Tahmima Anam - A Golden Age

‘Where did you get it?’

‘Naz Cinema. The owner is a Hindu. They killed him in March.’

So this was what he was doing. Looting and stealing. ‘So you just took the projector?’ The Major hadn’t said anything, and Rehana didn’t know whose idea the projector was. She thought it was probably Joy’s, because lately he was doing those slightly criminal things to prove there could still be pleasure, and roguishness, in the world. Or maybe he did it to forget the dead face of his brother.

‘It was lying there, gathering dust.’

‘You can’t just take things.’

‘It probably doesn’t work,’ Joy said, and as soon as he said it she knew they were going to keep it.

‘Of course it works. Why wouldn’t it work? I’ve seen at least a dozen films there.’ She went through the films in her head: Roman Holiday, High Society, Charade, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Casablanca . She was suddenly giddy. ‘Shall we try it out?’ She looked inside the box. Mughal-e-Azam . ‘How did you know?’

‘I just pulled this one out.’

It couldn’t have been a coincidence. Sohail must have told him. ‘Thank you, thank you. It’s really too much.’

‘Consider it a gift from the guerrillas.’ Joy smiled, his face broad.

The tears welled up even before the credits began. Joy adjusted the focus and walked backwards to the door.

‘You’re leaving?’

‘Not for me,’ Joy said. ‘I’ll go soft!’

Rehana was already ignoring him. Akbar came on screen, praying to God for an heir. Let me not die without a trace, he was saying.

‘You won’t understand,’ Rehana whispered; ‘it’s in Urdu.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ the Major whispered back.

‘Don’t you want to know the story?’

‘Tell me quickly,’ he said, ‘before it starts.’

‘It’s complicated.’ She had her eye on the screen, where Akbar was making his way across the desert to Nadir Shah. ‘It’s a love story — the Prince, Salim — Akbar’s son — he falls in love with a servant girl, Anarkali. And then—’

He reached over and laid a finger on her arm. ‘I understand,’ he said.

Anarkali came on, posing as a statue. She flashed her tilted smile. She spoke; the throaty sugar of her voice echoed through the room. Rehana’s ribs began to throb. Anarkali danced her rolling-hips dance. Prince Salim fell in love. Akbar, infuriated, jailed them both. ‘Keep your precious India,’ Prince Salim said. ‘I will have my Anarkali.’

‘She has to pretend she’s betrayed him,’ Rehana whispered.

‘Hush.’ The Major raised a finger to his lips. The film shadows moved over his face.

‘You see,’ Rehana said, ‘it’s the finest love story.’

‘Right. You were right.’

‘Joy really shouldn’t have stolen the projector.’

‘You would have taken it yourself if you’d had half the chance.’

Rehana took a deep breath. There wouldn’t be a better time. The room was dark, and the projector fan was still running, a static buzz that seemed to brighten the window of white that hovered in front of the Major’s bed.

Rehana turned to the Major. He made no move to turn off the projector, as though he knew she was about to tell him something. Maybe he’d planned all of this, getting Joy to steal the projector, watching Mughal-e-Azam , which he wouldn’t understand. If so, she was willing to fall into the trap; she wanted to tell him as badly as he wanted to know.

‘After the children were taken away, I thought I would die. I didn’t know what to do, and the worst thing was, I actually started to think they were better off with that woman. I didn’t have anything to give them, not even the money to pay off the judge. And I was such a coward, believing it was all for the best and letting Faiz take the children away from me. I will never forgive myself for that.’

Rehana looked at the Major and waited for him to say something, something like What could you do? or You poor woman . These were the things that she had grown so used to hearing, the words that followed her everywhere. But he was just waiting for her to go on.

‘I closed the doors and refused to see anyone. I dismissed the servants — there was no money to keep them anyway. Mrs Chowdhury’s daughter came over sometimes, and sometimes I liked that, but then she reminded me of the children, and I sent her away. I was cruel, I think, but she’s a very sweet girl, she’s forgotten all about it.’

Rehana paused, wondering if she should tell the Major about Sohail and Silvi.

‘Mrs Chowdhury came over one day. I was asleep, in the middle of the afternoon, wearing Iqbal’s coat, and she came in through the garden — I never used to shut that gate — and she said she had an idea. That I should borrow money from the bank and build a house on the property. It was just the bungalow then, and a huge tract of land, wild grass, where I was always telling the children not to play. Iqbal and I had dreamed of building a big house some day, but it never occurred to me after he died. Mortgage the land, Mrs Chowdhury said, take a loan, build the house.’

It used to look like a field of paddy, Rehana thought, with only the tall furry grasses, and the mango tree in the middle, like a finger pointing to the sky. ‘But I was just a woman. Without a male guarantor, all the banks turned me down. And then Mrs Chowdury said there was a man she knew, a Mr Qureishi, an old friend of her brother, and he had agreed to meet me. I went to the bank — Habib Bank, you know the one? The big branch, in Motijheel.

‘That Qureishi man was a fraud. It wasn’t Mrs Chowdhury’s fault — I should have taken her with me, but I went alone, and I must have looked terrible, lost, and the man tried to take advantage.’

There he was, pressing the gristle of his cheek against her mouth, and his hand was on the sleeve of her blouse, and she could smell the curry breakfast he’d eaten that morning, and the stale old soap, and the sick, brutal need.

Still the Major didn’t say anything. She saw him biting the inside of his lip, the right side, the one that wasn’t torn.

‘So there was no loan. Then Mrs Chowdhury decided I should find a husband. You must think I listen to everything she says, and it’s true, back then it was like I was sleepwalking. And I desperately wanted someone to tell me what to do. My whole life the only decision I ever made was to marry Iqbal. And that was only because…well, I already told you.’

The difficult part remained ahead. Poor T. Ali, the gentle blind man with the phantom wife.

‘Mrs Chowdhury suggested T. Ali. He had just moved to the neighbourhood. He was much older than me — already an old man, really — and his wife had died. And he was blind — did I say that before? Yes, he was blind. But he was rich; his father was into tea; he had inherited a fortune.’ The words tumbled out of her mouth.

‘The man was quiet, and the first time we met — Mrs Chowdhury invited us to dinner — he didn’t speak a word to me. He ate, said a polite goodbye to Mrs Chowdhury and left. I’m sure he likes you, she said.

‘I almost did it. T. Ali indicated he was willing to consider remarrying, but that I must allow him to keep the portrait of his wife in the drawing room. He invited me to his house to see the portrait. I wasn’t sure I should go, but I was curious, and I thought, maybe he’s just a sweet old man — a little odd, perhaps — but if we married, I was just going to ask him straight out if he could give me the money to bribe the judge, the tickets to Lahore.’

T. Ali’s house had been built in the traditional style, one storey with a large central courtyard and a wide veranda with rooms leading out of it. From the road it looked like a fortress, and Rehana had walked in and seen the man crouching over a chair in a dimly lit drawing room. He was wearing a chocolate-brown suit and a deep red bow tie. His hand was pressed against his chest, and at first Rehana thought he might be having a heart-attack, and she was about to curse her luck. But then he raised his hand, and in it was a small oval frame. He was holding the frame in the palm of one hand and stroking it with the other. My Rose, my sweet Rose, he kept saying. The room — the muscular wood furniture, the old carpets, the honey-toned walls, the portrait that dominated everything — smelt of crumbling plaster and damp, the colours bleeding into one another. Rose was a young woman, so pale her face foretold her death, with delicate hands folded across her lap. She wore a dress and looked like an English woman, the ones who had had worn wide, sloping hats and gloves, even in the warmest weather. Her dress, which reached down to her ankles, was a light pea-green with lace around the high collar and a tight row of buttons from chin to waist.