Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

‘Life,’ he said.

On Monday, heading out to work, she left the weekly payment on the table as usual. It was still there when she came back.

‘But don’t you need it?’ she asked.

‘I’ve enough.’

She divided the sabzi and put a plate of white bread in the centre of the table. She sat down. He was looking at the food.

‘Is something the matter?’ she asked.

All at once he moved to the cupboards and pulled out the half-packet of flour. He shook it into a plastic bowl and added water from the tap.

‘Are you making roti?’ she asked, curious. She joined him at the sink.

He was using his hands, the wet dough hanging off his fingertips in stiff peaks.

‘You made the sabzi, I’ll make the roti.’

She watched him work, adding water a little at a time — which she supposed was where she always went wrong — and she saw the concentration on his face, as if nothing in the world was more important than this task. She watched the muscles in his upper arms rise and fall and a slight sheen of sweat form across his brow. When he finished, he threw the ball of dough high up in the air, caught it, and turned to her.

‘Done,’ he said. And there was that quick smile again, and here was she, feeling herself blush.

That became the shape of their evenings: one of them cooking up the dhal or sabzi, the other making the rotis, and then a meal together, quietly, peaceably. At night he stood at his bedroom window, a finger absent-mindedly, repeatedly, tracing a crack in the wall. It really did feel like the two of them were alone in the world, as if the city was all lit up while they hid away in this pool of darkness. He moved to his mattress, listening. Her room was below his. There were small noises, creaks, light-footed and careful, unidentifiable in themselves, so painfully womanly when heard together.

Narinder pulled out from her suitcase the photo of Guru Nanak and stood it on the windowsill. She brought her hands together underneath her chin and thanked Him. He’d seen that she was in trouble and had given her His sign. Tochi. That’s what this had all been about. That was why she’d been brought onto this path. So that she might help Tochi, a good man who’d been through too much. She understood now. She stood up, light-headed with relief. She wanted to rush upstairs and knock on his door. But no. She’d wait until tomorrow. She hurried into bed. It took some effort to get to sleep, though. She was restless, like a castaway who imagines they’ve seen the prow of their ship coming over the horizon.

She didn’t catch him in the morning — he was still in his room and she needed to get to work. The evening, then, she decided. But when they sat down to eat that night she was suddenly nervous of his reaction. She mouthed a silent waheguru.

‘You not hungry?’

‘Hm?’ She gave the tiniest shrug, more a twitch of her shoulders, and put the roti down. ‘Not really.’

‘You should eat.’

‘Later.’

He thought on this. ‘You don’t have to eat with me every night. You don’t have to feel sorry for me.’

‘I don’t feel sorry for you.’

‘I shouldn’t have told you about me. It’s put you in a difficult position.’

‘It’s not. I like spending time with you.’

He said nothing for a while, as if absorbing this confession. ‘I’ll do the meal tomorrow.’

She took a sip of her water. ‘I went to the gurdwara at lunchtime and signed up for the kirtan tomorrow. And the rest of the week. I’ll have langar there.’

‘And if someone sees you?’

‘God will protect me.’

His jaw paused in its chewing, then resumed its work.

‘Why don’t you come?’ She’d tried to sound offhand.

He said nothing.

‘It might help.’

She watched him lift his face to her. The look in his eyes.

‘It might not help straight away. But in time. .’

‘In time what?’

She hesitated, then forced herself on. ‘It might help if you let in His love.’

‘If I let in his love,’ he repeated, as if trying the words out.

‘His love for us all.’

He laughed a little, and turned back to his roti.

He didn’t see her for five days. He cooked his own meals — potatoes with a thin gravy, adding peas if he could steal some from work — and ate alone at the table. He’d be lying on his mattress by the time he heard her key rattling in the lock, her footsteps on the stairs. He held his breath — if she knocked, he’d answer — but always she turned down the landing and away from the second flight of stairs. He moved onto his stomach. He wished these feelings would go away. He wished things could be as straightforward as they once were.

His phone rang — Ardashir. They’d not spoken since the hotel work dried up.

‘You still looking for work?’

‘In London?’

‘Would you go to Europe?’

Tochi was crossing the empty car park in front of the chip shop, on his way home. He switched the phone to his other ear. ‘Get to the point.’

‘Building offices. In the capital of Spain. For the city’s rich.’ There was lots of work, he said, enough for two years at least. He knew one of the contractors, and they’d get Tochi across no problem. The job was his.

‘Are you going?’

‘Me? No, I don’t think so. I’ll see out my days here.’

Tochi said nothing.

‘What is it? When do you want to leave?’

He’d reached the gates to the Botanical Gardens. He curled a gloved hand around an iron bar. ‘I’m staying here.’

‘Why?’

‘I want to.’

‘You want to take this chance, Tarlochan. That’s what you want to do. They’re talking thousands. It’ll make your future.’

‘I’ve decided.’

‘You’ll never earn as much.’

‘I know.’

‘You’re being stupid.’

‘Maybe.’

He heard Ardashir sigh — ‘I hope she’s worth it’ — and then he rang off.

He jumped the gates and was soon at the house, but one look at the unlit windows and he turned on his heel and set off back down the road.

The nishaan sahib fluttered above the gurdwara and for a long while he stood in the sudden icy rain. Inside, he removed his shoes and washed his hands and took a ramaal from the basket and tied it around his head. He could hear the kirtan playing upstairs, the plaintive chords of the harmonium, and, sort of under them, encouraging them, her voice. Slowly, he climbed up. It was his first time inside a darbar sahib since his family’s murder. He didn’t bow down before the book. He sat at the back and watched.

She had her eyes closed, her long lashes resting on her cheeks. Her necklace swung out, the kandha suspended in the air, and he allowed himself to imagine kissing her neck. She sang well, with feeling. He could see the strain on her face, as if she was working hard to dig right into the hymn, either to pull meaning from it or to force some back in. For a whole hour she sang like that, hymn begetting hymn, and when the last chords were played she bowed her head towards the book and picked up her songsheets and stood to leave. That was when she saw Tochi, watching from the back.

They walked home together in silence. The wind still contained grits of rain. As they turned up their road he said, ‘The puddles in my village when it rains, some of them are as wide as this street.’

She could hear the effort he was making. She should respect that. ‘In the monsoons?’

‘Not only then,’ he said, after a pause, and she wondered if she’d said something wrong. Did they not have monsoons in Bihar?

‘You sing really well.’

‘Thank you. And thank you for coming. I hope you got something from it?’

He said nothing. At the edge of his sight she looked beautiful, tired but beautiful. Her eyes were soft, her lips slightly parted. The wind turned her chunni into a sail behind her, exposing the small carriage of her breasts, the river of a back that flowed into the gentle roundness of her hips. More than anything he wanted to be with her tonight. They were nearing the house.