In the town centre there are horses of stone. Lions guard the entrance to the library. A granite deer looks down from the top of the train station’s façade.
The electric light inside the newspaper shop seems to be a continuation of the weak sun shining outside. He quickly explains that he has lost the newspapers to the river and asks for another batch. As always he doesn’t wish to be engaged in a conversation because it might lead to talk about the murdered lovers. They have become a bloody Rorschach blot: different people see different things in what has happened.
And so he leaves as soon as possible, speaking no more than two or three sentences between arriving and departing, finding contentedness only in wordlessness these days.
As he turns around to leave, he is aware that his eyes, as always, are lifted slightly higher than need be, to catch a blurred glimpse of the magazines on the top shelf.
With the newspapers under his arm he begins the journey home, lingering outside the florist — called La Primavera—to look at the brush-like Australian flower-heads and sprays of eucalyptus like a flinging of coins; at the wide-open lilies possessing a thick chewiness of petals; the Germolene-pink roses; the gardenias; the carnations as red as bullet wounds, luxuriant with pain; the small flowers with petals the size of his grandson’s fingernails; sunflowers that seem to be on fire; the edge of a leaning arum pressed flat against the glass like a soft marine creature in a tank; leaves of every shape, each as different in its serrated outline as the notches on different keys. There are roses in the window the colour of Suraya’s clothing, he remarks to himself in passing. .
He raises a hand in greeting at a plumber from Calcutta whose van bears the legend, You’ve tried the cowboys, now try the Indian, his heart full of anxiety that the man will stop the vehicle and come over to talk.
The breeze gives his face feathery touches.
Changeable like a cloud, a low flock of pigeons keeps flying by, the white wings taking on various tinges from the colours reflecting off the shop exteriors, and, as he watches, the flying birds form the faces of Chanda and Jugnu in the air just for an instant — two images undulating like pages on moving water. The lovers are everywhere, lying in ambush.
He can never be certain about Chanda’s father but he is sure the mother knows nothing about what happened to her daughter and Jugnu. According to the Home Office statistics 116 men were convicted of murder last year as opposed to just 11 women. Women are usually at the receiving end.
A few days after the couple went missing, the girl’s father had visited Shamas to say that he was aware of the rumours implicating his family in Jugnu’s disappearance. He sat in the blue kitchen, drinking the tea Kaukab had made, and insisted that neither he nor his wife and sons knew anything about what had happened to Jugnu. It was strange. The fact that Chanda too remained unaccounted for didn’t seem to enter the man’s mind — or if it did it didn’t seem to concern him, and he didn’t see why it should concern anyone else either. The only crime he and his wife and sons could be accused of was the possible one against Jugnu; the girl — the daughter of the parents, the sister of the brothers — belonged to him, to them, to do with as they pleased. Is that it? Would he, would they, expect a pardon if Jugnu were to turn up tomorrow, unharmed, but the girl were to remain missing?
And then he had felt ashamed at these thoughts: he knows that it is a matter of great distress for a parent from the Subcontinent — for the majority of parents on this imperfect and shackled planet, in fact — that their daughter is living with someone out of wedlock. It is likely that Chanda’s father could not bring himself to mention his daughter’s name because of the shame he felt, not wishing to see the girl coupled with Jugnu in his own speech, not having the strength to see them together even in language.
Now Shamas briefly pictures the two names merged and intertwined with each other: C J h u a g n n d u a
Despite understanding his discomfort, there are, however, times when Shamas imagines Chanda’s father physically preventing his wife from revealing some important bit of evidence. He imagines violence. Keep your mouth shut! This woman is a complete haramzadi! The kanjri woman didn’t say anything when it was time for her to speak and raise her badmash kutia daughter properly and now she cannot hold her tongue! It is a possibility, however grotesque; it happens in millions of homes throughout the world every day, from hamlet to metropolis. Hadn’t he himself slapped Kaukab one day all those years ago? He had torn her shirt with both hands and dragged her across the room with all his strength, one of her breasts exposed and bloody from his fingernail.
It happened in 1974, the year the younger boy, Ujala, was born. Kaukab returned home from the maternity ward on a bright April day with the sun lying like a new coat of metallic paint on the street. The two other children — all toffee-sticky fingertips and grime-covered toes in their mother’s absence — examined the baby and declared he looked like a tortoise because his upper lip was pointed in the middle, that he was the colour of tangerines, and his always-clenched fists made them think he was tightly holding on to coins.
Within hours the house was heavy with the intimately lush smell of recent birth that the mother and child gave off — it was like heat clinging to footpaths long after the sun has gone. Ujala was born in the middle of April just a few days before the Muslim month of Ramadan began. Dozens of people came to see the baby because the word immediately spread that he was a blessed child destined to be an especially pious Muslim: he was one of those rare boys who are born without a foreskin, the Muslims believing that such children have been marked by Allah for an exemplary virtuous existence in the world.
For Shamas the visits and the visitors were a headache. Kaukab, on the other hand, felt several stories high after the baby Ujala was born.
“Who else but a cleric’s daughter would have been blessed by such an event!” said one visitor, the matchmaker, in tones of wonderment and awe. “I knew someone in Peshawar who was born like that. I remember the lullaby his mother used to sing to him — O nurses with milk too white and sweet: wean him soon as can be, for the black hearts of infidel kings will be his meat. The boy had learned the entire Koran by heart by the time he was three years old, and he was teaching Arabic to the djinns by the time he was five. A number of profligate djinns converted to Islam at his hand.”