An Atlas of Impossible Longing (42 page)

“You may know some of this already: Bakul was born a month before time and nobody could reach the house with medical help because the house and the surrounding area were inundated. As a result, Bakul's mother died giving birth. After Shanti died, her father (my father-in-law) became a little eccentric; he insisted on staying in the house even though, each monsoon, the ground floor flooded and for several years he was marooned inside for weeks at a stretch. I am told people arrived by boat with food for him and he threw down baskets for them on ropes, but he wouldn't leave. People have strange
obsessions that nobody else can understand. They seem irrational, but to themselves these people make complete sense.”

It was a long letter. I turned to the third page. It was as if he had embarked on an autobiography. He seemed to have been in need of someone to talk to who was familiar with his terrain, and I felt he was addressing me as he might a son. After my excoriating self-hatred the night before, the letter seemed a healing ointment that had come by post. It connected me, however tenuously, with a world in which a part of me existed, still untouched by later changes.

“A few years ago,” the letter went on, “the government decided to construct an embankment further up the river. This was eventually completed, and all of a sudden, after the havoc of all these years, the river is tamed. Some other area must be inundated because of the embankment, but for the moment the house is safely out of the water and has been for a year or two now. (The garden would be a good place to find fossils.)

“To graver matters: we received some grim news a few days ago, which has prompted this letter to you. My father-in-law passed away, perhaps ten days or so ago, I cannot be sure – he died alone, away from family, but that's how he wished it, and I cannot pretend at this stage of my life that I was particularly attached to him. I had always blamed him, justly or not, for my wife's death. But the fact remains that he was Bakul's grandfather and she is emotionally attached both to him and to her mother's house. What I hear is that some others have collected at the house to lay claim to it – land and houses seem to bring out the rapacious in everyone. There is an old retainer who says the house is morally his, a neighbour who claims it as repayment for loans my father-in-law had apparently taken from him over the years, and a property dealer from Calcutta who has sent his men because apparently he paid some money for it in a fraudulent deal some years ago. They are all hunting for the original deed of the house, which my father-in-law seems to have hidden somewhere. Without this deed, none of them can claim the house.”

My breath had quickened. I wished he would get to the point. I felt as if I had never read a letter so long.

“The house is Bakul's by right,” the next page went on, “and she is the only person who knows where the deed is; her grandfather was extremely eccentric, as I've said – you know, he lived alone, trusted no-one, not even banks. Bakul remembers how he hid his house papers, almost as a game with her, on a visit we made years ago. I had no idea they'd done this because he swore her to secrecy, and she took – takes! – secrets very seriously. She's going to Manoharpur next week to try retrieving the deed and, if it's still there, to decide what she will do with her inheritance.

“Speaking for myself, I want to sell the house; I have never been attached to it – quite the reverse – to me it has always been my wife's tomb. I could not make myself return there for years after her death. Bakul has always resented this, I know, but I could do nothing about it. If she does decide to sell the house, I would appreciate your help. Once the sale money is in hand, we can begin to repay you – your generosity over this house in Songarh weighs heavily on me and I cannot rest until I have paid you back, though that would still not be enough to thank you for saving my home.

“Bakul would be extremely annoyed if she knew that I'd asked you for help. She refuses, as you know, to take help from anyone, even her own father. But to me you are like a son and who would I ask if not you? I'm writing this letter at night and will post it on my morning walk so that she doesn't know of it: I would be very grateful if you could go to Manoharpur, as if by accident, and help her through this.

“I have to be in Songarh: I have to stay here because of my dog – only other people as attached to their dogs will not think me irrational – but she cannot survive without me. Also, as you may have gathered, I'm hardly very practical in matters of land and money. But I am worried about Bakul trying to deal with this by herself. So I hope this letter reaches you in time for you to be there for her.”

There were many things in the letter that worried me, but what occupied my mind to the exclusion of all else for the moment was this: what was Bakul doing at her grandfather's ruined house in Manoharpur? Where was her husband, and why had he not accompanied her?

Immediately my mind began to fly kites. Had the husband turned out an inept fellow whom nobody trusted? Had Bakul fallen out with him and returned home to her father? Whatever the situation, Nirmal Babu had thought of
me
, me and nobody else, in this time of Bakul's need. I clung to this simple knowledge – in his eyes I alone could help her. I would finally meet her, and she would be by herself, just as I had fantasised.

She would be there
by herself
. The thought also struck me with dread. Bakul in that secluded spot, that wilderness, with those sharks moving in? I remembered how far away the house had been from the shops and the railway station, how the grounds stretching around it shielded it from other people. If she shouted, nobody would hear. I tried not to think about that, but I knew better than her father how dangerously she would be out of her element. The dealer from Calcutta who had renewed his pursuit of the house could be none other than Aangti Babu, although there might be others too.

I plunged my arms into a shirt, took some money from the cupboard, and tore down the stairs for a taxi to the station. The letter was dated four days ago. Bakul might already have reached Manoharpur. I had lost a whole evening while the letter had lain overnight on my doorstep. There was no time to lose.

All that my mind could nonsensically intone as the train chugged out of Sealdah in the harsh ten o'clock sunlight was, “Look up at the stars, look, look up at the stars, look at all the fireflies … ” I tried to remember the name of the poet, but the only name that came to mind was Harold.

* * *

When at last we drew into Manoharpur I leapt off the train before it stopped. The six-hour journey had seemed to me to take eight or ten, as the train stopped at every wayside station for passengers, tea, vegetable vendors, and who knows what else. The engine wheezed and groaned and puffed through the landscape of ponds and greenery I usually found enchanting. On this journey I had leaned out of the
door, the wind in my hair, landscape rushing by me, as if peering into the horizon would bring Manoharpur closer.

The sign at the station was new, still black on yellow, but bolder and larger. The station had a concrete platform in place of beaten earth and its railings were now metal, not bamboo. There were more people than I remembered, and I got a cycle rickshaw right by the station gate. When I told the man where to go, he said, “Oh, to Pagla Dadu's?” He laughed at the surprise on my face. “Oh we always called Bikash Babu that, and he didn't care. He knew we thought he was half crazy.”

He began to pedal and said, “I hear his house is for sale. So many people going to it these days!”

“Who?” I exclaimed. “Anyone you remember?”

“I just took a man there this morning, a tall thin fellow,” the rickshawallah said. “But others have gone too I hear, Babu, what can you say of the greed people have? God save me from such greed.”

He pushed at the pedals, his checked lungi riding up his thin, hard-looking legs. “So long as I have a little food to eat and some cloth to cover my body,” he said. “I'll earn by my sweat, Babu, not other people's deaths, you understand, Babu?”

He stopped pedalling and, sitting on his saddle, wiping his face on the sleeve of his shirt, he turned to look at me. “The old man dies all alone, alone, you understand, Babu,” he continued. “And now those very relatives who never took any care of Pagla Dadu in his lifetime, they want to sell his land and house and make off with the money.”

“I'm in a bit of a hurry,” I tried to edge in. “Could you … ” I would have got off and walked to the house if I had remembered where it was. He turned back to the road with a sigh and pushed the pedals again.

“Human beings are vultures, Babu, take my word for it, you understand?” he panted. “That son-in-law of his – they say he was a good enough fellow – but can you fry and eat a good enough fellow? Did he look after his wife's only father when he was dying?”

“Didn't he?” I said, struck by this image of Nirmal Babu as a callous villain.

“No, he did not, you understand, not a bit! Poor Pagla Dadu even had to be cremated by his old servant's son, nobody from his family. Now tell me, is this right? Even if a man is a bit crazy.”

I clutched the handle as the rickshaw crested a hillocky part of the dirt road.

“But what can you say, he only had that one daughter, and she's dead, poor girl. Even if she were alive, what good would it have done? Could she have lit his pyre? What's a man to do without a son? I'm telling you, Babu, I'm a poor man, not a landowner like Pagla Dadu, but God above has blessed me with two strapping sons. To throw me a handful of rice when I can't pull this rickshaw any more. To touch a flaming torch to my pyre.”

We were approaching the same drive, now looking even more unkempt. The rickshaw set me down before the same deep front verandah that Aangti Babu and I had sat in. The same cane chairs stood in the verandah, and I could have sworn the brown discoloration on the verandah wall was the spot Aangti Babu's betel juice had splattered on. The rickshawallah took his money and cycled away.

Only one thing was different: one of the cane chairs was occupied by Harold.

* * *

He was dressed as usual: shiny old suit, narrow blue tie with bright yellow stripes, the trousers two inches too short for him, showing worn, black socks over thin ankles, despite which he looked respectable enough, more like an elderly schoolmaster than a thug. He looked up with a beaming smile when he saw me and exclaimed, “Oh, Mukunda, m' boy, I'm bloody glad to see you! Didn't know the boss was sending reinforcements.”

He dropped his voice and said, “I tell you, m'n, this job's got me foxed. The boss said to go an' hunt for the deed – the old bugger who's kicked the bucket stuffed it in some hole somewhere in this whackin' big bledgy mansion of his. An' I've got to pose as a buyer and just look around like, and then find it! An' y'know what, m'n? For a change the
boss sez don't get rough, you got a girl here to work on, just find the dashed deed, he's already paid some bugger an advance for the house and he just needs the papers quick and quiet – but tell me how? Give me a straight job and I'll do it m'n, it's easy to beat the stuffing out of a man and make him cough up a bloomin' deed, but dealin' with dames? I wasn't brought up to bully the gentle sex, no, m'boy.”

At this point Bakul came into the front verandah. I don't know if she had overheard Harold, but she gave no sign of recognising me. She gave me a quick, somewhat cold look and said to Harold, “If you and your colleague are ready … ?” She turned and walked back in without waiting for us to follow. Harold made a face behind her back, mimicking her frown, and motioned me to follow.

“The ground floor is a mess, I'm sorry to say,” Bakul had begun, her voice echoing in the almost-empty room. “You see the river has been flooding it every year and there have been hardly any repairs, no upkeep. My grandfather lived upstairs till he died.” She spoke with a measured politeness, a calm impersonality that confused me. Did she actually imagine I too had come to dupe her? Or was this part of some elaborate plan?

We went from room to room, Bakul providing explanations for each, with apologies for the all-pervading dust. She spoke in the same passionless, descriptive way, not pausing to let us respond. I recognised the mildewed portraits on the ground floor from my visit with Aangti Babu, and the chandelier he had been eyeing still hung from the ceiling, too grey with dust and cobwebs, surely, to make light. We passed through an enormous wood-panelled billiards room, the table piled high with legless chairs, broken boxes, and pictures in frames. I wondered who had used it in the past – it was certainly never going to be usable in the future.

Harold was darting about like a long-legged insect, peering here and there. When he noticed Bakul's ironic gaze levelled at him, he said hurriedly, “Termites, ma'am, one can't be too careful, don't want to take on property with woodworm. If you'll excuse me … ” He rapped a knuckle on the wood of a cupboard as if to make sure it hadn't rotted.

We went up a creaking staircase to the first floor. Upstairs, where I had never been, there was Victorian furniture, and everything was as if the occupants of the house had just gone out for a walk. There was a typewriter on a grimy rolltop desk, with a sheet of paper flapping in it. An empty cup and saucer, brown with dust, stood on a side table. I passed a huge framed mirror so opaque with dust that all I could see of myself in it was a shadowy form – it was like looking through the eyes of a half-blind man. We stepped through clouds of grime and cobwebs, passing ghostly chairs and tables, four-poster beds and sideboards, pictures on the wall that showed nothing but black fungus and dirt, and spiders' legs drifting streamers for a ghoulish party.