Jeevanbhai led them through the shop to a room at the back. As Das entered the room, he faltered, for the reek of whisky clouded the room like a fog. It was a small room made even smaller by two large steel cabinets. There was a desk in the middle of the room, marooned among scattered files and stacks of paper weighed down by cracked saucers and chipped cups. Bits of paper blew around the room chased by half-hearted gusts from an ancient table-fan. It was very dim; the only light came from a single, dusty table-lamp that had been placed on the floor.
Jeevanbhai cleared piles of paper off two steel folding chairs, wiped them with a duster and hesitantly pushed them forward.
Patel sahb, Lal said, I hope we haven’t come too early?
No, no, said Jeevanbhai, not at all, never. No formalities. The man who works here leaves early nowadays. I let him go; he’s growing old. This is the best place and time to meet.
Lowering himself into a chair behind the desk, he pulled a drawer open and took out three glasses, one of them half-full, and a bottle of cheap Scotch whisky. A little bit? he said, turning a raised eyebrow from Jai Lal to Das.
Jai Lal glanced at Das and nodded. Jeevanbhai drained his glass and poured whisky into the glasses. Splashing a little water into them, he handed them out. Cheers! he said, knocking his glass against theirs.
So, Patel sahb, Lal said, sipping his warm whisky fastidiously, how are you?
Not bad; growing older.
Lal laughed: We’re all growing older.
Yes, said Jeevanbhai. We’re all growing older. He drained his glass and poured himself another drink.
Lal cleared his throat: Patel sahb, this is a friend of mine, Mr Das, who is also interested in what we were talking about yesterday. Could you tell him what you told me — about how this young man died?
Died? Jeevanbhai ran his tongue over his teeth. Who said he died?
Lal raised a quick eyebrow at Das. Didn’t you say he died? he said smoothly.
No, said Jeevanbhai, I just said the building fell on him, and that nobody could have survived it. That is not the same thing as saying nobody did survive it. No, no.
I see, I see, said Lal. What happened?
What happened? Who knows what happened?
What do you think happened?
Who am I to think anything happened, Mr Lal? Who are you?
Lal half-rose from his chair. Perhaps, Patel sahb, we could come back later, when you feel like talking? Or when your head is clearer?
Later, earlier, how does it matter? Jeevanbhai said softly. Whatever it is, whether it’s happened or not, it’s a little difficult — to use simple words — a little difficult to understand.
Lal shot a glance at Das and motioned to him to keep quiet and sit back. But Das could not keep himself from straining forward to look into Jeevanbhai’s face. Abruptly the bulb went out. Jeevanbhai rummaged among some papers on the floor, pulled out a bent candle and struck a match. When the flame spluttered Das noticed that Jeevanbhai’s hands were shaking, but he could not tell whether it was drunkenness or only an old man’s tremor. Jeevanbhai’s eyes glowed momentarily in the candlelight. Then he put the candle on the floor, beside his chair, to shield it from the fan, and at once his face disappeared into pools of shadow, and all Das could see were the enigmatic red teeth.
Late last night, Jeevanbhai said, with an almost imperceptible slur, they brought him back. Bhagwan jane, God knows how they did it. They must have taken thirty or forty men into the ruins of that building, and tools and things as well. There’s a police cordon around the ruins, all day and all night. How did they get through it? God knows. Perhaps, but of course this is just speculation, Abu Fahl — you don’t know him, a very wily man; knows every corner and every turn in al-Ghazira — found a way to pay those policemen to stay away from the building for a while. Perhaps.
Anyway they brought him back. And it wasn’t as though he was barely alive, like a survivor from a disaster of that kind ought to be. He was well, hearty, smiling, as healthy as any of us. I know: I saw him later. How does one account for that? A whole building had collapsed on him. No ordinary building, but millions and millions of dirhams in effect. It wasn’t good money, but any money on that scale has a certain weight. You can’t disregard it. And still he lived through the fall of that whole building. Apparently — this is just hearsay — he lay flat on the floor with a huge block of concrete just inches from his chest. And that, too, for four days. It is no exaggeration to say that many people in that situation would have died of shock. And, far from being dead, he seemed to have come out a new man altogether, if such a thing is possible.
People say, I don’t know with what truth, that he had no food or water for those four days. And when they were offered to him, they say, he refused. And when they asked him whether he wanted to leave that place, right till the very end, they say, he said no, he wanted to be left alone to think.
One could say: people think of these things when something unusual happens. But the truth remains, and it is that when he was brought out at last he was unscathed. It came as no surprise to anyone when some of the women there started saying that it was the doing of a dead sheikh whose grave lies under those ruins; one of his many miracles. People say these things.
I believe a crowd had gathered there long before he was brought back. When they saw him in the distance, they ran on to the road and carried him back to a house which belongs to one Hajj Fahmy — you don’t know him — an elderly man, greatly respected in that area. They carried him into the courtyard and put him on a platform where Hajj Fahmy keeps his loom — he was once a weaver — and they all crowded into the courtyard to listen to him.
And all evening the crowds grew and grew.
I heard all this, for I wasn’t there at the time. I was at my office near the harbour. I went there after I left the Souq, for there were a few things I had to do. Even in my office things weren’t as they usually are. My assistant, one Professor Samuel — no longer my assistant, I should add, but that comes later — had left the office even though I had told him to wait. And, very unusually for him, he had left it in great disorder.
But I had my work to do and it was only much, much later that I went back to the Ras, where we all live. Anybody could see that something unusual was happening there. Usually the Ras sleeps early, all except Zindi’s house, because people have to work. But last night I had a feeling — if one may talk of such a thing — that no one was sleeping. And yet the whole place was in darkness. Not a light in any of the shacks, not a person to be seen on the lanes, nobody sleeping out on the roofs. The whole place was, to use a simple word, deserted.
But at the other end of the Ras, where Hajj Fahmy lives, there were bright lights, and a faint hum, like a slow-running machine — the noise a crowd makes merely by breathing.
I thought they had organized a film on the beach as they do sometimes, though the place is never so deserted then. But I was tired, and I wanted to sleep, so I went straight back towards my room.
There again, when I pushed the door of the house open, things were not as they usually are. It was empty, or so I thought, and that house is never empty. I called out once or twice, but there were only echoes and the sound of geese hissing. I looked into the room on my left, where the men sleep, and it was empty. I looked to my right, into the room opposite, and — to tell you the truth — I was so startled I almost bit my tongue off.
Zindi at-Tiffaha — you don’t know her — a woman large enough to fill a room, was sitting on a mat in the corner, staring at me, but sightlessly, and without a sound, like a corpse. And in her lap was a baby no less silent, staring at me, too, with huge black eyes.