Mohammed Hanif - Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

Here is yet another man who is not sure any more if he is a man or not, Malangi thinks. A woman can do that to you, especially a woman you have loved. It is unpleasant to talk about these things, especially on your last working day, but Inspector Malangi feels he can’t just walk out of this life without passing on the knowledge he has acquired in thirty-six years of working and loving.

“Sit down,” he says, and then resumes clearing out his drawers and starts talking with his head buried in the desk. “Do you know what a woman in love is like? You probably knew it once but now can’t remember. Have you ever seen a mad filly? When a filly goes mad, there is not much you can do. The best rider can try and mount it and it’ll still kick up a storm. You can chain it to its bones but it’ll still run away in the middle of the night. That is a woman in love for you. What do you do when everything fails? They need to be put down. For their own good. There is no other way.” He produces a velvet pouch from the bottom drawer and begins to untie the shiny silver wire securing it.

Teddy’s arm in the cast has developed a really bad itch. He desperately wishes he could scratch it just once. He also wants to ask Inspector Malangi how he knows, about him and Alice, but then decides against it. You don’t ask the head of the G Squad about his sources. And then it occurs to Teddy that if a common ward boy in the Sacred knows, then probably the whole city knows.

“Yours is only a domestic situation. Things always blow up around the house. The gas cylinder, a leaky oven, a cupboard can fall, someone slips out of a window. It happens every day.”

“We are not living together any more,” says Teddy, his gaze fixed on the velvet pouch with expectant eyes, as if Inspector Malangi is about to produce a solution to his life’s problems, or at least give him an expensive watch as a farewell present. Inspector Malangi produces two solid gold bracelets from the pouch and caresses them gently, as if trying to remember the texture of the soft wrists these bracelets might once have adorned.

“Where is she now?” he says, stretching out his hand so that Teddy can see the bracelets closely. “Dead. Rage of youth. Is there a single day in my life that I don’t remember her? Yes, there are days when I actually don’t. But here,” he knocks his forehead with his knuckle, “she’s always here. And what was her punishment? A bullet in the head, two seconds of flashback and now she doesn’t even remember that she was the most beautiful woman that G Squad ever put handcuffs on. And what do I get? A lifetime of heartache, a career destroyed, children who keep failing in maths. A wife who keeps taunting me that I am not man enough for her. But you don’t have to suffer what I suffered. Let them share our suffering a little bit.”

Inspector Malangi pauses for a moment, not sure if Teddy is following him. “Come with me.” He puts the gold bracelets back in the pouch, ties the silver wire, takes out a bunch of keys and starts walking. Teddy follows him to the maal khana. Inspector Malangi flicks the light switch on; the storeroom is still semi-dark, full of shadows and strong, pungent smells.

“Let me show you something,” Inspector Malangi says, removing a bedsheet from a wooden coffin with a glass cover. In the dimly lit room Teddy can see a mummy, the kind they show in tourist advertisements for Egypt. The mummy has the rosy cheeks of a young mountain girl and the mournful eyes of an old woman who has seen all her offspring die in her lifetime. “It’s a fake, of course. Only seventy years old, but a true artist manufactured it in his backyard and then was trying to pass it off as booty from Balochistan, some minor pharaoh’s runaway cousin who ended up here. A British museum almost bought it.” He pulls the sheet back on the coffin. “Do you get my point? They are fakes even when they are dead. These women, I tell you, they continue to peddle these fantasies from their coffins. You can’t trust them even when their hearts stop beating.”

Teddy is not really sure what a fake Egyptian mummy has to do with him and Alice, but suddenly he feels an acute sense of loss. He feels he was promised an authenticated five-thousand-year-old love from the very depths of some pyramid. What he got was a fake from someone’s backyard in Balochistan.

“Take whatever you need,” Inspector Malangi tells Teddy, his hand sweeping the room. Teddy has been here before, but only to pick up a weapon that can’t be traced back to the G Squad. Standing in the shadow, he wonders what he could possibly do with two tonnes of hashish piled to the ceiling, or crates of DVDs or boxes of fake Indian currency or rocket launchers without any rockets.

“Do you love her?” Inspector Malangi asks in a neutral tone, as if asking Teddy what he had for breakfast.

Teddy thinks it’s a trick question and shuts his eyes. “This is something that I have been asking myself.”

“I think the very fact that you have been asking yourself this question — that’s your answer. And if you love her, you’ll never forget her. That’s the nature of love. If you love somebody you’ll remember them no matter what, even after you have screwed every whore of every nationality that washes up on these shores.”

Teddy nods in agreement. The smell of hashish is making him dizzy and he remembers Alice’s smooth chin nuzzling his neck.

“And don’t you want her to remember you? Let’s say you put a bullet through her, will she remember you after that? She won’t remember anything. She definitely won’t remember you. You are a young man, you have a lot of life ahead of you. Do you want to spend that life in oblivion, forgotten by the only person you loved and the only one you are guaranteed never to forget?”

“You are right, I was angry. I was very angry.” Teddy points to the cast on his arm. “But now I am not angry. I don’t want revenge, I only want justice. Fair is fair. I just want to make sure that if I can’t have her, then nobody should be able to have her. Is that not fair?”

“She has already been had,” Malangi interrupts him. “It’s better not to think about these things. It’ll only drive you crazy. Even saints don’t make babies without having a bit of fun first. Forget about that. Stop pitying yourself. Stop pitying her. Remember it’s about love. You need to give her something she’ll never forget. Never.” He points towards a glass cupboard with a double lock. The label above the cupboard reads Hazardous Material . Inspector Malangi goes to the cupboard, unlocks it and stands next to it like a chemist showing off his life’s work.

He takes out a glass bottle, then puts it back and looks around for a piece of cloth. He wraps it around his hand and unscrews the bottle carefully. He pours a drop on to the wooden shelf in the cupboard. A hissing sound, smoke rises from the spot where the liquid drop fell and in an instant it burns a hole through an inch and a half of solid wood.

“Try this and she’ll always remember you. This is the only thing that’ll hurt as much as love hurts.”

Carefully they put the bottle in a small gunnysack and Inspector Malangi walks Teddy to the outer gate. “You also need work, because this place is going to the dogs. There is this old family, nice people, they need a driver cum bodyguard type person. Work is a bit boring but the money is good. They also have some business pending with your wife. They’ll protect you. You’ll get to see the world.” He leads him to a gleaming Surf surrounded by four guards in black uniform. There is no number on the registration plate, just some words in bold red. “Try it out. I hope you people get along,” says Inspector Malangi, introducing Teddy to the guards. “And keep that stuff away from your body, make sure it doesn’t spill. It’s as precious as gold.”