Leela's Book (46 page)

‘But it was Humayun’s intention to marry Aisha.’

‘Was it?’

‘And,’ Urvashi said, in a small voice, ‘she told me that the rapist was an old Hindu man.’

Ash glanced at Urvashi, who was sitting with her eyes cast down, fiddling with a gold Islamic pendant round her neck. He knew that he ought to submit the results of the sample he had analysed to the police. What he wasn’t clear about was whether he was legally obliged to draw their attention to the genetic match he had discovered (quite by chance, after all). Without this coincidence there was very little likelihood that Shiva Prasad’s supposed crime would ever be discovered. Indeed, the police would be more likely to deduce that Aisha had been raped by a relative and would pursue that line of prosecution instead.

‘Nothing is ever one hundred per cent certain in genetics but assuming neither of the samples was contaminated …’ Ash began. He got to his feet suddenly. ‘But it may easily have been contaminated! I tested Shiva Prasad’s DNA in my lab. There could easily have been cross-contamination there.’

Urvashi looked up at him in relief. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it could easily have been contaminated. Have you told Sunita yet?’

‘No.’

‘That’s good. It would have been very difficult for her. She loves her father.’

He sat down again, and finally he said, ‘But I must tell the police that the sample has been analysed. That is my duty.’

She picked up the telephone on the desk, consulted an address book and dialled. Then she held the receiver out to him. Ash spoke to the policeman in Hindi, trying to sound authoritative. He threw in some words of English, to show that he meant business. But the policeman wasn’t getting it. ‘Put me through to your superior,’ Ash said at last, growing annoyed.

The superior took a long time to come to the phone. This time, Ash explained that he was the son of Professor Chaturvedi from Nizamuddin West, G-block.

‘Professor who?’ This man wasn’t getting it either.

Ash explained the story all over again – of the rape, the samples of bodily fluids taken by the doctor, the fact that he himself had analysed them.

‘But, sir,’ the superior officer said, ‘the girl in question came in yesterday. She withdrew the rape allegation and we let the boy go.’

Ash put his hand over the receiver and consulted with Urvashi.

‘It’s true,’ she said, ‘they’ve disappeared – they’ve eloped.’

The policeman heard her answer. ‘Now that the charges have been dropped and the girl has absconded, we cannot mount an investigation. The case is a dead end, sir.’

‘What if my work shows who the rapist is?’ Ash asked.

‘Very helpful, sir, thank you. But first bring the girl back to Delhi. Till then, let me assure you, there is nothing we can do.’

In the room next door, Ram, who had rung his sister half an hour ago on his new mobile to ask if he could come over for a chat, and had been told that she was expecting Ash Chaturvedi any moment, gloomily accepted a beer from Feroze and lapsed into a self-pitying silence.

‘What are they discussing in there?’ he asked Feroze at last. They had met only a few times but he found his sister’s Muslim husband to be a sympathetic, straightforward person. Normally they liked to talk business but not today.

Feroze shrugged in answer to Ram’s question – as if to imply that life was full of benign and mildly intriguing mysteries, which was not at all Ram’s take on the issue. ‘Something to do with Ash Chaturvedi’s genetics work. Do you want another drink?’

Ram shook his head. For a few moments the only sound was the murmuring of voices – those of Urvashi and Ash – that came from behind the door of the study. Ram got up and walked towards the front door. ‘I’ll wait in the garden,’ he said. ‘I need to smoke a cigarette.’

Feroze nodded and picked up the book he had been reading. ‘She’s made haleem. This time you should stay for dinner.’

‘Ok,’ Ram said, fleeing into the garden.

He knew that Ash had been avoiding him since the night they spent together. During the wedding lunch he wouldn’t even look him in the eye or make any special sign of recognition. He no longer came online at midnight, he didn’t come to the phone when Ram called the house – or worse, sent Sunita to talk in his place. The most terrible thing was that Ram now felt jealous almost all the time. Until the wedding, he was certain that nothing carnal had yet occurred between Ash and Sunita, but every night that had passed since then had been a torment. Late at night he woke up sweating, imagining his lover locked in the most disgusting of embraces with his sister; and since all of this was quite disturbing, and knowing that he needed someone to talk to about what was happening in his head, he had rung Urvashi to ask her to meet him and listen to his problems. Yesterday he had considered telling Auntie Leela, but decided against it at the last minute – and now, he found that Ash had beaten him to it and was confiding in Urvashi himself.

Could Ash really be telling Urvashi what had happened? And if so, what would she say? And the notion suddenly entered Ram’s head that Urvashi herself might well consider that her brother was guilty of interfering in the special pact of marriage.

He sat down on the bench next to his sister’s ferns, and dismissed the thought impatiently. He was angered by the complacency of these married people, who always assumed that their way was right. He had known Ash for just as long as Sunita had. Simply because one relationship was legitimate in the eyes of the world, and the other was not, did not make it better.

But he wondered about Ash, nevertheless: about what would really make him happy. On the wedding night, Ram had bragged to Ash of how they could go travelling together, to London and Paris and New York. He had depicted them walking through Leicester Square, spending Uncle Hari’s money in bars and nightclubs, climbing the Eiffel Tower, swimming in the skin-shrivellingly cold European seas, eating aphrodisiacal oysters and millionaire’s caviar. But now, as he smoked, a second vision came to Ram, of Ash in his other, more conventional avatar: as a husband, boating with Sunita through the verdant backwaters of Kerala; wearing baggy shorts as he played with her in the surf on a Goan beach; shopping for the things that husbands and wives liked to buy – curtains, he supposed, for the bedroom, vegetables for dinner, garments for their children.

He placed these competing visions side by side, knowing full well that they could not co-exist. Ash was too shy to be deceptive – and he would always fear opprobrium. Ram himself had got used to the secrecy that was required in India; he didn’t mind it; as long as one didn’t say it out loud it was even possible to be open, demonstrative, loving. But Ash would never behave like that. He would cower in the shadows; he would play the faithful husband; and as soon as he could manage it he would become – actually become – a doting father.

Meanwhile, there was the question of keeping the relationship secret from Uncle Hari. And for the first time, Ram wondered whether it was the kind of offence that warranted a family rift – disinheritance, even.

Ram lit another cigarette and drew the smoke deep into his lungs, willing it to calm the anger he felt at the injustice. He breathed it in and out, reminding himself that nothing could be improved on in his life; he knew that, truly he did. He thought of all the smart places he would visit on his travels, all the money that was his to spend, and all the gorgeous men that he would meet. Ash was just one tree in the forest – a particularly touching, lost and lovely tree, it was true – but just one, nevertheless. And Ram forced himself to see the forest of his life stretching away, through London to New York, into the green misty distance.

And yet, even as he sat in the dark, he wondered how soon he could persuade Ash to spend another night with him – at least one before he left on honeymoon –
just one more tryst before everything ended
.

Inside the house he heard voices, and Ram knew that Urvashi’s meeting with Ash had ended. In a minute, they would come face to face. He stubbed out the cigarette, stood up and walked over to the front door. ‘I have to get home,’ Ram heard Ash say to Urvashi – he was declining some invitation – ‘Sunita is waiting for me. We’re going to her parents’ … to your parents’, for Diwali dinner.’

‘You must come round for a meal when you get back from your honeymoon,’ said Feroze to Ash. ‘When are you leaving?’

‘Friday,’ Ash said. ‘We’re back in two weeks’ time.’

‘We’ll make a plan with Sunita as soon as you return,’ Feroze said, and then the door opened, light from the house spilt out into the garden, and suddenly Ash was standing there before him. Ram looked up and saw the man he had spent the night with, the man he had chatted with twice a week for the past twelve months, the man who blinked at him now through his glasses and smiled so suddenly that Ram flinched. Then the smile disappeared from Ash’s face, he pushed his glasses back onto his nose, said goodbye to Urvashi and Feroze, and without a word to Ram, almost ran away down the path to the gate.

‘You can eat Diwali dinner with us instead then,’ Feroze said to his brother-in-law. Ram barely noticed that this invitation directly contravened his father’s edict. He was staring up at his sister.

‘What was Ash Chaturvedi doing here?’ he asked her.

A fearful expression came over her face, and she half turned away to go into the house.

‘Tell me what he was saying,’ Ram insisted.

‘He analysed the DNA of the man who raped our maid,’ Feroze said soothingly. ‘Come inside. I’ll get you another beer.’

‘What was he saying to you?’ Ram almost shouted at Urvashi.

‘He did a DNA test,’ she said, looking back at him at last. ‘But the results were contaminated,’ she went on, and her voice grew in confidence the more she spoke, ‘and the police aren’t interested, and the maid has run away, so there is nothing we can do at all tonight, except celebrate Diwali together. Come inside and have dinner with us, just like Feroze said.’

And before Ram could follow Sunita’s husband down the path to wherever he was going in the world, she pulled him into the house and shut the door behind him.

All the way home from the restaurant in the car, Vyasa and Bharati drove in silence.

‘You’ll have to get a test done, to prove it,’ he said suddenly as they turned into Nizamuddin West.

Bharati glanced over at him and said, in a tone of voice far too jaded for a twenty-two-year-old (even she felt that): ‘We look the same, Baba, stop being a dickhead.’

He began to interrupt her (‘Don’t you dare talk to your—’) but the look she gave him was so withering that the phrase dried up in his mouth.

‘You did sleep with her like she claims, right?’ she said.

‘Once.’

‘Once is enough, Baba, to get a female pregnant. Is there anyone else out there, do you think, reeling from your failure to contracept them?’

By now they had reached the house. Bharati got out of the car, slammed the door behind her and ran up the steps – to find Pablo in the sitting-room, drinking beer with Ash, who had returned from an excruciating dinner at his in-laws.

Bharati frowned at Pablo most severely once she’d got him out of the house. He had arrived this evening on the night flight from Calcutta and come straight over. They stood in the garden and had a whispered conversation.

‘I saw Leela today. I’ve told my father. I don’t want to stay here tonight. Can I stay at yours?’

‘Yes, of course.’

He bent down and kissed her but she shook him off.

‘Listen, if you write a story about the things you found out at Santiniketan I’ll kill you.’

‘I was thinking, if I discussed it with my editor—’

‘No!’

‘It’s an important story, the story of the poetry – this dual authorship, their shared creativity—’

‘It’s my life, you bastard. You’ll disgrace my family.’

‘But if—’

‘And anyway,’ she went on before he could reply, ‘they’ll never print something unflattering about Hari’s wife; and really, Pablo, it’s not the kind of story that a journalist should be investigating, quite frankly. You did your lingam story, didn’t you?’

‘That thing!’

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, laughing at him unkindly, ‘did I mess up your scoop? Did I …?’

‘Yes,’ he said, placing as much pathos as he could on that one word, ‘but you’re right. I won’t mention it to anyone.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, and bestowed a commiserating kiss upon him.

It was only much later that night, as they lay in bed together listening to Diwali fireworks exploding all over the city, that Pablo dared to ask, ‘So what did he say when you told him?’

‘Who?’

‘Your father.’

Bharati thought of how he had denied at first that such a thing was possible, and how she had had to spell it out. She considered how best to reply to Pablo. ‘He fucked up,’ she said flippantly.

‘What?’

‘In the epic, Ved Vyasa gets three women pregnant, two sisters and—’

‘The servant.’

She laughed. ‘You know everything.’ Then she said, in a more serious voice, ‘I think my father is in shock. But really – what was wrong with him? Indira Gandhi was sterilising the villages, and there he was, out there in the sticks, reproducing. Who did he think he was?’

‘And Ash, what does he think?’

‘I haven’t told him yet.’

‘Don’t you—’ he began.

But she turned round and put a finger to his lips. ‘Not yet, no.’

And then one more: ‘What did you think of her?’

There was a long silence.

‘I’m not sure. She gave me up.’

‘Presumably she thought it was for the best.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Did you like her? I liked her.’

‘Maybe. I don’t know. Let’s see.’

Next morning it was still dark when she woke – and her first thought was:
I do like her after all
. She was too proud to admit this to anyone, of course; and she felt a lonely pang for Ash, whose own mother remained in a state of deadness.

She turned over restlessly in bed and Pablo whispered, ‘Are you awake?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, let’s get dressed. I’ll take you somewhere special.’

‘Where?’