Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? Read online

  Bibi-ji, though, was torn between wanting all the luxuries Pa-ji heaped on her and being appalled by such extravagance. The poverty of her childhood had made her cautious about spending money. She found pleasure in hoarding and counting, in making sure that there was more money rolling in for the future.

  “Why are you buying all these things for me?” she demanded of Pa-ji, even while splashing her favourite lavender perfume all over herself, carrying a different handbag to the shop every morning or trying on yet another pair of shoes. “I am not in need of three sets of cutlery, ji. I eat with my hands.” But none of her protests had stopped him. What, he had demanded, was the use of having money if not to spend it? And what was the use of having a beloved, and beautiful, and smart wife, if not to spoil her?

  Bibi-ji glanced around the tiny shop. Four rows of shelves loaded from one end to the other with sacks of rice, bags of mung, toor, chana, masoor dal, kidney beans, chick peas, navy beans and spices from India. This is all mine, she thought proudly. What a transformation she had undergone—from a girl named Sharanjeet who had nothing to a woman of substance named Bibi-ji.

  It was her husband who was responsible for the new appellation. He had a variety of affectionate nicknames for her—Honey, Rani, Bebby. The last was the one that had stuck. He really meant to say Baby, like the characters in the romantic Hollywood movies he loved to watch, but his Punjabi accent interfered and messed up his English. People in their small Punjabi community, who weren’t sure what this word meant, tagged on their own marker of respect and called her Bebby-ji. And soon “Bebby-ji” became a word used so frequently that, like a stone worn small and smooth with caressing, it was turned by the constant touch of many tongues to Bibi-ji. She did not mind the transformation. The term meant Wife, and that was what she was: the respected wife of a respected man. It went well with Pa-ji, which was how Khushwant Singh was addressed by the newly arrived immigrant men over whom he presided like an older brother.

  In the thirteen years since she had snared Pa-ji with her fluttering eyelashes and dimpled smile, Bibi-ji had become a handsome young woman of twenty-nine. She had put on weight, and her cheeks were taut and pink with good eating and better living. Her hair was piled fashionably in a bun, with a curl or two escaping artfully to decorate her wide, smooth brow. She applied make-up with an extravagant hand, her special weakness being lipstick in shades of dark red and pink. Her voice too had changed. It had grown deep and resonant as a temple bell, ringing solemnly out of the generous spread of her body.

  Smoothing a hand absently down the pink and green kameez that she wore, she wondered what her mother would have made of her new status in life. And what about Mrs. Hardy, to whom Bibi-ji was daily grateful for teaching her the p’s and q’s and other things about the gora way of life—how to eat food with a knife and fork, how to hold a teacup, how to use a hanky to blow her nose? Mrs. Hardy, who had taught her that it was polite to constantly say sorry and thank you—habits that were dismissed scornfully by Pa-ji, even though he had insisted on Bibi-ji’s English education.

  “The goras hide behind these politenesses and commit all kinds of sins,” he told her. “You should say sorry and thank you only when you feel it from the heart, not every two minutes.”

  But truth be told, Bibi-ji didn’t feel quite as strongly about the goras as he did. In fact, she had a sneaking admiration for these fair-skinned people who had infiltrated every part of the world with their manners and customs and languages, who had managed to make even a refrigerator of a country like Canada a place of comfort and plenty. Unlike the Panjauri villagers who assigned everything to Fate, the goras, Bibi-ji noticed with admiration, wanted to know why and what and when. It was not boats or horses that had transported them to all corners of the world, but their long noses, which quivered with a desire to poke into everything. Their sky-coloured eyes watered with the need to peer under every stone, their white fingers itched to take everything apart until they understood it, learned how it worked, found what they needed to make their own lives better.

  “Bibi-ji? What should I do with these two sacks of rice?” It was the lanky Sikh youth, Lalloo, who helped in the shop. He was Pa-ji’s protégé, the son of a school friend from Amritsar. Lalloo was only about nineteen, but Bibi-ji was pleased with his bright mind, which soaked up information as rapidly as a sponge, filed it away and used it whenever the opportunity presented itself.

  “Put them on a shelf, not on the floor. If there is a flood or something, we will lose it all,” she said.

  From her apartment upstairs, which had become a stopping place for newcomers who needed a bed and meals until they found their feet, came the muffled sounds of the radio and of people moving around. Pa-ji believed in running an open house. Anyone was welcome: relatives, friends of friends, refugees, children of friends on their way to somewhere else, they were all ushered in. They slept wherever there was space—on the floor in the living and dining rooms, in the landing and in the spare bedroom. Pa-ji, she knew, would be locked in their bedroom, working on his grand book of history as he did whenever he had a spare moment.

  She shifted in her chair and reached into her capacious handbag for a letter she had read so often it was beginning to fall apart. It was the last letter she had received from her sister, Kanwar. It had arrived four years ago and was dated February 11, 1947. A few months later, in August, the British had left the Indian subcontinent and Punjab had been divided between two new nations—India and Pakistan.

  The Punjabi lettering was neat, written by the schoolteacher in Kanwar’s village.

  “My dear sister, I have bad news for you. Our mother died suddenly yesterday. It happened in her sleep and without any pain. Only people who are blessed die in this manner. She was speaking about you a few hours before she fell asleep, my sister, and was sad that you were so far away from us. She missed you and so do I and the children.” Tears welled out of Bibi-ji’s eyes. She wiped them away with the end of her dupatta. “Your niece Nimmo, in particular, asks after you often. She is now almost seven years old and talks without stopping. She looks at the letters that you send and asks me what they say. I have to pretend to read them out to her. I feel ashamed sometimes that I do not even know what the pen-marks on the paper mean. I have asked my husband if she can go to school with her brothers so she too will learn to read like her foreign aunt. I am also happy to tell you that I am expecting another child.”

  Bibi-ji remembered guiltily how envious she had been the first time she had read this letter. Now Kanwar was swelling with another baby, she had thought, while her belly, for all of the nightly loving that she and Papa-ji indulged in, remained flat as the Gangetic plain. At first she had told herself that her body needed to adjust to the change in climate. Vancouver was so different from Panjaur. Perhaps all the rain they endured here in this place full of trees was not good for growing babies. The fetus turned to mould like bread left out in the damp. Which would explain why there were hardly any people here. Deep down, Bibi-ji knew such thoughts were ridiculous, but her desperation made her willing to believe almost anything. She wished that her mother was near to give her advice on what she should do about her lazy womb. She had racked her memory for the recipes that the midwife in Panjaur had suggested for barren women. She swallowed concoctions involving turmeric, nettle juice, milk, saffron, almonds given to her by other women in her community. She lay in bed with her thighs crossed tight after Pa-ji had poured his sticky seed into her, and she lay there with a bladder full of urine, refusing to go to the toilet, afraid that it would wash away the fetus that she prayed was forming in her womb.

  Nothing had helped.

  “The child is due in October and this worries me,” Kanwar continued in her letter. “Ever since it was announced that there will be a division of land between the Hindus and the Mussulmans, there has been unrest everywhere. There are rumours that Punjab will be broken into two pieces—one piece of our heartland to stay in India and the other to go to Pakistan. This is
the name that Muhammad Jinnah has chosen for his new country. I do not know which piece we will end up in. Where will my new child be born, I wonder?”

  The door opened, and Bibi-ji looked up from the letter, frowning. A gora came in.

  Bibi-ji wiped the frown from her face. “Good morning!” she said cheerfully, just like Mrs. Hardy of Amritsar had taught her. “Howdyoodo?”

  The man ignored her and wandered around the shop.

  “Are you in need of something in particular, sir?” Bibi-ji called after him, even though he had not responded to her greeting. As if she were invisible. Maybe she was. Maybe when the gora fella looked at her, he saw not Bibi-ji—beautiful and accomplished proprietor and clear owner of this shop and the upstairs apartment, in debt to nobody in the world except God-he saw an insignificant brown foreigner, one of the people who ran small shops like this one, or worked in the sawmills, or cleaned up in the posh restaurants, hardly worthy of notice. Bibi-ji shrugged. It did not hurt her, this kind of blindness. She knew who she was and she knew her place in the world.

  “You don’t keep root beer?” the man asked.

  “No sir, but we have many other things.”

  “How about tuna?”

  “No sir, but we have six types of dal. I will show you, if you wish. And high-quality rice.”

  The man left without buying anything.

  Lalloo’s thin, sharp-featured face appeared from behind a tall shelf. He asked, “No sale, Bibi-ji?”

  “No, putthar, the gora wanted tuna and some kind of beer. Maybe we should keep the things these goras like. Some root beer, some ice cream, sardines …”

  “You will need a refrigerator in the store for all that,” Lalloo pointed out earnestly.

  “Mmm, that is true. I will have to think about it a bit,” she said, waving him back to work. Her mind, though, clicked busily, adding and subtracting, expenses versus profits, plans and projects for the future. Since her arrival in Vancouver, Bibi-ji had discovered that she had a talent for accounting and business. Focusing on the shop also kept her from worrying about her sister and her own childless state which, she was certain, was the Ooper-Wallah’s punishment. She had stolen a life and she would not be allowed to give birth to another. So she had thrown herself into the business of making money. To begin with, she had swiftly put an end to Pa-ji’s habit of accepting credit notes instead of hard cash for purchases.

  “No more credit until arrears are cleared,” she told the regulars crisply.

  Some of them paid their bills without a murmur. Others did not like it at all—the well-off ones who had no business grumbling about paying two years’ worth of debt. One woman whose husband owned acres of vegetable farms in Abbotsford had whined and fussed. “But,” she had said, a frown corrugating her high round forehead, “but, but …”—like a duck—“I wish to speak to Pa-ji about this. He knows me well. I am not going to run away with the money we owe you, understand?”

  “It is his decision to collect all arrears,” Bibi-ji had said, staring her down, taking in her gold chains and bangles and thinking, You are using my money to buy all that jewellery!

  “In that case, sister, I will not be coming to this shop again,” the woman had declared.

  “Your wish, sister,” Bibi-ji had politely replied—wondering briefly if she was ruining the business that her husband had so painstakingly built. “You owe us one hundred and two dollars and five cents.”

  The woman had slapped the money down on the counter and swept out. A month later she was back for dal and wheat flour, cash in hand, a smile on her face and a gushing invitation to visit her house for an important ceremony.

  Bibi-ji had been relieved to see her—and even more pleased that she had, once again, taken a chance and won.

  Recently she had set about trying to get rid of the house guests who always filled their apartment.

  “What is this, ji?” she asked Pa-ji one evening after he had settled in his favourite armchair with a glass of Johnny Walker whisky in hand. “A dharamshaala for every passing person? They are sitting here and eating and sleeping at our expense. At this rate we will be bankrupt.”

  “Only until they find their feet, my sweet Bebby,” Pa-ji said firmly, his good eye fixed on her. “People helped me when I came here, and this is my way of paying back. We are strangers in this land and have nobody but our own community to turn to.”

  Bibi-ji recognized when not to argue. Pa-ji had said nothing when she stopped taking credit notes, even though she knew that the grumblings and mutterings from the customers had reached him. But on the matter of their house guests she knew he would not budge. However, there were other ways of dealing with the endless train of people wandering through their home; what could not be removed could be used. The women understood this and made themselves useful around the apartment, cooking and cleaning, washing dishes and doing laundry without being asked. It was the men who lounged around, watching television, listening to the radio or discussing the political situation in India. All very well, talking big about distant matters, but what about the here and now? Bibi-ji thought sourly. What about the money that was leaking out of Pa-ji’s pockets to feed these people while they sat around talking?

  “We are not doing these boys any favours by letting them stare at the walls.” She had widened her eyes at her husband in a way that she knew he could not resist, and leaned against him. “They need to keep busy, otherwise God knows what trouble they might get into. They can help in the shop. It will be good Canadian work experience.”

  Pa-ji looked doubtful. Bibi-ji wriggled her body against his and ran a finger down his cheek.

  “Yes my beauty, you are right,” Pa-ji sighed and gave up. “It will be good experience for them.”

  After that, when a grateful newcomer folded his palms and said, “Pa-ji, how can I repay you?” Pa-ji would pat him genially and say, “Pass it on, pass it on. There are certain things that must be passed on, not returned.” And in the same breath he would add, “By the way, from tomorrow morning if you could help Bibi-ji in the shop, poor thing, her back is gone lifting those heavy sacks of rice …”

  Bibi-ji turned to gaze out at the street, her eyes resting momentarily on two small plum trees shorn bare of leaves. A young couple peered into the window of an antique shop across the road, a few yards from the Salvation Army store. Bibi-ji wondered whether there was any money to be made from selling dusty relics from the past. More than her grocery store made? They could become far more prosperous, she was sure of that. Opportunities lay around them like pearls on these streets. But they were visible only to people with sharp eyes.

  “What are you looking at, Bibi-ji?” Lalloo asked, coming around to the front with a box full of pickle jars. He lowered it carefully on the floor and stared out the window.

  “What am I looking for, Lalloo, for,” Bibi-ji corrected. “I am looking for pearls.”

  “I don’t see anything there, Bibi-ji,” Lalloo remarked after a few moments.

  She laughed. “Neither do I, but I will. I know I will.” She continued to appraise the stores across the street—the bakery with the electricals shop on one side of it, and the store selling second-hand clothes, a store, she noted, that was always full of people. The war had left the whole world poorer: why had Pa-ji not thought of opening a used-clothing store instead of this Indian grocery shop? She wondered whether the shop would do better in Abbotsford or in Duncan, where there were more Sikhs than here in Vancouver. But no, she liked being in the city. She had a feeling that it was a city with a future, one in which she would be wise to invest her money and her hard work.

  The aroma of cooking drifted down from the upstairs kitchen, and an idea came to her. How about a restaurant? Small, no fuss, just a few things on the menu. She could supervise the kitchen and Pa-ji could handle the cash. But then a real estate agent’s sign in a window across the road caught her eye, and the thought of a restaurant slid away. She decided that their future lay in real estate: she would persuade P
a-ji to buy a house and rent out their apartment …

  She returned to Kanwar’s letter. “Last week there was a big fight between the Mussulmans and the Sikhs in Hazara district in the north-west. My husband’s cousin escaped with his life and is here with us now. He spends his days sharpening his kirpan and swearing that he will kill any Mussulman who crosses his path. Across our land, hearts are filling with anger and hate. So far there is calm here in Dauri Kalan, but hate is like an infectious disease, it can become a plague very soon if something is not done to stop it. I too am becoming suspicious of every Mussulman in this village. Now I notice there are more of them than of us Sikhs. If there is a fight we will be outnumbered. My husband says I am being foolish and nothing will happen to us. He has known the Mussulmans in our village from the time he was a baby. They are like his family, he says, they will protect us if there is trouble. My husband has lived for ten years longer than I have on this earth, so perhaps he is wiser than I am. But I have a bad feeling about this Partition business. I am afraid.”

  Bibi-ji had replied promptly, enclosing postcards for her nephew and little niece Nimmo. There had been no answer. She followed up with another letter. Again there was no response. By July, Kanwar’s silence began to consume Bibi-ji. The following month, India and Pakistan were due to become independent nations. But the only thing Bibi-ji could think of was the fate of her sister and her family.

  That year—her first in Canada—her already crowded apartment became a gathering place for their friends. Every day it was full of people who would huddle around the radio and listen anxiously to the BBC news or discuss rumours of fighting between Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other, of the beatings and rapes and killings occurring daily in the villages near the lines that had been so arbitrarily drawn across the country. An Englishman, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, had been appointed in the days before independence to head a commission that would create two nations in the subcontinent—India, with a Hindu majority, and Pakistan, for the Muslims. Most of West Punjab, with its Muslim majority, would go to Pakistan, as would East Bengal on the other side of India. East Punjab, with its Hindu and Sikh majority, would remain part of India.