The Space Between Us (19 page)

It was almost noon when Feroz and Sera walked in, Sera looking radiant in a green sari. To Bhima, it seemed as if the two of them, in their good clothes and their clean, glowing faces, were a splash of color against the black-and-white background of the dark, dingy room. They look like film stars compared to the rest of us, she thought, like gods dropped from the sky onto this mortal earth.
She noticed that the other people in the general ward, patients and their relatives alike, were staring openmouthed at the Dubashes as they made their way toward her.

“Serabai,” Amit screamed with pleasure. He stood before the two of them beaming his delight, a little afraid of Feroz but unable to contain his joy at seeing Sera. “Amit,” Feroz said stiffly, nodding his head in acknowledgment of the boy.

But Sera’s face suffused with warmth. “How do you do, Amit?” she said, extending her hand for a handshake. Amit giggled at this familiar greeting. “Fine, thank you,” he responded, in the way she had taught him. Then a worried look crossed his face. “My baba is sick,” he said. “His forehead is as hot as a cup of tea.”

Bhima sat with her hands folded in a gesture of gratitude. “Bai, many thanks,” she said. She turned toward where Feroz was standing. “Sorry to trouble you so, seth,” she added.

Feroz waved her thanks away. “Where are the doctors and nurses?” he said, scanning the room. “Who is in charge here?”

“A sister was here earlier,” she replied. “Gave Gopal a big injection. She was the one who told me about the influxtion.”

“Infection,” he corrected her absentmindedly. His eyes darted around the room until they fell upon a ward boy who was about to give someone a bedpan. “Ae, you,” Feroz called. “Come here a moment.”

Mesmerized by the authority in his voice, the boy dropped the bedpan and began to walk toward them. “Mere re,” Sera whispered. “You’d think he could have finished giving that poor man his bedpan before coming here.”

Feroz pulled out his business card. “Listen here,” he said. “Take this to the attending doctor and tell him I want to see him here in a few minutes. Hurry up, we don’t have much time. We have to be somewhere else by one-thirty.”

The ward boy held the card as if it were an important document. But he lingered. “Doctors come only once in morning and once in evening,” he said.

Feroz roared. “Listen, you. You tell that doctor to show up here in two minutes,” he said. “I know the people who built this hospital, understand?”

The boy scuttled as fast as a cockroach. “Yes sir,” he said. “Just a minute, sir.”

Bhima watched in amazement as an older man in a white coat walked up to them a few minutes later. “Mr. Feroz?” he said. “I’m Dr. Kapur.” He was a man of medium height with coarse gray hair and bags under his eyes. One end of his eyeglasses was held together with dirty-looking medical tape.

“Ah, yes, good,” Feroz said, extending his hand. “I’m Feroz Dubash, senior executive with the Tata Group.”

“I see.” The doctor looked at Feroz and Sera curiously. “What can I do for you?”

“We just wanted a progress report on this young man here,” Feroz said, glancing at the sleeping Gopal. “He had an operation yesterday after some kind of industrial accident. We were told he has an infection. I was wondering if you could explain what has happened.”

Dr. Kapur looked uneasy. “Yes, there is some infection, per se. Common problem here, postsurgery,” he mumbled. “You know, sometimes germs get in after surgery. We are trying to cure him.”

“So when was he put on antibiotics?” Sera asked.

“Antibiotics?” Dr. Kapur looked as if he’d never heard the word. “Well, that is, he’s not on those yet, per se. We were trying other measures first.”

Sera flushed with anger. “What, are you feeding him paansopari first?” she asked sarcastically. “What are you saving the—”

Feroz squeezed her elbow to quiet her. “Sorry, Doctor, my wife
is a little worried,” he said. “You see, this fellow is important to our family.” He leaned closer to the doctor, his black eyes scanning the man’s face and his words slow and deliberate. “Anyway, what’s done is done. It sounds like your hospital has made a major mistake here. But the question is, What can we do to fix this?” His voice dropped even lower. “May I speak to you a moment, man-to-man? Good. Now here’s the thing. For some reason, my wife is very fond of our servant here. And if my wife is happy, then I am happy.” He winked at the doctor. “If you are a married man, Doctor, then you know what I mean. For instance, today is our wedding anniversary. I took the day off to be able to spend it with my wife. Believe me, the last thing I want to do is to be here, in this—place. But my wife insisted we stop here to check on things, and here we are.”

“No need to bother about anything,” Dr. Kapur said testily. “This man here is getting good treatment…”

Feroz suddenly looked furious. The vein in his forehead bulged. Still, he kept his voice low. “Do you call not treating an infection with antibiotics good treatment?” he said. “Do you call not explaining to a wife what’s wrong with her husband good treatment? Is there any explanation for this?”

Dr. Kapur looked away. “He’s not the only patient here, per se.” He laughed uneasily. “You can worry about just one patient. We have to worry about all our patients.”

Feroz made a gruff sound that sounded like a bark. “Then, worry. Goddamnit, worry. Do something. If this man dies because of lack of care, I swear to you, Kapur, I’ll have your testicles wrapped around your head so fast—”

“Now look here, Mr. Feroz. There’s no need to talk so crudely. I came to see you because—”

“If you’re worried about my talk, you better never see my actions,” Feroz interrupted. “I work for the Tatas, you understand? Do you know what pull we have with the hospital administration?
One word from me and you will be out on the streets with not even your white coat with you. And what’s more, I’ll make bloody sure not one other hospital in Bombay hires you, you understand?”

Sera moved swiftly toward her husband. “Now, Feroz, I’m sure there’s no need for all this,” she said smoothly. “I can tell the doctor here is a good man, that he will do his best for Gopal.”

“That only is what I’m trying to tell your husband, madam,” Kapur said. His voice had changed, and there was a sniveling, ingratiating quality in it. “This afternoon only we will put your patient on antibiotics, per se. A few days and he will be brand new again.”

Bhima noticed Sera flashing Feroz a warning look. But Feroz ignored it. “Okay,” he said. “Here is the plan. You have my business card. I want you to have one of your doctors call my secretary every morning and give her a report on Gopal’s progress. Tell him to call around eleven o’clock.”

Dr. Kapur smiled a chastised smile, but his eyes were cold with fury. “Mr. Feroz, be reasonable,” he said. “This is a hospital, not a railway station. I cannot spare one of my boys to call you daily. If you like, you can call the main office and talk to someone there.”

“You’re right,” Feroz said thoughtfully. “Your boys have no time to call me. Okay, here’s a better idea—I want you yourself”—he jabbed the older man lightly with his index finger—“to phone me each morning. Understand?”

Dr. Kapur stared at the floor. His Adam’s apple worked furiously. “I am a trained doctor, sir,” he started to say and then fell silent.

“Then act like one,” Feroz said. “Don’t tell me what you can’t do. Tell me what you
can
do.”

At this final insult, Dr. Kapur’s face went slack, reminding Bhima of a straw hut collapsing in the monsoon rains. “Okay, sir,” he said. “I will phone you every morning. And I will personally oversee his treatment, I promise.”

“Good,” Feroz said curtly. Kapur shuffled his feet. “Anything else I can do?” he asked.

“No, that’s all. You can go now.”

Kapur flushed. Keeping his eyes averted from all of them, he nodded and walked away.

Bhima looked in wonder from the doctor’s retreating back to Feroz’s triumphant face. To her surprise, Feroz was laughing and winking at Sera, as if his earlier show of anger had just been a performance. “Just having some maaja-masti with him.” He chuckled. “Can’t let these government fellows get big heads.”

So this is what education does, Bhima thought. It opens doors for you. She wondered if her Amit would someday be like Feroz, able to get others to do things for him. She was thrilled and repulsed by the thought of Amit exercising such naked power over someone else. How that doctor had burst, like one of the Pathan balloonwalla’s creations. A few words from Feroz sahib and he had collapsed totally. And now, Gopal would get the help he needed. Already Serabai was explaining to her that they would soon be starting Gopal on some new tablets.

“Feroz seth, if you live to be a hundred years old, I will not be able to stop thanking you for your help today,” Bhima said. She walked toward him, her hands cupped together so that she could take his right hand and lift it to her head in thanks. But Feroz flinched and jerked away as her hands touched his. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said hurriedly. “No thanks needed.”

Bhima did not allow herself to feel the sting of his rejection. “When Gopal is home I will make you some shrikhand,” she promised. She knew that Feroz often brought home the sweet yogurt paste from Parsi Dairy Farm.

Feroz smiled. “I only like Parsi Dairy’s shrikhand,” he said. Then, seeing the hurt look on her face, he added, “But we’ll see, we’ll see. Let him get home first.”

After they left, Bhima gave Amit two rupees to go get himself some samosas for lunch. “And you, Ma?” he said.

“I’m not hungry,” she said shortly. “You go outside and eat and then come right back, achcha?”

Watching the boy speed down the hallway, Bhima smiled. Amit was as sharp and fast as lightning. Tomorrow, she would insist he go back to school. He would argue with her, she knew, but she wouldn’t listen. Watching how Feroz seth had completely dominated the conversation with the doctor had sealed her belief in the power of education. Someday, her Amit, too, would argue like this with doctors, lawyers. Perhaps he would be a doctor or lawyer himself. Bhima didn’t really know what a lawyer did, but she knew Freddy seth was one and she liked him. Freddy seth was nice—once, when she had accompanied Serabai to her in-laws’ house, he had allowed her to stroke his parrot, Polly. And when he came over to Sera’s home, he always inquired about Gopal and the children. Yes, Amit could be a lawyer and Freddy seth would help him.

But then another thought struck her and she paused, as if she were at a busy intersection and her thoughts were cars she had to watch for. The doctor babu had to be an educated man also. Then why had he allowed Feroz seth to talk to him in that manner? Was education alone not enough? And if not, what was the missing part? She had not been able to follow the actual conversation because Feroz and the doctor had spoken in English. Still, she needed to know, for Amit’s sake. Could Feroz seth talk like this because he was a Parsi? Everybody knew the Parsis were educated and rich and their women mostly wore dresses instead of saris. In other words, they were different. Different from her and Gopal and even the doctor sahib, with his frayed rubber chappals and his eyeglasses held together with tape. So was that it? Or was it some other thing? Was it because Feroz seth knew how to look angry even when he
wasn’t? Would her Amit be able to do that? Was that something they taught you in school also?

Bhima looked up to see another nurse, this one younger and prettier than the one who had given Gopal his injection earlier in the day, standing beside the bed.

“New medicines we are starting him on.” The nurse smiled, holding out her hand. “Antibiotics.”

G
opal came home after ten days in the hospital, and Bhima returned to work. The fever and cough had receded, but he complained about the terrible pain in his hand, pain that ran like hot bolts of electricity up his arm. “Wait till the wrapping comes off, Gopu, then I’ll use some of our home remedies,” she promised him. “We can even ask your brother to send us some herbs from the village.”

“And what will those do?” he asked. “Make my fingers grow back?” He had developed this abrupt new way of talking that hurt and bewildered her.

“No, but…At least they will help with the pain,” she said feebly, but he made a dismissive sound and turned away.

Bhima did not persist in engaging him. Something else was bothering her, something more urgent. Ever since the day of the accident, the foreman had vanished, not to be seen again. He had not shown up the next day, as he had promised, nor the day after. What had he said about coming to them with a business offer? It was time for him to contact them, now that Gopal was home. After all, they needed the money if they were to pay the month’s rent. And in a few weeks, once the bandages came off and Gopal was feeling stronger, he would want to get back to his job. Even if he couldn’t run the machinery now, surely there was another job for him at Godav Industries.

Bhima wanted to discuss this with Gopal, wanted to tell him about the strange man who had escorted her to the hospital on that terrible day, but her husband’s face seemed to turn to stone anytime she mentioned the hospital or the accident. He’ll feel better in a few days, she said to herself. I’ll talk to him then.

As if he had read her thoughts, the foreman knocked on their door the next evening. Bhima had just returned home from work and was kneading the dough for the chappatis. She glanced out the window at the darkening sky. Pooja should be home any minute now, she thought. She could hear the cries of the neighborhood boys with whom Amit was playing cricket in the courtyard of the building. “Sixer,” a young voice shouted enthusiastically, and Bhima prayed that it was Amit who had hit the ball hard enough to score the six runs. She tried to look through the window, but the angle did not permit her a good view of the courtyard.

When the doorbell rang, she noticed that, although Gopal was nearest to the door, he stayed in his seat and looked to her to wipe the flour dust off her hands and answer it. The old Gopal would never have done this, she thought but then snuffed out the thought. Poor man, she said to herself. He hurts so. If he wants to rest, why not? It won’t hurt me to walk to the door.

It took her a moment to recognize the foreman. When she did, relief made her forget the fact that she did not like this man, and she smiled enthusiastically. “Welcome, bhaisahib,” she said. “I was thinking you had forgotten us.” Stepping aside for him to enter, she turned toward her husband. “Gopal,” she said. “You have a visitor. It’s the foreman from the factory.”

The man behind her cleared his throat. “Er, actually, what I said the other day was not exact-to-exact. I, er, just thought it was easier that day, given all the tamasha that was going on. Actually, I’m the accountant for the company.”

Gopal stood in front of the man, looking at him with puzzled eyes. “You’re the accountant?” he said.

“Namaste, ji,” the man said, folding his hands in greeting. Instinctively, Gopal started to imitate his gesture, but a quick glance at his mutilated hand made him drop his hands to his side. He nodded. “Namaste,” he said.

“Please to allow me to introduce myself,” the man continued. “I’m Devdas. I am doing the bookkeeping for Godav Industries.”

Gopal glanced quickly at Bhima, as if to reassure himself that she was in the room. “You shouldn’t have taken the trouble to come here all this way,” he said politely. “After all, I am planning on returning to work in a few weeks. As soon as these come off,” he added with a rueful smile, indicating the bandages.

“Well, er, that all is what we are needing to talk about,” the man said. He eased himself onto a chair and then opened his plastic briefcase.

“What will you take?” Gopal asked graciously. “Chai? Or something cold?”

“No, no, nothing,” Devdas said, shaking his head vigorously. “I will only be taking a few minutes of your time,” he said, including Bhima in the sweep of his glance. “After all, you must still be resting, no?”

Gopal shrugged. “Only so much resting a man can do.”

The accountant laughed, as if Gopal had cracked a fine joke. “True, true.” He paused and looked at a long sheet of paper that he had pulled out of his briefcase. When he spoke, his voice had changed. “Achcha,” he said crisply. “About this contract. According to this, it says that Godav Industries will pay you one thousand rupees as a one-time, lump-sum payment. After this, you will have no more claims against us. You will be free to seek employment anywhere in this city that you like.” Ignoring their dazed expressions, he leaned back in his chair and smiled benevolently. “I have come
prepared to pay you the entire sum of money tonight,” he said, stretching out each word. “That’s why only I have come so soon after your return home. After all, the boss understands that you will have need for money at a time like this.”

Gopal spoke through a fog of confusion. “Excuse please, but I don’t understand. I intend to come to work as soon as I am able.”

The man’s face was equal parts pity and contempt. “Just think, Gopal babu,” he said in a voice laced with malice. “What are you going to be doing at the factory? Can you lift the sheets of plastic anymore? Can you move them around so that the machine cuts them just so? A factory worker with three fingers missing—I don’t know, baba. That’s like a woman without breasts.”

Gopal leapt up. “Watch what you say in this house, mister. This is a respectable house you have entered, not a whorehouse, you—”

“Calm down, calm down, Gopalji,” the man drawled. “Why for unnecessarily you’re getting all riled up? You need to preserve your energy, na? I meant no insult to your chaste wife here. But my main point is there is no job for you at our place. Okay?” He searched his briefcase with his fingers, all the while keeping his eyes on Gopal. He pulled out a fat, brown envelope with a flourish and then fished around some more before he pulled out his receipt book.

“So here’s the thousand rupees,” he said, stroking the envelope. “Not a small sum of money in these hard times.” He turned to where Bhima was standing and offered the packet to her. “Here, didi,” he said. “You are the mistress of the house. You count the notes and make sure I haven’t made a mistake. After all, these days in Bombay you can’t trust anyone.”

“Don’t touch that money.” Gopal’s warning rang out sharply, like the smack of a cricket bat against a ball. “I want a job, not the price of my three fingers. And also, what about my workmen’s compensation money? That alone will be more than this measly sum.”

“Ah, babu, that’s what I’m trying to tell you,” the accountant
said softly. “While you were in the hospital, your wife here signed the terms of this settlement. According to this piece of paper, this is all you’re entitled to.”

Gopal’s face turned pale. He turned to look at Bhima, and there was so much hurt, betrayal, and confusion in his eyes that she felt mesmerized by the look, as if his eyes were arrows that had her pinned against the wall. Those arrows pierced her chest, killing the words of explanation before they were born; they welded her to the space on the floor where she stood, so she could not take a step toward her husband and bridge this awful chasm that had sprung up between them. She wanted to explain to Gopal the panicked ride to the hospital, her distraught state of mind, and Devdas’s lies about the piece of paper he had tricked her into signing, but she could mount no defense under the weight of Gopal’s look.

“Liar,” Gopal finally said to Devdas, who was looking from husband to wife, a strangely satisfied expression on his face. “My wife doesn’t know how to read or write. How could she sign anything?”

In response, Devdas held up the sheet of paper. “Thumb impression,” he said. His tone was triumphant, almost giddy, as if he was trying to suppress a laugh. He turned to Bhima, who still stood rooted to the floor. “Tell me,” he said. “Is this your impression or not?”

But she was staring at Gopal, watching the single line of saliva that hung from the roof of his open mouth; noticing how he was licking his lips nervously; seeing the lines that appeared on his brow, the tears that glistened like dead stars in his dark eyes. “Woman,” he said hoarsely. “What have you done?”

Devdas shifted in his seat impatiently. “What’s done is done,” he said. “Now, if you please, my wife is waiting for me for dinner. Please to sign this receipt on this stamp here, saying you have accepted the money. Or do you need an ink pad also?”

“I can sign my name,” Gopal said, his eyes still on Bhima. He ac
cepted Devdas’s pen and scribbled on the pink government stamp with his left hand. “Here it is,” he said, returning the book to Devdas. “I have just signed my life away.”

Devdas dropped the receipt book in his briefcase and stood up. “Thank you,” he said. “And now, with your permission, I will take your leave.” He set the brown envelope on the table and looked at Gopal as if he expected something—curses, violence, threats, a display of anger, anything. But Gopal stared at him blankly, with the face of a dead man. The accountant clucked his tongue in dissatisfaction. “I tell you, Gopal babu, you brought this misfortune on yourself. You should’ve been more careful on the job,” he said. “After all, these are big, dangerous machines, not a child’s dollhouse. Next time, you will learn to be careful.”

Finally he got the reaction he was after. Gopal got up from his chair with a roar of anger. “Get out of my house,” he yelled. “Take your lying evil out of my sight. Telling me I should’ve been more careful when everybody knows that only three days earlier I had complained to the big boss about that machine. And none of you sons of whores did a thing about it. Cheaper to pay off a worker like me than to stop work for a day to get the machine fixed. Don’t think I don’t know what’s inside this envelope—it’s blood money. It’s my three stolen fingers returned to me inside this brown envelope, nothing more. Saala maadarchot, who do you think you’re fooling? You may fool your mother and sister and your son who still hangs from your wife’s tits, but you won’t fool me, understand?”

Devdas made a sound that was a cross between a snort of anger and a helpless giggle. “Now, babu, no need to act like this. After all, I’m a guest in your house.” He caught the gleam in Gopal’s eye. “I’m going. Good-bye,” he said hastily.

The house was eerily quiet after Devdas left. Bhima went back to making her chappatis while Gopal sat in the chair where Devdas had sat just a few minutes ago, staring at the wall in front of him as
if it would reveal the mysteries of his life. The envelope lay untouched on the table. Occasionally, Bhima stole a glance at Gopal, but his face was as blank as the wall he was staring at. Finally, she couldn’t bear the silence any longer. Wiping her hands clean of the flour, she went to where Gopal was sitting. “My husband,” she said quietly. “Find it in your heart to forgive me. I am a stupid, ignorant woman. That badmaash lied to me. He told me what I was signing was a letter to make sure you got good treatment in the hospital.”

Gopal shook his head slowly. “Woman, don’t you see?” he said. “It doesn’t matter. One way or the other, they would’ve tricked us. Because they own the world, you see. They have the machines and the money and the factories and the education. We are just the tools they use to get all those things. You know how I use a hammer to pound in a nail? Well, they use me like a hammer to get what they want. That’s all I am to them, a hammer. And what happens to a hammer once its teeth break off? You throw it away and get a new hammer. All they did was use you to buy themselves a new hammer.”

She stared at him uncomprehendingly. She did not recognize this Gopal nor did she like him very much. Not only did this Gopal look different but he even smelled different. Her Gopal was built of sunshine and songs and laughter and jokes and smelled of mint and coriander and new rain. This new Gopal was hard as a hammer, tough as leather, and smelled of sweat and ashes and sour milk. “Gopi, listen to me,” she said desperately. “Forget Godav Industries. With my stupidity, I took this job away from you, but I’ll find you another one instead, I promise. And from tomorrow, I’m going to feed you a piece of chicken every day, to help you get your strength back. And I’m going to pay Pandav to write a letter to your brother, asking him to send us some herbal cures for your pain. Gopal, my husband, while you were in the hospital, I fought to
keep you among the living. And now that you are home, I will take tip-top care of you, I promise.”

He smiled at her, and it was then that she knew the gods had played a trick—they had kept Gopal alive, but they had taken away that essential something that makes a man want to keep on living. Gopal was like the empty shell of a clock whose insides had been removed. There was nothing to keep him ticking anymore. She wished that he would cry, weep, curse the world, beat her, smash something, tear the envelope on the table to bits, rage against Devdas—do something to tell her that he was still alive. But instead, he smiled, this slow, sad, fatalistic smile that made him look more dead than he had in the hospital.

“Shall I turn on the transistor radio?” she asked, thinking the Hindi film music would cheer him up. But he simply shrugged. “I’m tired,” he said and turned away to face the wall again. After a minute, she went back to the kitchen stove.

She heard Amit and Pooja race up the outside steps, and the next second they flew into the room. Bhima caught the worried look that Pooja flashed toward her father, a look so grown-up and cautious it tore at her heart. This girl is too young to worry about so much, she thought. Bhima saw Pooja go up to Gopal and stroke his hair as she spoke quietly to her father, and her heart ached with love for her quiet, steady, sensitive Pooja. Amit, by contrast, seemed unaware of the tension in the room, his face still flushed from the energetic cricket game. There was something about Amit that reminded Bhima of a lively, excited, eager-to-please puppy. If this boy had a tail, it would be wagging all day, she thought. And ever since Gopal had returned home, Amit’s tail had not stopped wagging. He is so happy to have his baba home that he doesn’t seem to notice the change in Gopal, Bhima marveled. Now Amit was doing a jig, telling his father about the match. “I hit two sixers, baba,” he said. “That Vasu tried to
catch one of my shots, but he’s such a fatty, he couldn’t even run behind the ball. And then that new boy tried to…” His eyes fell on the envelope. “What is this?” he asked, picking it up.