Seahorse (21 page)

She ran her fingers through her hair; her neck was pale and translucent, untouched by the sun. If she spent a summer here, she would be as tanned as Nicholas.

“Bigger,” she said. “And more mellow. It has a deeper pitch than the violin, which I prefer.”

“Will we see you play?” I thought it polite to ask.

“Oh, be careful what you wish for… I brought my viola… can't go too many days without practice.”

How many, I wondered, would that be?

As instructed, I stayed away from Rajpur Road.

Around the college campus, there was a quickening end-of-term excitement, a flurry of concerts, a small book fair organised by the Literary Society, and the general unraveling of classes and tutorials. Soon, I'd be traveling home for Christmas.

It was hard not to think about Lenny, the only reason I wouldn't have minded making the long journey back.

In the residence hall, things moved along as they usually did—the drifters wandering from room to room in the evenings for a chat, a smoke, a drink, diligently avoiding the serious science scholars, or the third-year students preparing for their CAT or civil service exams. Slowly, people would fall away, retiring to sleep, while some stayed up late, their rooms hazy with smoke, reeking with the fumes of cheap whisky, mingled with the strains of Floyd or Grateful Dead. I usually kept to myself before, but now I felt even more estranged. Watching it all from a distance. Back for long stretches in my room, sparse, bare, and suddenly… small. Everything downsized, and somehow so provincial. The latest rumors and petty rivalries. The silly victories. The same, stale mockeries.

When people remarked that they hadn't seen me around in a while, I'd say, casually, “Yeah, I was at my local guardian's place.”

And that was an unexciting enough reply for them to lose interest.

“Hey,” said Kalsang when I met him, “Whassup?”

“Not much. You?”

“Not much.”

If he was intrigued about my sporadic absences, he didn't show it. I noticed he now spent time with a group of boys from Darjeeling. Loafing around, sharing spliffs and stories. Our late night talks had come to an end.

When I visited the bungalow over the weekend, I found Nicholas and Myra just back from a swim. Somehow, I was certain she was a good
swimmer, that she could probably race Nicholas across the pool, and do complicated maneuvers like the butterfly stroke.

“It was
so
cold,” he complained.

“Nonsense,” said his sister. “It was refreshing. You're a wimp.”

Their banter would continue—a constant volley of testing and teasing. At those times, I assumed the role of an onlooker. I thought Nicholas would prefer it that way, that his sister should have his attention, that our plans be molded around her whim—the places she wanted to visit, the things she wanted to eat, the demands she made on his attentions. I moved through the bungalow like a ghost.

On the few occasions I stayed over, it felt strange to return to the room with no clocks, no calendars. Nicholas, a few doors away. Myra in the second guest room next to mine. I'd hear her moving about, drawing back the curtains and finally, she would settle, for there'd be sudden silence. Once, I awoke after midnight, dry-mouthed—the fan heater in the room had been on for hours—and found the jug on my bedside table empty. I stepped out for some water, still in a sleep-heavy daze. On my way back, I noticed that the door to Myra's room was slightly open. Moonlight streamed through the window falling on an empty bed.

Most of the time, I was unsure how to behave around her—rather, I was never certain how she'd behave toward me. One day, while Nicholas was away at the National Museum, we spent an entire afternoon in the veranda in silence. A solid chunk of hours where she ignored my presence. She sat with notebook in hand, wearing one of her brother's white shirts, staring out dully, while I fidgeted around, read a magazine, and repeatedly, for amusement, fed the fish.

“You'll kill them,” said Myra. And that was the only thing she uttered.

On another occasion, I'd barely walked into the bungalow when she accosted me, linked her arm through mine as though we were old friends, and ushered me into the kitchen.

“What is it?”

“It's my kheer…” She pronounced it
ke-er.
“I asked Devi to teach me how to make it.”

“Oh, well done.” I pushed a spoon into the mess.

“Taste it first…” Her face lit up with expectancy.

The dessert was blindingly sweet, the rice still a little raw, but I ate the bowlful, saying it was delicious.

“Oh, you're precious,” she declared and planted a kiss on my cheek.

What distressed me was how I rarely found myself alone with Nicholas.

The one evening I did, Myra was in the veranda, practicing on her viola. The notes rose through the bungalow, a wild wind, suddenly swelling and falling. It was a piece by Brahms, said Nicholas. “Some sonata or the other…”

The notes stopped abruptly. In a moment, they started again, from the beginning of the composition.

“She's a terror, isn't she? I finally asked her, though… she'll be gone after Christmas.”

We were in the study, images scattered across the table. Nicholas had spent hours at the National Museum photographing, as he called them, “Buddha's brothers”. Exquisite sculpted faces stared up at us, enigmatic, some smiling benevolently.

We were drinking, after ages, his favorite whisky.

I warmed the glass with my palms, swilling slowly. As I'd been taught. Holding it up, breathing it in, my mouth slightly open. Every sip stung my throat, and leapt to my head.

I moved closer to him. I missed his smell. Wood and musk and something else I couldn't name. “I'll be going home soon.”

“And you'll be back soon?”

I shrugged. I wanted to draw this out a little, make it last.

“After New Year, I suppose.”

“Perhaps you could return… sooner.” He placed his hand on my waist. Pulling me closer.

“I-I don't know.” I could feel myself faltering. If I could, I wouldn't leave at all. But it had been almost six months since I'd seen my parents; my mother was sentimental about these things.

I could feel Nicholas against me, our fingers entwined, my hand guided to the knot around his waist.

In the distance, the notes continued in unfailing diligence.

Somewhere in the distance, the music stopped. A door opened, and then another. The slap of footfall, growing louder.

By this time, I'd straightened up and moved to the other side of the table; Nicholas sat down and adjusted his clothes.

“Darling!” Myra fumbled with the door handle, and then rushed inside the study. “I did it. I managed the allegro appassionato…” She sank into the sofa, viola in one hand, bow in the other. “It took me long enough.”

“Splendid,” said her brother. “Can't bear Brahms though… go play some Haydn…”

She made a face. Then turned to me, standing there, quietly cradling my glass.

“What have you both been up to?”

“Nothing,” we said, too quickly, too loud.

By the time I returned to Delhi, a little after New Year, she'd left and there were no traces of her in the bungalow. As though it had been a vaguely remembered dream.

Apart from those three weeks, she might not have existed.

But she was real.

I could see her in my mind now, as clear as the image glimmering on my computer screen. It was her. Nicholas' step-sister. Performing in a fortnight.

Is that what he wanted then? For us to attend her concert. To meet again, that strange, unlikely trio.

Surely I was owed more than this? More than a rendezvous at a formal social event at which we could play-pretend to be perfunctorily polite and civil, drink a glass of wine, and return home.

Yet what was it I hoped for?

What else did I expect?

In the garden, I stopped next to a lady in a Victorian dress and wide-brimmed hat.

She looked at me either in disdain or despair, it was hard to tell. I leaned against the stone base on which she'd been standing for two hundred years, gradually marked and mildewed in the wind and rain. Behind her, the lawn trailed away like a green veil, hemmed by a high stone wall. In the middle sank a rectangular pond topped by a non-functioning fountain. There weren't many people around—a man threw a ball for his dachshund, a couple of young girls smoked on a nearby bench, a woman and her toddler played with a white balloon. I watched them, constantly expecting the balloon to burst as the little girl gripped it tight against herself.

The far edge of the garden was once a burial ground, although the eighteenth-century tombstones were now all propped in a line against the wall. I examined them in some amusement—
Thomas Gibson MD In God's Keeping, Elizabeth Marley She Sleepeth with those She Loved, Henry L Lawson Until the Day Break and the Shadows Flee—
and then wandered away, down a paved avenue, lined by oak trees. I'd read that oak trees lived for almost half a century. These ones had seen many funerals, I imagined—their trunks wider than myself many times over, their branches flickering with the color of firelight. Perhaps the wisest and most ancient had watched poor Thomas Gibson MD being laid to rest, over two hundred years ago. Nabokov said that trees were always journeying somewhere; those looked as though they'd reached their place of pilgrimage.

I grasped the ticket in my pocket and felt that, somehow, I too had reached mine.

Lauderdale House stood behind a row of graceful hedges and neat flowerbeds brimming with snapdragons, late-blooming carnations and purple dahlias. It was a large white structure that reminded me of the homes I'd seen in movies about America's old South. With classically inclined pillars, well-spaced windows and an airy veranda. How odd, that this should be where we'd next meet, Nicholas and me.

What would I ask him first?

About the seahorses.

Questions unfurled endlessly.

The last time I saw Nicholas, he was lying asleep, bare except for the white sheet entwined around his legs.

Time had done it again. Turned into itself, inverted, and dropped away all the years in between.

What would I ask him first?

At ten past seven, twenty minutes before the concert, I decided to head inside.

It was cool and quiet, the large central space leading off into galleries and offices—hard to imagine this had once been a family home. Landscape paintings hung on creamy walls, smooth as the interior of an egg. Far above arched a modest octagonal dome, edged with a rococo molding of flowers and leaves.

“In the lower chamber,” said the lady at reception, smiling and pointing toward the stairs.

The usher at the door checked my ticket and waved me inside—a long carriage-shaped room, with rows of velvety red-backed seats. I wondered where Nicholas would be sitting. For now, the chairs on either side of mine were empty. Some people were already seated, talking, checking their phones. Gradually, more wandered in. The auditorium was small; it probably couldn't seat more than sixty. I played with the
programme. A page. Reading it over again, the words simply sitting there, lost in the space between the paper and my eyes.