Closure (6 page)

Whilst the young woman retrieved her rotis, Kamli Kaur walked around the veranda, holding the child close to her. I stood where I was.

A few moments later a frail old woman, much older then Kamli Kaur came out. “Kamli!” she cried.

I went outside, stood by the door and lit a cigarette. A short while later, a door close to me opened and a young man asked me to come inside. He pointed to a tray of food on a small table and said, “Eat, Ustad,” and walked back into the house.

On the way back to Islamabad, Kamli Kaur sat in the front passenger seat. She looked much younger now.

“What's your name?” she asked, lighting a cigarette.

“Iqbal. Raja Iqbal.” I replied. “We are refugees from India.”

“Do you know where from?” Then she added quickly, “How could you, you were not born then.”

“No Majee, I wasn't born then,” I said, “But my mother, may the Almighty grant her a place in heaven, never stopped talking about her house. She said we had a great big peepal tree in the middle of our yard. We had the biggest well in the whole area, which never went dry and from which everyone filled their pitchers. It was close to the Pir-I-Dastgir shrine.”

Kamli Kaur threw her cigarette out of the window, touched my lucky key and went silent for the rest of the journey.

It was late at night and there was not much traffic so we made good time.

I pulled up outside the Marriot and said, “Majee, I want no fare from you. I will never forget this journey.”

She held my hand tightly in her trembling hands and left the car. As I withdrew my hand I noticed there was a key in it, and there was a small pile of one thousand rupee notes on the passenger seat. I picked up the money and drove off, the key in my hand. I stopped a short distance from the hotel, put the light on inside and stared at the key.

A chill ran down my back. I held it next to my lucky key.

They were exactly the same.

CHANTAL OAKES
THE WEIGHT OF FOUR TIGERS

Neon Banks had been working on the piece of performance art for so long, he had begun to wonder if it was actually possible that some sort of butter might be made from tigers. How pungent would that substance be, how feline? Would it be too rich for the human palate?

George Mbewe, on the other hand, one of the cleaners at Chatsworth Villa, with its museum, park and zoo, where the performance was to take place, felt lucky to have the job as it was so much easier than the succession of short-term contracts involving hard manual work he had been employed in before.

He now cleaned beautiful wooden floors and hand-woven carpets and rugs in what seemed to him the epitome of peace and quiet. Neither guests nor staff raised their voices as he cleaned the gilt door handles and light switches. He made sure the grand front step was always spotless in case the owners ever visited, and all around him it was as hushed as a shrine.

As he cleaned he listened to his small radio tucked in his shirt pocket, switched on low. He didn't like the feeling of dislocation when he plugged headphones into his ears, and he didn't want to be taken unawares. He listened to talk programmes mostly; today there was to be a live radio broadcast from his place of work. He would listen from his small side room, grateful to whoever the artist was for the extra shifts.

From the west wing windows of the grand house – modestly labelled a villa – beyond the corridor and the small storeroom where he kept his cleaning materials, he could see the radio station van topped with a large aerial. And there was Harry Cook, the radio presenter, getting out of his mobile changing room, ready to start his broadcast.

Harry Cook always sounded very jolly on the radio and looked jolly too, even though he wore a suit and didn't sport a beard as George had always imagined.

Five minutes later, at 11 o'clock precisely, Harry Cook told his listeners, “Good morning to you all.” George replied, “And good morning to you,” half expecting to hear his voice relayed back to him through his radio. He listened to Harry Cook most work days, and now here he was on the other side of the corridor wall.

“We are delighted to bring you this live broadcast from Chatsworth Villa with its Zoo and Country Park. The sun is shining,” Harry Cook told his listeners, “but today, I am inside, standing by a purpose-built glass room, manufactured in Germany and constructed on-site in the Great Hall of this palatial house, for a groundbreaking performance featuring the famous American scientist, Charles Draper, and four of the park's tigers. Here in the room are assembled a large group of interested individuals, many of whom have travelled a great distance to be here. I'm with Neon Banks, who instigated this piece of performance art, and the curator of Chatsworth's Museum, Susan Jones. Good morning to you both.”

George only half-listened to the artist talking about re-examining the connections between words, African peoples and global culture. It was time for a sit-down. He had been working hard all morning, mainly keeping the caterers from dropping food on the 17
^th
century rugs.

In his storeroom, resting on a small 200-year-old wooden chair with a beautifully embroidered pad, George waited for the kettle to boil. Harry Cook was still talking to Neon Banks about being a black artist living in the UK and Banks was interrupting to protest that he was actually born in England, but the kettle drowned out the rest of his words.

Harry Cook began speaking to the curator, Susan Jones. She was always very nice to George and so he paused to hear what she had to say.

“The timing was perfect. The breeding programme at the Zoo was very successful and as Neon wanted to work with tigers it was a fantastic opportunity for us to collaborate with this up-and-coming artist. It has taken us many weeks to rearrange the Great Hall collection for his work, but we are happy to be part of a groundbreaking project of international stature.”

At seven that morning, George had been inside the Great Hall to sort out the chairs. Three of the huge white statues of naked men were now painted brown. The effect had been unsettling because they looked real in the shadowy early morning light.

As if to explain this, Susan Jones continued: “…Even though my specialised research area is in classical art history it was Neon who informed me that the statues, so faithfully reproduced from the Greek and Roman period by the Victorian and Edwardian artists, were, in fact, originally painted in bright colours. Since both the Greek and the Roman forces throughout the world were what we would today call multicultural, having raised large armies in northern Africa, for instance, the artist is being factual, but the effect is very interesting. We invite visitors to come and see them when the gallery reopens to the general public.”

For some reason, this information annoyed George. He sipped at his tea distractedly and scalded his lips. He put down the cup and took out his mobile phone to play Tetris.

When Harry Cook told the listeners that Devon Derbyshire, his co-presenter, was with some protesters at the perimeter fence, George lost his concentration and then a life in the game.

For a moment his mind flashed back to the mob that had scaled his compound wall, and driven his family into exile – after he had pleaded for their lives – over several days of looting and general mayhem.

He checked outside the storeroom but all was quiet. He put away his phone and drank his tea, now it had cooled. He didn't want to think about the past.

“Morning, Harry,” Devon said. “I am here with a group of protesters at the gates of this lovely estate. They have come here to make their feelings known about the performance taking place inside. Oliver French is with me now. He has travelled all the way from Sheffield to be here. Sir, can you tell us why you are protesting today?”

Oliver French was trying hard not to shout. “We do not think it's right that animals are being used in this way; in this day and age it's disgusting,” he said. “This so-called work of art is cruelty. We're not protesting at the use of animals by humans, but we say that non-human animals must be given respect.”

The crowd cheered him on. “We don't think a black man should even be considering using animals in this way. How can anyone think this is art?” The crowd murmured their agreement again.

“Why does the artist's colour make a difference?” Devon Derbyshire asked.

George was wondering the same.

“Africa is being stripped of its natural wealth of wildlife and resources,” French stated, and then asked: “Should Neon Banks really be considering more of the same?”

George tried to forget the taste of some of the wild animals he'd been forced to eat as a young boy, during the colonial wars. He had been seven and wondered how he had not died from diarrhoea.

When he returned to the present, he found that Devon Derbyshire, unsure who had carried out the asset-stripping in Africa, had signed off and returned the broadcast to Harry Cook.

Harry Cook started to describe the apparatus involved in the art event as he moved past the rows of seating George had put out around the glass room. He entered the main glass chamber where Professor Draper stood with his assistant, an intensely composed and small woman called Helen Preston.

They had taken two days to set up a complicated arrangement of measuring instruments, attached to a clump of elephant grass that circled a mature tree, itself held upright by a series of strong wires secured to the floor and ceiling. They had changed the atmosphere in the chamber, reproducing the heat and humidity of the tropics. Harry Cook was impressed. He marvelled at the technology of a hydraulically powered platform from where they would record the data, and a five-foot high secondary glass wall enclosure with an electronic door that circled the tree and the elephant grass. Both structures would contain the tigers when they arrived.

Harry Cook commented, in passing, on the condensation on the glass enclosure, and so George Mbewe picked up the window-cleaning tools and let himself out of the store room, closing the door softly. He would be needed in the Great Hall after all. He left his little radio behind in case of feedback. Now, he would be able to see and hear everything first-hand.

He entered the room through the small door behind the great tapestry. Harry Cook was talking to the professor. George discreetly watched the interview from behind the assembly of dignitaries and the radio station technicians.

Professor Draper, now as relaxed and avuncular as a scientist could be, described what his instruments would be measuring.

The specific tests were divided into three sections, he said. Firstly “friction”, where he and his assistant would be examining paw-to-dry-grass contact ratios i.e how much friction could four tigers create on the amount of grass it was possible to grow within such a localised area, considering they each weighed approximately 500 pounds. The second set of instruments would consider “spontaneous combustion”, i.e. would the heightened emotions of the tigers along with their hot breath and the reproduced heat of their habitat contribute to a conflagration; and finally, “liquidisation”.

Just as the professor was about to describe the conditions required for liquidisation, George dropped his squeegee and the metal handle clattered on the granite floor. He had been trying to signal to Susan, the curator, to ask if he should clean the main glass enclosure of condensation when it slipped out of his hand. Harry Cook gave him a sharp look but the moment was saved when Tom Wright, the head keeper from the Zoo, radioed the Great Hall, informing everyone that the tigers were ready and waiting in the wire corridor, specially constructed to get them through to the glass enclosure, now dripping with moisture.

Professor Draper and his assistant took their positions and Harry Cook left the enclosure, continuing to talk to his listeners. The process of getting the tigers into the Hall would take a few minutes and because the glass was soundproof they would not hear the felines approach. Harry Cook continued to enthuse about the workmanship of the construction, and George, patiently standing in a corner, found himself fixated on a slow but steady drop of water meandering down the thick glass.

As a side panel in the main enclosure rose, Harry Cook informed his listeners in a voice that was louder than usual: “The tigers are here!”

They were magnificent beasts, standing at least four feet at the shoulder and over eight feet in length. They prowled into the space, wary and watchful, sniffing out the environment and circling under the professor's specially built platform, now raised eight feet off the ground. One of the tigers defecated and Harry Cook wondered aloud if that would change the outcome of the experiment in any way.

That was Harry Cook at his best, George thought, displaying the tongue-in-cheek humour that had made him so popular with listeners. George had tried out Cook's technique on his wife a few times, but it had failed to lift her depression.

“We have radio contact with the Professor inside the enclosure,” Harry Cook said. “Professor, can you tell us? How do you intend to get the tigers into the second, smaller enclosure in order for them to circle the tree?”

The Professor did not reply. He and his assistant were completely focused on their experiments. Both Harry Cook and George looked up and saw several large cuts of meat being lowered down through the tree branches.

The tigers were interested; three were already walking under the tree in the second, smaller glass enclosure. Everyone in the Great Hall held their breath waiting for the fourth tiger to do the same. When at last it sniffed its way in, the professor with a flamboyant flourish of the hand, directed his assistant to close the glass gate.

The tigers did not circle or begin to race each other around the tree. Bunched together, their tails began switching, and first one tiger, then another, jumped out of the tight enclosure and began to prowl again under the platform and around the perimeter of the main glass enclosure, their tails lashing at the air with concern.

The professor signalled his assistant to raise the meat and as it slid out of view the movement attracted one tiger's attention. It stretched up the tree trunk, extending its claws to grip the bark then leapt with no effort at all, onto the lower branches. The tree began to lean.

Finding its quarry among the limp foliage, the tiger wrestled it from the wire that held it. The wire snapped causing the tree to lean even more dangerously. Harry Cook, amazed by the prowess of the animal and noticing one of the tigers eye-balling him, fell silent.

The animal that had retrieved the meat jumped to the ground with it, and a tussle began, each tearing at it with their mouths while trying to bat away the others with heavy swipes of their paws. The soundproofing was very effective. It was like watching a silent movie.

One of the animals retreated from the fight and approached the platform sniffing. The assistant opened her mouth and presumably screamed as the tiger leapt up towards her but fell short.

“Oh gosh…” Harry Cook said – all his usual jollity vanished. “I can see one of the tigers is making ready to leap up at the platform again. Oh look! Professor Draper has raised a gun. He is pointing it at the tiger.”

The entrance gate rose and George saw chunks of meat had been laid to entice the tigers away. Distracted by the rising door the animals moved off, except for the one that continued to explore the potential for a fresh meal on the platform. Everyone watched it as it prepared to spring again. They did not hear the gunshot; it was the shattering of the huge outer enclosure of glass that alerted them to what the professor had done. It seemed, however, that the shot had missed the tiger. It bit through the glass and continued across the room until it found the arm of one of the statues. Harry Cook dropped his microphone and ran with the rest of the assembled audience as the arm crashed to the floor. A second shot sounded as they stumbled through the main door and slammed it shut, leaving the professor and his assistant inside.