An Atlas of Impossible Longing (43 page)

In one of the rooms there was a carved, glass-fronted cupboard in a corner, and Harold bent almost double to look into it. He gestured to me. “Bledgy hell, look at that, m'n, wouldn't the boss like that?” Inside the cupboard were five glass shelves, each containing delicate figurines of men, women and gods, children and animals, dozens of them, all in ivory. Even the wood of the cupboard was inlaid with ivory. Some of the figures stood upright, some had fallen on their faces in the dust that coated the shelves.

“Exquisite, aren't they?” Bakul's voice startled me. “And priceless. It shows the five days of Durga puja and all the different things that happen each day. Only, the key to the cupboard is lost, so when the figures fall, they remain forever fallen.

“As you can see,” she continued, moving into the next room, “the upstairs is in better condition, structurally. I had planned to get everything cleaned before you came so things would look better … but never mind, you're earlier than I expected. The damage downstairs isn't as terrible as it could have been, considering the house had two feet of water in it every monsoon. Prospective customers are likely to know this from the locals – they call it the drowned house, so there's no point trying to hide the fact. Of course,” she turned to me and Harold with a raised eyebrow, “your customers – or you – may not want to keep the house at all.” She shrugged. “You may want to demolish it. If that's so, you're in trouble. This is a sturdy place. It won't go down without a fight.”

By now we had rounded the corner of the wide verandah that ran the length of the house. Beyond it we could see hardly anything but trees, and only bakul trees. Soon they would be in flower and the air heavy with their scent. This part of the verandah appeared to have been swept and cleaned. It looked as if someone lived there.

“This is one of the upper bedrooms,” Bakul said in a smaller voice than before. “There are four more.”

The room was clean and smelled fresh, as if still in use. There was a single, green-sheeted bed with a simple headboard, an ordinary wooden cupboard, and a dressing table with a long mirror. The window opened onto a tree whose branches almost came into the room. Another bakul tree. On the wall was a picture of Bakul's mother, Shanti. There was a thin, dried-up garland around the picture and the ashes of incense on the table before it. She looked exactly as Bakul had when we made love in Songarh that afternoon – her refusal to recognise me now made it all seem too far away to be true any longer.

For a moment Bakul and I stood in the room, not speaking, forgetting Harold. I remembered how she had longed for her mother all through her childhood, how she had tried to hide it. I felt wretched, but could do nothing. I could not hold her and tell her, “It's me, you can say what you like.”

The moment passed. Bakul's voice returned, “I'm afraid the other bedrooms aren't quite so clean, but of course you must see them. The one that used to be my grandfather's has some spectacular carved cupboards and a very striking four-poster bed.” Then she said, “What happens to the furniture? Is that part of the deal?”

“That's for you and your daddy to decide, ma'am. We've no preferences … ” Harold turned to me and said, “ … though the boss may fancy some of it, yeah? Likes a bit of good carved wood, does the boss. That ivory cupboard … D'you fancy some of this for y'self?”

I walked quickly ahead, wanting to distance myself from Harold's predatory interest in Bakul's furniture. I went out to the verandah and took a deep breath, wondering, hoping this was some complicated game Bakul was playing. Sooner or later Harold would get tough, demand the deed, then begin his search – and how would she stop
him? He would find it eventually. For all his languor and his poetry, I had never known him to fail.

Quite far from the house, from the verandah, I could see the river, a sluggish stream now. It had retreated some distance from its original bed. “There's a dam upstream now,” Bakul's voice suddenly said next to me. “So this house is a viable proposition again. It once had two acres of garden, most of which has been under water all these years. Now it's surfaced again. There are a good many acres of fields as well.”

* * *

We reached the head of the stairs, having completed our survey of the upper floors. Harold held back, saying to Bakul, “If you don' mind, ma'am, I'd like to look around alone, at leisure. Investment of this size, y'know. Need to take a good long look.” He turned before she could say anything and ducked into one of the rooms.

I followed her down the stairs and into the front verandah. She was stalking ahead of me, as though hardly aware of my presence. Now that we were free of Harold for a few minutes, I had to ask her what it all meant: How could she really think I was here to wrest her house away from her? She had to know I was on her side, not Harold's. How could she possibly doubt it? I had to warn her that Harold was no innocuous or trustworthy buyer, that he was in there trying to find the property papers, that it was dangerous to give him the run of the house – she needed me, Nirmal Babu was right, and regardless of how she perceived me, she needed to be told this.

“Bakul,” I began as we reached the front verandah, “I need to talk … ”

The verandah was no longer empty, however. Sitting in one of the cane chairs as if he owned it as well as the house was a man about as old as Nirmal Babu. He had a prosperous face that shone with fat and sweat. He wore a crisp, white dhoti with a fashionably crinkled kurta that had diamond buttons twinkling in it. Next to him stood a shrivelled up, sorry-looking servant waving a palm-leaf fan over his master's balding head.

We stopped short. He got up when he saw us and said in a booming voice, “Namaskar, Shaheb! And you too, Bakul. You don't know me, but I know you!”

Bakul gaped at him.

“Your grandfather and my father were great friends, the greatest of friends! You must have heard. Ashwin Mullick was my father's name! And my own humble name is Rathin Mullick.”

“I had not heard,” Bakul said.

“Do sit down,” the man said, inviting Bakul into her own verandah as though it had always belonged to him. She followed in a daze.

“Oh well, it's natural, how would you know me? You, poor child, have hardly ever come to this house! Strange,” he said opening a silver paan-case and passing it around “No? Don't want paan? Well, as I was saying, strange indeed. You hardly know anything about this house, and I know every inch of it and all your grandfather's family and friends. I played here as a child, floated paper boats in the river, and in your ground floor when it started flooding. What fond memories! And the wonderful jackfruit dalna your grandfather's cook made! Even your mother … Shanti and I – for some years, we played together, in this very verandah! She was a timid sort. Whenever she lost a game she would burst into tears, floods of tears! Ah, but Rathin Mullick, stop, you must not use the word flood in this house, a bad word, a disastrous word! After what the house has been through!”

I was staring at the man dumbfounded. He sounded and looked like something out of a cheap film or jatra, laughable, yet somehow menacing.

Bakul was beginning to look impatient. In the crisp tone that I knew from years ago, she said, “How can we help you, Rathin Babu? This gentleman,” she looked at me, “has come here on some work, so I'm sorry, but … ”

“Ah, the young,” he said with regret, “always, always in a hurry. I know why this gentleman has come, child, and why the other gentleman with him has come. And that is why I have come. Dear child, for years and years, my father had been telling your grandfather, ‘Bikash Babu, sell this monster house, it will swallow you up, sell it,
and if you like, I will buy it!' My father even gave him money for years as a down payment, and Bikash Babu, your good grandfather, took it – otherwise how do you think your grandfather lived, eh?” The man sounded suddenly truculent. Then he softened his tone again, and continued, “My poor father, God rest his soul, looked after your grandfather, sent him food during the floods … and now I'm hurt, my trust in humanity is gone, my child! I hear – from other people – that this house is to be sold – behind my back! Behind my back, when my family has already paid lakhs of rupees for it! Can it be true, I asked, and came to see for myself.”

A frog began to croak, and then a rickshaw's bells sounded. The withered servant, though half asleep, still stood behind his master waving the palm-leaf fan. Bakul looked as if she were trembling. She turned to me and said – and somehow the three words she spoke cleared the air as if a sharp gust of fresh breeze had blown over us – she said, “
Say something, Mukunda
!”

“I'm sure Bakul's father has no intention of cheating anyone, Sir,” I said. “We know nothing about any understanding you may have had with Bakul's grandfather. Naturally, we need to see some documents, a contract between you and the property owner would be required for legal reasons … ”

“Documents! Moshai!” the man spluttered. “When an old friend helps another over years and years for the whole of Manoharpur to see, with food, with money, with medicines, with servants, on an understanding between friends, are there documents?”

“Still,” I said, with a new surge of confidence that came from all my years dealing with property. I knew that without papers he was a gnat I would brush off, a butterfly on a mill wheel. “I'm a mere agent for the seller, how can I do anything without the relevant papers?”

I could feel Bakul's eyes on me, different now, surprised and not edgy. Rathin Mullick's motive in arriving at Bakul's family home was no less predatory than Harold's, but his unexpected appearance had been my salvation, his intrusion had placed Bakul and me on the same side. He argued, alternating between threats and appeals to sentiment, and I let him. The longer he thrust, the more skilfully I parried, and
the happier I felt at being able to wield my rapier – and before Bakul. I could not resist showing off a little, letting her know conclusively that I was on her side and Nirmal Babu's, that I was here to rescue her and save her old house.

We argued for what seemed like an eternity and then Rathin Mullick left, vowing that we had not heard the last of him. I knew that probably we had not, but the danger seemed to have passed even if temporarily, and it had served a purpose: I could talk to Bakul before Harold reappeared. Now, I thought, now I could explain everything to her.

“Bakul,” I said, “I have thousands of times dreamed of us meeting again, but never like this. Listen to me now, we need to talk. There's no time to … ”

“Well, life is always unexpected, isn't it? Nothing happens as we expect or dream it,” she said, looking preoccupied. “Our chat will have to wait a bit – we should go in and see to that man – what's his name, Harold? What can he be doing in there so long? I can't believe a word he says, and he looks more sinister than anyone I've ever encountered. Mukunda, how can you work with such people?”

As if on cue, Harold walked into the verandah. He looked hot and irritable, brushing his hair and his tie free of dust. He had been ordered to find the deed or wheedle it out of the occupants and vanish with it, but given the size of the house this was a tall order, and he had obviously made no progress. Now he gave Bakul a belligerent look and said, “The place is a mess ma'am. I'm afraid it's in no fit state to be bought or sold. An' the papers, please. Show me the papers before I can say anythin' about our decision.” Harold cast a glance in my direction for confirmation, saying, “Eh Mukunda, nuthin' goes further without the papers, right?”

As he looked to me for agreement and support, I had an idea in one of those flashes that seem blindingly obvious later. Why had it not occurred to me before! Harold was relying on me to back him up: we had been on many similar assignments together, too many to count! He trusted me and assumed Aangti Babu did too. If I convinced him I was better suited to extracting the papers from Bakul, that my familiarity
with the house and its owners would work where his threats and blandishments had not, and that I would deliver the papers on his behalf to Aangti Babu, it might suffice for the moment and remove him from the scene.

“The deed is not here. I'm sorry I haven't found it,” Bakul said.

“Maybe we can, ma'am, me and my friend here.” Harold looked at me.

“You do need to show the deed to sell the house,” I said to her, and then to Harold, “I know this lady's family. Aangti Babu asked me to follow up here because I inspected the property with him some years back … you know that. We couldn't seal the deal at the time … ”

I looked at Bakul, carefully turning away from Harold so he could not see me signal to her with a look she knew from our childhood: “
Say nothing, trust me.
”

“Give me and my friend here a moment to discuss a couple of points,” I said to her. “Then we can reach some suitable decision on how to proceed.”

“I'll wait inside,” she said. “For you and your
friend
.”

I took Harold aside. “Either she really hasn't got the papers, or she doesn't mean to part with them,” I said. “Whichever it is, we can't force the thing out of her. She's tough. I know how to handle this. We've got to take care. I know the family. I can convince her we're genuine buyers, but it'll take a while, she has to trust someone enough to fish out the documents. There's no point us both hanging on here, she'll feel even more intimidated and cautious than she is already. You go back and report to Aangti Babu. I'll get the papers out of her or her people over the next couple of days, I'm sure of it.”