Under the Jeweled Sky (35 page)

“Come,” she said. “Let us go inside. You must be tired.”

Navinder stood with his family, unsure of what to do. Mrs. Gupta spoke to his wife. “Come. Bring your family inside. We shall have to make more bread.”

• • •

Within an hour, dusk had fallen, the rooms above the workshop warmed by the yellow flames of half a dozen clay oil lamps, the light just enough to illuminate the plentiful supper they shared. Together they sat and ate, Navinder and his family, Jag and his aunt, Deepak the vegetable seller, and the two young women, Geeta and Komal, introduced by his aunt as close neighbors whose husbands had gone missing. They were staying with Mrs. Gupta while they waited for news, the three women feeling safer for being together. Jagaan tried to recall the last time he had eaten supper with a family, a high stack of warm chapattis quickly diminishing, torn up and scooped into a big dish of curried vegetables before disappearing into hungry stomachs.

“You must miss your home,” Mrs. Gupta said to Navinder.

“Yes,” he replied. “But I believe in karma. We were preordained to leave. Our
anjal
is here, our destiny. We will trust in that and build our lives again.”

Navinder's boy began to fall asleep, food still in his mouth, his head slipping forward sharply, then back, eyes opening for a moment before sliding closed again. Navinder gathered him up, one of the young women rising to take him through to the second room where the family slept on mats laid out on the old wooden floor.

When Navinder returned, they were talking again, his wife this time, speaking softly, telling of the conditions in the camp, the scenes on the roads as they had trudged endless miles.

“They said we will have to go into one of the camps again,” she said, “and hope that a house can be found for us soon. But the baby…” She looked down into her lap where the infant lay sleeping, rattling short breaths. “It is not good for the baby.”

Mrs. Gupta fixed her eyes on Deepak. He stopped eating, setting down the piece of chapatti in his fingers.

“I know what you are going to ask me,” he said.

“Well, why not? It is what Taj Din would have wanted.”

Deepak looked at Navinder, at his wife, at the infant in her lap.

“What if somebody objects?”

“By somebody, you mean your wife.”

The talking stopped, everyone eating quietly for a while before Navinder broke the silence.

“Have things been very bad here?”

“Very bad,” Deepak said. “You can see for yourself what it has done to our beautiful city. There was rioting in the streets. Pitched battles being fought right outside that window.”

“Are things better now?”

“Yes. Thank God. At least the worst of it is over, but now we have all the refugees streaming in. We are trying to help them as best we can, but still they come in their thousands.”

“We saw,” Navinder said.

“They wanted to put Amritsar behind the line, to make it part of Pakistan. We were lucky to be able to stay in our homes. It is the ones who had to come over the border who we feel sorry for.”

“We had to leave our home behind,” Navinder said. “My wife thought we would be able to go back one day. Now she accepts that we shall never return. We have to start again and make a new home somewhere, but with so many people…” He noticed that his wife was weeping, silent tears she tried to hide behind the veil of her thin, stained sari.

“Let her cry,” Mrs. Gupta said. “We saw our neighbors crying when they left. Taj Din, the Moslem tailor, came to every Hindi house and wept openly before leaving.” She looked at Deepak again.

“He was my neighbor,” Deepak said. “His family lived in the rooms above ours. All day long and half the night we would hear the beating of his little sewing machine. He made beautiful clothes. My wife had the best
cholis
and I the best shirts. He was a good man.”

“And what did Taj Din say to you?” Mrs. Gupta asked him.

“He gave his home to me,” Deepak said. “He said that he had blessed it so that it would never feel the shame of the blood that had been spilled, that its walls would never be tainted by the hatred that infected our city and its people.” Deepak looked at Mrs. Gupta. “He said that we must always remember to love our neighbor as we do our own family.” He turned to Navinder, face covered in shame. “We have been using the space,” he admitted. “My wife said that we needed it, for the day our son marries and brings his wife into our home.”

“He is two years old!” Mrs. Gupta said. “And you have plenty of room.”

“Then it is settled.” Deepak drank a little water, thinking for a while, and said to Navinder, “But I will warn you now, you will not find my wife the easiest of neighbors. She snores like a water buffalo.”

• • •

Jag watched from the open window as Deepak, Navinder, and his weary family crossed the dark street on their way to Deepak's home. A few minutes earlier, Jag and Navinder had embraced like brothers, Navinder's eyes red-rimmed, his throat unable to speak.

“Your aunt has put a basin of water for you downstairs in the kitchen at the back of the workshop.” Jag turned to see Geeta, one of the neighbor women, standing there. She set down a small pile of clean cottons—fresh pajamas and shirt, some cloths with which to wash and dry himself.

“Thank you,” he said. She turned to leave. “Geeta?”

“Yes?”

“How long has your husband been missing?”

“Three months.” Her eyes held the floor. “He went out, with Komal's husband. Komal's mother-in-law had the cholera. They said they would fetch the doctor or bring some medicine at least.”

Jag looked at her and wondered if she knew that her husband was dead. They both were, hers and Komal's. He thought about the bodies he had seen in the canal, the ones along the railway tracks, and wondered if any of those blackened remains were their menfolk.
What
had
happened?
he thought. How could this country have descended into such wretchedness? It seemed to have happened overnight, this once happy and peaceful land now an unfolding nightmare of death and destruction at every turn. Geeta's head remained bowed.

“They must have got caught up with the crowds,” Jag said lamely. “I hope they return safely soon.”

“Thank you,” Geeta said. She lifted her eyes to him. “Komal and I both know that our husbands are gone, but for so long as we believe them alive, we shall not have to live as white shadows. No woman wants to be a widow. It is our darkest fear.”

Mrs. Gupta appeared in the doorway. “Jagaan,” she said. “Go and wash.” She picked up the pile of fresh cottons. “Take these down with you and put on something clean. You can leave your clothes there on the floor. We will lay a bed for you here. We will sleep in the next room.”

“Thank you, Aunty.”

• • •

Jag steeped a cloth in the basin, water dripping to the floor as he brought it to his naked body, the outline of bone and muscle illuminated by the golden glow thrown out by the lone oil lamp. His skin bore scars here and there, superficial marks on his arms that would not stay for too long, a deeper twisted river across his shin where he had gashed it open as he leaped from the train. Another scar ran for three red inches just below his right shoulder blade, but he was not aware of it. He rinsed the cloth, the water clouding, and passed it over his face again, around the back of his neck, scrubbing hard. Bending forward, he dipped his head into the basin, massaging his fingers into his scalp, his hair slicking out into the water, grown long again since one of the nurses had cut it for him in the camp. He stood up, flicking his head back, a trail of water flying through the air behind him, spattering against the wall.

Without warning, his reflection stared back at him, and he stopped, not recognizing it for a moment. It had been a long time since he had seen his own face, thrown back at him now in the small blackened window, the dim glass fractured across one corner. He leaned toward it and inspected himself, tipping his head back, lifting his chin, seeing the jut of his collarbone, the smooth, hard round line of his shoulder. He rinsed the cloth again, pressing it into the water, and washed his body, freeing his skin from the long journey, consigning it to the layer of grime that settled at the bottom of the basin.

Upstairs, his aunt was waiting for him. His bed had been laid out. A mat and a colorful blanket sewn of myriad patches. And cushions, three of them, to arrange however he wanted. A cushion for his head, he thought, the one thing that he had stopped longing for more quickly than anything else. It was nothing more than a luxury, unnecessary for the purposes of survival. He had forgotten about cushions. He had forgotten about many things.

“I hope you will be comfortable,” his aunt said.

“It is a bed fit for a king,” Jag replied.

Mrs. Gupta looked at him, so tired, so thin, sharp elbows poking through her husband's cotton shirt. She was still reeling from the shock of it, that he had somehow found his way here. She knew of her sister's son, of course, but they had never expected to see him. That was the way of it when sisters grew up and married away, moving into the households of their husbands, leaving their own families behind, often never to be seen again. A wife belonged to her husband and his family. It was the sons who stayed behind, bringing wives into households, swelling the family's tribe. All these years, she had not even heard his name.

And then the letter had arrived, and they had not known what to make of it. They had stared at it, as though it were some strange object just dropped out of the sky, wondering what it could be. Her husband had made the decision. He had opened it, peeling back the roughly made envelope, its folds stuck down with rice glue dried powdery white into the corners. Inside, folded small, had been a scrap of paper, so thin that he had shaken it open carefully, exposing patterned, foreign writing, its figures looped in thin pencil lines.

“What is it?” she had asked, wringing her hands.

“A note of some kind,” her husband had said. “It is written in English.”

They studied it anyway, even though they were unable to read it. Mr. Gupta took it to the vegetable seller, and together they took it to the barber. He knew some English words, but the letter had made no sense to him either. The only person who would be able to get to the bottom of it would be Mr. Shirodkar, the advocate who lived on the corner. So they had taken it to him, the three of them, and he had told them what it said.

“What should we do?” Mr. Gupta had asked his wife when he returned home many hours later. The men had discussed it at length in the advocate's office, and the news was already sweeping through the street, passing quickly from door to door.

Mr. Gupta had sat before his wife, watching her thinking. His wife was a wise woman. She was not afraid to speak the truth. Nor did she fear any man. She claimed she had no need to, for her husband would protect her from any man who came into her presence, and he would never wish her to be dishonest with her own husband. There had been times when he had wished he had married a less outspoken woman, but not often. He loved her very much, and her honest manner of thinking and clear advice had saved him from his own hot temperament many a time. Mrs. Gupta had thought long and hard before she spoke.

“We know that Jagaan and his father left the palace months ago. They could be anywhere. They are probably dead.”

“Yes,” her husband had said.

“I believe that what the letter says is true,” she said. “Why else would someone send such a thing?”

“Yes. I believe it too.”

“And you ask me what should we do?”

“Yes.”

“Now I will ask you the same thing, husband. What should we do?”

“I don't know! That is why I am asking you!”

Mrs. Gupta had taken his hand. “You and I, is our blood the same?”

“Of course it is!”

“Then you forget, my blood is shared with my sister too. I had hoped to see her again one day, perhaps when we were old, so that we could share the stories of our lives while sitting around getting fat on sweets.” She smiled at her husband. “A grandchild,” she said. “My sister has a grandchild. A boy, born through the line of her own blood. And what has happened to him? He has been thrown away like rubbish! Don't you see? He is alone somewhere, waiting for someone to claim him. Perhaps he has already been given away, a child, connected to me by blood. Connected to
us
. So now I ask you, husband, what do you think we should do?”

Mrs. Gupta thought of all this as she watched her sister's son, sitting on the floor beside her, fighting his fatigue. And now she asked the same question of herself,
what
should
we
do?
wishing her husband were there to answer her. It was not in her nature to hold back, but now was not the time. He needed to rest, to regain his strength and replace some of the flesh that had fallen from his bones.

“I will leave you to sleep now.” She got up from the floor, adjusting her sari over her shoulder. “I cannot believe that you are here. It is a miracle.”

• • •

Jag did not wake until noon the following day, and when he did, he was so tired that he managed only to eat a little, to drink some water, before his body waned and he fell asleep again. The women left him in peace, keeping to the other room, slipping past quietly whenever they went downstairs to wash or prepare food.

Mrs. Gupta watched Jag sleeping. He seemed so peaceful, untroubled by his dreams, and she studied his face closely, the marked resemblance to her sister. His mouth twitched, just slightly, and for a moment it looked as though he were smiling.

Jag had heard her come into the room, the sounds of the day drifting into his half-sleep, unable to rouse himself. He had not slept like this since forever, always on his guard, ready to spring up and defend, or flee, or respond to whatever threat might creep up on him while he lay down. Sometimes he would wake with a start, realizing that he had fallen fast asleep, and he would check everything around him quickly, feeling angry with himself for slipping off like that, and then he would force himself awake, shifting to a less comfortable position to reduce the temptation to drift into full sleep. He and Navinder had taken turns keeping watch, but still, one of their bundles of belongings had been stolen in the night, lifted and carried away from right under their noses.