The Age of Shiva (39 page)

I could tell how immediately embarrassed Arya was. This man who had once serenaded me with such crudeness—dancing to the same song was all it took now to turn his neck a deep red. I felt self-conscious as well. Perhaps because you were watching, perhaps because it was so unusual to have the formal barrier between a wife and a brother-in-law shed. Or perhaps it was something more dangerous—the way I began to be intoxicated by the memory of Dev's looks, his clothes, his scent. Fortunately, the record was almost over—we retired to different corners of the room the instant it came to an end.

You hated the flip side, “Hawaiian Wedding Song,” but put it on today. You tried to draw us back, but soon realized how impossible it was to lure us into dancing to so slow and intimate a tune. Instead, you began making exaggerated sweeps across the floor with arms raised, as if waltzing to Andy Williams' crooning with an imaginary partner. As usual, the song made you sleepy—when the last note faded, you yawned on cue.

But you were unwilling to let the evening end just yet. When Arya kissed you good night, you put up such a fuss that he agreed to sit by your bedside and relate a story to you.

“Once there was a boy named Ashvin,” Arya began. “Unlike other boys, Ashvin was special—he had not only Shiva, but also Vishnu living in him.”

“Shiva was quiet, and Vishnu was lively,” you responded. By now, you could recite all the different attributes for the two from Arya's letters. “One came from the moon, and the other from the sun.”

“So you can imagine how much of a problem this caused,” Arya said. He began spinning out a variation of the tales in his letters, about how Shiva wanted tranquillity for Ashvin, while Vishnu kept encouraging the boy to shout and laugh. In this one, instead of the two gods battling over Ashvin, Vishnu transformed himself into a beautiful woman to seduce Shiva and keep the peace between them. “Shiva found himself helpless in front of her beauty—the soft skin, which was the color of lotus petals, the silken hands and feet, the sweet, succulent lips.” By the time Shiva succumbed to Vishnu's charms to become one with him and restore harmony to the world, you were asleep.

Arya kissed you. “He reminds me so much of Dev when he was the same age.” Outside, atom bombs still went off on the street, rocket flashes lit up the sky. Arya covered your sleeping form to the waist with a sheet, then followed me out into the drawing room.

We stood around awkwardly, on opposite sides of the sofa. “I suppose I should be going.” The intonation suggested a question more than a statement.

It would have been a simple matter to reply, to agree with him. But I hesitated—seeing Arya put you to sleep like Dev used to had heightened my intoxication. It wasn't arousal I felt but a headiness, a nostalgia, so overwhelming that it was almost physical. How long had I inhaled the scent of Dev's toiletries without being aware of it, brushed against his kurta without thinking about it twice? Over how many years had the contours of his facial features, so similar to Arya's, been impressed into my mind? Whether or not I had been in love with Dev, or attracted to him, or happy, or satisfied, made no difference. His memories had been forever implanted within me, their rootholds tenacious and deep, their shoots ready, at the slightest stimulus, to start rising back into life. I could no more help responding to these memories than I could control a reflex in my knee or the twitching of an eye.

My hesitation must have been plain for Arya to see. He moved closer. “I got your letter,” he said. “I can't tell you how depressed it left me. It wasn't just my own disappointment I could taste, but Sandhya's as well. Tell me, what can I do to show you how much I've changed? If not for me, then at least so that Sandhya can be at rest.”

I tried to reply, tried to summon up my letter and the points I had enumerated in it. But the reasons I had listed didn't cooperate—they danced around, refusing to be pinned down in my head. All I could think of was Dev's after-shave—why had its scent not dissipated as yet? It had been hours since Arya had bathed.

“You don't know how awful the last four months have been. Hiding in filthy holes, eating rotten food, scurrying from place to place every night. The only thing that separated me from a rat's existence was the hope that I would be able to make it here someday. Everyone told me not to leave the safety of the small towns, but I was ready to risk everything, just to see you and Ashvin.”

His face loomed closer now, like some moon trying to ensnare me in its gravity. His eyes were large and absorbing, as I remembered from those days in Nizamuddin. I felt again the sensation of being drawn in by his unwavering stare—was he trying to hypnotize me?

“I don't expect to be able to enjoy my liberty much longer. I can feel them closing in on me—every day I think that this might be the last one I'm free. They've already caught three out of the five HRM people who work at my level. One of them, Madhuram, Indira Gandhi's goons tortured so badly, I heard that he might not survive. If I'm going to languish in some prison cell, I need some hope to cling on to—or if not that, at least a memory.”

His fingers brushed the back of my wrist resting on the sofa. Was there a reason I didn't move away, why I allowed him to continue stroking? I could feel his hand sliding over mine now and squeezing it. “It would mean so much to me,” Arya whispered. Why were my own fingers so acquiescent, why didn't they protest in any way?

The other hand was on my shoulder now, his lips in my hair, his chin against the nape of my neck. Each contact hushed and dreamlike—could he have succeeded in his attempts to mesmerize me? He stood unmoving behind me for a long time, as if he had bitten me in secret and was waiting for the venom to work its way through my body. Finally, when there was no resistance left, I felt him turn me around and kiss me. The couch seemed to vanish, like a prop whisked off the stage in a play. The floor stretched out all around us, smooth and white and bare.

Hadn't I lived through this once before—another uncushioned floor somewhere long ago in my past? This time, though, a pillow from the sofa waited—I felt it cradle my head as I reclined in the center of my drawing room. Arya stared down at me, as if poised at the edge of an exclusive pool, whose waters he could finally explore. I imagined Sandhya hovering somewhere behind him, her eyes starry with approval, her lips spread in a grateful smile.

And now Arya kneeled shirtless between my legs, and I could see how the hairs flecking his chest had begun to whiten like the ones on his head. He cradled my neck in the crook of an arm to get to the buttons of my blouse. As I felt the cloth lift from my body, I wondered if such a momentous occasion in my life shouldn't be marked once more by something melodramatic like the lights going off. Perhaps Nehru or Gandhiji could emerge from the darkness and stand next to Sandhya to watch, maybe even applaud. At the very least, the ceiling should open up above us to reveal a sky ablaze with fireworks.

But the night outside was not visible from where I lay—even the firecracker bursts on the street were muffled by the door to the bedroom in between. The electricity remained on, harsh and glaring, to illuminate Arya as he stripped the rest of his clothes off. The scent of Cinthol and Godrej vanished abruptly—what took its place was the smell of his desire. The familiar sweet emanation of overripe fruit, which began permeating the air in the room.

The odor jarred me out of my trance. The cells in my brain snapped alert as Arya loosened the drawstring of my petticoat. I felt the material being pulled down over my thighs, the breezy sensation of bareness as my pubic hair was exposed.
Was this what I wanted?
—the question lit up in my mind. Arya gazed down again, as if admiring the waters of his pool one final time before wading into them. Then, with a contented exhalation, he sank into me, and his throat emitted a groan.

At first, he seemed satisfied to simply lie there. His breath smelled of turnips, from the curry I had fed him; his skin was slick, as if oil had seeped from his pores. Even after all the weight he had lost, his body was still heavier than Dev's. “I've dreamt of this since the night you first arrived in Nizamuddin,” he whispered boyishly into my ear. I waited under him without breathing, wondering if by some miracle, I might satisfy him with a hug.

He began inching himself into position, and I recognized what he was preparing for. How should I slow him down, explain the spell from which I had just emerged?

“All those years I waited patiently on the sidelines,” Arya said. “Never allowing myself to appear too interested in case I scared you away. The letters I wrote so painstakingly—did your response have to be so curt? ‘I always want to think of you as Ashvin's uncle.' Why? Am I not good enough to be your husband? Am I not as good enough as my brother? Is he the only one who gets to marry someone as beautiful and perfect and sophisticated as a Sawhney girl?” As if to punctuate his last point, I felt his penis jab against my groin.

So far, I only had an abstract intimation of the danger into which I had thrust myself. Now, with Arya signaling the imminence of his entry, the full seriousness of my situation seized me. I tried to squirm out from under him, but his arms caged me in like bars. His body was everywhere—his chest pressing into my breasts, his crotch rubbing against my pelvis, his thighs smearing me with their sweat. I panicked at the image of the violation to come, at the thought of my own powerless-ness. The muted explosions outside reminded me that there would be little chance of being heard if I shouted for help. “I don't want to do this. Let me go, please,” I said. Even to me, it sounded as if I was just laboring through the motions, making one last protest for form, after leading him on.

“Don't worry, I'm not here to hurt you,” Arya said, as he slid his thickness against my thigh. He kissed my neck, then raised himself on his arms, as if readying himself for the plunge. “I'm just here to change your mind.”

I braced myself. Was there some way of making it less repugnant, by focusing my attention elsewhere? Then I heard you call out to me. “Mummy,” you said, and I bent back my head to see an upside-down image of you standing sleepily outside the bedroom door. “The atom bombs woke me up.” Your voice quavered—had you come out because you sensed something awry?

I began to say your name, but it emerged as a sob. “It's all right, Ashvin,” Arya said. “Go back inside.”

But you moved closer. “Did you hurt Mummy? Why is she crying? What happened to your clothes?”

Arya sat back up on his knees, undaunted by his swinging nakedness. I reached out towards my sari, to drape it over myself like a sheet. “Go back to bed. Yara uncle will tell you when you can come out again.” He patted you firmly back towards your room.

“No. I want Mummy to come with me.” You took my hand and tried to pull me up from under Arya.

“Yara uncle's going to get very angry if you don't listen to him. Now leave your mummy alone and get back inside.”

“No.”

For a moment, the two of you silently challenged each other with your stares. Then Arya slapped you. You were stunned for an instant, then flew back at him, and began raining your fists down on his head. “Let Mummy go!” you shouted, trying to topple him over with a wrestling lock around the neck. Arya bore your attempts for a few seconds, then tore your hands off and sent you careering into the gramophone console. The radio teetered in place, but a stack of records and the gramophone itself slid off and crashed onto the floor. You lay dazed on the ground, surrounded by glossy black fragments of broken record.

“How dare you touch my son!” I shouted, striking my palm against Arya's face. He caught my wrist and hit me back—I tasted blood in my mouth. We scuffled on the floor, and I tried to pull away, but Arya grabbed me by the shoulder and dragged me back. “Ashvin,” I gasped, trying to twist around to see if you were still lying hurt on the ground.

But you were already standing, throwing pieces of the broken gramophone at Arya. The handle, the microphone, a bracket that had come off—they all missed and clanged harmlessly to the floor. Then you spotted the turntable and took the record off. You hurled it across the room, striking your uncle in the face and shattering the bridge of his nose.

Arya's blood dripped onto my face, speckled the parting of my hair. From the landing outside our flat, Zaida's voice called out, asking if everything was all right. Hearing it, Arya sprang up with a roar. I tried to latch onto his foot, in case he went for you once more. Instead, he lunged to the door and threw it open. Still naked and bleeding and bellowing, Arya charged past Zaida, down the steps towards the street.

THAT NIGHT, AS ZAIDA
helped me wash his blood out of my hair, I kept thinking of Arya skulking outside. I wondered if he would come back, and almost asked her to stay. By the time she left, after making sure we had suffered only cuts and bruises, it was so late that even the celebrations outside were dying down. You stood in the balcony, gazing at the sky to catch the last remaining rocket flashes. Below, urchins roamed the pavements, searching through the litter for unexploded firecrackers. You shivered, even though the night was warm with smoke. I put my arm around your waist and led you back inside.

We pushed the beds together for the night, the way they used to be—you were too upset to leave my side. For a while I sat straddling the seam between the two mattresses, rubbing Iodex over your bruises. You neither wanted to play a game nor be told a story. Instead, you worked your head into my lap and stared at me, your eyes doleful, your face full of turmoil. Every once in a while you would begin a sentence, but then not complete it—about Yara uncle, about me, about yourself. A part of me wanted to squeeze your trauma away, wipe from your memory the sight on the floor. I felt a heaviness in my heart, or perhaps it was shame, that you had seen your mother in that condition. Surprisingly, I also felt guilt—wasn't it enough to have lost your father, that for my sake, you had now been forced to drive your uncle away? “Will he come back?” you asked as I rubbed in the Iodex. I heard fear in your voice, mixed with a trace of wistfulness.