An Atlas of Impossible Longing (23 page)

But the letters? There was nothing else in the box. He shook it in disbelief.

“Satisfied, Mukunda?”

Mukunda froze on the chair, feeling as if his knees had turned to water. The box fell from his hands with a thud. The feather lay half out of it. Slowly, he turned around.

Mrs Barnum looked taller than him, even though he was standing on a chair. He wanted to get down, but couldn't. He wanted to say something, but his tongue felt like paper.

She sat down on the bed and began to stroke the head of the tiger. She wore a silk dress the tawny colour of the tiger's skin.

“Is this what you give me for my trust?” she said, her voice hoarser than usual.

I wanted to prove you're innocent, Mukunda wished he could say. I only wanted to prove everyone is wrong. I wanted to know the truth. He felt he would start to cry if he opened his mouth.

“Come down from that chair,” she ordered.

He climbed down, legs shaking. He could not take his eyes away from the hand stroking the tiger. It had a large, green-stoned ring on one long-nailed finger.

She got up and lit a cigarette. She inhaled and coughed. Maybe it was not so bad after all. She could not be furious if she was smoking, she always said it relaxed her. He opened his mouth to explain and took a deep breath of the smoke around him.

She whirled back towards him. “Don't say a thing,” she hissed. “Don't try. Go away, leave. Never come back.
Get out of here, get out
!”

Her voice rose as she spoke. She coughed violently and wiped her eyes. Mukunda edged away, out of the room. As he left he heard her yell into the passage.

“And as you leave, look up ‘betrayal' in the dictionary, will you? Look up ‘treacherous', look up ‘cheat'!”

* * *

Nirmal was announcing over tea that at last everything was in
place – the officers, the theodolites and cameras, the labourers, the tents, the permissions and paperwork – and in two days they would begin to set up the dig at the ruin.

“What will happen now?” Manjula said. “Maybe a castle will be found under the ruin! I don't mind if this old ruin is destroyed if a grand stupa is found. Something will happen at last in this boring old town, and people will come to see it.”

“Nothing will be destroyed, even if anything is found,” Nirmal repeated. He felt too elated by the thought of the work ahead to let anything else occupy his mind. “We'll start with the mounds at the back. It's delicate work, it'll take months maybe. We'll put up some tents there. The labour especially cannot keep coming and going all that distance.”

He looked sidelong at Meera for a response, but she seemed distracted by thoughts of her own. Since the afternoon she had eaten the fish he had brought, Nirmal noticed that she seemed to be going through the polite motions of conversation and interest, but was far-eyed. She had stopped coming to the fort, or to the roof to dry clothes in the morning. He never found her alone to ask for an explanation. Not that she owes me one, he thought, but even so – there are drawings she needs to finish.

“That's the end of the romantic couples, isn't it?” Kamal chortled. “The pigeons weren't the only things billing and cooing there.”

“The ruins will be crowded for a while, yes,” Nirmal said, filling an awkward pause. “No room for the ghosts of kings and queens either.”

“Especially canoodling kings and queens,” Kamal said, looking at a brown spot on the scratched wooden surface of the table.

“Quiet,” Manjula said. “Can't you see there's a child here?”

Bakul, who had been reading a book in the slanting early evening light by the window, all of a sudden pushed it aside and sprang up. “Mukunda? Mukunda!” she called, leaving the room.

Meera got up and began to clear away the cups and teapots, clattering them onto a brass tray.

Kamal said, “Ah, what's the hurry? I still want another, can't I have a cup? Please make me one.”

Meera stopped. She found an unused cup on the table, began to pour tea into it, spilling a puddle on the saucer. She added a quick dash of milk.

“Oho,” Kamal said sadly. “All these years, and you can't remember I don't like milk in my tea.”

“I'll get a fresh cup.” Meera turned on her heel and left the room.

“Why are you being difficult?” Manjula said. “Just drink it.”

Nirmal got up to follow Meera into the kitchen, somehow he'd get a minute with her alone. But Kamal said, “Oh Nirmal, don't go away while I'm having my tea, tell me about the excavation, what happens next exactly?”

* * *

Mukunda was running from Mrs Barnum's bedroom, down the stairs, into the garden, not noticing the dark, jackfruit part of it that they avoided in the evenings, not noticing the vivid orange of the large setting sun cut up by branches of trees. The khansama was in the garden, shooing his hens into their coop. “Hutt, hutt, hutt,” the khansama called out. “Hey Mukunda,” he said. “Help me with the hens!”

Mukunda wiped his tear-blocked nose and eyes and tried to say something, then ran towards the gate.

“Come tonight, I'm slaughtering a chicken.” The khansama chuckled. “When its head is chopped off and it rushes about dripping blood, that's really funny, you'll like it.”

Mukunda ran through the gate that hung loose on its hinges. One of its wooden panels had rotted away, the other was nailed on somehow, and a piece fell down with an exhausted clunk as he banged the gate behind him. He ran down the road in the twilight, faster and faster, panting, seeming directionless and desperate. His breath came in sobs. He left the main road and ran down a dirt path that went through fields mellow in the setting sun. The last birds quarrelled and chattered over their choice of evening perches as he jumped over ditches, his flapping slippers leaving a cloud of dust over his hair and face.

At last he could see the ruins and the ridge behind it. He went into the inner courtyard with its large pool of red stone, dim arabesques still struggling out of the dusty earth around it. The banyan tree nearby was beginning to grow larger with deep evening shadows.

He flung himself down at the base of the banyan tree.

Bakul was already sitting there. She said: “You heard too? From tomorrow they're digging up the ruin. We won't have a ruin to come to any more.” She looked around at the mosses and ferns creeping out of the walls, the broken walls they had clambered over so many times, imagining rooms where now there were none.

Mukunda looked at her uncomprehendingly. He had not noticed she was there at all.

“My father
had
to do it,” Bakul said. “He
had
to come back and spoil everything.”

Mukunda wished he could put his head between his knees and cry. He wished he could explain things to Mrs Barnum, or at least to Bakul. But he could never speak about what he had done, not to anyone. He knew he would never forgive himself for losing Mrs Barnum's trust, never stop feeling the sense of shame that made him want to be sick. He sank his head into his knees and felt the salt of tears in his mouth.

“No room for the ghosts of kings and queens any more,” Bakul mimicked. “He thinks that's so funny.”

A swoop of green parakeets above made them look up. In the early evening sky there was one bright star. The banyan tree to which the birds were heading was now a shadow.

“Hey,” Bakul said to Mukunda's buried head when he did not reply. “Come on, it's bad, but not
so
bad. He says they won't spoil it all.” She felt alarmed by his stifled sobs and got up saying, “Let's go, it's late.” She was frightened of the darkness and the black shapes in the trees but could not admit it to Mukunda. Out of the night-time forests came foxes and leopards, she knew. She had seen pairs of foxes, curiously dog-like, sometimes even in broad daylight in the fields.

They started to run down the tree-filled path back towards the fields. It was still easy to see the ruts in the pathway and leap over
them in the soft purple light. The darkness seemed to gather and snuff out the shapes around them, making everything look bulky. They could smell crushed eucalyptus, sharp and fragrant, over one part of the track shadowed by the lean trees. Soon it became difficult to see exactly where they were stepping. They held each other's hands as they scampered on as swiftly as they could. When Mukunda stumbled, Bakul clutched his sleeve harder and said, “Careful, there's a big stone there!”

Mukunda looked back. Was someone following them, someone from whom they had to run? He could see nothing but the snarling tiger on Mrs Barnum's bed. Over the sound of their panting and their flapping slippers, he could hear it – something behind them. He held Bakul's hand tighter and whispered, “Don't be scared!”

“I'm not,” she whispered.

They reached the fields. There was more light in the open, away from the trees. Bakul tugged at Mukunda's sleeve as they ran down the humps that separated one field from the other.

“Look,” she exclaimed. “Look! Up there!”

He stopped running and looked up. Above them, as far as they could see, the blue-black sky was sequinned with stars, so many stars that the sky did not seem to have the space for them, and yet it seemed endless, a vast, sparkling dome arched over the star-washed field, so many stars that if you stood looking up for a while you felt dizzy. Through the stars streaked a white, flaming trail of light, light of a kind they had never seen, arcing downward until it disappeared into the horizon.

Hand in hand, they stood in the middle of the empty fields under the star-filled sky, their troubles, fear, and the long way they still had to go before reaching home, all forgotten.

* * *

Meera sat in the kitchen, not noticing that she had not switched on a light, that her midriff and arms and feet were aflame with mosquito bites, that in fact if she had tried switching on the light it would not have worked because there was a power cut.

She could think of nothing but the terrace at dusk, ten days ago, when Kamal had come up to her with an unobtrusiveness she wouldn't have thought him capable of, and said, “You really work too hard.”

She had smiled a polite smile. “Not at all, I'm just taking in the pickle bottles. I didn't want to risk the servants breaking any.”

“I was just thinking how difficult it must be for you, how lonely.”

She had laughed, bemused more than disconcerted, and said, “I'm used to it.”

“Oh, but it's a great pity, the dreadful rules our society makes, and the blindness with which we impose them on ourselves. I think we need to rebel a little.” He was absorbed in brushing off a bit of blackness his white kurta had picked up from the terrace wall.

“I should collect the bottles.” She edged away from him to the corner of the terrace where bottles of mango pickle stood ranged in a row, still warm from the daytime sun they were storing.

As she bent to pick up the bottles, she felt a hand on her back where her blouse dipped, scooping out bare skin. She leapt away, startled.

“Don't be alarmed,” Kamal said, “I just wanted to … say that if you need anything, tell me. Don't think twice.” She saw his gaze travel over her as if he were mentally unfurling her sari and unbuttoning her blouse.

He paused. Then looked skyward and said, “We should have some rain soon, shouldn't we?”

Ten days had passed since that evening. He had said nothing more, made no move to touch her, but if he looked at her, she knew he was looking beneath her clothes. When his eyes travelled over her body she shuddered as if a lizard had slithered over her skin. Why had he done this, she asked herself again and again. She had lived in the house so many years and he had never attempted anything of the kind before. What had unleashed this sudden lechery? She thought back to the past fortnight and could recall nothing out of the ordinary. Their conversations, if they could be termed that, always took place at the dining table, when he asked for a second helping of something and she served him.

It struck her like a blow. Of course! He must have caught wind of
her friendship with his brother! And decided he too would try his luck. She stood up in agitation. Of course! That was it, it was how men thought: friendliness with a man could be nothing but flirtation, and if you flirted with one you were easy, a slut, game for more.

What was she to do? The only woman she had to talk to was the man's wife. Making accusations to Nirmal about his brother was impossible. What if he said she was overreacting to friendship and sympathy? What if he did not, and confronted Kamal instead?

Meera lit a lamp when she realised there was no electricity, then pulled out the rice canister and poured three cups onto a plate. Methodically, she began to sift through it for stones, trying to quiet her mind and decide what to do.

* * *

A little while later, when Mukunda and Bakul stole back into the house that evening from the fort, they saw Meera hunched over a plate in a pool of yellow lamplight, her shadow tall on the opposite wall. Her rigid back and bent head discouraged questions. They crept past her, knowing they were in for a scolding. Even in the wide verandah on the first floor that ended in Amulya's stained-glass window – one of the panes had cracked and been replaced by one in plain blue that was thought to match – there was nobody. This was where Kamal sat drinking tea every evening. A lamp had been left there, darkening the sooty cobwebs high up in the ceiling. Bakul and Mukunda edged closer to each other. They padded out onto the small terrace that led to Manjula's quarters, hearing an indefinable murmur of voices emerging from there.