A Dream of Horses & Other Stories (5 page)

Hills seem to get taller and taller as we approach the falls. The leaves of trees that grow in these shadowy parts are of a pale green silhouetted against a sky, blue and full of light, where a half moon is already beginning to show. The trees are unusually silent, there are no birds or animals visible to the eye. My friend finds a second trail that saves us some walking and I am tempted to try. Halfway, we slip over dry leaves and it is only a miracle that we manage to come up on both legs on the other side. My sight falls on a kitten tearing apart a mouse in a cleft along the trail. We continue to walk, and soon we begin to hear the plash of water. Crossing a wooden bridge, which looks as if it will not see another summer, we go down a few steps cut into the hill,
and find ourselves standing at the edge of the pool into which water is falling in narrow streams over the rocks on the other side: this is all that remains of the waterfall. We wash our faces and, removing our shoes, dip our legs in the pool. Its coolness makes us light and cheerful. Two boys emerge from under the waterfall, their brown skins glisten as they run naked towards the brush where they have left their clothes. Taking turns rubbing each other with a rag brought for that purpose, they talk in a language we cannot understand.

My friend is now telling me about his trip into the interiors with a tribal leader during his election campaign last winter: ‘Thick clouds had covered the moon. But on either side of the road, sleeping in the open, were countless people who had walked long distances through the forest to see their leader. People caught in the war between the government and the guerrillas. Uprooted and fearing for their lives. The guerrillas in the forests prodded them every now and then to join in
their
war, while the state was doing all it could to make them soldiers in a very special kind of ‘civil resistance’ – note the irony – by promising each of them a self-loading rifle and a paltry allowance. Moving them to camps set up for this purpose alone. Forcibly removing people from their homes and disrupting their peaceful existence to help the state fight the guerrillas. And when they tired of all this fighting they could always be useful to the industries in the region. What a scheme! Isn’t it incredible? And we still have a real beauty of that book with all the world’s protections against abuse of civil liberties.

‘A snake. A long, red snake melting into the horizon. That’s how I first saw all those people patiently walking to the assembly, to listen to their leader, to pledge support. I felt there was some point in all this.’ My friend has fallen silent, the way he does when he is confused or simply unwilling to waste more words.

I know what happened. I have heard it before. I have felt it before. You can taste the success on your lips, but it is only a
word spiralling in your head. It never comes. Something else comes in its place. Failure. Disappointment. I do not say any of this to him. Instead I tell him we are, in our separate ways, in the lonely business of rolling dice and dealing cards. We may learn tricks on the way, but that is about all we can do.

It is getting dark and we have a long climb ahead. By the time we cross the battered bridge, the light has left the sky; it is weightless, rising higher and higher until stars puncture its fabric. In a hut, just where the climb begins, a solitary man has kindled a fire and is playing a flute. Gloom fills my heart and mercifully ejects all fears of the dark, of animals and phantoms. But my friend walks fast, and every now and then lights a match, perhaps to scare away creatures hiding in the trees or in the rocks. Breeze that is by turn cool and warm flows over us, taking away the drops of sweat on our faces and necks. We stop only twice to get our wind back. We reach the road in less than a quarter of an hour. My fingers are swollen, I move them like apes do to make them thin and long again.

My friend has to make a call, and I need a sip of water. So we walk along the road that cuts across the meadows to the kiosk where we take turns drinking from a bottle before he goes into one of the phone booths. I want to call her. But I know there is little point; the pit of despair separates us. A beating of drums lures me out of the kiosk. I find locals arrive in small groups and assemble in a nearby ground where a strange rite has commenced – men and women, joined to one another in chain-like formations, perform some sort of a tap dance around an effigy, their feet churning dust to the beat of the drums. I grab a boy from the shoulder and ask about the ceremony. From whatever little I gather it is to commemorate the recent death of one of their kin. To me it sounds nothing like the music of grief, and maybe it is not. I do not realise when my friend joins me. We watch until clouds of dust have completely filled the ground and only the beating of drums can be heard.

For dinner we eat a local form of spaghetti cooked in a red sauce. Before I fall asleep, just as I close my eyes, I see the words ‘SHOOT TO KILL’ painted in white on the cliff that towers above the shooting range inside the cantonment.

Next morning we walk towards the church under a sky low and grey with clouds. There are pines around it, but the grounds look pale and unkept. Under a few trees, stone benches gather dust, awaiting visitors. The church is over a century old though it appears much older, like a medieval chapel in some Scottish village. It is open now, and you can see people sitting in the pews listening to the vicar who is making most of this opportunity, reciting in an animated voice and a language I can barely understand something to do with a tussle between Christ and Lucifer. Outside, several shoes and slippers are stacked in pairs next to the front wall: harmless temple practices brought over to other doorsills. While my friend busies himself with observing the stonework, I drift towards a bench where a little girl is sitting, absorbed in a game of marbles she is playing with herself. The sound of my approaching step makes her look up. Her small arms and legs are coated with dust, her hair unwashed and her frock dirty and torn in places; the skin of her face is parched and scabrous. Yet her eyes are alive, deep dark pools that will drown anything that falls into them. And with these liquid eyes, she smiles at me, and the smile enters me, fills me.

Tahiti

One who loves must share the fate of his loved one
.
Mikhail Bulgakov

I

For some time now I have lived in the hills, in a settlement built a century or two past with not a few old, impressive structures in it. What will, what labour must have gone into them, today less than a drop in the pool of time. Weight of age-old stone on trembling spines, again and again and again. Occasionally, they’d bring to mind an ancient monastery I had visited in those remote mountains of which Kipling had spoken so reverentially, towering high atop a cliff, blunting its summit. Above was the clear blue sky and behind the rugged precipices, snow in their highest crevices, even as the dry terrain below merged far off into the horizon.

That thrust which begat art in rocks so close to heavens is lost on us. Maybe some of it remains. There still exist a few who deliver up to its call, perishing gladly drinking its glory. But enough of this. Why obscure a plain matter unnecessarily?

The place I speak of is spread over two adjoining hills. Twenty-one even-sized cottages with slanting tile roofs mark the
green slope of one hill in a rising curve. Together, they give the impression of a large orange boomerang lying on the grass as the road suddenly bends about the hill across the valley, clearing the view. Most of the cottages are privately owned, the few remaining ones have been retained by the authorities for lodging senior public servants on a holiday. Pines and deodars climb the hills from all sides creating a most picturesque landscape. At its centre is a clubhouse, circular in shape with an aquamarine dome, that provides for satellite television and indoor recreation, houses a small pool and a bar serving some very fine spirits.

To reach the cottages you must first negotiate the winding road about the neighbouring hill that in its lower stretch is arrested on either side by shops of everyday supplies and local craft dealers such as are common in small mountain towns, and a few eating places. Upon climbing up from the bazaar for about half a mile the road suddenly forks, one half dropping slightly to the left meanders about the hill, crosses over to the next, and ends at the clubhouse, while the other half continues its ascent amid ancient pines to reach a clearing where an old library and the ruins of a church keep each other company. Visitors are not many and chiefly consist of friends or families of those who own the cottages. Locals are scattered in the lower folds of the hills living mostly in a dismal state.

Like the cottages, the clubhouse is a colonial legacy. It is managed and maintained by means of a yearly grant from the authorities and an annual fee paid by its members. Most of the cottages are vacant all the time; their owners come visiting once in a few years when the psychosis of living seeps so deep that they are obliged to take the air.

On my first visit to the clubhouse the manager gladly took me around and offered me drinks. Being new to the place, I was somewhat surprised at being so entertained. But later it occurred to me that the settlement’s obscurity had snuffed out any opportunities that could have been available to the locals to earn a trifle
extra. Barely receiving a few guests in a year limited his secondary earnings considerably and, smelling an opportunity, he entertained me for two full hours.

Outside it had become incredibly dark. Black clouds with bloated bellies had crept from the north, swallowing up the stars. He said it would snow in the night, and I saw this as my chance. I paid, adding a handsome tip. It appeared to me that I would need his company one way or the other as time moved on.

Seasons change. Nights assault days more easily with the approaching winter. It snowed on my first night up here. All night I watched the snow fall while Bach played in the background, lost in a kind of tug-of-war between the past and the future.

But today? Today nothing. Nothing except this silence, this wish for the world to come anew simply through my being.

I arrived here seven months ago. At about noon one day I found myself negotiating the bend about the hill I described before. A two-hour ride in an old and rickety bus from the town where I had been staying for a week. In the early hours of that morning there were not many passengers in the terminal. I sat some rows behind the driver and looked out to the several stalls with tin roofs which served tea and snacks to passengers and crowded either side of the terminal’s entrance. To begin with it had not been a bright morning, but as I took the seat on the bus the clouds quickly thickened and soon there was snow.

The attendant at the rest house where I had stayed for a week had told me about the settlement. He described it, as hill men do, with such vividness that I was interested. He offered to make arrangements for my stay there – he knew of a cottage that was available on rent. From there on things fell smoothly in place.

Trumpeting through the outskirts of town, the bus joined the sparse traffic on the route to the settlement. The road, cut into the mountainside, passed through a wooded expanse and not infrequently looked upon the valley that was progressively being
covered with a thin coat of snow. From my window I saw how the snowflakes fell silently on the pine needles and, unable to maintain their hold, slipped down to the ground. The pines looked like giants standing up in snow with bated breath watching the bus move at its leisurely pace. A profound silence hung over the entire forest. The only sound you heard clearly was of the overworked engine that seemed to suggest a lifetime of service, now in need of an overhaul. There were hardly a few passengers in the bus. The one sitting across had already dozed off with his legs closed tightly around a large dirty sack of potatoes. Two rows behind sat a woman with a young girl; the girl, wrapped in woollens, now and then mumbled something in the woman’s ear that did not fail to bring a smile to the her lips.

In that white morning, for a reason I could scarcely fathom, I felt the darkness lift slightly. I recalled how, for far too long a time, I had wandered through life like a sleepwalker, walking through streets barely familiar. The city had oppressed me much and at last I was happy to escape from it. For some years, I had been attached to a publishing firm, a job that I had held on to since my early runaway success as a writer.

Then on one of those days when you can see it clearly for all its worth, I resigned from the firm and, upon completing a few pending assignments, found myself heading for the mountains.

Ah, the mountains. They rise before you from the depths of earth and in no time reach the blue dome, where – near their crown – they too take on a bluish hue.

II

The weather cleared up just as the bus crawled through the narrow street of the bazaar. Leaving the bus I found a tea stall where men were drinking tea and chatting incessantly. I sat on a bench and waited. In the distance, I could see the conical roof of the abandoned church that had somehow managed to escape the
pine cover closing on it. Also visible slightly below, as I was soon to find out, was the cupola of the building that housed the library.

Sitting beside me was the man who had slept during the entire journey with his legs tightly closed round the sack of potatoes, sipping tea and absorbed in thought. He did not notice me at first, but then recovering somewhat asked if I was a first-time visitor. He smiled easily, a smile that deepened the creases on his face and left bare a tale of hardships, slight melancholy clouding his eyes. I asked him for directions to the cottages, which he clearly provided. Then balancing the sack across his back, he swiftly descended into the valley by the steep mud path that lay behind the stall.

At first I strolled through the bazaar looking now and then at the displayed items outside the shops. But before long the road was climbing into the mountain. In half an hour, I was at the fork, from where I looked back to take in the scene – shades of green with snow here and there, light clouds settling over the valley and the sun glowing feebly in the cobalt sky – which, then, seemed to me the summation of all beauty.

I soon reached the cottages. Something in the symmetry of the place made all of it look atemporally removed from the modern world, to its anxieties and its distrust in the destiny that binds all. I was in time for lunch, but first I was taken around the house – empty for its owner lived abroad.

My room was to the left of the main sitting area that opened on to a verandah where, in a corner, there was an easy chair and near its foot a low table, both made of walnut wood. It was warm and comfortable with a medium-sized bed and side cabinets perched on one of which was an anglepoise lamp. Under the window, through which a tall deodar could be seen, was a writing desk with a cane chair. There was a music player too. The room had a fireplace; on its mantlepiece was an attractive glass bottle holding a yacht in its belly. The yacht was made of
different coloured crystals. The glass restricted human contact as if human touch was the deadener, human touch robbing things of their value.

After lunch I settled in the easy chair with the Mallarmé. But I did not begin instantly. Instead I watched the valley receive, like a vast bowl, the slanting rays of the sun. I was tempted to close my eyes a moment, and then, all at once, I saw Asya.

Driving past the fields that turned the countryside yellow. The road smooth and clear, a local radio station playing popular music. Then a small lake formed by the backwaters of a dam. The sun making the water flash silver. Mustard crops beyond the lake. A solitary cloud lingering near the sun. My kiss on her nape, my face in her hair.

III

At eight in the evening, the late August sun was growing pale, and the Seine shimmered in its last light. I had spent most of the day wandering about Montmartre visiting antiquarian shops and kiosks where one may purchase a Van Gogh or Gauguin for a trifle, and had towards late afternoon settled at a restaurant on Rue de
Rivoli
, not far from Notre Dame, reading an essay by that blind old Argentine whose works combine the fantastic with the commonplace, distil metaphysics into magic.

Now my eyes were locked on its coarse blue cover. Out of nothing, a bizarre yet remotely familiar thought had acquired weight: wasn’t the book as much alive as the reader, the words and characters inside continuously arranging and rearranging themselves to suggest a myriad of stories, constructs, universes.

At half past six I found myself near Invalides, from where I resumed my journey on foot, without much cause, along Quai d’Orsay towards the Eiffel Tower. Walking beneath the line of maples, the Seine by my side, I fell prey to a sudden bout of sadness, and knew not how to escape it. ‘A cruise on the Seine.’ In
all these days I hadn’t once thought of the river, but now it seemed the only reasonable thing to do.

Waves lashing against stone. How I loved that sound, now coming to me all mixed up with the noise of the evening traffic on Quai d’Orsay. My pace had slowed down, and soon I fell under the spell of random thoughts.

I imagined us in a garden, walking along a path that cut through a flower bed beyond which lay a carpet of green, lush under a bright sun. The path dipped so very slightly and in time exposed a split – in the distance could be seen a baroque palace on whose white walls towering palms, standing like minarets in four corners, left interesting shadows as the rays broke over them. The branching paths met again at the palace gates.

At the fork, then, we parted. But why? That first step was the wrong step. In a moment everything vanished, and the palace hovered like a flame on the edge of vision. Only the path remained; unchanged, testing, as each walked for days, for months, for years, never meeting the other. Yet the desire did not extinguish even as the body perished and the soul melted away in its own nothingness.

Now we were at the fork again, and a fine rain was falling. It fell all the while we walked through disparate landscape, through water, air and ether, fell for an immeasurably long time. At last we entered the palace, time or rain seemed to have changed little. But what was this? Why did she look at me as if seeing me for the first time? Her eyes were lifeless like a mirror, reflecting all that fell to their lot. Eyes that had become a mirror, not of within but of without.

And yet I stood right there looking at her. She came a step closer and held me in her arms. Something remarkable happened then: in an instant we were inside the palace gates, amid the palms, the lawns, the flowers, the fountains. Off its courtyard, we found a room, empty except a huge triangular bed in a corner. Large mirrors on opposite walls expectantly waited to endlessly
multiply the one image.

A careless nudge of a jogger broke my reverie, dissolving the last tremors of dream. What took form was the lustrous water of the Seine, the din of automobiles, lovers delighting in each other, the Tower – Paris.

It is then that I notice her, sitting on a bench, held captive by a book with a black leather binding. She appears to be enjoying herself, for a smile is collecting at the corners of her mouth. Her face, mysteriously elegant, is remotely familiar too, smooth forehead, hair straight and lustrous that curls very slightly near the shoulders. My stare disturbs her, and she moves her attention away from the book, directs it at me. Now her sight rests on me (or pierces through me?) for a moment or two, but then, dismissing me, promptly returns to the script. It is enough, this slight gesture on her part, revealing to me those clear brown eyes that mock me faintly.

Waiting in the queue for the ferry, I see her again, at the other end, enjoying the evening breeze. She is alone, unperturbed. At times, she looks away to gaze at the Tower that deflects the sun’s rays.

I found a seat in the penultimate row where the glass cover did not obstruct the view and observed how the wind and the dying sun had made the scene painting-like. About me, people moved chaotically to find seats of their choice.

Next to me is an unoccupied seat. Just then she walks into the ferry and comes up to me and inquires if I am holding it for someone. When I decline, she smiles and sits beside me. This is the time the dream has me in its clutch. She is saying something to me but I don’t hear or can’t hear. She is already inside me, she is me. Her face is my face too. How incredible! I can hear myself. And here, in Paris, of all places! I see the book in her lap. It is a Mallarmé. Oh, now she is telling her name. What was that? Tahiti? It depends, she says. It changes from one season to the next, from place to place, like names always do or appear to. But,
I resist, that’s an island in the Pacific. That is how she is is all she offers. Yes, I think, you are an island drifting in a sea of countless, unknowable faces.