Mohsin Hamid - Moth Smoke

‘Nothing clean,’ I answer.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

I take a white undershirt out of my closet and sniff it. Smells neutral enough. She puts it on and walks out of the room, her bare feet avoiding the dead moths and the puddles near the windows.

‘You need a replacement for Manucci,’ she says.

‘I can’t afford one,’ I reply, following her.

She sees what she’s looking for, a box of matches, and lights her cigarette. Then she sits down on the couch and pulls her legs under her. ‘I’m going to give you some money until you find work.’

I sit down next to her and shake my head. ‘I don’t want any more of Ozi’s money, thanks.’

She kisses me. ‘Well, once you’ve started having an affair with his wife, taking his money doesn’t seem like such a big step.’

I rub the corner of her jaw with my chin, feel my stubble scratch her skin, turn it red. ‘I don’t want to be having an affair with his wife.’

She smiles. ‘Tired of me so soon?’

‘I’m serious.’

She shakes her head and looks away. Her hair covers the patch of redness. ‘Don’t do this.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t make this into something it isn’t.’

‘What isn’t this?’

‘This isn’t a courtship.’

I tug at the bottom of her undershirt. My undershirt, on her. It’s old, the cotton very soft, fraying slightly around the collar. ‘This isn’t just sex.’

She turns and looks at me. One hand covers mine, stops my tugging. ‘Nothing is just sex. I care about you. I need this right now.’

‘I love you.’

‘Stop saying that.’

I pull on her shirt again, gently. ‘Do you think you can go back to Ozi as though nothing ever happened?’

‘Daru, I don’t have to go back to him. I’m married to him. I’d have to leave him to go back to him.’

‘But you started this.’

She takes my hand off her shirt. ‘You didn’t exactly resist.’

‘But you’re the one who made it happen.’

‘I just got over my guilt first.’

‘So why hold back now?’

‘Daru, I’m married. I have a son. I’m not looking to mate. I’m looking to be with a man for me, because it makes me happy.’

‘And I don’t make you happy?’

‘You do.’

‘But you don’t care about my happiness.’

‘Of course I do. That’s why I’m being honest with you. If you’re looking for a wife, you need to look somewhere else. I’m an awful wife. And I’m already married.’

I walk over to a cabinet and take out the hairy. I haven’t told Mumtaz I’ve been smoking the stuff. But suddenly I see no reason to hide. Let her be angry.

Then again, maybe she won’t even care. I’m just her lover, after all.

I light up and she asks for a puff.

‘No,’ I say.

She stays seated, hugging her knees on the sofa. ‘Why not?’

I pull the smoke into my lungs, growing calm before the aitch has even begun to work: the relaxation of anticipation. ‘You don’t want it.’

‘Are you angry?’ Her tone is neutral, neither cold, accusatory, nor warm, inviting reconciliation.

‘It’s an aitch.’

‘Aitch?’

‘Aitch. Hairy. Heroin. Bad for your health.’

She’s quiet. I don’t feel any need to say more. I like this, the sense that she’s trying to communicate with me while I hold back, waiting.

‘You’re more stupid than you look,’ she says.

I ignore her. The aitch is almost gone. I hold it between thumb and forefinger, fill my chest with a last puff.

‘Are you such a coward?’ she snaps. ‘Have you really just given up on everything?’

‘Don’t overreact. I’ve had some occasionally. Twice or thrice.’ I’m acting cool, but inwardly I’m overjoyed by her reaction. She’s furious. Which means she’s concerned.

She glares at me. ‘You have to stop it.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t be an idiot. It’s heroin. It isn’t hash or ex. It isn’t a nice little recreational drug.’

‘It depends on how much you have. I’m a recreational user.’

‘Do you think you can quit?’

‘I’m not hooked. How about you?’

She’s touching her chin with her finger. ‘How about me?’

‘Do you think you can quit?’

She shakes her head and gives me a frustrated smile. ‘I don’t smoke heroin, you maniac.’

‘Quit Ozi. He’s bad for you. You’re unhappy.’

She looks at me, still shaking her head. Then she lights a cigarette. ‘Let’s not confuse things. Your doing heroin has nothing to do with my marriage.’

‘You’re here every day. Why don’t you leave him?’

‘I have a son, in case you’ve forgotten.’

With the heroin comes clarity. And a certain cruelty, a calm disregard for consequences. ‘You don’t give a shit about your son.’

She stops smoking. ‘Don’t say that,’ she says in a low voice.

‘You don’t love him. Stop pretending.’

She drops her cigarette on the floor. ‘I’m leaving.’

‘You run away from him every chance you get. Do you think it’s good for him that you stay? He’s going to grow up wondering why his mother never really talks to him, why she’s always so distant. And do you know what that’s going to do to him? He’ll be miserable.’

She stares at me, eyes wet, face hard. ‘You’re a bastard.’

‘Quit them,’ I say. ‘It’s for the best.’

She stands, wipes her tears.

I reach out, but she slaps my hand away. Pain slices up from my finger.

‘I don’t love you,’ she says. ‘And the reason you’re so desperate to think you’re in love with me is because your life is going nowhere and you know it.’

With the pain in my hand comes unexpected, ferocious anger. But even more than anger, I feel triumph straighten my back and flush my face, triumph because I know I’m right about her, because she’d never be so vicious if I were wrong.

She holds out a note. ‘Here’s a thousand. You’ll need it.’

‘I don’t want it.’

She walks into the bedroom, strips naked, puts on her clothes, and leaves without another word.

When she’s gone I pick up the clothes she was wearing and put them on. I can smell her in them, and I’m suddenly filled with the longing to speak with her.

Then I find the thousand-rupee note in my wallet.

I’m at once furious and ashamed, furious because people give money after sex to prostitutes and ashamed because I’m so hungry that I have to take it. But I make a decision. To hell with handouts. I’m ready for a little justice.

I’m driving slowly to Murad Badshah’s workshop, trying not to splash pedestrians wading through the flooded streets with their shoes in their hands and their shalwars pulled up their thighs, when I’m overtaken by a Land Cruiser that sprays muddy water in its wake like a speedboat and wets me through my open window. Bastard. I dry my face on my sleeve and clear the windshield with the wipers.

All my life the arrival of the monsoon has been a happy occasion, ending the heat of high summer and making Lahore green again. But this year I see it as a time of festering, not rebirth. Without air-conditioning, temperatures are still high enough for me to sweat as I lie on my bed trying to sleep, but now the sweat doesn’t evaporate. Instead, it coagulates like blood into peeled scabs of dampness that cover my itching body. Unrefrigerated, the food in my house spoils overnight, consumed by colored molds that spread like cancer. Overripe fruit bursts open, unhealthy flesh oozing out of ruptures in sickly skin. And the larvae already wriggling in dark pools of water will soon erupt into swarms of mosquitoes.

The entire city is uneasy. Sometimes, when monsoon lightning slips a bright explosion under the clouds, there is a pause in conversations. Teacups halt, steaming, in front of extended lips. Lightning’s echo comes as thunder. And the city waits for thunder’s echo, for a wall of heat that burns Lahore with the energy of a thousand summers, a million partitions, a billion atomic souls split in half.