When She Was Queen (2 page)

Imagine, she says. A man, his trousers tucked inside his Wellingtons, wearing a thick sweater, then a greatcoat on top, setting off on a horse early at dawn, into the mist-strewn forest of the Elburgon Hills, to mark out trees for the day’s cutting. His keys, tied to his belt, tinkling softly in the half dark. This was during the years when he managed a sawmill. Once he met a gang of freedom fighters returning from a raid and promised to bring them a package of corned beef and a couple of old bicycle pumps the next morning, which he did. He could have been hanged for that. Or imagine someone who spends all his savings to enter a safari rally in Nairobi and nearly wins. Nearly; your father was not an out-and-out winner, that was never his style.

She catches my eye; the spot of pink on her cheeks deepens a shade, and I look away from my mother.

In Kisumu, she says, your father and I seemed finally to be settling down.

The “Johnnies” ruled Kisumu, if to rule meant to be the envy of the town and to set the trend for the other rich Indians to follow; if it meant to possess enough wealth that all kinds of influence and licence were a phone call away. They were called the Johnnies because of their wildly extravagant ways and because the most prominent among them had adopted the English name John. On Friday nights they hit the town, together with their wives, stopping off finally at the Rose. My father Rashid supplied their victuals and libations, and the gambling tables; and as the night wore on, and their tired wives retired to one corner of the hotel to sit, wait, and chat, he turned a blind eye to their sins, as one or two of them began hunting the bar for a bit of exotic flesh on the side, a beautiful African girl or a down-on-her-luck European, and gave the nod for a room to be made available. Rashid was not one of the Johnnies, he was an employee; but he was at home with Western customs more than these rich merchants who’d made their money in all sorts of ways, and so they liked to have him around. He introduced them to airline pilots and stewardesses on their nightly layovers, the occasional tourist, and once the famous Dr. Leakey passing through with part of a human cranium in his briefcase. He gave them the taste for a good martini, he introduced them to the slick Manhattan, the Nairobi punch, the exclusive Dodoma wine, of which, according to him, a few hundred bottles were prepared with devotion
every year by a mission in central Tanzania that very few knew about.

In addition to John Chacha, the group included Ambalal, a gregarious man with a freckled face, flaming red curly hair, and the red mouth of the habitual paan-chewer; the quiet, cadaver-like Hassam Mukhi, who wore yellow cotton suits and always seemed quite lost; the diminutive, well-mannered Dr. Patel, who was never without a necktie; the tall and handsome Dr. Singh, the medical expert of last resort and only cancer specialist in town.

Every eight weeks or so, on a Saturday night, there would be the anticipated “party” at one of the better homes. This was a family event; children were seen in hordes, servants packed the kitchen, the men and women mingled happily and domestically together. The occasional birthday or Eid or Diwali was remembered and celebrated with due fanfare. Drinks flowed, the women making a show of sophistication in this privacy, clinking glasses of tepid baby cham; there was the bawdy joke or two related loudly for the pleasure of all; there was a gaming table for the compulsive gamblers.

On the fateful evening that would become the obsessive and dark centre of my existence, the party was at John Chacha’s. Mother and Father drove down from the hotel with their two daughters in their ancient green Morris. On the way, as Mother always demanded during such visits, they passed the former British properties of the Lavington Avenue area—dreamy tree-shaded bungalows behind large lots, their French or bay windows emitting a cosy warm light into the thick darkness—the
sights of which never failed to provoke wistful sighs from her and consequent pangs of male guilt in him.

Their drive took them uphill, next to the lakeshore, and John Chacha’s was the last house on a broad cul-de-sac at the edge of a cliff, the road leading straight into the driveway and back. Behind it, a few hundred feet below, lay Lake Victoria. Sometimes, through the back windows, the meagre lights of one of the handful of passenger ships which plied the lake would be visible, in a background of pitch blackness. The house itself was likened to an ocean liner, due to its size and location. It had a white exterior, with teak doors and windows, the latter equipped with louvred shutters. The gravelled driveway, bordered with gleaming white flagstones, led straight up to a grand portico supported on two columns. I see my father park his modest conveyance among the others’, the four of them get out, my sisters scampering up ahead of them to the door, from behind which come the sounds of party, men’s guffaws, women’s peals; lights on in every window. The couple enter, mingle in the crowd, the door closes.

Father was never fazed by wealth; he accepted it as a matter of course that some people were born into it, others acquired it through a combination of cleverness and sleaze, and the rest didn’t have it. He had no regrets about his life, he would tell his wife, he would never have become a businessman. She thought he excused himself a little too easily. What made our family acceptable in such a group was his manner, and her beauty and style.

The inside of the house was appointed with lush drapes and carpets, heavy dark wood furniture of the European
style; there were knick-knacks collected from every part of the world, paintings and curios, some marked with names of foreign cities, which the children would stare long at, imagining exotic places. Overseeing all the goings-on in the vast drawing room were two large framed photographs of John Chacha’s parents on a wall, his father urbane in a typical round turban and a suit, tricorn white handkerchief sticking out from his breast pocket, his mother with her head covered in the Gujarati-style pachedi, nose stud glinting, looking very ancient and grim. The old man had made his money in cashews and jam.

It was the eve of John Chacha’s wife Khanoo Chachi’s departure for Mombasa to visit her family. Both children would go with her. Some of the guests had brought presents for her, there were parcels to take for relations. There was consequently a certain amount of nervous excitement in the air that night. The journey would be by train, taking two days, from the lake up to the highest station in Kenya, close to where father had worked in a sawmill, then down via Nairobi to the coast. Khanoo Chachi reminded all to look after her husband in her absence, and they assured her not to worry, they would do so and make sure he kept out of mischief. Mother knew all the stations on the line and went over them with Khanoo Chachi. Her father had worked on the railways—as an engineer, she always insisted; as a guard, my father would protest with equal force. His own father had been a ticket collector.

Toward the middle of the proceedings, John Chacha, seated by himself with a drink at the card table, was served a brand new pack, which he stripped open, saying, “Who’ll make a foursome with me?”

“I don’t mind winning some,” Dr. Patel muttered, coming over with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Or losing some, Patel, welcome.”

Ambalal came rolling over, whisky in one hand, soda in the other. “Just a few rounds, John, last time you took the pants off me.”

Just then Father passed by.

“Eh, Rashid, just the chap. Come and join us,” John Chacha beckoned him over.

“Let’s strip the chap naked,” Ambalal whispered with a snicker.

“Yes, let’s,” said Patel quietly.

Father hesitated. Ambalal turned on his wheedling voice. “Arré, come neh, be a sport. Enough of chatting up the women. Join the men now. It’s time we rub John’s nose in the dirt.”

Father took a seat, and started winning.

As the pile of chips beside him started growing, the wives and other guests gathered around to watch. John Chacha was losing the most, and he had become tense and curt. He was not a good loser. Ambalal was his chirpy self, though far from a winner. Dr. Patel was a few chips down at most. Mother stood quietly behind Father, looking serene. Beside her loomed Dr. Singh next to the African intern he had brought with him to the party. It was about time to break up and leave, only the cue to do so awaited the initiative. It was then that John Chacha made his offer, bidding his palatial residence.

Khanoo Chachi gave a gasp, saying, “You can’t!”

Her husband raised a hand to quiet her, throwing her a sharp look, and said: “I have just done so.” He smiled
expansively at the players round the table, his edginess suddenly gone.

“Don’t I only wish I had something of value to bid against that,” Father said, sounding regretful.

John Chacha beamed at him. “You have! If I have a palace, you have the Queen of Kisumu! You can do better than the Pandavas, surely.”

The reference was to the five Pandava brothers of mythology, who gambled away their wife in a game of dice.

“Arré what is he saying, this man,” Khanoo Chachi said in despair. “Have some shame, for God’s sake.” She started crying. She was an emotional, uncomplicated and kind woman, admired and pitied for enduring the trial that was her marriage.

“Bid her,” said the undeterred John Chacha to my father, “and if you win, this alishaan mansion, this Taj Mahal of Lake Province”—he made a gesture to indicate all its grandeur—”is yours for you and your Mumtaz to move into. If not….”

“If not?”

“If not, she’s mine for a night.”

There was laughter from the spectators.

“So you think,” Father replied, with pluck. “I’ll beat you this time, Johnny-boy. All right, my wife on the table.” He threw a quick look at my mother, who stood behind him smiling.

“Can they do this?” the African intern asked Dr. Singh.

“It’s only a joke,” someone said beside them and chortled with nervous excitement. It was Dr. Patel’s wife. The haughty Dr. Singh threw her a look of scorn.

The intern turned away with a look of disgust, then turned back again to watch the hand played out.

Father lost. He got up, his face flushed.

Dr. Singh and his friend were the first to leave, then all the others started packing up their children and heading for the door. It was a typical leave-taking, with many best wishes and reminders to meet again. Khanoo Chachi had been subdued by the women telling her it was all a joke, and men will be men, John especially. John Chacha stood beside her next to the door, equally subdued and polite in a drunken way. They shook hands with my father, did pranams to my mother. Ambalal and his wife Moti and their three children came out with Mother and Father, and as they separated in the driveway, Ambalal said to Father, “Well, you lost your wife. You have to watch this Johnny, he pulls the pants off you if you give him the chance.”

When they reached home, my mother and father fought.

“So you simply gambled me away. Like this,” she snapped her fingers. “What did you think of me?”

“I was a fool, darling, but it was for you that I was tempted!”

“And so you sold away my dignity.”

“You could have stopped me! You could have objected! You
allowed it!”

“We were all watching
you
to see what you would do! You accepted an insult to your wife! You
sold
me away! Well, if my husband thinks me dispensable enough a commodity—”

“We were all a bit tipsy,” Father said desperately.
“John especially. I’ll call him tomorrow, tell him it was all a joke. He should apologize. Come on, I am sorry …”

The next morning he called up John. “I say, my wife’s a bit upset—that joke went a bit too far and I think—”

“You know I don’t joke when I gamble and when I do business.”

“But this time you joked, and I think—”

“I didn’t joke. I bid my house fair and square, with all my honour at stake, and I take it that you too bid fairly. I could have lost, and you would have won my house. As it stands, I won.”

“What do you mean?”

“I won your wife for a night, Rashid. Tonight I’ll send a car for her.”

The car came, and she strode out to it, dignified as ever, dressed in her finest.

“So, did they?” I ask my two sisters.

On one side of the large deck at Habibeh’s Scarborough home, her husband and son barbecue meat and vegetables in an instance of father-son bonding I find quite touching. Teenagers shoot hoops in the distance, at the far end of the backyard, among them the other children of the family. Mother sits out on the lawn, protected by an umbrella, in the company of a new friend she’s brought with her today and her other son-in-law. And Habibeh, Razia, and I sit huddled together on the deck, transported by our habitual closeness, which my mother and my two brothers-in-law sometimes find tiresome.

“Did they what,” Razia asks, puckering her lips, sending a devilish glance at Habibeh.

“You know what I mean—sleep together,” I say, reddening. How the utterly unspeakable finds a voice, given time. My sisters never lost their habit of teasing me mercilessly.

Now they raise their eyebrows at each other. “You have to ask her,” says Razia.

“Don’t be silly. How can I ask Mother
that?
You must know—was John Chacha my real father? The date fits, doesn’t it, more or less?”

I was born nine and a half months after that eventful night, delivered by Caesarian section.

“Sometimes you can’t tell,” Habibeh says.

All three of us look toward our mother, casually conversing, as composed as ever.

“I thought women could always tell.”

“Not always. You should get married,” Razia advises.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Mother lives by herself on Don Mills Road. She is too proud to live with me, which is as well, because I too have my own sense of decorum and privacy. Her one-bedroom flat is dizzying in its plethora of colour and
objets d’art
of the type fashionable in Kenya’s Indian homes in the 1960s—copper and batik hangings, Jack-and-Jill and Bo-Peep glass statuettes, Indian dolls that dance; embroidered cushions crowd the chairs, and the air is faintly perfumed. The place has the feel of a shrine. Left alone here, I often tell myself, I would in a few moments rid it of all its clutter and oppressive aura. My father Rashid’s picture hangs on a wall next to hers. Both photographs are large and full-length; he looks grey and diminutive in his, she, naturally, bright and stately.