Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

‘What will they do?’ Navjoht asked.

Mrs Lal was weeping onto the shoulder of her husband, who was, in turn, stroking her head.

‘Their son. He wasn’t earning much, after all.’

A man got out of the truck — the same man Avtar had seen removing the television — and clicked his fingers. Mr Lal handed over the keys. Then he took up the suitcase by his feet and led his wife away from the building. No one knew where they were going, though six months later the gaswallah would say he’d seen poor Mr and Mrs Lal rattling a can outside Harminder Sahib. For now, the old couple passed by Avtar and he reached out and touched Mr Lal’s shoulder, but it was a faint touch, not enough to detain anyone.

*

He had to press the buzzer twice before the chowkidar appeared, yawning. He flicked his eyebrows at Avtar: what did he want?

‘I’m here to see Harbhajan Sahib. I’m his friend.’

‘What friend? Harbhajan Sahib has many, many friends. Friends who use his car. Friends who take his money. Which one are you?’

‘Is Nirmalji here?’

The man spat at the ground. So, no one was in. He wouldn’t have dared spit like that otherwise. Avtar asked when they’d be home but the chowkidar laughed and told him to go and piss on someone else’s doorstep. He headed back down the avenue. Perhaps if he went straight to the bus depot Nirmalji would be there. A woman called to him. She held a watering can and wore a tatty brown sari. A maid. She stood on the other side of her gate and asked what Avtar knew of Nirmalji’s situation. More specifically, his son’s. Probably her madam had tasked her with finding out details, and probably each detail earned her a few extra rupees.

‘About what?’ Avtar asked.

‘The shor-tamasha all night.’ It seemed an ambulance had been called at about four in the morning and the son carried out on a stretcher. ‘You should have seen the poor mother. I hear they’ve gone to that private one. Do you know?’

He whistled for a rickshaw, bribed the deskman with twenty rupees and followed his directions past the children’s ward and up the thin stairwell. At the top, through a square window in the door, he saw Harbhajan. He looked asleep. A red drip sprouted from his hand and connected to the stand by his bed. The stand had four wheels, Avtar noticed. Beside Harbhajan was Nirmalji, wearing a face that expressed nothing more than stately forbearance.

It must have been five months since he’d last met his friend. That time, after another week of empty searching, he’d asked Harbhajan to speak to Nirmalji about giving him his old job back. Harbhajan had blankly refused, saying he wasn’t going to do anything that involved asking a favour from his father. Angry, Avtar ignored all of Harbhajan’s calls in the weeks that followed, and then the calls dwindled to the occasional message, and, later, Harbhajan stopped contacting him altogether.

Avtar applied the flat of his hand to the door and pushed it open. He said sat sri akal and waited about a metre from the bed, feet together and hands closed over his stomach, the heels of his palms touching as if he was standing in the gurdwara. Nirmalji sat motionless and Harbhajan lay between them, under a pale-green blanket. There were terrible marks down both his forearms. Avtar wondered what to say. He asked after Aunty.

‘She’s at the temple,’ Nirmalji said.

‘I’ll ask Mamma to pray too.’

‘Is the God that will help him different from the one who put him here?’

Avtar said nothing. Then: ‘Shall I fetch you something to eat, uncle?’

‘Someone’s bringing something.’

‘Some water?’

Nirmalji closed his eyes and for several minutes Avtar stood there wondering if he could go.

Back in the reception lobby, he waited until the deskman had dealt with the fidgety queue trying to force an appointment for that same day. When he did approach, the man looked up from his calculator, then back down. He had an ugly moustache, the bristles hanging unevenly over his top lip.

‘Yes?’ And the looking down, the practised indifference with which he said this single word, made clear that the earlier bribe was now meaningless, forgotten. Any future favours would cost Avtar again.

‘I’m looking for work.’

‘No openings,’ he said, almost singsong.

‘Any job will do. Cleaning. Carrying. Portering.’

The man shook out a form from a sheaf trapped under a Buddha-bust of a bookend. ‘Fill this in and bring it back.’

‘Nirmalji sent me,’ he lied.

Now the man stopped his calculations and raised his head. ‘How long for?’

‘Kya?’

‘Are you looking for a permanent position?’

Avtar hesitated, then said that yes he was. It was too late. The man smiled. He had horrid teeth.

*

Randeep reached out of the window and stroked the basket of English Lady apples being offered up to him. In the end, he disappointed the kid and opted for the cheaper Green Bharat ones, with their Shivji logo. He’d get the others on payday. He dropped the lumpen bag of fruit in his lap and loosened his tie and waited for the bus to move.

It had been half a year since the teacher unbound his arms and legs and he’d scrambled out of the lecture hall, humiliated, grunting, the students all standing to look. He’d written to Jaytha once since that day, a long letter in which he’d underlined his mobile number three times. He said he felt sick thinking of how he’d held her down. Those were the words he’d used. He couldn’t quite say it any more strongly, even to himself. It was too adult a crime. Of course, he’d told his family nothing. He’d simply said college wasn’t for him any more. That he missed his family. Wanted to be with Daddy.

Outside the flat he paused, cocked his ear. His mother was speaking in her special chiming voice. He wondered which guests they might have. She hadn’t complained in advance about anyone coming over. He turned the key lightly and stepped inside. He recognized Vakeelji’s red Panjabi brogues, but not the slim, sensible black shoes placed tidily next to them. Women’s shoes. He closed his eyes. Will they never give up?

‘Randeep? Is that you, my dear? Do come. Vakeel Uncle is here.’

His mother, addressing him in English? Whoever the girl was, she must have impressed. Randeep kicked off his shoes, a little petulantly, and padded down the hall, suddenly aware of the sweat patches flowering in the armpits of his white shirt. His mother sat on the edge of the settee, ankles crossed and feet aside; she’d set her hair differently, so the streak of white made a significant sweep up past her ear. Vakeelji more or less filled the space beside her. His pencil tie with its baby knot and psychedelic pattern made him look even broader, and a little silly. Later, Randeep would wonder if the tie had been an attempt to lend a more relaxed atmosphere to the meeting, given how terrifically badly the first few had gone. At the window, on the red armchair — on his father’s red armchair — was a woman. The first thing he noticed was her small turban, the kind he sometimes saw women wear at the gurdwara. It was black and started halfway up her brow and smoothly covered her hair and head. Her chunni was a simple green unembroidered rectangle, overlaying her turban and pinned in the traditional manner, so it stayed in place down her shoulders and across her chest, the way few girls seemed to bother doing these days. A delicate steel band circled her wrist. No rings, no jewellery. Her small hands seemed calm in her lap and her eyes were bright and clever. She looked elegant, plain, kind. He pinned his arms to his sides — the sweat patches — and realized he was staring. He looked back to his mother. She indicated the bag.

‘Apples. For Daddy.’ He put them on the table. ‘Sat sri akal, uncle.’ He turned to her. ‘Sat sri akal.’