There was energy in her voice, as if the sight of Malati had transformed her. There was a new personality on her face, and Ramchandra could hardly believe that this was the wife he’d lived with all these years.
“Will you forgive me, bhauju?” Malati asked.
“I don’t have that power. You’ll have to forgive yourself.”
Rakesh, who had been listening intently, asked, “Forgive for what? What mischief did she do?”
“That’s none of your concern, wise boy,” Goma said.
Sanu said nothing, and Goma asked both of the children to go into the room and look after the baby; they were to call her when Rachana woke up. Then she brought a dhoti to Malati. “You can wear this until your clothes arrive this evening. Come, don’t stand there in those wet clothes, both of you.” And she shooed them into the bedroom and went to the kitchen.
“What’s happening, sir?”
“I’ll step outside for a moment. Why don’t you change?”
Her face still bore the look of bewilderment. She appeared in a few minutes, wearing Goma’s dhoti, and said, “I’ll go help bhauju.”
In the bedroom, Ramchandra changed into dry clothes and sat down on the bed. Goma had removed all the photographs from the walls. He got up and checked the closet: her clothes were gone. He checked under the pillow, where she kept the necklace she’d been given by his family at their wedding for good luck; it was no longer there. Outside, a bicyclist rang his bell, and the sound rumbled in Ramchandra’s head. He ran his hand over the clean bedsheet. This is where Goma wanted him to sleep with Malati. He held his head in his hands.
Goma called him, and reluctantly he went to the kitchen, where Malati was scooping rice from the pot onto the plates. She didn’t look up when he entered. Goma called the children, but only Rakesh came.
“Where’s Sanu?”
“She’s doing her homework.”
“Well, it’s time to eat.”
“She says she’s not hungry.”
“I’ll go fetch her,” Ramchandra said and went to get his daughter.
Sanu was on the floor in her room, her books spread out before her. The baby was sleeping close by.
“Sanu,” Ramchandra said, “why don’t you come?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’ll be taking your exams soon. If you don’t eat, you’ll not do well.”
She didn’t respond, and he asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why is your face like”—he searched for a funny simile—“a piglet’s swishing tail?”
“Why is that woman here?”
“She needs a place to stay.”
“This is a big city. Why couldn’t she go somewhere else?”
Ramchandra braced himself. “Daughter, you shouldn’t hold anything against her. The fault is mine, not hers.”
“I’m not blaming anyone. If there’s anyone to blame, it’s me.”
“And why is that?”
“I’m just a stupid girl.”
He knelt beside her. “No, your father is stupid. You know everything, don’t you?”
“I don’t want to look at your face.”
“You don’t have to. Just come and eat. Eventually, you’ll forgive me.”
“I’ll never forgive you. I’ll never forgive Mother for allowing her to come into this house.”
“Your mother has a kind heart.” He touched her shoulder, but she jerked away. “Okay, I’ll bring the food to you,” he said.
“I won’t eat anything you touch. I want to go back to Pandey Palace.”
“This is your home, Sanu.”
“What kind of a home is this?” she said. “She’s not my sister; she’s not my mother; she’s not my cousin. So why is she here?” Now she turned to face him, and anger burned in her eyes. “And you’re not my father. Why don’t you two go live someplace else?”
Ramchandra shrank back from his daughter’s anger. “Please, Sanu, please find it in your heart to forgive your father.”
“Never.”
In the kitchen, they talked about mundane things. Actually, it was Goma who talked; Ramchandra and Malati mostly listened. Goma had taken Sanu’s dinner to her room, though Ramchandra was sure she’d leave it untouched. In the middle of the dinner, Rachana began to cry, and Malati went to her.
“I am not sleeping with her in this house,” Ramchandra said.
“And why not?”
“With the children? Are you crazy? Have you lost your mind, Goma?”
“It’s funny that you’re the one asking me that question.”
“This is insane.”
“It’s an insane world. It’s better this way.”
“Goma, please don’t do this.”
Rakesh turned his head back and forth like a pendulum, watching his parents.
“We’ve had this conversation before,” Goma said. “And I thought we agreed.”
Ramchandra could no longer eat. “I’m going to be sick.”
“You asked for help, and this is the only way I know to give it to you.”
Malati came back. Sanu hadn’t eaten, she said softly, and hadn’t responded when Malati talked to her.
“Why is she so upset?” Rakesh asked.
“She’ll be fine.”
After dinner, Malati helped Goma with the dishes while Ramchandra looked after Rachana. Both children had gone to bed. When Malati discovered that she was to sleep with Ramchandra in the bedroom, she was shocked. “Bhauju, what are you doing?” she cried.
“I’ll sleep with the children,” Goma said.
“I can’t do this. Why are you punishing me?”
“This is not a punishment. I am allowing you two to be together.”
“Please don’t do this to me.”
Goma led her to the bedroom. “What I am doing is right. Please trust me.”
Malati kept trying to dissuade her, but Goma didn’t budge. Once they were inside the bedroom, with Rachana sleeping on a mat in a corner, she shut the door behind her. Ramchandra and Malati looked at each other. “I can’t sleep with you here, sir,” Malati said. “I simply can’t. Not with bhauju next door. I won’t be able to sleep.”
Ramchandra checked the closet and found a bedsheet, which he spread on the floor. “Why don’t you sleep here with Rachana?”
“But there’s only one blanket.”
“I won’t need one.”
“Of course you will. It’s cold.”
Ramchandra ignored her, handed her the blanket, then lay down on the bed.
For a long time he couldn’t sleep, wondering what was going to happen to him and Goma. Malati also tossed and turned.
He woke to the sound of the baby crying, and Malati got up to breast-feed her. In the dark, he shivered, and watched the outline of the mother and the baby.
“Is she eating?” he whispered.
Malati said yes. Once Rachana went back to sleep, he heard Malati say, “I can’t sleep.”
“Neither can I. But we will, eventually.”
Malati said, “Sir, I can see that you are shivering. Why don’t you come down?”
It took him only a moment to make the decision. Her warm body felt good, and soon his hands were roaming over her chest. “Not now, not tonight,” she said, but feebly, and suddenly they were kissing and he was fumbling with the strings of her petticoat, and he thought, This is crazy, this is crazy, and he thought he heard Goma laughing in the next room.
8
OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, the apartment took on an air of ordinariness that stunned Ramchandra. Goma acted as if nothing were amiss, as if Malati were her younger sister. Rakesh began referring to Malati as “Malu Didi,” and displayed great fondness for Rachana. “My little sister,” he cooed to the baby, who smiled at him, her minuscule index finger reaching out to touch his nose. He kissed the baby often and shared his toys with her, something he’d never done with Sanu. Part of this affection, Ramchandra gathered, grew from the boy’s
pleasure at no longer being the youngest in the household. Sanu, however, remained unhappy. She barely spoke to her father, and with Goma she remained sullen. She never met Malati’s eyes. As for the baby, Sanu ignored her in company, but Ramchandra spotted her patting Rachana and whispering to her when she thought no one was looking.
It was Goma, however, who most perplexed Ramchandra. Much of the sadness had disappeared from her face. She’d begun to laugh, and he heard no hint of muted pain in the laughter. In unexpected moments, alone in the kitchen or on the landing, she smiled as if to assure him that everything was proceeding according to plan, and he was bewildered. Once, he caught her in the kitchen by herself and asked, “And, so...?” But he was unable to articulate his thoughts. She pretended that he was speaking about lunch, and, looking straight at him, said the meal would be ready in a few minutes. When she was not in the kitchen, she spent time in the children’s room. One morning he discovered her there reading the Mahabharata, an old edition he’d received as a wedding gift from an uncle. It had been in a corner collecting dust. Goma was sitting on the floor, the book in front of her, her lips shaping the words on the page. When she sensed him standing in the doorway, she looked up and asked, “You never read this, did you?” He thought he detected a hint of sarcasm in her voice, as if, had he read the Mahabharata and heeded Lord Krishna’s advice to Arjun about what was important in life, their lives wouldn’t have turned out this way.
The hope grew in Ramchandra that one morning something would click inside Goma and she’d walk into the bedroom, where Ramchandra and Malati would be entangled in each other’s arms, and tell them that she had changed her mind, that Malati could no longer live there. Every morning Ramchandra hoped this would happen; he even pictured Goma trying to separate the two of them with her hands. Or dragging Malati by her hair down the staircase and slamming the door in her face.
Winter intensified in Kathmandu. In the morning it was so cold that Ramchandra didn’t feel like leaving his sirak and Malati’s warm body next to him. But the exams were only a few weeks away, so they forced themselves to rise and, warming their hands by making fists and blowing into them, sat on the floor for their session. Goma would bring them tea, then shut the door quietly. Rakesh was instructed not to make any noise. By the time Ashok arrived, both Malati and Ramchandra were tired. Ashok, who’d been surprised to see Malati living in the house, was now distracted by the coming exams, and he no longer cracked jokes about Malati. “My father has become a dictator,” he said to Ramchandra. “Hitler, sir; he’s a real Hitler. He’s threatened to disown me if I don’t pass.”
At school, Ramchandra encountered whispers, glances, and subdued laughter. Bandana Miss was tight-lipped in front of him, and the other teachers maintained a politeness he knew was unnatural. No one asked him what was happening at home. During tea break one afternoon in the staff room, someone mentioned a former colleague who’d taken in a second wife because his first wife couldn’t bear children. Everyone glanced at Ramchandra. “It happens with much more frequency than we think,” Bandana Miss said. “Lack of children is one thing, but people do it for all kinds of reasons. The old thinking still persists.”
One teacher joked that Bandana Miss was speaking from personal experience. Everyone knew Bandana Miss’s husband had left her soon after their son was born, although no one was certain it was for another woman. Bandana Miss glared at that teacher, who smiled apologetically.
“Ramchandra-ji, do you know anyone who’s ushered in a second wife?” That was Shailendra. A smile hovered on his lips. A few weeks ago Namita’s parents had taken her out of school without much fanfare. She’d simply stopped coming. Shailendra had been unhappy since then, and he probably saw this as payback.
“No, I don’t know anyone,” Ramchandra said.
“No one in your neighborhood? It’s an old neighborhood, Jaisideval. Many people with old-type thinking there.”
“Which world are you living in, Shailendra Sir?” Ramchandra said. “Perhaps your neighborhood is old.”
“No young flesh you yourself have brought?”
Ramchandra was about to say something sharp when Bandana Miss interrupted. “We need to discuss whether we’ll have debating teams next year. The school is closing again in a week for winter, so let’s decide this right now.”
Ramchandra swallowed his anger and shame and feigned interest in the debating teams and the other extracurricular activities Bandana Miss was considering.
One morning, after spending two hours going over several math problems with Malati, Ramchandra went to take his bath downstairs and ran into Mr. Sharma. So far, Ramchandra had orchestrated his bath time so that he’d enter the courtyard just as Mr. Sharma was leaving. But today Mr. Sharma was late.
“How are you, Ramchandra-ji?” Mr. Sharma said, a bit too jovially.
Ramchandra said he was fine, that he had too much going on at school.
“Of course,” Mr. Sharma said. “And things are busy at home too, I see.”
Ramchandra knelt and poured the water over his body.
Mr. Sharma, who was soaping himself, said, “It’s the same girl, isn’t it? Very attractive. I’ve seen her in the morning sometimes. Have felt like talking to her.” Malati was the first one to use the tap in the morning. She always wriggled out of Ramchandra’s arms before the sun rose.
Ramchandra recalled Sanu’s complaint about Mr. Sharma, but he held back his angry words. Hands all over his body, Mr. Sharma was soaping himself. “Lovely, lovely,” he said, giving the impression that he was complimenting his own physique. The silence extended; then Mr. Sharma blurted out, “So, you’ve taken her in, have you?”
“A guest,” Ramchandra said. “She’ll move out soon.” Although he hadn’t washed all the soap off his body, he reached for the towel.
“Where does she sleep? Is there enough room up there?”
“Enough room for everyone. This is a big universe, Mr. Sharma; you know that. It’s your god, after all, who provides.”
Oblivious of the barb, Mr. Sharma said, “So, you no longer complain of the apartment, eh? That’s good. We all must learn to be satisfied with our lives. Where is her husband?”
“I don’t know.” Ramchandra finished rubbing his body with the towel.
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
“Depends on the nature of the question, Mr. Sharma. A wise man like you would never ask an objectionable question.”
Mr. Sharma laughed sheepishly. “You are a wiser man than I am. I was just wondering, you know. I have that room that’s not being used. If your apartment is congested, I could easily take in—”
“This kind of talk doesn’t suit you, Mr. Sharma. You’re too old. Besides, she wouldn’t want to live with a stranger.”
“I am only offering out of the kindness of my heart.”
“I know,” Ramchandra said. Stop staring at my daughter, he wanted to say, or I’ll hurt you.
Talk of the strange arrangement in Ramchandra’s apartment spread across the city with the urgency of a thousand bees. Neither the Pandeys nor Nalini and Harish came over, and Ramchandra wondered what crazy thoughts were buzzing through their heads. Goma hardly mentioned them these days. When Ramchandra ran into relatives in the streets, they appeared to have forgotten how to make natural conversation. Some tried to pry things out of him by asking pointed questions about the size of his apartment.
One day the shopkeeper with the phone shouted Goma’s name from the courtyard, saying that her mother was on the line. Goma left, and came back in a short while. Judging from the expression on her face, Ramchandra knew they had argued. When he asked her what had happened, Goma said, not meeting his eyes, “She wanted to know why I was destroying my house. She wanted to know why I was destroying the family name.”
The next morning, before anyone was out of bed, a loud rap sounded downstairs, and Malati shot up in bed, saying it must be Malekha Didi. Who else would be here this early? So it was she who went down to open t
he door, in her petticoat, and soon Mrs. Pandey was on the landing, her eyes exploring the apartment. Malati was cowering in a corner, a terrified look on her face.
“Where’s Goma?” Mrs. Pandey asked in an imperious tone.
Goma came out of the children’s room. Ramchandra wondered whether he should join her, but he decided to stay in bed and let Goma handle her mother.
“What’s going on here?” Mrs. Pandey said. “Who is this girl?” she asked, jabbing a finger near Malati’s face, though she surely knew perfectly well who she was.
“This is Malati, Mother.”
Malati did a namaste, and Mrs. Pandey narrowed her eyes.
“Mother, why don’t you go in there?” Goma pointed to the children’s room. “I’ll make some tea.”
“I didn’t come here to drink your tea.” She looked at Ramchandra through the door. “Do you know what people are saying? All over the city? Where is she sleeping?” She pointed contemptuously toward Malati.
“What are people saying, Mother?”
Rakesh appeared, looking bewildered, sleep marking his face. He opened his mouth to say something to his grandmother, then swallowed some air.
“With young children at home, you commit such an outrage,” Mrs. Pandey said. Her lips were quivering.
“Mother, why are you so angry? I am doing what is necessary for my life.”
“This is necessary? You bring your husband’s randi, his whore, into your house, and that’s necessary?”
Malati gasped. Rakesh seemed to be mouthing the word whore as if it were a piece of chocolate. Goma signaled to Malati and Rakesh to go inside. In her confusion, Malati went into the bedroom and shut the door. She and Ramchandra heard Mrs. Pandey fume about Malati’s going there. Goma must have taken her mother to the kitchen and shut the door, because the voices became faint. Malati leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. Ramchandra went over and put his arm around her shoulder. She shifted away. “A whore.”
“She’s a lunatic,” Ramchandra said. “Her words mean nothing.”
“But she’s right. I am a whore. I have broken up your family.”
The Guru of Love Page 17
