A House Is a Body

by Shruti Swamy

  “You’ve been working?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I see?”

  “No.”

  He slid his hat off. Underneath, the hair was gone, only a thin, soft-looking fur close to the scalp.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. I cut it.”

  “It was so beautiful.”

  He shrugged. “It grows.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “What did your tabloids say?”

  “They haven’t said anything about you.” Then I blushed, I knew I shouldn’t still be reading them. But how else was I to know?

  “I have a gift for you.”

  “You do?”

  His hand dipped into his pants pocket, and reappeared with a flat blue bead. His palm, extended, was peach-pink, and there was a line on the sides that sharply delineated the pink from blue.

  “It’s sea-glass.”

  I took it and tucked it in my cheek. It was cool, and strangely sweet.

  “Where were you?”

  “Oh, many places. I went home for a while.”

  “Mathura?”

  “No, that’s where I was born. I live in Kerala. Well, I have a house there.”

  “What did you do there?”

  “Nothing. I was quiet. I just stayed quiet for awhile.”

  “I’ve been to Mathura once.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Yes, when I was younger. It was cold there. Everyone wore shawls around their head at the train station.”

  “Aren’t you going to put your groceries away?”

  “I’ll do it later.”

  “Do it now.”

  “Why?”

  He sat down at my little table. “Are you ashamed of something?”

  “Everyone’s ashamed of something.”

  I poured his coffee. His straight blue fingers tapped on the white table.

  “I’m not.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No.”

  “That must be nice for you.”

  “It’s a choice.”

  “I didn’t ask for advice.”

  “I’m not giving it.”

  I sat down with him at the table, on the other side of the same corner, to look at him without looking at him too openly, able, at least, to see the stubble on his cheek that looked a day or two old, glinting in the light that came in from the window. He picked up the glass and poured back and forth, in a way that struck me as showy, pulling the glasses farther and farther apart while the brown ribbon of coffee thinned but never broke.

  “What’s Kerala like?”

  “You’ve never been?”

  “No.”

  “You should come visit me there.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “It’s very beautiful, very green. It’s good for you to breathe in that kind of air. Thick, hot. It’s so thick it seems liquid; it’s full of smell. In the summers it’s almost unbearable. But during winter—”

  He paused for a moment.

  “What?”

  “You’re distracted. You’re not here.”

  “I’m here. Summer . . . winter . . .”

  “I can see your thoughts just drifting along.”

  “You can see my thoughts?”

  “Not literally.”

  “Figuratively.”

  “Yes.”

  “What do my thoughts look like? Figuratively?”

  He rubbed his hands across his head. The hair was so feathery short that through it I could see a black-blue birthmark behind his left ear, kidney-shaped. It had smooth edges, nicely formed, the curve of it echoing the larger curve of his ear, as though someone had drawn it there, placed it purposefully, to make his smooth head slightly imperfect. But it was a perfect imperfection. It angered me.

  “Just pale, thin, one after the other, anemic-looking. Blurry.”

  “My thoughts are anemic?”

  “Don’t get muddled up in words,” he said kindly. “You know what I mean, don’t you? Close your eyes.”

  I closed them.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, don’t say them aloud. Just name them as they pass.”

  Krishna’s birthmark, gin, gin, my mother’s face when she was cooking. Krishna’s slender wrists. My painting, those little faces, the little eyes. Gin. The first sip of gin I ever took, thirteen, spat it out on the kitchen floor. The smell of alcohol is similar to the smell of paint. Painting has the word pain in it, and your arms do ache after a while, your wrists. His wrists look delicate enough to snap in half.

  “You see now?”

  “But I paint.”

  “You paint.”

  “Painting takes strength, strong thoughts.”

  “You use it all up for art and then there is nothing left over.”

  “Good. I want to spend my whole life on art.”

  “You don’t have to, and anyway you can’t.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Nothing,” he said. His face stayed quite calm, though anger was leaking into mine, I could feel it rising in my cheeks. “Don’t listen to me if you think I’m wrong.”

  “People’s thoughts don’t look like anything. It’s a party trick.”

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “You tell me. You seem to know anyway.”

  “Gin,” he said. “Three bottles of gin, and one bottle of vodka. You want me to leave so you can have some.”

  “No.”

  “No? Three bottles of vodka, one bottle of gin?”

  “No. I don’t want you to leave.”

  He put his hat back on.

  “Poor little human,” he said.

  In a dream, Krishna called me to Kerala. His house was permeated with the outdoors, and filled with thick air and wandering animals. Peacocks with their cat-like cries, and leopards, and ground-snakes and iridescent insects and jackals and mongoose, I walked through room after room, each space humble in the clean white cotton of a mourner. In the middle of a wide white bed Krishna lay half covered by a cotton sheet, a blue marble disappearing into a glass of milk. His chest was bare and smooth as the still surface of a lake.

  “Krishna?”

  His eyes came open. The same brown eyes I had seen in waking life, not altered by the dream-state. “I’m glad you came.”

  I was in bed with him. We lay, not touching, both naked, under the sheet. I lifted the sheet and ducked my head under to look at the beautiful length of him, strong and compact as a fighter.

  “Is it true you had a thousand wives?”

  “Did your tabloids tell you that too?”

  “No. My mother told me. She said the one you loved the most you never married. And the rest you had to marry for political reasons.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think that if it’s true you have a real hard time saying no.”

  He laughed.

  “Can I ask you something else?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can I look inside your mouth?”

  He came close to me. I could feel the heat of him so close. So close but he wouldn’t yet touch me. I could smell him, the sandalwood, the juniper, the absence of that mortal smell I was always able to find on the skin of my lovers.

  “Please,” I said. And then I added, with desperate sadness, “I know this is just a dream.”

  He took hold of me, I felt his skin around me, strangely cool to the touch like embracing water, as he pushed inside me, like water flooding through the core, the odd buoyancy of Dead Sea water, dry-cool, stunning, moving through me again and again. His face was folded in concentration, gentle, as though he was praying. An ugly nest of scars was stuck on his right shoulder, a palm-shaped wound that looked as though it had never quite healed. I brushed my fingers over it. His blood was right there, separated from mine by just two thin layers of skin. When our two faces were lined up, his over mine, he closed his eyes and, as though he wer
e about to sing or scream, opened his mouth.

  Yes, I saw there what I’d known I would see: the three worlds suspended in darkness, each one glowing like a star.

  I saw a girl who looked like Corrie at the far away grocery store that had the cheaper booze and followed her from one aisle to the next. It was Thursday evening. At first I was following her to be sure it was actually her, but in the snack aisle I determined it was from the way she moved, which had the same clumsy friendliness that she had approached me with all those years ago, though she had grown lean, and I only dared to look at her face in profile, and could therefore only see one of her two symmetrical moles. The last time I had seen her was in high school. Her family had moved back into town and mine had decided to send me to school for my last three years because they were tired of homeschool, maybe, or maybe because my dad changed jobs and had to work in an office instead of from home, so he could drive me on his way there. Nothing good came of that decision, of course. A city girl airlifted into the Alaskan wild couldn’t have done worse than I did at lunch, or in gym class, in those horrible shorts. Corrie didn’t know me anymore—she erased me, and I didn’t blame her. When I looked at her, she was always looking the other way. It seemed as though, when we met together as kids in those afternoon acts, we had each proven our essential nature: a sort of radiant wholeness in Corrie, sleekly chubby with adolescence, and an ugly misalignment in me, my teenage body a jumble of sullen angles.

  “Corrie?” I had to repeat the name before the girl turned. Tight jeans, tight jacket, sneakers, all black. And she was thin, sharply thin, and pretty, with clear, flawless skin. But there was no matching mole on the other cheek, and the elements of her face resolved themselves entirely differently when I looked at her full on.

  “I’m sorry, I thought you were this girl I went to high school with.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe I am. I went to a big school.”

  “But your name’s not Corrie.”

  “No.”

  “What is it then?”

  “Athalie.”

  “I’ve never heard it before.”

  “It’s French. My mother’s French.”

  “It’s funny, you have a mole—just right where she had one. Right here.” I touched my left cheek to mirror her right.

  “Oh this?” She smiled. “I draw it on.”

  “You do? Why?”

  “You know—a beauty spot. You put an imperfection on your face to make it seem more perfect. My mother—” She stopped, blushed. “Well.”

  “It is perfect. Your face. Everything is symmetrical about it. It’s perfectly aligned.”

  “Just genes,” she said. “Are you hitting on me?”

  “I think I am,” I said.

  It was seven, evening, but like the museum, the grocery store was windowless and was lit by its own white-blue light. And I had found Corrie. Her slim girl-hips and her newly lean face. I wanted to put my hands around her. She was shorter than me now and seemed more fragile. I had brushed my teeth before I left so my breath wouldn’t smell too boozy, though I had only expected to talk to a cashier.

  “Are you having a party?” said Athalie, looking at my basket full of bottles.

  “Yes, do you want to come?”

  “When is it?”

  “This weekend.”

  “Okay,” she said. I couldn’t tell if she believed me.

  “Can I walk you home?”

  “—picked me up at a grocery store, I mean, I’ve never done anything like this, I’m telling you—”

  I heard my voice say, very quietly, “Corrie?”

  Then her face was there, above mine, almost, almost her face. The mole on her left cheek was smudged, no, my right so her left, smudged, and her swan’s neck bare, her breasts bare, naked, all of her, her naked feet. Not Corrie. Why did I think of Corrie anymore? “Not Corrie. I didn’t even like Corrie. Athalie.”

  “I don’t know your name.”

  “Radika.”

  “Radika. Sounds like a hiccup.”

  I could taste the cigarettes in her mouth. I sat on a blue couch. Naked on a blue couch. Hot-cold. Thighs splayed out against the rough fabric, my strange little belly and my breasts, the blue bead Krishna gave me suspended between, hanging on a loop of mint flavored dental floss. Corrie was more beautiful. Lust parted her lips. Wet taste of cigarettes.

  “Can I put the mole on your other cheek?”

  “You want me to look like that girl.”

  “Yes—do you mind?”

  “Do you think I’m pretty?”

  “Pretty? No, no. That word doesn’t mean anything when I look at you. The shape, and color of you—like if a flower was a creature, that’s you. Athalie. Soft, and bright and love-ly.”

  Corrie with a mole on each cheek. Those honey-colored eyes that make you want to tongue the iris. Returning to the places she has touched. Her shell-pink nipples and tongue. Helpless in my shameful pleasure: Corrie—I’m sorry—

  Where had I been? What had happened? I thought I saw Krishna, but after a little while I knew I hadn’t, like a wish given momentary form, it had been another person wearing, just for a second, his body. I slept and woke and stood up in my clothes, smelly, and the room tilted and righted several times. It was like walking in an earthquake, or on water. I made it to the bathroom and threw up in the toilet.

  Not my toilet. The tiles in this bathroom were blue. The towels were clean, and beautiful. At the sink there was shell-shaped soap. The mirror contained a surprised face. The skin was sallow in the reflected blue light, my bloodshot eyes.

  It was a beautiful, sunlit apartment. For a moment I almost couldn’t see through the pain that light brought. Then, my eyes focused, a couch, an open door, an unmade bed, a note on the kitchen table, next to a wooden bowl full of lemons. I picked one up and held it to my face, smelling it, tasting the bright color with my eyes, as though it would wake me. Then I dressed and washed my face in the sink and left the apartment. I could hear the door lock behind me. I stood in front of the building just to get my bearings.

  What street, what day—what was my name? That came first. When I held the syllables in my mouth I was able to sift through the streets of the city in my mind, and place myself. I began to walk. My mouth was dry. What had happened? I pressed my mind against the memory of last night. Light, light, light was falling around me like rain. I pulled a name out: Corrie. I got right to the edge of the memory. Then I decided I didn’t want to remember and turned my mind away.

  At home, I stripped my clothes off and took a purely hot shower, and felt myself returning. By the time I was finished, I was almost cured. I made and drank a cup of simple coffee, in my underwear, gagged down a bowl of cereal, and dressed in my work clothes. I was good at ignoring headaches. In fact, often the things I hated about being hungover were the things I liked about it too: the constant reminder that you are alive, in possession of a body. Your head said, “head.” Your belly said, “belly.” And your mind was squeezed out of it.

  Drinking could help you along, of course, but I never did it on a workday, a morning when I was painting, which was every morning, even Sundays: I had been very strict about that rule. Because the work was so finely detailed, I knew I needed my fingers smart and limber. Today though, it had nothing to do with my head saying “head” and my belly saying “belly.” It was only this: I wanted the taste of it. For no other reason than it would taste nice. It would feel very nice on my tongue and going down my throat. Not to get drunk, of course not. It took a lot to get drunk anyway. Just to have the taste in my mouth to move me along as I worked.

  I had forgotten the bottles I had bought last night at the apartment I had woken up in: no matter. I was being proactive. I used to keep beer or wine in the fridge before I realized it was a waste of money and after that I only bought spirits. On a high shelf in the kitchen I kept a reserve bottle of vodka for emergencies, I think the way people keep guns, for comfort.

  This morning I knew I had to keep work
ing, but I was only going to have a taste. I knew this as I climbed up on the counter to reach the high shelf, and the bottle was cool in my hands as I pulled it down, a little friendly gentleman, Russian, with a smart blue cap. I felt, all of a sudden, quite cheerful. The sound that the cap made as I twisted it off was crisp, like a fresh carrot snapped in half. There was no need to dirty a glass, so I put my lips to the bottle. The moment before the liquid passed through my lips and touched my tongue, I had no thoughts. Not one. My body, hungry, open, reaching, was singular in its focus. It was a state like praying.

  Five sips, then I climbed up and put the bottle back. I felt good: clearer, steadier. I stood at my canvas and looked at it. It felt quite large to me, and there was so much work to do. I took my palette from the fridge and darkened a brush with color, almost arbitrarily. Then I stood in front of the canvas again. Just looked at it. I began to feel that ugly thing for my project that I had somehow miraculously evaded up till now: doubt. So much work—for what? Of a seven by ten foot canvas, I had completed only one little corner. Who would see it? Who would want it? Who would care?

  It was like standing at a podium and clearing your throat again and again instead of speaking. I stood there for an hour, maybe longer, unable to work, unable to quit, just stood there. I had to go right down to the core of myself and touch it before I could put any more color to that canvas. And even after that, the work was slow. But I worked. I could say that for myself, painting took strength, and I was strong. If my mind wandered, it wandered, I brought it back, as I always did.

  That time I lost some hours but not a whole day.

  When I saw Krishna next, if I saw him again, I would show him. It wasn’t finished, but I would show him anyway. Just to prove that my thoughts were strong. If he saw my paintings there wouldn’t be any doubt. He might love me. He might leave me alone.

  But mornings. The hammer worked at me and I woke dry and brittle, or already smashed into pieces. It took longer to put the pieces together. I lay in bed for many minutes or hours. Part of me talked to the other, tired part, murmuring at it almost kindly, but after a while it would change tactics and my mind would begin to berate itself. What an incredible store of insults it had to draw on. I could very nearly see my father’s face as he unbuckled his belt. I put my feet on the floor. Good. I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. I made coffee black and drank it, several cups. No need for breakfast after that. I put on my work clothes.