Love and Longing in Bombay (14 page)

She walked stiffly, her shoulders high, and with a large black purse held hard against her hip. She stood next to the furniture they had chosen together, in a black skirt and high heels, stylish as always and with the closed face of model on a runway. “Sit, Megha,” Sartaj said. He pointed at the green sofa, and she arranged herself with her hands held in front of her, the purse standing straight up on the coffee table in front of her like a bulwark. Sartaj sat on a chair across from her and held his hands tightly across his stomach. He opened his mouth, and then shut it again.

“Rahul told me he told you,” Megha said.

“Told me what?” Sartaj said, even though he knew. His voice was loud. He wanted her to say it, the word. So that his pain would hurt her, as it always had. But she said it easily, as if she had been practising.

“I’m getting married.”

“Is that why you came? For that?” With the jerk of his head he meant the papers on the dining table behind him, but in the sudden snap of the motion he had also the policeman’s brusqueness, the coiled promise of angry force. She shut her eyes.

“No, I didn’t come for that,” she said. When she looked at him now her eyes were wet, and he felt inside the unhitching of pieces of himself, things drawing apart and falling away. “I came because I thought I should tell you myself.” A tiny shrugging motion with her shoulder, and a hand drawing up and touching her mouth. “I didn’t want you to hear about it like that, from someone else.”

The sunlight in the room dappled the familiar sofa and made it unreal. Sartaj was aware now of the great distances to the surfaces of his body, the strangeness of the hand that lay like a knurled brown slab in his lap. He slumped in his chair, trembling.

“What are you smiling at?” Megha said hesitantly.

Sartaj thought about it. “How did we get so old?”

He laughed then, and after a moment she with him, and the sound sped around the room, over the photographs, the few knick-knacks on the shelf, the stained dining table. They both stopped suddenly, at exactly the same moment.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He struggled himself upright. “Do you want some tea?” he said.

In the kitchen he had to wash the pot, and then the teacups as the water burbled. Then he stood ready with the sugar, alert and concentrated, and the smell of the heating milk and the leaves, and the wisps of steam, sent him reeling into the first morning of their marriage, the first time they had woken together, the profound heat of her skin against him, and her confession that she did not know how to make tea. I told you I can’t cook, she giggled into his neck. But
tea
, Sartaj said, pretending to be angry, but after that he had always made tea in the morning. Now the heat from the stove spread across his knuckles, and he remembered the newspaper splayed across the table between them, and buttery kisses, and he felt his heart wrench, kick to the side like a living thing hurt, and he fell to his knees on the dirty floor, held his head between his hands, and wept. His sobs squeezed out against all the force of his arms, and the wooden doors on the cupboard under the washbasin rattled faintly as he bent and curled against them.

He felt Megha’s hands on his shoulders, and her breath on his forehead as she whispered, “Sartaj, Sartaj,” and he turned away from her, from his own embarrassment, but his strength was gone, and she pulled his head back, into the solid curve of her shoulder. He shook again and she held him tight, hard, and he felt with piercing awareness the pain of her forearm against the back of his neck. He was gone, then, vanished into the familiar fragrance of her perfume, unknown for so long, with its flowers and underlying tinge of salt. He was perfectly still. Her lips moved against his cheek, murmuring, something that he couldn’t quite hear, and then he felt the brush on his mouth, a gift of softness and then the shifting suppleness, what he always experienced as a question. He kissed her desperately, afraid to stop or pause because then she would stop. But she wasn’t stopping, she held his face in her hands, her long palms strongly on cheeks and chin, and sipped at him with little murmurs. Despite himself, Sartaj curved against her, an arm up and around, and he felt the weight of her breasts against his side, and she laughed into his mouth, not here, not here.

They almost made it to the sofa in the drawing room. He walked behind her, and he watched the sheer cloth of her skirt flap faintly against her legs, and her neck under the pinned hair, and the straight back under the expensive white cloth, and he reached with both hands to hold her by the upper arms. Again the vivid shock of the flesh. She fell back easily against him, offering him her neck. Under his nuzzling she squirmed and said, “The curtains.” He stumbled back, dizzy, found the curtains and pulled. When he turned around into the sudden dimness she was sitting on the sofa, her hands together on her knees. “I’m going to marry him,” she said, and her voice was small. Sartaj navigated towards her, one step and then another, and they peered over the sudden distance. He knew it was true and there was nothing he could say to it. He tamped down his entirely unreasonable anger and searched for words. Then she giggled. He followed her eyes and there was the unreasonable bulge in his pyjamas, his red
shamiana
she had called it once.

This time they found each other somewhere over the coffee table. He dragged her over it, one hand on her back and the other in her hair. Once they would have delighted in the lingering discarding of clothes, the slow fall of silk, the shifting of cotton and slow revelations, but now there wasn’t the time. He laboured with the complications of her skirt as she shrugged off her blouse. Her pull at his
nada
dug into his side but his pyjamas came down efficiently with a single movement of her wrist. “Sar-taj,” she said, and took his hands away from her skirt, and with two clear snaps it came away, and then she was against him. Now he dared to look at her face, and in the dark flush of her cheeks there was that concentration, that singular look of intent purpose he had not seen for a long time, and he was no longer afraid. Under his thumbs her nipples bloomed and she shivered helplessly and smiled.

But he buckled under the scrape of her fingernails on his thighs. She was arrogant now, full of secrets and sure, very sure, as he slid to his knees and onto his back. She pressed with her hands on his shoulders, pushing him down, straddling and hovering over him, her breasts a maddening lightness on his chest. Again her fingers moved over his stomach, scuffing, and his face contorted, saying take pity on it, my thing my muscle my cock, take pity on its loneliness, and she grasped him in her hand. She leaned low over him, breathing in the agonized relief in his exhalations. When she looked down along the length of their bodies, he looked with her, and saw her hand grasping hard, and springing from her fist, him, each pulse distinct. They had argued and talked and laughed about what to call their parts, she hated
lund
and
chut
, how vernac and crude and vulgar she said, cock and pussy and fuck felt foreign in his mouth, he said that to her and she laughed fondly and said all I want in your mouth is me and thrust her breast against his lips, me by any other name. But now she groaned, a curious groan mingling hunger and joy and defeat and yearning and she snaked down fast moving like heat over his skin and she took him in her mouth. She reached with her neck, mouth wide open, and took him in.
Me
by
any
other
name.
His mind drunken reeled and she made greedy little noises, slobbering, and he heard his own voice calling, and her head bobbed and weaved, and in the confusion of pleasures he remembered
a
long
walk
along
a
sandy
beach
the
feeling
of
the
sunrise
ahead
,
and raised his head and saw with wonder her lips on him. The stretch of the flesh and beautiful and grotesque. His gasps in his mouth. A burning warmth against the side of his chest through the thin silky cloth on her hips. With his right hand he reached down and pulled pins from her hair. It uncoiled reluctantly and dropped slowly to his stomach.

When she looked up her face was blurred, her eyes hazy from wine. “Condom?” she said. “Condom?” He was still running back, retreating from the edge she had brought him to and relieved she had stopped, and as always the way she pronounced the word with the flat “um” baffled him. “Condom?”

“In the bedroom,” he said finally. He followed her, followed that movement of her haunches, that slight jiggle which still and now made his heart surge in tender ferocity. He found the unopened condom packet easily, in the table next to the bed. She lay back on the bed, twirled off her panties in a single arcing moment that bent her like a bow and back. Orange light spilled through the curtain on the west-facing window, across her belly and into the shadow below. His fingers fumbled at the plastic.

“Give,” she said. She took it from him as he tumbled onto the bed. She kissed his tip with a swirl of tongue, then rolled the rubber down. Then she was over him, squatting. She held him and he thought of the other man viciously. Look where she is now. Look. But who is the cuckold, which is the husband, and he felt despair in his throat, like black and bitter iron. But then he cried out in love, from the scalding oily embrace of her. She took him in, a fraction, just so much, so little. His hips bucked and she put a hand on his stomach. Don’t move. He knew her pleasures. Her engulfing would last an eternity, little by little. She was absolutely still, not moving at all but yes slipping down eighth by infinitesimal inch. On her face an expression of indescribable luxury. Even during the first time together, which had been her first time ever, she had been confident. Afterwards
she says ah
that wasn
’
t too good but I
think
it’s
going
to
get
better
and
rolls
herself
in
a
yellow
silk
sari.
Sartaj saw now that this was the last time, and again flickering shadows of hopelessness chased the pleasure up his spine. He opened his eyes wide, to see her breasts light and golden in the slanting light, against the black brassiere, and he wanted to touch them but he knew not yet. Her mouth was open and he knew she was on the same razor edge between excruciating delight and impatience, holding by the will on to time. For in time there was joy. Children’s shouts tumbling into the room but here the harsh breathing. In Benares
he
is
overwhelmed
by
time
as
an
owl-faced
shopkeeper
displays
for
Megha
his
saris,
he
throws
them
in
the
air
with
a
flourish
and
the
silk
billows,
red
and
gold
and
deep
blue
and
green
,
and
Sartaj
laughs
as
the
colours
float
and
fall
but
he
is
full
of
loss
and
afterwards
on
the
street
she
asks.
It’s
nothing
,
he
says.
Nothing.
Now she exhaled, a wail, “Sartaj it’s so good.” He considered the nuances of “it,” distilled the traces of regret and exultation in her voice, but now with another grateful sigh she gave up, gave in, reached with a right hand to their joining, under her, above him, and with a finger strummed at herself, at the centre. Through her flesh he felt the vibration. Which he remembered. When
she
finds
out
about
him
and
someone
else
she
cries
and
leaves
for
two
weeks
and
three
days.
Later
when
he
finds
out
about
her
,
much
later
,
he
cannot
believe
it
cannot
see
it
in
his
head
and
then
wants
either
to
die
or
kill
someone.
She flick flickered with her finger and he could hear it in her breathing and nothing else was moving and he raised his head to watch and she leaned down suddenly and kissed him and her tongue moved in and out of his mouth furiously. He felt fucked and was grateful. She spoke into his mouth now, a cry, something, and then shook and came down on him the rest of the way, and trembled defencelessly on him, and he held her. Until she was still.

But with his hands spread wide on her buttocks and his face in her neck, her shoulder, he found his rhythm. She stirred and moved with him. There was the fleeting awkwardness, a move this way and that and an unsatisfactory impact and a farting sound from between their bodies, but then she pushed herself up on his chest, palms spread, hair falling over his face, and together they had the movement, and he was moving in and out slicked from the sweet pocket of contentment‚ his thumbs on nipples pulled from the brassiere and rolled, and she made now small sounds on every stroke, halfway between protest and welcome, between all worlds, and Sartaj somewhere aware of the bed below, the roof, the building, and what they were doing high in the air above the earth, the eager grinding of the bodies, he in the body and out of it, mind moving and not moving, sweat on her forearms,
me
by
any
other
name,
the moving sun, and then she looked down at him with eyes shining with wonder, and he held her by the hip and strained up to her, rising off the bed and reaching in her, saying Megha, and she rolled down to meet him, and at the closest point of their meeting he felt the spill, ecstatic and alive, and in a last moment of thought he asked, is this me? Is this you?