Magic man

1IT WAS jadu ¬– magic – he made, that magic man of my childhood, as he spangled the air carelessly with fish scales, transparent and turquoise. I watched the snake-charmer with the wondering eyes of childhood, this glimpse into a never-land of devilry and mysticism, brief and luminous. His naked black arms were held high up in the air, his face raised, eyes closed to the harsh summer skies, as he murmured enchantments. The fish scales were fresh as he had demanded (they came from the enormous rui fish I had watched Firoza, our maid, chop up that morning), and still retained the pungent odour of faraway riverbeds. The shapure-man was casting a spell: Firoza wanted to get married again or at least have her old husband come back to her. She had saved from her pay for months (as well as sneaking some money from the shopping she was supposed to do), and finally she had the twenty five taka, three candles and three heads of garlic that the snake charmer had demanded. The fish scales were to be wrapped in a piece of cloth that had been rubbed on the face of a kumari-kanya – a young virgin. His tongue flicked out in a quick motion as he enunciated the words again – the face of a kumari-kanya. The bundle would then be tied to her hair where it was to remain for seven days and seven nights. ‘That should do the trick,’ he told her, ‘Bring some unfortunate right to your doorstep. But your face won’t do, will it, now?’ Firoza giggled as he winked at her. He had caught the fish scales in his palms as they descended, winking in the late morning sun. They lay there like coinage of some virgin kingdom, awaiting the breathlessness of first discovery. As the snake charmer asked for the cloth to bind his magic, Firoza pulled me to her, ‘You won’t tell your mother, will you?’ She tore off a corner of the anchal of her cotton sari and wiped my face with it, moulding it to my lips before handing it over to the shapure. He smiled his wolf-smile at me as he moved closer to enlace the tight little bundle of fish scales in Firoza’s waist length hair. He turned to me and asked, ‘And what can I do for the little apa?’ Firoza giggled again, ‘She’s too young for your tricks, snake man. Leave her be.’ ‘Ah,’ He exhaled. “The little apa is not so little any more, is she?’ He laughed as if in mockery and I felt his breath warm my cheeks. His eyes were as brilliant and opalescent as the moni-gem that was hidden in the head of a king cobra, the pupils mere pinpoints of lucid light. Older kids snickered that he was a neshakhor, forever high on ganja, hashish, bhang – those forbidden fruits, that nocturnal nectar. They whispered that he sipped snake venom, and his blood ran cool under his avid skin. The shapure had arrived that morning – as he always did – with his box of treasures, satin ribbons, vivid coloured glass bangles, cheap earrings and nose-pins. He fanned them out for us, ‘Dekhen-dekhen, look here, all that your hearts desire.’ The magic baksho would open, the serrated wooden sides falling away like the opening petals of some iridescent night-blossom, revealing his offering of a vast cornucopia of jingly-jangly, spingly-spangly gewgaws. His eyes glowed with imaginary wisdom as he foretold weddings and woes. The sheen of his pearly black skin was mirrored in the rapacious eyes of the women who sat with spread palms. Once he told Asma, who was maid at my best friend Pamela’s house, that the dark cloud over her would not go away for one whole year unless she took heed to his words. At the time Asma’s father had been bedridden. Asma assumed a blue stone, a Neela as blue as spring skies set in silver, on the third finger of her right hand. Her father died within a month. As the snake-charmer explained on his next visit, there was no saying how fate would finally decide to end the game: but the cloud had gone away for certain. I cannot remember how I could tell that he had arrived. It seemed as if on certain mornings the winds whispered the arrival of the miracle-monger. I would turn a corner on my way to school, or glance into a field on my way back, and suddenly my eyes would see a three-deep closed circle of women and children and I would know that when I elbowed my way to the middle, he would be there – the shapure man who had snake-charmed his way into my childhood. I would always ask ma for some money for the shapure, and she would give me a five taka note. She never knew that I sneaked another five taka note in before handing over my offering to him. I would save the money from the salaami money I received each eid from the elders. Sometimes, when I had greedily spent the money beforehand, I would steal – a fifty paisa from her purse, another from dad’s wallet. If she was busy when a beggar came, I would turn the beggar away with a whispered pleading of forgiveness ‘Maf koren’ and pocket the coins she had given me; alms for my curious and fearful greed. Firoza knew about the money, of course. Firoza who was supposed to be buying our groceries at the store but was standing here wasting time with this flim-flam. I had been playing outside, and had tagged along when I saw her with the shopping bag in hand. If there was any money left over from the groceries, she would let me have an ice-lolly or a candy bar. Firoza had been at our house ever since I could remember. Some years older than me, she had been taken away by her parents once about three years ago and married to a man years older than her: her father had owed him money. The man had beaten her every other night, finally kicking her out after three months, and Firoza came back to us. Yet Firoza yearned for him – a need as mysterious and constant to me as the river waters rising with a full moon. She had told me two nights ago that the shapure was going to give her a charm to get her husband back. She had shown me the three heads of garlic she had sneaked that evening from our kitchen as she lay on her pallet on the floor by my bed. The candles and the money were in the pantry, tucked away in the pink-flowered tin trunk that held her worldly belongings. Now as we stood together, Firoza raised both her hands and wound her hair in a loose bun in languid motions. But the shapure was looking at me, ‘Nothing today, little apa?’ The unfamiliar laughter in his gaze made me uncomfortable. ‘The snakes,’ I managed to say, ‘Didn’t you bring the gokhra?’ ‘Oh, it is only the snakes that you want? Those king serpents?’ He tucked his matted hair behind his ears and moved closer to me. I took a step back only then noticing that his baskets were behind me, by the side of the road. ‘For you, anything. Everyone has time for the snake-games.’ Firoza hissed, ‘Stop your nakhra, will you? And do what you must.’ His voice grated in our ears in its litany of vicarious greed as he opened the telescopic wicker baskets containing his snakes, ‘Eat, eat, eat the skinflint –bakkhila, eat his miserly head, gobble it all up.’ The scrawny flat heads of his gokhra-snakes with the horse-shoe sigil painted behind weaved and waved in the shimmery summer air in time with his been-flute, fat and purple like an eggplant. His right hand curled in on itself, he let it spasm in the air in time to his invocation and exhortations to his scaly companions to punish the ones who kept their purses closed to him. The beady eyes of the gokhra kept darting towards me as the dance continued. The shapure bowed his head in salaam as always as he took the money from my hands, his rowdy black hair hung in matted clumps hiding his thin face. His fingers touched mine for an instant. Then he was carefully folding the notes and putting them in his fatua-pocket: it felt strange, for what had been mine was now his. I shivered as he turned his eyes on me again, ‘Your little breast holds a big heart, little apa.’