An Atlas of Impossible Longing (12 page)

At last Manjula finished anointing her face with cream and flour and went for a second bath.

The doorbell rang.

Gouranga opened the door and leapt away from it. It was Larissa Barnum, followed by her khansama, in grey uniform, complete with tarnished brass buttons and grey cap.

“Ask them!” she ordered.

The khansama said to Gouranga, “Where is your Mataji? Memsahib has to see her.”

The servant stammered, “Upstairs, but … ”

“What is he saying?” Mrs Barnum demanded.

“ … she does not see anyone.”

The khansama translated.

“What nonsense,” Mrs Barnum exclaimed. “I need to see her. If she is upstairs, I will go to her.”

And that was how
3
Dulganj Road had its first British visitor, a visitor who reached the bedrooms upstairs. Mrs Barnum darted curious glances around the first Indian home she had ever been in as she went up the dark stairwell that opened into Amulya's stained-glass verandah and led to his bedroom. Her heels clattered on the cool, hard floor. Manjula, hearing the unfamiliar sound in the bathroom through a cascade of water, wondered what it was, then returned to her iron bucket and mug.

Mrs Barnum swept into Kananbala's room and trilled cheerfully, “Well, here you are, we meet at last!”

Kananbala, startled, leapt up and exclaimed, “Oh Ma, what's this?”

“Tell her,” Mrs Barnum ordered the khansama, who was hovering at the door.

“My memsahib would like you to come with her for a while, please,” the khansama said in Hindi. “It will not take long.”

Kananbala understood Hindi, though she did not speak anything but Bengali. She looked at the khansama and Mrs Barnum in speechless surprise. She had not left the house for what seemed like forever, let alone with strangers. It was impossible. She said so.

“That is absurd, quite absurd,” Mrs Barnum said, and walked up to Kananbala. Firmly, she took her arm, trying to lead her out of the room.
“Don't worry,” she said in a reassuring voice. “It's only across the road, there's nothing to worry about. You'll be back before anyone knows. D'you realise we've known each other for ages and never met?”

Kananbala looked up at Mrs Barnum's smiling, confident face bobbing considerably above hers. What strangeness! Her clothes, the colour of her skin, the way she walked, shoulders thrown back. She noticed Mrs Barnum's earlobes were long and pierced with green stones, that her front teeth were stained yellowish, that she smelt of roses and smoke. Kananbala had looked at Mrs Barnum so many nights and evenings separated by road, window grill, and distance that to have her so close seemed a revelation. Impelled by some irrational force, Kananbala felt she could not stay in her room any longer. She felt as if she could do anything at all,
anything
to get out of the house. She looked down at her sari, not one of her going-out ones, and smoothed it, saying, “I should change … ” But nobody heard her anxious murmur.

Mrs Barnum, dropping Kananbala's arm, was standing at her window, the same window at which she had seen Kananbala every night looking out, waving to her. She examined the view from that window towards her own house across the road, the bougainvillea at the gate, the window upstairs, curtained against the world, the
portecochère
. How much had Kananbala seen that night, Larissa Barnum wondered. How different it all looked from this side of the road! Then she heard a muttering of voices behind her and called out to the servant, “Shoes, get her shoes,
joota, joota
!”

Kananbala divined what was required and went and slipped her feet into the good, wine-coloured velvet pair that Amulya had got her once from Whiteways in Calcutta, a pair she had never worn. She walked through the verandah, down the stairs, out of the gate and onto the road, suffused with an unreality that made her stagger. The light was too bright, the trees too tall, the road too long and smooth. She had not been outside the house before dusk for months. For months, she had seen the world outside from her window, or by evening light when Amulya took her to the garden to make her walk. She stumbled again. Mrs Barnum held her elbow and said, “There, it'll be alright,
it's just strange at first. What bastards, to lock you up.” The khansama thought it best not to translate everything.

The car was parked outside the gate. The khansama got into the driver's seat, while the two women sat at the back. Kananbala began to panic and looked wide-eyed with questions at Mrs Barnum. “Where are we going?” she quavered.

Mrs Barnum understood the question despite not knowing the language. Gaily, she laughed, “A surprise, it's a surprise!” The khansama dutifully translated this as he started the car.

The car rumbled down the road. It began to move faster, too fast for Kananbala who stared bewildered out of its window, her heart thumping with the novelty of it, with the speed. She had barely focused on one tree or building or clump of bushes when, already, it was part of the past. The wind rushed into her hair and made strands escape from her tight bun. Her aanchal slid off her head; there was nothing she could do to keep it on. Bare-headed, hair flying, she put her face to the rushing air that made her eyes water. A feeling of exhilaration swept over her, something overpowering, something she could not remember feeling after she was newly married.

* * *

Amulya returned home at midday, as he usually did. Sitting on the bench by the front door, he took his shoes off, calling out, “Arre o Gouranga, where are you? Bring me some water!”

He rose and in slippered feet walked up the stairs towards his bedroom. In the long verandah-room, the light streaming in through his stained-glass window was a mellow monsoon colour. Amulya paused to admire it, relishing the thought of at least a month of rain, and reached out for the glass of water Gouranga had brought. “Where is everyone?” he enquired. “The house is very quiet, what's happening?”

“N … nn … nothing, Babu,” Gouranga said, and, almost grabbing Amulya's empty glass, scampered out of the verandah as if pursued. Amulya watched him disappearing and muttered, “Dolt … fifteen
years and still he isn't trained … just can't make a horse out of this donkey.”

He turned into his bedroom saying, “Are you there? I'm back.”

He stepped in. “Are you there?” he said again, peering into the curtained-off dressing area.

Amulya stood puzzled, brows knit, wondering where Kananbala could be. Then, thinking she might be – uncharacteristically, he admitted – with Manjula in her quarters, he sat down with the newspaper to wait for Manjula to call him for lunch. He flipped it open to the editorials and began to read. The silence was broken only by the rustle of the paper and the monotonous tinkle of cow-bells.

Much time had passed, his hungry stomach told him. He pushed the paper aside as if everything in it was nonsensical and got up.

Looking into the corridor, he bellowed “Bouma!” towards his absent older daughter-in-law.

Manjula appeared, wiping her hands on her sari, looking drawn with worry. Like the rest of the household, she was terrified of Amulya's temper.

“Ma has gone out,” she stammered when he asked. “I was having a bath … Mrs Barnum … ”

Amulya stood stock still for a moment, then turned away from her without a word. The thought that his wife had left the house, defying him – even in her disturbed state she knew the rules – that she was making a fool of herself with a stranger, that the stranger in question was an Anglo-Indian murderess! He could not stretch his mind far enough to accommodate all these facts together. He summoned Gouranga and sent him across the road to call her back. Gouranga returned after ten minutes, not daring to speak.

They could not say at Mrs Barnum's where Kananbala was. She had been taken away in a car by Mrs Barnum and her khansama.

Amulya sat in his armchair by the window and stared at the wall opposite, frozen into inaction by fury and astonishment. He could not think of returning to the factory. Where would he begin to hunt for his wife? What did the Barnum woman intend to do to her? Perhaps there had been some development in the police investigation and she
was going to silence Kananbala? Maybe the police had lied to Mrs Barnum and told her Kananbala was about to depose against her? Could one put anything past a woman who had killed her husband for the sake of a lover?

He sat straight-backed, saying nothing to anyone, unable to still his mind. Manjula peeped in through the door at his preoccupied face, his rigid body, and stole away. She sat in her room eating a hurried, stolen snack to make up for their forgotten lunch. Her afternoon nap was out of the question. What if her father-in-law summoned her? “What a lot of trouble the woman is,” Manjula spluttered under her breath with exasperation. “What the hell is the old bag up to?”

* * *

The car sped over the smooth road and then turned into a narrower one that was bumpy. Around them were fields of stubble, the earth damp, exhaling, grass shooting out almost before their eyes with the new rain. They had left the houses behind, and now, apart from a villager's hut or crop-guard's shack, there were no buildings. The car bumped and lurched more and more until they passed first the rustling shade of a eucalyptus stand, then a stretch of open field, and then Kananbala knew where she was, though she could hardly believe it.

There, across the horizon, was the spine of the ridge, its body visible too, closer than she had ever seen it. This close, she could see the slopes had trees and scrub poking out of them, and the trees continued right down to the flat ground where they became the forest and met a dry stream-bed. The same forest she could see from her window, the forest where her lion was.

The car twisted round the dirt track and turned the corner, and Mrs Barnum said, “There! Now, have you seen that before?”

They were before the ruins of the fort. The car had stopped. Kananbala took no notice of Mrs Barnum helping her out of the car as she stepped across, hesitant at first, then with strong strides, to the old stone walls. She touched the stone with a wondering hand and
looked around. She saw the enormous, aged, banyan tree that had sent out hundreds of aerial roots, now joined with the ground. Kananbala stood among the roots, looking up at them towering past her, a forest made by just one giant tree. She noticed the bark on the tree's main trunk had knotted up into an odd shape, and looked closer.

“That's meant to be the face of the Buddha.” The khansama translated what Mrs Barnum was saying. “He is said to have meditated here. This tree is supposed to bring people peace. It certainly does me!” She laughed. Then she said, “Shall we go further or stop here?”

“Stop!” Kananbala said.

“Right! Bring out the hamper, khansama, and the carpet, will you?” Mrs Barnum tripped ahead calling out, “Come, there's more!”

She reached for Kananbala's hand again and almost pulled her along. Kananbala watched the wine-coloured velvet of shoes that had lain perfect in their tissue wrapping for years grow beige with mud. She smiled a sudden, radiant smile of uncomplicated happiness, and then she saw a shallow pool of water, faded arabesques on the floor around it. She almost ran towards the water, ungainly, wobbly, sari entangling her legs. Mrs Barnum let go, watching her. The pool was cool with water from the new rain, not much deeper than a big puddle, but Kananbala, forgetting she was a woman in her fifties, threw off her shoes as children do and sat dipping her toes, then let her feet slide in, shivering at the touch of water.

Mrs Barnum was busy with the hamper. The khansama laid out a bright, striped duree, and on it a tablecloth that covered a portion of the middle. He took a few boxes out of the hamper, and a bottle. He laid out forks and napkins. Then he stepped back and said in English, “I will wait in the car?”

“Yes, I suppose … ” Mrs Barnum was irresolute for a moment and then said, “Yes, go to the car. If I need you, I will call, thank you.”

Kananbala saw Mrs Barnum crouching next to her, her peacock-blue dress trailing in the dust. Mrs Barnum had a bottle in her hand, and string.

“Ah,” she was muttering to herself, “Now let's see … um, yes.” She tied the neck of the bottle with string and slid it into the water
of the pool. She took the other end and tied it to a tree root. Then she rubbed her palms together in glee, exclaiming, “Now our picnic begins!”

* * *

When the afternoon was at its most silent, they heard someone at the door of
3
Dulganj Road. A servant came upstairs to Amulya's room, followed by a stranger. It was a thin, balding man in a crumpled dhoti and a grey, sweat-stained shirt. Under his arm was a rolled-up, long, black umbrella with a wooden handle. In his other hand he held a very small, worn cloth bag of the kind people used when buying vegetables from the market. He came into the room and stood silently for a few minutes, opening his mouth as if to say something, then shutting it again. After this happened a few times, Amulya said, “Sit down. Where have you come from?”

The man remained standing.

“Kindly sit!” Amulya repeated, sounding a little impatient. “What's the matter?”