The Blue Notebook

by MD James Levine

  Looking down the street, I can see an old man. He is gray and stooped and he is walking up the Common Street toward me. He is wearing an oversized brown suit and in his right hand he is holding a shiny steel walking stick. The base of the stick has three prongs, each with its own black rubber cap. The stick seems to be indestructible but everything else about him is brittle. It seems that his grasp on life is as tenuous as a word caught beneath an eraser.

  Each time he advances his walking stick, he resembles a watchmaker meticulously placing a cog in a watch mechanism. Once the stick has been placed about a handbreadth in front of the old man, the left leg advances six inches: sh, sh, sh. Once the left leg has reached its target, a pause occurs. Then the right leg follows: sh, sh, sh. He could be excused this slowness were he to possess everlasting life, in which case time would be inconsequential. However, it is obvious that he is shuffling along the edge of the well of death. Perhaps he is afraid that if he slips, he will fall into the well.

  What is funniest of all, however, is that as he walks in this excruciating unhurried manner, he is grasping his testicles in his left hand, as if they are about to fall off. His grasp on them is so tight that I can see the whites of his knuckles. I peer at him, but he looks ahead, completely expressionless. I swear I have watched him for an hour and he has walked fifty paces. I guarantee he will not bake sweet-cake with me. Mind you, if he did, I would need to set the day aside. I was going to point him out to Puneet, but why bother?

  Oh calamity! Coming from the other end of the Common Street, down the hill, is Mr. Bent-Nose for his weekly cooking session. You should have seen him the first time he baked with me. Sweat formed a river down his back and his “thank you” resembled the stutter of the old man’s gait. But here Bent-Nose comes, gaily bouncing down the street as if on his way to a birthday party.

  As Mr. Bent-Nose reassembled himself and prepared to depart from my nest, he pecked me on the cheek as if bidding a favored niece farewell. He said, “I have done you a favor, my sweetest.” To be honest, he had already done me a favor by finishing his sweet-cake in five minutes yet staying with me for an hour. He continued, “A senior manager from my company” (I had no idea what he did, except that I was sure he did it badly) “was asking around the office if anyone knew a pretty girl for a party. I told him to come down here and get the girl with the green curtain over her … room.” “Oooh,” I said (I had no idea of his name and I certainly could not call him Mr. Bent-Nose), “you are so kind to me. I will have something extra special for you next time.” I drew him to me and embraced him. After I had expressed my extreme gratitude, which I knew would delight him, I forgot him.

  Late that night, after the night rush, a taxi drove down the Common Street and stopped close to our nests. A man got out of the white car. In silhouette he appeared to be quite handsome. He was large and full figured and effused power like fresh tea. From the taxi headlamps I saw that he wore a light blue suit. It is astonishing how quickly Mamaki can move when the nectar of money is puffed in her nostrils; she sprung on the man with the agility of a mountain goat. The man stared in the direction of my nest. My green curtain was partly drawn and the small electric light lit me from the back. I am not sure if he saw my face, but he stared at me for longer than a glance. I then remembered the earlier comment of Mr. Bent-Nose. The man spoke with Mamaki for several minutes and looked over at me again. He climbed back into the taxi, which sped off, just missing an elderly woman carrying heavy sacks to the Street of Thieves before the protection of darkness lifted. Even after the taxi had disappeared, Hippopotamus was still waving goodbye, a huge smile on her face.

  The next day, something out of the ordinary was in the air; I could taste it. My supper tray contained rice, meat, fruit, and lassi, and as I started to eat, Mamaki waddled into my nest and sat beside me on my throne. She was flushed with excitement and overexertion, desperate to talk. She spoke like the mad people who have more words to get out than their lips can speak: “Batuk, darling, the man who came last night …” (puff, puff) “the one in the taxi …” (puff, puff) “… he is going to send a car for you later and take you to a hotel … for a treat. A hotel!” She repeated “hotel” as if it were heaven. “Now, darling,” she said, as an insincere smile slid onto her face, “you spend as long as you like there and you do a good job for me … I promise you, Batuk, you will be eating like this for weeks.” She was spitting all over me as she spoke; it was disgusting. However, I could see that this was something to celebrate and so I smiled.

  Now I am alone again. I have not felt fear since the night I met my new uncles but now that feeling has returned.

  This ends the blue notebook.

  ∗ The word used in the original notebook is the Hindi bandhura, . It has a double meaning: both “crane” and “prostitute.”

  ∗ The word used in the original notebook is the Hindi śaśak, .

  Numbered sheets of paper

  from the Royal Imperial Hotel, Mumbai

  About an hour after nightfall, a white taxi drew up outside my nest. Mamaki was obviously waiting in the shadows as she sprang out like a disturbed bullfrog. She was smiling and bowing; it was quite comical. At one point, I thought her breast might fall out of her dress but thankfully the steel struts of her brassiere held fast. After she had bowed at least a dozen times, the same man as earlier, still wearing the light blue suit, got out of the taxi. He handed Mamaki an envelope, which she took and opened. She turned her back to him, pulled out the deepest pile of money I had ever seen, and counted it while mumbling to herself. Halfway through the pile, she looked over to me. “Batuk, Batuk, go on, get in the car. Off you go.” The taxi driver, a tall, fat man who wore a sand-colored army uniform, got out of the car. The uniform was dirty and he smelled as unclean as any of my cooks. He said to me in a tone of disdain dressed in false politeness, “Get in the car … next to me.” The politeness, I figured, was for the sake of the man in the light blue suit.

  “Batuk, is it?” said the man in the light blue suit from the rear of the car. The car had pulled off. I had made sweet-cake in the front seat and backseat of cars and so I was familiar with driving through the streets like this. I love the music that comes from the radio. I am not fussy about what sort of music I listen to, but I find it irresistible how sound moves through itself and how it rises and falls. I have no idea how music can evoke feelings, but I can dissolve my own rhythm inside its beat.

  I was itching to ask for music in the car but did not dare to. The driver turned his head to me as we turned off the Common Street and spoke to me with unfettered loathing. “The gentleman spoke to you … did you not hear?” I realized I was developing a severe headache, the feeling of a wet strip of material tightening around my forehead. I felt a wave of despair and I wanted to vomit. “Batuk,” I replied to my knees. “Speak up,” the driver ordered. “I heard just fine” came the voice from behind my right shoulder. The man in the light blue suit talked like silk. “So it’s Batuk. That’s an unusual name,” he said. “Look, Batuk, there is no need to be afraid; I just want you to meet a friend of mine. If it does not work out, no harm done. Is that all right?” With each word, the band around my head tightened just a little. I turned my head toward the man in the backseat. The blue of his suit hurt my eyes. I drove a smile through my head and onto my face with the force of an ax that breaks stone. I said, “Thank you, sir, that is fine.” He responded in kind. “Batuk, you are so pretty, I am sure my friend will love you.”

  I faced forward and watched the Mumbai night stream by. As we stopped at a traffic light, three beggar boys accosted the car; one had a massive lump projecting from his neck, the other a glazed left eye, and the third a severed arm. It is well known that deformed boys are the most valuable as beggars and it was quite possible that a Yazak from one of the Orphanages had chopped off the third boy’s arm to increase his value. Regardless of the boys’ appeal, our windows remained closed and we continued on. As we drove alongside the promenade, I saw the ocean for
the first time. Palm trees dotted the boardwalk, lit up by strings of electric lights. Food vendors sold hot food from rusted grills and fruit from makeshift stands. Well-dressed foreigners and Indians ambled along, some with children. These people appeared different from the people I saw parading along the Common Street every day. They were clean and orderly and did not leer; they often smiled and laughed. On the other hand, these well-dressed rich were also merely a stream of human life that flowed this way and that. Watching them going places I could not see, I felt that I presided over this river of humanity. Perhaps the tree had spoken the truth, that it was all created for me.

  Every now and again, groups of beggars emerged from the shadows to accost the wealthy walkers but retreated in response to a dismissive sweep of the hand. I saw one Indian spit at one of the beggars. We drove too fast for me to see the beggar’s response.

  The hotel was a huge sand-colored stone building with massive windows. Through the windows, I could see enormous chandeliers hanging from an invisible ceiling. There was a lit veranda immediately over the entranceway where hotel guests could look out over the waterfront while drinking cocktails, safe from the advances of beggars. Mamaki had been right; this was magnificent. I was not in rags but wore the glaring bright red chiffon of my trade. I caught my reflection in the window as I entered the hotel behind the gentleman in the light blue suit. I was not clean but my physical beauty burst through the dirt of the streets as fire through rice paper.

  I stepped into a massive, spinning glass door. A fifteen-year-old girl, with the evolving body of womanhood, stepped out of the magical glass entry into her palace. I had tight hips, fist-sized breasts, and the poise of royalty. Hidden in my vest, my nipples had grown and were deepening in color. My armpits and my vagina had grown the early hair that retains the scent that draws men astray and causes them to behave outside themselves. I halted my step as we walked across the entranceway and looked momentarily at my reflection in the windows. People peered up from their papers and men looked away from their wives. It may have been because I wore no shoes and they did.

  I followed the blue-suited man through the palace entrance hall. The unknowing eyes watching us wondered, a father and daughter? An uncle and niece? The reality was an emissary and prostitute. We entered a box that contained a man dressed to serve, who was ordered to the seventeenth floor by the emissary. The doors of the box closed. I would have felt afraid were it not for the man in the light blue suit standing next to me. I looked around for a hole in the floor as I thought it might be a toilet. It was too small for a throne room. Then the box jolted. Heat rushed to my neck. Then it moved and I held my breath. But the box then sang to me, a strange soft growling sound. “Batuk,” it said, “welcome to my temple.” As the doors to the box slid open, I let out my breath. We were in a new place, the gates to a temple; and before me sat the gatekeeper.

  An old man in a white cotton shirt and pants sat on a simple wooden chair outside a pair of giant open doors. He wore a straw hat and no shoes and stared downward at the floor. We walked past the man as if we were invisible into a room the proportions of which I had never imagined. My headache had completely disappeared. I was overwhelmed by space.

  I realized that the size of the room appeared even greater than it was because the ceiling was so high. Everything shone. To my left, through an entryway was another room, in which I could see a huge bed covered in lime green. Along the right side of the room was a polished wooden table with six chairs around it. In front of me was an arrangement of two large sofas and two single armchairs. A television as tall as myself was housed in its own wooden cabinet facing the sofas. The seating encircled a glass table, on which lay a fan of books. Even the books were big, their covers shiny, reflecting the light of a chandelier overhead.

  For all its grandeur, the room was dominated by the wall decoration directly facing me. Splayed across the wall were the skin and head of a tiger. The head faced downward, as if the tiger were trying to crawl off the wall. He and I locked eyes; he seemed to be smiling, perhaps because he was happy to have been killed and hung up for his eternal rest in a palace as lavish as this. Below the tiger’s head, two crossed silver swords hung on the wall, to suggest that the tiger had been killed with these weapons. I doubted the tiger was slain in a just sword-fight; man rarely relinquishes power for the sake of fairness.

  Impulsively, I started to walk around the room. The softness of the carpet made me feel as if I walked on clouds. The man in the light blue suit was looking in his wallet for something and did not seem to be in a hurry. I went from chair to chair touching their soft backs, over to the dining table and then to the entrance of the bedroom. Although I was flooded with things to see and smell (the space smelled so clean), I did not lose sight of why I had been brought here. I turned to face the man in the light blue suit, who had remained standing by the door and who was now looking at me while turning a small white card in his hand.

  As I looked over to him, he called out “Hita” in the direction of the bedroom. I half expected to see the nurse from the hospital appear with her huge, lovely chubby smile. An amazing thought flitted through my mind that Hita had married well (obviously not the teacher) and had come to rescue me and have me as her daughter (this would have been fine with me). Such fantasies have the lifespan of a raindrop; by the time you see it, it has landed, exploded, and disappeared. The Hita that emerged from the bedroom was trim and had none of the transparent happiness of her namesake. She marched through the bedroom door as if she had been called for an important business meeting. She looked straight ahead of her, her face like her body, lean and purposeful. “Yes, Mr. Vas?” she asked in a clipped but polite tone. She wore a plain white cotton suit with red-and-white lining. Everything about her outward appearance was plain and functional, but I could sense other depths to her that she hid. The man in the light blue suit said, “Here is Batuk.” He turned to me and said, “Hita will clean you up and look after you; anything you need, just ask her. I will see you tomorrow.” He smiled without warmth and left.

  The door closed behind the disappearing suit of blue; it appeared that the elderly doorman had fallen asleep, for he jumped as the emissary left. Hita turned toward me and looked me up and down like a dress. She folded her arms and said to me, “Little whore, don’t you ever forget that I know exactly what you are. Don’t you dare play princess with me or you will see my hand.” I did not say a word but I knew that she would never lay a hand on me, as I was obviously here to please a master of hers, perhaps the man in blue or perhaps someone else. Even if she did strike me, her threat was toothless since, from the looks of her, she could not possibly inflict sufficient pain on me that I would care; you see, I am quite inoculated to pain. However, I recognized that buying favor from Hita might be convenient and so I feigned subservience.

  Puneet would have loved to have seen my performance. Actress Batuk fell to the floor in front of Hita, knelt, and placed my forehead on the carpet’s softness. I implored her, “Oh mistress, I beg of you. Please, please do not strike me. I have been hit so often, mistress. Whatever you order me to do, I will. I promise.” Yes! I even managed to command tears to my face so that when I looked up at her from my prostrate position at her feet, my eyes were swollen. She was obviously moved by my performance; she actually leaned down to me and offered me her hand. “Batuk, come, stand up; there’s no need to cry. I really won’t hurt you; you have my word. Come on, sweetheart, get up.” I took her hand, pulled myself up, and felt guilty for my well-acted deceit.

  I then started to cry. The first tear rolled down my left cheek. The second tear followed the first. Then I felt a tear from my right eye, this one not born of duplicity but of pure, torrid, and unfettered despair. The first tear had slid down my cheek, hung upon my chin, and fell to the carpet; the other two tears followed the first. And then I was sobbing. I had not cried since the day I had been left with Master Gahil many years before. All my feelings of being alone in a world awhirl with evil erupted an
d all the feelings of being cut off from the strands of my true life compounded. Suddenly, the lakes of love that had become buried deep within me started to pour out of me. Hita held me to her thin chest and I closed my eyes to enter the darkness.

  She lowered her chin to my head, stroked my hair slowly, and said nothing. And then I knew that it was not Hita’s touch and it was not her person and it was not the beautiful room and it was not the hundreds of men and it was not the black ink; it was the smell of the river on Hita’s clothes that had released the flood of tears. As I inhaled her I smelled the river, the same river that as a child I had bathed in, washed clothes in, swum in, and drunk from. On her, I smelled the same source as my own. But then, as my spirit opened into this woman, I understood that it was she who smelled of the river and not her clothes, it was she who was the river. As I cried, rivulets of tears dripped into the channel that formed naturally between her meager breasts. I melted into that river and she with me. We were neither as two lovers nor as a child suckling, but we were as one because we were one water together. If you mix water from one cup with water from another, can you distinguish them? No! They are the same water; there is no separation. The bodies of women, so gently carved, are the skins that carry water over the earth. Like one glass of water poured into another, I poured into Hita and she mixed into me so that we became a single drop.

  Men are seekers. Men seek to stream into us from their wet mouths, their sweat, and their sex. All that they seek, however, is to return into the river that is woman. Why is that? Man emanates from the water of woman; he is carried there, until at birth he swims from it. Then, what is the first thing man does when he leaves us? He seeks to suck and draw the river into him, for without woman, he is empty. For the rest of his life man deposits his sins and waste back into the river. In the end, his dead body burns before returning to the river that is woman.