Their voices had grown louder. It’s a replay of last night, Ramchandra thought. Sanu had stopped shelling the peas and was staring at the floor.
“You seem not to realize what your daughter has become.”
“My daughter is fine,” Ramchandra said. “Perhaps you should realize what you’ve become.” He couldn’t remember the last time they’d argued like this.
“What have I become? All I want is my children to respect their elders. Is that too much to ask?”
“The elders who want respect should respect others.”
“They haven’t been disrespectful of anyone.”
“How can you say that? How can you stand there in front of your daughter and pretend that nothing’s wrong with the way your parents behave?”
Goma’s face suddenly became transformed, and she started to cry. Sanu leaped from the floor and went to her mother. Goma pulled her hand away and turned her back to them. Father and daughter exchanged glances, and Ramchandra motioned to Sanu to go to her mother again. Sanu stood near her and said, “If it’s that important to you, Mother, I’ll apologize.”
Goma didn’t respond. Ramchandra placed his hand on her shoulder. “Okay, enough. We have a guest in the house. What will she think?”
“This whole thing gives me a headache,” Goma said.
“All right. Sanu will apologize, so please stop worrying.”
It took a few minutes for Goma to regain her composure. Then she embraced Sanu.
They heard the children’s room door open, and Malati and Rakesh appeared in the kitchen doorway. Malati obviously sensed that something untoward had happened; she looked uncomfortable. Goma smiled and said, “The food should be ready in a few minutes. Is your daughter sleeping?”
Malati nodded. She was standing close to Ramchandra, and as Sanu left the room, Malati had to shift closer. Now their shoulders touched. Briefly, Goma turned back to her masu, stirring the meat, scooping up gravy to smell it, and Ramchandra let his small finger caress Malati’s wrist. She blushed.
“Taste it and tell me how it is,” Goma said. She put a piece of meat and some gravy in a bowl and gave it to Ramchandra. He tasted it and made appreciative noises. “Delicious,” he said, and as Goma turned toward her cooking again, he looked at Malati directly and said, “Delicious.” Only then did he notice that Rakesh, who had been fiddling with the religious calendar hanging on the wall by the entrance, was watching him.
They ate in the kitchen while the baby slept in the children’s room. Malati had a funny way of eating. She’d scoop up the rice with her fingers, lower her head, and thrust the food into her mouth, keeping her head lowered while she chewed, as if she were embarrassed to have anyone watch her eat. “How is it?” Goma asked, and they waited while Malati finished swallowing. “It’s delicious.” Ramchandra became mesmerized by the movement of her slender fingers cradling the food and then putting it into her mouth. Her bangles tinkled. Goma asked him whether the meat had enough salt, and he nodded, unable to talk. “Tell me if it’s not good,” Goma said, laughing. “I can take it.” She explained to Malati that Ramchandra never criticized her cooking, which was good, but she didn’t know whether he was being completely honest.
Mr. Sharma across the courtyard began to chant his religious hymns at his window, and abruptly Malati looked up.
Ramchandra said, “Seems that our neighbor is late today.”
“On Saturdays he wakes up late,” Goma said.
“Mr. Sharma is funny,” Sanu said.
“Why?”
“He stares at me.”
“He doesn’t stare at me,” Rakesh said.
“When did he stare at you?” Ramchandra asked Sanu.
“Every time I’m in the courtyard, he looks at me, as if I’ve done something wrong.”
Ramchandra recalled Mr. Sharma’s comment about Malati. He stopped chewing, drank some water, and said to his daughter, “The next time he does it, ask him why he’s staring.”
“There you go again,” Goma said, “teaching her to mouth back to adults.”
“But why does he look at her like that? What’s his motive?”
“He’s just a strange man,” Goma said. She’d finished eating and was extracting threads of goat meat from between her teeth, her palm covering her mouth. “He means no harm.”
“How do you know that? He’s lived alone too long.”
“Calm down,” Goma said. “Why are you so hot? Is the food heating up your brain?”
After they were finished, they washed their hands and mouths at the sink. Ramchandra looked out the window toward Mr. Sharma, who was rocking as he chanted. He looked up and waved at Ramchandra, who didn’t wave back.
They all sat in the bedroom and settled into a game of carom. The board had been a gift from the Pandeys to Sanu when she turned six, and over the years the paint had peeled off, so some spots were rough. Often one of the small counters would zoom across the board and get stuck right before it hit the mark, so Goma brought some powder and sprinkled it on the board’s surface. Ramchandra asked, “Okay, who is whose partner?” Both Sanu and Rakesh wanted to partner with Malati, and there was a brief argument before Sanu gave in to her brother. “I’ll watch,” Goma said, because only four could play.
The counters were arranged and the game began. Malati turned out to be an expert player. She’d align the master counter with great care, hit the designated piece, and it would deftly plop into the corner hole. Rakesh was delighted with his partner’s virtuosity, and they won every game.
“Where did you learn to play like that?” Ramchandra asked.
She said her father was a big fan, and they’d had a large board at home when she was a child. “I might be a math monkey, sir,” she said with a smile, “but I’m certainly not a carom monkey.”
Liking the sound of those words, Rakesh turned to Ramchandra and started chanting that it was his father who was the carom monkey. It was true; Ramchandra was clumsy at the game.
The baby started crying, so Malati hurried to the children’s room. Goma said she was feeling sleepy, and, with a yawn, lay down on the bed. Sanu and Rakesh went down to the courtyard to skip rope. Ramchandra sat on the floor near the bed, one hand massaging Goma’s foot. “The meat feels heavy in my stomach,” Goma said drowsily. Soon, she was snoring, the faint rasping breath that had lulled Ramchandra to sleep so many times. He kept rubbing her foot, aware that he and Malati were the only ones awake. From the next room came the soft gurgling sounds of the baby Ramchandra let go of Goma’s foot and stood up. A truck whizzed by outside, making such a ruckus that Goma’s eyes fluttered. She shifted and went back to sleep. In the courtyard, Sanu and Rakesh were counting as they skipped rope.
Ramchandra stood near the door of the children’s room, which was slightly ajar. Malati was softly singing a lullaby. As he pushed the door open, she looked up from the floor, where she sat nursing the baby. For a brief moment, she attempted to cover her breast, but then her face relaxed, and she smiled. Ramchandra put an index finger to his lips, shut the door behind him, and sat beside her. Leaning his head against her shoulder, he dosed his eyes and soon felt her palm on his chin. She caressed him. The baby was sucking hard on her nipple. “Where is everyone?” she whispered. He whispered that Goma was asleep. He opened his eyes and watched her breast, then reached out to stroke it. He could feel himself getting hard. The baby stopped sucking and fell asleep. Ramchandra bent down and took Malati’s nipple in his mouth. His head was so close to the baby’s that he could feel the up and down of her tiny chest. He sucked briefly, then sat up. The room seemed to be moving. He put his hand on Malati’s chin. “What’s happening?” he said. Her eyes became moist. “Sir, sir,” she said, “what are you doing?” He leaned over and kissed her fully on the lips. Goma might wake at any minute next door, yet here he was, smelling Malati, sucking her body.
Around four, after they had tea and pakodas, Malati left, and Ramchandra’s mind became numb. The others kept talking about her, saying
what a sweet girl she was. Goma said that she’d like to invite her again—she was so popular with the children. Sanu said Malati had invited her to her house to learn how to sew, and that she couldn’t wait to go. She asked Ramchandra to take her to Malati’s house one day soon.
Sanu and Rakesh sat down to do their homework, and Goma began to prepare the evening meal. Ramchandra told her that he needed some fresh air; he put on a sweater and left the house.
The evening was chilly. He walked around aimlessly. The dusky sky was filled with kites. As he traversed New Road, with its brightly lit shops, its shoppers carrying bags and looking happy and tired in anticipation of the festival, he knew he’d taken another step toward Malati. The significance of what lay ahead seemed immense. He stood beneath the large peepul tree, its long branches covering the sky, and looked around. Under streetlamps and shadows, newspaper vendors and shoeshine boys advertised their wares. Small groups of men milled about, discussing the rumbling of the nation. Ramchandra stood and listened. Last night, painted slogans decrying the Panchayat rule had appeared on the walls of alleys and houses in Patan, and bands of policemen had begun patrolling the streets to catch the culprits. Newspapers reported the mysterious disappearance of some political activists.
Before he was married, Ramchandra used to come here in the evening to smoke and discuss the politics of the day with friends and strangers. They would buy the local newspapers and argue vehemently about whether a certain politician was corrupt, whether India would barge into Nepal and declare it a part of its own territory, as it had done to Sikkim, and, in whispers, whether eventually the monarchy would be ousted from Nepal and replaced by the kind of democracy found in Western countries. Of course, at that time such vocal protests against the government and the king were unthinkable, so the evening arguments were conducted with secrecy. Ramchandra and his friends downed glasses of tea over the course of the evening, smoked one Gainda cigarette after another, and found great satisfaction in their own words, which blended with the smoke and circled up to the sky.
Even though Ramchandra and his mother lived in dingy apartments, life was uncomplicated for him then, as he struggled each evening to pay his share of the cigarettes and tea.
Now, his temples started to throb, so he walked into a small restaurant and bar in Indrachowk and asked for a glass of the local rum. It burned his throat as it went down. He drank another and laughed to himself as he doled out the money. My house is sinking into my stomach, he thought, and it’ll stay there and eat my innards.
Gradually the voices in his mind became muted, and he walked home, on unsteady feet, as he hummed a tune from his younger days, a popular folk song: rato bhaley kwaink kwaink—about a red rooster and how the singer, while feeding it to a pregnant woman, gobbled down the head. The buoyancy of the song made him smile, but when he entered his courtyard, he thought of what had happened inside his apartment today, and the song took on a menacing tone.
Goma smelled the alcohol on his breath and was surprised. He told her he’d run into one of his old friends, who’d coaxed him into having a drink. She accepted the explanation with a degree of suspicion, and said nothing about the expense.
He woke around two, his heart beating wildly, his throat parched. He reached for the jug of water Goma usually placed beside the bed, but he couldn’t find it. In the darkness, he got up, made his way to the kitchen, and, standing by the window, drank a glass of water. Mr. Sharma’s light was on, and Ramchandra could see him move back and forth. The man seemed to be talking to himself, every now and then he lifted his hand toward the ceiling and said something. Ramchandra recalled Sanu’s comments about him, and his disgust seemed to move physically inside him; nauseated, he stood by the sink and retched. In that moment, breathing hard, his eyes blurry, his hands clutching the side of the sink, Ramchandra knew he had to do something.
He went to his room and sat on the bed. Goma’s mouth was slightly ajar, her eyes partly open. This was how she slept, and during the first months of their marriage, he’d been amused by those eyes that never fully closed. He’d teased her, saying she wanted to keep an eye on him all the time, even in the darkness of the night, so that he wouldn’t escape. In frivolous moments, when she was asleep, he’d taken some sugar and sprinkled it into her open mouth. She’d wake up, her tongue tasting the sweetness, and scold him, and he’d laugh.
Now, he placed his hand on her hip and jiggled it. She woke up instantly, saying, “What? What?”
“I have to tell you something.”
“What time is it?” She sat up and turned on the bedside lamp. “Why are you up?”
“It’s about Malati and me.”
She stared at him. “What about you two?”
“There’s something going on.”
Her face became very still.
“I’ve kissed her.”
“Are you still drunk?” she said softly.
He shook his head. A strange sound floated up from the courtyard, like the howling of a distant dog. Then it became more clear; Mr. Sharma was chanting. Goma lay down.
“Goma.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I don’t know.” He picked a piece of lint from the bed. “I don’t know what’s come over me. I don’t know why—”
“I think I understand.” Her face was slightly turned away. “You don’t want me anymore.”
“That’s not true.”
“Please leave the room.’’
“Goma.” He placed a hand on her arm.
She moved away. “Please.’’
He wanted to tell her more, tell her that he could not control himself, that perhaps if she helped him, he could. But with no response from her, he left the room and went to the kitchen, where he sat on the cold floor.
He had no idea how long he sat there, and whether he’d dozed off. But a gray light appeared in the window, and Mr. Sharma’s chanting had stopped. Silence surrounded Ramchandra.
Goma stood in the doorway. “I will leave for Pandey Palace with the children,” she said.
“With the day of Tika so near? Maybe you can go after that,” he offered.
“It doesn’t make any difference,” she said. And she was right. After a moment, she said, “I don’t know what I’ll tell the children.”
He had nothing to say.
“Perhaps we should get a servant, to feed you and wash the dishes and your clothes.”
“How long will you be gone?”
She didn’t answer his question. “I’ll send my parents’ servant for a few days, until we find someone permanent. It’s good that your school is closed for these few weeks of the festival. You’ll have some time to cook for yourself.”
“What about that girl from Chitwan?”
“She’ll be too hard for you to train. I’ll keep her with me, there. Her father is supposed to bring her to the city in a couple of days.”
“Sanu will be unhappy in Pandey Palace.”
“I’ll start to pack now.”
She lingered as if she were waiting for his permission. Then she entered the kitchen, set some water to boil for tea, and stood by the window. He watched her. She made the tea and set it before him. “Aren’t you going to have some?” he asked.
“I don’t feel like it right now.” She hesitated, as if she expected him to say something. But a lump had formed in his throat; he couldn’t talk. He sipped the tea. It tasted bitter—she’d forgotten the sugar.
“I’ll start packing now,” she repeated, and left.
Later, he heard her wake the children. Rakesh sounded excited about going to his grandparents so early in the morning, probably pleased that he’d spend the next few days of the festival at Pandey Palace, where he’d be given money and gifts. Sanu sounded querulous. Ramchandra heard her ask Goma whether her father was coming, too. When Goma didn’t respond, Sanu asked again, and Goma scolded her. No one came to the kitchen, and soon footsteps descended the stairs.
6
FOR A LONG TIME Ramcha
ndra sat in the kitchen, listening to the birds chirping in the guava tree in the courtyard. The gray light had given way to a golden hue that painted the courtyard, and people were waking in the surrounding houses. Someone coughed, then gargled by a window. The old lady living in the apartment above Mr. Sharma tuned her sitar.
Ramchandra put his head between his knees, and tried to make sense of what had happened, but the lack of sleep confounded him; he couldn’t think. He went to the bedroom to see what Goma had packed. All her clothes from the closet were gone. In the children’s bedroom, one of Rakesh’s shoes had been left behind. Ramchandra picked it up and thought it might serve as an excuse for him to go to Pandey Palace and urge Goma to come home. He’d plead with her; he’d tell her it was all a mistake, that he’d slipped in a moment of confusion.
But he wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t happen again. Even now, as he rehearsed what he’d say to Goma, his thoughts linked themselves into a chain that led him to Malati. She would arrive soon for her session; this thought entered his mind like a breeze. He began to imagine what they would do together. Perhaps he’d cook lunch for her. Or she would cook for him. Then he became ashamed. Goma and his children had left, and here he was, thinking about someone he’d known for only a few months.
It occurred to him that he and Malati may have had some connection in a past life. Usually he scoffed at belief in reincarnation, but right now he couldn’t think of any other explanation. How else could he account for his surge of anticipation at Malati’s arrival, in this pathetic apartment, the morning his family had left him? Even this hellhole didn’t seem bad now. He looked around the bedroom. The sparse furnishings: a bed and a small bedside table with a lamp, some photographs on the wall, a religious calendar of Goddess Kali with her fangs showing and decapitated heads at her feet. That was it. And yes, the traffic noise. As he imagined spending the afternoon in bed with Malati, his body trembled, and he quickly walked back to the kitchen.
The Guru of Love Page 12
