The Weary Generations (41 page)

‘Let me stay tonight,' Ali begged. ‘I will go tomorrow.'

‘No,' she said sternly, ‘I am busy.'

‘There are soldiers –'

‘No soldiers in the back street. Go now.'

Her expression had changed, the rough edges to her face and voice had returned. Frightened, Ali quietly went down the stairs and out the door. As he left he passed a bearded man in loose unwashed clothes who went in the door and bolted it from inside. The narrow back street was deserted. He did not know where he was or where he was going, except that he had to keep walking. For the first time since he boarded the train at Rani Pur Ali felt the unbearably aching pull of home.

B
EFORE HE COULD
decide for himself what to do next, nature felled Naim. One morning he felt more than usually dizzy and lay down on the cot after breakfast. A while later, as he awoke from sleep, he found that he was unable to pick himself off the bed. He told his mother, who ran to the village hakeem. The hakeem, after examining Naim by poking fingers in his flesh and asking questions, declared that it was no different from a horse or a donkey whose body becomes hot-cold after a race and jams up. But the sick animal, he said, gets back on his feet – he flicked his fingers to indicate a speedy recovery – within two days with proper treatment. The treatment was the tried and tested potion, effective for both man and beast, of jackal-meat stock made with herbs supplied by the hakeem. The stock, said the hakeem, had ‘hot properties' that would unlock the joints and perk up the flesh. Naim refused point blank to drink the stuff, although Rawal had set a snare and spent a whole night in a field of near-ripe wheat to catch the jackal. Eventually he did catch one, killed and skinned it and brought it home, and the old woman boiled it with herbs without Naim's knowledge. Naim wouldn't have it. Luckily, the stroke was not severe. His speech was not affected and a little voluntary movement began shortly to appear in his limbs. After the discarded jackal, the next best thing Naim's mother could do was to massage the paralysed left side of Naim's body with linseed oil seared with cloves, which she did three times a day, apart from feeding him hot chicken soup. Whether the massage worked or whether the body regained strength from its own natural resources was never definitely established one way or the other. But after two weeks Naim could sit up in bed with the support of pillows behind his back without feeling tired and could even move his leg and the half-arm on his left side a few inches every day by way of exercise. From the very first day, Naim had read all hours to while away the time, holding a book in his
unaffected right hand. Books were stacked around him, some on the table and others on the floor beside his bed. That was what he was doing one evening by the light of a lamp when Azra appeared at the door.

It was not until a fortnight after Naim fell ill that Azra got the news from the munshi who had gone to Delhi, ostensibly to show the crop accounts to Roshan Agha's main munshi, called the manager, but also to let Azra know about Naim's condition. She had known of his release from prison and had been thinking – fearfully because Naim had not contacted her – of going to Roshan Pur. After the munshi's visit, she left for the village and went straight to the big house, which had been not just abandoned but neglected for years, for the servants, although they still received wages in money and kind for looking after the house, had taken to working in the fields to earn extra money. There was only the loyal old man who lived in one of the rooms in the outhouse. Confused and frightened, he ran out to collect the servants from the village and the fields. Azra, sitting on the thick roots, visible above the earth, of the great bohr tree, heard, as from afar, the sounds of doors and windows opening and shutting and of furniture being dusted and dragged about. She sat there, refusing the offer of tea or a meal, until the sun went down. The house was eventually cleaned and aired, made ready for her. But she did not go in. Leaving behind the small heap of fallen leaves she had made while she sat under the large tree and accompanied by the old servant, she came out of the main gate and headed for the village. The house was never to be lived in again.

It was evening when Azra stepped into Naim's house for the first time in her life. She lingered at the door of the courtyard. She could see the shadowy figure of Naim's mother, whom she had only met once before in all those years, moving about in the lamp-lit room. As Azra stood in the darkened doorway, the old woman came out and went into the next dimly lit room. On trembling legs, Azra crossed the courtyard and reached the door of the first room. Naim was sitting up in bed with his back to the door, reading a book. Hearing the footsteps, he said without turning his head, ‘I don't want the massage just yet. Give me something to eat.' Hearing no answer nor a shuffle of feet, he turned his head to look. For a few long moments, inhaling successive short breaths, Naim stared at Azra's figure standing absolutely still in the doorway of his room as though it were a vision he had longed for from a former life, disbelieving it. The book fell from his hand on to his stomach as he tried to turn over to face the door, but his body would not cooperate. Azra walked into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed, her body touching his. She put both hands on his shoulders and gently pushed him back on to the pillows. Her hands resting on him and Naim
gripping her arm with his one hand and making a supreme attempt to lift his left half-arm to touch her with it but failing, they kept looking at one another in silence until the old woman appeared carrying a cup of warm linseed. It took her a minute to recognize the woman sitting on her son's bed. She smiled a simple peasant's smile and sat down at the foot of the bed. She rubbed a little oil on her palms and started to massage her son's leg. Neither Naim nor Azra, locked in a gaze, paid any attention to her. Naim's eyes were once more seeing an image of the old Azra, but Azra saw that her husband's hair had receded almost halfway over his head and the several days' growth of beard on his face was more than half white. Wordlessly, Azra bent over and put her face close to Naim's. He kissed her on the brow, the cheeks and the lips but did not linger, raising her face with his hand to about a foot from his. Minute after minute, with their eyes alone, they renewed their acquaintance, until Naim's mother's hands became hot from rubbing and she left the room, taking the pot of oil with her.

‘You have,' Azra spoke her first words, ‘lost some hair.'

‘No,' Naim laughed. ‘A lot.'

‘And your eyes,' she said, ‘have become wrinkled.'

‘Because they didn't see you for so long.'

‘Are you cross with me that I didn't come?'

‘You came once.'

‘Only once,' she said with sadness.

‘That was no place for you. Once was enough.'

‘No, I should have come.'

‘No, no.' Naim was quiet for a moment. ‘You know, the hardest thing for me was the night. I kept busy during the day, but the night without you was like – like a mountain.'

‘A mountain?'

‘One that had to be climbed.'

‘You spent many nights alone when you were here.'

‘It is not the same. The place I am talking about has nights – nights – oh, I can't put it into words – like stone.'

‘The words?'

‘No, nights. Like they are made of stone and you have to scale them with nothing to hold on to and only on the other side is another day.'

‘You know, Naim,' Azra said, ‘a strange thing happens to me. Have I told you this before?'

‘What?'

‘This strange thing that always happens to me?'

Naim laughed. ‘You have told me many strange things that happen to you.'

‘No, this: I can't imagine your face.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I know your face as well as my own – no, as well as my own hands. But as soon as you go away, I can't remember it, can't picture it in my mind. No matter how I try, I can't bring your features back to memory.'

‘Well, I have been away a long time.'

‘No, it has always happened.'

‘From the very beginning?'

‘Yes.'

‘That means,' Naim said, smiling, ‘that you didn't love me.'

‘No,' Azra cried, pressing her hands down on Naim's chest, ‘seriously, I have never understood this. I can picture everything of yours, your feet, legs, the way you walk, even your voice, the whole figure but not the face. Does it happen to you as well?'

‘No, never,' Naim replied. ‘Your face, your voice, they are always there, they alone carried me through all the stony nights.'

Naim's mother came into the room, carrying a tray on which she had two bowls of chicken shorba, mango pickle in a separate saucer and hot rotis wrapped in clean cloth. Carefully, she placed the tray on the table and walked out soundlessly, avoiding looking at her son and Azra, neither of whom looked at the food or at her.

‘Uncle Ayaz died,' Naim said.

‘I heard,' Azra answered.

‘He was not happy with me. Never came to see me in gaol, not once. A few days after he died his old servant Aslam came to visit and gave me the news. Some time later, I dreamed about my uncle. He was standing at the door of the prison as I was walking out a free man. He handed me his favourite walking stick and walked away without saying a word. Now here is something that would astonish you, as it did me. When I came back to Roshan Pur, Aslam came to see me. He told me that my uncle had left his house in Delhi to me but all the household goods to him, his old servant, except just one thing – the silver-topped cane. He had brought it with him along with the papers for the house. Aslam had never mentioned it to me when he came to visit me in gaol. I asked him and he said that he didn't know about it until later when my uncle's lawyer read the will.'

‘Is that true?'

‘Absolutely true.'

‘Amazing. He must have loved you very much.'

A shadow of pain appeared in Naim's eyes. ‘Yes,' he said.

‘Khala died last year,' Azra said.

‘Did she? I am sorry.'

Suddenly, Azra took his face in her hands and said, ‘Naim, promise me one thing.'

‘What?'

‘Say that you promise.'

‘All right, I promise.'

‘Come with me to Delhi.'

Taken by surprise, Naim looked at her without answering.

‘Won't you?'

‘What for?'

‘You need proper treatment.'

‘I am getting better,' Naim said, making a little movement in his left leg.

‘You are deceiving yourself, Naim. You won't fully recover like this, and not here. You need a good doctor's treatment, in a hospital if necessary. Look, you promised.'

Naim was quiet for a few moments, avoiding Azra's gaze. There was an intensity in her face that he found himself powerless to resist. In the end, he closed his eyes and nodded. Azra lowered her head and began rubbing it on his chest.

Until now, Naim's life seemed to have led him by its circumstances not from the front but from behind, like a man being pushed along in a storm by gusts of strong wind, limiting his own movements to the resistance of his limbs. Now, in a life circumscribed by necessity, he had entered a different world – the unfamiliar territory of the mind. He could do no more than read and think. It was as if a skylight in the ceiling, cut through the roof – at which he stared most of the day and night – had opened up. Into this he was to step on hesitant, fearful feet, for the place beyond was in utter darkness, and he was like a child who presses himself on hands and knees against invisible barriers until his eyes begin to make out the shapes of things about him and then he stands up, extends his arms in front and walks, becoming familiar with the blackness. Occasionally, he indulged in dialogue, often with himself, at times with his doctor but rarely with Azra.

Dr Ansari, a cultivated man, renowned too for his political activities, and a friend of Roshan Agha, visited once a week to examine the sick man who lay in Azra's room in a separate bed, and he usually left Naim with a thought. At times it would be something as troubling as this:

‘Are you a believer, Naim?'

‘Believer in what?'

‘God. Religion.'

‘Why do you ask?'

‘Because even in this day and age when science is making great advances and machines are taking over the work of men's hands and feet, belief in religion is still a force that a man can bring to bear on his life.'

‘Which religion are you talking about?'

‘Doesn't matter which, the main religions all have a common aim.'

‘Paradise?'

‘No, the provision of comfort and hope.'

‘Even in illness?'

‘Especially in illness. Let me explain. Illness, long-term illness, as for example yours, can drive a man to dark thoughts, sometimes to hopelessness. Religious belief can pull you out of that condition. It provides you with a focus for positive thought. The worst thing in a state of illness, as I have often said to you, is a negative attitude. External application of medicine alone cannot do the job. Putting it purely in medical terms, it can reduce the agitation of the mind and bring down the blood pressure.'

‘So you advise me to use religion like some kind of pill?'

‘That, my dear man, is exactly what I call negative attitude.'

‘Don't you think I am a bit old to turn myself to this kind of thing at this stage?'

‘You are never, never too old to become a believer.'

‘Can I get back all that I have lost?'

‘No one can. But you can start a new life. The past doesn't exist if you are a believer. There is only the future – a new future.'

When Dr Ansari left, Naim kept thinking about this – although he did smile at the doctor's passionate phrase, ‘a new future'. The doctor's speeches sparked off trains of thought, but his vehemence had the opposite effect on Naim. The renewal not of life but a hollowed-out memory cast a shadow over his brow. ‘What has belief in God or religion or whatever got to do with me, my everyday life, with me and Azra, she who picks up my arm and leg and exercises them but is lost for words, except the renewed concern she shows in her every movement? Who is she doing it for? For me or for herself? Why is it always like this between me and her, passion flaring with blinding light and then dying quickly, like a soft, hollow driftwood fire? Belief! What place does it have in lives that have gone wrong? All she ever says now is “when”, “when I get better”, “when I will walk into the world”, into life again, when, when – the future, the coming into new life. What about the dead, what shall we say about them? Having made a compromise with death once and for all, why should we make any other? Belief! What has it got to do with love?'