The Weary Generations (6 page)

‘Let's exchange them.'

‘No,' she said. ‘They have to be exchanged accidentally.'

‘Well, let's exchange them accidentally.'

Without warning, Azra began to climb up the tree. Naim followed her. Azra's round pink heels were close to his eyes, her foot almost touching his face. The wind, full of tiny drops of rain, swept across her, losing raindrops in the tree. Her mauve silk dress of shalwar-kameez fluttered, defining her calves, thighs and hips, their firm flesh straining against the heave. Reaching the middle of the tree, she sat herself snugly in a nook formed where two thick branches joined, her feet wedged against a third. Naim sat beside her, dangling his legs.

‘You asked me whether I had – er – what was it, Western clothes?'

Her face, already red from the climb, became flushed.

‘Well,' said Naim, ‘how do I look in jacket and trousers?'

‘You still look funny.'

‘Why?'

‘You are the only one with a jacket on. It's hot, you know, or haven't you noticed?'

For the first time the old mocking tone had crept into Azra's voice. Naim blushed.

‘Well, did I not have to show you my proper Angrezi libas?'

Azra looked at him intently for a moment in the semi-darkness of the tree. ‘You really looked funny with that tassel bobbing about on your head.' A moment later she laughed.

It was the same brief laugh with a hint of hoarseness, rather like a gust of wind through thorny shrubs, that seemed forever to be enclosed by her lips, ready to emerge even when there was little cause for it. Looking back at her through the wet, dark leaves, he suddenly saw the resemblance between her and her father. Both had a certain something – a wildness that imparted a shade of brutality to their eyes and the corners of their lips.

‘What about your father's hat the other night?'

‘That was only ceremonial,' she said, laughing again. ‘I must say he looked funny as well.'

There was a commotion in his heart. He tore off a sprig and waved it in the air. It bounced the drops of rain resting precariously on the leaves of the tree. He laughed.

‘Why are you laughing?' asked Azra.

‘I never ask you why every time you laugh.'

‘Two errors,' she said. ‘First, I never ask you each time you laugh. Second, why does it make the question unnecessary?'

‘I remembered monkeys up a tree in Calcutta Zoo.'

Slowly, a smile spread on her face. The rain became heavier. The others had all gathered on the veranda, looking at the rain and singing.

‘Why do you throw your head back when you laugh?' he asked.

‘Do I? I don't know. Why?'

‘I like it.' He kept looking at her quietly. ‘Your mouth opens when you laugh.'

‘Doesn't yours?' she asked.

‘Not as much. It's your lips. They make me want to touch them.'

‘You come from Roshan Pur,' she said suddenly.

‘My family live there. I live in Calcutta.'

‘Will you go there?'

‘Perhaps.'

‘When?'

‘I don't know.'

He reached out to touch her lips, running his fingers on them, then on her nose, eyes. Next he pressed the base of his hand on her cheeks, feeling the bones underneath, the jaw and the chin, as if trying to capture the memory of her looks in his fingertips, while the peculiar smell of the wet tree entered his nose, warm and humid.

From the veranda came the sharp sound of her aunt's voice, calling out to her. After a moment's pause, staring at him with unblinking eyes, Azra said, ‘Let's go,' without moving.

‘Stay here,' Naim said thickly.

‘No,' she said, and jumped down from a great height. ‘Uff,' she cried as she landed, looking up at him fixedly again for a moment, as if in terror. Then she got up. Naim climbed down and followed her, running, to the house.

Looking at Naim, a shadow passed over the aunt's brow, although she only said to Azra gently, ‘You've been out in the rain, bibi.' They had all gone into Pervez's room, except for Waheed. He stood talking, in his usual conquering-hero style, to Lydia, the Bishop's daughter, who sat in an armchair below him, gathering up her feet, against the rain coming in with the wind.

I
T WAS A
small house that Naim's grandfather had built long ago, and it was inhabited permanently by a distant relative, an old man who had stayed single all his life, a grace-and-favour resident doubling as caretaker and general servant in the house now used by Ayaz Beg on his very occasional visits to the city. Naim lifted the side of the mosquito-net to look. His uncle still lay half-hidden behind his own net, partly covered by a thin cotton sheet, but was already stirring and coughing, a sign that any moment now he would slip his hand under the pillow and take out a packet of his small cigars and light one. He would cough some more, inhaling deeply, and before you knew he would step down from the cot and into the lavatory. In there he would make much noise. Emerging, he would go into the bathroom to make more noise, to cough out the phlegm from his throat and to fiercely blow his nose many times until he was breathing clear, while the half-smoked cigar was left behind on a ledge in the lavatory, slowly turning to ash and spreading all around its acrid smell, which Naim would find both familiarly satisfying and unpleasant as he took his turn in that small space. Ayaz Beg had ordered his life according to regular habits that had hardened into rituals, ceasing to exist as functions of the day in that Naim never noticed them; he simply waited for the day to begin.

He went and stood at the edge of the roof where they had slept through a warm night. Looking emptily down into the street, he saw the milk shops opening to cook a breakfast of halva-poori for their regular customers and street vendors returning from the main market with their pushcarts loaded with green vegetables and fruits of the season. A young lad ran up the street, carrying a jug to collect the day's milk from the shop with a popular street song loud on his lips, the tune rising along the wall to greet Naim, blinking away the sleep amid bits of early morning dreams and memories
still fresh in his mind …

Lighting another cigar after his first cup of tea, Ayaz Beg surprised his nephew with a sudden remark. ‘You have been going to Roshan Mahal every day.'

Naim looked at his uncle's open face, trying to fathom the meaning of what he had said.

‘I have not visited the place since the evening of the ceremony,' Ayaz Beg continued. ‘You know why?'

‘No,' replied Naim.

‘Because our family has been disgraced in Roshan Pur.'

Naim searched for something to say. ‘I didn't go to see the nawab.'

Ayaz Beg ignored his reply. ‘His children,' he went on, ‘are the issue of a woman of the street. Ghulam Mohyyeddin married her. Then her sister came to stay. The nawab got interested in her and rivalry began between the sisters. After some time the wife killed herself. Her sister now takes her place – without marriage. But who bothers about that? The masters of land can get away with anything. Ghulam Mohyyeddin, although a man of cultivation, nevertheless listened to his heart instead of his head and introduced rotten blood into his family. It was different for us. Our family was respectable but did not have enough property to cancel the wrong-doing. Your father –' Ayaz Beg got up in agitation and went to the window that looked out on the street. When he returned to his chair, his voice had calmed down.

‘Your father also followed his heart, bringing ruination upon us.' He lit another cigar, pulling deeply at it before he spoke again. ‘You are old enough, it is about time you knew what happened. Ours was the only family in Roshan Pur that wasn't servants of Roshan Agha. Our father, when he went to the big house, sat in a chair and not on the floor. He was a brave and hard-working man. But Niaz Beg, my brother,' Ayaz Beg stood his cigar on the edge of the ashtray and spread his hands, as in a gesture of remorse, on the table, thick fingers stained with tobacco, ‘oh, he too was a brave and hard-working man. But he had madness in the brain. Along with the workshop that our father had built, my brother also acquired a passion for making things. It wasn't ordinary fondness for using tools with his hands, he was completely taken with it, absolutely and entirely at one with the job. He started making guns. This is the truth, that the way he made a twelve-bore barrel and fitted the works to it and polished it, even the English guns couldn't match it. Oh, he was an artist. He made them and kept them with the care and attention that other people reserved for children. I remember the day the police came. They searched our house
and found several guns without licence. Niaz Beg was trying to explain, begging them to let go. They grabbed him by his beard and slapped him on the face. They dragged him away with them.'

Ayaz Beg's hands now rested on the table like two wounded birds, quivering at the tips. ‘A few days later, he returned. The skin on his cheeks was black from blows, and half his beard had been pulled out. Any other man would have stopped. But not my brother, no, sir, not him. As I said, there was madness in his heart. I only want to tell you the truth of how it was, so that you know the real nature of your father and not end up hating him. When he moulded those objects from cold iron, they turned into living things in his hands. It was like love; if he stopped making them, his life would ebb away. How could they take that from him? Soon he was at it again. Roshan Agha the elder said to him, “Niaz Beg, you will bring destruction upon the whole village.” Your father took the tools from the workshop into a room in the house where wheat chaff was stored, shut himself in there and carried on. He made ten-chamber revolvers that nobody had ever seen. Well, this time a whole police guard came with a white officer at the head. It was as if the villagers knew that they were coming. People had disappeared into their houses, shutting the doors behind them, and cattle wandered in the streets unattended. They took all his firearms, got every single thing in the house, including cots and clothes, made a heap outside the house and put a torch to them. My brother spread his hands before them, saying that these were his “toys”, that he only played with them. “No bullets. I make no bullets,” he said, weeping, “I don't know how to. Not a single bullet has been fired from them. These are toys. My ornaments.” The British officer took his revolver out and fired into the burning heap. “I will burn the whole village down,” he shouted, so that those inside the houses could hear. Then they took him away. In the end he was sentenced to twelve years of rigorous imprisonment, on a charge of mutinous treason, plus confiscation of all our lands, save a few acres.'

Ayaz Beg covered his face and wept silently for several minutes. His voice had been pressing on Naim's heart as if a massive stone were being lowered slowly on it. He felt relief when that voice broke down. Before he got up to go out of the room, Ayaz Beg spoke his last words. ‘Your parents want to see you. You can go. But you must come back soon. I can't go. Even today, if the government comes to know that I see him, I will lose any position that I have earned.'

Naim climbed up the stairs to the roof and lay down on his cot. After a while he went to sleep. He woke up only when the sun crept up and
started to burn his skin. He dragged his cot to the shade of the parapet. Tossing and turning, he went back to sleep. He was drenched in sweat when he awoke. The sun was setting on a hot day. He took off his shirt, made a ball of it and pressed it on his face and chest to dry himself. Ayaz Beg had come up several times to look while Naim slept. Hearing the noise of his waking, Ayaz Beg climbed up to the roof once again to ask whether Naim would like to accompany him on a stroll. ‘I don't feel like it,' was Naim's answer. He sat on the cot where he had slept for a long time, his limbs feeling leaden, until the sun went down and stars began to appear one by one in the clear sky. Ayaz Beg was long gone on his evening walk. Naim got up, put on a clean shirt and walked straight out of the house.

Azra was sitting by the fountain out on the lawn reading a book in the light of a table lamp brought out on a long flexible wire.

‘What have you been doing today?' she asked.

‘Sleeping,' Naim answered.

‘Sleeeeping!'

‘Yes.'

‘Why?'

‘It was hot.'

‘You should have taken a bath,' she said, laughing. ‘We all waited for you.'

‘Who?'

‘Who what?'

‘Who waited?'

‘Pervez. Jamila.'

‘Not you?'

Azra silently extended her hand to catch the cool drops of the fountain on her fingers.

‘Why not you?' asked Naim.

‘Why, why!'

They laughed quietly. For the first time in all these days, Naim felt that through the jokey exchange and the low self-conscious laughter they had suddenly become aware of one another as never before.

‘You haven't even washed your face today,' Azra said to him.

‘How do you know?'

‘I have good eyesight. Wash it in the fountain. It's clean water.'

Naim put his hand under the fine drizzle of the arcs the fountain made and wiped it across his face. He went and lay down on the grass beside Azra's chair and realized that he had walked out of the house wearing only
slippers on his feet. Surprisingly, it didn't bother him. He closed his eyes and felt the cool of the grass through the thin muslin shirt on his back. Behind the dark eyelids he saw, unaccountably, the image of a mountain lake he had never seen.

‘Come here,' he said.

Azra kept looking at him intently without moving. Resting her elbows on her knees and her chin on the heel of her hand, she sat leaning in her chair in such a position that the wind blew needle-tip drops from the fountain on her face, where they flickered like tiny stars. Naim put his hands on the grass and sat up.