuing from me I hear myself say: “Don't think we don't know what you're up to with the petrol cans and matches!”

Mother looks so bewildered and alarmed that I wonder for an instant if Cousin, Adi and I are not mistaken. The twinge of doubt passes.

“I know about the petrol in the car's dicky!” I accuse, once again steadfast in my righteous and indignant conviction.

“Oh?” says Mother looking, if anything, more perturbed and baffled. “I didn't think it necessary you children should know about it... It could be dangerous ...”

“But we do know!” I cry. “We aren't dumb! You and Aunty should be ashamed of yourselves! Deceiving everybody! Pretending to look for Ayah and instead burning Lahore!” I can no longer hold back my tears or prevent the tragic break in my voice.

“Oh my God!” Mother exclaims. “Is that what you think?”

And as understanding slowly replaces the astonishment on her face, she pulls me to her lap. Wiping my tears with her soft hands, speaking simply and gravely, she says, “I wish I'd told you ... We were only smuggling the rationed petrol to help our Hindu and Sikh friends to run away ... And also for the convoys to send kidnapped women, like your ayah, to their families across the border.”

“You should have trusted me!” I cry, trying to stay the threatening surge of self-loathing and embarrassment from annihilating me.

“Yes,” she says, solemnly shaking her head up and down. “I should have!”

How could she have? How can anyone trust a truth-infected tongue?

On Monday I come straight to Godmother's from Mrs. Pen's. I remove my satchel, kick off my shoes and I am peeling off my damp socks when Godmother abruptly says:

“You were right. Ayah is still in Lahore.”

I feel goose-bumps erupt all over. My body feels drained of strength. I totter across the cool cement to Godmother's bed. “How did you find out?” I ask, when I am able to get my breath back.

“I have my sources,” she says.

I realize the question was redundant.

“What did you find out?” I ask.

“She's married.”

“I heard she's converted into a dancing-girl,” I say.

Godmother is taken aback. “Who told you that?”

“Cousin told me,” I say. “His cook told him.”

“She isn't a dancing-girl anymore: she's a wife. Her husband is coming to see me this evening.”

“Is Ayah coming?” I ask at once.

“He isn't bringing her.”

“Who's her husband?” I ask eagerly.

“You'll see.”

I can't wait for evening. When's evening? Four? Six? Eight o‘clock? It is already three. The waterman is spraying the drive from the leather pouch slung on his back, and the fine dust clings in little balls to drops of water. I can see him through the screen door and smell the steam off the parched earth.

“Let's sit out,” I say impatiently.

“We'll go outside at five o'clock. Like we do every day,” says Mini Aunty.

“Can't I take the chairs out at least?” I say impatiently.

“My, my! One would think someone was expecting her own
bridegroom! He'll come when he comes and your sitting outside will not hurry him the tiniest bit!”

“When you've finished laying your eggs of wisdom,” says Godmother, “you can make me some tea.”