Tahmima Anam - A Golden Age

‘Fix it.’

‘I can’t. I need things — medicine, anaesthetic.’

‘You’ll have to make do with what you’ve got in the bag.’

The doctor was no older than the rest of them, probably hardly out of medical school, a thin, delicate boy with greasy hair.

‘You have to take him to the hospital!’ he said.

‘Are you mad? Do you know how many people are looking for us?’

The doctor waved his arms. ‘I can’t. I can’t do it.’

Rehana found herself kneeling beside the Major, looking the young doctor in the eye. ‘Listen, this is an emergency. Just do your best.’ She kept her gaze on him, until he nodded slowly.

‘We have to get the shards out of his leg,’ he said, looking only at her. ‘There are several smaller traumas, but the main thing is the leg. And the face. I wouldn’t know what to do with the face.’

‘Just patch it up,’ Joy said. ‘We’ll take him to the field hospital in the morning.’

‘He can’t go very far.’

‘Fix it! We have to move out tonight!’ Joy pressed the gun to the doctor’s temple.

‘Joy, baba, this man is trying to help,’ Rehana said.

‘Please, take the gun away. I’m on the right side.’

‘Just fix it.’

‘The gun! Take it away first!’ The doctor blinked away tears.

Joy lowered the gun, but he kept his finger curled around the trigger.

The doctor took a syringe out of his bag and filled it with the contents of a small, upturned bottle. Then he went to work on the Major’s leg. Rehana remained beside him, strangely unaffected by the sight of the Major’s torn limb, the ragged flesh exposed, the whiteness of bone shining through the dimness of the room. She didn’t hesitate when the doctor told her to peel back the Major’s trousers and begin to clean the smaller wounds. He gave her a pair of tweezers and told her to pick out the shards. She bent over the leg, working quietly, ignoring the shudders coming from the Major.

When Rehana finished with the tweezers, the doctor started to stitch. ‘Thank you, Mrs Haque.’ She could tell he wasn’t just thanking her for helping to clean the wound.

The wood was still lodged in the Major’s cheek.

Sohail whispered something to Joy, and he put down his gun, crouching instead and holding a kerosene lamp over the doctor’s arm. ‘Auntie,’ Joy said, ‘you go and take a break.’

Rehana went to Mrs Sengupta’s kitchen for a glass of water. She was taking a giant gulp, sighing into the glass, when Sohail approached and hugged her tightly. She felt him crying into her shoulder.

‘Ammoo,’ he whispered, ‘it was my fault.’

‘What happened?’

‘It was me. I was supposed to fix the timer on the explosive. But I got there and I just froze. I couldn’t move. The Major pushed me aside and did it himself, but it was too late; he got caught up in the blast. It should have been me; I messed it up.’

Rehana didn’t know what to say. She held his head, stroking it slowly.

‘I don’t know, I don’t know if I can do this — I’m no good — the firing, training — I shouldn’t have gone.’

‘It’s not your fault. Whatever it was, it can’t have been your fault.’

‘He saved my life,’ Sohail said. ‘I would’ve been dead without him.’

The doctor finished his work.

‘I’ve sutured the wounds, but I can’t promise there won’t be an infection. He needs medicine. And even then he might lose his leg.’

‘Can we take him away?’ Joy asked.

‘Maybe a few roads, but no further.’

‘There’s a field hospital in Agartala, near our camp.’

‘Across the border? Absolutely not.’

‘Ammoo,’ Sohail said, ‘you have to let him stay here.’

Rehana was tired; there was blood everywhere; Mrs Sengupta’s carpet was ruined. She wanted to feel sorry for the man, but she couldn’t. He was so ugly, lying on the carpet, his mouth open horribly. But he had saved her son’s life.

But it was Maya who said, ‘No. He can’t stay here.’ She had been quiet ever since the boys arrived, hovering at the periphery of the scene. Now she was standing over the Major, pumping her fists.

‘Maya, please,’ Sohail said, ‘there’s no choice.’

‘Then you stay. You stay here and take care of him. Don’t make us do it.’

‘We can’t stay here. We’re wanted men.’

‘This is all your fault.’

‘It is, it is my fault!’ Sohail’s eyes opened wide, red and ferocious. ‘Ma, you have to take him. Please say you’ll take him.’

Rehana was torn. ‘You’re sure there’s nowhere else he can go?’

‘Ma,’ Maya gasped, ‘you want another man dying in your house?’

Another man? Was she talking about her father?

‘This man cannot be moved,’ the doctor said. He looked at Maya, who was leaning against her mother and breathing heavily, as though she’d been running. Then he said, ‘I will stay. I will stay here and make sure he doesn’t die.’

Rehana breathed a sigh of relief. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked the doctor.

‘Rajesh.’

‘Maya. Maya, please look at me. Look at me. Dr Rajesh is going to stay here and take care of the Major. No one is going to die. OK? No one is dying. You wanted to do something, remember? You wanted to do something? Here it is. We’ll take care of him. He saved your brother. Enough, enough. No crying.’ And she stroked her daughter’s hair.

Rehana opened her eyes and for a moment forgot where she was, only sensing the wrongness of the place, and then remembered, and woke with a start, moving the hair from her forehead, feeling for the frayed braid, untying, retying, out of habit. She was positioned awkwardly on the sofa. Looking across the room, she saw the rubble from the night before — the stained bandages, the muddy footprints across the floor, the little bits of plaster and wood from the explosion — and accounted for the tiredness in her limbs.

The Major was installed in Mithun’s bedroom. When Rehana approached him, she saw the lace curtain was drawn, and in the early-morning light the pattern traced shadows across his face. There, on his forehead, a star-shaped flower; and there, across the thigh, a speckled row of hearts. He slept without a sound, immobile but for the lace shadow that stirred slightly with his every shallow breath.

In slumber, the Major was enormous. His arms and feet spilled out from the bed, his hands like spreading spider webs. The doctor had left just after dawn, declaring the Major stable and promising to return the next day with medicine and more bandages. The first night will be the worst, he had said. You must stay here.

And here she still was.

The night had made him no prettier. On his face, in a jagged, angry curve, was a scar. It travelled, meandering, from the outer edge of his left eyebrow to the corner of his upper lip. A bluish stain marked the other side of his face. The rest of him, except the bandaged leg, seemed strangely untouched, healthy in fact, the skin on the neck and arms taut and glowing in the pale morning sunlight.

Rehana looked at him and felt a surge of pride in his solid presence, as though he were a fallen angel, ugly and beaten, but maybe still a little blessed.

Suddenly she was hungry; she couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten. She had a craving for lychees, not the dry ones they imported from China but the local variety with the smooth, leathery skin. The lychees made her think of other indulgences; perhaps she should buy some meat, some better rice. She would go to New Market. She felt the urge to venture out, to leave the house and the sight of the night’s chaos.

It was a bright day with no clouds at all, the sort of day when the sky is holding its breath and everything is still and perfectly clear. The market was the same as it had been ever since the start of the war: every week another shop or two closed, the vegetables dusty and shrivelled, the fish small and dull-eyed. But Rehana was buoyed by the thought of haggling with the vendors or finding some small treasure, a fresh chicken or a late-season papaya.