Tahmima Anam - A Golden Age

Rehana stood up in what she imagined was a guiltless manner and opened the front door.

‘You take it,’ Mrs Bashir said, thrusting the silver tray towards Rehana. ‘Please, you have it. Think that I made it for you.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Bashir, please go.’

‘I know he’s here, I know it. You’re a liar,’ she said softly. Her kajol-streaked tears fell sloppily on to her cheeks. She stepped towards the door, and for a moment Rehana thought she might fling the hot rice at her, but she didn’t. She smoothed the tulip napkin and walked away, leaving Rehana in the doorway reciting the morag polao recipe to herself, wondering if she had enough chicken to prepare the dish when Joy returned.

The visit from Joy’s mother was unsettling. Just after she finished the Magrib prayer, Rehana went to see the Major. She felt strangely exposed without a tray of food in front of her, a bedsheet to change or even a vial of medicine from Dr Rajesh. ‘Joy’s mother was here,’ she said. ‘I sent her away.’

He was looking into a small mirror, examining his scar. ‘You did the right thing,’ he said, tucking the mirror under his pillow.

‘But her son is dead.’

He struggled to lift himself up onto his elbows, dragging his broken leg, until he was sitting up and facing her. ‘You have to do these things sometimes — difficult things.’

‘I’m not sure I’m a nationalist,’ she said. She was thinking of the well-loved volumes of Urdu poetry on her shelf, right next to the Koran.

‘Well, why are you still here, in Dhaka?’

‘To take care of you, of course.’ She shouldn’t have said that. She paused for a beat, checked herself. ‘I love it here,’ she said. ‘It’s my home, and the home of my children. I would not give it up for anything. Believe me, I’ve been tested.’

‘Then you are a true nationalist.’

‘That’s kind of you to say. And you?’

‘This is the greatest thing I have ever done. If I ever leave this bed!’

Her heart sank a little at the thought of his leaving.

‘My life was a waste before this.’

‘You were in the army?’

‘I joined years ago, because I had to get away, from the village, from everything. There were too many memories.’

He looked at her, as though to ask if she knew what he meant, and she said, ‘But that is precisely why I stayed.’

Three things happened at the end of June: Joy returned from Agartala, Dr Rajesh arrived with bad news, and Rehana gave the Major her gramophone. It was her idea; he’d looked so despondent when the doctor had checked his leg and said he needed at least three more weeks’ rest. Rehana dusted the gramophone and dragged it across the garden to Shona. She hunted through Sohail’s room and found a few records. One of them said Help! Another had a black-and-white photograph of Elvis Presley with his lips caressing a microphone. The gramophone needle was spiked with dust; Rehana had to spit on her finger and pluck it out. To polish the wood she dipped a rag into a little of the olive oil she sometimes used to shine her elbows.

It was as if she’d given him a month of chicken curry. He smiled so widely his scar stretched across till it touched the tuft of hair beside his ear. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered, closing his eyes and tilting his head to the ceiling, ‘how did you know?’

In the first week he played and played again the two records she’d given him. And then one day she heard some new music. Joy must have brought the new records; or maybe it was someone else; a woman, even. After all, she didn’t know what happened at Shona after dark. No, he wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t bring a woman into her house.

At first the records were familiar: some Tagore, a few Bengali folk songs, their lyrics changed to nationalist slogans. And then one day she heard the strangest music coming from his room. She had brought his breakfast: one scrambled egg, four triangles of toast, a glass of milk. She stood at the door, listened for what seemed like a moment but must have been much longer, because by the time she noticed the eggs they had stiffened and turned orange. What music could this be? She had never heard anything like it. She ran back to the bungalow and made new eggs, chastising herself for the waste, and retraced her steps back to Shona. But again she was rooted at the doorway.

It was a woman. In every syllable Rehana could hear the delicate intake of her breath, the tongue caressing the palette and the slow, tender piano in the background, and, as the song built, she could hear melancholy, and a low, guttural moan and stretched-out vowels. Her voice was a thousand years of sorrow. Rehana tried to make out the English words. I loves you, Porgee .

Who was this Porgee? The song was like the weather, a thing that was everywhere and nowhere all at once, the words falling into each other like overlapping raindrops, a dry day and then a wet one, the scale rising like a gust of wind. Sometimes it was as though the woman was holding her breath and then releasing it; she was young, almost girlish and then her voice would go deep, with the confidence of a secret masculinity. The weather filled the room; it travelled across the corridor until it rose up in Rehana.

By the time she had gathered the courage to enter the Major’s room, she found herself a little out of breath. She told herself it must be the fast walking, carrying the heavy tray, trying not to spill the milk. She tried to stir up some irritation at the Major. She put the tray down in front of him harder than she meant to.

‘Her name is Nina Simone,’ the Major said.

Nina . Sounded like a Bengali name.

Rehana had a melting feeling in her mouth, as though she had bitten down on a pink, overripe guava.

‘You like the music?’ he asked, when she returned for the tray.

‘It reminds me of my father,’ Rehana said.

‘He liked jazz?’

‘There was a band once. A party in the ballroom, and dancing. And champagne. Probably one of his last.’ Rehana spoke as though the memory was new to her. ‘Yes. Champagne in delicate, bowl-shaped glasses, and ladies with short hair. There were lots of instruments. And it was loud, cheerful music. Not like this.’

‘Nina Simone doesn’t sound like anybody else,’ the Major said. Rehana looked at the scattered record sleeves beside the Major’s bed. A dark man with his lips pressed against a trumpet gazed out earnestly.

Then she asked, ‘Where did you get this music?’

‘You like it?’

‘No, I don’t like it,’ she lied.

‘OK.’

Why didn’t he protest? What kind of a person wouldn’t like this music?

‘What do you like?’ he asked.

‘What sort of a question is that?’

‘Simple. If you don’t like this, what do you like?’

‘You mean, what music do I like?’

‘No, I mean, what do you like?’

‘Anything?’

‘Anything.’

How could she reply? No one had ever asked her that question. Why had no one ever asked her that question? It stunned her that a person could go through life without anybody ever asking them that question. She thought for a moment.

‘I like the flowers in my garden,’ she said slowly. ‘The yellow roses are my favourite. And I like to make dimer halwa. It’s very difficult, you know. One slip and it turns into egg scramble.’ She felt the weather rising up in her again, a squall, rippling and swirling. ‘And the cinema. I like the cinema.’ It was another lie. She loved the cinema.

It was Joy who brought the projector. It was the last day of June, and the rain had started to appear every evening just as the sun plunged crimson-shy under the horizon.

Rehana didn’t know what it was at first. When she saw the hard black box she thought it might be some other thing to bury in the garden, a weapon, but then Joy opened the two buckles on the side and she saw the reel and the lens; even then she thought it must be some sort of camera, because she’d never seen one up close. It was Joy’s grin that gave it away: a smile full of mischief and pride, the new face he’d acquired to mask his grief.