1.
The rent is eleven taka. People laugh when they hear it. A room four cubits by six on Asmanitola Lane now goes for seven hundred, and hearing eleven they stop laughing and all ask the same question: what’s the condition?
There is only one condition. Once a month each tenant must come down and tell a dream. I enter the dream in the register, put the date on it, and then ink the tenant’s right thumb and take a thumbprint.
A thick register, the cover wrapped in red cloth. The pages ruled into columns: date, room, name, substance of the dream, remarks, thumbprint. The column for the substance of the dream is the widest, and what goes into that column must be written in the tenant’s own words, not in mine.
— If you dress it up the thing is spoiled. Write it the way he said it.
I do not correct spelling. If somebody says the bridge din’t have no railing, I write the bridge din’t have no railing. In the evening Sardar sahib takes the register upstairs, and beside some of the lines he makes small pencil marks.
I came to this house as a tenant myself. Three months later Sardar sahib called me and said my dreams were of no use, and in the same breath said my handwriting was good.
— No rent for you. Write the register.
For four years I have not dreamed at all. I say it now, because said later it would sound like an explanation. I sleep well enough; I lie down at ten, get up before Fajr, and all the time in between is black.
2.
The first Friday of the month, eight in the morning. The east window of the front room. On a winter morning the light falls on the right-hand corner of the table, then as the day goes on it slides off and collects at the foot of the wall, so I always keep the register on the left.
Hafizuddin comes down first. One arm of his glasses is bound with white thread. He had a watch shop in Nawabpur for twenty-eight years. Since the shop went he sits at home opening and mending people’s watches, and when he has finished he holds the watch to his ear and listens for a long time without speaking. In his dreams there is always something missing. A bridge without a railing, a watch without hands, a first floor without a staircase. Sardar sahib has never rejected a single one of his dreams, because what is missing from a dream can be put in later.
Then Chhabura Bibi, in the roof room on the third floor, who drags her right leg. Her son Motaleb drowned in the Buriganga in the month of Shrabon and the body was found three days later at Shyambazar ghat. Since then she sees her son in her dreams nearly every month. For those dreams Chhabura Bibi has to give her thumbprint in the boxes of three consecutive months.
Nitai Pal lives in the back room on the first floor and cuts conch bangles in Shankharibazar. His fingertips are white all year round, the conch powder has gone into the skin, and when he gives his thumbprint he dips the thumb in the ink and shakes it twice so the print will not blur.
Alauddin the tinsmith lives at the back of the ground floor. He makes tin trunks. The sound from his room is not a hammer’s but shears’, and when that long drawn-out sound of tin being cut stops at night you know he has gone to sleep.
Last of all, Ramjan. Seventeen years old, works at a rickshaw garage in Thatharibazar, and the only one who wants to write his own name in the register.
— Do names stay in the register? — They stay. — How long do they stay?
I did not answer.
From Ashwin of that year a new word began appearing in the remarks column. Not acceptable. Two in the first month, five the next, nine the month after.
— A rejected thing won’t go into the register twice. You’ll sort them out first.
From that month the rejected dreams had to be sorted by me before they went in. There is always something wrong in a true dream. The man who really saw it will say there were three people in the room and then count four, and the man who has made it up will bring it all matching, and that is exactly where he is caught.
3.
The first requisition came in a month of Magh. Half a sheet of paper, weighted down with a stone on the table.
Requisition, Falgun
1. One road. Length as you please. At least two bends. 2. Water. But not a river. 3. Evening light, after six.
Dreams relating to rooms will receive special consideration.
It was the first requisition to come from Sardar sahib. A requisition is not a thing one asks questions about. I made five copies and pushed them under the doors of the five rooms, and for the next twenty-four days nobody in this house slept properly. Dreams do not obey orders. The faster the tenants understood that, the faster I understood that making them understand was now my responsibility.
I made rules. I wrote them out and distributed them. Sleep on your left side. Keep water in a brass bowl under the bed. Take a little salt at night and no water. Whatever has been asked for, think of it at the exact moment of closing your eyes, and not before. The rules worked. On the first Friday of Falgun the road Ramjan described had three bends in it and a tubewell at the head of the last bend, and in the remarks column went: Accepted, excellent.
It became easy for Ramjan. The boy brings a road every month. Some months of brick, some of mud, once he brought a road with shops on both sides and nobody in the shops, and that month Sardar sahib waived his rent.
After that a requisition came every month. In seven years the number reached eighty-four. The early papers asked for roads, water, light, walls; later they began asking for things nobody had ever asked for, because they are not things one asks for.
Requisition, Shrabon
1. One corner. Nobody lives on a straight road. 2. Such sound as cometh from a distance. 3. Somebody’s back. The face shall not be required.
Alauddin could bring nothing for three months. In the fourth month what he told me was so well ordered that I stopped him after three lines.
— This isn’t yours. — It’s my nephew’s. — Outside goods don’t go in the register.
The person writing this story has never been to Asmanitola Lane. He has only checked the rent figure against two sources; the rest is the register-writer’s account.
4.
That year the winter came late. The fan ran at night until the middle of Poush, and then one night the cold came down and in the morning there was mist on the inside of the window glass.
Chhabura Bibi came down at eleven. She stood; she did not sit.
— Brother, is it written in the register which side my boy’s parting was on?
I got the old register down. Page seventy-two, the twenty-third of Shrabon, roof room, and in the column for the substance of the dream it says, went in the room and seen Motaleb doing his parting on the right side, and under it her own thumbprint.
— The right side. — Oh.
She stood a while. Then she went up the stairs, and the drag of her right foot could be heard on them for a long while.
A dream that goes into the register begins to blur inside itself within three months. At six months the tenant remembers it by looking at the register, and after a year even the register does nothing, and then he only knows the dream was true because it is written on paper.
Nitai Pal submitted a dream of an alley in Falgun. Walls on both sides, white powder on the walls, wet clothes on a line overhead. In Baishakh he came home one night at half past ten and sat down on the stairs.
— I’ve forgotten the road. — Which road. — Not all of it. Just the last alley.
From the following month he pays a man six taka to walk back with him from Shankharibazar.
Hafizuddin’s loss is of another kind. He has forgotten nothing. He only finishes a job and sits holding the watch to his ear, and although the watch is running it seems to him it is not, so he opens it and mends it again, and listens again, and opens it again, and what used to take him three days now takes him eleven.
5.
In Ashwin, Alauddin stopped submitting dreams. In the third month Sardar sahib came down himself, which he does not do.
— Go at night. Ask him in his sleep. A sleeping man doesn’t lie.
Around two in the morning I lift the latch on Alauddin’s door from outside. The smell of tin in the room, strips of cut tin on the floor, and because the window is shut the air inside is holding the day’s heat. I sit on a stool beside the cot. I put my mouth near his ear and call his name, twice, three times. A sleeping man answers to his own name; that is the one thing I have learned in four years.
— What are you seeing, Alauddin.
— A tin roof. It’s raining.
— What else.
— There’s nobody under the roof.
In the morning he can remember nothing. The dream goes into the register, and I take his finger and press the thumbprint, and Sardar sahib writes Accepted in the remarks column.
After that no rejected dream went back. With the requisition a second paper began to come, with only names, room numbers, and a date beside each name: which night, and to whom. At the head of the paper was written Recoverable.
Within three months the tenants began bolting their doors from inside. Sardar sahib gave me a strip of iron, thin, six inches, one end bent. Pushed through the gap in the door it lifts the bolt without a sound; at Nitai Pal’s door it takes three tries because that door has swelled. Chhabura Bibi never bolted hers.
One afternoon in the courtyard Ramjan came and stood in front of me with a tin of grease in his hand.
— You come at night? — Yes. — I’ve noted it.
After that day Hafizuddin no longer lets me hold a watch, Nitai Pal comes down the stairs hugging the wall if he meets me, and Alauddin’s tin-cutting now goes on until three in the morning.
One night Alauddin answered, walls on both sides, white powder on the walls. The next week Ramjan said, a railing made of watch hands, and the night after that Hafizuddin said, shops on both sides of the road, nobody in the shops.
That month Sardar sahib wrote a new word in the remarks column.
Repetition.
6.
One afternoon in Falgun Sardar sahib called me upstairs. I had never been to the third floor before. A long veranda, three doors on one side, the last of tin. The railing broken, bamboo tied across the break, and no sun reaches the floor because the house next door went up to six storeys last year. In his room a cot, an almirah, no picture on the wall. Four registers by his feet, another in his hand, open.
— It’s come to four hundred and sixty-one.
— Four hundred and sixty-one what?
— Dreams. Accepted. One more is needed.
— Whose?
— Your name isn’t in your register.
That day I made up a dream and told it. I spoke about a roof, rainwater collected on the roof, the sky’s reflection in the water, and before I had finished he raised his hand and stopped me.
— Made up.
— Yes.
— You haven’t seen anything in four years. I know.
— Then why did you call me.
— To show you. The register-writer’s sleep goes into a separate account. You haven’t seen that account.
He opened the almirah and took out a key, long, iron, with a thread tied to the head of it.
— The last room. The key stays with you from now on. My hands shake.
7.
The door of the last room is not wood but tin, and in the tin there are small hammer dents, at perfectly even intervals. The lock is brass. It opened without a sound.
Inside it is evening.
Outside it was two in the morning, but inside it is the light after six in the evening, the light in which everything has its colour and yet casts no shadow, and where that light comes from cannot be found out, because there is no roof above and no sky either. The room is twelve cubits by fourteen. Standing in the doorway you cannot see the far wall.
From the threshold a road begins, of brick laid on edge. A dry drain. The road goes ten paces and turns left, then right, and at the head of the third bend there is a tubewell whose handle, when you press it, gives water, and the water is warm, the way tap water that has stood in the sun all day is warm in the evening. The bridge came after seven minutes. Water below, still, having come from no direction and going to none. The bars of the railing are made of watch hands, the long hands of big clocks, several hundred of them, set side by side and fixed at the top with an iron strip. Past the bridge, the alley. Walls on both sides, white powder on the walls, wet clothes on a line overhead that do not dry. I walked it three times and there is no way out; you have to come back to the mouth you entered by. And after three attempts I understood that this alley is Nitai Pal’s and that he was never able to get out of it himself.
Then a field. In the field, tin roofs set on posts, no walls. I counted sixty-seven such roofs, no cot under them, no stove, nobody, only the sound of rain on the tin although the ground is dry. There is one school. One storey. The staircase to the first floor climbs seven steps and then ends. There are twenty-two shops, all open, all empty. Tin signboards at every corner. Asia Road, Asia Pond, Asia Girls’ School, and at the foot of the bridge, in large letters, ASIABAD, and beneath it in small type, Right of entry reserved.
Asia Khatun is Sardar sahib’s wife. Married in sixty-three, died in the Shrabon of seventy-six, buried at Azimpur, block nine. This much I know from the first page of the register, because the reckoning of dates is written there. I have looked for her. Not at the pond, not at the school, not on any one of the twenty-seven roads. The kind of nameplate that stands on her grave at Azimpur has not been set up anywhere in Asiabad, and yet the name of the road, the name of the pond, the name of the school, all of it is hers.
At the head of the last road there is an empty plot. A brick boundary all round it. A tin signboard on a bamboo post, and on the board in ink, Makbul Hossain, and inside the plot there is not even grass. I came down leaving the door open. Not on purpose; I forgot.
8.
On the first Friday of the next month I sat down at eight. Nine o’clock came. Nobody came down.
I went up. All five of them are there. Hafizuddin is rubbing one bar of the railing on the bridge over and over with his finger, the way he used to clean watch hands in the shop. Nitai Pal is walking in the alley. Ramjan is sitting at the foot of the tubewell.
— This is mine. I ate salt three months for this.
Alauddin is standing under one of the roofs with his hand out holding the post, as though the roof would blow away if he let go.
Chhabura Bibi is on the road in front of the school. There is a lamplighter who walks there, a long bamboo on his shoulder with a wick at the end, and he goes lighting one lamp after another although it is already evening light everywhere.
— Why is the face blurred.
I did not answer. I had the register with me. I opened page seventy-two and held it out to her, and she lifted her eyes from the page to the lamplighter, then back to the page, and then did not look again. The lamplighter passed us. He did not stop, did not look, walked on with the bamboo level on his shoulder, and Chhabura Bibi knew the walk, because she raised her hand, but the hand stopped halfway up.
There are twenty-seven roads in Asiabad. One pond. One bridge, one school, and the school has no first floor. There is not one house. In the requisitions Sardar sahib has asked for a house twenty-nine times. I have turned every page of all five registers, not once but twice.
Turning them, I found my own name near the beginning of the first register. Three entries. Tenant Makbul Hossain, first floor, head of the stairs, and beside all three a red pencil circle, and under the circle Not acceptable, and under all three my own thumbprint, broader then than it is now.
The first: standing in the yard, someone calling my name, I turn round and there’s nobody. The second: mother serving the rice, one plate. The third: sitting at the station, the train don’t come.
I read them three times. Reading them it seemed I was reading about somebody else, and reaching the last line I realised I do not know what the station was called. These three Sardar sahib did not take. Why he did not take them he did not say that day, and does not say now, but going through five registers I have understood: in none of the three is there a place. There is a yard, no house. There is a plate, no room. There is a station, no name.
The last requisition came in Agrahayan. Half a sheet of paper, the writing shaky, no date.
Requisition
1. One house. Any house. Four walls will do.
Ramjan went first, changing garages, to Jatrabari. Nitai Pal went to Shankharibazar and lives above the shop; he has said he will not come back. Alauddin took his trunks away on a van, two trips. Hafizuddin died in Ashwin, in his own room, at dawn, with an opened watch on his chest.
Chhabura Bibi did not come down. The door of the roof room is open. Two garments hang on the line, dry, and in seven months I have not once seen those two garments move.
I no longer lock the last room on the third floor. There is no need. There are two people in this house now who climb stairs, and one of them cannot climb stairs. Sardar sahib does not climb them any more. At midday the sound of the cot comes from his room; the rest of the time nothing comes. I take the food up and bring the plate down, and most days the plate is as I left it.
On the first Friday of Agrahayan I sat down at eight. The light from the window fell on the right-hand corner of the table, then slid off and collected at the foot of the wall. Nobody came.
I sat until two in the afternoon. Then I pulled the register over and wrote the date, and in the room column I wrote under the stairs, and in the name column I wrote Makbul Hossain. I left the column for the substance of the dream empty, put the pen down, opened the lid of the ink pad, got up, and went and sat in the chair on the other side of the table.
