A Deconstructed Heart (8 page)

They were lost. The Hyderabadi Society’s 2012 New Year’s Eve invitation had said that ‘Dera Dun’ was just off the M25, on a country lane called Twelve Oaks, but there was nothing on the map named after trees. It was already eight o’ clock in the evening, and the light was dying quickly in the sky, heavy clouds low and a murderous purple against the horizon. Mirza kept turning the car around, speeding up and down one country lane after another, his wife’s gold earrings swinging like chandeliers with each turn of the steering wheel.

“Bloody stupid directions,” Mirza cursed, tossing the map over his shoulder into the empty backseat.

“Stop swearing,” said Naida, between her teeth. She sat straight up in her seat, her brocade sari folded stiffly like an oversized starched napkin, her hands tugging pointlessly at the pleats. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, and saw her jaw set like a trowel.

He had not wanted to come tonight. Their social calendar was beginning to oppress him, weekend after weekend of suits and ties, platefuls of biryani and mirchi ka saalan, each dish interchangeable, undoubtedly forming a film of spicy oil over his intestines. He ate too many squashed cakes
 and fruit pies at the church fundraisers, fared miserably in the tennis tournaments and, inevitably, sat in the corner armchair at parties, slowly suffocating in his own silence as his wife withdrew with her friends, somewhere he could not follow. They had argued until Naida cried and he reluctantly agreed to take her.

Mirza saw a series of Jaguars and BMW’s with private license plates turning off the main road into a side lane, and he decided to follow them. Sure enough, they soon pulled up to Dera Dun, a large mansion that had once been owned by a 19th century aqueduct engineer and was now owned by Bala and Priya Shunmugan, both private practice doctors. There were hundreds of lights lining the gravel walkway to the front of the house, and although it was dark, Mirza could see that every window had a balcony with flowers trembling on their stalks in the evening breeze. Car doors slammed, and Mirza saw a few couples still walking up to the house, the women picking their way carefully in their strappy sandals, hanging onto their husbands’ arms as if they were climbing the sheer face of a rock wall.

The host and his wife were greeting their guests at the front door. He wore a dusty pink sherwani, with matching Turkish slippers. Priya was wearing a cream sari, with a tiny black oval tikka in the middle of her forehead. She immediately led Naida to see the mosaic urns that she had been commissioned to make for the Shunmugans, a matching pair of jade and spring green vessels that stood sentry to the great hall at the center of the house. Mirza took a step to accompany his wife, but she was already sailing away, her hand gripped in Priya’s, nodding at something she was saying. Mirza caught himself and swayed on the spot, trying to stop his momentum forward. Bala chuckled, then coughed when he saw a line deepen on Mirza’s forehead.

“Err… please go on to the parlour, there are some refreshments there.” He waved Mirza through the long hallway, indicating a room whose doorless entryway was lined with an arc of black and silver balloons and a banner that
read “Best wishes for the New Year!” and then turned to welcome the next couple through the door.

Mirza
picked up a harlequin patterned china plate from a stack on a side table and took a few samosas and canapés from the waiters swirling silver platters of appetizers through the room. He was offered champagne, but he muttered a polite refusal.

Most of the guests formed small tight circles around a formation of furniture or standing by the windows, occasionally breaking the geometric perfection with an arm that reached for drinks, or a couple that drifted to join a different social set. Mirza thought of a trip one summer to Brighton Beach, where he had watched empty crisp packets and other detritus floating on the water by the shoreline, the flotsam and jetsam forming groups and dispersing with every swell of the tide. Mirza stood by the unlit fireplace, half turned towards the grate as if there were flames to watch. Bala Shunmugan circled past a few times, but after the first nod and gentle exhortation to “Eat! Eat! It’s a party after all!” Mirza pretended not to see him.

He was about to hail his third egg roll as it soared past on a waiter’s outstretched palm, when he felt an arm squeeze his shoulder.

“Bit past your bedtime, isn’t it, Mirza Sahib?”

It was Jilani, an acquaintance of Mirza’s since his first days in England. Jilani’s younger brother, Imtiaz, had been at the end of the phone tree that extended from India, and had agreed to pick up Mirza from the airport the day he arrived. Mirza remembered that the Mini Cooper he drove reeked from what he later learned was Old Spice cologne. He also remembered trying to sit down in the car, and then having to move a hairbrush from the passenger seat, its bristles unaccountably full of long, blond hair. Mirza and Jilani had met not long after, and continued their casual acquaintance at the odd badminton match or movie screening. Jilani was very social among the expats, but his loudness grated on Mirza’s nerves somewhat, and Mirza usually left his company feeling as if he had finally reached shade after standing under a hot sun too long.

“Good show, don’t you think?” said Jilani, using his glass to point out the room (the guests? the furniture? wondered Mirza). “I should have been a doctor, or at least married one,” he complained, although Mirza knew that his chain of dry cleaning businesses were booming and that he and his wife were building a second home in Spain. “Where’s the good lady?”

“With Priya,” began Mirza, but just then, the hostess walked through the parlor, pointing out the original crown molding to a rather large woman in an orange sari and her thin, balding husband, and Naida was not with them. He turned back to the fireplace.

“Job going well, is it? Publishing or perishing?” asked Jilani, his eyes swiveling around the room as he waited for Mirza’s answer.

“Neither. Going tickety-boom,” said Mirza, knowing that he wasn’t being heard. “Super. Duper.”

“Excellent,” replied Jilani, “Listen, I’m starting up a cricket team, just a couple of overs on Saturday mornings,” he said, sipping his drink and looking over the rim of the glass at Mirza. “Get you away from the wife, just tell her you need the exercise.” Mirza nodded silently.

“Bloody fool fuss this New Year’s stuff,” continued Jilani, still looking around the room. “Just like last year…next year, all the same. Still, might as well party, right?”

A friend of Jilani’s came by and started a conversation about an investment and Mirza took the opportunity to slip away, pointing at his empty glass in explanation. He slid out of the open patio door and walked down the floodlit sloping lawn to a pond in the center of the garden. Small knots of children were running up and down the grass, one little girl rolling down the hill in her finery until an angry mother came and pulled her up by the elbow.

Mirza sat on the stone wall of the pond and peered into the greenish gloom at the dark orange and yellow flashes moving under the surface. His stomach was rumbling, but the house was bristling with people and he turned back again to watch the fish. After a while he noticed a little boy carrying a small plate with a fondant fancy on it, eyes fixed on the treat as it slid from one side to another with each step down the lawn’s slope. He looked about three years old, and looked longingly at the fancy and yet internally preoccupied, as if he had eaten too much. Both he and Mirza looked at the cake on the plate, and the boy shrugged.

“You want it?” Mirza asked, and the boy shrugged again. He exhaled heavily, and took in a shallow breath, looking at the cake again.

“Shall we give it to the fish?” At this, the little boy smiled slowly. He nodded.

“He’s having a birthday,” said Mirza, pointing at an orange flash in the water, and he broke off a chunk of the cake for the boy. He squashed it between his fingers by accident, so Mirza gave him several small pieces instead, which he flung like shrapnel across the pond.

Mirza chuckled. His wife was standing with the host’s wife and two younger men on the patio behind the house. He saw the white slice of scalp at the parting of her hair as she nodded or looked down at her glass, the oval of her face as she looked up, perhaps at him.

“Fish,” said the boy, pointing.

“Can you count them?” asked Mirza, looking at his wife and drawing an arm across the boys’ shoulders. The boy got bored soon, and started licking his fingers and looking about for his mother, so Mirza began a story about the king fish, who guarded his treasure with an army of soldier-fish, who had once been men who had tried to steal his riches. The boy peered into the gloom. “I wan’ see it.”

Mirza looked up at the knot of people around his wife. He could see one of the men’s white teeth as he spoke to her, his feet planted wide, calling the waiter
for fresh lemonade for her. “I’ll show you.” He took off his socks and shoes and rolled up his pant legs. The water clutched at his toes and feet with iciness and the pebbles under his feet were sharp. The folded-up hem of one pant leg slid down his knee into the water and was immediately waterlogged.

“There!” yelled the boy.

The man was touching her shoulder now, was bending his head towards her, telling her something animatedly. Mirza bent over and put his hand into the pond and felt the gravel between his fingers, scrambling over the bottom of the pond, crablike, until he felt something cold and hard.

She was looking over at him, the man still leaning into her, talking. He pretended to be caught, trying to pull his hand away, for a moment, but the look of horror frozen on the boy’s face changed his mind. He smiled. “I can only reach this,” he said, pulling out what turned out to be a grimy and battered spoon, with a crest on its handle. “If I stay in here another minute, it will be too late, I’ll get caught. I must hurry,” he said. She was facing the man, now, taking the glass from him, both their hands touching the glass for what seemed like a long time. Mirza meant to spring over the wall of the pond, onto the grass, but his foot was caught in a tangle of lilies and he fell over backwards, landing with a loud splash in the center of the pond. He heard some tittering, and stepped out heavily, swaying for a moment on the lawn, one pant leg still tightly rolled up. “Wet! All wet!” shouted the boy with glee. He took the spoon out of Mirza’s hand and ran to show his mother, who was walking hurriedly over to him. She propelled him back up the slope.

One of the guests called out “It’s not Trafalgar Square you know!” He raised a flat palm in reassurance to the voice as he bent to squeeze the water out of his pant legs. With his head lowed he squinted at the house and watched a small kerchief of pink silk slip behind a door, followed by a pair of gleaming shoes.

Mirza stood up and marched up the slope to the house, shouting, “Naida! Naida! We’re leaving!” He pushed past the host, who was saying something about getting him a towel. His trousers clung to him, and he smelled the dankness of the pond on him as he pushed open doors and yelled for his
wife. The other guests stared, moving at his approach and whispering as he passed them. A waiter was walking towards him with a tray of canapés and spun to the side in one motion to let him pass.

“Look here,” Jilani was rushing up to him with a towel, “hang on!”
Bala Shunmugan was behind him, his mouth open.

“Have you seen my wife? Where is my wife!” The lobby was large and marble-lined, and his own voice bellowed back at him.

“She had a headache. She asked a friend to drop her off home, she asked me to tell you,” said the host, now running behind Mirza who was almost at the front door. He spun around and saw the two green vases at the entranceway to the great hall, and suddenly he was kicking at them. The first fell over onto its side with a loud clang and revolved in a circle, like a spin-the-bottle from a child’s game. He did not hear the shouts around him. He kicked the other one over, and this one cracked, the neck breaking off. In the cold air of the lobby, there was a fine cloud of iridescent green dust motes and a small puddle of water forming at his feet. He looked up to see his wife as she stepped slowly into the house. Over her shoulder, he could see Preeta, her friend, standing very still, car keys in her hand.

Chapter 12

When Vanessa left, Rehan told Amal that he would only be able to stay another night before he returned to his own place. “I understand, you have to get back to things,” she had said, hoping that he could not detect the disappointment she felt.

“It’s not just that.” He glanced at her as he folded up his sleeping bag. “I tried to get her to stay longer, but she has a shift this evening and has to get back.” He shrugged. “I can’t stay here alone with you.”

Amal found herself blushing and was annoyed. “Don’t worry, your honor is perfectly safe with me.”

“But you see, it isn’t. I like you too much.” He was blushing now, and she laughed.

“I see. Well… this is awkward.”

“It certainly is,” he smiled shyly at her. “I guess that’s what I’m trying to say.”

She smiled and bit her lip. With a quick turn, she walked back into the house, going straight upstairs and closing the door of her room, lying down on the bed. She heard him come into the house and she listened to his movements; she thought of the table at the children’s museum where she played when she was little, the magnet beneath the table pulling the sailboat that lay on the wooden painted lake, this way and that. When she got up, she stood by the window and looked down at garden, where Rehan was heading towards the tent with a cup of tea.

She moved towards the pile of laundry she had dropped on the chair at the dresser, and began to fold. A few moments later, she heard Rehan calling her from the bottom of the stairs. She hurried down to where he stood.

“He asked for a second cup of tea.”

She waited, before finally replying. “And? So he’s thirsty.”

“You don’t understand. He wants to have two cups of tea at the same time. I think he’s sick. He seems feverish to me.”

Amal felt a lead ball drop in her stomach. Since her uncle had moved into the tent, she had not given another thought to the idea that he might get sick.

“Are you sure?”

“Help me find a thermometer.” He pulled out drawers around the kitchen, rummaging through the serving spoons and matchboxes. She pulled up a stool and climbed up, reaching for a cardboard box with a lid. She brought it down to the counter and found an old mercury thermometer. She shook it heavily a few times and squinted at the silver flash inside the glass, satisfied that it had shrunk down to the bottom of the cylinder, like a metallic animal backing angrily into a corner.

They took the thermometer, medicine and a glass of water out to Mirza, whose hair was wet with sweat. There was a pink flush in his cheeks and his eyes were baleful. He was lying on his bed, muttering, but they could not make out the words.

Amal put a hand on his forehead and nodded. Rehan tried to get the thermometer between Mirza’s chattering teeth while Amal tried to soothe him with hushing noises. Rehan pushed a white tablet onto his tongue, and Amal poured water into his mouth, the rest trickling down the corners of his mouth and onto his kurta.

Mirza looked wildly from one to the other, but they could not see the thin young man with a line of dark fluff on his upper lip, sitting on the edge of his bed. This was the adolescent Sahib, with frightened eyes and a scratchy, half-broken man’s voice. They had not played chess this time but talked about Khan Sahib’s summer spent touring India by bicycle with his high school friends, and he saw the deck of cards scattered over the bedclothes and on the floor, so they must have played cards for a while.

Rehan was saying something, but he was distracted because it seemed that Khan Sahib was arguing with him now, something about the lineage of the nawabs of Lucknow and Mirza knew that he was wrong. He jumped up, almost knocking the chessboard, which was close by on the side table, to the floor.  Rehan and Amal quickly stopped its fall, but a rook slipped past
Amal’s fingers and was chipped.

“Later, Uncle. I will get it for you from the library.” She was looking carefully at his face. Rehan and Amal
held one arm each, steadying him as he tottered on his feet.

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. You know, I’m planning to write a book.” He pointed at Khan Sahib with his round stomach.

“What a good idea,” Amal said slowly. “You’re going to feel better in a little while, I promise, Uncle. Please don’t tire yourself out.”

“The library? Yes, that will teach him,” he said, quite seriously, and he told her which books about Lucknow’s early rulers to look for.

“Bring them all,” he said, “I want to show you something in them. Wonderful idea.”

Rehan looked at Amal, and together they gently pushed him onto the bed and drew the edge of the blanket over him. “I’d feel better if he was in the house,” said Amal. He was muttering again, but they could no longer hear the words.

“He just needs to sleep right now. Once the medicine kicks in, let’s see if we can’t get him into the house, at least for tonight.”

The afternoon shadows were lengthening. Rehan found a packet of dried soup mix in the kitchen and added water. He looked in the freezer and pulled out a packet of corn and added some kernels to the soup. Amal sat on a stool and watched him work. He had large hands that moved dexterously as they peeled onions and swept the skins into the plastic bag hanging from a drawer pull— “the makeshift dustbin of all desis in the kitchen. I learned that from my mother”— and he moved around the kitchen like an otter showing off in the water.

She thought of making tea for her uncle, thinking that the more hot things he could consume, surely the better. She crossed Rehan’s path several times and once he took a small step back and almost bowed to keep from colliding into her. He straightened up slowly and then bowed again with a flourish.

When they brought the food out to Mirza, he was sitting on a lawn chair outside the tent, with a blanket wrapped around him. He smiled weakly at them, his hair curled up on his head in wet locks.

“My children, my children. How can I thank you for all you’ve done?”

“Prof.,”
said Rehan. He kneeled down in the grass at Mirza's feet, and Amal sat on the other side. Her uncle was drinking noisily at the hot soup.

“Please come inside,” she said softly, but he was shaking his head, even as he slurped at his soup. “This is delicious,” he looked at her, but she sighed and gestured at Rehan with her eyes. “Then this is just ok, and the tea is delicious?” he asked hesitantly, and when she nodded, he broke into a big smile.

“This is not a time to be outside, Mirza Sahib,” said Rehan, with a more determined edge to his voice than Amal had heard before. “You will get sicker, and poor Amal here will never forgive me for letting you stay out with a fever.”

“A light dinner and a heavy sleep, and I will be a
s right as rain again,” he said. “And you,” he looked at his niece and Rehan and then at the house, and for a moment his eyes were like black beads, “you should be heading back to your place soon. I have caused disruption to too many people.” Rehan nodded.

“I was thinking that, first thing in the morning.”

Mirza yawned. He took a few sips of his tea and then stood up. “Must sleep some more.” He shuffled back into the tent.

Amal picked up the tray and gathered the dirty dishes. Rehan took the tray from her, his fingers accidentally brushing hers, and they looked at each other for a moment. She felt him, rather than saw him as they walked back to the kitchen in silence, and she busied herself with washing the dishes as he stacked the tea tray in the cereal cupboard.

She did not see him approach her until she felt her hand being taken into his. She put down the cup she had just washed, and all she could think of was that her hands were wet, and there was no way of drying them, and then his mouth was on hers and his arms were encircling her and she was pushed back against the sink. She felt as if she was being towed under by waves and she could no longer hear or see anything beyond the heft of his body.

Suddenly he broke away and put his forehead on her shoulder, his hands in her own. “Oh
, God,” he said.

She stood still, hardly daring to take a breath. He pulled away completely, and she wanted to cry when she saw a stricken look on his face. “I’m sorry, I can’t… I can’t do this.”

“I didn’t mean…” she began, but he was talking fast, shaking his head as he spoke. “It was me, it was all me. I should not have come here. I should not have put you in this situation.” She wanted to speak, to catch at his hands, which were moving fast in the air as he spoke, but he did not notice her. “I have not been a gentleman, and for that I’m sorry.” She wanted to poke fun at his choice of words, but he was deeply serious and she was shocked to realize that he regretted her as if she had been his tawdry mistake.

“It was just a kiss…” her voice died in her throat.

“No,” he said, “It’s never just a kiss. It’s a promise I broke to myself. I don’t want to be that person.”

“What person?” She could not help the harshness in her tone.

“The one who breaks everything because he can’t control himself. This is not the way.” They were silent for a moment. “I’m going to take my sleeping bag and share the tent with Mirza Uncle. He needs someone to watch over him tonight.” She nodded and watched him gather up his things, too fast, and head out into the garden.