Luka and the Fire of Life (3 page)

Lately, however, Rashid’s hands had slowed down, and seemed to have gone back to being just hands. In fact, the rest of Rashid was slowing down as well. He walked more slowly than before (though he had never walked quickly), ate more slowly (though not very much more) and, most worryingly of all, talked more slowly (and he had always talked very, very fast). He was slower to smile than he had been, and sometimes, Luka imagined, it seemed that the thoughts were actually slowing down in his father’s head. Even the stories he told seemed to move more slowly than they once had, and that was bad for business. ‘If he goes on slowing down at this rate,’ Luka told himself with alarm, ‘then pretty soon he’ll completely grind to a halt.’ The image of a completely halted father, stuck in mid-sentence, mid-gesture, mid-stride, just frozen to the spot for ever, was a frightening one; but that, it seemed, was the direction in which things were heading, unless something could be done to get Rashid Khalifa back up to speed. So Luka began to think of how a father might be accelerated; where was the pedal to push that would restore his fading zoom? But before he could solve the problem, the terrible thing happened on the beautiful starry night.

One month and one day after the arrival of Dog the bear and Bear the dog at the Khalifa home, the sky arching over the city of Kahani, the River Silsila and the sea beyond was miraculously
full of stars, so brilliant with stars, in fact, that even the glumfish in the depths of the water came up for a surprised look and began, against their wishes, to smile (and if you have ever seen a smiling glumfish looking surprised, you will know that it is not a pretty sight). As if by magic the thick stripe of the galaxy itself blazed out of a clear night sky, reminding everyone of how things had been in the old days before human beings dirtied the air and hid the heavens from view. Because of the smog it had become so unusual to see the Milky Way in the city that people called from house to house to tell their neighbours to come out into the street and look. Everyone poured out of their homes and stood with their chins in the air as if the whole neighbourhood was asking to be tickled, and Luka briefly considered being the tickler-in-chief, but then thought better of the idea.

The stars seemed to be dancing up there, to be swirling around in grand and complicated patterns like women at a wedding decked out in their finery, women shining white and green and red with diamonds, emeralds and rubies, brilliant women dancing in the sky, dripping with fiery jewels. And the dance of the stars was mirrored in the city streets; people came out with tambourines and drums and celebrated, as if it were somebody’s birthday. Bear and Dog celebrated, too, howling and bouncing, and Haroun and Luka and Soraya and their neighbour, Miss Oneeta, all danced, too. Only Rashid failed to join the party. He sat on the porch and watched, and nobody, not even Luka, could drag him to his feet. ‘I feel heavy,’ he said. ‘My legs feel like coal sacks and my arms feel like logs. It must be that gravity has somehow increased in my vicinity, because
I am being pulled down towards the ground.’ Soraya said he was just being a lazy potato, and after a while Luka, too, let his father just sit there eating a banana from a bunch he had bought from a passing vendor while he, Luka, ran about under the carnival of the stars.

The big sky show went on until late at night, and while it lasted it looked like an omen of something good, of the beginning of an unexpectedly good time. But Luka realised soon enough that it had been nothing of the sort. Maybe it had actually been a kind of farewell, a last hurrah, because that was the night that Rashid Khalifa, the legendary storyteller of Kahani, fell asleep with a smile on his face, a banana in his hand and a twinkle on his brow, and did not wake up the next morning. Instead he slept on, snoring softly, with a sweet smile on his lips. He slept all morning, and then all afternoon, and then all night again, and so it went on, morning after morning, afternoon after afternoon, night after night.

Nobody could wake him.

At first Soraya, thinking he was just overtired, went around shushing everybody and telling everyone not to disturb him. But she soon began to worry, and tried to wake him up herself. She spoke to him gently at first, murmuring words of love. Then she stroked his brow, kissed his cheek, and sang a little song. Finally, growing impatient, she tickled him on the soles of his feet, shook him violently by the shoulders, and as a last resort shouted at the top of her voice into his ear. He let out an approving ‘mmm’ and his smile broadened a little, but he did not wake.

Soraya sat down on the floor beside his bed and buried her
head in her hands. ‘What will I do?’ she wailed. ‘He always was a dreamer, and now he’s gone and decided he prefers his dreams to me.’

Soon enough the newspapers got wind of Rashid’s condition and journalists came snaking and oiling around the neighbourhood, trying to get the story. Soraya shooed the photographers away, but the story got written just the same.
NO MORE BLATHER FROM THE SHAH OF BLAH
, the headlines shouted, a little cruelly.
NOW HE’S THE SLEEPING BEAUTY, ONLY NOT SO BEAUTIFUL
.

When Luka saw his mother crying and his father in the grip of the Big Sleep, he felt as if the world, or a big part of his world, anyway, was coming to an end. All his life he had tried to creep into his parents’ bedroom early in the morning and surprise them before they awoke, and every time they had woken up before he reached their bedside. But now Rashid was not waking up and Soraya was really inconsolable, a word which, as Luka knew, in reality had nothing to do with games, even though right at this moment he wished he was inside some other, fictitious version of reality and could press the Exit button to get back to his own life. But there was no Exit button. He was at home, even though home suddenly felt like a very strange and frightening place, with no laughter and, most horrible of all, no Rashid. It felt as if a thing that had been impossible had become possible, a thing that had been unthinkable had become thinkable, and Luka did not want to give that terrifying thing a name.

Doctors came and Soraya took them into the room where Rashid was sleeping and shut the door. Haroun was allowed inside, but Luka had to stay with Miss Oneeta, which he hated,
because she gave him too many sweets to eat and pulled his face towards her so that he was lost between her bosoms like a traveller in an unknown valley that smelled of cheap perfume. After a while Haroun came to see him. ‘They say they don’t know what is wrong with him,’ he told Luka. ‘He’s just sleeping and they can’t say why. They have put a drip into his arm because he isn’t eating or drinking and needs nourishment. But if he doesn’t wake up –’

‘He’s going to wake up,’ Luka shouted. ‘He’ll be awake any minute now!’

‘If he doesn’t wake up,’ Haroun said, and Luka noticed that Haroun’s hands had tightened into fists, and there was a sort of fisty tightness also in his voice, ‘then his muscles will deteriorate and his whole body too and then –’

‘Then nothing,’ Luka interrupted fiercely. ‘He’s just resting, that’s all. He was slowing down and felt heavy and he needed to rest. He’s looked after us all his life, to be honest with you, and now he’s entitled to take some time off, isn’t that right, Oneeta Auntie?’

‘Yes, Luka,’ said Miss Oneeta, ‘that is right, my darling, I am almost completely sure.’ And a tear rolled down her cheek.

Then matters got worse.

Luka lay awake in his bed that night, too shocked and unhappy to sleep. Bear the dog was on the bed, too, whiffling and mumbling and lost in a doggy dream, and Dog the bear lay motionless on a straw mat on the floor. But Luka was wide awake. The night sky outside his window was no longer clear, but cloudy and low, as if it were frowning, and thunder grumbled in the distance like the voice of an angry giant. Then Luka
heard the sound of beating wings close by, and he jumped out of bed and ran to the window, stuck his head out of it and twisted his neck round to look up towards the sky.

There were seven vultures flying down towards him, wearing ruffs around their necks, like European noblemen in old paintings, or like circus clowns. They were ugly, smelly and mean. The biggest, ugliest, smelliest and meanest vulture settled down on Luka’s windowsill, right next to him, as if they were old friends, while the other six hovered just out of reach. Bear the dog woke up and came to the window fast, growling and baring his teeth; Dog the bear leapt up a moment later and towered over Luka, looking as if he wanted to rip the vulture to pieces there and then. ‘Wait,’ Luka told them, because he had seen something that needed to be investigated. Hanging from the ruff around the Boss Vulture’s neck was a little pouch. Luka reached for it; the vulture made no move. Inside the pouch was a scroll of paper, and on the scroll of paper was a message from Captain Aag.

‘Dreadful black-tongued child,’ the message read, ‘disgusting witch-boy, did you imagine I would do nothing in return for what you did to me? Did you think, vile warlock infant, that I could not damage you more grievously than you damaged me? Were you so vain, so foolish, feeble pint-sized maledictor, that you thought you were the only witch in town? Throw out a curse when you can’t control it, O incompetent pygmy hexer, and it will come back to smack you in the face. Or, on this occasion, in perhaps an even more satisfying act of revenge, it poleaxes someone you love.’

Luka began to shiver, even though the night was warm. Was
this the truth? Had his burning curse against the circus boss been answered by a sleeping curse on his father? In which case, Luka thought with horror, the Big Sleep was his fault. Not even the arrival in his life of Dog the bear and Bear the dog could make up for the loss of his dad. But on the other hand, he had noticed his father’s slowness long before the night of the dancing stars, so maybe this note was just a hideous lie. At any rate he was determined not to let the Boss Vulture see that he was shaken, so in a loud, firm voice, like the one he used in school plays, he said, ‘I hate vultures, to be honest with you, and I’m not surprised that you are the only creatures who stayed loyal to that terrible Captain Aag. What an idea, anyway, to have a vulture act in a circus! Just shows you the type of guy he is. This, also,’ Luka added, and tore the note to bits under the vulture’s cynical beak, ‘is the letter of a nasty man, trying to make out that he could make my father ill. He can’t make anyone unwell, obviously, but he does make everyone sick.’ Then, summoning up all his courage, he shooed the big bird off his windowsill and closed the window.

The vultures flew away in disarray, and Luka collapsed onto his bed, trembling. His dog and his bear nuzzled at him, but he could not be comforted. Rashid was Sleeping, and he, Luka, could not get rid of the notion that he himself – and he alone – was the one who had brought this curse down on his family.

After a sleepless night, Luka got up before dawn and crept into his parents’ bedroom, as he had done so often in happier times. There lay his father, Asleep, with tubes running into his arm to feed him, and a monitor showing his heartbeat as a jagged green line. To tell the truth, Rashid didn’t look cursed
or even sad. He looked …
happy
, as if he were dreaming of the stars, dancing with them while he slept, living with them in the sky, and smiling. But looks weren’t everything, Luka knew that much; the world was not always what it seemed to be. Soraya was sleeping on the floor, sitting with her back against the wall. Neither parent woke up, as they always used to do when Luka was sneaking towards them. That was depressing. Dragging his feet, Luka made his way back to his own room. Through the window he could see the sky beginning to lighten. Dawn was supposed to cheer people up, but Luka couldn’t think of anything to be cheerful about. He went to the window to draw the curtain so that he could at least lie in the dark and rest for a while, and that was when he saw the extraordinary thing.

There was a man standing in the lane outside the Khalifa residence, wearing a familiar vermilion-coloured bush shirt and a recognisably battered panama hat, and plainly watching the house. Luka was just about to call out, and maybe even send Bear and Dog to chase the stranger away, when the man threw back his head and looked him right in the eye.

It was Rashid Khalifa! It was his father, standing out there, saying nothing, but looking wide awake!

But if Rashid was outside in the lane, then who was sleeping in his bed? And if Rashid was sleeping in his bed, then how could he be outside? Luka’s head was whirling and his brain had no idea what to think; his feet, however, had started to run. Pursued by his bear and his dog, Luka ran as fast as he could to where his father was waiting for him. He charged downstairs barefoot, stumbled slightly, took a step to the right,
felt oddly giddy for a moment, regained his balance and hurtled on through the front door. This was wonderful, Luka thought. Rashid Khalifa had woken up and somehow slipped outside for a walk. Everything was going to be all right.

As he ran out of the front door with Dog and Bear, Luka had the strangest feeling: as if they had crossed an invisible boundary; as if a secret level had been unlocked and they had passed through the gateway that allowed them to explore it. He shivered a little, and the bear and the dog shivered, too, although it was not a cold dawn. The colours of the world were strange, the sky too blue, the dirt too brown, the house pinker and greener than normal …
and his father was not his father
, not unless Rashid Khalifa had somehow become partly transparent. This Rashid Khalifa looked exactly like the famous Shah of Blah; he was wearing his panama hat and his vermilion bush shirt, and when he walked and talked it became obvious that his voice was Rashid’s voice, and the way he moved was an exact copy of the original, too; but this Rashid Khalifa could be seen through, not clearly but murkily, as if he were half real and half a trick of the light. As the first whispers of dawn murmured in the sky above, the figure’s transparency became even more obvious. Luka’s head began to spin. Had something happened to his father? Was this see-through father some sort of … some sort of …