After Love (23 page)

‘You'll get over it. We all do. We have to, don't we?'

‘Of course,' I replied.

‘And don't worry about Anna. She'll be fine and you'll be fine and happiness will surely return.'

I spent the night on her sofa searching for one peaceful thought that could lead to sleep. But I tossed and turned. The window was open and the wind, moist and cold, flirted with the curtain. I heard the water slapping the boats; someone walked across the bridge; a bird fluttered, followed by another. Then there was a prolonged silence broken suddenly by a song, faint and hazy, as if heard in a dream.

Was it a dream or merely its shadow?

A week after the night in Sophia's apartment, we decided to go to Palmanova. Sophia wanted to see her parents and I wanted to explore the city.

Her father owned a small pottery shop in the main market and we spent the first day helping him out. In the evening they invited me to a simple family dinner to which Sophia's aunt, her father's sister, and her husband also came.

After dinner I moved to a corner of the room and began sketching.

I spent the following day walking through the city on my own. I climbed the tower in the centre to enjoy the best view of this seventeenth-century town built in the shape of a nine-sided polygon with radiating streets and a moat along the fortress wall. A tower stood at the centre of a hexagonal piazza connected by gates to the roads. If it had been attacked it would have been easy to shut the gates and seal off the city. Palmanova had been designed as a fort with a series of protective walls ringing it, but had seen only one battle. I made a few quick sketches, climbed down the tower and strolled to the nearby parade ground and arms depot.

Before I said goodbye, I gave Sophia's parents the three sketches I had done after their dinner. They liked them and wanted to give me something in return. Sophia's father asked her to take me to his shop to select a piece. I chose a long thin vase suitable for a single flower.

Sophia's mother didn't like it. ‘Only one flower? Not lucky,' she said.

The boat trip back to Venice was tedious. It rained the whole way, cold and windy, forcing us to stay under cover. Isabella played with my camera and asked me to show her how to take photos. I did, and set them up. Each time she pressed the shutter she echoed its sound.

She wanted to take a photo of her mother and me standing near a railing with the sea in the background. She focused the camera, pressed the shutter and then became so excited that she dropped the lens cover she was holding in her other hand. Sophia tried to catch it but she was too late. It slipped from her hands and disappeared into the water.

Isabella was upset. All the rest of the trip she kept bewailing the lost cover.

As we approached Venice's Lagoon the rain suddenly stopped but the sky was still full of clouds, lit here and there with slivers of fading daylight. The boat moved slowly towards the mouth of the Canal Grande and just at that moment the lights came on. On the left was San Giorgio Maggiore with its white Palladian façade and its helmet-like dome and tall redbrick bell tower. The portico of the Doge's Palace appeared. I counted its seventeen doors topped with thirty-four arches on the balcony of the
piano nobile
. As I admired its lightness and airiness, I understood why this smelly city of water, stones and boats seduced everyone.

But once again the city failed to win my heart. It was too enchanting for its own good, I thought, too loud and bold, too ruthless and cold.

I was already yearning to go home, to India.

As it turned out, I didn't have to wait long. Just two weeks after the trip to Palmanova, a telegram from Uncle Triple K arrived. He told me to return at once: ‘Jijee-ma is very ill.' I said goodbye to Sophia and Isabella by phone, telling them that I would leave two boxes of my watercolours, pencils and crayons for Isabella, with my neighbour. I said that I would miss them more than Venice, and that I would remember the city only because of them. Surely I would come to see them again, perhaps to celebrate Isabella's wedding.

The night before I left, it snowed. I went into the Piazza San Marco to have one last look at the domes of the Basilica under their white shroud. I spent the evening in a bar.

On my last morning I took some photos of the square, the bell tower and the Basilica.

Jijee-ma died just as I was taking the pictures. It was seven-thirty in the morning in Gurgaon.

A large print of my photo of the Basilica hangs in my office. It reminds me of the passing of Jijee-ma and the disappearance of Anna from my life.

Part Three

Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben

(Whoever is alone will stay alone)

Rainer Maria Rilke,
Autumn Day

Moscow, August 1991

Vasu

‘
Vladimir is dying
,' Katya wrote. ‘
He is sinking minute by minute and soon the doctors will stop feeding him altogether. He wants to see you. Come and help him walk the last few steps to the other side of life. Come, before he forgets that you came.
'

I was in Berlin at a conference. I read the letter during a session I was chairing. Soon I lost track of the proceedings, got up, excused myself and left the room.

The next day I caught the first train to Moscow.

During the long trip I tried to keep myself busy with an essay I was writing on emotions and their relationship with modern urban spaces. But I couldn't find the right voice and soon gave up. This was foolish because in no time at all my mind began to play tricks with my memory.

Although I had made myself stop remembering Jijee-ma soon after her death, I still felt her presence continually around me. Every time her daughter phoned I heard Jijee-ma in her voice, and that brought both joy and consolation. I was relieved that no special effort was required on my part to remember her.

With Anna it was different. I wanted to forget her – move on, as they say – but she stubbornly resisted all my attempts. In the end I decided that I would stop trying. That's when, out of pity or some other cunning intent, she relented and disappeared from my life. But I knew that she was still alive somewhere within me, ready to show herself, staring as if from the cracked mirror we had once upon a time refused to throw away.

‘That mirror will bring you bad luck,' Aunty Olga had warned us.

‘
Chepukha
(nonsense),' we had said, ignoring her warning.

Now in the train rapidly approaching Moscow, the city of my youth, I was beginning to wonder about my decision. I wanted to see Vladimir and Katya, no doubt about it, but I was also frightened that I wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to visit Leonid Mikhailovich and Aunty Olga. I could already picture it: there I was, standing at the door ready to ring the bell and it was Anna who opened it. She looked at me and I had no idea what to say or do. Even if she asked me to come in, my feet would fail to obey.

I used to carry a little photo of Anna in my wallet, but the day I left Venice I took it out and put it away. Soon all the photos of her vanished and her presence in my everyday life was reduced to a handful of after-images: the starry night at Gelon; the bed in the abortion hospital; the reading table near the window in Leninka; her bare feet poking out from under the quilt; and her cello standing quietly in the corner of the room.

Five years before in London someone had showed me a concert programme for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and an unknown voice had begun to whisper to me. I tried my best to ignore it, but failed. The concert was wonderful and I was relieved that I couldn't find Anna listed among the players. A year before that, watching the telecast of a one-day cricket match from Sydney, I started searching for her in the crowd. It was silly to expect to see her at a cricket match but it didn't stop me from looking.

The proof that she had finally set me free came a few years ago when I tried to remember her face. I realised that I couldn't recall anything except the tiny mole just above the left corner of her upper lip. Nothing more than a mole. ‘What a disgrace!' I thought then, strangely angered by my inability to remember her whole face.

Now I wondered in a panic if I had completely forgotten Vladimir as well. He had been a good Moscow friend, but in the last ten years I had only been in contact with him and Katya through occasional letters, New Year and birthday greetings and rare phone calls. In them, the bond of friendship remained strong. Katya's little boy, Yasya, must have grown into a handsome young man. The daughter which she had so desperately wanted to have with Vladimir had, never arrived. ‘Complications,' I remembered Katya mentioning in one of her letters that also contained photos of the three of them in Prague on a tour. Now I tried to recall their faces and those photos, but failed.

But my effort wasn't wasted; it did retrieve a few memories of our times together. There I am, sitting with Vladimir in a train returning from his
dacha
. We have spent the day walking in the forest hunting for mushrooms. The sun shines for a while and disappears between the showers. He tells me about growing up in a small village in the Urals. His father was a master watchmaker who could take anything apart and then, without a manual, put it back together again, polished and good as new.

Vladimir had an older sister, Anyuta, who used to carry him on her back when he was little. One day she climbed a tree to rescue the newborn chick of a bee-eater abandoned in a nest. Vladimir stood under the tree watching. Suddenly she fell, the chick in her hand, broke her knee and punctured a lung.

But worse was to come. After three days, she died. His mother weathered the tragedy but his father couldn't bear the loss. He put away his tools and became a bee-keeper.

Scene number two: It's Anna's birthday. We are in a restaurant. Dessert is about to be served. Vladimir gets up from his chair, walks up to the little orchestra and whispers something to the bass-player. As he comes back to our table they begin to play a waltz. He kneels down on one knee in front of Anna. At first she looks uneasy, but then pushes her napkin aside, gets up and dances the waltz with Vladimir.

Here is another scene, shorter but more intense. I am in a park with a dozen other people on a warm summer night. The sun has long disappeared but it isn't dark. The air is soft and light and the sky clear, waiting for the stars to come out. A little book is lying on the floor near Vladimir's chair. He picks it up, opens it, looks in the direction of the others sitting on the grass, shuts the book and walks right up to the edge of the stage.

Then he begins to read:
(Li….sten!). He waits for a few seconds for the audience to stop talking and pay attention to him, then continues:

(Listen!

If the stars light up

It means that someone needs them?

It means that someone wants them to be there?

It means that someone dares to call these spit-lets pearly?)

This was my favourite Mayakovsky poem. Although I hadn't read anything in Russian for over a year, the words came to me effortlessly. I repeated them and a feeling of incredible lightness enveloped me. I looked out the window. Just above the horizon in the pitch darkness I saw a large star, its pale yellow light reflected on the rails running parallel to our train's. I wished the train would stop so that I could open the door, step into the darkness and vanish without a trace.

The spell was broken by a knock. When I opened the door the conductor brought me down to earth. She had come to tell me that the dining car was about to shut and that if I wanted anything to eat I should hurry. Otherwise nothing would be left but tea and soggy biscuits.

I wasn't hungry and asked her for tea. She returned with a pot, some biscuits and chocolate wafers. She left the tray on the table near the window and glanced in my direction to see if I wanted anything else. I thanked her and gave her a few German coins as a tip.

She wanted to stay and talk. The train was passing over a bridge and I looked for the name of the river.