Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? (40 page)

“What do you mean?” Jasbeer asked. “Sabotaged? How?”

Lalloo shrugged. “I don’t know. These are the rumours I have heard. There is something bad going down soon. Maybe just a boycott—symbolic because it is India’s national airline. In any case, I would feel better if you travelled on some other flight.”

But Jasbeer never reached Nimmo. The last Bibi-ji heard of him—only a rumour—was that he had been arrested at Delhi airport. She heard other rumours, wispy and uncertain, that something was about to happen to avenge the invasion of the Golden Temple and the killing
of Sikhs in Delhi. She felt as if the world that she had known for so long, the stable, safe world, had been blown apart, leaving only smoky puffs of whispering, poisonous rumours.

T
he room was dark, even though it was a brilliant morning outside. Her windows still shut, Nimmo lay on her bed unable to bear the thought of another day. She glanced at the clock; it ticked the passing hours relentlessly, uselessly, reminding her that it was eight o’clock, time to pack her husband’s lunch box, nine o’clock, time for her daughter to leave for school, twelve o’clock, time for her son to arrive home for lunch.

But there was no one to wait for. Pappu was dead-dragged out of Mohan Lal’s house and burned on the street. And Kamal …

And Jasbeer and Satpal, they too were dead, she knew it, for otherwise why would they not come home to her? If she
listened carefully, she could hear them both crying from the skies for their last rites. But how could she perform the required oblations when she had no bodies? How could she recite the Sohila, the last hymn of night to lull their spirits to sleep, or the Sukhmani, the psalm of peace for their eternal silence, without their bodies to pray over?

She roamed the house, touching this and that. Although Manpreet and Kaushalya had cleaned the house for her, she was sure that she could see the bloodstains from the man she had struck with the iron poker. And there, clinging to the broken chair like a ghost, was the long pale yellow dupatta worn by Kamal that day. She noticed, once again, the imprints of two pairs of hands low down on a wall—blue hands on a white wall. She recalled the happy origin of those prints.

A few pots and pans lay outside, in the open washing area behind the kitchen, and she sat down to wash them. Ever since Manpreet and Balraj had left a week ago, her neighbour Kaushalya had made it her duty to bring hot meals twice a day. Nimmo barely touched the food. Every time she brought a morsel of it to her lips, she remembered that Pappu had not eaten anything before leaving home that day. Her boy had died on an empty stomach.
Oh Wahe-guru,
Nimmo murmured as she scrubbed the dishes harder and harder,
oh beloved all-seeing God, why did you do this to them? And why have you done this to me? She
rocked on her heels, wiping her streaming eyes with wet fists, weeping like a baby.

A cold breeze started up when she was halfway through the pile of dishes. She sniffed the air with a faint stirring
of pleasure, of half-remembered joy. She sucked in her breath, clung to the memory that had surfaced.

A small naked child, gleaming with oil recently applied, dashed out of her arms into the front yard, laughing, leaping up and down in the wintry morning, ecstatic to be alive.

It was the child of her heart, her Kamal, her third and last one—a daughter at last. Every mother has one child she favours if only a little more than the others, and this was the one Nimmo held closest. Was that why she had been so punished? For the sin of loving one more than the rest? It had only been a little more; after all, a daughter was a visitor in her parents’ home, soon to be sent away with tears and sweets to her husband’s.
The child, naked as the sky, leapt to catch the sun, slipped and fell, scrambled up and raced towards her, weeping from the insult of mud on her small knees.
The mother held out her arms and gathered air.

Dishes done, Nimmo washed the clothes and went out in the front yard to dry them. Asha’s barbed-wire voice, which had earlier torn open the day, could now be heard haranguing someone inside her home. On the other side, Kaushalya called to her children. The sound of traffic, which had started at daybreak, had become a uniform roar punctuated by horns and beeps and clanging rickshaw bells.

Nimmo scrubbed the kitchen, the front and back rooms, the bath, the upstairs room. By late afternoon all her work was done and the house was spotless once more. She bathed and wore her best salwar suit, a dark pink silk, which had burn marks all over it. It now hung loosely on her frame.
She combed her thick hair and braided it carefully. She discovered, beneath the cot, a pair of embroidered slippers that her mother-in-law had had made especially for her wedding and that Satpal had removed with great tenderness before he kissed her feet, her ankles, her calves, his hot mouth working its way up, up, up. And she, lying there in a tumult of shyness, had stifled her giggles from the tickling of her new husband’s moustache on her young skin.

She shut the front door, which was still weak from the battering it had received two months ago, and retreated into the inner room she had shared with Satpal Singh, owner of a mechanic’s shop, for twenty-seven years. She lowered her tall body, once lush with happiness and health, onto the bed, directly onto its ripped and charred mattress, for the murderers had used her sheets as wicks to burn her life down. She lay there supine in her best clothes and poured a bottle of yellow pills in her mouth. She swallowed with difficulty, gagging, but persisted. There was no safe place left in the world, she knew that now. Not a cupboard, not even a bharoli of grain.

She felt her breathing slow, grow quiet.

Brisk footsteps came to the front door. “Nimmo? Nimmo? Are you there?”

Her ears were clogged with silence but she could hear the thin, caring voice.
Kaushalya.

“Nimmo?” sharper this time. “Nimmo?” A hammering on the door. Then a crash as it was pushed open. “Where are you?” Closer it came, that voice, closer and closer. Who would reach her first? Kaushalya or Yamraj the king
of death? A hand on her shoulder, pushing hard. So far away that voice,
Nimmo, wake up, what have you done, Nimmo?

She was dragged upright. Kaushalya was trying to pull her off the bed. “Walk!” she said. “Nimmo, move your legs. Help me. Walk, walk.”
But I don’t want to walk, I want to sleep, I want to go where my children are. I want to see my Kamal again, and my sons, like pillars on either side of me, and my Satpal who has left nothing but his handprint on the walls of this house. I want to go to them.

A great heave of nausea. “Walk, Nimmo, walk.” A hand forcing Nimmo’s mouth open, fingers pushed inside, tickling the back of her throat, a thin trail of sour vomit. Again and again. The endless walking, dragging along, draped over the tiny Kaushalya, to the kitchen, where she glimpsed the clean pots and pans ranged shining bright along the walls. Opened her mouth again to swallow a glassful of salt water. In the backyard a spray of vomit this time, salt and sour.

Another voice now. It was Kamal, her daughter.
Mummy wake up, Mummy, I am here. Wake up.

And Kaushalya saying, “Go quickly, get a taxi, we have to take her to the hospital. Hurry, hurry!”
I am to live after all.
She touched Kaushalya’s hand. “My child,” she said. “I am the one who put her in there. It was me, I know she will be safe.”

Kaushalya stroked her hair away from her worn face gently, as if she, Nimmo, were the child. “You did the best you could, Nimmo. It isn’t your fault.”

Nimmo was puzzled.
What isn’t my fault?

“Those men were responsible for Kamal’s death, not you,” Kaushalya said, still stroking the hair.

Nimmo shook her head, no, no, Kaushalya did not understand. It was all a mistake.
Kamal is at home, in the safest place of all.

I
n the middle of June, Leela called Bibi-ji again, persistent as a fly. “Bibi-ji, listen, we go back way too. long,” she said. “Don’t put the phone down, please.”

Silence from Bibi-ji, but at least she did not hang up. “I am so terribly sorry about what happened to your niece’s family. Balu got the news from Lalloo. I wish I could say something other than sorry. Really.”

Silence.

“Bibi-ji, how is Jas taking it? Preethi was asking about him.”

“He has gone back.” Silence again.

“Oh, I see,” Leela said, feeling uncomfortable about the long pauses. “I just wanted to tell you, Balu and I are
going to India. Is there anything you would like me to bring to Nimmo?” There was no response, and Leela rushed to bridge the silence. “It was very difficult to get seats, but Lalloo’s friend who owns one of those travel agencies on Main Street managed to get me a seat on the twenty-second of this month and Balu one on the next day. He was very helpful, Bibi-ji. I am so excited. It has been eighteen years.”

“To India?” Bibi-ji asked, her voice sharp. “On which flight?”

“Air India for me and Air France the next day for Balu. Via Toronto and Montreal. Look, Bibi-ji, why don’t you and I get together for chai like we used to? Come here. I will make you masala-dosai and we can talk.”

“There is nothing to talk about,” Bibi-ji said gently. She hung up the telephone and leaned her head against the wall. But Lalloo had said that it was not safe to fly Air India—economic boycott, his friend, the travel agent, had said. Perhaps sabotage. But what did Lalloo’s friend, the one who had sold Leela the tickets, know? And what did Lalloo know? He would have said something to the Bhats if there was anything to worry about, wouldn’t he? Perhaps she, Bibi-ji, should have said something to Leela. But it was none of her business what happened to them. No, it was not her business at all.

T
he night before she was to leave for India, Leela dreamed that she was in a plane, cutting through the infinity of space towards an unknown destination. Thousands of feet below, the ocean undulated silently. She could not see it but she knew that it was there. It was dark inside the plane and all around her she could hear the sussuration of her fellow passengers breathing.

Leela too shut her eyes but was woken a moment later by the sound of someone approaching. She saw, coming down the cramped aisle of the plane towards her, Yama the god of death.

“Leela Bhat, are you ready?” Yama asked, his deep voice resonating through her body.

“No,” she whispered. “No, I am not. Can you not wait until I get home?”

“Your time has come, Leela Bhat,” Yama said gently. “I am merely the collector of souls.”

“Just another day or two?” Leela gazed up at him with an enormous confused sadness. But his lasso swung over her head and she reached out for it. A wind touched her skin, her eyes clouded and her voice tore out of her in a mournful ululation that climbed higher and higher into the thin air.