The Blue Notebook (14 page)

I woke up at night on the mattress. The blanket had been removed. I was in pain and completely naked. Most of all my neck hurt. My hair was wet and cold and the room smelled bad. I looked around. Shahalad was sitting at the far end of the cell watching me. When he saw me wake up, he folded his lips into his mouth like he was sucking on a lollipop. As much pain as I felt, I could see that he too grieved—maybe for me or maybe for him.

Shahalad got up, walked over to me, and stood over me. I could not read his eyes, as it was dark. He slipped off his trousers (he did not wear shoes) and climbed onto me. He jammed into me with so much anger that I thought he would crush my body, but he did not. As he was releasing himself, I recognized the smell on my hair as urine.

Shahalad was not a demanding husband, as I was predominantly a showpiece for him. This was a role I was happy to play.
The more I attested to his potency, the less potent he seemed to need to be. In fact, within a week, he would drag me into the back room (I had learned to scream in mock fear) and there we would sit, sometimes for hours. While we sat together on the mattress, I would scream out in feigned agony from time to time or beg for “more.” This was entirely my idea and it pleased him.

Our times together in the cell varied. Sometimes Shahalad would fall on me and make sweet-cake but this was always short-lived and became less painful as I became habituated. Also with habituation I gained greater skill at releasing myself to the upper air. There were other times when he would speak to me. He would most often speak of events at the Orphanage. He told me of the beatings and the cruelties, I think to dissipate his own pain. He would tell me about Wolf’s exploits in part out of admiration and in part out of hatred. Once he mentioned a dead brother, but he never said anything else about himself or his family. Once he told me that he liked me. He did not seem to expect me to say anything, which was just as well, as I had nothing to say. There were other occasions when we would sit together in perfect silence. He would smoke and we shared serenity together. There were occasions when I wished that those times would never end and I think he wished this too.

Between sessions with Shahalad in the back room, there was little else for me to do, and so most of the time I would sit doing nothing in the main room. I favored a wooden bench at the back of the room where I could sit or lie down and just watch the goings-on. I was happy to be alone most of the time. The other girls, by contrast, would parade themselves around the main room. Just as there was a hierarchy among the Yazaks,
there was a similar pecking order among the wives. They would expose their thighs or uncovered breasts. They would flirt with Yazaks who were not their husbands, which often resulted in terrific fights among jealous wives. Sometimes wives would contribute to the punishment of a street prostitute who was brought to the main room for “correctional teaching” for becoming lazy or unproductive; here a wife might help tie down a woman or even goad a Yazak to “split her.” I once saw a wife push a beer bottle into one particularly ugly street girl, saying, “That should get her going.” I observed a savagery among the wives, some barely older than me, the motivation for which I suspect was simply survival. I happily melted into my chair at the back of the room and sought invisibility.

For most of the time the Yazaks, other than Shahalad, left me alone. There was a strict code that one Yazak did not take another’s wife to the cells and I never saw this rule violated. Wolf of course was the exception. I was not Wolf’s favorite and he never took me to the cells again, although every time I caught a glimpse of him or felt his eyes glancing on me, I smarted and felt the hairs on my body stiffen. My bruises from him soon healed. Another Yazak’s wife was Wolf’s chosen one, a very tall, stunningly beautiful older woman who reveled in Wolf’s attention and oftentimes mocked her husband publicly, knowing that she was untouchable; that was until one day she just disappeared. I soon realized that Wolf welcomed all the new wives personally and loved to evoke fear and hatred in each. His dominance over the wives implied the same over the husbands. A couple of years later, when I was on the Common Street, I heard that the Yazaks eventually turned on Wolf and hacked him to pieces with knives and broken bottles. His
evisceration was so complete that he was taken to the dump in two dozen brown paper bags. It is the nature of great leaders to rise and fall.

It was during my second week at the Orphanage that I first met Puneet. In the midday heat, I had been taken to the back room by Shahalad where he briefly made sweet-cake with me before we both fell asleep. We were awakened by a commotion in the main room and Shahalad jumped up and ran out. A few minutes later, I lolled into the main room and headed for my seat at the back of the room. There, in my chair, sat Puneet; he was eight at the time, a beautiful-looking boy. He sat with his knees drawn to his chin, dried tears on his face. His black hair was dusty and he was thin. He had been sucked off the street.

Like many hungry street boys, Puneet had been caught pilfering food from the market and had been sent to the Orphanage. This is the way many children arrive there; they are caught committing small crimes, say by a vendor, by another member of the Orphanage, or even by the police. A Yazak is then called to cart them away and bring them to the Orphanage. When the Yazak came to collect Puneet from the fruit seller who had caught him, he was tied to a lamppost by his neck and hands. The Yazak immediately saw Puneet’s potential as a love-boy These boys either become prized as being male or become girl-boys—boys who get dressed as girls. Puneet inevitably became a girl-boy because of his femininity. He had been deposited by the Yazak at the brick hut while Shahalad
and I had been sleeping. Wolf had immediately taken him, before assigning him to a Yazak, and broken him; new girl-boys were Wolf’s greatest pleasure. I had actually heard Puneet’s shrieks a few hours before but I had thought nothing of them, as these sorts of noises formed part of the air in the Orphanage. Wolf had been at him for hours before an emergency at the Orphanage had occurred, which had necessitated his cutting the boy free.

As Wolf became immersed in the mounting crisis, I sat next to Puneet and we watched in silence as the Yazaks congregated in the middle of the room with Wolf at their center. The issue of concern was that another Orphanage had started to traffic stolen goods through our territory. The demarcation between the three major Orphanages was well defined and rarely infringed upon. Clearly today was the exception. Wolf, who always spoke softly, urged caution. For the only time I ever observed it, one of the senior Yazaks disagreed with him, asserting that they needed to defend their territory aggressively. I could not see exactly what happened because of the crowd, but this Yazak ran from the middle of the huddle screaming, with blood pouring from his cheek. Everyone else seemed to agree with Wolf’s approach.

The crisis of the trafficking violations absorbed the Yazaks’ attention for the entire night. This resulted in my sharing several uninterrupted hours alone with Puneet. I remained sitting next to him for the whole time, watching the goings-on, but he did not apparently notice or care. Since I was accustomed to sitting alone in silence for hours, Puneet’s silence was no inconvenience to me at all. We sat together, alone, in silence.

Generally, when night came, the Yazaks took their wives to
the back rooms. Many couples shared rooms as there were more Yazaks than there were rooms. (Some couples also slept in the main room.) Tonight was different, as the Yazaks who had not left with Wolf to investigate what had happened stayed behind but were hushed and tense. A cricket game was on the television but the room was otherwise silent. Eventually I saw Puneet’s eyelids start to droop and soon his head flopped to the side and he fell asleep. I slid off the bench to let him lie down. As he fell sideways, I saw a puddle of blood on the seat where his bottom had been; the blood was already dry and darkening. I slept on the floor at his feet.

Wolf proved to be correct. What had occurred, I learned later, was that a single rogue gang of house thieves had strayed into our territory. The matter was quickly resolved that night when Wolf and several of our Yazaks met with the equivalent leadership from the other Orphanage. Apparently reparations were made; Shahalad did not know exactly what they were but we both guessed that the rogue gang had become part of the great garbage mound of Mumbai.

The following night I dreamed for the first time of the hat vendor at the market. Though I did not yet know I would see this dream several times in the future, even then it puzzled me. It was such a realistic experience that I awoke with a start in the middle of the night, trying to grab the falling hats. I felt that my descent through the marketplace was a premonition. Truth proved me to be right because three days later I was collected by Mamaki Briila.

When Mamaki Briila entered the main room, the Yazaks called her “Hippopotamus” to her face. She did not seem to take offense but rather laughed at the endearment. Hippopotamus
and I left for the Common Street on foot—I was unbound. I had no idea that Puneet’s destiny was married to mine but a few weeks later he showed up to occupy the nest two doors down from mine. I never got to say goodbye to Shahalad.

He may have laughed yesterday at the joke about the disappearance of Hippopotamus’s husband, but Puneet is a sullen pile of horseshit. He is no use to me as he sits downcast all the time. Pah!

Looking down the street, I can see an old man. He is gray and stooped and he is walking up the Common Street toward me. He is wearing an oversized brown suit and in his right hand he is holding a shiny steel walking stick. The base of the stick has three prongs, each with its own black rubber cap. The stick seems to be indestructible but everything else about him is brittle. It seems that his grasp on life is as tenuous as a word caught beneath an eraser.

Each time he advances his walking stick, he resembles a watchmaker meticulously placing a cog in a watch mechanism. Once the stick has been placed about a handbreadth in front of the old man, the left leg advances six inches:
sh, sh, sh.
Once the left leg has reached its target, a pause occurs. Then the right leg follows:
sh, sh, sh.
He could be excused this slowness were he to possess everlasting life, in which case time would be inconsequential. However, it is obvious that he is shuffling along the edge of the well of death. Perhaps he is afraid that if he slips, he will fall into the well.

What is funniest of all, however, is that as he walks in this excruciating unhurried manner, he is grasping his testicles in his left hand, as if they are about to fall off. His grasp on them is so tight that I can see the whites of his knuckles. I peer at him, but he looks ahead, completely expressionless. I swear I have watched him for an hour and he has walked fifty paces. I guarantee he will not bake sweet-cake with me. Mind you, if he did, I would need to set the day aside. I was going to point him out to Puneet, but why bother?

Oh calamity! Coming from the other end of the Common Street, down the hill, is Mr. Bent-Nose for his weekly cooking session. You should have seen him the first time he baked with me. Sweat formed a river down his back and his “thank you” resembled the stutter of the old man’s gait. But here Bent-Nose comes, gaily bouncing down the street as if on his way to a birthday party.