‘Who’s the guy who calls up at odd hours of the night?’
‘What do you mean?’ Rhea’s guts bunched up.
‘He hangs up when I pick up.’ Adi deftly tore at a puran poli. ‘Surely you know who I’m talking about, babes?’
Drawing a deep breath she looked out of the window at the thick crown of a haunted banyan, at the scarred, shining hide of the Arabian Sea. After a sip of water she faced Adi confidently, for a piece of fiction had arisen unbidden in her and she surrendered to its transformative avalanche. ‘Yes, I do know who he is.’
She started off by confessing that the man who called her frequently was actually known to her. ‘Around two or three months ago I got a call from my friend Meera who was with me in college, while you were in New York.’
‘You had a friend?’
‘It is possible, Adi, even for me,’ she said dryly. ‘Anyhow, Meera got married and moved to Bangalore. Earlier this year she called to say that her brother-in-law was in Bombay for work, and asked if I could help him out. I asked Meera what kind of help he was looking for. She said, basic stuff. The number of a good doctor; recommendation for a decorator.’ She paused to swallow a spoonful of shrikhand. ‘Meera’s an old friend. I just had to say yes. I met this fellow, Karan Something-or-the-Other, and answered all the questions he had…’
Adi’s mouth fell open. ‘The man came to our house?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘For a bit.’
‘So Miss Cooper was right.’
Rhea lowered her eyes, as if trying to remember something.
‘And you never even told me?’ he asked, his voice quavering with suspicion.
‘As far as I was concerned, jaan, he didn’t really exist. All I did was answer a few queries. He was some photographer type who wanted suggestions for locations, where to shoot, etc., etc.,’ she said as casually as she could. ‘So I gave him tips on a few of the places I like in the city.’ She ladled a dollop of shrikhand on the side of Adi’s silver thali. ‘I had no inkling he’d go all wonky on me.’
‘Wonky?’ Adi’s eyes widened.
‘I mean’—she caught her words when she saw Adi’s expression—‘he asked me out to lunch! Can you believe the nerve? I said no, of course. Then he sent me flowers. That’s when I told him to keep away. I was tempted to call Meera and ask her to intervene.’
‘Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me all this was going on?’
‘You’re in Singapore half the month, Adi. I didn’t want you losing sleep over a trivial matter.’
‘But you should have told me! This is not a trivial matter.’
‘So you could extend some long-distance security service of your own?’ Her ears pinched back. ‘If you feel so strongly about my safety why do you go away in the first place?’
‘I go to Singapore because you’ve always insisted you could never live with anyone full-time; early on, you set down the rules of our marriage, and one of them was that you needed alone time.’
‘I needed time to work. In case you forgot, I gave up my career for this marriage.’
‘I know that. You don’t need to rub it in.’
‘I gave up a scholarship to study in Berlin.’
‘Aren’t we veering off the subject we were discussing?’
‘No, I’m just clarifying something here, Adi.’
‘Well, I get your point.’
‘And, if it helps, I did call my friend Meera and ask her to speak to Karan. He promptly denied ever sending me flowers! I felt humiliated. I figured he would go away…’
‘But he hasn’t, obviously.’
‘He still calls now and then.’
‘And you try to pass this Karan off as a telemarketer?’
‘He’s a pain,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want you to worry about some dopehead, darling.’
‘Do you have any idea how these things can pan out?’
She looked at him, her face as blank as an author’s first page, uninitiated by word.
‘A girl who was in my class at NYU was butchered by her ex-boyfriend. She was sleeping in her studio in Williamsburg when he stole in and took her out with a bottle on the head. He hacked her up with a knife and fed her body parts to the piranhas in her tank.’
‘That’s sick!’
‘These things happen all the time. Did you never stop to think about Zaira? Do you think she ever assumed some freak who had a crush on her would one day blow up her brains in a bar?’
‘You’re right.’ Rhea looked appalled, as if such a thought had never crossed her mind. ‘You want more kadhi with your rice?’
‘No, I’m done,’ he replied crossly. ‘Now, shall we report this Karan fellow to the police?’
‘What will it achieve?’ Rhea felt out of breath. ‘We’re leaving Bombay in a short time anyway.’
‘Is that why you suggested we move to Singapore? Because you were starting to fear this fellow?’
‘What a ridiculous notion!’ She stood up; the discussion was getting out of hand now.
‘Well, I’d like to report him nevertheless. The police will track his calls and give him a thrashing.’
‘I’m not sure if it’s sensible to provoke such a man. God knows what these hot-blooded small-town sorts can do.’
‘That ought to have occurred to you before you invited him over, Rhea!’
Before he could shout another word, she clutched her stomach, her mouth contorted. She fled the dining room and rushed into the bathroom where she retched into the white porcelain basin.
Adi rushed to her side. ‘You okay?’
‘I’m not handling the pregnancy too well, am I?’ She wiped her mouth.
‘You’re doing fine; you’ll be even better once we’re in Singapore.’
‘I don’t know what came over me, Adi.’ She was sobbing now, subsumed by an overwhelming sadness for Karan, burnt to cinders in the bright flames of her fiction.
‘It’s going to be fine, jaan.’ Adi hugged her, chiding himself for pressing her with his questions during such a delicate time.
‘Maybe I’m not cut out to be a mother. Becoming a mother changes you.’
‘You’ll handle it like a pro.’
‘Motherhood is not a profession.’
‘I mean you’ll take to it like a duck to water.’
‘To be a mother demands that you be a better person. A good person…’
‘You are one already. You are a good person.’
She looked confused, even exasperated. ‘A good person?’
‘A good woman,’ he reaffirmed. ‘You, my love, are a good woman.’
As his fingertips touched her cheek and he focussed his inky black eyes on her, tears left her eyes. She felt once again the entire world bursting in upon her: rivers uncoiled, lions roared, a marigold bloomed, a mass of clouds floated over a delta, orange lava bristled, the sea churned, a cocoon split open and something with green gossamer wings emerged from it.
24
When Karan called Rhea to tell her about Mr Ward-Davies she decided to forgo her decision never to see him again; besides, she thought it would be better to tell him in person about her plan to relocate to Singapore.
‘Right outside his house?’ She sat on the love seat, the phone against her ear, dazed. ‘In Worli?’
‘I was with Samar.’
‘Again?’
‘I must be a curse.’
‘Don’t be absurd.’
‘Can I see you, Rhea? Please.’ He looked out at the dirty pond beyond his balcony; two geese floated by serenely.
‘I’m not sure if it’s quite kosher right now…Adi is in town.’
‘Please. I need to see you.’
‘What did you do with Mr Ward-Davies?’
‘Buried him in Samar’s lawn. Under the almond tree. Pickaxe left calluses on my palms.’
‘Six-thirty. Near your place.’ She could hear a cat wailing in full-bodied agony somewhere outside his room.
‘I’m so glad to see you,’ he said later t
hat evening.
‘I can’t stay for very long.’
‘Well, I’m glad you came.’
They started down the steps toward the pond, past skeletal men in white dhotis, an indolent brown cow, scruffy kids playing a noisy game with moss-green marbles.
‘Samar must feel ruined.’
‘He’s in San Francisco. Leo refused to stay in the country—he had been preparing to leave for a while—and Samar thought it was better to go with him. The trial had been enough hassle, and now this came along…’ Karan paused, inhaled deeply. He could not erase the sight of Mr Ward-Davies from his mind, the bloodied, whining heap on the pavement, Samar trying to fix an eyeball into a socket. ‘It’s not going to be okay.’
‘I know.’
‘I just want the pain to stop.’
‘It will, Karan, it will.’
They paused as he leaned against a wall, squeezed his eyes shut to hold in the tears.
She felt helpless, unable to comfort him; his pain was entirely his own land, unmapped, private. Perhaps he should never have gone so deep into the trial. Perhaps the witnesses who had backed off had done it with good reason. Perhaps he ought never to have opened the dark beating thing in his chest to the ravages of love. Look too closely at life, she thought to herself, and it can blind you senseless. So it was best to take it in small doses; it was best to bake cakes, glaze urns, clean cabinets, watch television, go for walks, care for sick animals, fuck a husband, read a novel: all sustainable terrors.
They started to walk again, and she asked, ‘Did Samar report the attack?’
‘The police had a laugh at his expense. A dog croaked it, they said. Shit happens. This is Bombay, take it on the chin. Move right along, or they’ll deck you again.’
‘Did such a bitter response freak him out?’
‘More so Leo. When I was digging the grave for Mr Ward-Davies he was on the phone to his travel agent.’
She reflected for a moment. ‘It’s strange how little you can ever know anyone.’
‘Even yourself, for that matter,’ he said, thinking about how easily he had walked away from photography. ‘But I wonder if it was sensible for Samar to take off to San Francisco…Samar had something on his mind on the morning Mr Ward-Davies was picked up. He was trying to tell me something; that’s why he had called me at dawn. And just as he was about to…’ His expression was one of inexplicable concern. The worry in Samar’s eyes had been like the sound of a mouse in the attic, an eerie, scurrying presence in hiding.
‘What do you suspect it was?’
‘Maybe that he could no longer soldier on with the retrial? Maybe that he was tired of Leo?’
‘Well, without Samar the reinvestigation will lose its steam. In some ways he had become the trial’s public face.’
‘But how much can you expect him to do? He stood his ground even after the defence falsely accused him of hustling little boys. He survived a vandal attack on his house. His dog was picked up and slammed into a lamp post. He was bound to burn out at some point.’
‘I hope he heals in San Francisco…perhaps he was right to leave. Sometimes,’ she said, ‘leaving is much more difficult than staying on. But I suppose’—she closed her palm over her navel—‘it’s usually wiser in the long run.’
His ears pricked up. ‘Are you telling me something here?’
‘I’m moving to Singapore, in a month, once the Ganesh festival is over.’
‘On holiday?’ He gulped.
‘No. It’s time to settle there with Adi. He’s been wanting it for the longest time. I had to say yes this time.’
‘But you hated Singapore.’
‘People change.’ Her voice trembled with uncertainty, as if she had said the words aloud so she might believe them herself. ‘People have to change.’
‘So you no longer think Singapore is some sort of a gigantic mall where they spank you for spitting on the street?’
‘Oh, I do. But Adi wants me to go with him, and I don’t have a choice.’
‘You had a choice all these years.’
‘Well, not any longer.’
‘You’ll live there permanently?’
‘We’ll keep the house here, of course. But I’ll move with him for now.’
They passed a dingy store with low chuna walls and thick, uneven ledges on which glass jars stuffed with orange sweets the shape of kidneys were arranged in a neat row.
‘Is there a reason why you’re giving up on Bombay?’ A tremble took up his leg.
‘Is there ever a reason for giving up on something?’ she asked. ‘Was there a reason you gave up on photography?’
Karan felt she was punishing him for giving up on his passion. Disturbed by the news of her impending relocation, Karan wanted to take Rhea into himself and run down the dirty, abandoned alleyways in his mind and show her he had been living rough and without cover. Then he wanted her tranquil, able hands to work on the cuts. But perhaps it was best not to expect anything, for he remembered how she had advised him not to take life personally; life happened to everyone.
‘I’ve got some news of my own.’
She looked at him enquiringly.
‘I got fired.’ As he laughed, the uneven, diabolic peals made her want to flee that very instant but she steeled herself to hear more about his dismissal from India Chronicle.
‘Iqbal fired you?’
‘Yeah. He got rid of me, too.’
‘Why?’
‘I was missing many appointments. I couldn’t deliver.’
‘You shouldn’t get spooked, Karan; any magazine will take you on in a heartbeat. Your work is fierce and glorious.’ She toyed with the silver bangles on her wrist. ‘But why don’t you take a break before you apply for another position?’
‘Maybe I should come along with Adi and you to Singapore; a spot of sightseeing with the Dalals might pad up my resume.’
She ignored the jibe. Her heart brimmed over; she wanted to keep him safe. ‘Promise me you’ll quit the bottle?’
‘I don’t owe you any promises.’
‘If you don’t have a job, how will you cover rent?’
‘I’ve got savings.’
‘Enough to tide you over?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Do you need any money?’
‘No, no. My services were for free,’ he said. ‘I absolutely enjoyed fucking you, Mrs Dalal.’
‘Well, I’m glad one of us did.’ She lowered her head. ‘Look, Karan, I don’t want to leave you this way.’
‘You shouldn’t leave, Rhea…’ He slapped the side of his thigh to lick its trembling.
‘I have to.’
‘Just stay a few weeks longer. I promise I’ll clean up; I’ll go back to photography.’
‘Karan, this is not about photography.’ She felt tears gather at the corners of her eyes. She could not imagine that the sweet, bumbling boy she had met in Chor Bazaar was now a weary, incoherent wreck: but the politics of the trial had seeped into him and left him sick and mucky. She wondered, then, what had been the point of their meeting; perhaps they had merely passed through each other, like ghosts passing through flesh, to be exorcized only by the formidable poltergeist of fate. But there was something else here, and although words eluded a description of the experience, an image came to her mind: a curator was adjusting a light over a painting in a gallery, and once the curator’s job was done, he simply turned and walked away, leaving the painting perfectly lit and absolutely alone. She looked at her watch. ‘Anyway, enough of talk, time for dinner at home.’
‘And time for me to hit the bottle.’
‘Stay sober.’ She paused. Was the sorrow of loving a man greater than the pain of having to leave him? ‘For my sake.’
‘I’ll stay sober, Mrs Dalal.’ A bitter laugh tumbled out of his lips. ‘For your sake.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘I’m saying you’re keeping me from the bar,’ he hissed. ‘So why the fuck don’t you get out of my face?’
25
Rhea experienced the disadvantages of moving from Bombay at the time of the Ganesh festival on multiple levels. Lila-bai had taken off for her village for a fortnight to participate in the celebrations there, leaving Rhea saddled with the household chores in addition to overseeing the packing. Adi was often irritable because of tiresome traffic jams brought on by the celebrations. She didn’t blame him for his moods; in fact, she too found the frazzled atmosphere charged with revelry and chaos, and longed for Bombay to return to its routine and form. Her neighbours turned pious overnight, handing out churma laddoos and chanting day and night. On the streets there were bright, noisy pandals at every corner, and traffic across the city became completely gridlocked when rowdy processions led statues of the deity to the sea.
One evening, Adi and Rhea found themselves miles from home, surrounded by a daunting mass of devotees.
Rhea had noticed that Adi had been antsy all week; now, in the frustrating propinquity of a traffic jam, she asked him if something was chewing at him.
Adi tightened his grip on the steering wheel. ‘You were very irresponsible to let that Karan guy into our house, Rhea.’
‘I know.’ She decided to let him vent his suspicions; if she defended herself too much, it would only confirm her guilt.
‘You should’ve told me he was acting up.’ Outside their car, a frenetic, colourful parade of devotees chanted stridently. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about it when it happened?’
‘I’m sorry, Adi.’ She looked out of the window and sought solace in the city that she had explored with Karan. An awful, insurmountable loss fluttered in the distance. She knew she would miss Karan in ways she had not yet imagined. ‘I just didn’t want to upset you. It seemed inconsequential at the time, and I’m quite good at handling tricky situations. Why don’t you take one of the lanes where we might get less traffic?’ she suggested casually.
The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay Page 24
