The City Son

by Samrat Upadhyay

  “Will you do what we ask you to do?”

  Rukma knew what was coming. “Yes.”

  “Let us find you a boy, and let us move quickly before this gets out.”

  Her mother stood next to her, and now it was her hand on Rukma’s arm, like they were playing a game of tag.

  “That’s fine with me.”

  “You’re not joking?”

  “I’m not joking.”

  She hugged Rukma. Her father uncharacteristically hugged her. More tears were shed. At that moment when she thought of her Newar lover it seemed like she’d known him a long, long time ago, whereas it hadn’t been too long since their break up. How’s that possible? Rukma asked Tarun. How can something that happened to her turn so fluid and flimsy within days? That’s something she doesn’t understand about this life. We become so wrapped up in, so intensely engaged with, our present moment, she says, and soon after the moment passes, its hold over us dissipates.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE SECOND NIGHT in bed when Rukma kisses him, he kisses back gingerly. He feels petrified, and his body is cold and unresponsive to her touch. After some light kissing, he gently pushes her away. It’s not that he doesn’t like the kiss; he’s deathly afraid of what it’ll turn into. “Is something wrong?” she asks, and he says that he’s exhausted. She’s satisfied with that answer, but when he gives the same answer on the third night, then the fourth and the fifth, a knot forms on her forehead. On the fifth night, she ignores what he says, and her hand roams his body as she attempts, unsuccessfully, a longer, deeper kiss with him, one with more feeling, the kind she clearly thinks a wife and a husband should be sharing. But he has an avoidance mechanism with the kiss, whereby after a few seconds he moves his lips and plants them on her forehead, as though he were kissing a sister. On the fifth night her hand rubs his crotch, and harder, with desperation, when she finds that there’s no movement down there at all. All this time he’s lying there stiff as a corpse, his heart pounding loudly like a gong inside him. Please stop, please stop, he thinks. This is like rape—this thought assaults him. I am being raped, and he jerks himself up from the bed and sits, facing the other way.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks him, her voice hoarse. She’s trying not to cry.

  He contemplates the floor.

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why are you acting like this? Why—am I not—what is it that’s my fault?”

  “Who says it’s your fault?”

  “Then?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Is it because of my revelation? What I told you about my past?”

  “It’s not that.”

  After some silence she says, “I misjudged you. I thought by getting everything out in the open I’d gain your trust.”

  “It’s not about your past.”

  She lies down and closes her eyes. He, too, lies down. He knew this was coming, and yet when it’s here, it’s worse than how he thought it’d be. The fifth night of their marriage and already there’s an impasse so big it appears insurmountable. She is disappointed in him, and he simply wishes it’d all go away, that she wasn’t here, that he had the bed to himself. He’s not meant to be with anyone.

  He closes his eyes, and here comes Didi, with her smile. She’s giving him a bath, her strong hands rubbing soap on him. Her hand moves down to his crotch, gently fondling his penis. No, no, Tarun tells himself as he reaches down under the blanket and begins to stroke himself. This is the only way he can feel good right now, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. His hand moves faster. The bed creaks, but the pleasure is too intense for him to stop, and of course, as usual, he discharges quickly in his pajamas.

  She’s in disbelief over what has just happened, then she doubts herself, tries, desperately, to convince herself that she has imagined the squeaking of the bed. Surely, her new husband wouldn’t be masturbating on the same bed after repeated failed attempts at sex with her?

  He busies himself at work the next few days and finds some solace in the catching up he has to do. His mother’s death and the wedding have pushed everything to the background. He has to make quick moves to salvage a couple of business deals and face one irate loan officer who claims he’s in hot water with his bank because some key documents hadn’t been signed on time. He makes phone calls and pacifies people and averts crises. His staff comes into his office, but he barely smiles as he accepts congratulations for his wedding. When a couple of them try jokes and innuendos about newlyweds with him, he’s annoyed and responds with questions about their work.

  Even as Tarun spends long hours at the office, the slobbering anxiety looms large in the background, his dread about Didi: what is he going to say to her about what he’s done. During brief office breaks, he clasps his head with his hands. He thinks that he should have sneaked out during the mourning period or taken a brief moment before the wedding to explain what was happening, to ask for her forgiveness. Now the days are slipping by, and he’s feeling as though small slithering things are crawling inside him, making him squirm. He yearns for her, shivers when he thinks of her face looking at him in adoration, her voice that’s sweet as honey, her dark brown shoulders that he loves to plant his lips on. Didi lingers in the back of his head—people think of the recent dead watching over them, but here he is, having had barely any thought of his mother since her death.

  In the house Rukma appears to converse normally with Mahesh Uncle and Sanmaya. During mealtimes she smiles and piles food onto Mahesh Uncle’s plate, despite his protestations, like a good daughter-in-law should. In the kitchen she tucks the end of her dhoti into her waist and goes to work, cooking the favorite dishes of the men in the house, thereby receiving even-bigger toothless smiles of approval from Sanmaya.

  But as days go by, it takes her longer to smile, a couple of seconds more to meet the eyes of the person addressing her. She’s lost in thoughts more often, and when she and Tarun are together in the living room or the bedroom there are moments she seems to find solace in leaning back and simply closing her eyes.

  A couple of Mahesh Uncle’s friends throw parties on the newlyweds’ behalf, and they attend these parties and act normal. Later at night in bed, when she asks him how he enjoyed the evening—they’re still trying to converse, despite the strain—he says that these parties tire him, then turns his back to her and closes his eyes, hoping, praying, that she, under the influence of one or two glasses of wine she’s consumed, won’t attempt anything. He waits, and she doesn’t lean over to rub his shoulder or chest. He’s immensely relieved, yet despondent. He’s sure that her thoughts are filled with her Newar lover.

  A few weeks after his wedding he leaves Putalisadak early in the afternoon and goes to Ladys Fashion. The sewing shop is in a large room of the second floor of a house in Pako. He stands in the doorway, listening to the clacking and clattering of a dozen or so machines operated by women. Didi is in a corner, close to the window, and she doesn’t look up from her work. The owner of the shop, a small woman with a large mole on her nose, greets him, and he nods and goes to Didi. In this moment of anxiety and trepidation as he approaches her, he finds it difficult to maintain his official face, a young man who is in charge of a company at twenty-three. What he really wants to do is crouch before her, in front of her machine, and ask for forgiveness. But eyes are watching them, so he pulls up a stool and sits next to her. “I wanted to come earlier,” he says, “but I simply couldn’t arrange it.” Her eyes are glued to the thread that’s hammering itself into the seam between her fingers. He keeps on with his low voice. She continues as though he’s not there, and he, a married man now, briefly contemplates getting her attention by banging his head against the floor.

  “Why did you come here?” she says finally, after an excruciatingly long time. Her voice is filled with days of crying. But she spoke, which means she’s cracked a bit inside. He can even smell onions on her, faintly, from this morning’s cooking.
He savors that smell for a moment, then says, “I have something for you, something I need you to see.”

  “I don’t have time to see your silly things.” She bites off a thread with her teeth.

  “It won’t take long. Half an hour at the most.”

  She finally turns to face him. Her eyes are puffed up. Her cheeks slightly swollen. She turns back to her machine. He waits. The clickety-clickety-clickety of the sewing machines in the room—it sounds like there are thousands of them—fills his consciousness.

  “You must be very happy with your—”

  “I don’t care about her.”

  She says nothing.

  “I didn’t come here to talk about her.”

  “Why?” She puts down the dress she’s been sewing and faces him squarely. “Is it because you’re having so much fun with her?” Her voice has risen slightly, attracting the attention of some women in the room. “Because she’s so pretty?” It’s as though she doesn’t care if the others think it sounds like a lovers’ quarrel.

  He wants her to keep her voice down but doesn’t want to jeopardize the fact that she’s finally engaged him. He decides to use her language. “You know I don’t care for these sahariya girls.”

  “Then why did you marry her, so soon after the death of your so-called mother, as if you couldn’t wait to get your hands on her?”

  “I had no choice.”

  “No choice,” she says. Her voice is low now. “Did you think about me, for a moment? What my state will be?”

  Tears have come to her eyes. He wipes them with his thumb, intensely aware that several pairs of eyes are on them. One of the women, a mousy one, has a small, knowing smile on her face.

  “Please, jauna ma sanga,” he says.

  She’s stopped running the machine. Apparently the whole thing had become too much for her.

  “It’s not far,” he says. “I want to see you smile again. Please.”

  She presses her palm to her face. A man has entered the shop and is exchanging sharp words with the owner near the door, which has the other workers distracted. “Go wait for me downstairs,” she says, with her palm still covering her face so that her voice is muffled.

  Didi is quiet as he takes her to their hideout. Before they climb the stairs she says, “Where are we? Where are you taking me? If you’re taking me to meet your new chhaundi, I’m not interested.” But she knows his wife is not up there. “It’s a surprise.”

  On the second floor is a shop with copying and long-distance phoning facilities, and a young man there, his hands in his pockets, looks disinterestedly as they go up. It’s hard to say what’s on the next couple of floors—renters? shops?—but at one point she leans against him, breathing hard, and says, “Just a moment.” By the time they reach the top she’s so breathless that she’s wheezing, and she keeps saying, “It better be good since you’ve made me suffer so much,” but she finally has a trace of a smile, and her cheeks appear to have regained some color. He feels light and buoyant.

  “Okay, what do you have here?” she asks, but the gleam in her eyes tells him that she’s beginning to understand. He holds her hand and leads her past their room to the roof. His tie flutters in the wind. She surveys the scene. “Oh my, what a nice view,” she says. “Is this what my betrayer son brought me to see?” But she knows there’s more; she’s simply playing along, like she used to when he was younger, when he used to lead her by the hand to some surprise, perhaps Sumit hiding behind the door.

  With trembling fingers he opens the lock on the door, and there it is, their sanctuary. It has a mattress and new sheets and pillows. There are two chairs, not expensive but decent looking and with padding. Next to the bed is a small table with a lamp; he doesn’t expect them to be there after dark, but he doesn’t want to rule it out entirely. His heart beats rapidly at the prospect of their staying here in each other’s arms in the evening, as dusk falls over the city, with the knowledge that in Bangemudha his father will be waiting for Didi, and in Lazimpat Rukma will be wondering where he is.

  “Tarun, what is this?” she says, standing at the door.

  “For you,” he says. His hand holding hers is damp, but he’s unwilling to let it go. “Bhitra aunusna.”

  “I’m afraid to,” she says. Her voice is soft because she’s so happy. “When did you do this?”

  Tears roll down his cheeks. She quickly embraces him. “I didn’t know my son had gone through so much trouble for me.” She takes his face between her palms and implants fervent kisses, on his eyes, cheeks, neck, lips, where she lingers until he can no longer distinguish between his breath and hers. Their lips enjoined, she pulls him to the bed and lowers him, makes him lie down. Her lips still attached to his—the thought flashes through him that he’ll never be able to extricate himself from her—she loosens his tie, unbuttons his shirt. Her right hand slips into his undershirt, and she plays with his nipples. Her lips finally let go of his—God, they feel mauled—and now they move down to his neck. She kisses and probes the soft parts of his neck, runs her tongue on his throat. She pushes up his ganji so she has access to his bare skin, and she lovingly licks and laps on his nipples. Her head moves down to his belly, his navel, where her tongue darts in and out, then burrows itself deep for a few seconds. He writhes and moans. Now her right hand is on his crotch, and she’s lightly rubbing it. “Please, Didi,” he says. Her tongue still flickering on his navel, she deftly unbuttons his trousers and pulls them down to his knees. In no time his underwear is down, too, and she’s stroking his member. She brings her mouth up to his ear and whispers, “Does that wife of yours do this for you?”

  He can’t think—he doesn’t care.

  Her palm is sliding up and down his hardened penis. “Do you love her more than you love me, your mother?”

  “No! No!” He’s crying again.

  “What will you tell her when you go home?”

  “That I don’t love her.”

  Her hand pauses.

  “Please!”

  “That won’t be enough.”

  “Please, Didi, what should I tell her? Please don’t stop.”

  “You know what to tell her.”

  “I’ll tell her that I love you more than I love her.”

  Her fingers resume their play, and soon he arches his back and spurts his semen all over her palm, on the bed. “La hera, la hera,” she says as though he were a child who’d made a mess while eating. She reaches into her dowdy bag, pulls out a white handkerchief, and wipes him with great care.

  Their bedroom turns into a painful space. At night Rukma changes into her nightgown in the bathroom, then slips into bed, still hoping that something will be different. He lingers in the living room, either reading or talking softly with Mahesh Uncle. Then the two men come up. Tarun enters their room, and she hears Mahesh Uncle shut his door. He, too, changes into his pajamas. He tries idle conversation with her, but she knows it’s to mask the discomfort he feels. He slides into bed, and both of them lie quietly. She doesn’t want to initiate anything because she feels that she’s tried enough, that now it’s his turn. And he doesn’t want to start anything because he knows there will be no completion.

  One night he takes her hand in his, strokes it. She won’t look at his face because tears have come to her eyes, and she doesn’t want to appear vulnerable to him. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

  “I’m not right for you,” she says.

  “It’s not that.”

  “You don’t like me.”

  “No, no, you’re wrong about that.”

  “It’s not this, it’s not that. Then what is it? Why are things the way they are?”

  She takes his silence as proof that he considers her inadequate.

  Every day he can see the small damaging effects he’s having on her. He rationalizes then that she has also chosen her fate, which is to be with him, so she has no choice but to accept it. Just like he’s had to accept his life with a stepmother with whom he’s so tightly entangled. You ar
e bound to your Newar lover and I am bound to Didi, that’s our fate, he thinks. We can think of it as a marriage of convenience, a functional marriage.

  Neither Mahesh Uncle nor Sanmaya nor her parents, who have visited a couple of times, have an inkling that anything is amiss. There are moments when he’s assaulted by guilt regarding her, what she may be going through, and he thinks: Rukma, you should make it easy on yourself and leave me.

  PART 3

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  DAYS SLIDE BY, and she doesn’t leave. She can’t because she has no desire to make her parents suffer any more. What would she say to them? That something is not right with their marriage, with him? They would respond that it’s too early, that her expectations are too high. Her mother, in her exasperation, may even comment that she should not expect it to be like her Newar lover, smooching lips and honey talk all day long. Her mother may even say, Do you see the two of us, your father and mother, besotted with each other? Yet, no one can say that there’s no love between us. Her mother’s example of the solidity and immovability of her own marital love is a self-enclosed argument: it doesn’t tolerate exceptions and departures. In such a closed system, would it make a difference to them when Rukma says that she and Tarun, weeks past the wedding, barely embrace in the privacy of their bedroom? Would it make a difference if they learn that their daughter has yet to consummate her marriage? Her parents may recognize that something is off, but they will be loath to admit it. It’ll eventually work out, they’ll say. With some people it takes time. Her mother, ignoring her own discomfort, might even ask, But surely there’s some amorous activity in bed? Some petting? Kissing? She might even blush at this bold conversation she’s having with her daughter.

  And Rukma, too, can’t imagine saying to her mother that the kisses, if there are any, and there are hardly any anymore, are perfunctory. I am the one who has to crawl over to him and put my hand on his body. He doesn’t respond. I rub my hand over his shoulder, his chest. If he turns toward me, there is a vacant look in his eyes. I think of an animal who is playing dead at the approach of a predator. I whisper his name. I lick the skin around his neck and his earlobes, but either there is no response or he moves farther away from me. I move my fingers down to his belly, then farther down, but there is no movement, not even a flicker. He lies there placidly like a mannequin. I fondle him, first gently, then hard with annoyance. He lifts my hand in the dim darkness and pushes it away, gently—he’s a gentleman about it!—then turns to the other side.