A River Sutra (11 page)

I frequently found myself shouting in irritation when something small had been overlooked, as if I had become Mr. Sen. The workers responded by withdrawing their affection, leaving me frozen in that isolation which had led so many of my colleagues to become alcoholics.

Now I followed the example of my predecessors, putting aside my books to sit in the darkness, a bottle of whisky at my elbow, while the head bearer waited in the garden, drawing on his bidi as I drank myself into oblivion. Then, my body a dead weight across his shoulders, he dragged me into the bedroom and somehow undressed me and pushed me through the mosquito net where I lay in a stupor of stale whisky fumes never sure if I was awake or asleep.

Perhaps my loneliness caused my mind to create its own enslavement. Or perhaps I had already become the victim of my grandfather's books. In any case, one night I was lying in my bed when I was awakened by a perfume that subsumed the smell of whisky that had become the companion to my sleep.

As that musky fragrance enveloped me, calming me and exciting me at the same time, I felt a softness press against my shoulder. Stretching out my hand, I grasped the swelling firmness of a woman's breast. But the petals of a flower garland intruded between my lips and her flesh, a girdle chain between my thigh and her smooth hip, an anklet between my hand and her slender foot. Maddened by the fragile barrier of her ornaments, I crushed her in my embrace. Her body encircled mine like a flowering creeper grips a tree. She made a sound between a sigh and a laugh, her breath moist against my ear. Then a low voice asked, "Why did you not send for me earlier?"

Was I bewitched that night by the moon throwing its feverish light across the bed, gilding her supple body silver as she rode mine? Or was it the long eyes sliding like fish above her slanting Mongol cheekbones? The slender shoulders pulled forward by the weight of her breasts? The perspiration shining on her narrow waist above the mango curve of her hip?

Was it the perfect oval cast by our shadow on the sheets as she pressed her feet against my chest when I enclosed her in my embrace? The sight of her limbs turning the dark blue of a lotus calyx as the clouds obscured the moon? Or was it the heavy plait coiling and uncoiling against our bodies until it unraveled under the billowing curtain of the mosquito net to cocoon us in a second curtain, blacker than the night outside?

I did not know whether I had fashioned her from the night and my own hunger, even though her small teeth pierced my skin again and again like the sudden striking of a snake, and I heard

' the hissing of her pleasure against my throat. But when she left my bed I was already asleep, dreaming I still held a creature half serpent in my arms, my sated senses pulling me into the underground world of my grandfather's legends.

If in the morning the mirror had not reflected the vermilion marks of her painted feet on my chest or the streaks of her black collyrium on my skin I would not have believed she existed. Seeing them, I was sick with love as if I had been pierced by all five arrows of desire.

The next night I lay in my bed, my limbs trembling in anticipation as I waited for her. Yet I was asleep again when her low voice in my ear awoke me, and I was again asleep before she left me.

Knowing the urgency of my desire, I could not understand my inability to stay awake. After the first few nights I realized I was enchanted.

What can I tell you of the months that followed? I was intoxicated by a pleasure that left me both satisfied and delicately unsatisfied. I never saw her by daylight, and if I had I would not have recognized her. At some point in our lovemaking she had revealed her name was Rima, yet I did not search for her among the tribal women bending over the tea bushes, fearful that the brilliant sun might rob me of my enchantment.

My body knew the contours of her body, my hands the features of her face, but to my eyes she was an endless play of shadows, entering my bed in darkness when I was no longer capable of waiting for her so that always she surprised my senses.

She even knew when when our passion was in danger of becoming repetition. Then she seduced me with tribal songs in a language I could not understand so that I heard only the sweetness of the melodies. She told me tales of a great serpent kingdom lying inches beneath the soil. She spoke to me of charms that gave men the strength of elephants in rut and of magic performed during the eclipse of the moon when a man's soul could be captured inside the two halves of a coconut.

She swore she had seen an old woman raise flames from the palms of her hands, and a tribal priest cover a mango seedling with his shawl, then pull it away to reveal a dwarf tree bending under the weight of ripe mangoes. Swarming like clusters of black bees in the whiteness of her eyes, her pupils mesmerized me as her low voice gave substance to the worlds I had dreamed of when reading my grandfather's books.

Once again I took pleasure in my work as manager of the garden, and the tea pickers again treated me with the esteem they had withdrawn. Maybe they laughed at me when I sometimes did not answer their questions, but often the only sound I heard were her songs floating in my mind.

For a long time I believed these melodic fragments surfaced from my unconscious. When I finally realized they were actually being sung by the women as they picked leaves, I asked Mr. Sen to translate the words.

"On the hill
See the peacock's feathers swayAs I am swaying on your lap, Sighing on your lap,
Smiling on your lap.
0, my handsome friend."

Then to my delight the women began singing the song Rima often sang to awaken me, and I wrote the words down as Mr. Sen translated.

"Bring me my oil and my collyrium. Sister, bring my mirror and the vermilion. Make haste with my flower garland. My lover waits impatient in the bed. "

For a year Rima came to me every night, sliding into my ebony bed to coil her limbs around me. Like a magician she drew me into a subterranean world of dream, her body teaching mine the passing of the seasons, the secret rhythms of nature, until I understood why my grandfather's books called these hills Kamarupa, the Kingdom of the God of Love.

The Chairman's telegram ended my delirium. "Head Office reorganizing Company. Proceed to Calcutta immediately to study innovations."

I tore the telegram in a rage, certain that Ashok had forced the Chairman's decision, but there was nothing I could do. The telegram was not a suggestion. It was a command.

Rima wept as if her heart were breaking when I told her I was leaving. Gratified by her tears, I made love to her with an ardor that surprised me, so exhausted by my exertions I almost didn't hear her ask "Should I return to my husband? He works as a coolie at the railway depot in Agartala. Should I join him while you are gone?"

Such was my enchantment with Rima's strangeness that I did not find it odd that she was married. And I could tolerate the thought that another man might embrace her. After all, who had I slept with all those years in Calcutta but other men's wives?

But that he should be a coolie. That I should love a coolie's wife. Waves of disgust engulfed me and I wanted to vomit with shame. At that moment the spell in which Rima held me was broken. For the first time I remained awake when she climbed out of the bed to wrap herself in her sarong. Her limbs were squat and ugly in the light of dawn.

How glad I was to return to Calcutta and the insouciance of my old life of clubs, friends, and betting.

The very superficiality of my colleagues dulled my shame. How hard I laughed at their jokes as they bought drinks for me at the bars of the Saturday Club, the Tolleygunge Club, the Calcutta Club, the Turf Club.

How lightheartedly I flirted with the sophisticated, husky-voiced women whose boredom I briefly diverted by the novelty of my presence. And when they took me to their bedrooms, I kept the lights on as I kissed their large eyes that did not slant upward like Rima's, until I buried the memory of Rima's body in their warm brown flesh.

I could no longer resist the excitement of Head Office. The international shipping arrangements and insurance problems, the constant deadlines presented by bids taken in London or Hong Kong, made my life in the tea garden seem primitive, governed as it was by the grinding slowness of the changing seasons. I did not want to go back to that isolated house or the demands of the bovine tea pickers. I did not want to return to Rima.

Encouraged by Ashok, the Chairman invited me again to become a director. This time I accepted eagerly and it was agreed that I would return to the tea garden to organize things for my successor, then take a few weeks' leave before assuming my new appointment.

I felt a certain trepidation at returning to the tea estate for the last time. Rima had wept so much at my departure for Calcutta that I dreaded her reaction when she learned I would be leaving her permanently.

I could no longer remember any desire for Rima but I could not overlook her poverty, and I decided it was only fair that she should earn some
• thing from our association. Hoping to avoid recriminations, I left money with the head bearer, instructing him to deliver it to Rima.

To my surprise she did not try to see me. I knew she was in the tea garden because at night I heard a voice singing in the darkness outside,

I pretended not to hear and continued reading, but even in my cowardice I appreciated Rima's discretion in leaving me alone, which seemed so elegant in someone of her origins.

Her subtlety was greater than I understood. By standing outside my bedroom every night, she succeeded in turning my cowardice into guilt. Night after night I lay in the ebony bed unable to concentrate on my book as I listened to the voice outside my window singing,

Unable to tolerate my guilt, one night I opened the door leading into the garden. I could still hear her singing but there was no one there. Then I heard her call, "Nitin. Nitin Bose."

"Rima, come inside. I want to talk to you." There was no answer so I repeated my request. Again she did not respond. For several minutes I stood there calling her to come inside, but no one replied.

Instead of returning to my room, I waited in the shadows. After a while I heard a rustling in the undergrowth, then the sound of breaking twigs as footsteps retreated into the woods that ringed my house. I ran to the wall. As I flung my leg over it I heard her call again, "Nitin. Nitin Bose."

"Rima, wait! I must talk to you!" I shouted. "Nitin Bose!" The voice grew fainter as she ran into the trees. The darkness was so dense I wished I had taken a torch from the guard so I could see my way. Then I remembered the moon was in eclipse that night, and the superstitious guard would not venture out of doors on a night so full of ill omen.
Heedless of the low branches whipping against my body, I ran after her through the jungle, calling her name, my voice loud in the night.
Suddenly, almost in front of me, she shouted, "Nitin. Nitin Bose."
"Yes," I answered in surprise. There was the noise of something being clapped over something else, like two books slapped together. As I heard that sound I felt the air being sucked out of my lungs.
Nothing touched me but I felt as if a pump had been forcibly placed over my lips and nose. I gasped for air, unable to breathe. Over the noise of my own suffocation I heard laughter, then the striking of a match. A lantern flared in the darkness, lighting a woman's face from below as she adjusted the flame.
Rima placed the lantern at her feet and retrieved something from the ground.
"You will never leave me now, no matter how far you go," she said triumphantly, waving her trophy in front of me. It was a coconut, the split halves covering each other. I clutched at her, feeling myself begin to fall, but she eluded me and I hit the ground. Picking up her lantern, she disappeared into the jungle.
I lay under the trees, the stench of decomposing vegetation filling my nostrils as I tried to suck air into my bursting lungs. Over my harsh breathing I could hear her vengeful song growing fainter and fainter in the darkness:

"Bring me my oil and my collyrium. Sister, bring my mirror and the vermilion. Make haste with my flower garland. My lover waits impatient in the bed."

"At dawn the guard made a round of the house before he went to his quarters. The door of your bedroom was open and your bed had not been slept in. Finding you nowhere on the grounds, the guard went to search for you in the woods.

"He found you lying in the mud. He asked if you were all right but you talked only nonsense, calling the name Rima again and again and singing a song our tribal women sing at the time of marriage.

"The guard ran to my room and woke me up. Together we managed to carry you from the woods to your bed. We could see you were not physically ill and we were frightened. We realized you had gone out during the eclipse. Perhaps you did not know that a man can become fatally ill or mad if he walks outside during the eclipse of the moon. We sent for the priest of the tribal village to ask his advice before we informed Mr. Sen.

"The priest tried to talk to you, asking why you had been walking in the jungle on such an inauspicious night. Who had you gone to meet. But you just sang and called this Rima's name, your eyes so strange, like a madman's. The priest told us to let no one see you and he went away.

"He returned an hour later with a covered basket. He asked me to heat some milk while he went to your bedside. I brought the warm milk, thinking he had some medicine for you. When I reached your bed I screamed with fear and dropped it. The priest was holding a snake only inches from your