The Blue Notebook (22 page)

The phone next to the bed suddenly rang. This too made me start. Hita answered it. “Master Iftikhar, the phone. It’s for you.” He had left the room, it seemed. “It’s for you,” she called again. Iftikhar used the phone in the main room but it was easy to hear what he said. “Yes, Father … it was an accident … she fell … she tripped over the carpet running around.” “And Buddha is a melon,” I heard Hita mutter. Iftikhar’s voice was tremulous. “No, Father, it’s this stupid hotel, everything is falling to pieces … she tripped over the carpet … no, no, she is fine … right, Hita?” he called. “She’s breathing,” Hita responded. “You heard that, Father,” Iftikhar repeated. “She’s fine, Hita just said so … all right.” “Come here,” he called out in the direction of the bedroom. “Father wants to speak to you.” Hita left my side and walked to the phone, “Yes, master, yes, master … yes, master … she is injured … on her head … it’s bleeding and her face is bruised … I don’t know, she is unconscious … I wasn’t here … yes, she probably … yes, a terrible accident … yes, she most likely tripped … I think we
should get a doctor … yes, sir, yes, sir, you are right, we should wait … Mr. Vas is coming … yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Master Iftikhar, your father wishes to speak with you again.” I heard Hita return to the bedroom and sit next to me on the bed. It was impossible to hear what Master Bubba said to his son, but he was screaming at him; I could hear it right across the room. This tirade was punctuated by a loud knock at the main door. Hita ran to answer it, “No … no one called the hotel doctor … no, everything is fine … everyone is fine.” She shouted, “I said everyone is fine,” and slammed the door shut and locked it.

I lay on the bed for about half an hour when there was another pounding on the door and muffled cries of “Hita, open it.” Hita sprang from beside me, where she had been intermittently wiping my head. She ran to the door and unlocked it. The door opened. She was slightly out of breath. “Sorry, Mr. Vas, I left the key in the lock to stop the doorman and the cleaners from coming in.” “Fine, fine,” he said, “where is she?” I heard the pairs of footsteps enter the bedroom and felt bodies standing over me. Hita said hurriedly, “She’s breathing fine.”

There was a short pause and I heard footsteps go into the bathroom and the bath being run. In an instant I felt a torrent of cold water drench my head. I sat up coughing and spluttering. Mr. Vas stood at the end of the bed with a tipped-over silver bucket still dripping with water. “She’s fine,” he said. He did not scold me but his look told me that he understood my pretense. He was not wearing his blue suit but rather gray trousers and a white shirt. He was a handsome older man.

I sat up on the bed, my face wet, hair drenched. There they
were: Mr. Vas and Hita. Iftikhar entered the room, looking like a condemned man awaiting the firing squad. The firing squad was soon to come.

The silence was broken by Mr. Vas. “Master Iftikhar, might I please suggest that you get yourself ready as your father will be here in a minute to go out to the factories. Hita, do you have clothes for the girl? I suggest she wash up. We’ll be leaving soon, so there should be plenty of time for you to put her back in shape.”

While Hita had been frantically scurrying around, I was rehearsing in my head. “A poem,” I groaned. “What?” Mr. Vas asked. “A poem … Master Iftikhar told me to write a poem today.” Here was the opportunity I could not let pass: a chance to write all day long. I continued, “He is teaching me to write as brilliantly as he writes.” I certainly had not meant this to be a joke but Mr. Vas burst out laughing. “You said what? Master Iftikhar is teaching you to be a poet?” For the first time in ages Iftikhar spoke. “I got an A grade in English last term and Mr. Mitra said I had a gift in composition.” Vas laughed again. “What Mr. Mitra meant,” Vas responded, “was that
he
had a gift from your father to give you an A.” Mr. Vas repeated half to himself, laughing, “A poet …” Humiliation ignited anger in Iftikhar. “Listen, Vas, you are my father’s servant, and when he hears what you said he …” Vas cut him short. “Listen, Master Iftikhar” (he said “master” with a sarcastic leer), “you go right ahead; you tell your father whatever you want. I have a strong feeling that your father will have more on his mind than your poetry right now. All I will tell you is that if you are a poet then I am Elvis! Yes, Master Iftikhar, Elvis reborn as an old Indian!” Even Hita smiled. I stayed impassive as I had a feeling that it
would be in my interest to do so. It was a plan well executed. Whether Iftikhar was a poet or not, Hita would understand the need for me to appease him and write the day away.

Vas was still chuckling at his humor (and partially I think, out of relief that I was still alive), when Bubba burst in. Even from the bedroom you could feel the sonic boom of his entrance. “In here, boss,” Vas called. Bubba strode in, jangling. Iftikhar was still standing in his nightclothes. I was sitting on the bed with wet hair as Bubba looked me up and down. “Well, pretty little thing, you seem alive,” he boomed. Vas said, “Yes, she came to.” “Good,” Bubba said, “then no harm done.”

He then walked over to Iftikhar, raising his right arm as he did, and without a moment of hesitation, he struck the boy’s head. The power of Bubba’s descending open hand could have snapped a cricket bat in two. Iftikhar was completely unsuspecting of this assault and on (jangling) impact was launched under his father’s power two feet across the room before landing in a pain-ridden heap. I am sure that his howl was heard in Delhi. I was smiling internally as soon as I realized that he and I would have matching bruises across the left sides of our faces. As I looked down at Iftikhar, bouncing around the floor in pain, you could make out the indentations from Bubba’s ring on his face.

“Boy!” Bubba boomed. “We have to be at the first factory in an hour. Get your clothes on or you’ll be going in your sleeping gown. Now get dressed.” I could have sworn that the windows rattled with the might of this final command.

Iftikhar opened the closet in the bedroom, still gripping the left side of his head. He was whimpering while Hita helped him dress. Bubba ushered Mr. Vas into the main room to speak
to him privately. I do not think they were aware that I could hear. “What the hell are we going to do with the boy?” Bubba asked. Mr. Vas answered, “Well, we could send the girl back, and then we’re done with it.” “But you already paid for her,” Bubba responded. “It wasn’t pricey,” Vas said. “Say he finishes her—that’s going to cost us another hundred thousand.” “I am a father, Vas. Part of a man’s job on earth is to prepare his son for his path, right? My father got girls for me … and look at me. This is what you do for your boy. Look, Vas, if he finishes her, he finishes her … the trouble is she’s a pretty one. You know … if I were a few years younger, I wouldn’t mind a taste of her myself!” He laughed and slapped Mr. Vas so hard on the back, I could hear the thump. He sighed and then with a voice loud enough to wake the dead, shouted, “Iftikhar, I am leaving.” Iftikhar, still holding his head, followed his father and Mr. Vas out the door.

When Hita returned to me, she appeared contrite; I suspect that, like Vas, she was relieved. I was worried that the bucket-of-water trick might have alerted her to my sham. Instead, I think, she viewed it more as a medical procedure than as a means of removing the cloak from my fine acting. “You had better get cleaned up,” she said. I obediently went and soaked in the bathtub again, and when I was ready I came into the main room wearing the bathrobe I found hanging on the back of the door. Hita was sitting at the table, staring ahead. When I entered she looked over to me. “Are you all right?” she asked.
I smiled at her. “I am all right.” Hita said, “So Master Iftikhar told you to write him a poem today. Well, you had better get going then. I am going to get you something else to wear. I have ordered food for you.” Food (bread, dahl, fruit, buttermilk) arrived shortly thereafter, and as soon as the food man left, she gathered up her things. She seemed pleased to leave the suite and locked the door from the outside.

I peered out the window. Light clouds displaced the intensity of the sunshine. I wrote a simple poem for Iftikhar.

Immersion

Immerse me in thy beauty
Anesthetize the pain
Stop my heart from beating
That I never feel again

Come sink within my beauty
Cast away your fear
Hold me close and love me
And let me hold you, dear

Immerse me in thy beauty
Anesthetize the pain
Take from me my fingers,
My pen, my words, my brain

Come sink within my beauty
Cast away your fear
This life is but a droplet
A salty, falling tear
Immerse me in your beauty
Anesthetize the pain
Here is my life. Take it
Make me one with you again.

It rhymes.

Hita reappeared in the mid-afternoon and interrupted my writing. I quickly shuffled my papers, placing my poem for Iftikhar on the top. “So you finished your writings?” she said. “Yes,” I replied. Since the poem lay on top of the pile and my other writing beneath it, I had no fear of discovery even if Hita could read. Under her arm, she carried another bundle wrapped in brown paper, similar to the first. I assumed that it was my next costume. Hita for once appeared relaxed. I smelled a whiff of a particular fragrance on her, suggesting that she had spent some time in a drinking establishment. When she said, “Let us go and put on some makeup over those bruises and make you all pretty,” I felt that I had already fallen into a routine.

Despite the freedom I enjoyed all morning, the pain across my eyes and deep in my head was constant and had intensified over the day. This cast a net of melancholy over me. It is rare for me to feel this way, but I felt overwhelmed by a blanket of despair. My mind drifted back to the riverbank with Grandpa, the feasts, the feuds with Mother, the fights with my brother Avijit, the smell of dirty perfume on Father’s clothes, the conversations I used to hold with Shahalad lying in the back room
of the Orphanage, Puneet’s whole-bodied laugh, and the jokes we made about Hippopotamus. Who are you to judge if my path is wretched? Judgment is the shadow cast by preconception. You are ignorant of the Common Street and of the raw and wild color that would paint my every hour and splash across my day. But now—here—there is silence, and for the first time I can taste my soul’s lament.

Hita is skilled with face paint, as a result of which my beauty is restored. She is entirely detached as she rebuilds my face and she steps back in admiration as a portrait painter steps back to admire the image she created. The dress I am to wear is a bright blue with a similar shape to yesterday’s dress (I think the store label is the same) except that the back of this dress rests higher up the neck. Before I put it on, Hita stretches a brassiere around my chest, which is obviously meant to accentuate and pad out my as yet quite limited bosom. I slip into the dress and I must admit that the bra does help fill it out somewhat.