Seahorse (20 page)

His parents were Cypriot Greeks (Titania's friend was right; I remembered the conversation I'd eavesdropped one distant afternoon outside the college café), and their families moved to England after the Second World War. In London, after they married, they lived in a flat close to the British Museum.

“Every time a fight broke out in the house, I'd walk across, and stay there until it shut in the evening.”

His father taught Classical Studies at King's College, while his mother was Keeper of Special Collections at the Senate House Library. (“I've always been jealous of her job description,” he added, smiling.)

Yet it was at the British Museum, that Nicholas, all of fifteen or sixteen, wandered upstairs to the northwest wing—China, South Asia and Southeast Asia.

“At the time, it made little sense… I think my first afternoon there, I was even a little frightened… perhaps a bit like Adela in the Marabar caves… this astounding visual unfamiliarity. But I was fascinated, it was unlike anything I'd seen in any museum my parents had taken me to, in Florence, Rome, Athens, Vienna. My father couldn't begin to comprehend… why study anything else apart from painted Greek pottery? Or the glory of Hellenistic sculpture.”

Nobody, apart from Lenny, understood why I drifted toward Literature.

“Nicky, stop wasting your time on Eastern monstrosities.” Impossible, of course, to explain to him the invalidity of applying Western classical norms for appreciating
all
art. So I went ahead and enrolled at the Courtauld, making vague mutterings about Byzantine symbolism… or some other such thing he'd approve of…”

“And?”

“And emerged with a PhD in Eastern monstrosities.”

His thesis, he explained, had explored the cultural biography of a set of third-century bodhisattva statues.

“What does that mean?”

He laughed, saying I should know better than to invite an academic to talk about his work. With a large, quick sip, he finished his whisky, and looked around, seeking something. “Let's see… no, give me a minute…”

He walked into the bungalow and returned, before long, carrying a figurine. A miniature oxen carved in mottled jade. He placed it on the table.

“Have you seen this before?”

Admittedly, it looked familiar.

“It was in the study?” I offered.

I was wrong.

“Malini's parents are keen collectors,” he said, “so I'm certain this is of some value. Let's assume it dates back to the early Ch'ing dynasty, the late 1600s, and somehow it found its way here, to this veranda, before us. It may have been carved as a trinket, a child's toy, a decorative piece for an altar… its changed hands a thousand times, from home to shop to museum.”

“It was in the guest room,” I interrupted. Placed on the table alongside other miniature carved creatures.

He picked up the figurine, holding it in the palm of his hand as though weighing it, running his fingers over its smooth lines.

“That is how I looked at sculpture, as fundamentally social beings whose identities are not fixed once and for all at the moment of fabrication, but are repeatedly made and remade through interactions with humans. Often, religious historians and art historians privilege the moment of an object's creation as the essential meaning of the object… but some of us hold that subsequent reinterpretations are equally important and equally worthy of enquiry. Would a person's biography be confined to an account of his or her birth? No. Objects come to be animated with new significances… their lives are just as filled with change, disjuncture, and readjustment as those of humans.”

He placed it back carefully on the table. The oxen faced us, a third party to this conversation.

“Do you see? This evening too…”—and Nicholas looked around as though to acknowledge the quiet, silvery darkness, the overhanging trees, the night sky, me—“is forever intertwined in its biography.”

“Is it similar to that? What you're working on now?”

“You're spoiling me… showing all this interest… I might have to take
you away with me when I leave…” He leaned closer and traced a finger down my cheek.

Even that slightest touch would make me feel that my next breath depended on what he would do after—whether his hand would travel around the curve of my ear, down my neck, linger at my collar, the line of buttons, the hollow of my chest.

Then swiftly return to his glass.

Or whether he'd continue further, lower, over the plane of my stomach, the top edges of my jeans. A zipper pulled, a button unclasped.

Sometimes, just our palms and fingers.

Or the bed and I catching every push, the sheets marked like a map by our movements, the pillows disarranged.

In time, I learned the things that pleased him. To discern the shape of, as my own, his desire. This, most intimate act of togetherness, was tied intricately with a craving for dis-union. To long even in that miniscule moment of parting, to meet. And when meeting, to part. Like music, to wait for the next note, to be incomplete without the silences.

We'd sleep in the hush of midnight, or distant blush of dawn. Morning after morning, I'd awake with the taste of him on my tongue.

Myra dropped into this.

A stone casting unwelcome ripples.

One afternoon, after class, I headed to the bungalow, hurrying down the forest path to the main road. All of a sudden, the Ridge was behind me, and I was in the midst of a bustling city. A roadside barber, shaving a man seated on a stool, holding up a small mirror. A row of makeshift cigarette stalls. Hawkers selling bhel puri and spicy channa.

Soon, I turned off into Rajpur Road, wider, quieter; its sidewalks empty apart from a lady under a tarpaulin tent swiftly ironing clothes. I nodded at the guard by the gate—our acquaintance hardly
evolved beyond this—and entered the lawn. The gardener was cleaning a flowerbed, digging the soil between a glorious line of many-colored phlox.

The wicker chairs were empty, but on the table, I noticed a tray with two empty teacups. Who would have visited so early on a Saturday?

The bungalow stood in mid-afternoon silence. Cold now in the winter, and almost every room had a small electric heater, lit in the evenings. Nicholas wasn't in the study, so I wandered into the drawing room, and peered into the veranda. The aquarium hummed quietly, a clear, bright bubble.

Chairs, table, potted plant, everything in its place.

Except that someone lay on the divan.

On her back, sleeve fallen off her bare shoulder, her hair bright and cropped against the cotton spread. She was covered by a woollen shawl, her feet curled under. From here, I couldn't see her face, she'd turned away. I could only trace the outline of her neck, her jaw, the sharp curve up to her ear.

It was Malini, I was certain, back home from working on her PhD in Italy, here to be with Nicholas. The girl he'd studied with at the Courtauld. Whose house he so casually inhabited. The one who wrote him those letters. Whose painting took pride of place on his desk.

I want you in me.

I refrained from edging closer afraid I might wake her. Instead, I backtracked to the corridor, past the empty guest rooms, to the main bedroom. Nicholas had just emerged from a shower. His hair, wet and wavy, clung limply to the edges of his face and neck, dripping down his bare back and chest. He'd wrapped a towel around his waist, tucked precariously on the side. Without his glasses, he looked younger, his eyes deep flints of blue-grey.

“I was wondering when you'd show up.” He stood by the window and light glinted off his skin. One summer in Delhi had darkened him.

I sat at the edge of the bed, uncertain.

“How was class?”

“Alright.” I didn't elaborate as I usually did.

“Anything exciting?”

“The usual… Eliot's Gerontion.”

“Our favorite ultra-conservative anti-Semite…” He smiled. His lips soft and rounded, the water had rejuvenated him, filled him out.

Some other day I might have playfully attempted to defend the poet, but not that afternoon. “There's someone… in the veranda.”

He whipped off his towel, using it to dry his hair. “I see, so you've met…” His words were lost in a muffle of cloth and hands.

“Who? Who is she?”

Nicholas looked amused by the urgency in my voice. “My sister.”

He threw on a shirt the color of sand, it floated over him, sliding down his arms, over his head. “Well, my step-sister… after my parents' divorce, my mother married another man and had a daughter.”

“I'm sorry. About—the separation.” I was disoriented. As though I'd uncovered an unread chapter in a book, a painting hidden behind another. Why hadn't Nicholas told me?

“That's kind… thank you.” He laughed. “But it was only a divorce… they didn't die.”

The mirror on the cupboard reflected us and the mirror hanging behind us on the wall, creating an endless tunnel of images.

Would it be rude to ask how long she'd be staying? Perhaps.

But I could enquire about when she'd arrived.

“This morning…” He reached for his glasses on the dresser. “I think she's sleeping… terribly jet lagged, I'm sure.”

“What does she do?”

“Myra's a musician. Don't worry,” said Nicholas, playfully throwing the towel at me, “you'll love her.”

“What does she play?”

He reached out and touched my arm. “I'd prefer it that way.” His eyes had changed color, behind glass they were light, a shade of grey feathers.

“Of course,” I said. “I understand… except…”

“Except?”

“Should I stay… or leave? At night, I mean…”

Nicholas stood and smoothed down his shirt. “Come stay over the weekends…”

“Tonight?”

He paused, working out the calendar in his mind. It was a Saturday. “From next weekend… that way it seems like it's a break for you from university. Rather than… you know… a regular thing.”

I wasn't quite certain whether to be pleased or affronted.

I didn't see Myra until well after lunch.

She emerged from the bungalow, early evening, as the trees braided long shadows across the grass, and the air was filled with the scent of damp earth. The gardener had just finished watering the flower-beds. Nicholas had headed indoors, saying he needed to work, and I was reading, dozing, working on article ideas for Santanu. She walked out barefoot; her hair, cropped into short waves, was the color of autumn leaves glistening wet. Her long smoke-grey dress fit close and loose all at once. It was easy, I noticed, to trace her contours through the material—slight, but with the hidden energy of an athlete.

She gave me a sleepy smile, shading her eyes against the sun.

“I'm Nehemiah.”

“Ah,” she said. “Nicholas told me about you.”

My heart swelled with pride.

“Myra.” Her eyes were blue, and edged with slate. “His sister… well, half-sister.”

Her voice sounded low and liquid, perhaps because she'd just awoken.

She sank into a chair and turned her face to the sun. “Gorgeous. Such a change from our despicable British winter.” Her words dropped like polished marbles, smooth and round.

“When did you arrive?”

“This morning… I gave Nicholas such a surprise.” She smiled to herself, indulging in a secret.

That explained it all then. He couldn't have told me if he himself hadn't known.

“I think I'm hungry for breakfast but it might be suppertime.”

“You're in time for tea.”

“Marvellous.” She raised her arms, chiseled like ivory; on her fingers, thin and long, she wore numerous silver rings.

“Nicholas said you're a musician…”

She laughed. “Studying to be… not quite the same thing.”

“What do you play?”

“The viola.”

“Is that… similar to the violin?” I wished I hadn't asked—it suddenly seemed a silly, childish question.