The City Son

by Samrat Upadhyay

  When Tarun returns home from his private time with Didi, his mother recoils from him, as though she knows what he’s been up to. This makes him avoid her room for days. At times he even wishes that she were dead, then feels guilty that he does. When he thinks of Didi, he feels a gradual, warm arousal, and he closes his eyes and remembers her kisses, so succulent and loving, and he compares her lips with his mother’s dry lips. Slowly he starts playing with his penis, and soon his palm is covered with his discharge. He has a tattered vest under his mattress he uses to wipe himself.

  Mahesh Uncle doesn’t understand why he is neglecting his mother, and confusion shows on his face. He suspects that it’s got to do with his complex relationship with Bangemudha. Tarun is reticent and vague about what he does in Bangemudha when he visits on Saturdays. Didi adores him, this much Mahesh Uncle has gathered, but whenever Mahesh Uncle asks Tarun to invite his Bangemudha family to lunch in Lazimpat, Tarun demurs. One time Tarun said, “It’s probably best if we let the two sides remain separate.” When Mahesh Uncle said that he found it incredible that he’s yet to meet the Masterji and Didi, Tarun said, “I don’t know what good that will do. Why make things further complicated?”

  So Mahesh Uncle stops asking Tarun about Bangemudha. He reaches the conclusion that it’s too burdensome for a young teenager to be constantly thinking about his strange family dynamics and his mentally ill mother. The boy needs a life, too, doesn’t he? But it worries Mahesh Uncle that Tarun has a tendency toward being a recluse. He does all right in school, brings home good reports, yet he spends long hours inside his room.

  On some days Mahesh Uncle takes Tarun with him to the Mahesh Enterprises office in Putalisadak. He teaches the boy to duplicate documents on the mimeograph machine, write brief reports on the typewriter, and on occasion he also sends him out to run errands, like fetching a file from a nearby business concern or making purchases from the stationery shop up the hill. Sometimes Mahesh Uncle takes Tarun with him to the guesthouse in Thamel and lets him check in guests. The boy does well. He doesn’t smile much, but he has a serious professionalism about him that belies his age.

  One Saturday a year later, after she’s wiped him, Didi brings up the topic of the girls who might be after him. Lately she’s been commenting more on what a handsome boy he’s turned into and how girls must be eyeing him. Her tone suggests that these girls are up to no good. Today she says that the SLC exams are approaching and that he must study hard and not be distracted. She’s observing his face as she says this. “You’re such a smart boy. It’d be a pity if you let one of these seductresses distract you from your studies. You don’t want to end up like Amit. Look at him. He failed the SLC with such low marks last year. He barely comes home. When he does, he glowers at me, wheedles some money off his father, and leaves. What a complete waste.”

  For a moment she’s silent. In his underwear, he’s lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. His time with Didi was especially pleasurable today; it has been a few weeks since they’ve been alone, and he’s been obsessively thinking about her—her hands, her tongue, her breasts—even as he was trying to study for the exams.

  “You won’t let any of these princesses distract you, will you?”

  “Didi, I told you—”

  “You don’t have to lie to me.” Her tone is prickly and accusatory.

  “But I’m not lying. I don’t like any of them. They’re so immature. Silly. They’re always chattering and giggling.”

  “They’re good for nothing.”

  “I have no interest in them.” He nuzzles against her.

  “I know there’s someone you like.”

  “Who?”

  “I know.”

  “Who?” He turns over, props himself up on his elbows. His heart is thumping. There’s this girl at the bus stop. He hasn’t told anyone about her. Whom would he tell? This girl is thin, with bob-cut hair. She’s usually standing across the street with other girls, waiting for her bus. He stands a bit apart from the boys at his bus stop. He secretly watches her, averting his gaze if she happens to look his way. One time she caught him looking at her, and he half expected her to march angrily across the street. Luna, she’s called by her friends. He has repeated the name to himself at night. It’s a strange name, but it seems to fit her, her angular body, her short hair and sharp features. He wonders what it would be like to have her as a girlfriend, and he knows that it will never happen. She’ll recognize immediately what a depraved, sick boy he is, and she’ll want nothing to do with him. Still, he enjoys small fantasies about being with her, nothing big: holding hands, talking about school.

  “You think I don’t know?” Didi says. “You think I’m a fool? Is that the kind of love you have for your mother?”

  “But, Didi, it’s nothing. I’ve only thought about her a couple of times.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Just some silly girl. She’s not important.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Luna.”

  “Ah, a city name. She must be the type who’s out and about.”

  “But, Didi—”

  “Well, now that you have her, what do you need me for?”

  His world is beginning to spin. Her face has changed. Her eyes are narrower; her face is tighter. She’s no longer looking at him. She’s on her way to withholding her affection, and his stomach is contracting, a coiling of muscles that’ll keep tightening and that won’t relent until her face softens in forgiveness. She turns away from him and faces the wall. He should have never brought up the girl. He shouldn’t have even thought about the girl. He’s a fool. Now he has ended up hurting Didi. It’s all that stupid girl’s fault. She and her silly hair and her dumb name and her coquettish ways.

  He’s whimpering a bit by now, apologizing to her, stroking her arm, pleading with her to look at him, telling her that she’s just someone at the bus stop, that he really doesn’t have any feelings for her. But she doesn’t turn. She’s immobile, like a sleeping elephant. He weeps, calls out her name, tells her that he’ll purge thoughts of all girls from his mind.

  He stands on the bed and bangs his head against the wall. When she doesn’t budge, he bangs harder, repeatedly. The sound resembles the thud-thud-thud of someone hammering a nail. His forehead is sticky with blood, but he’s determined not to stop. He needs to show her his repentance. She needs to know that he’d rather hurt himself than see her unhappy with him. She still doesn’t turn, and, gritting his teeth, he bangs even harder. His head feels like a pumpkin, ready to crack open and shatter into pieces.

  The bed lurches, and she’s beside him, holding his head in her arms. He pushes against her so he can hurl himself at the wall again, but she is too strong for him. Blood from his forehead has trickled down to his eyes, making his vision blurred; it’s also running down to his neck. Sharp, seizing pain is pulsating in his head, then shuddering through his spine. She’s whispering things to him, planting kisses on him.

  She has him lie down on the bed, then hurriedly fetches a wet towel, with which she cleans him. He closes his eyes as she inspects his injury. His forehead is swollen, he can tell without her saying anything. She rubs a cream on his forehead, then gets some gauze and wraps it around his head. She’s silent, and her mannerisms resemble a mother taking care of an errant child. She hands him an aspirin, which he swallows with water. She makes kindly noises, then goes to the kitchen and makes some kheer. When it’s ready, she spoon-feeds it to him.

  When the Masterji and Sumit return home, they ask what happened. Didi scolds them for pestering him with questions when he’s clearly hurt. “He tripped, the poor boy, and he fell, okay? Now leave him alone.” Sumit goes to the corner to study, and the Masterji sits on the bed, dazed. He notices the speckles of blood on the bed; then his gaze falls upon the wall, where there’s a crimson patch, with a few strands of hair sticking to it.

  “Tripped and fell” is the story he provides to Mahesh Uncle and Sanmaya. That evening he runs a high fever. His mo
ther comes into his room—Sanmaya must’ve told her—and stands by the bed, watching him. “I’m fine,” he tells her, “you can go back to your room.” But she continues to stand. Then she crumples to the floor, as though her legs have given out on her. He bolts from the bed and goes to her. She’s shaking, her teeth rattling. But there are no tears in her eyes. She gazes into his face, and it’s he who finds that his cheeks have become moist, and it’s he who is consoling her, telling her everything is fine, that everything is going to be fine. He holds her tightly in his arms, and her fingers reach out, explore his face, attempt to wipe away his tears, but her fingers are trembling.

  PART 2

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  NOW TWENTY-THREE YEARS old, Tarun has gotten into the habit of following women around the city. This usually happens after work, on the average of once every other week. He leaves the office of Mahesh Enterprises in Putalisadak and, telling the driver to take the car back home, walks. At some point he ends up following a woman. It’s never planned; he doesn’t have roaming eyes that settle on a target. He’s not a hunter; he’s not searching for prey. In fact, he suffers from the impression that he’s the one preyed upon, by an unknown force that’s constantly on his back. He doesn’t need to turn his head to look—it’s not that type of threat. It’s more a brooding presence that hovers above his head. It’s some type of a dance: he’s following these women, and this thing is following him.

  He doesn’t even have to think about a woman during these walks. He’s often thinking about something else. Mahesh Enterprises, for example. He’s thinking about how to make the business grow again, for it has been declining in the last couple of years, ever since a senior manager absconded with a large sum of money, leaving Mahesh Uncle devastated and the company in doldrums.

  When his mind is on Mahesh Enterprises and its troubles, there’s a pensive quality to Tarun’s evening walks. He’s mulling the problems at work as he’s meandering through streets and lanes. At a young age he’s now the director of the company. The senior manager’s betrayal has delivered a blow to Mahesh Uncle, and lately he has withdrawn from the company’s activities and left Tarun to handle its day-to-day affairs. The plan for the five-star resort has failed because investors pulled out in the aftermath of Mahesh Enterprise’s financial woes. The volume of import-export the company engages in has been reduced to half; so has the number of employees. Now Tarun oversees a staff of five at the Putalisadak office. He blames Mahesh Uncle’s overgenerous personality: the old man trusted the senior manager, allowed him total access. Tarun has cut down on expenses that he thought were extravagant on Mahesh Uncle’s part. He questions his staff when they take more than an hour’s lunch break. He doesn’t allow the new senior manager to handle large sums of money. He doesn’t feel like he’s an unreasonable boss: he compliments jobs well done; he’s sympathetic, to a reasonable degree, toward his workers with family and children they need to attend to; and he allows his staff time off for major festivals, even if he has to take on extra work himself.

  The older among the staff miss Mahesh Uncle, who makes only sporadic visits to Putalisadak. He knew the names of his workers’ children. He held annual picnics to which family members were invited and where they were acknowledged by name. He gave his staff regular bonuses. He sent them on all-paid seminars and trainings. Tarun, on the other hand, doesn’t get emotionally close to his workers. He’s brisk, efficient; he can even laugh and convey a joke or two with his office staff. They go along, but they know he’s different. There’s a severely reserved quality to him, as though something is physically wrong inside; something about his body, the way it’s so tight and contracted, as if, as one staff member put it, “there’s a giant metal weight inside his chest that makes it impossible for him to feel joy.” It’s not that they dislike him, but they dislike it when they find themselves becoming sad in his presence, as they often do. He’s a lonely figure: as he sits at his desk or when he’s on the phone or when he studies a document or dictates a letter to the typist—even when he’s drinking tea. The typist once complained to her husband at night, “When I have to spend more than a couple of hours taking dictations from him, I feel like my own world has become dark. Even the thought of him makes me depressed.”

  Tarun is aware that many people shy away from him. It’s not hostility. It’s a reaction akin to stepping back from someone with foul breath or with body odor. It makes him morose, his inability to connect with people, the “smell” he exudes. You are a smelly, abhorrent person, the voice inside him tells him, in a half-contemptuous, half-pitying tone. That is your lot. Yes, this is my lot, he acknowledges, and the thought brings a brief calm. He uses the line as a mantra: This is my lot. Sometimes it generates acceptance; sometimes an overwhelming sorrow.

  Even during parties he finds himself either engaged in serious, short-lived conversations or by himself in a corner, nursing a drink. These days he’s more or less stopped going to these parties, where businessmen drink heavily and brag about their accomplishments or complain about how hard it is to do business in this country. Now he only attends parties if not attending could jeopardize a business prospect. He is fine with working by himself in the office, his doors closed, handling transactions over the phone in which he can be clipped and concise and still get the job done. He’s not sure he likes the world of business, the negotiations and the haggling and the chaplusi and the loudmouthed braggadocio. It’s just not him. But he has taken on this responsibility from Mahesh Uncle, and he’s going to fulfill it to the best of his ability.

  “I hate to put you in this kind of position so early,” Mahesh Uncle had said when he first proposed to make Tarun the director. “But I no longer have it in me to go to the office daily and handle the details. Every time I walk in, every time I look at the staff, I think of Biswa and his treachery, and I lose interest in everything.”

  “What’s happened has happened. Biswa will get his due at some point. We need to move on.”

  Mahesh Uncle looked like he was about to weep. “I had such high hopes for Mahesh Enterprises, high hopes for what shape I’d leave it in for you.”

  “I’m fine with the shape it’s in. I’ll take care of it—I don’t want you to worry.”

  His routine with Didi hasn’t changed much over the years. When he goes to Bangemudha on Saturdays—now almost every Saturday—after some chitchat the Masterji and Sumit leave. Then it’s him and Didi. He lies in bed. She exits, locks the door from the outside, then returns through the back door. He waits for her impatiently. She approaches him and undresses him, leaving him in his underwear. She often doesn’t wear a bra so when she unbuttons her blouse he has full access to her breasts. The sickly pleasure of being with her is still the same for Tarun; if anything, it seems to have intensified because his libido has increased. She has learned to be even more patient, gentler, more teasing with her fingers so that his arousal is greater, and when he achieves orgasm he spurts more. She kisses better, her tongue performing more tricks, darting and taunting, sliding and attacking and submitting.

  Over the years she hasn’t aged. When he comments on how she looks the same, how her skin has become even smoother, she says, touching his lips, “You’ve kept me young.” He smiles, but he has been noticing more creams and lotions and oils inside cupboards and on tables, in the bathroom. Now during their love sessions she also puts on a lipstick-like substance that gives color to her lips and tastes like oranges or bubble gum when their lips meet. These days she likes to give him hickeys, which he covers with a scarf, even on hot days. One Saturday when the Masterji arrived home, by himself because Sumit had gone on an overnight trip with this college friends, Tarun forgot to cover the hickeys. His father, with concern, approached him and said, “Tarun, these red burns on your neck …” He trailed off once he realized what they were and, red faced, shuffled to the bathroom.

  She also likes to call him her lover. “You’ve grown so much now,” she says, “you’re like my lover.” She pronounces it lab
ar. When she first said it, he’d laughed, for although he’d heard her utter Nepali versions of English words—pilastic, taybul, restooran, iskool—labar sounds too filmy. “Where did you hear it?” he asked her. She feigned offense. “Why? You don’t think our types can use this word? Only your city seductresses can say it?”

  He has considered going to see a therapist about what ails him. He has pictured himself lying on a couch while the therapist takes meticulous notes, saying, Hmm, hmmm or Go on. What would Tarun say to the therapist? I was a young boy when we started our relationship. She is the only mother I’ve known. This declaration alarms him. He has had his own mother all this time, so why would he say such a thing? Yet it’s true: when he thinks, Mother, he thinks of Didi.

  The therapist he ends up revealing everything to, in his fantasy, is a bearded man wearing glasses, with a grim visage. The man doesn’t say much. He has a fair complexion: a foreign therapist. That’s because it’s easier for Tarun to confess to a stranger, someone from a faraway country.

  He can’t live without Didi—he knows this much. By the middle of the week, in anticipation of seeing her on Saturday, he starts getting headaches, and at night he thinks of her and masturbates in his room. Since his room is still sandwiched between his mother’s and Mahesh Uncle’s, he makes sure that no grunt escapes his throat. But by now, after years of practice with Didi, he has become good at holding in his breath. There’s only a small hmmmph that emerges at the release, a sound like a clearing of his throat. He still uses frayed T-shirts for his discharge, hiding them under the mattress or in the locked cupboard; then, on an opportune day, he stuffs the T-shirt in his briefcase on the way to Mahesh Enterprises and flings it out to the small piles of garbage scattered throughout the city.