Love and Longing in Bombay (28 page)

He was filled with a longing so bitter that he wanted all over again to die. He felt as if he was gone from himself. This was not the numb descent towards an inevitable stillness, no, not that at all. Now, in the darkness, Shiv felt a quickening in the night, a throb like a pulse that moved far away, and he was acutely aware of the smallness of the
chabutra
and how tiny Frankie’s room was, with its one sagging
charpai
and the chipped white plaster on the walls and the crudely shaped green windows that could never completely close. Even the moonlight didn’t hide the dirt, the dishevelled ugliness and cowpatties of a small
mofussil
town one step away from a village.

“Have you seen her before?” Shiv said. His voice was loud. He was angry, and he didn’t know quite why.

“Yes,” Frankie said. He stood up straight, alive with pleasure. “Twice before. She comes through every two or three months, I think. Looking so beautiful and so alone.”

“Going where?”

“I don’t know. She catches a
tonga
outside the station. I think to the cantonment. Her attaché has stencilling on it.”

Four miles from the station there was a brigade headquarters and, further away, an aerodrome.

“She’s married,” Shiv said. “Probably going to visit her army husband.”

“Air force,” Frankie said. “And why would she be visiting instead of staying in a lovely air force bungalow? And when she showed me her ticket I saw that she had others. Connections to all over the country, man. Why?”

“I don’t know,” Shiv snapped back. “I don’t
know.
And why would it matter to you and me anyway? She’s a married woman.”

Frankie raised an eyebrow. He put a hand on his hip and his shoulder rose and fell in a long exaggerated shrug. Shiv saw that it was a gesture too large for life, impossible in its elegance, but in the silver light it was entirely conceivable and exactly right, as if the world had suddenly changed, moved and become just a little larger, just enough to contain Frankie Furtado. Frankie, who swept his hair back now and turned majestically away, ridiculous and beautiful. Shiv shut his eyes, pressed on them until he felt pain.

Frankie sang: “
Kahan
gaya
ranchor
?
Duniya
ke
rahane
valon
bolo
,
chcheen
ke
dil
mera
,
kahan
gaya
ranchor
?”
His voice was good, light and yet full of intensity, and ample and rounded with its delight in its own skill. Shiv fled from it.

*

A cut on the palm of a right hand. Small, not too large, but ferocious in the straightness of its edges, in the geometry of its depth. Another on the left forearm, from the same straight edge. This is what Shiv remembered. As he walked home along a dusty lane he remembered the dark pearls of blood frozen on the pale skin. In the morgue he had found the cuts unbearable to look at, this damage, these rents in the surface and the lewd exposure of what lay underneath. Now he clung to the still shape as the only reality. It was the world stripped of all its fictions, this dead body on a grey stone slab, the smell. In only a minute or two, in a lane off Chandni Chowk, a whole life came to merely this, all of Hari’s idealisms, his Congress membership and his Nehru-worship, his belief in change and the careful asceticism of his three khadi
kurtas
and his blushing appetite for mangoes, all of it gone to an odour of rot. All of it ready for the fire. Shiv held out an arm in the darkness and took careful steps with his fingertips on a wall. In the memory of the dead body of his brother there was a certain safety. There was a certain logic there, a brilliant lesson about the nature of the world. This Shiv knew. In Frankie’s falsities, in his fantasies about the past and the future, there was certain disaster. To believe Frankie, to believe in him, that he could exist in Leharia, Shiv knew, was to risk an unfolding in his own chest, an expansion of emotion that would let in, once again, a certain hell of hope and remorse. He had left this behind.

“Did you have a good evening?” Shiv’s brother-in-law, Rajan, liked to sit in an armchair in the courtyard of their house after dinner. Shiv could see the curve of his bald head, and the rounded shapes of his shoulders.

“Yes,” Shiv said, and shut the door to his room behind him. He knew Anuradha
akka
would hurry out of her bedroom in a moment, and want to give him food. He was unspeakably rude, and they were used to this. They had patience. But Shiv lay on his bed and wrapped death around himself. He could hear a bird calling outside, solitary and plaintive. Shiv knew that finally the bird would stop crying out, his sister and her husband would stop whispering to each other and sleep, the house would settle into a late silence, a quietness that would echo the slow creaking of trees into his head. He would feel his self, his soul turn and turn inwards, again and again, until it was as thin-drawn as a wire, shiny and brittle. It was not a good feeling but he knew it well, and it was better than everything else. He waited.

*

He found that he was waiting for her. As he cycled around town, from one tuition to another, he anticipated each turn in the rutted lanes, even though on the other side of each corner there was always the same pool of stagnant water, the same goat leaving a trail of perfect black pellets, the same two familiar
dehati
citizens of Leharia with their flapping
pajamias
and “Ram-Ram, Shiv Bhaiyya.” At the station, Shiv sat on platform number one and watched the trains. Frankie smiled fondly and hummed
Mere
piya
gaye
Rangoon
under his breath every time he strolled by. Rajan believed that Shiv had at last and only naturally succumbed to the charm of steam, that he had become a lover of the black beauties that raced across the horizon, an aficionado of their hulking grace and their sonorous power. He came and sat beside Shiv often, in the quiet moments of the day. “Beyer Garrat loco, latest model, 1939. Used only on the express. Look at that! The total heating area, including the superheater, is more than four thousand square feet.”

Shiv listened to the tales of the trains, and imagined the tracks arrowing across the enormous plains to the north, and to the south across the rocky plateau, and hairpin turns over vertiginous ridges, and through black deserts. He thought of her sitting by a half-closed window, her hands in her lap, and wondered what she was doing. Who was she? Where was she going? Why did she return? As the questions came he understood that everything had changed. Now, at night, instead of long wakefulness and empty, tiring slumber for an hour before dawn, he found a twisting, sweaty, dream-ridden sleep. He saw long visions of childhood, fantastic and drenched with blood, and also adventures in forests, and unspeakable seraglios in which
apsaras
with long black hair twisted against each other. He was hungry all the time, and ate his sister’s
uttapam
with a relish that made her beam and write gladdened letters to his parents. And one evening in August he actually asked Frankie Furtado to sing
Kahan
gaya
ranchor.
Frankie tilted himself against the wall next to a window, a slim streak of white against the black, black clouds, turned his face to the light, and sang as the rain billowed over the green fields.

Shiv believed that he would know, somehow, when she came back, that he would sense her presence in the twisting lanes. Even as he laughed at the Frankie influence on his thoughts he believed this. But when she came he missed her entirely. He was unfastening the cycle-clips from his calves outside the station when Frankie came running out and found him.

“Where were you? She’s here,” Frankie said, clutching hard at Shiv’s shoulder. “She’s here.”

“Where?” There was a solid sheet of water falling from the crenellated roof of the station, spattering loudly against the flowerpots below.

“On the 24 up. She had to wait quite a while for a
tonga
,
all this rain, I suppose. Then finally she left ten, fifteen minutes ago.”

Shiv threw his leg over his cycle and skidded out into the rain. His plastic cap tumbled away and splashed into the mud but Shiv rode on, spraying an arc over the road. He rode hard, leaning against the pedals, feeling the water pull at the wheels in the deep parts. The rain hit him violently in the face, coming straight and parallel to the road, and he laughed. His chest was drenched and cool, but under his raincoat he was sweating. He cycled through the main bazaar, where the little shops looked cozy under the darkness of the rain. Then he struggled against the long slope where the road opened out into the orderly rows of the Civil Lines and the cantonment, and the wind pushed against him, but then he saw the shape of the
tonga
ahead, sailing on the water. He pedalled madly, and then he came up on it and slowed. He could hear the muffled clip-clop, the swish of the wheels. There were small curtain-like pieces of cloth drawn around the back of the
tonga
,
but he could see her feet on the backboard. Shiv went along now, not near but not too far. He listened to the rain, and the sound of his own breathing, in and out. He had no idea what to do next.

Shiv stopped at a big double gate. There was a wide curving drive leading up to the square white building Shiv knew was the military hospital. He could see, as he blinked his eyes against the sting of the drops, the
tonga
stopped next to a balustraded entranceway, the dripping horse, her attaché case, and her, as she hurried, head bent, through the doors. Shiv waited, cold now, shivering. Finally, when it was dark and he could only see the rows of lighted windows, glowing and unreadable, he turned and wheeled his cycle home, coughing.

He woke up the next morning with a fever. His sister saw it in his reddened eyes and careful walk, but he burst past her protestations and rode to the station. It was very quiet now, no rain, and the silence was wet and fresh and everywhere green, and he felt himself lost under the enormity of the smooth grey sky. Frankie was waiting for him at the entrance to the station.

“She’s in the waiting room,” Frankie said.

Shiv nodded impatiently. He walked down the length of the platform, past the fire buckets filled with sand and the two coolies wrapped in checked red sheets and a cloud of
bidi
smoke. Outside the waiting room, he stood for a moment, running hooked fingers through his tangled hair. His eyes burnt drily. He pushed the doors ajar and went in, keeping his gaze on the floor. He found the
matka,
and as he dipped into the water with the ladle he found that he was really thirsty. He poured into a glass, drank, and turned.

“Hello,” he said.

She said nothing, and looked solemnly at him. He realized suddenly what it must take from her, how much courage and strength to travel the length and breadth of the country alone, in these times.

“My name is Shiv Subramaniam,” he said. She looked down, and he was then ashamed of persecuting her as many others must have done on her travels, and he edged away toward the door. But Frankie was backing in, carrying a tray with a teapot and cups.

“Mrs. Chauhan,” Frankie said, swooping down on the small table in front of her. “Tea for you.” He laid out the cups with smart little movements. “There. Mr. Subramaniam, who is our esteemed Station Master
Saab
’s
brother-in-law, will serve.” He looked at Shiv. “Please.” Then he bowed to Mrs. Chauhan, and was gone.

For a moment Shiv stood absolutely still. He felt dizzy. Then he stepped up to the table, bent over, and picked up the teapot. He was angling awkwardly at the waist and the teapot felt very heavy, but he poured one cup, and then the other. He put the pot down.

“Sugar?” he said.

“No,” she said. Her voice was oddly husky. She took the cup and the saucer and held it in her lap. Shiv stood stupidly still, and then realized she was waiting for him. Quickly he picked up his cup and saucer, and tried to keep it steady in his trembling hand. He took a sip, and it was very hot and he usually took sugar, lots of it, but he drank rapidly and watched her. Finally she raised her cup and drank.

“You’ve come here before,” he said.

“I go to the hospital at the base,” she said.

“Ah,” he said. His legs were shaky, and very carefully he sat on the chair to her left. Looking at her directly, he saw that she was very thin, that the way she held her head alertly above her bony shoulders gave her a kind of intrepid dignity.

“I’m looking for my husband.”

“Your husband?”

“He’s missing in Burma,” she said. “He is a pilot.”

There was nothing to say to this.

“He is a fighter pilot,” she said. “He was in the first batch of Indian fighter pilots in the RIAF. He was flying a Hurricane over Burma in 1942. They were protecting transports. They were attacked by Japanese fighters. The last his wingman saw of him was the plane losing height over the jungle. The plane was smoking. That was all they saw.”

She was speaking in an even voice, and the sentences came steadily after one another, without any emotion. It was a story she had told before.

“So, at the hospital … ?”

“I talk to the men who come back. Before it was only a few. Now they’re all coming back. From the prison camps. And the others, from the INA.” She looked at Shiv. “Somebody must have seen him, met him. Only today I met a soldier from the Fourth Gurkhas who said he had heard about a fighter pilot in a camp on the Irrawaddy.”

She had complete confidence. The names of the units and of the faraway places came to her easily.

“So I’ll go to the army headquarters in Delhi, find out who was in that camp. Talk to them.”

She nodded. She finished her tea, and put the cup back on the tray. Then she folded her hands in her lap, and it seemed she was now content to wait, either for the train, or the man from the Fourth Gurkhas, or a flier in a plane above the trees. There was again that strange quietness, as if the world had paused. Again Shiv felt that he was vanishing into the huge wash of grey above, the sudden and endless green to the horizon. He shut his eyes.