“Home”

"Hey," said the boy. "I was thinking, you could come to my house for a moment, it's just down that little path. I'd like you to see my place. It's not much, but I've got a TV. It'll be cozy, I've got an electric heater, all the conveniences of home."

Mustafa knew that Chaudrey Sahib wouldn't emerge until he had eaten everything that he possibly could, and probably made a fool of himself for good measure; even the cripple knew that the dinner wouldn't end till late, and no one would leave before the chief guest, who wouldn't even have arrived yet.

"It's not much, the place I've got. I pay two thousand a month, just for my little home," the boy said, proud and pleading at the same time.

Mustafa opened the door and stepped down, so much taller than the boy, who squatted in a pile on the ground. "Go on," he said in brusque Punjabi. "Let's see it then." To hell with the city drivers, their uniforms and keys to expensive cars dangling in their fingers and stories about whores.

"I bet you can't even keep up," said the boy, swinging off energetically, surprisingly fast, using his arms like crutches and tilting his body forward. The other drivers, sitting by the fire, watched impassively as Mustafa followed the boy down into the wash, which smelled of urine. Mustafa stumbled under the dark trees.

"It's just a bit further," said the boy, coaxing Mustafa along. "Just down ahead." He kept up a patter and strained forward.

They came to a walled hut, built on the banks of an open sewer that must be draining this section of the city, and the boy opened the gate and led Mustafa into a little courtyard enclosed by rusty walls made of oil drums beaten flat, with a swept earthen floor. The sewage perfumed the willows that lined the banks of the black stream, permeating and flavoring the darkness. Unlocking the single room, which was built of whitewashed brick, the beggar took a plate of sweets from under an upturned pan, barfi and ladoo. The walls of the room had newspaper photos pasted all over them, and brightly colored paper, whole sheets of wrapping paper, orange and green, printed with birthday images of little children, cutout figures of a boy and a girl straining forward to kiss. Two pots of begonias bloomed by the door, one red and one white.

"I've got a terrible sweet tooth. One of my regulars brings me a box of them every few days, religious-looking guy in a white Toyota." He put the plate in front of Mustafa, who had sat down on a very low charpoy, its legs sawed off. "Do you want a chair? I've got one outside for when my friends come. Or do you want to watch the TV?"

Mustafa broke off a little piece of a ladoo. He didn't want to eat it.

"I'm friends with this municipal guy," said the boy, filling the silence. "We're sitting on municipal land. Nice, huh? He's the one that built this, and he rents it out, he says he prefers the street artists like me, we pay on time, and he always knows where to find us. There's another guy just downstream, a guy who works a big four-way light out in F-10. He doesn't have any legs. Come on, let's watch TV. Back home you don't get these channels." He untied the leather pad that he wore around his buttocks and put it carefully under the bed, dragged himself up onto the low charpoy, took a remote control from a shelf, and began flipping through the channels.

"Satellite dish," he said, looking up at the screen. Foreign shows and Indian channels came on, and then the screen filled with flesh, a thrusting couple, the grainy TV making their flesh orange. The cripple looked over at Mustafa. "What do you think?"

Mustafa didn't respond, but looked down at the floor, repulsed by the thought of the boy sitting here alone on other nights, watching sex films. After a moment the boy clicked forward and stopped at racing cars painted in bright colors going around a track.

"Hey, let's check this out," said the boy, but without emphasis, uncertain; then insinuating, trying again, "Well anyway, let's have a little something. I've got some booze, good clear stuff. I can keep pouring it down all night, my buddies say I must have a leak somewhere. We'll have a couple of glasses before your sahib comes out again." Without waiting for an answer he leaned over, reaching toward a wooden box lying next to the bed.

Mustafa prickled with discomfort, sitting with this creature, this inhuman thing with its knobs and dead feet, like a pile of rags—and in the center, propped up on a scrawny neck, a strangely handsome face, hair boyishly parted on one side, the teeth very white. "Are you kidding?" He spat it out, breaking his long silence, his kindness in coming here thrown back in his face, by this cripple, who used to sit on the railway tracks back home while truckers threw rupee notes down at him. "Was that your idea? To make me drink that poison and watch that filth—with … with you?"

"But it's not like that," cried the boy, seeming genuinely surprised, babbling. "My friends visit me here, they come and drink with me, it's our social thing."

He jumped from the bed, surprisingly lightly, and in his rhythmical circling way planted himself in front of the open door, sitting up in front of it.

"It's alright," he said, pulling the door shut. "I'll close this so it'll get really warm in here, the way we southerners like it." He indicated the three-bar heater, which glowed orange, homelike.

The boy looked strong, his arms must be like steel; and Mustafa thought, In his world, chloroformed boys are stolen from lonely villages at night, and mothers cut off their daughters' hands and feet with axes to make beggars of them.

God help them all. Quite evenly, passing it off, he said, "I'm just going outside for a moment, I'll be right back."

"I know you're leaving." The beggar spoke with the gravity of a disappointed child, the voice coming from that bodiless head. "Please, just listen for a minute. You know what my kind of people say about you people? We say that me and you and everyone else, we're all the same—none of us here under heaven is more than half a man. That's our joke. Please remember that."

He moved back from the door, almost imperceptibly, as if the tension in a muscle had relaxed, then reached and pulled the door open; and Mustafa tumbled out, out under the many stars. He turned, not knowing how to take his leave, unsure whether he should shake hands, or just flee, unsure if he'd been spared from assault.

Swiveling his body around, still holding Mustafa with the corners of his eyes, the boy reached into the room with his long muscular arms, brought out the sweets, and held them respectfully up toward his guest, who stood in the courtyard three arm-lengths away.

"Here, take these, eat them in the car," the boy said, piled on the doorsill, offering the box with raised arms. "But promise me one thing. Tell them about me at home. About the electricity and my TV and my heater. OK? Tell them everything about me."

© 2009