The City Son (19 page)

Rukma licks her fingers, says that although she’s enjoyed the company and the food, she’s overstayed her welcome. The wife doesn’t move from the window. She is already confusing loving moments she’s spent with her husband with pictures Rukma has implanted in her mind: the whipping of the wind on the back of the motorcycle, the feel of his strong hips against her hips when he carries her up the hill toward the ancient city’s square, the touch of his thigh against hers in seedy and secluded tea shops that dot the city. It’ll get to the point where she won’t be able to distinguish which experience is hers and which is Rukma’s because he also has taken his wife to the ancient city and for rides on his Kawasaki 250 cc.

The Newar lover, still seated on the floor, looks defeated. He is realizing, perhaps, that he ought to have stopped Rukma. He’s examining his wife anxiously. He accompanies Rukma down the stairs, holding the flashlight. At the bottom, he scolds her for revealing their past to his wife, then he attempts to embrace her, asks her when he can see her again. She tells him to come to her house so she can introduce him to her husband.

Rukma’s journey home is, inexplicably, filled with sadness. She keeps recalling the wife, her peace destroyed. Sahara
wants to accompany her all the way home, but Rukma is tired of her questions—“Were you telling her about me?” “What did his face look like when he first saw you?”—so after providing Sahara with some details she tells Sahara to go away. Sahara gives her a wounded look and says that she hopes Rukma won’t forget to call her when she wants to do something like this again. Rukma knows Sahara won’t be able to sleep tonight. She has also been changed by this experience, and the microcosmic moments of what occurred inside the Newar lover’s house, the moment-by-moment unfolding—the flashlight suddenly shining on the ceiling to reveal spiderwebs; the rose-patterned sheet on the Newar lover’s bed; the chubby boy’s fart as he bounded away to play after showing Rukma in—all of these will seep into Sahara’s brain through repeated playing until they begin to color the experiences that belong to her, that arise out of her own senses. She’ll begin to think that she owns a rose-patterned bedsheet, or in the midst of an NGO meeting, the thought will appear that she has a chubby nephew to take to the doctor for his gastric problems.

By the time Rukma reaches Lazimpat, she is so filled with sadness that she can barely move. The guard asks her if everything is all right. She says it is. Tarun is in the living room, but she barely glances at him as she goes up. From the kitchen Sanmaya asks whether she needs a snack before dinner, which she says will be ready in an hour. Rukma doesn’t have the energy to answer her. She goes to her room
and lies down on the bed, but then she gets up and goes next door, to the room that her mother-in-law had occupied. Every few days Sanmaya dusts the room, so it’s habitable. She lies down on the bed—it is smaller than the bed she shares with Tarun, but it feels comfortable. The room is also smaller, perfect for one person. She closes her eyes and soon drifts into sleep. She wakes up, briefly and groggily, to hear voices. They are talking about her, wondering where she went. “I saw her come in,” Sanmaya says. “I peeked from the kitchen and saw her climb the stairs.” Tarun concurs, says he saw her, too. Mahesh Uncle says—must be to Tarun—“I thought there was some sound in your room.” It feels good to be talked about. She’s like a child who’s hiding in the perfect spot, smack in the middle of everything but concealed enough that no one can ever find her.

They look for her in the Japanese garden, they ask the guard if he’s seen her leave the house, and finally with a worried air they eat dinner.

Later that night, Sanmaya discovers her in her mother-in-law’s room.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I
T BECOMES HER
room. It’s a natural transition. She likes how its size seems to match the cramped feeling inside her. She has stopped going to Swarga. When she contemplates taking care of all those people, this thought descends upon her:
Who is going to take care of me?

She’s also afraid of running into Sahara again. Soon after she visited the Newar lover’s house, there were phone calls from Sahara, but Rukma refused to take them. Then Sahara came to Lazimpat, to the house. The guard sent Rukma a message upstairs that a woman was at the gate. “Tell her I’m not home,” Rukma instructed Sanmaya, who inquired who it was. “An acquaintance who thinks she means more than she does,” Rukma said. She went down to the living
room, parted the curtains, and watched. Sahara was quarreling with the guard. Rukma couldn’t make out the words, but Sahara’s index finger kept pointing to the house.

“She’s a fancy dresser,” Sanmaya said.

“She feeds off other people’s emotions,” Rukma told her.

A few days later Sahara was at the gate again, and after nearly getting into fisticuffs with the guard, she broke down and cried out Rukma’s name. “Shall I bring her inside?” Sanmaya asked. “Perhaps she’ll go away if she just got a glimpse of your face.”

Rukma shook her head. “You don’t understand,” she said. “That woman is insatiable. She’s the epitome of greed.”

The Newar lover also phoned, and she spoke to him. He sounded cocky and self-assured. He told her he had two tickets to a newly released movie. She told him she’d meet him at the theater, and she simply didn’t go.

Mahesh Uncle is concerned about her. “It’s not right,” he says to her, “you sleeping in his mother’s room. You and Tarun should sort out your differences.” As he talks she notices how old he looks, with craggy lines running down his cheeks. He lives in his robe these days, an unlit, fat cigar between his fingers, as though it’s an image he’s copied from a gangster movie. He also neglects to comb his hair some days so when he stands in the doorway to her room—her mother-in-law’s room that she’s made her own now—he appears like someone who has wandered in from the street. But Mahesh Uncle is really not interested in the details of what’s going on, is he? He might have a vague sense that
it has something to do with Tarun’s aloofness, but he’s not sure why it has reached the point that they have to sleep in separate rooms. Rukma has heard him say to Tarun: Take her out, go and do things that young couples do. And yes, Tarun and she have gone on outings, have tried talking, but it’s no use.

She’s been contemplating, with increasing frequency, simply ending the marriage. She thinks these thoughts at night when the house is in deep sleep. She sits up in bed, without turning on the lights. She peers out at the darkness through the window. There’s a hazy type of glimmer that’s coming off the surface of the earth, and it makes the outlines of trees and bushes visible. She sees an apparition, a fluid figure, perhaps a female. A ghost. I’ve begun to see ghosts, she thinks bemusedly. Her mother-in-law, too, spent countless nights like this, staring into the dark, seeing her own brands of ghosts.

Today’s ghost stands near the fountain, a woman ghost, her mother-in-law, Rukma is sure. Now, why are you there and not here? Rukma whispers. The figure turns toward the window, as though she has heard Rukma. All right, Rukma thinks, I’ve made you real. Let’s see what you’re going to do. Now the ghost is bending to smell flowers. Is that what ghosts do? Smell flowers at night? The ghost keeps looking in her direction after each smell, as though she’s reminding Rukma of what she’s missing. My dear
sasu
, my dear mother-in-law.

At some point she drifts into sleep. Tomorrow she’ll tell her husband that she’s moving away. Where, she doesn’t know. She may return to her parents’ house, if they’ll take her. But they’ll probably insist that her rightful station is with her husband. Has she tried everything to make her husband happy, to make her marriage work? Has she done enough self-analysis to see if she’s contributing to the problem? She pictures her mother’s weeping fits.

Instead of returning to her parents’ home, she’ll find a room in the city. She will return to work at Swarga. If the mood strikes her, she’ll have an affair with her Newar lover.

Yet when dawn breaks, she is unable to move from her bed. Her muscles have become heavy, and the room closes in on her, and the walls oppress. She wants to shout for help, to call Sanmaya. But how much can Sanmaya do? She can’t be at the beck and call of people all the time! It takes Rukma a long time to sit up in bed, like she’s been drugged. In front of her is the old photograph of her mother-in-law from her younger days. It shows her in red high-heeled shoes and matching red lipstick. She is wearing bell-bottom pants that tighten at the crotch and flare absurdly at the bottom; she has on a tight shirt that makes her breasts protrude. The photo was taken about the time, or right before, she met the Masterji.

Holding the staircase railing, Rukma manages to go downstairs. Descending slowly, like an ill person, not unlike her mother-in-law during Rukma’s first visit. She sees herself through her mother-in-law’s eyes: innocent Rukma
bruised by her Newar lover, half hopeful about a new life. There they are, the concerned parents, wanting to make everything right for their daughter, wanting so desperately to ensure that she doesn’t suffer.

Rukma calls Sanmaya. She can hear her voice float away toward the kitchen, from where Sanmaya emerges. There’s some exchange, but she’s not sure what is being said. Now she’s being led to the dining room table, where Sanmaya has her sit and says something like she’ll be back in a jiffy. Out in the Japanese garden the sun is already so bright that the sky has turned white. It seems as though she herself has become older and slower and needs to be taken care of. And the person taking care of her returns from the kitchen, and a shaft of happiness enters her. Good old Sanmaya. What would she do without her? She asks Sanmaya something, but Sanmaya puts her tea on the table, spoons and stirs some sugar into it, and doesn’t answer her. She must not have heard what Rukma asked, so Rukma asks again, but Sanmaya is busy now with her own monologue about the chores she has to do that day, a talk that’s interspersed with how things were done in the village when she was a child and what the weather is going to be like and what festivals are coming up. Her voice is like the gentle patter of the rain, which makes Rukma think, briefly, that it’s indeed raining, but when she looks outside there is no rain, only a blinding kind of whiteness.

The earlier resolve she had about leaving this house comes to her like a tiny bird with a message. Sanmaya brings her
pakoda
for breakfast, and suddenly Tarun and Mahesh Uncle are at the table also, demanding things of Sanmaya, rustling the newspaper, commenting on the weather. Mahesh Uncle—how come he’s down here so early, and he’s even dressed? He’s flying to Biratnagar to see a dying aunt, he informs them. Tarun is eating quickly. He doesn’t meet her gaze. He’s in a rush to get to his office.

So what are you doing today, Rukma? Mahesh Uncle asks. Why don’t you go to Tarun’s office later, and you two can go out for lunch?

I am leaving this house for good today, Rukma says.

I won’t have time for lunch today, Tarun says. Many things to take care of.

Why don’t you take some time, Tarun, Mahesh Uncle says. It’ll be good for the two of you to go out.

I’m looking for a flat today, Rukma says.

Not today, Mahesh Uncle, Tarun says. I simply can’t do lunch today.”

Or why don’t you two come home for lunch, Sanmaya chimes in. I can cook something special. I’ll even have the guard write up a menu, like in the hotels.

I’ll be out all day looking for flats, Rukma says.

But it’s clear no one has heard her, or no one is listening. Mahesh Uncle is asking her: Are you not feeling well? Why don’t you go and lie down. Here, why don’t you lie down on the sofa in the living room? Sanmaya will take care of you. Tarun, try to come home in the afternoon, okay? Rukma is not feeling well. I’ll be back in two days.

At once the house is quiet, except for the sound of Sanmaya cleaning in the kitchen. Rukma is shivering. Her body is hot, burning, floating, yet it doesn’t feel unpleasant. It’s a different type of energy now, not quiet and closed but expanding, as if she’s on her way to discovering something. The kitchen has gone silent. Perhaps Sanmaya is eating? Sanmaya is shy about her eating. No one sees when she eats or how. A few times when Rukma has entered the kitchen she’s found Sanmaya in the corner, her back to the door. But Sanmaya immediately stops eating when she senses a presence. She doesn’t even turn toward the intruder without first finishing chewing and swallowing. Come to think of it, Rukma has never seen her with food in her mouth. She has, however, seen Sanmaya drink water out of a
karuwa
. She raises the
karuwa
above her head, tilts up her chin, then allows the water to pour into her open mouth, the veins and muscles on her neck going up and down like pistons.