Helium (24 page)

‘You must have hit her first. She must have done it in self-defence. Please, why did you hit her?’

He stared at me. ‘What is the good engineer talking about?’

‘What are you hiding?’

‘I am hiding nothing. I can even show you the place where the incident took place.’

The dog came running. There was a black sock in its mouth. Benazir had warned me that the dog loved playing with socks and brassieres. ‘Leaves them lacerated.’

This is painful to write. The old man struggled to free himself. ‘This is a mistake,’ he said.

‘Listen, Mrs Singh didn’t send me here, I figured it out all on my own.’

‘I have no idea, my dear, no idea, my good engineer, what you are talking about.’

‘The beatings must stop. My father is a supercop, and if you continue your ways we will make sure you get arrested. You will spend the rest of your days in Tihar jail. She doesn’t owe you anything. She doesn’t owe anyone anything. Understand? She is the one who decides. You will break all contact with her. Now, where is
the
Kindle?’

Benazir’s father, beyond a shadow of doubt, was not the ‘saviour’. I was on the wrong track. My aversion to right-wingers made me commit a serious error. Right-wingers do not just screw the world, they screw logic, common sense and imagination. And: I was not myself then. Something was wrong with my state of mind in Shimla, everyone around me seemed to be a suspect. The world I inhabited consisted of no fixed laws, everything looked more confused and complex than it normally is.

Slowly I was walking, and someone was following me.

On the Mall Road, rather late in the chilly evening, when I turned back for a brief second I noticed a mangy dog. With its cracked skin and diseases it came very close. Foul odour. I changed my pace. The dog continued to stalk, adjusting quickly to my speed. From a certain angle it resembled Goya’s dog, and when I heard the whimpering sound I was reminded of the dog in the Russian film,
Stalker
. Although not completely black, the resemblance was astounding and so was its mysterious appearance, as if Tarkovsky’s dog had moved to Shimla after surviving Chernobyl. From another angle it revealed large protruding eyes, and disproportionately large ears. I could smell its gutter smell. The creature following me was more or less a blackish mound of shovelled snow. Yet, it was grotesquely beautiful. I stopped at the chemist’s shop; the dog stopped, I stopped at the newspaper kiosk; the dog trotted a little ahead, and stopped. Just then a couple overtook me. I sensed a tense quarrel, the woman kept saying na, na, na, and the man alternated between foul words and charm-coated words of gentle persuasion.

I followed them for a while, but the gluey dog walked next to me. The couple stepped inside a cafe. It was basically to get rid of the dog that I, too, took refuge in the cafe, planting myself close to the window. From a high stool I observed people passing by. I read local papers. Especially the ones in Hindi. A police jeep passed by. In the wake of that sarkari automobile there was a familiar figure. Slowly she was approaching the cafe.

At first I thought the man walking beside Nelly was not with her at all. But they were together. No loud quarrel ensuing, and they walked in intimate silence and that silent intimacy, at least to me, revealed enormous tension. With a newspaper I shielded my face. By the time I stepped out of the cafe they had already melted away in the crowd.

The man walking beside Nelly was the one I was after. The way to resolve this mystery was to have a direct word with Nelly. But I wanted to respect her privacy. I had already gone overboard the previous time.

On Monday I planted myself behind the tall oak trees outside Nelly’s apartment. Serrated oak leaves, still and silent. Unshaking. I had no idea about her new schedule. She stepped out at around nine, and that is when I thought it was safe to enter. The keys were still with me. She had not asked me to return the keys to her apartment. Soon I dashed inside like a thief. Everything looked the way it was. I checked her landline, the answering machine. No new messages. Something she had said about the saviour kept coming to me. I sat at the kitchen table. No handwritten messages on yellow legal paper. But she had forgotten a significant object I was not even looking for. Her cellphone on the table. I hesitated for a minute. The phone: unlocked. I went through the text messages. They convinced me beyond doubt that someone else was the saviour, the man walking intimately beside her. The nagging feeling within me was correct. I had his phone number now and this simplified the job. Human problems, just like engineering problems, are amply simplified by numbers. Sitting at the kitchen table I was afraid, though; she may return sooner than expected. If she returns to pick up the mobile, I will simply surrender, no, I will not hide in the closet or under the bed, I said to myself. She didn’t return. Although I felt the neighbour’s eyes on me, the skinny man packing a duffel bag. I used the bathroom and left the cellphone at its original location. Then I locked the apartment.

The
real saviour
also lived in Shimla. Not far from the Railway Board Building. I called him. To get advice on books on Hindutava. How to save and defend ‘our religion’. How to publicise and spread our cause in North America. He said there were already agents in both America and Canada involved with the diasporics. Of course he was gauging me. Our phone conversation dragged on; he mentioned briefly our national ‘traitors’ and invited me to his place during the weekend. Before I met him I thought it prudent to call Nelly. I apologised for having forgotten to return her keys. She met me briefly at the Mall. She looked more calm and collected than I had expected. In her hand a book as usual. She had just finished reading. She was carrying it around because ‘a part of me is still stuck inside’. This is the way she put it.

That is how I came to borrow
The Fall of a Sparrow
, which Nelly received as her retirement gift. While going through those pages I found myself looking for birds, and I found them everywhere.

Saturday, I decided to visit the real saviour. But the moment I stepped out I had a distinct feeling that I was being followed. Someone was keeping a watch on me. On the way to the Railway Board Building (for he lived in the vicinity) I mailed a postcard to my daughters. If something happens this would be their last gift, I thought. Instead of reporting my well-being I wrote in capital letters how much I loved them, and sketched a small flame-throated bulbul for Urvashi and a hornbill for Ursula.

The saviour’s house had a sentry posted outside. The place itself was modest compared to that cottage in Mashobra.

I was led to a special room. For five minutes I sat alone before he appeared. The man was not as tall or youthful as the oncologist. The tartan silk scarf on his accordion neck could have belonged to a Scotsman. My visit lasted no longer than thirty minutes. He didn’t offer tea. I didn’t tie his hands with a rope. But being in the same room with that man stirred a storm within me and made my pulse go quicker. The beatings must stop, I warned him. This one more forceful than the previous; at the same time it carried the air of theatre. Air of repetition. He denied any wrongdoing more or less like the oncologist. But he also tried to play a dirty game. Our conversation ended with three questions, and an answer.

‘Your father. What is his good name?’

‘That man, your father?’

‘Do you know what you have just revealed?’

‘You, sir, are the unfortunate son of a mass murderer.’

Second time in my life I felt like spitting in someone’s face because of a dirty game. But my mouth was dry. I slapped his shoulder. He lost his balance, but recovered quickly, the way mediocre singers do.

The path from the saviour’s front door to the main road was very slippery. As I walked to my hotel room I felt an immense need to hear the madwoman’s chandrayan chants.
Go to the moon and tell them about you.
But she was nowhere around. The one question on the tip of my tongue, the one I didn’t ask the saviour, was the question about his transformation. How come after saving Nelly in 1984 he beat her up in 2009? How come after saving lives during November 1984’s Bigger-Than-Kristallnacht-Barbarity he supported the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat? I had left this question for the very end, but the way our meeting ended, I felt he simply snatched away my right to pose these questions. He played real dirty.

Don’t worry, he said as I was leaving. I have not told her about your father.

Back in my hotel room I tried to read the book I’d borrowed from Nelly:
The Fall of a Sparrow
. But I could not focus. So I tried to think about Father. But I could not. I returned again to the book. Instead of birds or the ornithologist, Salim Ali, my mind drifted towards tigers and jungles and young Orwell, a colonial police officer in Burma, and I thought about his essay ‘Shooting an Elephant’, and I thought again about Father. I could not focus no matter how hard I tried, so I thought again about Nelly. Seeking clarity I waded into dense fog, and waited. When I recovered consciousness I found myself skating on memories. No ice. Sand and soil and grit and green grass. That day Nelly and I, after a game of badminton, had taken the bus to Jantar Mantar. All along I had a feeling someone was following us. Jantar Mantar, the eighteenth-century observatory, reminded her of a painting by de Chirico. Giant stone machines built by the Maharajah to forecast eclipses accurately. We stood by the sundial. A police jeep passed by. Slowly it was making its way towards the Imperial Hotel. It was Father’s jeep.

She had watched me watching the jeep longer than necessary, but ignored it. What is wrong with you? Tell me what is troubling you. You will feel better. I was about to tell her a few facts, but changed my mind. There, leaning against one of the measuring instruments, she took it upon herself to cheer me up, and told me she was a Pisces. What sign are you?
The red disc of the sun was about to set, we also saw a flock of birds, a murmuration, although I didn’t know the word ‘murmuration’ then. Standing so close to each other our lips quivered. My hands remember still the warmth, the texture of her skin. Dark and soft, which produced a burning sensation. I have my period, she told me, and the lights that night were dim and low and yellow
. Back in the campus we walked all the way to her place. Professor Singh’s Fiat, I see it still, parked outside the garage. She didn’t invite me in. The door slammed shut, and I stood by the gnarled bougainvillea hedge for a long time hearing voices. About to leave I heard the voices grow louder. I froze and listened. Neither Punjabi, nor Hindi, nor English, as if the two of them had invented a private lingo.