Padma - our plump Padma - is sulking magnificently. (She can't read and, like all fish-lovers, dislikes other people knowing anything she doesn't. Padma: strong, jolly, a consolation1 for my last days. But definitely a bitch-in-the-manger.) She attempts to cajole me from my desk: 'Eat, na, food is spoiling.' I remain stubbornly hunched3 over paper. 'But what is so precious,'
Padma demands, her right hand slicing the air updownup in exasperation4, 'to need all this writing-shiting?' I reply: now that I've let out the details of my birth, now that the perforated sheet stands between doctor and patient, there's no going back. Padma snorts. Wrist smacks5 against forehead. 'Okay, starve starve, who cares two pice?' Another louder, conclusive6 snort... but I take no exception to her attitude. She stirs a bubbling vat7 all day for a living; something hot and vinegary has steamed her up tonight. Thick of waist, somewhat hairy of forearm, she flounces, gesticulates, exits. Poor Padma. Things are always getting her goat. Perhaps even her name: understandably enough, since her mother told her, when she was only small, that she had been named after the lotus goddess, whose most common appellation8 amongst village folk is 'The One Who Possesses Dung'.
In the renewed silence, I return to sheets of paper which smell just a little of turmeric, ready and willing to put out of its misery9 a narrative10 which I left yesterday hanging in mid-air - just as Scheherazade, depending for her very survival on leaving Prince Shahryar eaten up by curiosity, used to do night after night! I'll begin at once: by revealing that my grandfather's premonitions in the corridor were not without foundation. In the succeeding months and years, he fell under what I can only describe as the sorcerer's spell of that enormous - and as yet unstained - perforated cloth.
'Again?' Aadam's mother said, rolling her eyes. 'I tell you, my child, that girl is so sickly from too much soft living only. Too much sweetmeats and spoiling, because of the absence of a mother's firm hand. But go, take care of your invisible patient, your mother is all right with her little nothing of a headache.'
In those years, you see, the landowner's daughter Naseem Ghani contracted a quite extraordinary number of minor11 illnesses, and each time a shikara wallah was despatched to summon the tall young Doctor sahib with the big nose who was making such a reputation for himself in the valley. Aadam Aziz's visits to the bedroom with the shaft14 of sunlight and the three lady wrestlers became weekly events; and on each occasion he was vouchsafed15 a glimpse, through the mutilated sheet, of a different seven-inch circle of the young woman's body. Her initial stomach-ache was succeeded by a very slightly twisted right ankle, an ingrowing toenail on the big toe of the left foot, a tiny cut on the lower left calf16.
Tetanus is'a killer17, Doctor Sahib,' the landowner said, 'My Naseem must not die for a scratch.') There was the matter of her stiff right knee, which the Doctor was obliged to manipulate through the hole in the sheet ... and after a time the illnesses leapt upwards18, avoiding certain unmentionable zones, and began to proliferate19 around her upper half. She suffered from something mysterious which her father called Finger Rot, which made the skin flake20 off her hands; from weakness of the wrist-bones, for which Aadam prescribed calcium21 tablets; and from attacks of constipation, for which he gave her a course of laxatives, since there was no question of being permitted to administer an enema. She had fevers and she also had subnormal temperatures. At these times his thermometer would be placed under her armpit and he would hum and haw about the relative inefficiency22 of the method. In the opposite armpit she once developed a slight case of tineachloris and he dusted her with yellow powder; after this treatment - which required him to rub the powder in, gently but firmly, although the soft secret body began to shake and quiver and he heard helpless laughter coming through the sheet, because Naseem Ghani was very ticklish23 - the itching24 went away, but Naseem soon I found a new set of complaints. She waxed anaemic in the summer and bronchial in the winter. ('Her tubes are most delicate,' Ghani explained, 'like little flutes26.') Far away the Great War moved from crisis to crisis, while in the cobwebbed house Doctor Aziz was also engaged in a total war against his sectioned patient's inexhaustible complaints. And, in all those war years, Naseem never repeated an illness. 'Which only shows,' Ghani told Mm, 'that you are a good doctor. When you cure, she is cured for good. But alas27!' - he struck his forehead - 'She pines for her late mother, poor baby, and her body suffers.
She is a too loving child.'
So gradually Doctor Aziz came to have a picture of Naseem in his mind, a badly-fitting collage28 of her severally-inspected parts. This phantasm of a partitioned woman began to haunt him, and not only in his dreams. Glued together by his imagination, she accompanied him on all his rounds, she moved into the front room of his mind, so that waking and sleeping he could feel in his fingertips the softness of her ticklish skin or the perfect tiny wrists or the beauty of the ankles; he could smell her scent29 of lavender and chambeli; he could hear her voice and her helpless laughter of a little girl; but she was headless, because he had never seen her face.
His mother by on her bed, spreadeagled on her stomach. 'Come, come and press me,' she said, 'my doctor son whose fingers can soothe30 his old mother's muscles.
Press, press, my child with his expression of a constipated goose.' He kneaded her shoulders. She grunted31, twitched32, relaxed. 'Lower now,' she said, 'now higher. To the right. Good. My brilliant son who cannot see what that Ghani landowner is doing. So clever, my child, but he doesn't guess why that girl is forever ill with her piffling disorders34. Listen, my boy: see the nose on your face for once: that Ghani thinks you are a good catch for her. Foreign-educated and all. I have worked in shops and been undressed by the eyes of strangers so that you should marry that Naseem! Of course I am right; otherwise why would he look twice at our family?' Aziz pressed his mother. 'O God, stop now, no need to kill me because I tell you the truth!'
By 1918, Aadam Aziz had come to live for his regular trips across the lake. And now his eagerness became even more intense, because it became clear that, after three years, the landowner and his daughter had become willing to lower certain barriers. Now, for the first time, Ghani said, 'A lump in the right chest. Is it worrying, Doctor? Look. Look well.' And there, framed in the hole, was a perfectly-formed and lyrically lovely ... 'I must touch it,' Aziz said, fighting with his voice. Ghani slapped him on the back. 'Touch, touch!' he cried, 'The hands of the healer! The curing touch, eh, Doctor?' And Aziz reached out a hand ... 'Forgive me for asking; but is it the lady's time of the month?' ... Little secret smiles appearing on the faces of the lady wrestlers. Ghani, nodding affably: 'Yes. Don't be so embarrassed, old chap. We are family and doctor now.'
And Aziz, 'Then don't worry. The lumps will go when the time ends.'... And the next time, 'A pulled muscle in the back of her thigh35, Doctor Sahib. Such pain!'
And there, in the sheet, weakening the eyes of Aadam Aziz, hung a superbly rounded and impossible buttock ... And now Aziz: 'Is it permitted that ...'
'Whereupon a word from Ghani; an obedient reply from behind the sheet; a drawstring pulled; and pajamas36 fall from the celestial37 rump, which swells38 wondrously39 through the hole. Aadam Aziz forces himself into a medical frame of mind ... reaches out... feels. And swears to himself, in amazement40, that he sees the bottom reddening in a shy, but compliant41 blush.
That evening, Aadam contemplated42 the blush. Did the magic of the sheet work on both sides of the hole? Excitedly, he envisaged43 his headless Naseem tingling44 beneath the scrutiny45 of his eyes, his thermometer, his stethoscope, his fingers, and trying to build a picture in her mind of him. She was at a disadvantage, of course, having seen nothing but his hands ... Aadam began to hope with an illicit46 desperation for Naseem Ghani to develop a migraine or graze her unseen chin, so they could look each other in the face. He knew how unprofessional his feelings were; but did nothing to stifle47 them. There was not much he could do.
They had acquired a life of their own. In short: my grandfather had fallen in love, and had come to think of the perforated sheet as something sacred and magical, because through it he had seen the things which had filled up the hole inside him which had been created when he had been hit on the nose by a tussock and insulted by the boatman Tai.
On the day the World War ended, Naseem developed the longed-for headache. Such historical coincidences have littered, and pejrhaps befouled, my family's existence in the world.
He hardly dared to look at what was framed in the hole in the sheet. Maybe she was hideous48; perhaps that explained all this performance ... he looked. And saw a soft face that was not at all ugly, a cushioned setting for her glittering, gemstone eyes, which were brown with flecks49 of gold: tiger's-eyes. Doctor Aziz's fall was complete. And Naseem burst out, 'But Doctor, my God, what a nose?
Ghani, angrily, 'Daughter, mind your ...' But patient and doctor were laughing together, and Aziz was saying, 'Yes, yes, it is a remarkable50 specimen51. They tell me there are dynasties waiting in it...' And he bit his tongue because he had been about to add, '... like snot.'
And Ghani, who had stood blindly beside the sheet for three long years, smiling and smiling and smiling, began once again to smile his secret smile, which was mirrored in the lips of the wrestlers.
Meanwhile, the boatman, Tai, had taken his unexplained decision to give up washing. In a valley drenched52 in freshwater lakes, where even the very poorest people could (and did) pride themselves on their cleanliness, Tai chose to stink53. For three years now, he had neither bathed nor washed himself after answering calls of nature. He wore the same clothes, unwashed, year in, year out; his one concession54 to winter was to put his chugha-coat over his putrescent pajamas. The little basket of hot coals which he carried inside the chugha, in the Kashmiri fashion, to keep him warm in the bitter cold, only animated55 and accentuated56 his evil odours. He took to drifting slowly past the Aziz household,
releasing the dreadful fumes57 of his body across the small garden and into the house. Flowers died; birds fled from the ledge58 outside old Father Aziz's window.
Naturally, Tai lost work; the English in particular were reluctant to be ferried by a human cesspit. The story went around the lake that Tai's wife, driven to distraction59 by the old man's sudden filthiness60, pleaded for a reason. He had answered: 'Ask our foreign-returned doctor, ask that nakkoo, that German Aziz,'
Was it, then, an attempt to offend the Doctor's hypersensitive nostrils61 (in which the itch2 of danger had subsided62 somewhat under the anaesthetizing ministrations of love)? Or a gesture of unchangingness in defiance63 of the invasion of the doctori-attache from Heidelberg? Once Aziz asked the ancient, straight out, what it was all for; but Tai only breathed on him and rowed away.
The breath nearly felled Aziz; it was sharp as an axe25.
In 1918, Doctor Aziz's father, deprived of his birds, died in his sleep; and at once his mother, who had been able to sell the gemstone business thanks to the success of Aziz's practice, and who now saw her husband's death as a merciful release for her from a life filled with responsibilities, took to her own deathbed and followed her man before the end of his own forty-day mourning period. By the time the Indian regiments64 returned at the end of the war, Doctor Aziz was an orphan66, and a free man - except that his heart had fallen through a hole some seven inches across.
Desolating67 effect of Tai's behaviour: it ruined Doctor Aziz's good relations with the lake's floating population. He, who as a child had chatted freely with fishwives and flower-sellers, found himself looked at askance. 'Ask that nakkoo, that German Aziz.' Tai had branded him as an alien, and therefore a person not completely to be trusted. They didn't like the boatman, but they found the transformation68 which the Doctor had evidently worked upon him even more disturbing. Aziz found himself suspected, even ostracized69, by the poor; and it hurt him badly. Now he understood what Tai was up to: the man was trying to chase him out of the valley.
The story of the perforated sheet got out, too. The lady wrestlers were evidently less discreet70 than they looked. Aziz began to notice people pointing at him. Women giggled71 behind their palms ...
'I've decided72 to give Tai his victory,' he said. The three lady wrestlers, two holding up the sheet, the third hovering73 near the door, strained to hear him through the cotton wool in their ears. ('I made my father do it,' Naseem told him, 'These chatterjees won't do any more of their tittling and tattling from now on.') Naseem's eyes, hole-framed, became wider than ever.
.. .Just like his own when, a few days earlier, he had been walking the city streets, had seen the last bus of the winter arrive, painted with its colourful inscriptions74 - on the front, GOD WILLING in green shadowed in red; on the back, blue-shadowed yellow crying THANK GOD!, and in cheeky maroon75, SORRY-BYE-BYE! - and had recognized, through a web of new rings and lines on her face, Ike Lubin as she descended76 ...
Nowadays, Ghani the landowner left him alone with earplugged guardians77, To talk a little; the doctor-patient relationship can only deepen in strictest confidentiality78. I see that now, Aziz Sahib - forgive my earlier intrusions.'
Nowadays, Naseem's tongue was getting freer all the time. 'What kind of talk is this? What are you - a man or a mouse? To leave home because of a stinky shikara-man!' ...
'Oskar died,' Ilse told him, sipping79 fresh lime water on his mother's takht.
'Like a comedian80. He went to talk to the army and tell them not to be pawns81. The fool really thought the troops would fling down their guns and walk away. We watched from a window and I prayed they wouldn't just trample82 all over him. The regiment65 had learned to march in step by then, you wouldn't recognize them. As he reached the streetcorner across from the parade ground he tripped over his own shoelace and fell into the street. A staff car hit him and he died. He could never keep his laces tied, that ninny' ... here there were diamonds freezing in her lashes83 ... 'He was the type that gives anarchists84 a bad name.'
'All right,' Naseem conceded, 'so you've got a good chance of landing a good job. Agra University, it's a famous place, don't think I don't know. University doctor!... sounds good. Say you're going for that, and it's a different business.' Eyelashes drooped85 in the hole. 'I will miss you, naturally ...'
'I'm in love,' Aadam Aziz said to Ilse Lubin. And later,'... So I've only seen her through a hole in a sheet, one part at a time; and I swear her bottom blushes.'
'They must be putting something in the air up here,' Use said.
'Naseem, I've got the job,' Aadam said excitedly. 'The letter came today. With effect from April 1919. Your father says he can find a buyer for my house and the gemstone shop also.'
'Wonderful,' Naseem pouted86. 'So now I must find a new doctor. Or maybe I'll get that old hag again who didn't know two things about anything.'
'Because I am an orphan,' Doctor Aziz said, 'I must come myself in place of my family members. But I have come nevertheless, Ghani Sahib, for the first time without being sent for. This is not a professional visit.'
'Dear boy!' Ghani, clapping Aadam on the back. 'Of course you must marry her.
With an A-1 fine dowry! No expense spared! It will be the wedding of the year, oh most certainly, yes!'
'I cannot leave you behind when I go,' Aziz said to Naseem. Ghani said, 'Enough of this tamasha! No more need for this sheet tomfoolery! Drop it down, you women, these are young lovers now!'
'At last,' said Aadam Aziz, 'I see you whole at last. But I must go now. My rounds ... and an old friend is staying with me, I must tell her, she will be very happy for us both. A dear friend from Germany.'
'No, Aadam baba,' his bearer said, 'since the morning I have not seen Ilse Begum. She hired that old Tai to go for a shikara ride.'
'What can be said, sir?' Tai mumbled87 meekly88. 'I am honoured indeed to be summoned into the home of a so-great personage as yourself. Sir, the lady hired me for a trip to the Mughal Gardens, to do it before the lake freezes. A quiet lady, Doctor Sahib, not one word out of her all the time. So I was thinking my own unworthy private thoughts as old fools will and suddenly when I look she is not in her seat. Sahib, on my wife's head I swear it, it is not possible to see over the back of the seat, how was I to tell? Believe a poor old boatman who was your friend when you were young ...'
'Aadam baba,' the old bearer interrupted, 'excuse me but just now I have found this paper on her table.'
'I know where she is,' Doctor Aziz stared at Tai. 'I don't know how you keep getting mixed up in my life; but you showed me the place once. You said: certain foreign women come here to drown.'
'I, Sahib?' Tai shocked, malodorous, innocent. 'But grief is making your head play trick! How can I know these things?'
And after the body, bloated, wrapped in weeds, had been dredged up by a group of blank-faced boatmen, Tai visited the shikara halt and told the men there, as they recoiled89 from his breath of a bullock with dysentery, 'He blames me, only imagine! Brings his loose Europeans here and tells me it is my fault when they jump into the lake!... I ask, how did he know just where to look? Yes, ask him that, ask that nakkoo Aziz!'
She had left a note. It read: 'I didn't mean it.'
I make no comment; these events, which have tumbled from my lips any old how, garbled90 by haste and emotion, are for others to judge. Let me be direct now, and say that during the long, hard winter of 1918-19, Tai fell ill, contracting a violent skin disease, akin12 to that European curse called the King's Evil; but he refused to see Doctor Aziz, and was treated by a local homeopath. And in March, when the lake thawed91, a marriage took place in a large marquee in the grounds of Ghani the landowner's house. The wedding contract assured Aadam Aziz of a respectable sum of money, which would help buy a house in Agra, and the dowry included, at Doctor Aziz's especial request, a certain mutilated bedsheet. The young couple sat on a dais, garlanded and cold, while the guests filed past dropping rupees into their laps. That night my grandfather placed the perforated sheet beneath his bride and himself and in the morning it was adorned92 by three drops of blood, which formed a small triangle. In the morning, the sheet was displayed, and after the consummation ceremony a limousine93 hired by the landowner arrived to drive my grandparents to Amritsar, where they would catch the Frontier Mail. Mountains crowded round and stared as my grandfather left his home for the last time. (He would return, once, but not to leave.) Aziz thought he saw an ancient boatman standing94 on land to watch them pass - but it was probably a mistake, since Tai was ill. The blister95 of a temple atop Sankara Acharya, which Muslims had taken to calling the Takht-e-Sulaiman, or Seat of Solomon, paid them no attention. Winter-bare poplars and snow-covered fields of saffron undulated around them as the car drove south, with an old leather bag containing, amongst other things, a stethoscope and a bedsheet, packed in the boot. Doctor Aziz felt, in the pit of his stomach, a sensation akin to weightlessness.
Or falling.
(... And now I am cast as a ghost. I am nine years old and the whole family, my father, my mother, the Brass96 Monkey and myself, are staying at my grandparents'
house in Agra, and the grandchildren -myself among them - are staging the customary New Year's play; and I have been cast as a ghost. Accordingly - and surreptitiously so as to preserve the secrets of the forthcoming theatricals97 - I am ransacking98 the house for a spectral99 disguise. My grandfather is out and about his rounds. I am in his room. And here on top of this cupboard is an old trunk, covered in dust and spiders, but unlocked. And here, inside it, is the answer to my prayers. Not just a sheet, but one with a hole already cut in it! Here it is, inside this leather bag inside this trunk, right beneath an old stethoscope and a tube of mildewed100 Vick's Inhaler ... the sheet's appearance in our show was nothing less than a sensation. My grandfather took one look at it and rose roaring to his feet. He strode up on stage and unghosted me right in front of everyone. My grandmother's lips were so tightly pursed they seemed to disappear.
Between them, the one booming at me in the voice of a forgotten boatman, the other conveying her fury through vanished lips, they reduced the awesome101 ghost to a weeping wreck102. I fled, took to my heels and ran into the little cornfield, not knowing what had happened. I sat there - perhaps on the very spot on which Nadir103 Khan had sat! - for several hours, swearing over and over that I would never again open a forbidden trunk, and feeling vaguely104 resentful that it had not been locked in the first place. But I knew, from their rage, that the sheet was somehow very important indeed.)
I have been interrupted by Padma, who brought me my dinner and then withheld105 it, blackmailing106 me: 'So if you're going to spend all your time wrecking107 your eyes with that scribbling108, at least you must read it to me.' I have been singing for my supper - but perhaps our Padma will be useful, because it's impossible to stop her being a critic. She is particularly angry with my remarks about her name. 'What do you know, city boy?' she cried - hand slicing the air. 'In my village there is no shame in being named for the Dung Goddess. Write at once that you are wrong, completely.' In accordance with my lotus's wishes, I insert, forthwith, a brief paean109 to Dung.
Dung, that fertilizes110 and causes the crops to grow! Dung, which is patted into thin chapati-like cakes when still fresh and moist, and is sold to the village builders, who use it to secure and strengthen the walls of kachcha buildings made of mud! Dung, whose arrival from the nether111 end of cattle goes a long way towards explaining their divine and sacred status! Oh, yes, I was wrong, I admit I was prejudiced, no doubt because its unfortunate odours do have a way of offending my sensitive nose - how wonderful, how ineffably112 lovely it must be to be named for the Purveyor113 of Dung! ... On April 6th, 1919, the holy city of Amritsar smelled (gloriously, Padma, celestially114!) of excrement115. And perhaps the (beauteous!) reek116 did not offend the Nose on my grandfather's face - after all, Kashmir! peasants used it, as described above, for a kind of plaster. Even in Srinagar, hawkers with barrows of round dung-cakes were not an uncommon117 sight. But then the stuff was drying, muted, useful. Amritsar dung was fresh and (worse) redundant118. Nor was it all bovine119. It issued from the rumps of the horses between the shafts120 of the city's many tongas, ikkas and gharries; and mules121 and men and dogs attended nature's calls, mingling122 in a brotherhood123 of shit. But there were cows, too: sacred kine roaming the dusty streets, each patrolling its own territory, staking its claims in excrement. And flies! Public Enemy Number One, buzzing gaily124 from turd to steaming turd, celebrated125 and cross-pollinated these freely-given offerings. The city swarmed126 about, too, mirroring the motion of the flies. Doctor Aziz looked down from his hotel window on to this scene as a Jain in a face-mask walked past, brushing the pavement before him with a twig-broom, to avoid stepping on an ant, or even a fly. Spicy127 sweet fumes rose from a street-snack barrow. 'Hot pakoras, pakoras hot!' A white woman was buying silks from a shop across the street and men in turbans were ogling128 her. Naseem - now Naseem Aziz - had a sharp headache; it was the first time she'd ever repeated an illness, but life outside her quiet valley had come as something of a shock to her. There was a jug129 of fresh lime water by her bed, emptying rapidly. Aziz stood at the window, inhaling130 the city. The spire131 of the Golden Temple gleamed in the sun. But his nose itched33: something was not right here.
Close-up of my grandfather's right hand: nails knuckles132 fingers all somehow bigger than you'd expect. Clumps133 of red hair on the outside edges. Thumb and forefinger134 pressed together, separated only by a thickness of paper. In short: my grandfather was holding a pamphlet. It had been inserted into his hand (we cut to a long-shot - nobody from Bombay should be without a basic film vocabulary) as he entered the hotel foyer. Scurrying135 of urchin136 through revolving137 door, leaflets falling in his wake, as the chaprassi gives chase. Mad revolutions in the doorway138, roundandround; until chaprassi-hand demands a close-up, too, because it is pressing thumb to forefinger, the two separated only by the thickness of urchin-ear. Ejection of juvenile139 disseminator140 of gutter-tracts; but still my grandfather retained the message. Now, looking out of his window, he sees it echoed on a wall opposite; and there, on the minaret141 of a mosque142; and in the large black type of newsprint under a hawker's arm.
Leaflet newspaper mosque and wall are crying: Hartal! Which is to say, literally143 speaking, a day of mourning, of stillness, of silence. But this is India in the heyday144 of the Mahatma, when even language obeys the instructions of Gandhiji, and the word has acquired, under his influence, new resonances145. Hartal -April 7, agree mosque newspaper wall and pamphlet, because Gandhi has decreed that the whole of India shall, on that day, come to a halt. To mourn, in peace, the continuing presence of the British.
'I do not understand this hartal when nobody is dead,' Naseem is crying softly.
'Why will the train not run? How long are we stuck for?'
Doctor Aziz notices a soldierly young man in the street, and thinks- the Indians have fought for the British; so many of them have seen the world by now, and been tainted146 by Abroad. They will not easily go back to the old world. The British are wrong to try and turn back the clock. 'It was a mistake to pass the Rowlatt Act,' he murmurs147.
'What rowlatt?' wails148 Naseem. 'This is nonsense where I'm concerned!'
'Against political agitation,' Aziz explains, and returns to his thoughts. Tai once said: 'Kashmiris are different. Cowards, for instance. Put a gun in a Kashmiri's hand and it will have to go off by itself - he'll never dare to pull the trigger. We are not like Indians, always making battles.' Aziz, with Tai in his head, does not feel Indian. Kashmir, after all, is not strictly149 speaking a part of the Empire, but an independent princely state. He is not sure if the hartal of pamphlet mosque wall newspaper is his fight, even though he is in occupied territory now. He turns from the window ...
... To see Naseem weeping into a pillow. She has been weeping ever since he asked her, on their second night, to move a little. 'Move where?' she asked.
'Move how?' He became awkward and said, 'Only move, I mean, like a woman ...'
She shrieked150 in horror. 'My God,what have I married? I know you Europe-returned men. You find terrible women and then you try to make us girls be like them! Listen, Doctor Sahib, husband or no husband, I am not any ... bad word woman,'
This was a battle my grandfather never won; and it set the tone for their marriage, which rapidly developed into a place of frequent and devastating151 warfare152, under whose depredations153 the young girl behind the sheet and the gauche154 young Doctor turned rapidly into different, stranger beings... 'What now, wife?'
Aziz asks. Naseem buries her face in the pillow. 'What else?' she says in muffled155 tones. 'You, or what? You want me to walk naked in front of strange men.' (He has told her to come out of purdah.)
He says, 'Your shirt covers you from neck to wrist to knee. Your loose pajamas hide you down to and including your ankles. What we have left are your feet and face. Wife, are your face and feet obscene?' But she wails, 'They will see more than that! They will see my deep-deep shame!'
And now an accident, which launches us into the world of Mercurochrome ... Aziz, finding his temper slipping from him, drags all his wife's purdah-veils from her suitcase, flings them into a wastepaper basket made of tin with a painting of Guru Nanak on the side, and sets fire to them. Flames leap up, taking him by surprise, licking at curtains. Aadam rushes to the door and yells for help as the cheap curtains begin to blaze ... and bearers guests washerwomen stream into the room and flap at die burning fabric156 with dusters towels and other people's laundry. Buckets are brought; the fire goes out; and Naseem cowers157 on the bed as about thirty-five Sikhs, Hindus and untouchables throng158 in the smoke-filled room. Finally they leave, and Naseem unleashes159 two sentences before clamping her lips obstinately160 shut.
'You are a mad man. I want more lime water.'
My grandfather opens the windows, turns to his bride. 'The smoke will take time to go; I will take a walk. Are you coming?'
Lips clamped; eyes squeezed; a single violent No from the head; and my grandfather goes into the streets alone. His parting shot: 'Forget about being a good Kashmiri girl. Start thinking about being a modern Indian woman.'
... While in the Cantonment area, at British Army H.Q., one Brigadier R. E. Dyer is waxing his moustache.
It is April 7th, 1919, and in Amritsar the Mahatma's grand design is being distorted. The shops have shut; the railway station is closed; but now rioting mobs are breaking them up. Doctor Aziz, leather bag in hand, is out in the streets, giving help wherever possible. Trampled161 bodies have been left where they fell. He is bandaging wounds, daubing them liberally with Mercurochrome, which makes them look bloodier162 than ever, but at least disinfects them. Finally he returns to his hotel room, his clothes soaked in red stains, and Naseem commences a panic. 'Let me help, let me help, Allah what a man I've married, who goes into gullies to fight with goondas!' She is all over him with water on wads of cotton wool. 'I don't know why can't you be a respectable doctor like ordinary people are just cure important illnesses and all? ?God you've got blood everywhere! Sit, sit now, let me wash you at least!'
'It isn't blood, wife.'
'You think I can't see for myself with my own eyes? Why must you make a fool of me even when you're hurt? Must your wife not look after you, even?'
'It's Mercurochrome, Naseem. Red medicine.'
Naseem - who had become a whirlwind of activity, seizing clothes, running taps - freezes. 'You do it on purpose,' she says, 'to make me look stupid. I am not stupid. I have read several books.'
It is April 13th, and they are still in Amritsar. 'This affair isn't finished,'
Aadam Aziz told Naseem. 'We can't go, you see: they may need doctors again.'
'So we must sit here and wait until the end of the world?'
He rubbed his nose. 'No, not so long, I am afraid.'
That afternoon, the streets are suddenly full of people, all moving in the same direction, defying Dyer's new Martial163 Law regulations. Aadam tells Naseem, 'There must be a meeting planned - there will be trouble from the military. They have banned meetings.'
'Why do you have to go? Why not wait to be called?'
... A compound can be anything from a wasteland to a park. The largest compound in Amritsar is called Jallianwala Bagh. It is not grassy164. Stones cans glass and other things are everywhere. To get into it, you must walk down a very narrow alleyway between two buildings. On April 13th, many thousands of Indians are crowding through this alleyway. 'It is peaceful protest,' someone tells Doctor Aziz. Swept along by the crowds, he arrives at the mouth of the alley13. A bag from Heidelberg is in his right hand. (No close-up is necessary.) He is, I know, feeling very scared, because his nose is itching worse than it ever has; but he is a trained doctor, he puts it out of his mind, he enters the compound.
Somebody is making a passionate165 speech. Hawkers move through the crowd selling channa and sweetmeats. The air is filled with dust. There do not seem to be any goondas, any trouble- makers166, as far as my grandfather can see. A group of Sikhs has spread a cloth on the ground and is eating, seated around it. There is still a smell of ordure in the air. Aziz penetrates167 the heart of the crowd, as Brigadier R. ? Dyer arrives at the entrance to the alleyway, followed by fifty crack troops. He is the Martial Law Commander of Amritsar - an important man, after all; the waxed tips of his moustache are rigid168 with importance. As the fifty-one men march down the alleyway a tickle169 replaces the itch in my grandfather's nose. The fifty-one men enter the compound and take up positions, twenty-five to Dyer's right and twenty-five to his left; and Aadam Aziz ceases to concentrate on the events around him as the tickle mounts to unbearable170 intensities171. As Brigadier Dyer issues a command the sneeze hits my grandfather full in the face. 'Yaaaakh-th铑铑!' he sneezes and falls forward, losing his balance, following his nose and thereby172 saving his life. His 'doctori-attache'
flies open; bottles, liniment and syringes scatter173 in the dust. He is scrabbling furiously at people's feet, trying to save his equipment before it is crushed.
There is a noise like teeth chattering174 in winter and someone falls on him. Red stuffstains his shirt. There are screams now and sobs175 and the strange chattering continues. More and more people seem to have stumbled and fallen on top of my grandfather. He becomes afraid for his back. The clasp of his bag is digging into his chest, inflicting176 upon it a bruise177 so severe and mysterious that it will not fade until after his death, years later, on the hill of Sankara Acharya or Takht-e-Sulaiman. His nose is jammed against a bottle of red pills. The chattering stops and is replaced by the noises of people and birds. There seems to be no traffic noise whatsoever178. Brigadier Dyer's fifty men put down their machine-guns and go away. They have fired a total of one thousand six hundred and fifty rounds into the unarmed crowd. Of these, one thousand five hundred and sixteen have found their mark, killing179 or wounding some person. 'Good shooting,'
Dyer tells his men, 'We have done a jolly good thing.'
When my grandfather got home that night, my grandmother was trying hard to be a modern woman, to please him, and so she did not turn a hair at his appearance.
'I see you've been spilling the Mercurochrome again, clumsy,' she said, appeasingly.
'It's blood,' he replied, and she fainted. When he brought her round with the help of a little sal volatile180, she said, 'Are you hurt?'
'No,' he said.
'But where have you been, my God?'
'Nowhere on earth,' he said, and began to shake in her arms.
My own hand, I confess, has begun to wobble; not entirely181 because of its theme, but because I have noticed a thin crack, like a hair, appearing in my wrist, beneath the skin ... No matter. We all owe death a life. So let me conclude with the uncorroborated rumour182 that the boatman Tai, who recovered from his scrofulous infection soon after my grandfather left Kashmir, did not die until 1947, when (the story goes) he was infuriated by India and Pakistan's struggle over his valley, and walked to Chhamb with the express purpose of standing between the opposing forces and giving them a piece of his mind. Kashmiri for the Kashmiris: that was his line. Naturally, they shot him. Oskar Lubin would probably have approved of his rhetorical gesture; R. E. Dyer might have commended his murderers' rifle skills. I must go to bed. Padma is waiting; and I need a little warmth.
收听单词发音 |
1
consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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itch
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| n.痒，渴望，疥癣；vi.发痒，渴望 | |
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hunched
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| （常指因寒冷、生病或愁苦）耸肩弓身的，伏首前倾的 | |
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exasperation
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| n.愤慨 | |
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smacks
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| 掌掴（声）( smack的名词复数 )； 海洛因； （打的）一拳； 打巴掌 | |
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conclusive
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| adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的 | |
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vat
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| n.(=value added tax)增值税，大桶 | |
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appellation
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| n.名称，称呼 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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vouchsafed
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| v.给予，赐予( vouchsafe的过去式和过去分词 )；允诺 | |
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calf
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| n.小牛，犊，幼仔，小牛皮 | |
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killer
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| n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者 | |
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upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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proliferate
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| vi.激增，(迅速)繁殖，增生 | |
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flake
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| v.使成薄片；雪片般落下；n.薄片 | |
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calcium
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| n.钙(化学符号Ca) | |
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22
inefficiency
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| n.无效率，无能；无效率事例 | |
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ticklish
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| adj.怕痒的；问题棘手的；adv.怕痒地；n.怕痒，小心处理 | |
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itching
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| adj.贪得的，痒的，渴望的v.发痒( itch的现在分词 ) | |
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axe
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| n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减 | |
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flutes
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| 长笛( flute的名词复数 )； 细长香槟杯（形似长笛） | |
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27
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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28
collage
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| n.拼贴画；v.拼贴；把……创作成拼贴画 | |
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29
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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30
soothe
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| v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承 | |
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31
grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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32
twitched
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| vt.& vi.（使）抽动，（使）颤动（twitch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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itched
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| v.发痒( itch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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disorders
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| n.混乱( disorder的名词复数 )；凌乱；骚乱；（身心、机能）失调 | |
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35
thigh
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| n.大腿；股骨 | |
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36
pajamas
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| n.睡衣裤 | |
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37
celestial
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| adj.天体的；天上的 | |
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38
swells
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| 增强( swell的第三人称单数 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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39
wondrously
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| adv.惊奇地，非常，极其 | |
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40
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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41
compliant
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| adj.服从的，顺从的 | |
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42
contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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43
envisaged
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| 想像，设想( envisage的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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44
tingling
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| v.有刺痛感( tingle的现在分词 ) | |
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45
scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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46
illicit
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| adj.非法的，禁止的，不正当的 | |
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47
stifle
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| vt.使窒息；闷死；扼杀；抑止，阻止 | |
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48
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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49
flecks
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| n.斑点，小点( fleck的名词复数 )；癍 | |
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50
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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51
specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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52
drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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53
stink
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| vi.发出恶臭；糟透，招人厌恶；n.恶臭 | |
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54
concession
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| n.让步，妥协；特许(权) | |
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55
animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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56
accentuated
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| v.重读( accentuate的过去式和过去分词 )；使突出；使恶化；加重音符号于 | |
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57
fumes
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| n.(强烈而刺激的)气味，气体 | |
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58
ledge
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| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
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59
distraction
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| n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐 | |
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60
filthiness
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61
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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62
subsided
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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63
defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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64
regiments
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| （军队的）团( regiment的名词复数 )； 大量的人或物 | |
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65
regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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66
orphan
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| n.孤儿；adj.无父母的 | |
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67
desolating
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| 毁坏( desolate的现在分词 )； 极大地破坏； 使沮丧； 使痛苦 | |
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68
transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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69
ostracized
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| v.放逐( ostracize的过去式和过去分词 )；流放；摈弃；排斥 | |
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70
discreet
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| adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的 | |
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71
giggled
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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72
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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73
hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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74
inscriptions
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| （作者）题词( inscription的名词复数 )； 献词； 碑文； 证劵持有人的登记 | |
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75
maroon
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| v.困住，使（人）处于孤独无助之境；n.逃亡黑奴；孤立的人；酱紫色，褐红色；adj.酱紫色的，褐红色的 | |
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76
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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77
guardians
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| 监护人( guardian的名词复数 )； 保护者，维护者 | |
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78
confidentiality
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| n.秘而不宣，保密 | |
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79
sipping
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的现在分词 ) | |
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80
comedian
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| n.喜剧演员；滑稽演员 | |
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81
pawns
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| n.（国际象棋中的）兵( pawn的名词复数 )；卒；被人利用的人；小卒v.典当，抵押( pawn的第三人称单数 )；以（某事物）担保 | |
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82
trample
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| vt.踩，践踏；无视，伤害，侵犯 | |
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83
lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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84
anarchists
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| 无政府主义者( anarchist的名词复数 ) | |
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85
drooped
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| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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86
pouted
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| v.撅（嘴）( pout的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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87
mumbled
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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88
meekly
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| adv.温顺地，逆来顺受地 | |
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89
recoiled
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| v.畏缩( recoil的过去式和过去分词 )；退缩；报应；返回 | |
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garbled
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| adj.（指信息）混乱的，引起误解的v.对（事实）歪曲，对（文章等）断章取义，窜改( garble的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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91
thawed
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| 解冻 | |
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adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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limousine
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| n.豪华轿车 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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blister
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| n.水疱；(油漆等的)气泡；v.(使)起泡 | |
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96
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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theatricals
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| n.（业余性的）戏剧演出，舞台表演艺术；职业演员；戏剧的( theatrical的名词复数 )；剧场的；炫耀的；戏剧性的 | |
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98
ransacking
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| v.彻底搜查( ransack的现在分词 )；抢劫，掠夺 | |
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99
spectral
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| adj.幽灵的，鬼魂的 | |
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100
mildewed
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| adj.发了霉的，陈腐的，长了霉花的v.（使）发霉，（使）长霉( mildew的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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101
awesome
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| adj.令人惊叹的，难得吓人的，很好的 | |
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102
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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103
nadir
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| n.最低点，无底 | |
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104
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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105
withheld
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| withhold过去式及过去分词 | |
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106
blackmailing
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| 胁迫，尤指以透露他人不体面行为相威胁以勒索钱财( blackmail的现在分词 ) | |
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107
wrecking
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| 破坏 | |
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108
scribbling
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| n.乱涂[写]胡[乱]写的文章[作品]v.潦草的书写( scribble的现在分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下 | |
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109
paean
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| n.赞美歌，欢乐歌 | |
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110
fertilizes
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| n.施肥( fertilize的名词复数 )v.施肥( fertilize的第三人称单数 ) | |
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111
nether
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| adj.下部的，下面的；n.阴间；下层社会 | |
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112
ineffably
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| adv.难以言喻地，因神圣而不容称呼地 | |
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113
purveyor
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| n.承办商，伙食承办商 | |
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114
celestially
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| adv.神地，神圣地 | |
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115
excrement
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| n.排泄物，粪便 | |
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116
reek
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| v.发出臭气；n.恶臭 | |
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117
uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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118
redundant
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| adj.多余的，过剩的；(食物)丰富的；被解雇的 | |
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119
bovine
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| adj.牛的；n.牛 | |
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120
shafts
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| n.轴( shaft的名词复数 )；（箭、高尔夫球棒等的）杆；通风井；一阵（疼痛、害怕等） | |
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121
mules
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| 骡( mule的名词复数 )； 拖鞋； 顽固的人； 越境运毒者 | |
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122
mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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123
brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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124
gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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125
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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126
swarmed
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| 密集( swarm的过去式和过去分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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127
spicy
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| adj.加香料的；辛辣的，有风味的 | |
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128
ogling
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| v.（向…）抛媚眼，送秋波( ogle的现在分词 ) | |
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129
jug
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| n.(有柄，小口，可盛水等的)大壶，罐，盂 | |
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130
inhaling
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| v.吸入( inhale的现在分词 ) | |
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131
spire
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| n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点 | |
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132
knuckles
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| n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝 | |
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133
clumps
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| n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声 | |
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134
forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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135
scurrying
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| v.急匆匆地走( scurry的现在分词 ) | |
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136
urchin
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| n.顽童；海胆 | |
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137
revolving
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| adj.旋转的，轮转式的；循环的v.（使）旋转( revolve的现在分词 )；细想 | |
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138
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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139
juvenile
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| n.青少年，少年读物；adj.青少年的，幼稚的 | |
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140
disseminator
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| 传播者，撒种者 | |
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141
minaret
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| n.（回教寺院的）尖塔 | |
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142
mosque
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| n.清真寺 | |
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143
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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144
heyday
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| n.全盛时期，青春期 | |
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145
resonances
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| n.共鸣( resonance的名词复数 )；（声音） 洪亮；（文章、乐曲等） 激发联想的力量；（情感）同感 | |
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146
tainted
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| adj.腐坏的；污染的；沾污的；感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 )；使污染；败坏；被污染，腐坏，败坏 | |
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147
murmurs
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| n.低沉、连续而不清的声音( murmur的名词复数 )；低语声；怨言；嘀咕 | |
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148
wails
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| 痛哭，哭声( wail的名词复数 ) | |
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149
strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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150
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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151
devastating
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| adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的 | |
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152
warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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153
depredations
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| n.劫掠，毁坏( depredation的名词复数 ) | |
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154
gauche
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| adj.笨拙的，粗鲁的 | |
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155
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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156
fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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157
cowers
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| v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的第三人称单数 ) | |
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158
throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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159
unleashes
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| v.把（感情、力量等）释放出来，发泄( unleash的第三人称单数 ) | |
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160
obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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161
trampled
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| 踩( trample的过去式和过去分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
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162
bloodier
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| adj.血污的( bloody的比较级 )；流血的；屠杀的；残忍的 | |
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163
martial
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| adj.战争的，军事的，尚武的，威武的 | |
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164
grassy
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| adj.盖满草的；长满草的 | |
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165
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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166
makers
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| n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式） | |
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167
penetrates
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| v.穿过( penetrate的第三人称单数 )；刺入；了解；渗透 | |
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168
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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169
tickle
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| v.搔痒，胳肢；使高兴；发痒；n.搔痒，发痒 | |
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170
unbearable
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| adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的 | |
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171
intensities
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| n.强烈( intensity的名词复数 )；（感情的）强烈程度；强度；烈度 | |
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172
thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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173
scatter
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| vt.撒，驱散，散开；散布/播；vi.分散，消散 | |
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174
chattering
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| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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175
sobs
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| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
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176
inflicting
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的现在分词 ) | |
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177
bruise
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| n.青肿，挫伤；伤痕；vt.打青；挫伤 | |
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178
whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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179
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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180
volatile
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| adj.反复无常的，挥发性的，稍纵即逝的，脾气火爆的；n.挥发性物质 | |
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181
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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182
rumour
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| n.谣言，谣传，传闻 | |
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