Kololo Hill Page 6

  He’d been there from the very beginning. She’d stepped off the steamer at the port in Mombasa, still dazed from her trip on the ocean, long weeks at sea from India to the Kenyan coast, a year apart from her husband while he’d got things settled.

  Motichand took her suitcase by way of greeting. She’d known her husband for such a short time before he’d left India that she had little way of telling whether he’d changed much. He was chubbier than she remembered, his face full of curves, his shirt straining at his belly.

  The memory of the ship, rocking in the water, had not yet left Jaya’s body. Despite the sand beneath her feet, creeping in between her chumpul, she continued to sway. The air, sea salt and sweat stuck to her skin. Motichand led her through narrow streets, past compact white buildings where women watched them from dark wooden balconies; shopkeepers shouted as they sold their wares below; street hawkers sold roasted corn and cashew nuts scattered with chilli powder, and Motichand stopped to buy some. Her husband seemed quite at home speaking Swahili, already fluent in this new language she’d never heard, with its concise yet melodic tones.

  Motichand bought tickets at the station and they boarded the train. Jaya wriggled in the leather seat, sari clinging to her skin, the air stuffy. He pointed things out on the journey: the hilltops layered in thick forest, the green fields of sugar cane shot through with red earth. Farmers, schoolchildren and stall traders went about their daily business. As in Gujarat, where the mix of people ranged from fair-skinned children with copper hair and grey eyes to dark-skinned men with wavy hair, the people of Uganda were equally diverse: from deep-brown skin that gleamed in the sun to russet-toned faces with high cheekbones. As they passed people tilling the land and strolling along the roadsides in patterned cottons, Motichand told her about the dukan he now ran.

  ‘And in the marketplace, you can buy anything you want,’ he said. ‘It is so fine. Mircha, buteta, tumeta.’

  ‘Chiku?’ asked Jaya. Chiku was her favourite fruit, dense and sugary.

  ‘Well, no, not chiku. But anything else you want. They will have that.’ Motichand turned to the window and mopped his moustache with his handkerchief.

  Outside the train station in Kampala, the roads were three times as wide as those in her village. They stopped briefly at Motichand’s dukan, which did indeed seem to have anything you could ever need and many things you’d never want, but she couldn’t take it all in. How far away her father was, her brothers, her home. Everything was different, strange, the buildings, the air. Her husband.

  The house was centred around an open yard. The single-storey building was painted pale green like the inside of a pea pod. Running along three sides of the yard were a kitchen, a walk-in storeroom, a sitting room with two wooden armchairs, three bedrooms and a small enclosed space with a tap for morning ablutions. It was a larger house than the one that she’d lived in for the past year back in Gujarat, crammed in with Motichand’s brothers and mother. This home was bigger than any she’d ever seen. All that space for two people.

  ‘And this is December,’ announced Motichand proudly, waving his hand towards the man in the corner of the courtyard, as though he was another feature of the house, like a brand-new radio or a stove. ‘Everyone has house boys here.’

  December was tall and slim, with a head of thick hair like unspun cotton. He was already too old to be considered a boy by a good few years, closer to her own age in fact, but Motichand had explained on the train that the name ‘house boy’ was the label for all male servants here. December glanced over at Jaya. His rigid brows made him look as though he was annoyed but then he flashed a brief smile, his eyes narrowing into crescents. Jaya pulled her chundri tighter around her face and turned her head away, as she’d been taught to do with all men for the sake of propriety. But she regretted it immediately. It must have made her look stuck-up.

  Jaya unpacked a few items in the bedroom she’d share with Motichand, a simple square with two large beds. Separate beds. She didn’t linger, going back outside onto the veranda.

  ‘Here, I have translated the main things you’ll need, so you can get December to help you with anything you want.’ Motichand thrust a scrap of paper into her hand.

  Jaya looked at the paper, a mess of scribbled words written in Gujarati with notes for the Swahili translation.

  ‘I am going back to the dukan now,’ said Motichand.

  ‘You are leaving?’ Jaya looked up.

  Motichand called out something in Swahili to December, who was sweeping the veranda. He waved his hand in response.

  ‘Do not worry. He used to look after an English widow for a while, she lived on her own, nothing to worry about. He is most helpful. Most reliable. Back soon,’ Motichand called out, leaving a spare set of keys on a hook and slamming the door behind him.

  Panic ran along her spine. He’d left her there with a stranger roaming the house. A Ugandan man. Could she trust him? In Gujarat, she’d never been alone with a male who wasn’t a relative; no respectable woman would be left alone with a man she wasn’t married or related to. What would her father say if he heard about it? What would the other Asians who lived nearby think of her and Motichand? But if there was one thing she’d learnt about her husband in the few weeks she’d spent with him in India, it was that he was oblivious when it suited him.

  She turned towards December, who was crouching on the far side of the veranda, sweeping. He looked up: an awkward smile, shy even.

  The day passed in a muddle. Either Motichand’s translations or her pronunciation were wrong. When she asked for a saucepan to make chai, December poured water from the copper pot into a saucepan and made the tea himself. When she asked for matches to light the outdoor fire for dinner, he lit the fire himself and beckoned her over when it was ready.

  She wanted to shout at him, to make him stop. She couldn’t get used to someone else serving her. Certainly not a man. ‘Revah deh,’ she said to him, the Gujarati words sounding strange in this new setting, and of course December looked at her in confusion. He got up and poured another cup of water, raising his eyebrows in the hope that he’d got it right.

  Jaya drank the water, even though she wasn’t thirsty.

  *

  Each day, December brought home food from the market, using the money Motichand gave him. Some measly tumeta, a paler red than she was used to, along with a few stringy pieces of chicken and a gunny sack of millet that he’d cradled in the crook of his neck all the way home. She looked at the food but lacked the words to ask December why the money provided so little. Now she realized she lacked the words to ask Motichand either; her mother had made it clear: you couldn’t involve men in household matters, nor question them when things went wrong.

  She longed to speak to someone she knew, to ask their advice. At least when she was in Gujarat, Jaya had been able to see her own family once or twice, even though she’d moved to another village after her marriage. It was the tiny details about each of them she missed the most. Her youngest brother gleefully pulling their Kaki’s little pigtail and running away; the string of soft sighs her father made when he fell asleep, as though the very act of sleep itself was exhausting. She even missed the people that were on the periphery of her life in the village. The people she’d never worried about leaving, people she’d assumed would always be there, their lives intertwined forever.

  *

  In the evenings after dinner, Jaya joined Motichand in the sitting room. He knocked back a glass or two of whisky while they listened to the BBC World Service. Even though she couldn’t understand the announcers, Jaya found the muted, crackling English words a comfort, a voice to cut through the loneliness. She asked Motichand about December’s life, where he came from, whether he had a family to support, but her husband had never bothered to ask. Meanwhile, Motichand’s occasional visits to her bed at the end of the evening were as awkward and bumbling as their wedding night had been, but thankfully infrequent.

  Motichand’s brothers were supposed to follo
w him across the black water, the kara pani, as it was known, because the people in their villages said the sea would pollute and wash away your caste. They were supposed to help grow the business, but their letters were full of vague promises to join him, arriving months after they were written, only adding to the confusion. Looking back, Jaya wondered if they knew what she’d later learnt for herself: Motichand couldn’t be trusted with money – it seemed to flutter in and out of his hands like a bird.

  Most days, Jaya was stuck at home until Motichand finally returned. The cricket call was often the only thing to keep her company as dusk fell. Wanting to take more control of the household and converse in Swahili, she encouraged Motichand to teach her words whenever he was around. Sometimes, when they went to the newly built temple, Mrs Goswami would teach her a few words, though Jaya learnt to ignore her sly digs about a husband who left his wife alone with a Ugandan man all day. Jaya picked up the names of different foods – mchungwa, ndizi – and found out how many shillings they cost. Her Gujarati was infused with the softness and timidity expected of a woman, an echo of the women she’d left behind in India, but in Swahili she was emphatic and assertive, her vowels rounder, diction stronger, rhythm bolder. She became someone else.

  *

  ‘What does your name mean?’ Jaya asked December. They were in the yard, turning over the chillies they’d left to dry out on her tattered old saris. As the day had gone on, the bright scarlet chillies had shrivelled and darkened, as though they had soaked up the terracotta colour of the earth beneath.

  December looked up at her in surprise; their conversations tended to focus on housework. His eyes were streaming; the heat of the sun brought out the fire of the chillies. They scorched the air, burning Jaya’s throat.

  ‘December. It’s the name of a month, in English.’

  ‘And it is a common name for people in your village?’ Jaya had assumed it was a traditional tribal name, similar to the way that Indian names were given, according to caste and religion. Yet perhaps it was usual to take the names of the English?

  December laughed and wiped his eyes with the back of his arm. ‘It’s not my name, not really. One of the families I used to work for before was English. The little girl said December was her favourite month and they struggled to pronounce my name. Adenya.’

  ‘A-den-ya.’ Jaya thought it much easier to pronounce than December. ‘Well, we will call you Adenya from now on.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Call me December, it’s my name at work. Adenya is my family name.’

  *

  ‘Kupata maiji,’ she called out to December one morning. He paused and smiled at her; she’d probably pronounced something wrong again. He nodded and went to fetch the bucket of water anyway. Despite the many months in Uganda and all her efforts, she still struggled with some basic words.

  Jaya turned to go into the kitchen. A sharp pain. She reached out, her body doubling over as she fell. December ran to her, bucket of water spilling across the yard, the trace of tobacco and washing soap as he picked her up. The shame of a man that wasn’t her husband touching her was overtaken by the pain searing through her stomach. She glanced over his shoulder. Two tiny moons, darker than the red earth, on the ground where she’d been standing.

  December laid her on her bed. He shouted something she didn’t understand in Swahili, eyes frantic, words fraught with alarm. A word she understood. Doctor.

  ‘No,’ she managed to say. ‘Please. Let me rest. Nothing’s wrong.’

  ‘You need help.’ His voice was firm. ‘Now.’

  ‘No. I told you.’ Who did he think he was? He had to listen to her. Nothing was wrong. It couldn’t be wrong. She strained to say the words. ‘If you leave, don’t come back to work tomorrow.’

  He shook his head. ‘I have to go.’ He started moving away from the bed.

  ‘No!’

  December ran out of the room.

  Dampness across her legs, seeping into her sari, bright blood spreading along the length of the lilac cotton, like the streak of vermilion sindoor in the parting of her hair. She fell into darkness.

  *

  When Jaya awoke, the curtains were drawn and the fierce smell of the kerosene lamp filled the room.

  ‘Eh bhagvan! I was so worried, Jaya.’ Motichand got up from the chair in the corner of the room. As he came closer, darkness crept into the crevices of his face, filling every sag and droop, turning him into an old man in moments. ‘I spoke to the doctor. He says you’ll be fine. He said that if December hadn’t been here and gone straight to him instead of me . . . They don’t know what might have happened.’ He shook his head, his voice wavering. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Jaya’s mouth was too dry to speak so Motichand filled the silence.

  ‘Don’t worry, the doctor says we may have more . . . chances.’ He rested his hand on her arm for a moment, then took it away. ‘You shouldn’t do so much. Let December help you more.’

  Jaya nodded her head. He still had no idea how much December did around the house. She felt a pang of guilt as she remembered what she’d said, threatening to fire him for trying to help her.

  ‘There is some water here. You rest now.’ Motichand stood up. ‘The doctor said I could pay him next week,’ he said, more to himself than to Jaya.

  She must have fallen asleep soon after Motichand left. When Jaya opened her eyes again, the muffled morning light came through the curtains. Her body ached, her stomach and legs were so heavy it was as though something was holding her down. She hadn’t been able to stop it happening: yet another thing she had no control over. Tears crept into her eyes, a new longing filled her, but this time it wasn’t for her old life in Gujarat.

  Her grief was the only proof that the baby had ever existed.

  She brushed her tears away as Motichand came into the room, smiling. He left some water and a paratha by her bed, then took out the money he kept hooked under the bedside table to pay December.

  Jaya eased herself up. A crackle of pain shot across her stomach, but she called out to Motichand as he opened the door to leave, ‘Wait, I wanted to ask you something.’

  Motichand turned around.

  She whispered to him, ‘Why don’t I save you the effort? I can deal with December’s money from now on.’

  ‘It’s fine, Jaya. You must rest, go back to bed now.’

  She put her hand on Motichand’s arm. ‘No, really. I can help make sure we’re spending the money on the right things for the house, buy some decent food.’

  ‘The food is first class, Jaya. First class. Now please, rest.’

  Jaya took Motichand’s hand and unwrapped the thin wad of money from his sweaty fingers. Three notes. So little?

  ‘I’m waiting for a few accounts to be settled, you see.’ Motichand’s eyes stayed on the money. ‘Harilal is a little behind, but he’ll pay next week. I’ll buy you anything you want then.’

  So that was why December had looked at her like that each time he came back from the market. It was her husband’s guilt that she’d seen in the house boy’s eyes, not his own.

  After Motichand left, she went over to the window and looked out into the yard. December was sweeping the veranda. She looked over to where she had been standing the day before, but the spots of blood were no longer there, fresh earth swept over them. In the far corner, her clean lilac sari fluttered on the clothes line in the morning breeze.

  For days after, he left food out for her, making sure she ate while Motichand busied himself at the dukan until nightfall. When she was well enough to sit up, he waited outside the door, pretending to sweep or tidy, keeping her company for a while. Keeping her dark thoughts at bay.

  Jaya had never forgotten what he’d done. If he’d listened to her and done nothing, she might not have survived. Even if she had, she wouldn’t have been able to have Pran and Vijay. What kind of life would that have been? Without a family of her own? How could she forget that? Of course, she couldn’t talk about such things with Pran, it was
impossible to discuss these things with any man, even her own family.

  7

  Vijay

  Vijay looked into Pran’s bloodshot eyes.

  ‘Go on, pass me another,’ said Pran.

  ‘You’re really trying to catch up with Papa over there?’ said Vijay. Motichand was snoring in his favourite chair, legs splayed, arms hanging down either side, mouth open so wide he could catch grasshoppers.

  ‘Come on.’ Pran beckoned for the whisky in Vijay’s hand.

  Vijay poured two glasses, far more generous than any bartender in town. If they couldn’t go out like they used to, why shouldn’t they make the most of it now? He got up and flicked off the light, casting the room into darkness. Outside in the yard, fruit bats flitted in the gloom.

  ‘So, is Asha still angry with you?’ asked Vijay. The seat fabric was warm beneath his skin as he sat back down. ‘With us?’ He couldn’t ignore it, that way she looked at them both now, occasionally accompanied by a beautifully arched eyebrow.

  Pran slumped further into his chair, resting his head on the seat back. ‘She’ll be fine.’

  Vijay laughed. ‘Yes, that’s definitely what fine looks like.’

  ‘I’ve explained everything. She just needs more time to cool off.’

  ‘Cool off? The only place cold enough is the North Pole.’ Vijay gulped the whisky too fast; it seared the back of his throat. ‘You just got married and you’re already in her bad books.’

  Pran laughed. ‘Such an expert, hey? Maybe you should have married her.’

  Vijay shifted in his seat, hoping his face didn’t betray how he felt.

  ‘I told her I didn’t mean to hurt her,’ said his brother.

  ‘But you have hurt her, haven’t you? We both have.’

  ‘It’s too late to feel guilty now. You played your part. It’s not like I forced you.’

  Vijay glanced at Motichand. He was still sleeping, but he jolted, as though some invisible hand had tried to shake him, then settled again. Vijay turned back towards Pran. ‘I know, but—’