An Atlas of Impossible Longing (34 page)

“There are no strawberries in Songarh,” Bakul said.

“There are, if you have the imagination,” Mrs Barnum said swiftly. “That's the trouble, nobody has imagination!” Then she said, “Mukunda, this is my nephew Tommy. Tommy, do you know, Mukunda was Bakul's childhood playmate. We had such a grand time those days, the three of us.”

“Thwee, Aunty, were you the third? You've always been such a baby. Did you play house-house? Or was it hide and seek?”

Tommy spoke to Mrs Barnum with an indulgent smile as though she were a child he needed to pamper. He reached out and picked up a sandwich, raising an eyebrow at me. “Do have some, old fellow,” he said.

I spoke English, but when I was confronted with anyone fluent in that language my mouth filled with wool and I could hardly get a word out straight. I began to chew a sandwich to avoid speaking.

“And are you Bakul's welative?” Tommy enquired. He looked at Bakul with a smile. “She doesn't say much, never told me she had long-lost bwothers.”

“Oh, no, darling,” Mrs Barnum exclaimed, “Mukunda was an orphan boy they took in. And then he went to Calcutta to study. Now you must be a big man, aren't you, Mukunda?”

Bakul held the tray towards me and spoke so that only I could hear. “Won't you have your lemon sherbet? It's getting warm.”

Tommy raised an eyebrow. Then, as if he had lost all interest in me, he turned to a pile of magazines on a corner table. Settling his long frame into his armchair and putting his feet up on the chair facing it, he said, “Don't let me keep you from chatting. It'll be nice to hear all your stowies.” He began flipping through the pages of the magazine.

“Oh, but you should hear the stories Tommy has to tell,” Mrs Barnum said. “Such tall tales about the clubs in Bombay and the races and dances. I don't believe a word of it, Tommy, I tell you I don't!”

“You just need imagination, Aunty,” Tommy smiled playfully at her again, and reached out for her wrinkled hand, “That's what you said, didn't you? Can't you imagine yourself dancing at the Yacht Club? I'm shwo you'd be the toast of the town even now.”

“Oh yes,” Bakul said enthusiastically, “Mrs Barnum can still foxtrot – she taught me.”

“We must have a dance then, Bakul,” Tommy said in a teasing tone. “Now, this minute!”

I felt the conversation twisting and eddying around me, the characters and incidents in it unknown to me. I laughed when they laughed, but I could not understand their jokes. When one of them, usually the nephew, stopped and said with ostentatious politeness, “No, we're weally talking too much. Mukunda Babu hasn't had a chance to tell us anything about himself,” I could not fill the minute's pause that followed. The sandwiches tasted nothing like they used to when the khansama made them. The bread was dry and there was so little butter the two slices separated and curled at the edges. I was no longer hungry, but I ate one nevertheless. It was worrying me in an obscure way that Mrs Barnum rang her bell for a servant who did not exist. I did not want to look at Bakul smiling at Tommy, laughing at his jokes, glancing at me as if to say, “Isn't he wonderful?” Our recently excavated closeness was buried, it appeared, for good.

Then Tommy got up and played a few notes on the piano, still standing, his tall, lean frame like a question mark over the black- and bone-coloured stripes of the instrument. He sighed, looking theatrically around the room, “Stwauss! Ah, how I miss swirling awound the woom to a waltz! Can you play, Mukunda Babu, or would you like to dance? I'm happy to pwovide the music!”

I got up from my chair. “I was never a dancer, and I really must be going.”

Tommy whinnied and said, “Oh, Mukunda Babu, I didn't mean to scare you away. Do please sit down.”

“I have to go,” I said, and turned to Mrs Barnum to say goodbye.

Tommy perched on the stool and began to play, eyes closed as if there was nothing in the room but his music. Mrs Barnum sat before him, her face lit by the evening light that shone in from the single window in the room, her expression rapt – as if she were looking upon divinity.

It was the three of them now.

* * *

Dinner was over. Nirmal Babu had refused to let me return to the hotel to eat. The power had gone off so we were sitting in the garden to get away from the stuffy heat of the house. It was very still outside but for the passing breath of air that ruffled the creepers, releasing the scent of white flowers gleaming in the dark. I am sure I had never noticed the fragrance twelve years earlier, but now it was a key that unlocked all my memories. And if that were not enough, there was Bakul next to me, perfuming the night herself with a heady mix of soap, talcum powder, and something else I could not identify.

All around us loomed the black shadows of watching trees. The only point of light was Nirmal Babu's cigarette and, further away, a dim yellow flickering from Mrs Barnum's upstairs window. The houses down the road, new and old, were bulky shadows. A chair had been brought out for Nirmal Babu, while Bakul and I occupied the stair before the front door. Bakul swivelled a semi-circular palm handfan, wiping her sweat with her sari when it trickled down her neck. Because she wanted to fan both of us with single strokes, she had settled down close enough for me to feel her brush against me. In the shadows I could not tell what Nirmal Babu made of Bakul sitting there next to me. He said nothing.

I wondered if Bakul's closeness was indeed necessitated by the fan. All through dinner I had felt her brushing against me, by accident I had supposed, as she leaned across to serve me. Her arm would stretch out right near my ear, touching it, or her hip would nudge me as she turned with the ladle towards her father.

Now in the darkness, as she fanned us both, each individual particle of my body seemed separately alive. I was conscious of every tiny move she made, every accidental touch of her shoulder or wrist or hip. My mind seemed to have emptied itself of all normal thought, making room only for the sensation of her touching me. I listened to Nirmal Babu's voice talking about the part of a stupa they had found near the Songarh ruin, about the crowds that now went to see it and scratched their names into the ancient stone, he almost regretted ever
having unsettled it, he said; he talked about attempts to climb Everest, about his own old travels. His dog began whimpering a little in her sleep and he caressed her ears and then began again to discourse about fossils recently found in the Himalaya.

All the while my body waited for a touch from Bakul. My knees trembled with the effort of not edging closer to hers.

And then a stone shot through the darkness and fell at a little distance from us. The dog leapt up barking while Bakul sighed and said, “Time to go in!”

Another larger stone fell, this time in a clump of bushes by the gate. After a moment's pause, there was a strange crying sound, like a baby's or a cat's.

“What's happening?” I exclaimed, getting up in alarm and going towards the sound. “Who's there?” I yelled into the darkness, “Come on out, you cowards!”

“Sit down, Mukunda,” Nirmal Babu said in a resigned, unsurprised voice. “They can't reach us here. They won't come in if they know we're sitting outside. And maybe they think we have a huge Alsatian.”

“What d'you mean? I'm going to go out and find them. What's going on?”

Then, even before Nirmal Babu began to explain, I knew. These were Aangti Babu's men, my colleagues Bhim and Harold. Knowing what they were capable of, I could tell they were still just horsing around, had not yet really rolled up their sleeves. Their faces seemed to bob above the wall, gloating at my predicament.

“I'd thought we could spare you these tiresome details,” Nirmal Babu said into the darkness in the same resigned tone, “but I suppose … sit down, Mukunda, it's no use pacing about.”

I returned to my place next to Bakul but kept glancing at the boundary wall, wondering when the next stone would come. I could picture the cadaverous Harold intoning, “Look up at the stars, look, look up at the stars”, as he searched for stones outside and pitched them through the night-sky into the garden.

“This is why Ajay could not let you in,” Nirmal Babu was saying. “A few days ago, when Bakul had come with me to the doctor to get
my blood pressure checked, two men came in claiming to be people from the electricity board. Ajay let them in and they went to the mains and cut off our electricity. When we came back, the house was in darkness. It took half a day's work for the electrician to repair it. So now Ajay has instructions not to let anyone in since he is too young to judge.”

Nirmal Babu fiddled with his matches. The red tip of a cigarette returned.

“The reason you don't see Kamal and Manjula here is that they left Songarh. The business collapsed, Kamal was deep in debt despite selling all the assets – even the factory and some land for growing medicinal herbs. Their needs had changed too. Kamal thought he'd get a job and Manjula was never happy here anyway.”

Nirmal Babu paused as if it was difficult for him to speak.

“Oh Baba! Don't make excuses for them!” Bakul exclaimed. “They were dreadful,” she said, in a scathing tone. She turned to me. “One day we discovered that they had sold the house behind our backs, using some old legal papers Baba had given them in the years when he travelled all the time. They said absolutely nothing to us, just that we'd have to move, holding out some fiddly amount of money as a bribe.”

“Not a bribe, Bakul,” Nirmal Babu said, “just a share, compensation.”

Another stone fell into the garden with a thud. A handful of gravel clattered onto the tin roof of the outhouse near the gate. Ajay came and took away the frantic dog.

“I'm sure we could have contested all this in court, but Baba … ”

“I don't want to waste my life in a law court,” Nirmal Babu cut in sharply, as if he had said this many times before. “There are other things to think about and do.”

Bakul must have decided not to pick a fight. She took a sharp breath but said nothing.

“I can't see any way out, Mukunda,” Nirmal Babu said. “I don't want to waste my life in law courts, especially fighting my own brother. I want to get Bakul married and then I'll move somewhere smaller.”

Bakul snorted, but too softly for her father to hear.

“You know I was never one for relatives, Mukunda,” Nirmal Babu said, forcing a smile. “But now I'm really having to cultivate them to find a suitable boy for Bakul. Tell me, is there anyone you know who might be a possibility? One of your friends?”

In the darkness I could not see his face and although his tone sounded jocular, perhaps he was half serious. After all Bakul was almost twenty-three, and at her age most girls were married. She did not think so, I suppose, and snapped, “Baba!”

“Well,” sighed Nirmal Babu. “I just need some time, but the dealer who's bought this place is in a hurry, and he's set his goons on us. One night it's pebbles, another night it's our doorbell ringing repeatedly, some other night we find our well has rubbish thrown in it. We've never seen a soul, but these things have been happening the past fortnight or so.”

He rubbed his hand over his eyes and then said, “For tonight maybe their activities are over. They must have run out of stones.” He got up from his chair and stretched. “Stay here tonight, Mukunda, why return to the hotel when your own home's here?”

I got up too. “I need to go,” I stammered. “I really have some work, some papers.” I could not meet his eyes, even in the dark, knowing what secrets my own eyes hid.

“He doesn't want to stay, Baba,” Bakul said scornfully. “He likes the comforts of his hotel.”

“No, no,” I protested. “It's not that, Bakul, the hotel is no good, but … ”

“But this house is much worse?”

I could see her teeth shining in a smile in the darkness. “Don't bother him, Bakul,” Nirmal Babu said. “But will we see you again?”

“I'll be back,” I promised. “Tomorrow.”

* * *

I poured out a large rum from a bottle I had bought at a shop near the station. The water I mixed into it was lukewarm, and it was already late,
but I took a long, scorching gulp. What am I to do, I kept repeating to myself, what am I to do? I could not throw up Aangti Babu's job and say to him, “I won't do your dirty work, take it somewhere else.” What if he did? Everyone else would be more ruthless than me.

I could move them out gently, find them a nice place. But then, to think of that house, my home, going over to Aangti Babu and his henchmen, to be broken into, broken down, bartered away in parts, built over, forgotten. Impossible!

I had never thought the work I did would one day boomerang this way; its darkness had always been locked away behind the doors of other people's lives. It seemed out of the question that I should continue. Yet if I gave up Aangti Babu's work, what would I do? What other trade did I know? How would I feed my son? My wife?

I lay staring up at the ceiling, noticing the fan for the first time. Its bulbous centre was greasy and yellow. The grease was so thick and heavy, it did not look as if the fan could hold onto it much longer. It creaked through each rotation, so slowly I could see its blades were edged with warty soot. With each rotation a drop of dirt seemed to form and I waited for it to drop onto my open eyes.