The City Son (8 page)

Every time he returns home after spending private time with Didi, he becomes despondent for a day or two. He
loses his appetite, and when Mahesh Uncle and Sanmaya talk to him, he barely responds. “Why so glum today?” Sanmaya remarks. Mahesh Uncle asks whether Amit bullied him again today. Tarun shakes his head no. Mahesh Uncle has heard about Amit’s aggression, not from Tarun but from Sanmaya after Tarun told her about Amit locking him in the outside shed in Bangemudha for nearly an hour one afternoon. “Tell me if he does anything like that again,” Mahesh Uncle had said then. “Maybe you need to stop going to Bangemudha.” But if Tarun stopped going to Bangemudha, Didi would be distressed, so he’s been keeping mum about Amit’s bullying.

Amit confronts him on the side of the house, the narrow strip enclosed by a wall that separates the neighbor’s house. Sumit is somewhere else. “Eh,
randi ko chhora
,” he says, grabbing Tarun by the collar. “
Muji
, you come here on Saturdays when we’re not here, don’t you?”

Tarun nods.

“Why?”

He has no answer for Amit, who briefly lets go of Tarun’s collar, slaps him, then grabs the collar again with the same hand. The smoothness of the gesture indicates it’s copied from a movie and practiced. “Tell me,” Amit says. “What do you come here for?” He’s speaking in a loud, urgent whisper. They are underneath the window of the living room, and the Masterji is inside, sitting cross-legged on the bed poring over a book. Didi is most likely inside, too.
Didi and the Masterji rarely speak to each other; rather, it’s Didi who rarely speaks to the Masterji, who generally avoids Didi’s eyes. But the Masterji, even if he knew Amit was strong-arming Tarun, would not have gotten up from his seat to stop it; he’d have looked on helplessly or offered a mild rebuke to Amit, who’d have merely sneered at his father.

“
Ta machikney
, you think you can come here and do whatever you want?” Amit grabs Tarun’s collar tighter, knuckles pressing against Tarun’s throat. He smells of
khaini
; his right cheek has the small bulge of the tobacco ensconced there. Sumit has informed Tarun that his brother is already smoking ganja with the neighborhood boys.

Amit’s voice is now a soft whisper. “She’s sucking your
lando
, isn’t she, my mother?”

Fear grips Tarun, and reflexively he drives his knee into Amit’s groin, feeling something crunch against his knee bone. Holding his crotch, Amit collapses to the ground, his face contorted in pain. Just then Didi and Sumit emerge from the front of the house. She observes Amit with distaste, then crouches in front of Tarun and checks his face for damages. She brushes her thumb against his lips, then takes him inside. Sumit attends to his brother.

Tarun worries about Amit telling everyone about him and Didi, or seeking revenge, but strangely, Amit seems to have acquired a new respect for Tarun. On the next visit, Amit even shows him his swollen testicles. Now he’s less aggressive toward him. He still calls Tarun names, and
sometimes he mouths them across the room when Didi’s back is turned, but now there’s an undercurrent of jocularity to it, as though the two share an inside joke. He never mentions his suspicion about Didi and Tarun again, but once or twice when Didi demonstrates affection toward Tarun, Amit is in the background, making kissing gestures, and once, he lewdly grabs his crotch. When Tarun runs into Amit with his friends on street corners, Amit warns them, “If any of you lay a finger on him, you’ll find your arms and legs broken.” He puts his arm around Tarun. “This brother of mine is a
chhupe rustam
. He looks like a pretty girl, but he’s got many tricks up his sleeve.”

When Tarun turns twelve he ejaculates as Didi is fondling him over his trousers. His crotch becomes wet. He is ashamed and stands stiffly, as though called to attention at a Boy Scout march. “I was wondering when this would happen,” Didi says. “All this means is that you’ve become a big boy now. But we’ll need to get you cleaned up. Come, take off your clothes.” He covers his crotch with his palms. She looks at him questioningly. “What’s the matter, love?” He shakes his head. “Is my beautiful boy shy? Is he ashamed about what his mother will see?” She’s happy at the idea of him shy about revealing himself to her. “But we’ll need to get you washed up before the others come. You don’t want them to find out, do you? You don’t want Amit to know, do you?” She rubs her index finger over the wet spot on his trousers, then brings it up to her nose to sniff. “A big boy
that you are now, you can’t let other people see these things. It’s okay if I see it, I’m your mother. But it has to remain our secret, do you understand?”

He nods.

“Come, let’s take off your clothes.”

He allows her to take off his shirt, then his pants. He has on white underwear. She cups his crotch with her palm and says, “Oh, look, how big the spot is on your
kattu
.” She pulls down his underwear and inspects his penis. There is a globule of semen on its tip, like creamy dew. She picks up the globule with her fingertip and tastes it with her tongue.

In the bathroom she washes him. The water is cold. He shivers. She’s business-like now, and her able hands soap him all over. He whimpers when the soap stings his eyes; she flicks away the soapsuds from around them. She briskly rubs him under his armpits, then the crack in his buttocks and his balls and his penis. “How can she call herself a mother?” Didi grumbles. “She ought to have died soon after giving birth to you so I’d have you all to myself.” She pours water over him to wash away the soap. “Soon, I’ll make my son some
chouchou
soup so he’ll be warm and cozy.” She fetches a towel and rubs him until warmth spreads through his muscles and skin. She leads him to the living room and grabs a pair of Amit’s pants and puts them on him. They’re slightly big for him, so she has to fold the bottom as well as the waist. She has him sit on the bed with a thick blanket around him, like his father, then she goes to the kitchen.

Tarun thinks that somehow Mahesh Uncle and his mother are going to discover that he’s ejaculated. He thinks it’ll be obvious on his face, a telltale sign that all adults know. And once they learn this truth, then the truth about him and Didi will also be forced out into the open. So for a couple of days he avoids everyone in Lazimpat. Even when he’s talking to Mahesh Uncle or Sanmaya, he turns his face away. But Mahesh Uncle is especially busy with his work and doesn’t dwell upon Tarun’s behavior. And Sanmaya is too busy with her own talk; besides, she doesn’t see too well. And his mother? Whenever she gets a chance she escapes Lazimpat and fitfully walks through the city. Mostly, her eyes are fixed on the pavement, but even when she lifts her head, she doesn’t appear conscious of much, except not running into traffic. At times her lips move silently; at times words fly out, but no one understands what she’s saying. She trudges in her worn house dhoti, her hair uncombed, dragging her slippers. Street urchins follow her, make faces, calling her names to taunt her. Drunk and perverted men block her way, making suggestions, for she still has the air of a former beauty. She doesn’t venture into the city center, toward Bangemudha; it’s as though she has forgotten that part of her life.

By the time he is fourteen, Tarun is somewhat of a loner. He has friends, but he prefers his own company. He comes up with excuses not to spend time with friends. “I have things to do at home,” he tells them. He uses his mother as
an excuse. “Today, my mother is in an especially bad state,” he says when he’s asked to join them for an outing or for a movie or just to relax on someone’s roof listening to music and smoking a cigarette or two. He is well liked, for he is mild mannered and considerate, but over time his friends have grown weary of how much persuasion he needs before he agrees to their company. He’s acquired a reputation as a lone wolf. When he does get together with them, he ends up faking a headache to leave early so he can then be alone with his own thoughts or go home and listen to music in the quietude of his own room. Or masturbate. When he masturbates he tries hard to think of girls, but in the end it’s Didi he thinks of and comes, quickly and without fuss.

“Think of pretty chicks,” Amit had said when he’d demonstrated for Tarun and Sumit and a handful of neighborhood boys how to masturbate. They were in a patch of bamboo grove near their house, and Amit had dropped his shorts and taken out his penis, which was long and twisted at the top. “See this beautiful creature?” he’d said, stroking it and watching it grow. “This
bhai
will happily serve many maidens for years.” He petted it, and it slowly raised its head like an animal aroused from sleep. “
Dai
,” cautioned Sumit, but he was smiling as usual. “And so this is how you masturbate,” he said, and his hand moved at first leisurely, then rapidly. “It helps if you think of pretty chicks.” He mentioned the names of a girl or two they all knew. He told his rapt audience that he was concentrating on one of those girls, then he shuddered and came.

But Tarun gets anxious with pretty girls. He thinks they won’t find him manly enough. He pictures pretty girls laughing at him, making fun of his penis, which is smaller than Amit’s. It’s slightly larger than Sumit’s—he’d taken a glance when they’d peed together into the bushes—but that hardly seems like a consolation. More important, no matter what its size, he feels like he has a child’s penis and that pretty girls will simply laugh him away. He is convinced that they call him a sissy behind his back. He pictures them saying to one another,
Who would want to be with him
?
He’s a dirty little boy
. Deep inside, he knows that girls don’t talk about him that way. If anything, he’s aware of how the eyes of the girls linger on him. He’s heard whispers of “handsome” and “good-looking,” but he’s convinced that after a short conversation with him they will realize what a pansy and how unmanly he is, and his good looks won’t matter. Once they discover that he’s not worth their time, they’ll gravitate toward someone like Amit. Yes, Tarun can see how these girls would throw Amit admiring glances. Amit has a perpetually sneering expression, and he leers at girls. One time he made a fornicating gesture with his hands at a girl who was sitting at her window near Bangemudha, a girl rumored to be loose. This happened toward early evening when people were about. Tarun was mortified, but the girl only preened and smiled and left the window. Tarun thought about that girl for many days. It was manly, that gesture. The girl had liked it. Girls liked such displays of manliness. He practiced the gesture in
front of the mirror: the left index finger and thumb forming a tight hole, and the right index finger pumping it like a piston. But when Tarun did it, it looked like a timid boy playing with his fingers, like girls play with dolls.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

S
ILENTLY THEY MOVE
toward each other and embrace. He is as tall as she is, yet in that moment he is the child who used to follow her around the house, cling to her dhoti, and eat her food.

She smothers his lips with hers. She has lipstick on. “My beautiful son,” she says. She cries, “I haven’t feasted my eyes on you for days.” She plants kisses all over his face, his neck. Her hand gently rubs his crotch. From the corner of his eyes, he notices that the curtains on the window facing the street aren’t closed, and with one hand he reaches over to close them, but she clasps him tightly and says, “Let them be. It doesn’t matter.” Still, his fingers strain and pull them shut. In the back of his mind, he thinks Amit can
walk in on them—these days Amit makes sudden, brief appearances to eat, then leaves—and Tarun stretches his neck to look at the door, which is latched shut.

She runs her hand over his body hungrily, overzealously, as though she’ll not get another opportunity like this. They shuffle toward the bed, where, as soon as they lie down, she reaches inside his pants and touches him. He ejaculates instantly in her hand. Her wet hand still inside his pants, she smiles, like she smiles when he gulps down her food and lets out a burp. They lie together like this for a few minutes. She says she’ll clean him up before others come, and he says he’ll do it himself. Let me do it, Son, she says. He blushes, shakes his head. You love your Didi, don’t you? she asks. He nods. You love me more than you love your mother? she asks slyly. He’s silent, then he says, I love you more than my mother. She closes her eyes and takes a long breath, gratified. I’m your real mother, am I not, even though I’m ugly? Please say yes,
chora
. He’s quiet again, then he says, Yes, you are my real mother. Her eyes are still closed; her lips are quivering.