Haveli (22 page)

“Choti! Choti!” Mumtaz cried.

“Choti! Come back!” Shabanu called.

But the little deer was gone, her small dark hooves kicking up high and tucking under her chest as she cleared fallen trees.

Mumtaz darted after her into the wooded area beside the path away from the canal, but Shabanu overtook her in less than a dozen bounds, caught her
by the arm, and lifted her into the air, kicking and crying.

“Uma! Let me go! Please! Choti! Choti!” Her voice broke and she cried, at first in anger and frustration.

Shabanu set her down on her feet and held her tightly. Mumtaz cried, her breath coming in chokes and gasps between small wails. Shabanu let her sob for a minute.

“Mumtaz, listen to me! Listen!” she said, shaking the child by the shoulders. “Choti probably will be waiting for us when we get home. We should go now. If she is not, she will find her way back to us. Now be quiet and come with me.”

Something about the calm, intense way Shabanu spoke to Mumtaz always made her listen and obey, and she quieted. She held her mother’s hand as they walked quickly back to the gate into the courtyard.

Shabanu was not surprised when Choti was not there waiting for them, but Mumtaz went through the gate into the garden without arguing. Shabanu and Zenat stayed with Mumtaz the rest of the afternoon, but the child would not sleep. She sat up to wait for the fawn, leaving the garden only when it was time to dress for Zabo’s
mahendi
, the beginning of the wedding celebration.

Finally Shabanu could bear it no longer. She sent Zenat for Samiya and told the two of them to lock the door behind her and to stay in the room with Mumtaz
until her return. They were not to leave the room for any reason.

She went bareheaded in her desert nomad’s clothes to the yard in back of the kitchen, where the servants sat in groups gossiping between serving courses of a large midafternoon banquet to the men in the dining room.

They fell silent as Shabanu darted through the yard, their starched and fanned turbans still, their waxed mustaches unmoving; even the gold fringe on the shoulder boards of their red uniform jackets did not jiggle.

Shabanu didn’t care who saw her, who might take pleasure in her pain. She went straight to the neem trees at the outer edge of the yard, where the late sunlight gleamed from the open eyes of the deer killed in the day’s hunt. They hung from the lowest branches of the trees, their heads pointing toward the ground.

There among them, smaller than the rest, was Choti, eviscerated, blood dripping from her nose in a thick ribbon to the ground. Shabanu thought almost absently that Choti was the only one that still dripped blood. She must have been killed after the others were already hung.

The pink silk cord that held her little brass bell had been cut from her neck and left an imprint in the fur.

Shabanu had half believed that Choti would come back—or had she only hoped for Mumtaz’s sake?

She lay her hand on Choti’s flank, stroking up along the grain of the fur. The servants in the kitchen yard looked at the ground.

They knew, she thought. She turned without looking at them and walked back slowly to dress for the
mahendi
.

A deep anger burned in Shabanu the rest of the afternoon as she thought of what to tell Mumtaz. She felt nothing but contempt for the people of Okurabad. Nazir’s greed had pushed everyone beyond the edge of worry and suspicion. Where his evil was forthright and seemed therefore less menacing, it was as if he’d laid the field for the evil that was hidden within each of them. It was as if they all had played a part in Choti’s death: Rahim because he refused to see the evil Amina and Leyla cast about carelessly; Omar because he had proven to be so like Rahim; the servants because they were always persuaded to do Amina’s bidding; the men because they killed the beautiful animals of Cholistan, when they had no need for the meat; and Amina … well, Amina would come to justice one day. If Allah could be trusted—and Shabanu had no reason to doubt He could—Amina would be repaid.

Mumtaz stood quietly to have her hair brushed and braided. She willingly put on her newest
shalwar kameez
, a pale pink silk with small white embroideries across the top. She held on to her mother’s hand throughout the afternoon, as if it were her only link
to safety. She did not cry, but Shabanu felt her shudder occasionally, and squeezed her hand.

On the table were large samovars and silver ewers and Chinese porcelain cups and small cakes decorated with bright-colored frostings on milk-white plates. Zabo appeared without makeup and jewelry, and she received her guests with restrained dignity and grace. Her face was solemn and pale. All this was customary for a Punjabi bride.

But Zabo’s gravity was not an act, as often was the case. Shabanu knew she was not only sober and sad but also frightened. Suppose something went wrong with the plan? Would she have to stay with Ahmed forever? Even one night was too long!

Three dozen women were arranged about the room like so many dollops of fruit sorbet, all wearing pale georgettes and gold strapped sandals and heavy ropes of amethysts and peridots and rose quartz that glittered in the same colors as their clothing.

The
mahendi
was like a very formal tea party. Zabo distributed gifts to Amina and Leyla and to Ahmed’s other relatives. The
mahendi
artists—local women wearing worn hand-printed
chadrs
and silver bracelets in rows on their slender arms—solemnly bent over the women’s outstretched hands, painting delicate patterns on them with sticky gray mud.

As usual on such occasions, attention shifted to the end of the room where Amina and Leyla talked loudly to a coterie of admirers. They had come late to
the
mahendi
, their first appearance since Shabanu and Zabo had returned from Lahore.

The other women, who had been gossiping and laughing in small groups, hushed so Amina and Leyla could speak uninterrupted. It was not that they had anything special to say; it was more that they were used to commanding the attention of any roomful of ladies. On this occasion they were intent on not allowing Zabo to steal the limelight from Leyla.

One of the rumors that flew about the compound was that Amina was annoyed with Rahim for allowing Nazir to arrange Zabo’s wedding first.

The shift of attention allowed Shabanu and Mumtaz to sit quietly with Zabo. Privacy was nowhere to be found. Even the bathrooms were occupied by women in numbers. It was the way with families in times of weddings.

It seemed the house had eyes and ears, all watching and listening for something to report to Amina. But Shabanu waited patiently until the women laughed at something Amina said. She leaned close to Zabo and whispered in her ear. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “You will be with Auntie Sharma soon—at the time of Leyla’s wedding.”

Shabanu and Mumtaz slipped away early. The sky had darkened, but the clouds were thick and gray, and there was no movement of air. Mumtaz had been brave. But no sooner were they inside their room than she began to cry again.

Shabanu pulled Mumtaz onto her lap and held her, letting her cry for a while.

“You know, little one,” she said, as if telling Mumtaz a bedtime story. “Choti has gone back.”

“No, Uma, she was very happy here. She wouldn’t want to go back to the desert and leave us.”

Shabanu held the child close to her.

“I mean that she’s gone to where we all go when our lives are finished.”

“When will she come back here?” Mumtaz asked. She stopped crying and looked into her mother’s face.

“She won’t come to us,” said Shabanu. “God gave her to us for just a little time. And now He wants her back.”

“I want her to come back to me,” Mumtaz said, and she began to cry again.

Shabanu pressed her daughter’s head to her shoulder and stroked her hair.

“It will hurt when you miss her for a little while,” she said. “But soon when you think of her you’ll think of the happy times you had together. She’ll be yours forever that way.”

Mumtaz put her finger into her mouth and sat still, thinking about Choti until she fell asleep. Shabanu laid her on her bed, pulled off her silk
shalwar kameez
, and covered her with a thin cotton shawl. In her sleep Mumtaz shuddered slightly from her day of crying and trying not to cry.

O
n the day of the wedding, the monsoon broke. The rain poured in sheets so thick that Shabanu could not see through them. Occasional gusts of wind knocked the rain sideways, and water came in through the shutters.

Usually the monsoon’s arrival was cause for celebration. The rain after months of overbearing heat was like salve to a wound. Children played outside in the driving rain, running with their heads back, catching water in their open mouths.

Monsoon weddings should ensure many sons. But rain on the day of the wedding meant unhappiness—perhaps disaster—and the house at Okurabad was filled with foreboding as the final preparations were made.

Everything was late. The sweets makers had to carry huge pans from their shops in the village bazaar in the back of
tongas
, and the
tonga-wallahs
had to be coaxed out of their houses on such a day. And
tongas
were to bring tuberoses that were to come from Kashmir by train, but the train never arrived, and no one seemed to know why or whether it would come at all. And the borrowed servants who were to come by bicycle were not able to ride their bicycles through the muddy ruts of the road.

A dozen men were gathered from the village to help erect the huge
shamiyana
, a tent of red, green, yellow, and blue canvas panels sewn in geometric patterns, in the garden where the wedding and the banquet were to take place. The men stood under the overhang of the stable, watching the rain stream down before them. The
shamiyana
was rolled on poles in the corners of the yard with plastic tarpaulins protecting it.

The gentry of the Punjab had been invited to the
nukkah
and the feast following it in the evening. But the monsoon often brought with it hill torrents, flash floods that struck without warning when the hills could hold no more water, carrying away roads and buses and cars and entire villages. With the monsoon so late and this such an inauspicious event, who could tell what would happen? Many people just did not want to drive the distance in such terrible rain.

It was amid the downpour, when Shabanu was bathing Mumtaz before her nap, that the second important rumor made its way to the stable yard.

There was a knock on the wooden door to the bathhouse. It was Samiya. The widow scurried around
trying to help, fetching a towel, more water, flitting like a sparrow before and after Shabanu, chirping the entire time.

“Please, Samiya!” Shabanu said after a while, barely able to contain her annoyance. “Surely there are other things you might be doing.”

Instead of being calmed, Samiya fluttered ever more persistently until Mumtaz was in bed, the sheet clasped beneath her chin.

“
Begum
, you must listen,” she whispered when Mumtaz had drifted off to sleep. “There is talk in the kitchen. Please listen. It is something you should know. Amina is starting an apprenticeship program for the children of the house servants. She talked about the children getting into mischief, not having supervision, not having a school. Mumtaz’s name was mentioned.”

“Mumtaz? A servant’s apprentice? You must be mistaken.” She had the terrible, familiar feeling of having let her guard down and giving those who never stopped watching a chance to hurt her and Mumtaz.

“They asked if I would teach,” Samiya went on. “They were counting how many children there might be, naming them. Mumtaz is one they named. This is how the talk came to me.”

“Samiya, stay here,” she said. She took a tattered old
chadr
from the hook behind the door and threw it over her head.

“Lock the door after me and don’t let anyone in—not anyone—until I come back. Do you understand?”

Without waiting for an answer, she slipped out. All she could think of was the servant children in other households who lived by their wits like animals, and whose veiled eyes saw only opportunities to steal. These children were never children, really, with no time for play or learning about what is good and beautiful in the world. Their lives were confined to their masters’ houses and the nearby bazaars. She pitied those children when she saw them, and she would see beyond certainty that her Mumtaz did not become one of them.

Shabanu walked purposefully though the rain to the main house, where Rahim was celebrating over tea with the few relatives and close friends who had braved the storm and a few who had come the day before for the wedding. Her
chadr
was soaked by the time she reached the veranda, but she never felt the rain. Two bodyguards stood at attention outside the door.

“Please,” she said to one of them. “Please tell Rahim-
sahib
that I wish to see him.”

The bodyguard stood still for a moment as if he hadn’t heard. Insolent, she thought. But then he turned without speaking and went into the hallway and repeated her message to Rahim’s secretary, who came out on the veranda.

“Begum,”
the secretary said unctuously, his hands folded over his broad belly. “Is there something I can …”

“No,” she replied. “I must speak to Rahim
-sahib
.” The secretary’s eyes were narrow slits in a fleshy face covered with a black stubble of beard, as if he couldn’t be troubled to open them to look at her.

“But he’s busy. He’s having tea now.… ”

“He’s been having tea for three months,” she snapped, and the secretary’s eyes opened a bit wider. “Tell him it is a matter of much urgency.”

The secretary turned to go back inside, and Shabanu stepped in front of him.

“I shall wait in the hallway,” she said, entering the house.

The secretary went into the parlor, and a billow of cigarette smoke escaped with a buzz of male voices in the instant the door was open. A few moments later Rahim emerged, looking tired and cross.