Moth Smoke

  Which reminds me, I haven’t paid him this month.

  A car honks outside, and after emptying the ashtray into the bin, Manucci goes to see who it is. I wipe the sweat from my face, dry my hand on my jeans, and run my fingers through my hair. The front door opens and Mumtaz steps in, wearing track pants, expensive-looking running shoes, a T-shirt, and big shades. She’s followed by a very curious Manucci, grinning sheepishly.

  It’s been three weeks since the party, and I’ve thought of her every day. But I haven’t wanted to meet Ozi, and I couldn’t come up with a reasonable excuse for me to get in touch.

  ‘Hi,’ she says. ‘I thought I’d drop by and say hello.’

  I stand up, flash my most charming smile, and almost step forward to give her a kiss, but think better of it, because my breath probably smells. ‘I’m glad you’ve come,’ I say, motioning for her to sit. ‘Can I offer you some lunch?’

  ‘No thanks,’ she says, sitting down and lighting a cigarette. ‘I’m on my way to the gym. But I’d love a glass of water.’

  ‘Bring one for me as well,’ I tell Manucci.

  Mumtaz takes off her shades and hangs them from the neck of her T-shirt, between her breasts. She has broad shoulders, not thick but wide, and she lounges in her exercise clothes with the relaxed physical confidence of an athlete. ‘It’s hot in here,’ she says. ‘Load-shedding?’

  I almost say yes, almost lie instead of saying that I’m out of cash and have no electricity and owe money to half the city. But I decide not to. I’m a bad liar. I don’t have the memory for it. And I feel like telling her the truth.

  ‘I’m broke,’ I say. ‘The power’s been disconnected.’

  She smiles at me for a moment as though I’m making fun of her. Then she flicks the ash of her cigarette and says, ‘Really?’

  I nod.

  ‘Why don’t you take some money from us?’ she asks. ‘Ozi will give you as much as you need.’

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t want any money from Ozi.’ The words come out more forcefully than I’d intended.

  She raises her chin at my tone, but looks concerned rather than offended. ‘Why? Are you upset with him?’

  I almost say, Because he killed a boy and doesn’t give a shit and I don’t want any of his corrupt cash. But instead I say, ‘I’m not upset with him. We had a little argument. Nothing important.’

  Manucci comes in, unable to meet Mumtaz’s eye, giggling slightly as he hands us our water. When he leaves, Mumtaz leans forward and presses her glass against her cheek. ‘It sounds like there’s more anger in you than you want to admit.’

  I shrug. ‘He’s a good man.’ I’m shocked when I hear the words, not because I’m saying them, but because I don’t believe them. ‘We’ll be fine.’

  She takes a sip of her water and looks at me like she knows I’m lying. ‘We’ve been having problems,’ she says.

  She strokes her glass with her cheek, and I keep my mouth shut and wait for her to go on. But she’s quiet for a while, looking away, and when she looks at me again, I can see that she’s decided to say no more about it for now. ‘I don’t want to bore you,’ she says.

  ‘You’re not boring me,’ I tell her.

  ‘I hate being so morbid all the time.’ She gives a little laugh that isn’t at all happy. ‘I think part of my frustration is that I haven’t been getting enough exercise. Do you work out?’

  I let her change the subject. ‘Not really. I do some push-ups and sit-ups, or go for a run, but not regularly.’

  ‘What about boxing?’

  ‘I hit a bag sometimes.’

  ‘Can you teach me?’ she asks.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I need a good workout.’

  ‘Now?’

  She gets up and raises her fists. She’s grinning, but there’s an intensity in her eyes that my coach would have liked to see.

  ‘If you want,’ I say.

  I go to my room for some equipment and take her to the back of the house, where my old heavy bag hangs from a rusty chain. We sit down on a wooden bench, straddling it and facing each other.

  ‘Show me your hand,’ I say.

  She does.

  I turn it over, a little hesitant when I touch her because I don’t want to be rough but I’m afraid that if I’m too gentle it’ll seem like a caress. ‘I’m going to wrap it,’ I tell her, slipping the loop of a rolled-up hand wrap over her thumb. I slide the cotton tape around her skin, encircling her wrist, slowly, so she can see how it’s done, then curving the tape up and around her fingers.

  ‘Take off your ring,’ I say.

  She does. It’s a solitaire diamond, simple and probably worth almost a year of my salary at the bank, when the bank paid me a salary. She puts it down on the bench behind her.

  I keep wrapping, covering her knuckles, binding her long fingers together, then spiraling back down to her wrist. Finally I tie the two tassels at the end of the hand wrap. I tell her to make a fist and then let go, and I watch the blood rush back into her fingers.

  ‘Do you want to do the other one yourself?’ I ask her.

  ‘I’ll try,’ she says. She slips the loop over her thumb and starts to wrap, keeping about the right tension, neither too loose nor too tight. Sometimes I have to guide her hand with mine.

  ‘Let me tie the end,’ I say when she’s done.

  ‘I want to try.’ She grabs one tassel with her teeth, pulls the other around her wrist with her fingers, and ties a knot. I’ve had these hand wraps for a long time, but seeing them on her skin, seeing her use her mouth to tie them, makes them seem less familiar.

  Finally I show her my gloves, once bright red, now faded and scuffed with use. ‘These will be too big,’ I say, putting them on her. ‘But I want you to wear them, because I don’t want you to hurt your hands.’

  She stands up, squares her shoulders, and raises the gloves. Her hair is pulled back, away from her face, and she looks beautiful. I reach out and take her shades off the neck of her T-shirt, conscious of my fingers touching the skin below her throat, and set them down on the bench near her ring.

  I look at her stance. ‘Spread your legs slightly,’ I say. ‘And bend your knees. Stand on the balls of your feet.’ Her body moves exactly the way I want. ‘Perfect. Now bring your hands up. Higher. That’s the basic on-guard position. After each punch, you want to come back to it.’

  She starts hopping up and down and making mean faces.

  ‘Easy, champ,’ I tell her. ‘Let’s learn a couple punches first. This,’ I say, tapping her left glove, ‘is your lead hand. And this’ – I demonstrate – ‘is a jab.’ I throw another, much faster this time, just touching her glove with my bare hand. ‘Let’s see it.’

  I talk her through a few basic punches, and she learns fast. Her movements are fluid, efficient, her attention focused on me when I’m explaining and on her own body when she’s moving. I put my hands on her arms and shoulders from time to time to adjust her position, and I feel long muscles under soft flesh.

  After she’s warmed up and has the hang of it, we move to the heavy bag, and I start by demonstrating one punch at a time. She watches me, breathing steadily, her face shiny with sweat, a smile pulling at her lips. Reaching up, she shuts her eyes and wipes the sweat from her forehead with her arm. I want to touch her face, smooth the sweat out of her eyebrows with my fingers. Then she opens her eyes and sees me staring at her, and I turn and slam my hand into the bag with a ferocity that surprises me. Suddenly I’m going all out, punching hard, deep in my rhythm, coiling and exploding, again and again, dancing, my muscles full of blood, hitting on the move, slipping punches. The bag is jumping. My hands are brutal. I shake my head, smile violently, and hit it.

  Then I stop, my breathing an easy pant, and look at Mumtaz. Our eyes meet and I feel the rhythm in my blood beating loud. I look down. Damn: my hands. I should have worn gloves, because now I
’ve rubbed the skin off my knuckles.

  Mumtaz steps up to the bag. She hits it hard, like she wants to punch right through it and trusts the strength of her wrist. The bag rocks slightly, and she hits it again, drawing power from her legs and twisting her body to put her shoulder behind the punch. She throws her punches at a slow, measured pace. Soon the bag is swinging. I hear a grunt of exertion, a sound almost like rage. She hits the bag like she’s furious with it, like she wants to hurt it. And she keeps on hitting it, completely intent on the bag, and my surprise at her strength gives way to a new surprise at her endurance. Finally she stops, puts her arms around the bag, and presses her forehead into it.

  I tap her on the shoulder and she turns. ‘I guess I needed that,’ she says, grinning.

  ‘So who were you punching?’ I ask her.

  ‘Who were you punching?’ she replies.

  I smile. ‘I was just showing off, I suppose.’

  She hits her gloves together. ‘So was I.’

  ‘You have a lot of stamina for a smoker.’

  ‘I work out. Besides, I have an older brother, so I’m a fighter.’ Her T-shirt is dark around the throat and along the back of her shoulders, where her skin touches the wet fabric. ‘Are you ready to box?’ she asks me.

  I start to laugh. ‘You won’t be able to hit me.’

  ‘Let me try.’

  I stand in front of her and let my hands dangle at my sides. ‘Punch me in the head,’ I say.

  She puts her hands up and throws a punch. And she doesn’t hold back. I watch the red glove coming and pull my head back at the last moment, grinning at her surprise. She keeps trying, but she can’t hit me.

  ‘Stop,’ I say finally.

  She does, dropping her hands.

  ‘I boxed for years,’ I tell her. ‘It’ll take you a while before you can hit me.’ Then, just to tease her, I shut my eyes and lean forward, offering up my best ‘do it if you dare’ face.

  Hot sunlight glows orange through my eyelids.

  I feel the punch coming and don’t move, don’t even open my eyes. I’m sure she’s bluffing. Then my head snaps back as her punch hits me full in the face. ‘What the hell was that?’ I say, shocked. I touch my mouth and my fingers come away with a streak of blood.

  She’s laughing, one glove in front of her mouth, her eyes wide with surprise. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, trying to look apologetic. ‘I didn’t mean to hit you that hard. But I just couldn’t resist.’

  I grab her by her wrists, just below her gloves, and pull her to me. She looks up, still smiling, and I can feel my mouth throbbing from her punch.

  I’m intensely aware of every contact between my body and hers.

  ‘I could knee you,’ she says. Her leg moves up slightly, between mine, and I realize how vulnerable I am. That would hurt.

  I let her go.

  ‘I wasn’t actually going to knee you,’ she says.

  ‘I didn’t think you were going to punch me either.’ My lips feel a little puffy as I speak.

  ‘I didn’t think I’d be able to hit you.’

  I smile at her, feeling my lips stretch. ‘Very funny.’

  I help her out of the gloves, and she takes off the hand wraps, rolls them up, and gives them to me. Then we head back inside and finish off a pitcher of water. Mumtaz stays for lunch. The sweat has dried on her face and covered it with dirty streaks. I imagine licking one and almost taste the salt, but I try to get the thought out of my mind before she sees what I’m thinking. I don’t eat very much, a little ashamed that there’s no meat or even chicken. I just watch her serve herself and clean all the food off her plate, wishing there was some reason for me to reach out and touch her skin.

  I look at my hands. Who would have thought that I would ever teach a woman to box and come out of it with a bloody mouth and torn knuckles?

  ‘Let me see them,’ she says.

  I reach across the table. She runs her fingers over my red knuckles, lightly, but doesn’t say anything. Then she turns them over and strokes my palms with her thumbs.

  ‘I went to see a palm reader the other day,’ she tells me.

  Palm readers must be the new fad among the idle rich. ‘I would have thought you were too educated for that sort of thing.’

  ‘I’ve told you I’m superstitious.’ She lets go of my hands and lights a cigarette.

  ‘And is this palm reader a well-connected young socialite?’

  ‘Her name’s Allima Mooltani. She’s about sixty and she lives in Model Town.’

  ‘A well-connected old socialite, then,’ I say, taking one of her cigarettes. ‘How much did she charge?’

  ‘Five hundred. But she spent an entire hour with me.’

  ‘I can’t believe you paid that much.’ I do some quick arithmetic. Let’s say she sees three people a day and works five days a week. That comes to seventy-five hundred a week, thirty thousand a month. That’s more than what I made as a banker, before taxes. And she probably doesn’t even pay taxes. Why am I sitting here, deeper and deeper in debt, when palm readers are making that much?

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Mumtaz asks me.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say, noticing that the ash has grown on my cigarette. I flick it. ‘What makes you think this woman isn’t a complete fake?’

  ‘That’s hard to explain. She doesn’t try to tell you that your eighth kid’s name will be Qudpuddin or anything. She just shows you yourself.’

  ‘For five hundred an hour I’d want to know my eighth kid’s name, birthday, and favorite dessert.’

  ‘You have to go.’

  ‘No thanks. I can’t afford it.’

  ‘My treat.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘You have to. I’ll take you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  Manucci comes in with her ring and shades, which we forgot on the bench outside, and she takes them casually, not at all upset that she was so absentminded.

  ‘Do you know what happens when you detonate a nuclear bomb under the desert?’ she asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘The sand turns to glass.’

  ‘From the heat?’

  She nods.

  When she leaves, I present my cheek for her to kiss, but she kisses my lips instead, softly. I smile in surprise, and then I remember pulling her to me earlier, which makes my smile wider even though my mouth hurts. And she smiles back at me like she knows what I’m smiling about. Then she’s gone, and I sit back down to lunch and finish off the food. Manucci clears the plates, giggling to himself, and although he’s just being silly, he makes me laugh as well.

  The celebrations begin not long after Mumtaz has left. How everyone knows I don’t understand. The excited trrringing of bicycle bells brings me to the gate, witness to the victory parade of a half-dozen gardeners, long shears tied to the backs of their Sohrabs, pedaling triumphantly, wobbling, clapping as often as balance and courage will allow.

  Manucci brings the news with him at a run, doubled over with the effort, from the neighbor’s servant quarters.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ I ask him.

  ‘We’ve done it,’ he pants.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve exploded our bomb.’

  I feel something straighten my back, a strange excitement, the posture-correcting force of pride. Manucci looks up at me, his face sweaty, dirty, and grins. We shake hands like old comrades, two warriors home at last, and I’m about to say something, to launch into a little self-congratulatory speech, when a sound interrupts the flow of my elation.

  From somewhere down the road we hear the first burst of celebratory gunfire, a hard-edged firecracker set to automatic, emptying its magazine into the sky. And I find myself thinking of my mother, beautiful, wasp-faced, with high cheekbones and hollow cheeks, her strict expression softened by sad eyes and a small, round smile. N
ever any jewelry, holes in her ears shriveled shut, still-black hair pulled into a bun. How young she always seemed, young enough to be mistaken for my sister the year she died. But not the day she was buried: bloodless, all color drained from her face, wrinkles visible in her pale skin like creases on a ball of paper.

  Manucci puts his fingers in the air and launches into a spontaneous bhangra. The Kalashnikov spits again. I head inside.

  That evening Raider comes to see me. He’s wearing his power suspenders, the ones with a red polka dot on either side, which he calls the Rising Sun.

  ‘Five each, baby,’ he says, giving me a hug.

  ‘Five each.’

  We sit on the bonnet of his car and share a cigar. ‘It’s a Havana,’ he tells me.

  ‘I hate cigars. You can’t inhale them.’

  He shakes his head and rolls up his shirtsleeves. Work is miles away, but Raider’s still wearing his tie. His jacket hangs in the car, broad shoulders, no vents, very European, copied from GQ by a tailor on Beadon Road.

  ‘Good parties tonight.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course. People are feeling good. It’s been a nervous couple of weeks.’

  ‘Armageddon parties?’ I ask, trying to sound superior, mainly because I haven’t been invited to any.

  ‘Initiation parties. Welcome to the nuclear club, partner.’

  ‘Are you going?’

  ‘I’m going to your buddy Ozi’s.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll see you there,’ I say, hiding my surprise. I didn’t know Ozi was having a party.

  Raider spits out a piece of tobacco and takes a few quick puffs. ‘I have to ask you a favor. I need some pot.’

  My stash is running low. ‘I can give you enough for a joint or two.’

  ‘I need more. I promised a couple of friends and all my sources are out.’

  ‘I can get you some in a few days.’

  ‘Before the weekend?’

  ‘I think so.’ I should be able to track Murad Badshah down before then.