The Mistress of Spices (27 page)

Then I hear a laugh. It peals up clear and true-noted, a derisive bell tolling me back to myself.

And without looking I know who.

Yes, two of them, one leaning lightly on her escort’s arm, one climbing out of a sleek low black-shine car with a glint of gold on its hubcaps, on her long legs in suntan-silk stockings. All silver and diamante, these bougainvillea girls, tossing their curls, breathing scents whose names waft across the darkening air to me. Obsession. Poison. Giorgio Red. Backless dresses held up as though by magic, a long slit up the side of a thigh. Deep velvet and cream. Their gold-brown bodies warm and humming like the engine of the car, ready for adventure, for distances.

What are they doing here, these girls I last saw at my store, shopping for saffron and pistachios?

“The food’s not that great,” says one woman, “but I love the view.”

I notice it for the first time, the restaurant set into the rock and colored like it, the discreet carved sign, gleaming glass giving way to more gleaming glass, and beyond, the ocean offered up like a plate of gold.

“Yeah, the view,” says the other woman, and looks for a moment straight at me from under her smoky lashes. Her lips are cranberry and glitter. Curving in a kind of smile.

I realize I am still in Raven’s arms and struggle away.

Her escort, a white man, whispers something.

The woman is not so discreet. “Some people—” she says. “I guess there’s no accounting for taste.” Her glance sweeps Raven now.

A heat begins to pulse behind my eyes, little explosions of red. The other woman laughs again, leaning into her man, his arm around her slim lame waist. I see with rage the lovely line of her neck, her breasts. “You know how it is, people get turned on by all kinds of kinky things.”

“And that dress,” says her friend. “Did you see that dress?”

“It’s pathetic, isn’t it,” says the other one, “what some women will do to look young.”

The man’s eyes slide over us, bored, as though he’s seen worse. As though it isn’t worth the waste of his time. “We’d better hurry,” he says, “if we want to make it to the theater on time.”

The restaurant door swishes shut behind them.

I feel a pounding inside me, starting up from my soles. It makes its way in waves up my body. Its color is boiling mud.

I welcome it. In a moment it will spew from my mouth in the shape of ancient words (where did I learn them), scalding the bougainvillea girls past recognition.

But.

“Don’t pay attention to them,” says Raven. “They aren’t important.” He grips me tight above the elbow as though he knows what I am intending. “Dear one,” he says, his voice urgent.
“They don’t know you, who you really are. They don’t understand about us. You can’t let them spoil our evening.” He holds on until the pounding slows.

But the evening is spoiled. We make our way to the car in silence, and when Raven tries to put his arm around my shoulder I move away. He doesn’t try again. Nor does he go back to his story. In silence we drive back across the bridge, and when I look back I see the fog has dimmed the lights of the city so they flicker like dying fireflies.

Raven stops the van in front of Haroun’s, sits for a moment with the engine idling. When I say nothing except a curt “Thanks” he says, “I’ll come by tomorrow.”

“I’ll be busy.” I step out, stiff and clumsy and angrily aware of it, remembering the gold sweep of young legs in nylons.

“The day after, then.”

“I’ll be busy that time too.” Ungracious Tilo, says a voice through the whirlwind in my head. What has
he
done.

“I’ll come anyway,” he says. “Give me your hand.”

When I don’t, he takes it and presses a kiss into my palm. Folds my fingers over it. “Dear Tilo.” There is tenderness in his voice but a hint of laughter also. “And I thought you were the wise one.”

All the way up the stairs I hold the warm shape of his lips in my hand. I am almost smiling.

Then I remember the other thing the bougainvillea girls took from me and am angry all over again.

The snakes. My only chance at seeing them.

The door to Haroun’s apartment feels brittle as a husk under my hand. Empty as a left-behind shell. Even before I am done knocking I know no one is in.

Where can he be? Have I once again missed him? But this time I am not late. Perhaps he is at
namaaz
and will not answer until.

I wait a while, try again. First polite and controlled, considerate of neighbors. Then I am pounding the door with my palm, feeling the hard
thwack
of the wood against my hand-bones, crying his name.

Behind me she stands at her open door, haloed by backlight, saying softly, ‘Today he hasn’t returned yet. Why not you come in and have some hot
chai
until he gets back?”

Her eyes are large and luminous as a moonlight lake, her cheekbones carved from softest soapstone. How could I not have noticed earlier.

But my body is beating out a question that will not be ignored. Why is he late why is he late today of all days. “Come
khala
, only I am at home.”

“I appreciate,” I say through sawdust lips, “but I must wait out here.”

“Excuse me one minute then,” she says.

She returns carrying a steaming stainless-steel glass wrapped in an embroidered dishcloth. Purple grapes, silk-green leaves. Even through my worry I notice the small neat stitches.

I drink the tea. It is strong and spiced with clove. It gives me heart, makes the waiting a little easy.

The woman—her name is Hameeda—asks if she might sit with me. She has some time. Shamsur has taken Latifa to buy a birthday gift. They asked her to come too but she had homework.
Besides, it’s better they went without her. She always thinks Shamsur buys the little girl too-expensive things, and then they have an argument right there in the store.

I am glad of her company, the artless way she has of talking, how prettily she moves her hands as she speaks. The water music of her bangles. Day after tomorrow is Latifa’s sixth birthday, they will have a small party, two-three children from Latifa’s class, a few Indian neighbors. Haroun also, but he is very proper, very shy, he will probably just drop off a gift beforehand. She will have to have Latifa take him a plate of food later.

“He is so shy with women, he hardly speaks to me. If we meet on the stairs he will only say Salaam Alekum and hurry down, not even look in my eyes, not even wait for my response.”

This is a new Haroun I am seeing.

“I think he doesn’t realize how good looking he is. Who knows, maybe he doesn’t care. His hair is always falling over his forehead! If only he would take a little trouble he could—”

I hear in Hameeda’s voice something dangerous that unchecked will lead to a home breaking.

“And your husband,” I ask in hard tones. “He likes Haroun too?”

“Khala!”
Hot color stains her face at what I have presumed, but there is a small laugh in her voice also. “Shamsur’s not my husband, he’s my brother.”

“Where’s your husband then?”

She looks down. Pain falls like a veil over her face.

I am regretting the words, I Tilo who should know better than to prod like some village gossip.

“Sorry I asked,” I tell her quickly. “This
chai
is very good. What-all spices did you put in it?”

“No no,” says Hameeda. “It is all right. With you I feel comfortable to tell, I don’t know why. The man who was my husband, one year and half ago back in India he gave me talaq. Because I had no boy children. Also he had seen another girl, younger and prettier. And her father owned big shoe-making business in our town. What better combination could there be.” For a moment her voice dips into bitterness.

“But truly I am luckier than many other women to whom this happens because I have such a good brother. Shamsur, when he hears what is happening, he takes one month off from his job saying Family emergency. That time he is head chef at Mumtaj Palace. You know Mumtaj Palace? Very fine restaurant, he has taken Latifa and me there to eat three-four times. Anyway, he comes to India and makes a big noise until he gets me a good divorce settlement, puts the money into savings bonds in my name, then gets me temporary visa to visit here. When I get here he says
Bahen
, why not you stay with me and go to college, get a good job, stand on your own two feet. Also here no one will call names to your Latifa because her father put her out of his house, no one will say bad luck girl child.

“I am a little afraid of this new country but at last I say Yes. And now I am taking Adult
Angrezi
class for free, learning to read and write the American language. Maybe I will study computer next in the community college, why not.”

“Why not,” I say, and looking at her face like a star my heart lightens a little.

“You know
khala
, what they say is true. Allah helps those who do good to others. Shamsur’s boss is opening one more bigger restaurant so he made Shamsur manager of this one. Now we have money to move to a better apartment but I told him
Bhaijaan
,
why do we need more fancy things, here with such kind neighbors is good enough.”

I see the blush rise up her throat as she speaks. Her eyes move involuntarily to Haroun’s door. And with all my heart I hope for them both what she is hoping.

Now it is late and cold, so much that I have lost count of the hours. My legs are numb from sitting on the naked wood of the stairs. Shamsur and Latifa returned long ago, and Hameeda went in to serve dinner. She returned with food for me, but I couldn’t swallow past the lump of dread in my throat.
Haroun where are you
.

“Please
khala
, come sit inside on the couch. You’ll catch
jukham
out here. I’ll leave the door open, that way you’ll hear him as soon as he comes.”

“No Hameeda, I have to do it this way.”

I did not tell her that I hoped my pain to be an atonement, a protection for Haroun. But perhaps she understood, for she didn’t insist again. She only said, “Knock if you need anything. I’m a light sleeper.”

The unseen sounds of the night, they are not unfamiliar to me. But tonight they have taken on a strangeness, a peculiar, ominous clarity. Footsteps ring as on a fiery anvil, splintering pavement. Sirens drill through the bones of my skull in corkscrew motion. A cry (human or animal?) arcs through the air at me, a thrown knife. Even the stars beat unevenly, like racing hearts.

So the clumsy climbing sounds on the staircase crash on my ear, like a mad elephant throwing itself at a pile of stones. No. They are the sounds of a man I once saw in my village, that long-ago other life, bumping into a wall, the bottle dropping from his hand. Shatter of brown glass, fizz of foam, the fermented yellow odor of it spreading over the street, turning the ground dark.

Haroun. He’s drunk.

I am dizzy with the anger of relief, already forming the scolding words,
You know how worried I’ve been? Look at the time, shame, for this I wasted my time sitting sitting in the cold? I never would have thought this of you, and you a good Mussulman too
. I am already in my mind making him bitter coffee with the grounds left in, brewed with almonds to clear the head and heart.

Then he rounds the bend of the stairs and I see.

Crusted on his forehead, his face. Deep red like carbuncles.

His blood.

At my knock Hameeda opens the door so quickly she must have been waiting also. She looks in my face, then beyond to where Haroun has fallen crumpled on the stairs like a thrown-away coat, stifles a cry,
Allah, no
, runs to fetch cloth and hot water. Wakes her brother. More efficient than I, she pries the keys from Haroun’s fist. Opens his door so we can carry him to his neat bachelor bedroom, whitewashed walls empty except two pictures hanging where his eyes would first fall on waking. A passage from the Koran in a lush curved Urdu script, and a silver Lamborghini.

O my Haroun.

“Khala
, no time to cry now,” says Hameeda, this slim girl so much stronger than I imagined. “Hold his head like this. And
bhaijaan
, go phone for help.”