An Atlas of Impossible Longing (17 page)

* * *

It was a year after her husband's death that a letter had arrived from Nirmal asking if Meera would live in Songarh, as part of their family, and look after Bakul. His wife had died in childbirth, he wrote, and his work took him away from home for long stretches. The woman who had looked after Bakul for the past four years was too old now, and besides, Bakul needed someone who could give her more than basic care – she would soon need help with homework, someone to talk to, confide in. Meera noticed he did not write that the child needed someone to give her affection, though that was surely what his letter was ultimately saying.

Meera's own mother, a widow herself who was dependent on her son, had urged Meera to accept Nirmal's offer: “The girl will be like a daughter to you. You will never have children of your own, make this motherless one your child! Maybe this is what God meant for you all along.”

Meera did not want a child. She wanted escape from her husband's parents, to whom the mere fact that their son was dead and she was alive was an outrage. It had not taken Meera long to decide; she had packed a small trunk and taken the two trains to Songarh within the fortnight.

It was now eight years since her husband's death. She knew she was supposed to mourn him for ever, but he was already slipping her guilty grasp. She recalled him only piecemeal – the way his stomach – he had a gentle paunch at twenty-three – sloped into his trousers. Or the way he couldn't eat without crunching through a pile of green chillies alongside. But his voice – she could no longer hear it in her ears as she did before, if ever she put her mind to it. How had it felt when he touched her? How did he smell when he woke up from sleep and curled up again next to her? Her store of memories, rummaged through too often, had staled now, lost their incantatory power to bring his presence back.

In the early days at Dulganj Road, she had begun to feel that Nirmal, who was not
really
related to her except by marriage, was a kindred soul. Nirmal did not speak very much to anyone, yet they always seemed to have things to say to each other when they met by
chance on the stairs or in the garden. But who had heard of widows marrying again? Who had heard of a widow marrying a relative? She had overheard people commending Nirmal's compassion in taking her in.

And then, to put an end to her thoughts, Nirmal had left Songarh on his new posting, as if never to return.

Over the years Meera's attacks of discontent and anger had dwindled until she felt herself ensconced in a comfortable if rather dull routine. But in the past week, since Nirmal's return, she had felt a return of the turmoil, sensed a tiny flame flicker somewhere inside her, a flame she knew would scorch everything in its vicinity if not stamped out.

Meera stretched to get rid of the tingling that was starting between her shoulders. Bustling to the garden, she spotted Bakul swinging her ankles from the second branch of the mango tree.

“Why do you have to be told every day it's time for your tuition? Don't you know Chaubey Sir has been waiting?” she said, more harshly than she intended, when Bakul pretended not to notice her. She could not understand the anger that was rising in her, hot and heavy in her shoulders and neck. She looked at Bakul, exasperated. Meera had tried and tried to be friends with her, but there was a hard, recalcitrant centre in the child which made it difficult for other people to approach. Far from confiding in Meera, Bakul hardly spoke to her unless necessary.

Now she stayed on her perch in the mango tree just long enough to make it clear that she was not coming down because she had been snapped at, but because she had chosen to.

* * *

Bakul disliked tuitions, disliked the way Chaubey Sir's thick moustache dipped into his tea, the way biscuit crumbs clung to it, the way he droned, “If you don't memorise your tables you'll never be able to finish your Maths paper.” The moment her tutor let her go, she scraped her chair back, jammed her feet into her slippers and ran across the road to Mrs Barnum's: she knew Mukunda had already gulped his
lemon sherbet and read picture books while she was at work on multiplication and mixed metaphors. Besides, it was Mrs Barnum's birthday again, and if she was late, she would not get any of the cake.

“You're early,” Mrs Barnum said as soon as she saw Bakul. “It isn't until five.” She shook the brass bell in her hand imperiously and said, “Since you're here, make yourself useful, girl – run down to the kitchen and get the sandwiches.”

The room they were in was a large one with mullioned windows that looked out on to the garden and beyond it to Bakul's house across the road. The windows had green curtains, always firmly drawn, and this gave the room the sense of being an over-decorated, dim aquarium. On one side was a fireplace, with a few chairs around it. Over the fireplace a mantelpiece, at the centre of which stood a glass globe tilting on its tarnished gold stand, continents and oceans and mountain ranges rippling on its surface. Beside it were two other smaller balls of glass, one enclosing a tiny Leaning Tower of Pisa, the other a little cottage with a red roof. If you shook these glass balls, frail, minute snowflakes floated down, clouding the tiny buildings in their private storms.

Over the mantelpiece, on the grey-white wall, gleamed the curved blade of an ornamental golden kukri. Bakul and Mukunda had been fascinated by it. Soon after they had begun coming to Mrs Barnum's to play, the khansama had told them in his sandpapered voice, “This was the kukri with which Sahib was killed. His ghost wanders Dulganj still, seeking justice. The earth where his blood was spilled never dries, not in the hottest summer. I will show you one day.”

On the other side of the room was a round wooden table with six chairs. The table had lost one of its legs to termite and had a lighter-coloured replacement which had shrunk after being fixed on, so the table tilted to one side. Bakul saw it was already set with napkins and silver for six people, and a cake on a tiered cake-plate about six times too big for it occupied its centre. Ranged around the cake were empty plates with patterns of roses and vines.

Mrs Barnum rang her bell again and Mukunda entered from a dark alcove at the end of the room. “Happy birthday, Mrs Barnum,” he sang.

The khansama, who was waiting just outside the room, came in clearing his throat and said, “Happy birthday, Madam.”

“Happy Birthday, Mrs Barnum,” Bakul repeated after him, “and many happy returns of the day.”

“Thank you, m'dear, thank you,” Mrs Barnum said as she rose, smoothing out her buttery frock. “So sweet of you to remember! So sweet of all of you to come!”

The khansama advanced towards the cake, which had a single tall candle stuck on it, like a pine tree on a cowpat.

“Shall I light it, Madam?”

Mrs Barnum seemed querulous. “Why aren't the others on time? Can't make people wait, can we?” She sat down and flapped a hand at Bakul. “Sit down, sit down! Don't make people wait!”

Bakul and Mukunda knew the routine, and sat down. Mrs Barnum liked celebrating her birthday every month, on an unpredictable day. All the plates, regardless of guests, were served cake and slightly dry, boiled-egg sandwiches. There was lemon sherbet in wine glasses, sweet and murky. The first few weeks, Bakul and Mukunda had been hesitant, looking at each other for guidance, not knowing what to do with napkins in rings, forks and knives. Now they waited each month for the day they would get cake and sandwiches to eat, things never given to them at home. Mrs Barnum looked around the table, smiled graciously at the empty chairs and at Bakul, and said, “How nice of all of you to remember. I can't think of a better birthday!” She adjusted her emeralds, patted her hair, and nibbled the corner of a sandwich.

When they had finished eating, the khansama had to go round the table saying “May I?” before removing their plates. Once the table was clear, Mrs Barnum moved the cake candle to the centre of the table while Mukunda went to the shelves in the shadowed alcove and pulled out a board with numbers and letters, and a heavy silver coin dating from Mughal times. A bumpy coin with uneven edges, a coin that felt like money. Mrs Barnum arranged the board and paused as if embarking on something important. She looked around at Bakul and Mukunda's candlelit faces.

“Silence now, and think!”

Bakul shut her eyes tight, frowning with the effort of thinking only about the board and its numbers. Mrs Barnum's head was bent over steepled fingers. Mukunda could hear her breathing. He stole a look at Bakul, then guiltily he shut his eyes. After a while he heard a scraping and shifting and looked. The coin was moving across the table from number to letter, number to letter. Mrs Barnum followed each movement and muttered under her breath, “No, you can't say that! That is not what happened. Really? Is that so? I'll go there tomorrow. Rat poison? Rat poison? Could be. Stars falling down, on the field, falling down. It's time for the train, Tuesday's the day, take the train on Tuesday.”

As Mrs Barnum muttered and the movements of the coin grew more frantic, her eyes darted from place to place on the board, strands of hair coming loose from her net. The candle cast tall shadows. Bakul did not like to say she was scared, but she always looked away during this part. What if the spirit decided not to leave the room? Sometimes Mrs Barnum stayed in her trances for half an hour or more. And if they were late, Bakul had observed the last few months, Manjula scolded them and muttered right through dinner that it was time Bakul's freedom was curbed and she was taught to be a young lady. She thought it was best to leave, all things considered.

She tugged Mukunda's wrist under the table. They got up and crept out. Once out of earshot, Bakul said, “I know you don't like it, so I made you leave. You looked scared.”

“Me?” Mukunda retorted. “Me scared? Hah! You're the coward!”

Some time after they had left, Larissa Barnum pulled off her silk frock and sat at her dressing table in her old lace-edged satin slip. She began to remove her hairpins, regarding her reflection with a quizzical air. A long face, with sharp, narrowed, hazel eyes divided by a prominent bony nose, and thick, arched, greying eyebrows. The skin on her thin neck looked a little as if someone was pulling it down into her collar. She fingered her neck, pinching up loose skin, then pulled her hair out from its net and squinted in the mirror at the grey strands at her temples. She removed the emeralds from her ears and played with them as if she would not have them for long. Her household had
for a while been financed by the jewellery she got the khansama to pawn for her.

The house felt larger and emptier in the late evenings, when the khansama retired to his quarters. Mrs Barnum wrapped a dressing gown over her satin slip, went to her chest of drawers, and took out a crystal tumbler, chipped at the bottom. She half filled it with whisky from a squat-looking bottle and then went to the living room to sit at the piano. She thought she would play something with big, crashing notes, crowd the house with noise, imagined people, a party. She began flipping through her music books.

Leaning on the parapet of the roof, Nirmal tore open his third packet of cigarettes. He listened to Mrs Barnum's piano crossing the road with its clamorous dissonances, and in a tentative, reluctant, uncertain way, he began to feel as if he had come home.

* * *

Bakul moved a piece of fish from side to side on her plate as if that would make it disappear. Mukunda, who was always hungry nowadays, wondered if he could have some more rice.

“The boy will eat us out of house and home!” Manjula exclaimed.

It was a Sunday some weeks after Nirmal's return to Songarh. Nirmal sat opposite his brother, lingering after lunch, amused by Bakul's surreptitious efforts to hide her fish under a spinach leaf on her plate.

“So, Nirmal,” Kamal said, with a chuckle. “Quite a comfortable job you've got yourself. You don't have to do anything but stroll down to that office! I wish I had such an easy time. The factory is full of problems. Cheaper versions of our things all over, made with artificial stuff, but who cares? Then this war cutting government budgets and to top it all we're asked to fight the British … and if that weren't enough, Salim is now too ill to work.” He drank in a loud gulp of water and put the glass down with a thud.

“We're starting the dig in a few weeks,” Nirmal said. “Not all work is visible, there is a lot of material to be bought, a lot of organising to
do.” Things were going slower than he wanted – too slow, he knew. They did not treat his requests with enough urgency at headquarters; everyone was preoccupied with the war in Europe – he was in a small town, and perhaps nobody else set much store by his dig. Besides, every item he requested had, it seemed, to be cleared by five different desks.

“Oh come, don't take me seriously, Nirmal, why are you getting annoyed?” Kamal said in a soothing voice. “So is the end of our local tourist attraction imminent? No more ruined castle?”

“You're digging up the ruins?” Bakul said to her father, accusing. “How can you do something like that?”

“Don't talk about things you know nothing of, Bakul,” Nirmal said, sharp-voiced, impatient. “And don't butt into grown-up conversations. I've noticed this tendency in you.”

“I'm not butting in, I'm just asking,” she mumbled.