After Love (31 page)

Yesterday I met Papa's Uncle Triple K and Mala Didi. Uncle looks so old and frail and doesn't talk much at all, just sits quietly and smiles, like Papa. Mala Didi (I think she's his wife) looks after him. She seems kind.

‘What a lovely girl!' she said as soon as she saw me. She made me sit beside her and didn't let me move away, even for a minute. We spent most of the day with them and Mala Didi began to tell stories about Papa when he was a child. Only then did Uncle Triple K join the conversation. But I could see it wasn't easy for him.

Later that evening Papa told me about the attack in which Uncle Triple K had lost his left eye. His stutter didn't start immediately afterwards although there was some awkwardness in his speech. He and his doctors thought it would pass but it didn't. Mala Didi blamed herself. She had wanted him to go to London for treatment but was overruled each time she raised the subject. When his real stuttering began it was already too late. Gradually, Uncle Triple K had been forced to stop making speeches. As usual he tried to hide his despair by joking about it. But he didn't succeed.

‘I don't need to speak any more,' he would say. ‘The dream is over.'

His problem, Papa explained, was complicated. The attack on his head must either have damaged that part of the brain which controls the movement of the mouth or the part connected with understanding and expressing language. The excessive use of tranquilisers and painkillers could have accelerated his deterioration, Papa said.

Mala Didi said she didn't want me to leave ‘empty-handed'. ‘You're my grand-niece, you know,' she kept reminding me. I didn't know how to respond and of course Papa didn't say anything.

I love Mala Didi's present, a cotton sari printed with Madhubani designs. It's not too loud. I'll ask Malati to teach me to how to put it on. Now Mandy will want one too.

As well as the sari, she gave me a hundred rupee note. ‘To buy yourself sweets,' she said. ‘
Jug Jug Jiyo
(live long) my darling,' she said, kissed both my eyes and asked me to visit her again.

Viola da Gamba

Anna

Something happened to me in the shower. At first I didn't take any notice, but once I stepped out and began to dry myself, I felt a piercing stab in my left breast. I looked at myself in the mirror and touched my breast. I examined it carefully as the medical brochures tell you and felt a lump the size of a small pea. I could feel it even more after my fingers explored the similar spot in my right breast.

‘No need to panic,' I told myself. ‘Wait until I show it to the doctor.'

My GP agreed that I should check out the lump with a mammogram. The news wasn't good, but even then I wasn't unduly alarmed. My panic started only after they said I would need a biopsy. I was told that I would have to undergo a small operation to find out exactly what the lump was doing in my breast. My GP suggested that it would be a good idea to ask someone to accompany me when I had it done.

Maya was away, backpacking through India. Milos was travelling in Europe. I didn't want to call him because I was unsure if he would interrupt his tour and return. This wasn't included in our agreement. We were lovers, not friends, ready to share joy but not grief or pain, which were to be managed on our own. Sounds selfish, but that's how it is.

I needed someone close to be with me. In fact I needed Maya. I decided to phone Vasu to see if she was still with him. But she had left Delhi two days before I called.

‘I can find her and ask her to contact you,' he said.

‘Can you? That would be very kind of you,' I said, astounded by my formality. He noticed this at once.

‘Thanks for looking after her so well,' I went on. ‘She's really enjoying her trip.'

‘I don't know. She looked happy when she left and seemed quite keen to get home.'

‘Why? I thought she loved travelling. She told me she wants to spend a whole year with a group of Mongolian nomads and write a book based on her diary. She can be quite independent and adventurous, you know.'

‘Of course.' And then Vasu told me about the rickshaws in which Maya refused to ride. He said that she had made quite a large donation to a local primary school to help it buy a water-cooler for the pupils. He said that she had bought herself a second-hand guitar and was writing songs. ‘She's a good singer, your Maya.'

‘I know she is. And I miss her.'

‘She misses you too,' said Vasu. ‘She's written a song just for you.'

We chatted like this for a while, jumping from topic to topic but keeping the conversation focused on Maya. It must have surprised both of us to find that we were talking in Russian, but even then we didn't dare stray from the immediate present. Our shared past remained out of bounds.

I mentioned the mammogram and told him a biopsy was scheduled in two weeks. Maybe he could explain the situation to Maya? It would be lovely if she could come home to be with me.

‘But it's not an emergency,' I stressed. ‘Don't alarm her.'

‘I understand,' he replied, and I think he did. He asked how bad the doctors thought the cancer was.

‘We all have to wait for the biopsy.'

‘Please take care of yourself,' he said.

‘I'll try,' I managed.

Vasu

After Anna's call I couldn't sit still. I cursed myself for being so formal.

‘Please take care of yourself.' How useless. So stiff and uncaring. Why didn't I press her to tell me more? Why didn't I let her know how much her news worried me? Why hadn't I told her I would be thinking of her?

An hour later I phoned her again. The phone rang and rang. I tried again and then a fourth time. But I couldn't reach her.

A day and a half later Maya left India. I went to see her off at the airport. She didn't appear too anxious, but nor did she have much to say. I gave her a hug and said: ‘Please look after yourself and your Mama,' and after a moment of silence between us: ‘See you soon.'

Before walking through the departure gate she turned and waved. I waved back as she repeated my words: ‘See you soon.'

It took me a week to arrange the visa. Three days before the biopsy I was knocking on the door of the cottage in the Blue Mountains. Maya opened it.

‘I didn't mean
so
soon,' she said. ‘But it's great that you've come.'

She turned and called: ‘Papa is here.' Without waiting for Anna to answer, she continued: ‘Come in. She's in the shower.'

Anna

I've been helping with the rehearsals of Gorecki's
Symphony of Sorrowful Songs
. I'm enjoying the work, although after chemo and radiation for my cancer, I often feel exhausted.

‘Take it,' Maya insisted when I asked her if I should accept the offer. She's right. The work has kept me busy, leaving me little time to think about pain and death.

Maya has now taken off again, this time to Mongolia, as she planned. That's good. I don't want her to worry about me. She's young and strong and more than capable of looking after herself. I don't want her to postpone or change her plans for my sake. She calls once a week and sends letters and postcards every other day.

Vasu came to stay with her while I was in hospital. He was in Australia for more than a month. When I came home, he went back to India. Before he left we filed for divorce. The documents from the Family Court came through last week and I posted them on to him straight away.

Now our separation is official. He is free of me and I am free of him, even if we both know that this isn't the freedom we were hoping for. He will be dismayed to actually receive the documents. Strangely I was too. But it had to happen, and
Slava Bogu
, it has happened now, while I am still alive. The doctors have given me five more years, and if I'm lucky and look after myself, another five after that. I'll be fifty-seven then. A bit young to die. Maya will be twenty-seven and I might get a chance to sing songs to my grandson. Who knows?

The other day I noticed that I am beginning to forget Papa's face. The effort it took to imagine it frightened and exhausted me. All those photos don't help much and their silence saddens me. In desperation I go back and play the tapes. He loved the piano but his singing wasn't good. However, as I hear his voice, his face in the photos comes alive and I begin to feel how intensely I miss him, especially now.

I have a few precious tapes where I accompany him on the cello. I used to enjoy improvising with him, especially after I returned from my self-imposed exile in Prudkino. Playing together healed the wound. I'm not sure if I forgave him his lies, but somehow music softened my anger.

‘He was wronged,' I told myself, ‘and he doesn't deserve that all over again.' I believed that he loved me more than he had ever loved Tonya, my unreliable mother.

The world often talks to us in whispers, Aunty Olga used to say, particularly when it wants to disclose its mysteries. She taught me the music that kept my ears and heart open. I can't say that I have learnt the trick fully, but I do remember moments of intense revelation. On such brief, rare occasions, I feel as if I am a little girl again, walking naked in a sunlit shower. The grass tickles my feet, the wind warms my skin and my ears are full of silence, fluid and sonorous.

It is music which has kept me sane. I hope it will help me now to face this ordeal with grace and humility.

It has taken me a while to bring myself to look in the mirror again. Each time I went to the shower I used to cover the mirror with a towel. I also moved all the other mirrors in the house out of sight and persuaded my hands against touching the ugly scar from my operation.

I knew I couldn't go on like that. Redemption finally arrived through Maya, who like a gentle, merciful angel stroked my wound and then took my hand and guided my fingers over its rough surface.

Since my illness, Maya has matured beyond her age. Our roles too seem to have reversed. Now she is the one who mothers me and I acquiesce, willingly following her appeals, demands and instructions. She calls my scar ‘the wounded crescent' and assures me that one day she will write a song about it. She believes that through her songs she can tame the ugliest and nastiest threats. She's a dreamer, my Maya, and this scares me. You need to be practical to overcome the cruelties people inflict on you.

I hope Vasu can help her find the right balance. He knows the way, the so-called middle path. I am sure that's the reason he has survived the upheavals of our lives. Only music used to disturb him, especially when I played my cello. He would wait in silence, gazing intently at me and the cello and then walk right up to me and sit on the floor leaning against my chair, as if he had entered a state of perfect quiescence. But as soon as I touched him, his body would betray the tension secreted inside and he would suddenly appear incredibly fragile.

I have often wondered why music affects us so much. How does it manage so easily to alter the whole texture of our emotions? It either magnifies them out of all proportion or diffuses them so thinly that we are neither able to notice their presence nor define their immediate cause. When I am sad I hardly ever pick a joyful piece, but look for something sombre or outright sad, as if C Major chords would insult my grief. I allow the melancholy tones to linger, hoping to find the measure of my own sadness. Perhaps then it might release its grip. The tempo and movements which I crave are slow and languid; they don't completely overpower the grief but make it a little more congenial.

Vika often used to talk about music in terms of colours and shades. ‘I paint with music,' she would say. Music for her was bright or dull, dark or light, smooth or jagged. Its effect on me in those years was much more nebulous; only rarely was I moved by it. Something has changed since then. When I think about music now, I feel as if I can touch the world and it touches me in return. The music purls through my body, soft and warm like a baby's feet.

I have begun to feel that music by its nature is engrained in our bodies. Like a voice it streams out of me. I read and learn the score and after it has been rehearsed, it becomes part of me. Something similar happens to those who hear it; my presence, real or imagined, is always conspicuous. The sorrow of the music is refracted through my sorrow. In the music itself, it may be diffuse, but when I play and people hear the music, my body playing, it thickens the sorrow, as drops of lemon juice curdle lukewarm milk.

I remember playing Debussy's
Beau Soir
with Vika, a short piece, moody, lyrical and quite difficult. We played it late on a bright clear day with not a hint of cloud, and yet as the piece unfolded it seemed as if I were sitting outside beneath summer rain, soft and warm. The cello imitated the wind and the piano the drops of falling rain.

Vika was shocked afterwards when I told her I was wet.

‘What do you mean, wet?' she asked.

‘Physically wet,' I said and laughed.