—49—
The raids let up a bit, and twice in a week, I slept deeply, waking up in my own bed.
It improved my mood tremendously. Mother, too, seemed a little less delusional, although her physical condition was deteriorating rapidly.
Mrs. Cotton offered to come in and keep her company while I ran errands.
Peter kept an eye out for a suitable refugee to help, but in the meantime, Mrs. Cotton was a godsend.
I’d given her one of the kittens, and I took a pair of kittens to Nina for companionship, and we made plans to move Mother there. Of course, I would come, too.
One morning, I dug up a handful of potatoes.
The night had been a long one, bombs dropping for hours, though nothing much landed close by.
Even when the bombs didn’t fall, the noise of guns and shrapnel and droning planes created enough noise to keep us awake.
Mother had had an episode of coughing up blood overnight, and now slept after a tea she’d instructed me to make from milk thistle and valerian.
Her skin was raw from scratching, and later I would bathe her in chamomile and oat straw, but in the meantime, I was very hungry and a sturdy potato soup with new leeks would go a long way toward comfort.
In the kitchen, I listened to the radio, humming along with a symphony, and scrubbed the skins clean.
When the phone rang in the hallway, I dried my hands and picked up. “Hello?”
“Elsie. There you are.”
Tanveer.
Every bit of tension in my body drained out, and I sank to the telephone chair. “And there you are. Oh my, what a sound for sore ears.”
A low plane flew overhead, and I winced, seeing the shadow pass over the window, but I would not leave this phone even if the bombs dropped in the front garden. In Hindustani, he said, “Tell me how you are, mere chiriya.”
I bent myself into the call, making a circle with my body to create a world for our voices. In the same language, I said, “Your voice is a gift. It cheers me immensely just to hear you.”
“What are you doing this morning?”
I answered in English, “Scrubbing potatoes. Very glamorous. You?”
He switched to English, “I have a meeting with some members of the Indian National Congress. I do not think it will go anywhere, but I will show up anyway.” His voice was warm, low. “It gave me an opportunity to call you again. Are you all right?”
I reached for the words in Hindustani, which I did not practice enough these days. “As well as can be expected. It was a terrible night, honestly. I’m going to move my mother to Nina’s so it will be safer for all of us.”
“Why is it safer? Fewer bombs?”
“No, it feels like they circle, and hit every area on rotation. She has a wine cellar, and it is quite deep.”
“Of course she does.” He chuckled. “This sounds like a very good plan.”
Such mundanities! “I wish I could say something profound or meaningful,” I said. “Something worthy of the call.”
“This is the worth for me, Elsie. To hear your voice and know you are alive and well. Shall I bring poems to read to you?”
“Honestly, you could say peas and carrots over and over and I would be happy. It cheers me more than I can say to hear your voice.”
“Peas and carrots. You’ve said that before. I don’t know what it means.”
“Never mind. I’ll tell you in a letter. How is Channan?”
A pause. “No better, I’m afraid.”
It made my chest ache. “Give her my love.”
A crackle worked through the line, almost too loud. “—for her.”
“I missed that, I’m afraid.”
“I can’t hear you very well.”
A harsh sense of loss pierced my chest. “Do not hang up! Not yet!”
The line went dead. I waited for another call, but it did not come.
Buoyed and despondent in equal measure, I returned to the potatoes.
In the basket by the stove, two kittens curled up together, and I picked them up, burying my face in their fluffy necks, and allowed myself to weep for the space of a single minute.
A minute was all I could spare, and when I deemed it long enough, I settled the babies back in their places, dried my face, and picked up the potatoes.
And in some spare gift of grace, I remembered that much of what was seeing me through these dark days was the experience I’d gained in the last war, when I’d retreated to Herewich and learned how to feed Tanveer and myself on meager rations and the garden.