Haggling on a Moonlit Night

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One day, the man I had been watching curiously for days discovered me. There were lots of shops near the bus station. The row of vendors had stalls for motor parts, betel nut leaf, cigarettes, fancy goods, saris, ready-made clothes, books, and shoes. In my little shop, I sold hemorrhoid medicines that my late father had seen in a prophetic dream. On his way to Sarsina’s¹ gathering of the Sufis, he failed to board the transfer train at the Santahar junction. So, while spending that chilly winter night at the railway platform, he was divinely inspired by a medicine for hemorrhoids.

As I was my father’s only child, he handed down his small medicine business to me. I could not help pondering that “piles” had disappeared from the country. Only anxiety and hunger ruled our lives these days; there were no other ailments. I realized the need for this drug seemed to have faded. The repainted signboard, in bright red letters, was glaring for no reason. I sat before a tilted almirah with a broken leg stuffed with my father’s medicine. My shop’s door was made from a folded corrugated tin, and my reclining chair belonged to my father, made from seasoned timber. I watched the busy sales in the nearby shops and the hustle and bustle of passengers shuttling to the Pirojpur bus stop from morning till evening.

I had seen that man many times before. He was always draped in a shabby shrug, be it winter or summer, hastily moving from here to there. Sometimes he stopped, swiftly looking in another direction, heading toward there, and then suddenly vanishing. Like a slick fish stuck in a stew, I had almost caught him, but he slipped through my fingers and left no trace. One day, he stopped by the betel nut leaf and cigarette stall. He did not buy anything there but thoroughly scrutinized me until our eyes met. He greeted me with an eloquent “salaam” and entered my shop.

He took out a matchbox-sized machine from his shirt pocket. It had little wheels. Gently placing it on his palm, he said gruffly, “Look!”

The machine made no sound or stir. It was impossible to tell whether it was a machine part or an actual working device. “Take it in your hand, sir!”

Then he hypnotized me with his compelling storytelling about the instrument he brought to sell. I studied the small shiny brass cogwheels with deep interest. The gears were connected to many sprockets. Some red and blue wires, thin as hair, were attached to the minuscule machine. It had a tiny bulb that looked like a blister on his fingertip. I was amazed the moment I set my eyes on the device. I could not turn away.

I had no idea that such a trivial thing could captivate me so intensely. It felt like I was lifted into the void in the blink of an eye! The neurons of this man’s brain had assessed my psychology precisely and exactly predicted my curiosity. I was mesmerized by the tiny object.

He gently placed the object in my hand as I greedily offered him my palm. Instantly, I was taken by an electric shock, from my bloodstream to my fist, which resembled a blue, smooth, and spherical bird egg.

Like a bending tree, I bowed and scrutinized the object’s intricate detailing. Suddenly, the man snatched it away and hid it between his fingers, the way a chicken would cover her chicks under her wings in the face of danger. His behavior stunned me.

The man began narrating his experience of acquiring the appliance. “You won’t get it anywhere; it’s not imported to Bangladesh anymore, although there’s a high demand, so people have gone berserk over it.”

I wanted to look at it again and was surprised that a simple machine could be that thrilling. The man did not uncover his hand and spoke with an air. “The price can be no less than twenty-five taka!”

My response sounded like an automated reply. “OK, let’s consider the cost later. Please let me take a closer look at it once more.”

He showed it to me again. Then we agreed on a final price of eighteen taka. I did not know why I even bought the thing; I did not know its purpose or use. I just felt happy to have it.

Before leaving, the man left me with a new piece of information: “Hundreds of people’ll chase you down for what you bought from me. If you’re lucky, you might be able to sell it off at thirty or forty, and even at fifty, if you’re fortunate!”

After my first purchase, the man began visiting me regularly. Every time he showed up, he would introduce me to a new type of paraphernalia and a new set of stories in his husky voice. It was as though the sun would never set on his raspy voice, and he continued to cajole me. In contrast to his marketing strategy, I could not sell a single bottle of the hemorrhoid medicine my father had gotten in his dream, which was displayed in my little shop. That meant I could not light my stove to cook my meals sometimes. I was a bachelor and lived alone in a shed behind the shop. I could not regularly light my shack, fearing it would exceed my expenditures. I would often doze off during the day because my nighttime sleep was often disrupted by hunger spasms and the scratching of my lice-infested hair. All those strangely designed and spectacular tools that I had bought and hoarded from that man at different inauspicious moments quietly gave me company after nightfall.

The man would often come to my shop to sell new apparatuses. He would appear with some novel piece of machinery in his hand like a sudden fleck of clouds blown from the northeastern sky. “The price is only twelve taka! I acquired this piece with a lot of difficulty, sir!” he would say.

I never wanted to tell him the truth that “my pocket is empty today” because I did not want to disappoint him. I tried to compensate him by offering tea and lentil puris, which I would barter from the next-door tea stall. I would also repeatedly request him to come another day. I feared he might find a new customer and forget me.

One day, the bus stand had been evacuated due to an emergency. The shops had to shut down abruptly, and the people rushed into their own cave-like hideouts fearfully. Stillness tiptoed, and empty eyes turned crimson. I was in my hut, preparing the ingredients for making khichuri, when I heard a loud knock on my back door. “Who’s it?” I snapped.

“It’s me, sir!” I unbolted the door, and the man immediately thrust his head through the narrow opening, wide-eyed. Like a sacrificial animal, he whispered excitedly, “Lend me a hand, sir.”

When I pushed the door ajar, I saw a heavy wooden box near his feet. The moonlight flashed into my faintly lighted bower. “This is expensive stuff, sir. You won’t find it anywhere. Help me move it inside.”

We carried the heavy wooden box together into my chamber. I could hear the khichuri boiling on the stove. The turmeric water and the bubbling white froth spilled out of the pot and crackled in the fire. I was so mesmerized by seeing him again that I forgot to lower the flame. “What’s this?” I asked curiously.

Instead of replying, he caressed the wooden box like a father; it was as if he was waiting to speak after the child had fallen asleep. I was struck by his spontaneous initiative in reducing the stove flame. Then he began speaking enthusiastically. “Are you making khichuri, sir?”

“Yes, I am!”

“Haven’t had khichuri for a while. Remember momma cooking it sometimes—we’d have a hearty meal once with lemon leaves, all of us together. ’Twas a moonlit night, sir. We ate in the courtyard, in the silvery rays of the moon. Next morning, found momma hanging herself from the branch of our Malabar plum tree, her sari tied around the neck.”

The man briefly narrated the story with a smirk lingering on his lips, just the way a private tutor might have smiled after solving a math problem for his pupil. That annoyed me a lot. “Why aren’t you telling me what’s inside this wooden box?” I spoke impatiently.

Rather, he inquired, “Sir, can you not manage just one hundred? Can’t you? It’s only a hundred taka!”

“What are you saying, one hundred?!”

“This is a special price only for you because I don’t want to haggle with you.”

“Show it to me then!”

He quickly opened the box with nimble fingers and took out the collectible. It was as though he was carrying a baby in his lap, searching helplessly for a soft surface to put him down.

“Lay it down here on my bed,” I said.

The spicy aroma of the steaming khichuri filled our nostrils. The apparatus he took out of the wooden box looked like a huge copper ash gourd. The moment I focused the lamp on the curio, it shone radiantly. On its smooth surface, numerous copper wires spiraled thickly. The copper ash gourd had two small steel stalks at both ends, wrapped in thick, transparent bubble wrap. “A hundred taka?” I inquired again.

“Yes, just for you, sir!”

I tried to calculate my savings in my head but could not concentrate; the quietude was hampering the process, and I gave up. “Do you need the money right away?” I asked anxiously.

“I won’t be able to give it to you then. There are other customers eagerly waiting for this.”

“Let’s do this.” Patting my bed, I signaled for him to sit down. “Why don’t you have some khichuri with me tonight? You’ll get your money in a few days.”

Like one could see tree branches through a thick fog, I could also visualize him turning away from me, like a corpse, dying gradually, powerless to pay.

“’Twas such a beautiful moonlit night that day, just like today.”

He spoke solemnly, sitting quietly. Then he suddenly clasped the copper ash gourd and put it back inside the wooden box. He swiftly closed the lid of the wooden box, snip-snap, and lifted it with agility underneath his shawl. “Open the door,” he said hastily.

“I’m not lying to you.” I pleaded with him to stay.

“My hands are occupied. Please open the door for me, sir.”

“You will get the money in a few days. A wholesaler is coming from Naogaon to buy two dozen bottles of medicine from me.” The man pushed the door with his shoulder. When I helped him widen the door panel, the bold emptiness of my room seemed struck by the pelting of the hoary silence of the exterior. The entire moonlit night let out a peal of laughter.

It was much later in the evening that I served myself some cold khichuri. I devoured it rapaciously when hunger had aroused a wild summit in my belly. My heart ached to experience another such beautiful moonlit night. Suddenly, a strange thought gripped me. I imagined myself as a divine mechanic in a luminous overall, turning the waxing moon into a full moon.

The man did not return for a long time. I waited for him every day, like the passenger from Patharghata who would never come. Like a family man, I hopelessly waited for a lottery that he would never win. All the machines and appliances I collected from him stared at me in the face with their metallic, sarcastic look. I did not know their usage or their function. Not a single customer knocked on my door to buy these curios. Nor did anyone step on the boundary of my drug shop to buy my father’s divine panacea. Selling this medication at that time seemed entirely hopeless. I worked gruelingly night in and night out, as well as day in and day out, trying to sell his remedy.

As a result, I could not light my stove regularly. All I could do was ask the next-door stall for a cup of tea and four pieces of lentil puris at best, promising I would pay back when I had earned the money. After gulping down that whole portion by midmorning, I contemplated ways to speed up the day toward the next morning. A few days later, the tea and lentil puri sellers stopped giving me food for free. Starving for two days and waiting for the man to appear again, who had been missing for the last two lunar phases, I was finally thinking of selling off my father’s seasoned timber reclining chair. In the evening, when I went to sleep, all those strange gears I had stored glared at me in the face, showing their tiny teeth like cogs. I tried to conjure a fictional customer in my sleep. Sometimes I dreamed of a broad-shouldered man wearing an oversize flowing garment with a walking stick in his hand.

My doors remained open for that robust man I dreamed of. Then, quite unexpectedly, he entered my home again like a slender black cat. It was that very man who hadn’t visited me during the last two lunar phases. He inquired, “Sir, is there anyone else in the room?”

The question did not surprise me. However, I was a little upset with him for his long disappearance. He spoke like a mystic. “Do you know why I didn’t come for so long? Everything went wrong with that wooden box I showed you. The police caught me. Look, sir, how they struck me.”

The man removed the shawl from his back. I held the lamp high, and he laid bare the bruises on his body. “My business is precarious; see my wounds from the severe beating.”

I requested him to take a seat. I could see the excitement in his glistening eyes when he began speaking like he had picked some fruit from someone else’s orchard. “Sir, I’ve something new.”

“Another new apparatus?” My mind became ecstatic like the color azure blue. The fact that I was going through a phase of starvation and was broke seemed irrelevant at that moment in comparison to the exciting object he had to offer this time. I was over the moon to find out what it was!

I was keenly waiting for him to take out his arms from underneath his shawl and show me what he was hiding there. What metallic object did he bring this time? He did not remove his hands but stared at me for some time. When he took them out, he had nothing hidden in his hands. He twisted his body through the narrow gap of the door, and, like pulling a passenger on the train, he passed someone clad in a sari inside the room. She was completely covered from top to bottom. He immediately closed the door behind him. “Do you have it, sir? Just a ten-taka note. You won’t get this at this price anywhere, sir. You were the first person I remembered. That’s why I came straight to you, only ten taka, sir!” The man held out his hand toward me for the money, waiting eagerly.

I looked at the body of the covered woman leaning against the door. The man became restless, as he did every other day. He stood next to the figure of the woman and used his fingers to turn her head toward me, almost like spinning a wheel. He uncovered her face with his other hand by removing the border of her sari that covered her head. Her bronze face shone in the lamplight—the high cheekbones, the tip of the nose, and the lower section of her temple all gleamed in the dim light. She wore a nolok.² The nose ring in her septum dangled from its hinge and sparkled brightly in the dark. “It’s only ten taka. Don’t you want to have it, sir?” he asked, urgingly.

“Let me see what you have here.” The man seemed to revitalize just from hearing the optimism in my response. He uncovered the woman’s shoulders, sliding a corner of the sari from one side, and laid bare her torso for display. Like a skilled artist, he instantly made an appealing presentation of the woman before me.

“Sir, I’ve been selling mementos to you for so long, but the police captured all I had. I have become completely impoverished. Now I must sell my personal belongings to survive. If this is the case, then I’d rather trade them with my kith and kin. Don’t you agree, sir?”

The man leaned against me. It was not just money he wanted but also a little bit of affection. I suddenly remembered that I had always saved a ten-taka note for my funeral shroud. I tried to recall where I had kept it.

“Give it to me quickly, sir. It’s getting late!” he said in haste.

After a lot of searching, I found the ten-taka note inside a book on religion, The Key to Heaven. I had spared that note many years ago. Had I died suddenly, that money would have served the people who bought my funeral shroud. The man vanished with the note again, almost immediately. He closed the door behind him. The moment the door clicked open, the moonlight flooded my dark chamber majestically with silver beams. The moonlit night roared out loud, first once, then repeatedly, and finally, eternally.

“It’s a full moon today!” I conveyed the message to the watchful woman in the room while I turned to the other side to sleep.

Footnotes

¹ The Sarsina Darbar Sharif is a world-famous religious center in Bangladesh situated in Pirojpur district in Sarsina village. It was first established by the Sufi leader Muhammad Nesaruddin Ahmed in 1890. The present leader of this center is Peer Mawlana Shah Muhammad Mohebullah. Millions of people attend its annual religious gathering worldwide. The purpose of this gathering is to discuss and be involved in spiritual practice. At the end, people have a big feast together. (return to text)
² A nolok is a piece of traditional nose jewelry, usually a ring in the septum of the nose, worn by rural Bengali women as a symbol of wedlock, just like an engagement ring. The nose pin is another kind of nose jewelry that is worn by married women. However, noloks and nose pins have now both become popular fashion accessories among educated, modern, urban women globally. (return to text)