An Atlas of Impossible Longing (13 page)

Amulya did not think the man was from Songarh. His clothes marked him out as being from rural Bengal. Amulya was filled with foreboding.

Then the man began to speak.

After many minutes, he finished what he had to say and left the room. Amulya's normally rigid back drooped semi-circular, and his skeletal face caved in further. He put his hands over his eyes as if he could not bear the daylight any more.

Gouranga, who was hovering just outside the door, heard a sound of anguish, something between a groan and a cry, from inside the room and fell back a few steps, startled. What could Kananbala have done, he wondered, to make Amulya Babu feel like this, where could she be?

* * *

They sat on the duree in the shade of an old spreading tree. Kananbala did not recognise most of the things Mrs Barnum laid out. There were sandwiches, cut fine and thin, wrapped in damp cheesecloth. Lunch boxes revealed cream biscuits and chocolate eclairs. One box was deep with small cakes studded with ruby red raisins. Mrs Barnum brought out cheese and a knife. She opened a tin of condensed milk and dipped a finger into it saying, “Try it, scrumptious!” She dipped her finger in again.

Kananbala shuddered at that. How could she eat anything contaminated by someone else's saliva? She tried to smile and picked up a biscuit. But what if the bread slices had meat in them? What if the cake had egg in it? Yet if she did not eat, wouldn't Mrs Barnum be displeased?

She started to babble, worried. “Slut, whore, daughter of the devil, syphilitic hen.”

“Pity we can't understand each other!” Mrs Barnum said, “We'd have such a jolly time.”

Kananbala bit into the biscuit mumbling fresh expressions of horror through the crumbs.

Mrs Barnum said, “The wine must have cooled a little by now, let me see.” She drew the bottle out of the water and tested it. “Yes, it'll have to do.” She produced a corkscrew from the hamper and opened the bottle as Kananbala watched intrigued. Mrs Barnum poured the deep red liquid into two crystal wine glasses and then, ceremoniously, held one out to Kananbala.

“Cheers.” she said. “Go on, there's no-one looking, try it!”

Kananbala knew about wine glasses. Magazines had woodcuts showing degenerate men drinking out of those glasses. Voluptuous, loose-moralled theatre actresses in Calcutta were said to drink out of such glasses. She shook her head.

“It's alright,” Mrs Barnum said smiling, gentle. “It's just wine. Not liquor. Theek hai!” she said, hoping that would reassure Kananbala.

Kananbala, uncomprehending, shook her head again and turned away to the pool. “I should have packed lemonade.” Mrs Barnum said, downcast. “I'm such a nitwit sometimes. Digby was right, I have no
sense, I don't think things through. You're a fool, an imbecile, he'd keep saying, all the time, at the drop of a hat, my mixed blood, my bad blood, my stupidity.”

Mrs Barnum was talking almost to herself, drinking rapid sips of the wine, not touching the food.

Kananbala looked up at the woman next to her. She looks young, must be only in her thirties, she thought, or maybe a little older – maybe the colour on her cheeks is rouge.

Mrs Barnum had a fine-boned face on a long neck that emerged stem-like from her dress. As she spoke, a knobble in her throat bobbed a little under the thin surface of her skin. Her fingers clutched her glass too hard and she jerked her head as she talked and paused and talked again. Kananbala watched her, fascinated. That she understood nothing did not seem to matter. She knew Mrs Barnum was saying something she needed to say, something she could say only to her, Kananbala.

A kingfisher sliced into the pool having sat immobile in a tree for several minutes. The blue of its wings was the blue of Mrs Barnum's dress and Kananbala, excited, tugged at the frock and pointed to the bird. The young woman looked down at the older one with a start as if she had only just realised she was not alone. Then, thinking she understood what Kananbala was saying, she chuckled, “Yes, Digby did think I was a vain strutting little bird – I suppose I am.”

She took another sip of her wine and sighed. “What a soup I'm in, what a godawful soup.” She was contemplative for a while, listening to the birds. Then she began to talk – and talk – beginning to feel a curious sense of lightness pervade her. Perhaps because of Kananbala's incomprehension, she felt entirely understood. She spoke into the ruins and to Kananbala, without stopping except for wine to wet her throat. She spoke about her childhood, about Digby courting her, about Digby beating her with his belt and, once, slamming her face into a door. She talked about her lover, the things he did that Digby had not done. She spoke words she had never thought she would. She spoke of the ease with which the knife had slid into her husband, first his stomach, then somewhere else, she did not know where. She
spoke of the blood, of the resistance of skin, the obstruction of bones, the sick ache in her heart and between her legs and in the pit of her stomach for her lover who had to run away.

Kananbala listened.

At last, exhausted, Mrs Barnum stretched her arms out over her knees and buried her head in them.

Looking at the bent head, Kananbala seemed to decide something. She picked up her crystal glass gingerly by the stem and took a long gulp, screwing up her mouth at the taste. She gasped as she felt an unfamiliar warmth inside her. Mrs Barnum looked up at the sound. Kananbala made a wry face and Mrs Barnum smiled back at her, incredulous. Kananbala took another long sip, giving Mrs Barnum a look of mingled fear and triumph.

Mrs Barnum smiled wider, her eyes glazed with wine and the clouded sun. Bending, she brought her wine-stained mouth to Kananbala's cheek and gave it a soft kiss.

* * *

Even as Kananbala was taking her first sip of wine, Amulya emerged from his room, his face composed, his back straight again.

“Come here,” he said to Gouranga, still by the door. “Send someone to Dadababu's college. He must run, and if he finds a tonga, tell him to take a tonga, and bring Nirmal back here. If Nirmal is teaching in a class, tell him to interrupt and go in. Get him back home immediately. Have you understood?”

Gouranga nodded and hobbled down the stairs as fast as his arthritic knees would let him. He knew the visiting stranger must be downstairs somewhere, and he would find out what had happened from him.

It was in the kitchen, as he had thought, that the stranger sat, holding a glass of something. Around him in a spellbound semi-circle were Shibu, the gardener, and the maid. Gouranga barged into the room and yelled, “Arre o, tear yourself away, there is a job to be done, boy!” Then, having sent Shibu off to Nirmal's college and established who was boss in the kitchen, he sat down with a grunt next to the stranger
and said, “So tell me, what's this news you've brought? Nothing good, I can see that, nothing good.” He lit a beedi.

Now, with many tellings, the stranger had got into his stride. The event, real enough five days ago, too real almost to grasp, seemed to have become a story, something that had happened to storybook people. He put his head in his hands afresh, simulating the despair he had truly felt the first few days, and with a heavy sigh that was an unconscious emulation of the lead actor in a jatra he had seen, he began again to speak.

* * *

When Nirmal at last returned home and rushed up to his father, Amulya, unlike the stranger, was still unable to put what he had heard into words. Being able to articulate what had happened meant being able to understand it, grasp it, digest it, even to a degree accept it. He cleared his throat, told his son to sit down, walked to the window and walked back again. Eventually, for the first time in his life, Nirmal snapped at his father. “What is it? Can you tell me what's happened? What's the matter?”

There had been a great flood in Manoharpur, Nirmal's father's voice said. It had come into the house, marooned it. Shanti had gone into labour too early, a whole month too early. Nobody could get out of the house to get a doctor in time. The maid, who had some midwifing experience, had done her best but … only the baby could be saved. Not Shanti. A healthy baby, but at what cost? Shanti had died giving birth. Nirmal needed to go to Manoharpur right away, although it was too late for him even to see Shanti's dead body … the countryside had been too flooded for anyone to reach the next town, where there were three telephones … a telegram or letter … nothing had been possible.

But there was his baby. He needed to go and bring the baby back, a baby girl named Bakul, as Shanti had always wanted.

* * *

Perhaps an hour later, at four in the afternoon, there were sounds of car doors slamming. Then, after a long pause, Kananbala was to be heard shuffling up the stairs. She stumbled into her room, somewhat unstable, cheeks warm, velvet slippers unrecognisable, hair straggling out of its pins, sari askew.

The silence brimmed with unspoken words. She knew she was in trouble. She ought never to have gone out of the house at all. Had she forgotten how furious Amulya could be? His fury was more potent and more frightening than Durvasa Muni's, especially when he said nothing at all. She glanced in his direction. She had thought only of his face all the way back from the picnic. She had wanted to drink in the last of the wind through the fast-moving car's window, imprint the landscape on her mind before being locked away in her room again, but despite trying to feel the joy she had on her way out to the fort, she had been filled with dread at the idea that Amulya would have come home for lunch in the meantime and not found her where she ought to be.

Amulya was not looking at her. He sat with his head in his hands, eyes shut. Nobody took any notice of her. Her act of what had looked like desperate rebellion, her drunkenness, her ruined velvet slippers, all went unremarked.

* * *

Nirmal left for Manoharpur that night. The household began a vigil for its motherless infant.

They waited a fortnight, then it became a month. Nobody came.

On the thirty-first day, Amulya wrote to Bikash Babu with a polite enquiry: “If you could find out from Nirmal what his plans are, it would be a great relief to us,” he wrote. “He was in a state of shock when he left Songarh, and we, his mother and I, have been anxious. Of course we know that as long as he is with you, he is in the best possible care, but still, parents worry. We wish we could also be with you through this grief that has devastated both our families … ”

They counted the days for a reply. Five or six days for their letter to
reach Manoharpur … or maybe seven or eight since it was going from one mofussil to another, and then the same time for a reply to arrive. In two weeks it would be reasonable to expect news.

Every day, when the postman passed along Dulganj Road jingling his bell, Kananbala waited at the window, willing him to stop at their gate. Amulya searched through his mail every morning when he reached the factory before he even hung his umbrella on its hook. Every morning he began with hope but was ready for disappointment.

At the end of twenty days, there was a reply.

“This is very puzzling, and extremely worrying,” Bikash Babu's blue ink said, foregoing the standard greetings and enquiries about health.

Nirmal was almost unable to look at his baby. He was disturbed when he was here, and did not speak much. He was incoherent when he did speak. He refused to come away from the room where Shanti had spent her last day. We could not intrude. Nirmal was here for that night, but the next morning when we woke up, he had already left. He said nothing to us. All this time, through this month, I have assumed that he returned to you – to calm down – and that he would come back to us for his baby when able … I understand his grief, I feel it myself, I have lost my daughter, my only child. But it is greater for him, losing the mother of his child, and we are broken-hearted for the little one who will never know her mother.

Shanti's old maid, Kripa, is taking care of the baby. Please have no worries on that count. For the rest, what is there to say? God's ways are inexplicable, we think of Him as merciful, but in these times when the darkness seems unending, we wonder.

Nobody knew where Nirmal was, neither in Manoharpur, nor in Songarh. He had not been seen for a month.

Should they inform the police? Enquire in hospitals? In morgues? In which city? Ask their relatives in Calcutta? Search out his college friends? Where could they begin to look?

Kananbala and Amulya spent the next three weeks staring down at the empty road, as if Nirmal would materialise on it. They looked up every time someone was at the door. Amulya attempted to mimic normality: he went to his factory every day as usual but sat at his desk forgetting what he had meant to do. He took out his old Roxburgh and Hooker volumes and looked up illustrations of plants, but the page stayed open on the same spot for hours. It was as if a cold, dead hand was squeezing him inside, making it difficult for him to breathe. He began to dread leaving the house, and eventually stopped going to the factory.

The house echoed silence. Everyone crept about. The maid and the gardener stopped fighting, feeling the silence devour everything.

One afternoon, the stillness was broken by a guttural groan that came from deep within Amulya. He gasped that a lion was clawing his chest apart. His pulse faded, came back, and faded again, this time for too long.