Tahmima Anam - A Golden Age

‘My brother is dead.’ His voice was as flat as a vinyl record.

She didn’t want to believe it. ‘Aref?’ Then there was relief flooding guiltily through her. ‘Are you sure?’

‘There was an operation,’ he continued in the same voice. ‘And they were ambushed. He was shot in the chest; he died instantly.’

Rehana compared this boy to her son. There was something wrong with his face, the thick upper lip, now shimmering with sweat, the hard, angry eyes. There was no trace of childhood.

Joy rubbed the sleeve of the red-and-blue check over his forehead, slicking his hair back until it stayed wet and stiff around the edges. ‘These things happen in war,’ he said. ‘You know what our sector commander told us? Did Sohail tell you? He said, “Nobody wants a live guerrilla.’’’

He said a live guerrilla. What did he mean? He swallowed the water she gave him.

‘We are all dead!’ he said, raising his voice. ‘Not just Aref, that’s what I’m trying to say.’ His wet face leaned close; she couldn’t stop the question any more. ‘Why are you wearing Sohail’s shirt?’

He looked down at himself. She saw his lips rustle. ‘We exchanged shirts. He wore Aref’s. I took his. Aref had mine.’

Rehana picked up her gloves and her shears. She felt like attacking something.

The garden was neither pretty nor particularly ordered. The rows were messy, the colours a little chaotic, and there was too much red and white, though this was not Rehana’s fault. The delta weather was punishing; it didn’t support the frailer colours of the palette, only the muscular ones, the shocking whites, the brutal reds, the fuchsias and the violets. And so Rehana couldn’t help overplanting the jasmine and the rojonigondha and the lilies. The dahlias and the chrysanthemums were mostly white too, and the carnations and the phlox were the crimson shade of a short, violent sunset. That was why she loved her yellow roses. Amid all the stark colours of the garden, they were the sweetest, tenderest plants.

She found a clutch of weeds growing against the eastern corner of the wall that divided the bungalow property from Shona. The weeds had spirited purple flowers, spiky and punctuated, as though they knew their time was borrowed. Rehana seized them with both hands and pulled. They didn’t budge. She planted a foot on the boundary wall, leaned back and used her weight. She strained and struggled, twisting the weed around her wrist, and finally it rushed out of the earth, trailing a long, knotted root.

Another boy dead. Rehana asked God again, as she did every day, to save Sohail. What made Him spare one and take another? She didn’t know. Bless Sohail in Agartala, and my Maya in Calcutta. Maya had rung once, a few days after she’d left. She didn’t say where she was calling from, or where she was staying. She said she was all right. Don’t worry, she said, I’m happy .

Rehana devised a strict schedule for the Major: the doctor came every other afternoon, checked the stitches and adjusted the medication. Rehana brought the Major his food on a tray and left him alone to eat. Then she gave him a half bar of soap and poured a glass of water over his right hand. After lunch, he took a nap. When he woke up, she brought him tea and gave him his evening pills. The Major, who could barely speak, chose to say nothing. He always nodded thank you. He didn’t smile, though, or wave to her when she said goodnight for the evening. He liked her cooking. His plate was always licked, except when she gave him fish. He would try to hide it under a pile of rice, or mix it up with the pieces of chewed-up pickle that climbed the side of his plate. What kind of Bengali doesn’t like fish? She added more pickles and replaced the fish with egg curry; maybe if she found a chicken at the market she would try to get it for him.

She thought his first words to her might be ‘thank you’ or ‘I’m so grateful to you’ but instead he began with ‘It won’t be long now.’ She assumed he meant before he was well enough to leave Shona. He couldn’t mean before the war was over. In any case he was being optimistic, she thought. His leg still looked horribly twisted.

She had to lean forward to hear him, and hold her hair back so it wouldn’t fall on to his face. She made a note to herself to braid her hair. She caught his breath, which smelled of watermelons. She found herself wondering how a person’s breath might come to smell of watermelons. She told herself it must be because he didn’t smoke cigarettes.

The next day he said abruptly, ‘Why do you always wear white?’ which she thought was a rude observation, but then she surprised herself by answering, ‘So that you’ll be convinced I’m a nurse and not just a poor widow.’ At which he smiled, and Rehana was annoyed, in case she had accidentally begun some sort of banter with the man. But she needn’t have worried. He hardly said a word for a week after that, only smiled briefly when she brought him lunch and dinner.

Then one day he said, ‘I’m sorry about your husband,’ and Rehana replied, ‘It was a long time ago,’ and then she said, ‘Are you married?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I was.’ What kind of an answer was that? A look, a flash of something, passed across the Major’s face. It looked like anger. She wondered what it would be like to be close enough to the man to make him angry.

The next day he asked, ‘What happened to your husband?’ It occurred to her that it was none of his business, but somehow she felt the urge to answer.

‘He had a heart-attack.’

‘Suddenly?’

‘Just like that.’

‘Why did you never marry again?’

Still none of his business, but once she started, it was difficult to stop without appearing rude. ‘I had children,’ Rehana said; ‘a reason not to marry again.’

‘I thought that would be a good reason.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘no. Children are the worst reason to marry again.’

‘You didn’t want someone to look after them?’

‘You don’t know how hard I had to fight just to keep them.’ She told him about the court case. ‘I had to get the children back. I needed money. A lot of money. I needed money to bribe the judge. Money for the plane ticket to Lahore. Mrs Chowdhury said, “Build a house at the back of the property.” This is what my husband had intended as well. So that is what I decided to do. But I needed—’

‘Money.’

‘Yes, I needed money. I didn’t have any. My father had passed away. My sisters were in Karachi. They said they wanted to come, but they couldn’t. Things hadn’t gone well for them, they were always struggling. I was the one who was always sending them things.’ She remembered the striped aerograms with the bank drafts.

The Major looked around Mrs Sengupta’s bedroom — took in the thick walls, the immaculate white plaster, the heavy double doors leading out on to the wide veranda. With his eyes he asked, How did you do it?

Rehana considered telling the Major about stealing the money. She told herself the thought was practical ; after all, she had to tell someone, she couldn’t keep it locked inside her for ever. A thing like that will eventually corrupt and destroy a person. And this man would be as good as any; better, in fact, because after he left she would probably never see him again. He might even die. Tobah as-tak farullah. She said Aytul Kursi in case he died. She said it again, sorry for having thought of his death.

She thought of telling him as her first selfish act in a very long time. Something just for herself. An act that would help no one, do nothing, feed no hunger, raise no children. She practised in front of the mirror inside the door of her steel almirah. She imagined the secret disappearing from her days. She lingered over it in her dreams, knowing it would soon be gone. She wondered if she would miss it.