Revenge Read Free Page A

steadied myself and set about placing the pan on the fire, throwing in the onions and garlic, turning the chillies and spices. Why, I asked myself, does this family pant for my cooking when in a sane world I could barely qualify as Rosuni’s assistant? Was it because my hands were fairer than hers? Because I had gold bracelets while Rosuni wore bangles of glass? Or was it that my knowledge of the great formulas of physics gave me a gift for refining the flavors of Bengali cuisine?
     
     
    When he got back from work that day, Haroon behaved as if he had no memory of my morning agony. Sitting down for supper, he chattered on about his new Korean colleague, how the gentleman could not speak English, and had conversed with Haroon for an hour in his own language, which Haroon, of course, could not speak and for which he had
no respect. He’d arrange for a translator, he said, and then sat down in front of the television to watch Mumazzudin Ahmad, who had cast himself in the role of an absentminded teacher. Haroon laughed and laughed. I would have laughed too, but my head was throbbing.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “My stomach again.”
    “Of course,” he said, barely looking up. “You must go and lie down if you feel unsteady.”
    When he came to bed, I was still awake, and soon he was loosening my sari. I sighed deeply as he began to make love to me. How could a man who was so indifferent to his wife’s discomfort be such a sensitive lover? Afterward, Haroon lit a cigarette and blew smoke rings as he always had, as he had in the early days of our marriage when our love was still new. “You see, I’m no longer tired,” he said, his entire frame loosened and calm. But I was hardly calm and I’d had no pleasure in spite of the precision of his touch. Haroon had simply used my body to relieve his fatigue.
    When I returned from the bathroom, Haroon had stopped smoking. He was lying with his back turned. I lay down beside him. Perhaps now he would listen to me, but when I moved closer to him, the sound of his snoring greeted my ears.

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    A s Haroon brushed his teeth, I vomited. To my surprise he reached for me, and steadying me from behind, gave me some water to drink. Such comfort, I thought, closing my eyes and letting my head rest against his shoulder. Quickly he helped me to our bed, and as soon as I lay down, fetched a couple of Pepto-Bismol tablets. “Here,” he said, jabbing them at me. “Swallow them now.”
    “Will I stop vomiting?”
    “Of course.” And then he went into the bathroom, only to return minutes later, wrapped in a towel. I watched as he dressed, knotted his tie and touched cologne to his neck.
    “I’m not feeling better,” I said. “I feel strange.”
    “How?” Now he was slipping into his shoes.
    “I’m pregnant.”
    At first he didn’t answer and then he said, “What rot!” and turned toward the door. In a second he was gone and I was alone with the burning sensation in my stomach, making trips into the bathroom where only moments ago he had showered. How had the charming boy I’d met at the academy musicale become such a cruel insensitive man? How could an
accomplished and intelligent man of twenty-two deny that morning nausea was a sign of pregnancy? I remembered our first phone call barely two years before.
    “Remember me?” a young man’s voice had asked.
    “Not really,” I replied.
    “We talked once in the park . . . ”
    “Possible, I guess,” I answered. “I’ve talked to so many men, I can’t remember them all. What’s your name?” I admit I was harsh, but I’d often been harassed by strange phone calls—we all were, my friends and I, in those days.
    “What’s the point of giving you my name?” he said. “There are scores of Haroons in the world. You must know at least ten!”
    I tried to recall him, but I could think of only one Haroon, a distant cousin. This Haroon would not get off the phone, even after I insisted I knew no one by that name.
    And then,