China Room by Sunjeev Sahota

Author:Sunjeev Sahota [Sahota, Sunjeev]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

17

By then, in the high summer of 1929, there was talk throughout the state that revolutionaries were going from village to village, farm to farm, taking by force valuables that weren’t offered willingly. Some said to give to those made destitute by British foreign policy. Others to fund the purchase of ammunition for the Free India movement. Either way, Mai decided she’d better make her annual pilgrimage to Amritsar while she could, before men on camels blocked the roads and things got too dicey to travel. She would take Jeet and be away for six days.

On each of these nights Mehar steals away to the fields, where the wheat is now tall, where Suraj waits. It is his idea that they leave the farm and meet underneath the stars.

One night, she brings the pearls and holds them high against the black sky, as if placing a garland around the moon. How small it all is, she thinks. What a brocade we make of life.

‘Why fetch them?’ Suraj asks.

‘I don’t know. Maybe I’ve got used to them. You got them for me.’

He releases her from his hold and rolls on to his back. ‘Mumbo-jumbo rubbish. Put them away.’

She lies there quietly, defying him, watching the patterns above. Then she shakes her salwar and slides it back on.

‘Don’t go,’ he says.

‘Oh, I think I will.’ It is their third night in a row like this and she knows she can get away with saying all sorts of things now. Knows also that she enjoys some control over her husband.

‘Once more?’ he says.

She laughs. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow,’ he repeats, sighing.

‘We’re lucky we can be together.’ She wants to say something more. She wants to share something of her own world with him, to draw him closer into her ordinary concerns. ‘Not everyone is blessed. My poor sister – she is so upset.’

‘Upset?’ he says, turning his face away.

‘It’s Gurleen.’ She wonders whether to carry on – might he think her trivial, in some way? – and then she does: ‘Your brother hasn’t wanted her company for many days now. Perhaps he’s going elsewhere. To the city.’

Suraj nods. The dark. The bats snapping through the dark. The whole wide and dark world.

‘She may well speak to Mai as soon as she’s back.’

Let that day not come, he thinks. Asks: ‘And when is she back?’

He says ‘she’ with such heavy distaste it makes Mehar smile. He can be such an old woman sometimes. ‘Two-three days? Is it six temples she’s visiting?’

‘God knows.’

‘I guess He’ll be hearing her prayers for grandsons.’ Then: ‘I hope children come but not too soon. Don’t you?’

He doesn’t know. Doesn’t want to speak or think about anything any more. Wants only to enjoy these next few days with her and then he’ll confess. Somehow, somehow.

‘Which of your brothers is hers?’ She feels able to ask this extraordinary question now. He won’t mind. He knows the question conceals nothing sinister about her wifely character. But mind he does:

‘What business is it of yours to

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