FIRST, PATRICK HAS A bad reaction to the fish, and he is holding his stomach and moaning very softly, not drinking the fizzy ginger water I am holding in a glass. Then Mrs. Farzana from upstairs calls me and does not say, “How is your husband? How can I help you?” but only asks if I could give her daughter Nida an extra half an hour of chemistry class on Saturday because she failed her last test. I listen to her with one ear; she goes on about how Nida will drive her to her grave with her bad attitude, and I say some rubbish that no, no, she is a very bright child. Patrick squeezes his eyes shut and puts his head on his knees and I hiss to him, “Drink this!”
Mrs. Farzana says, “Being busy with extra classes will keep her away from her bad friends, and all this boyfriend-girlfriend nonsense. I cannot allow this in my house.”
“I will be happy to help her,” I say, then I wait for her to tell me she will pay me for the extra time, and for all the other hours I have spent teaching her useless child.
“I will send Nida tomorrow at ten in the morning.” Mrs. Farzana shuts the phone in my ear and I am left holding the receiver like a dummy. I am angry but I do not have time to stay that way because Patrick is now stumbling toward the bathroom.
I let him watch three hours of TV that evening. It is the only way he agrees to drink water of aniseeds and fennel, and afterward take in a light tea with dry toast. He is fussy and tiresome when the nine o’clock news finishes and it is time to go to bed. He says, “You never leave any soda for me.” And, “Tomorrow you will make me halwa. Always you are too busy, busy, busy.”
I am the best secondary school chemistry tutor in Karachi. I write on the board, “Anise has anethol and fennel is a carminative.” My students ask, “Is this going to be in our exams?” I tell them no, and they put down their pens. I write, “Pimpinella anisum” and “Foeniculum vulgare” and they giggle.
I have taught for more than forty years, and I never used to teach on public holidays or weekends. I never taught on Christmas or Easter. But one day I saw Patrick sitting with his hand over his chest, breathing through his mouth, a horrible rattly sound coming from him as the air went in and out. There was nothing I could do for him at home; he ended up spending two nights in Victoria Hospital. I took out thousands of rupees from the bank to pay for his bed, and it was not even a nice bed in a semi-private room; they put him in the general ward with germs going into his body from all the other sick people around him. And then the hospital told me he needed this injection and that special medicine, so I sold the necklace and the bracelets my mother and aunt had given to me when I had got married.
They had combined their money to buy the jewelry for me, the gifts for Patrick and his family, and the food for the guests. My father had said I could take anything from the house that I liked, and when I demurred, he unglued the carpet from the living room for us. They have been dead for so long now, and the small house in Soldier Bazaar and all the things inside it belong to other people.
After Patrick came home from the hospital, I said to myself, Ruth, be practical. There is nothing in your locker in the bank. What are you going to do with all your hours of holidays? I told my students that I was available to teach on all the days of the week. “Because you need the extra practice; next year are your final board exams, your O Levels. Tell your mothers, same fees as for regular classes,” is what I said to them.
Nida’s mother pays me sometimes, and other times she does not. She thinks that oh, that Mrs. Ruth is just a neighbor. But I am noting down in my book all the money that she owes me. Maybe one day it will be useful. I am also noting, in my mind, Nida’s behavior in my classes. She sits with the boys at the back, never any girls. Tall, thin boys with collarbones and loosened ties. They like to talk to her even though she is not a beautiful girl. I don’t know what kind of studying Mrs. Farzana thinks her daughter does during chemistry.
* * *
Patrick can get in a bad mood before I have to start teaching. He says to me, “Make me Chinese rice,” or, “My eyes are hurting. Read me the newspaper.” Nothing I can do when he gets like that. I cannot tell my students, “Go away now, please. I have to make soup for Mr. Patrick,” or, “No class today, my husband needs me to read him the newspaper.” When I teach, I give my students full attention. Sometimes some girls say to me, as they hand me my fees in little envelopes, “Oh, Mrs. Ruth, you are so nice, you always help us.” And sometimes they give me small presents.
Kamila from downstairs also likes to give me a little something every now and then. One day it is half of a cake she has baked, another time it is kheer or biryani. She can make these kinds of food because she and her husband have a son, Rajeet, who lives in Malaysia and sends them money. Some weeks ago she let it slip that he had not sent them anything for a couple of months now. I like to help when I can; I put some money into her hands. If I could, I would be the only one giving.
Patrick’s left elbow has become big like a tennis ball and he is not letting me see it.
“Does it hurt?” I ask.
No answer.
“Let me see it properly.”
He picks up the remote control and turns on the TV.
I go downstairs to Kamila’s flat to get arnica cream. She has not stepped out much recently. I wonder what I will say to her if she asks me for financial help. When she opens her door, I am surprised to see her face looking young and fresh, all the lines of worry on it disappeared. There is a big mess in her living room—books on tables, a dusty carton of dishes on the floor, suitcases open on sofas.
“Is Rajeet getting married?” I blurt.
Kamila presses her lips and smiles hard and her cheeks puff out like two small knobs. “I have some news to tell you. Rajeet’s father and I are moving to Kuala Lumpur. We leave as soon as our paperwork is finalized.”
I smile hard and say, “Congratulations. You will be so happy there.” I do not make any sort of offer to help or pack, and do not promise to return the jar of arnica.
Patrick has not moved from his place in all the time I was gone; his eyes are still on the dumb TV. “I am back,” I say very loudly, but he says nothing. In the kitchen I rip open a chamomile tea bag and the leaves scatter all over the counter. I gather them in a heap and beat them with a pestle, but they do not break up. I bring the pestle down even harder until there is an ache in my hand and the leaves have become smaller. I mix them with the arnica cream and spread it all on a piece of cotton. I go to where Patrick is and stand in front of the TV.
“Show me your elbow,” I say to him like a schoolteacher, and he lets me wrap the cloth around the swelling.
Arnica has helenalin, I tell my students. One or two write it down, the rest look bored. Nida tilts her head to the boy on her right and he whispers something in her ear. Her mother owes me money for a whole month of Saturdays now.
Kamila is decluttering, she says. She gives me a planner that she says she never even opened, and a red clock. I do not know what to do with the month-by-month organizer since it is already November, but the maroon leather cover is nice. I put the clock on the dining table and give Kamila a slice of fruit cake. She has been a friend for a long time.
In the bathroom, I arrange a plastic stool for Patrick to sit on and a bucket of warm water with a jug so he can take his bath. I come back after thirty minutes with a towel so I can help him dry his hair and find him outside on the balcony in the cold night air.
“Come inside.”
“You do not want me to get fresh air,” he says. His thin hair moves in the wind. No jacket, no hat, not even a warm shirt. My own face has become covered with sweat.
“Patrick,” I say, and he turns around finally. I cannot read his expression because it is dark outside. He walks slowly into the room. I go to him, making my smile nice and pleasant, and drape the towel around his shoulders.
But he catches a cold the next day, and soon he has a terrible cough which shakes his whole body. It comes all the way from his stomach, tearing its lining. I am sure it is tearing up his insides. I give him clove and honey drops, but they do not keep him settled for long. I help him inhale steam from hot water mixed with ground ginger and a pinch of cinnamon, and still he coughs almost half the night. For four days he does not eat anything, he does not watch his programs on TV, just stays on his bed with his eyes closed and his chest rising and falling slowly. I am not able to be a good teacher during this time. My students ask many questions and I am not able to give the correct answers. Kamila comes to visit and hears the terrible sounds from Patrick and tells me he needs to go see a doctor. On the fifth day I wait for his afternoon nap, then I pick up the red clock and touch its two little feet and the golden Roman numerals from one to twelve. I carry it to Mrs. Farzana’s flat in an old gift bag. She opens the door only a little bit, her face peeking out suspiciously.
I say, “You are looking smart. The children are well? I got them a small gift, I hope they like it.”
She slowly takes the bag and smiles, but it is very brief and very tight. “There was no need for this. This is so kind of you. The children are well, just preparing for their exams. And how are you and Mr. Patrick?”
I say, “Actually, he has been a little sick lately—”
“Yes, there is a nasty cold going around.” Mrs. Farzana takes a small step back.
“He has to go see his doctor,” I say in a rush. “And he is too unwell for the bus or the rickshaw, and you are the only one in the building with a driver—”
“I am so sorry to hear that, Mrs. Ruth. I am sure you can find a taxi which will take you to the hospital.” Mrs. Farzana starts closing the door. “The children would be coming home now and I must see that lunch is ready. Goodbye.”
I look at her big, brown door and think, She took the clock. My hand is trembling and I ring the bell but no one comes to the door. My face is hot with embarrassment and anger. My heart continues beating fast as I help Patrick down the stairs and into a taxi. I hear his breaths rattling in his chest next to me.
The taxi driver is most kind. He holds Patrick’s elbow all the way into the hospital. I give him a tip of ten rupees. The doctor we see has gray hair, but he is younger than me. Maybe fifty-five. He nods occasionally while I speak, and he writes on his pad all the time. Then a nurse walks over in her big shoes and puts a syringe in Patrick’s arm to draw blood. I do not understand what they are going to check. “Oh, deficiencies, Mrs. Ruth,” the doctor says. “Iron, vitamins. Necessary at his age.” He sends us home with a bottle of cough syrup and a packet of vitamins. At home I crush the big oval pill. In a cup of milk, I add a pinch of turmeric, a few crushed kalonji seeds and the medicine. Patrick says he does not like the color of the milk, but drinks it anyway. Perhaps he is tired.
I make my students write down: turmeric has curcumin, nigella has thymoquinone. Curcumin links with thymoquinone and sits on inflammations to bring them down.
“What do you mean “sits”, Mrs. Ruth?” says the boy next to Nida. He has a half smile on his face; he is showing her he is clever and this teacher is an old, silly woman.
“Yes, sits,” I say. “On its bottom. Like you sit on your bottom and make jokes.”
Later I see Nida pass him a note, and he writes something in the palm of her hand. She glances at me and does not move her hand away, even though she sees my red face.
Two days after this, I am coming back from buying groceries and I see Mrs. Farzana walking out of our building. Her little Suzuki is standing nearby, her driver behind the steering wheel. She keeps her head low and gets into the car very quickly. She has seen me, I am sure of it. The back of her head looks guilty. I am about to spit on the ground when I remember that she used to forget to lock her flat. It was a long time ago, when her Nida had just been born and there was no husband to help with the baby and she was so tired from not sleeping she used to forget a lot of things. Milk for her tea, diapers for the baby, payment for her phone bills. I decide to get my clock back.
My breath gets shorter with every step but I do not stop; I am going to walk right into her flat. But this time she has remembered to lock her door. I lift the welcome mat but there is no key under it. I turn the handle again and push the door with my shoulder but it only shakes in its frame. There is a noise on the other side.
“Who is it?” Nida says.
“It is me, Mrs. Ruth.” My voice is high and thin.
“Hello, Mrs. Ruth. How are you?” She sounds unsure, perhaps a little afraid.
“I am fine, thank you. Can you please pass a message to your mother? It is about the clock she had borrowed, I would like it returned if she is done with it.” Then I quickly add, “Mr. Patrick is very fond of it, you see.”
“I will let her know. Goodbye.”
I am almost certain there is relief in the girl’s voice.
But Mrs. Farzana does not send the clock back. Her daughter enters my flat at class time, walks with her eyes down straight to her seat at the back of my drawing room. She lifts her head only when the boy she likes is sitting next to her. One afternoon that week she mumbles to me that she has to step out for a while, and three or four minutes later the boy follows. They do not come back to class that day.
Patrick’s feet have become one-and-a-half times their size. I go out to buy him new, larger shoes while he is watching a documentary on TV about mangroves in Pakistan. The shoes are made of very good leather, almost half the cost of his blood pressure medicine. But the stubborn man insists upon squeezing his bloated feet into his old ones. “If you try to take it away, I will throw it at you,” he says, holding his old shoe with both hands.
After every lesson, I send Nida home with a note for her mother. On Monday I write, “Mrs. Farzana, please return my property, that is, the red clock. Regards, Mrs. Ruth.” On Tuesday it is, “I await the return of my red clock. Thanking you in advance, Mrs. Ruth.” On Wednesday: “It has come to my notice that my red clock, which Mr. Patrick is very partial to, is still at your flat. Kindly return it via Nida.” On Saturday I write, “I shall take swift action imminently to ensure the return of my clock. Mrs. Ruth.” Each time, Nida takes the note from my hand without a word. I know she reads it the moment she leaves my flat, checking if I am telling her mother about her meetings with her boyfriend. Mrs. Farzana sends nothing back with her.
The nurse from the hospital calls and says Patrick needs to see the doctor for his blood test result. I hold the receiver with both hands and turn away from my students. I do not want them to hear. “But what is the result?”
“I cannot release it on the phone, ma’am,” the nurse says.
“Please, it would be so kind if you tell me, it would help Mr. Patrick not worry, you see,” I say.
Like a bleating sheep, the woman repeats, “I’m sorry, madam, I cannot tell the results on the phone. You will have to come see the doctor.”
All evening, I look up my students’ phone numbers and cancel the next day’s tuitions. But I do not call Mrs. Farzana. Let Nida come to my door and ring and ring the bell. On Saturday morning, I help Patrick shave his gray stubble. I tell him stories to keep his mind away from the hospital. I tell him that I caught Ahsan passing a note to Maryam, and that Hamza got in trouble with his parents for being out past his curfew. I am sure all the names and situations are like a pot of porridge for Patrick. He cannot even tell one student apart from another. I manage to get his arms through the sleeves and reach toward the buttons, but he pushes my hands away.
“Come now, we don’t want to be late,” I say.
“Go,” he says.
“Don’t be unreasonable. This won’t take long.”
But he turns away from me, his fingers fumbling over the buttons.
There is no one in the building who will take Kamila’s blue bag in exchange for driving us to the hospital, so I find us a taxi, an old black one with the lower fare, not the newer yellow one. The whole way Patrick sits with his head in his hands like he has a headache or is tired of life or maybe me. The hospital is crowded and germs are everywhere in the waiting room. I find two empty chairs at the end of a row and I put Patrick on the one by the aisle so he is a little bit away from the line of sick people. Our turn comes after thirty long minutes, but the nurse who comes to get us does not say “Sorry to keep you waiting.” We could have been waiting a week for all she cares. The doctor puts on a wide smile when he sees us, then spends a lot of minutes reading the report on his desk. I tell myself not to worry, I have done a good job preserving Patrick’s health. Round-the-clock-care, like the poster on the wall says.
Finally, the doctor wags a finger and says, “Has your wife not been feeding you well, Mr. Patrick? This says here your vitamin D is low, but that is nothing alarming. I will give you something for the fever and the cough.” He turns off his smile and starts writing on a prescription pad as if the topic is closed. But there are still questions in my mind.
“He has not been eating anything,” I say.
The doctor puts his pen down, crosses his fingers on his desk, and closes his eyes.
I continue speaking anyway. “His cough is full of phlegm, and it goes on and on. It damages his stomach lining. You need to give him something to repair it.”
The doctor opens his eyes and looks at me to make sure I am done talking, then he says, as if very kindly, “What is it that you do, Mrs. Ruth?”
I sit up very tall. “I am a chemistry teacher. I have been teaching for forty years, and I understand certain things about chemical reactions in the body.”
“Ah, a school teacher. I should have guessed.” He opens a thin folder, closes it, lifts a piece of paper and reads it. “There is nothing wrong with your husband’s stomach lining.”
Kamila gives me money before she and Mr. Aneet leave for the airport. She says it is a gift from one friend to another. I go to a pharmacy and buy paracetamol tablets, cough drops, and Vicks. I buy a syrup for weakness and a syrup for heartburn. I buy five packets of painkillers and a bottle of vitamins. I walk all the way back to my flat. In the kitchen, I put away in a cupboard my plastic packs of black seeds, ginger powder and anise; my foeniculum and syzygium aromaticum and chamomile; the tea bags which are not black tea. Even all together they do not take a lot of space. I arrange on the counter all the bottles and packets from the pharmacy.
A few days later Patrick falls down in the bathroom and hurts his hip, but there are no broken bones, only a very large, purple bruise. I wait for his fever, and when it comes I give him a tablet.
My students have their mock exams in school. Nida gets a C+. Mrs. Farzana marches into my drawing room and says I have done a poor job as a teacher. Her fingers poking the air are very bony, so different from the rest of her body which becomes wide like the letter A from her waist down. There is a dry spot under her lower lip. It does not look good. Nida stands behind her quietly. Her eyes are wide and her face, even her lips, are pale. She is thinking I will tell her mother about the boy, the notes with the hearts, all the bunked tuition classes, but I do not feel like saying anything. Soon, Mrs. Farzana gets tired and leaves, knocking over a book on her way.
It has become very windy now, and sometimes the temperature in the city goes to below fifteen degrees Celsius. I put an old towel in the crack under the balcony door in our bedroom to stop the air from coming inside. When the bruise on Patrick’s hip fades, I take him for little walks, just to the end of the street and back. It is important for his circulation and nerves. I convince him to wear his sweater and woolen cap all the time. I talk to him about the neighbors. I tell him the newly married couple on the fifth floor went to Malaysia for their honeymoon, and that Mr. Anwar on the third floor refuses to get his doorbell fixed, which is why he missed the delivery of an important document. I don’t know what things I say are true or untrue. It doesn’t really matter.
Nida does not come to chemistry classes anymore. Maybe her mother sends her to a different place now. It doesn’t matter. After she left, I got six new students and was able to get the bedroom painted. One evening I see her get out of a car that is not hers. There is a boy behind the steering wheel. I turn my face away, but she quickly steps up to me. She says hello and hands me a plastic bag. I look inside and see the red clock.