An Atlas of Impossible Longing (31 page)

Aangti Babu sneezed and growled, “This is the house you want me to buy?”

“Ssh, speak softly, huzoor.” The man showing us around looked over his shoulder towards a half-open door, and begged, “As I said, it is dusty here, we will be more comfortable outside … ”

It turned out that the house belonged to a very old gentleman, apparently heirless, and now very ill. We were speaking to a local man who had made himself indispensable to the ailing owner as a kind of nurse and manager rolled into one during the past year or so. Now that the old man was so unwell, his nurse wanted to sell the house before some inconvenient heir appeared. It was rumoured there was a possible candidate.

“We have to verify all this, of course,” Aangti Babu said. “My lawyers will look into the papers.”

“Huzoor, there is nothing amiss,” the man said. In a fit of bravado, he continued, “Others too have seen these house papers.”

“Oho,” said Aangti Babu. “Are you trying to tell me there are other takers? Hah.” He took a paan out of his silver travelling paan-box and stuffed it into his mouth with contempt. “In that case,” he said with his mouth full, “why don't you sell to these others?”

He chewed a little, then shot out a red stream of betel juice that spattered the white wall of the verandah and coloured the arm of the cane chair standing near it.

As I deduced, Aangti Babu knew that the man had got his master to sign away his property in some illness-induced haze, either by force or guile, I did not like to think which.

“And what about the furniture? You said it's included? I'll have to think of disposal, so we may as well get it clear,” Aangti Babu said, making it sound like a casual afterthought.

The man was sullen, having been beaten in the negotiations so far.

“I said nothing about the furniture,” he grumbled.

“Oh well, that is your concern, not mine,” Aangti Babu said, and made as if to leave. “We'll take the house, but we want it empty. Please get rid of the furniture – and the old man, of course. Let me know when he goes. I can't wait long. Don't want money locked up.”

I could see the man making rapid calculations. What would he do with crystal chandeliers and carved Victorian whatnots there, in that little town? The man's wife had arrived and was standing at the edge of the room. She gave him an exasperated look.

“Oh well, if you want the furniture so badly,” the man said, “you can have it, but for a price.”

We left the house after some more haggling. As we made our way down to the station, having decided to return to Calcutta that same day, Aangti Babu chuckled and extracted another paan from his box. “Thinks he's very clever, that fool,” he said to me with glee. “Gave me all that furniture for a song. I'll get three hundred from the auction houses for just one of those chandeliers. Did you see it?”

“What?” I said. The chandelier had looked like nothing much to me, a dusty assemblage of glass, its only virtue being that it was intact in a room full of disabled furniture.

“My boy, you have a long way to go and lots to learn, just stay by my side.” He giggled a little and made a dipping motion with his ringed fingers. “Dip one of those chandeliers into the river and pull it out and you'll see the crystal. Genuine Belgian, nothing less, nothing less.” He laughed again. His mirth caused a spasm of coughing, red betel juice spewing out groundwards from him like lava from an upturned volcano. “You have a lot to learn,” he said.

We reached the station. Despite his good humour, he did not ask me to travel in his compartment, but as I retreated to the end of the train with our luggage he said in jocular tones, “Now all we need is for the old stick to die.”

When I returned home that night I was feeling unusually melancholy and hardly noticed my wife's hands straying over me.

“What is it?” she complained at last.

I told her about the house and the river. “The old man,” I said, “dying, so alone, cheated out of his home. Why should anyone spend his last days so alone? It was a place called Manoharpur – have you ever seen it? An idyllic place! And to die in such misery surrounded by such beauty!”

My wife was fed up. “You and your gloomy fits! I tell you! It's many years yet before you'll grow old, and you sound ancient already.” She turned on her side, disgusted by my sombre mood and want of ardour.

I stared at the dark ceiling. That feeling I had had, of having seen the house before, was too secret for me to share with my wife. From her lack of interest I knew it had no connection with her, to my life with her. I said no more, though I was awake for a long time.

To end this story: this was the only instance, to my knowledge, when Aangti Babu made a loss. The old retainer to whom we had spoken turned out to be playing a double game. He had apparently taken earnest money from five parties before Aangti Babu, showing all of them forged documents. By the time anyone found out, he had disappeared. Nobody could report him to the police because they
had broken the law by trying to buy the property from him. Aangti Babu seethed and cursed, but there was little he could do. Neither he nor anyone else knew where the original deed was, without which nothing could be bought or sold.

I was for once delighted that a deal had been a hoax, and not in the least discomfited by my disloyalty. I felt happy to think the house was to remain as it was, serene by the river, untouched.

In a few days the house became just one among many others, and I forgot all about it as I immersed myself in preparations for another demolition.

* * *

A few months later, Aangti Babu called me early into his office. He had told me the previous day that he would need to see me first thing in the morning, so I was ready, my heart uncomfortably loud, my forehead damp with fear. I tried to reconstruct the week that had gone before, the days immediately preceding, and could think of no mistakes I had made in my work.

It was business he wanted to discuss. He asked me to sit down. I had always stood in his room, and continued to stand, my head a little bent, deferential and attentive. He looked up at me, irritable, and said, “Can't you sit when I tell you to? I'll get a crick in my neck looking up and talking.”

I lowered myself into a chair as Aangti Babu stuffed a paan through his betel-red, flaky lips.

“Listen carefully,” he said. “You have to handle this on your own, so take some notes and remember what I say.”

I looked around for paper and a pencil, furtively so that Aangti Babu would not comment on my lack of readiness. But he did not bother, having shut his eyes, joined his fingers to make a pyramid, and begun to talk.

“This is another big house, a little bit like the riverside one we went to some months ago,” he said. “It has a lot of land, and it's in a locality we think will prosper. The town is a small one now, but I've been told there is a good chance of it becoming district headquarters in a year
or two.” He opened his eyes and startled me with a question. “Do you speak Hindi?” he enquired.

“Yes, yes, I grew up outside … ”

“Alright,” he replied, shutting his eyes again. He had never been interested in knowing anything personal about me. I was used to it and expected nothing different.

“The house is owned by two brothers. There is a dispute.” Aangti Babu smiled to himself, his eyes still shut. “There always is. Or how would we make a living, eh? One of the brothers has sold this house to me,” he continued. “He needed money – failing business, large family, all the usual things. Now the problem is this.” He opened his eyes. “Are you listening?”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“Then say something now and then,” Aangti Babu said, eyes narrowed, before shutting them again. I began to mumble a response at the end of each sentence. The fan whirred and creaked above us, paddling the still air. The morning had turned oppressive. Sweat pasted back to shirt and shirt to chair. I looked with longing at the covered glass of water on the desk, but did not dare. My pencil was slithery with the sweat on my hand.

“The house was owned by
both
brothers. The one who has sold it claims he tried to persuade the other to sell and has even given the other his share of the money. Hah! The old story!”

“Huh,” I agreed.

“Anyway, that's none of our business. The older one had power of attorney over the younger because … oh, I forget the details. The older one has sold it using the power of attorney. So
legally
we are absolutely alright.”

“Then … ” I said in a murmur.

“The younger brother is refusing to move out. Oh, it's fine, we've dealt with this kind of situation before. I got a better price from the older brother because there is this problem. And this one is easy … the younger brother, I mean. He's not a tenant. He's signed his rights away. All you need to do is to tell him to go, remove himself, leave the house … persuade him.”

“Persuade?” I said, nonplussed. “Hasn't the older brother tried to do that already?”

Aangti Babu opened his eyes in sudden fury. I saw the bags under them were grey and red blood vessels snaked their way through the whites.

“If I were your age, I'd jump at this and not ask stupid questions,” he snarled. “It's just that I am too busy to go and attend to this business. Do you understand?”

“No, no, I mean, yes, of course,” I stammered.

“
Persuade
him to leave. Understand? I've got Bhim and Harold there doing the normal things: banging on doors at night, ringing their bell and vanishing, breaking a window or two. It hasn't worked. I want you to go there. I want an empty house. If you have to cut his water and electricity … if you need to frighten him … But no police. Don't get into trouble with the police. Just get him out.”

Aangti Babu found a notepad and wrote a few lines on it. He wrote laboriously, hissing under his breath the words he was inscribing. I heard what he was writing before I saw it. When he was done, my hand, which did not seem to belong to me any longer, reached for the slip of paper. Aangti Babu's handwriting was neat and rounded, like a child's. The note confirmed what I had heard, but still the stubborn recesses of my brain refused to let in the information staring at me.

* * *

I walked out of Aangti Babu's room feeling unconnected with my limbs. I was in the office, yet not in it at all. My ears had begun to whistle as if I were all at once weak with fatigue. When the tea boy clattered a cup on my table and said, “What, have you gone deaf? Here's your tea,” I looked at it for long minutes, as if I did not know what a cup with hot brown liquid meant. Throughout the day I did the things I had to, but almost without knowing what I was doing.

At home, my wife startled me when she touched me on the elbow as I stood in the jasmine-scented darkness of the verandah, my mind racing ahead of my body. At dinner, seeing my untouched food, she
exclaimed, “If this is what landing some responsibility does to you, just stay an assistant all your life, that would be better for all of us.”

At last the day of my departure arrived. I did not know what I had packed or how I got there, but some time in the afternoon, long before the train time, I found myself in the milling chaos of Howrah Bridge, staring at the barges that creaked along the flat, muddy river. People collided into me and cursed as they passed, ant-like beneath the towering metal arcs of the bridge. Trams clanged by, reduced by the crowd and the bridge to mechanical toys. I walked along looking at the river and one barge that had an orange and green tattered flag fluttering from its prow. Beside me the superstitious were bowing and whispering prayers to the Ganga.

I felt speechless and prayerless, my mind in turmoil.

Twelve years after Nirmal Babu had sent me away from Songarh to Calcutta, I was going back to Songarh. Aangti Babu had bought my old home from Kamal. I was to evict Nirmal Babu from the house I had grown up in.

And Bakul. I was to evict Bakul.

I
sat by the window, my hair tossing in the wind. Outside, shadows rushed backward into the moon-pearled night. The breeze that came through the open window was warm, but still it dissipated the stuffiness of the overheated, third-class, metal compartment. Beside me, on the next bunk, a hunched form lay asleep, snoring in a rumble, then exhaling with a whistle. From above, the arm of another man drooped down almost into my nose. The train seemed to be chugging along with my thoughts. “Bakul, Bakul,” each turn of its wheels said as it rushed over the plains of Bengal towards the hilly plateau of Songarh.

For all these years I had not allowed myself to think of her because it would open gates to misery that I knew I didn't have the power to shut. I never let my mind draw her picture: her turned-up nose, her always-wild hair, the down on her thin cheeks, and her eyes, like pools of river water, which stared rather than looked. From the time I was six and she about four, we had been together. On cold winter mornings we would watch our breath mist and mingle, in the heat of summer afternoons we would throw buckets of chilled well-water at each other and squeal with delight. When Bakul first menstruated, it was to me she came running, alarmed, excited, voluble – I was sickened and horrified at the blood stains, thinking she had somehow hurt herself. We were each other's secret-sharers, we were two orphans who had found refuge.