The Punkhawala and the Prostitute by Wesley Leon Aroozoo

Author:Wesley Leon Aroozoo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Epigram Books

Renuka, when I was young, I would spend hours at the pond in the forest outside my village. I would stare into the stillness of the water waiting for the karimeen to come up with their little mouths gasping, as though desperate for air. It wasn’t just the beauty of the green shimmer and the pearl-like spots on the fishes’ bodies that fascinated me. It wasn’t even how hypnotic the gentle swaying of their bodies looked as they glided in the water. It was something else about the fish that enraptured me, but back then, I did not know what.

I stood perfectly still so they wouldn’t know I was there watching them. I counted the seconds before one of them surfaced.

Twenty-one. Twenty-two.

I waited for them.

Twenty-three.

Maybe this was how I became so good at being a shadow. Now, I could go in and out of places and watch people without their even noticing I was there.

Twenty-six. Twenty-seven.

Renuka, even you never knew that I watched you as you fell at the market the day that we met. That I watched you while you were changing your clothes. The trick is to hold your breath and not think about breathing. I hold my breath and it is like I am barely breathing.

A flat and slender karimeen comes up for air. All it takes is a well-timed swoop with my bare hands. Then it is squirming and flinching, panicking, opening its mouth for air, gasping for my help.

“Hello?”

I look up again. This time her voice was so clear. Renuka, at first I thought it was your voice. But in the week since she left me her stained cigarette, I have come to realise that it is hers and not yours that I hear. In the forest when the tiger came out. In the middle of the night when I was pulling the punkha, and I heard a voice coming from the tree in the garden below. That was hers. Am I hearing her call for me because I did not help her? Renuka, I am not sure if I helped her. I can’t remember.

All I had meant to do today was attend my monthly roll call at the prison then go back home to pull the punkha. That was until I saw her walking on the street in front of me. She still looked so lost. Like she had nowhere to go. When she suddenly ducked into an alley full of two-storey shophouses, I was following her before I knew it. But I kept a distance. Renuka, you must believe me. I only wanted to approach her to tell her to stop calling out for me, for I don’t know what to do or where to start.

At the end of the alley, she stopped. Someone else was there—a smartly dressed man who was having his hair trimmed on the street by a barber. I hid behind some crates when they began arguing. Back and forth, they exchanged heated words. I did not know the man but he looked like he could hurt her.

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