Cracking India (19 page)

I get up and Masseur says, “Lenny baby, don't go far.” His voice is gravelly with desire and it makes something happen in my stomach, as when Sharbat Khan, radiant with love, ogles Ayah.

I know Ayah is beyond speech—her will given over to a maestro's virtuosity. Masseur's consummate arm circles Ayah...

Caressing me through the pampas, the breeze moans with love—and brings to me Masseur's song:

And so, the bumblebee courts the rose. I listen to the words unfolding the rose's tragic story and wait intently for the change in Masseur's voice.

There it is. The fearful and tragic climax! The rose awakens, weeps, shrivels, swoons! And nature, in all its marvelous tenderness, commiserates:

I wait a while, watching the shallow boats drift sluggishly on the shallow Ravi. The men in them, still as the dead, remain comatose as the boats, bumping along the shoals, right themselves and float slowly downstream.

We hear Masseur's song calling from the fountains, cypresses and marble terraces of the Shalimar Gardens. We hear him singing from the giddy heights of the minarets looming above Emperor Jehangir's tomb—directing his voice like a shower of petals to summon Ayah.

Ayah comes. And with her, like a lame limpet, come I.

We find Masseur waiting for us on the artificial hill behind
the zoo lion's cage and by the chattering monkeys and among the peacocks. The heavy pleats of his Multanisilk lungi fall in slender folds to his ankles as leaning against the paling he waits for Ayah. And when she comes, the peacocks spread their tail feathers. And Masseur's movements unfold the rich pleats in his checked lungi.

Where Masseur is, Ayah is. And where Ayah is, is Ice-candy-man.

I sense his presence.

While Masseur's voice lures Ayah to the dizzy eminence of one minaret, it compels Ice-candy-man to climb the winding stairs to the other minaret. On the riverbank I sense his stealthy presence in the tall clumps of pampas grass. He lurks in the dense shade of mangoes in the Shalimar Gardens and in the fearsome smells skirting the slaughterhouse... He prowls on the other side of the artificial hill behind the zoo lion's cage, and conceals himself behind the peacocks when they spread their tail feathers and open their turquoise eyes: he has as many eyes, and they follow us.

In the evenings he visits Ayah and squatting like an ungainly bird in his cotton shawl astounds her with his knowledge of our wanderings. And when his driven toes are too weary to perform their amazing seduction, his glib tongue takes over. Ayah, wide-eyed, wrapped in the silken web of his gossip, draws closer...

Ice-candy-man has an inexhaustible fund of gossip.

 

“Our lion tamer got rid of his tenants at last!” he announces one sultry afternoon in Electric-aunt's garden. He has followed us there. My aunt is busy inside filing her accounts in neat figures beneath the credit and debit columns. We are sitting outside so as not to disturb her while we wait for Cousin to return from school.

“How did he get rid of them? Did he win a case?” asks Ayah. “Did he get the police to throw them out?”

“If you await court decisions, you wait forever,” says Ice-candy-man with such contempt and authority that my faith in the judicial system is forever shattered.

“I told Sher Singh to take matters in hand,” he continues. “I
told him: Why go through all the rigmarole of courts and notices when we have time-honored remedies at hand?”

Ayah and I lean closer. Ayah is positively within striking distance. Ice-candy-man's toe twitches, but it is a weary, footsore little twitch and its impulse easily checked. I merely glance its way sternly and the twitch ceases.

“At first Sher Singh hemmed and hedged,” says Ice-candy-man. “Then he said: ‘You're a Mussulman... The tenants are Mussulmans... Why should you help a Sikh?' ”

His raconteur's gift places us in Sher Singh's shoes and we look at him with the same questions in our eyes.

“ ‘Oye, you donkey,' I told him. ‘So what if you're a Sikh? I'm first a friend to my friends... And an enemy to their enemies... And then a Mussulman! God and the politicians have enough servers. So, I serve my friends.' ”

Now he has us in his shoes. Ayah has an animated look on her rapt face. “Tell us... what happened then?” she asks breathlessly.

“Lenny child, be a good girl,” says Ice-candy-man, snapping his fingers to flick the ash from his cigarette. “Ask the cook to make me a strong cup of tea. Go:
putch-putch.”
(Kissing noises used to wheedle children dispatched on trivial errands.)

“No,” I say. “I'm not going anywhere: I also want to listen to you.”

He glances at Ayah. Since Ayah appears content to have me stay, he says: “Well, Sher Singh, his brothers Prem and Pratab, and one or two cousins—all strapping fellows... and I. Armed with hockey sticks we went to their tenants' house while the men were at work. We made a bit of
hulla-goolla
outside the building. Waved our hockey sticks and shouted: ‘Come to your windows, pretty ladies: don't hide. We have something to show you.' ”

Ayah and I, our eyes round, our lips parted, scarcely breathe.

“We attracted a crowd. There were quite a few dazzling eyes at some of the other windows in the building... But the ladies for whose benefit we were staging the show were more bashful.

“When I was sure we had their attention—and they were peeping at us through their reed blinds—as one man we opened our lungis! In such a way as to shield our rears: and in front our dangling dingdongs!”

Taking my cue from Ayah, I too wear a faintly scandalized, faintly amused expression.

“We exposed ourselves so that only they could see us. The crowd behind us guessed what was happening. There were one or two curses—one or two coarse remarks—but no interference. We made a few suggestive gestures... you know... It lasted only five minutes...

“But what a
hulla-goolla!
The women screamed and cursed... You'd have thought we'd raped them!

“We got wind the police were coming. By the time they appeared we'd wrapped our lungis back on and cleared out!” Ice-candy-man, half standing, moves his body and his arms like a magician conjuring images.

“I hear the men swore vengeance and what not. But this morning they cleared out!”

The triumph on his face is infectious: he sees it reflected in ours, and his teeth show increasingly white as his lips stretch and stretch into a smile in his narrow face. He crushes the stub of his cigarette into the grass—and I hear the school bus squeak to a halt as it deposits my cousin outside the gate.

Next evening when Ice-candy-man comes to our house I notice his toe is more vigorous. It is rested. We didn't wander far today. Only went to Godmother's.

Masseur massages Oldhusband every Thursday. Ayah was content to sit on her haunches and watch as, before our very eyes, beneath his supple fingers, Oldhusband acquired a youthful glow!

Later, when Electric-aunt and Cousin also came to Godmother's, Cousin informed me that Ice-candy-man's bicycle was parked outside Godmother's gate. In fact Cousin had purchased
and devoured a raspberry popsicle. He showed me the inside of his raspberry-stained lower lip and drew my attention to a pale red stain on his khaki shorts.

Cousin is like that. Even when I believe him, he shows me, shows me, shows me things...

 

“Did you hear about Bhagwandas the tailor?” Ice-candy-man asks, settling down cross-legged on a mat on the servants' veranda outside Ayah's quarters. Ayah has just washed her long hair and, having brought it forward over her shoulder, is running a combative wooden comb through the wet tangles.

“Lenny baby,” Ice-candy-man tells me, almost burying his head in his cupped hands as he lights one of his smelly cigarettes, “get me a glass of water. Tell Imam Din it's for me and he will put a bit of ice in it.”

“No,” I say, leaning firmly on his toe. “I'm not going anywhere. I also want to know about the tailor. Tell me!”

“Let her be,” says Ayah, who is as curious as me. Bhagwandas is her tailor too.

“Well, he ran off with the Mission padre's wife!” Ice-candy-man pushes his pillbox cap forward rakishly and looks at Ayah out of the corners of his gleaming light brown eyes.

“Hai!
No!” says Ayah, looking appropriately grave and scandalized and for a moment permitting the comb to cease its struggle with the tangles.

“Yes,” says Ice-candy-man, grinning into our avid faces. “You know how it is when you women visit tailors... This is loose, that is tight. Alter this, alter that. The tailor's fingers touch here, smooth the cloth there...” Ice-candy-man's hand strays to Ayah's knees, and as he raises it to her shoulder his fingers brush her bosom. Ayah's eyes flash a warning and Ice-candy-man's serpentine arm floats away. He shifts his eyes from us and stares ingenuously into the fading day.

“The padre, poor fellow, still doesn't know what happened,” he says dreamily. “He's a man of God. You know how they are. Simple. But the tailors are a sly lot. Never trust them, Lenny baby,
with their measuring tapes, needles and threads—and smoothing fingers.”

“Where's your wife?” I ask. I've never thought to ask him before.

“In the village, with her mother.”

“What if she runs away?”

“She won't. They have no tailors in the village. No masseurs either... with their cunning fingers taking liberties!”

Ayah looks startled. So do I. This is the first time he has openly expressed his jealousy of Masseur. Although we have been conscious of the undercurrent of hostility between them, neither Ayah nor I realized its development into the acrimony Ice-candy-man's bitter voice has just expressed.

It changes the complexion of the evening. I become aware of the dusk that has gathered in shadows on the dung-plastered veranda and is thick behind the open door of Ayah's quarters. The earth floor, compressed and sprinkled with water and swept clean, and her small string-cot, large tin trunk, and pictures and statues of gods and goddesses in the niches are all obscured.

“Why don't you ever bring your wife here? I want to see her. Please bring her here,” I plead, fretting him, trying to talk away my misgivings.

And, having at the same time to restrain his refreshed toes, I sit on them.

“What'll she do here, Lenny baby?” says Ice-candy-man, once again far-away-eyed and in control. “She's used to village ways, and to her folk there... She doesn't like to stay in the city... so I leave her there.”

“Is she your only wife?” I ask.

But Ayah is restive and clamps my mouth shut with her hand. “Stop asking so many questions,” she says with unaccustomed irritability. “Men don't like so much talk about their womenfolk.”

“Oh, I don't mind. Let her be,” says Ice-candy-man, pushing his cap back now that the impressive bit of gossip has been related. He musses my hair and, opening his thermos, reaches for a popsicle.

“Raspberry!” I demand, hoping there is still some raspberry left.

There is. Relinquishing my seat on his toes I stand up.