She Will Build Him a City (32 page)

She leans into Orphan, lowers her lips to his ears, and whispers, ‘There is something else I will show you. It will be our secret and it will be magic.’

And Ms Violets Rose smiles as she kisses Orphan on the tip of his nose. It tickles, it makes him laugh – his face bathed in light on the stage against the screen.

WOMAN

Photo Album

After that incident in the taxi, he becomes my secret.

So we meet when you are in school, this is when the city is not as generous as it is today, when it opens very few spaces for couples like us, closes very few eyes. Forcing us to meet in places, hurried and furtive, where we know no one will recognise us, between my classes in school, at a bus stop midway from his college to our home, sometimes a platform at the railway station, once even the waiting area of a hospital, on a bench, between waiting patients. We steal twenty minutes, half an hour to exchange words, to look at each other, sometimes let our hands brush so that we can return to our respective homes, assured that each of us is there for the other, that neither of us has slipped off the face of this earth.

~

‘How is she doing?’ he calls and asks me.

‘She’s sleeping,’ I say.

‘So long?’

‘Yes. Or maybe she’s awake, I don’t know, I can’t tell.’

‘Hasn’t it been almost ten hours since she arrived?’

‘More than twelve, in fact.’

‘Did she eat something?’

‘No, nothing, she’s locked herself in.’

‘Just like her.’

‘Yes. She hasn’t changed . . . except.’

‘Except?’

‘She looks very tired. Her face is just as beautiful as I remember, except that someone has added many lines to it. There are marks, too. She’s been hurt, maybe even beaten up. I see marks and smudges. I think she has been crying a lot. Or maybe it’s dust from the journey.’

‘On the way home, did she say anything?’

‘Nothing, she kept her eyes closed all the way in the taxi.’

‘Let her be. Let’s wait for her to wake up.’

‘That’s what I have been doing all these years. Waiting, and now that she’s here, I guess I don’t wish to wait any more.’

‘Be patient, she is with you now, she is in the same house.’

‘Of course, but it doesn’t feel like it. She is really holding me to that condition which she made me accept. No questions, Ma, she said, don’t ask me anything. Otherwise, I am not coming.’

‘So, don’t. Don’t ask her anything. It’s as simple as that.’

‘Easier for you to say because you are not here right now.’

‘She will come round. Let her stay in the room as long as she wishes. She will have to get up, she will need to speak.’

‘I don’t like this, sitting here, waiting for her.’

‘I know.’

‘You know what worries me most? I don’t even know if she’s ill or something.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘I don’t know. Just looking at her, she is like a shadow, so thin, when I touched her hands, they were cold as if she had washed them in water with ice.’

‘You want me to come over?’

‘No, not now, don’t. She isn’t ready yet.’

~

So busy am I in keeping my secret that I let you keep yours as well, let you drift away from me until you are too far out into the sky that opens between us, in which, once in a while, we pass each other like clouds.

Like the day I discover your first bloodstains on the bed.

Or the morning your teacher tells me you are way behind the rest in class, that you are always distracted, that you haven’t even been coming to school.

When I ask you where you have been, all I hear is silence. When I insist on an answer, you say, why don’t you tell me where you have been and with whom.

~

He calls again: ‘Have you had anything to eat?’

‘I don’t feel like eating when she hasn’t,’ I tell him.

‘You have been sitting alone all this while?’

‘What else will I do?’

‘You should eat something, catch some sleep.’

‘What if she wakes up in the middle of the night?’

‘It is the middle of the night.’

‘She doesn’t even know her way around the house.’

‘So?’

‘I don’t want her worrying when she wakes up.’

‘Not to worry, just relax. She’s a grown-up woman, she will find her way around the house. You are a light sleeper, if she opens her door I am sure that will wake you up.’

‘It’s just a few hours before morning. Let me stay awake.’

~

There is one evening when it’s almost perfect. When I am the mother, you are the child. A few weeks after you turn nineteen. We are at home, right through the day there are reports of violence in the city, of homes having been set ablaze. There is curfew outside, draping the entire neighbourhood in a silence unfamiliar for so early in the day. It’s December, freezing inside the house, and I have to switch on the electric heater. What comes back to me, of that night, at the remove of all these years, is that I am sitting in the living room with my school work. It’s exam time so I am either working on a question paper or marking answer sheets. You walk in carrying a photo album which, you say, you found in your room, fallen in the gap between the books and the back of the cupboard. Most of the pictures in it have come unstuck, you say, we need to fix them back. You carry a glue stick I got from school.

I am not sure why but I put all my school work aside and I say, yes.

You are right, the album is in a mess.

The next three hours, four hours we sit together, we glue the pictures back.

Black and white.

Pictures of your father and me in the city, standing outside his college, outside my school.

Of you on your first birthday, in your school uniform waiting at the bus stop.

You and me with a suitcase at the railway station, you at the school sports day, you and your father on the Ferris wheel. There is a picture of your father giving a speech at what looks like a college function.

Ma, why are there so few pictures after Papa died, why did we stop taking pictures, you ask. And I don’t have a proper answer. Papa is the one who took the pictures, is all I can say, and he’s gone. Where is the camera, you ask.

I tell you we have to look for it, maybe it’s not working.

We will look for it first thing in the morning, you say, I want to take some pictures of you, of us, of the street outside under curfew. But, Ma, tell me about these pictures, you say.

So as we glue each picture back, you listen, sometime during the night, you rest your head in my lap, as if you are five years six years old, your eyes wide open as I tell you a fairy tale for the very first time.

You laugh when I tell you how difficult it is to buy a candle on your first birthday because it’s a Sunday and all shops are closed and we finally get one but it’s not a birthday candle, it’s a tall one that’s used to light the room. That’s why the candle is the oddest, biggest thing in your birthday picture.

And you slip into sleep, I do not wish to wake you up. I keep looking at your face, your eyes closed, your hair tangled, in need of a comb or brush, a wash. The glue has dried on your fingers, your sweater is streaked with dust from the album and I stay perfectly still, I don’t want to move.

It’s been such a long time since I have held you, I want to feel your weight against me for as long as I can.

~

‘It’s raining,’ he says when he calls back.

‘I didn’t even know.’ I have been inside the house the whole time.

‘It’s very light rain but it will cool us down. We needed it.’

‘What have you been doing?’

‘I haven’t been able to sleep since I knew she was here. I want to meet her but you are right, there’s no hurry, I will wait.’

‘I have told her about us, I don’t know if she heard.’

‘Don’t make it about us. This is about her. Let’s find out why she is here.’

‘You are right.’

‘I am up the whole night so let me know if you need anything.’

‘Sure.’

‘I love you,’ he says.

MAN

Love Letter

Taxi Driver is gone.

And he is back from The Leela, in Apartment Complex, in his house, in The Room.

This time, Balloon Girl doesn’t follow him, she must be tired after all she’s done for him through the day, and although he knows she will return if he wishes her to, he needs to be alone. His body aches as if he’s been beaten all over which, in a way, he has, when Taxi Driver thrashed around while he held him down – like a fish out of water, just before it’s sawed in two.

He lies down, imagines himself in the mortuary at AIIMS, on the cement counter, next to the beautiful dead woman still warm. His breath slows down, he opens his eyes and looks along the floor at the coloured umbrella in the corner, at the butterfly mobile that hovers above, catching a faint wind from the air conditioner below.

Earlier this morning, he aired The Room.

Gone is its stale smell; the oak wardrobe is open and, through its doors, he can see Kahini’s winter clothes, coats and sweaters, shoes. He gets up, walks to the wardrobe, takes out a letter from its top drawer, lies down to read it. This is the first letter Kahini wrote to him, each word written in her hand and spoken in her voice, coming to his ears from another life.

~

Dear:

You tell me to write you a love letter and when I ask why, you say no one has written me one, that’s why. A love letter on demand? I think about it, yes, I am in love with you so why shouldn’t I write you one. About the first time we met. So if we do have a life and a future together, this letter will also serve as a record.

I meet you at a friend’s house. By accident. Whose house I do not recall, there are many people in the room, there’s some sort of a farewell for someone. Usually, I never do such things, going to places where I know no one, but this evening, I have a fight with my mother and I need to get away, I need to be alone, with strangers. It’s raining because the entrance to the apartment is wet and muddy where everyone has wiped their shoes on the mat. Inside, the atmosphere isn’t that of a party, that’s quite clear. In fact, it’s quite dull, like the room itself. Cement floor, bare walls, a mattress on the floor pushed against the wall. Some people sit on it, many sit on the floor, some stand. Someone offers me a glass of beer.

I stand in a corner, watch my friend move from one circle to another. Each minute seems to crawl like an hour, I need to use the washroom, someone points it out to me and on my way there, something happens, I am not quite sure what, I have a glass of beer in one hand and a paper napkin in the other. And the napkin, crumpled into a ball, falls to the floor. I bend to pick it up and I discover that I am a few feet away from four or five people who are standing in a circle and chatting. And you are one of them, you are the one I hear. You are the one speaking, the others are listening.

I hear you before I see you. Maybe it’s the weak light in the room or the fact that you are in half-shadow. I remember the words, all of them. Because that’s the sentence that scares me before it makes my heart beat so hard I think everyone in the room can hear.

You say, there is a woman standing behind me who’s just dropped something on the floor and I can tell you right away that she doesn’t have a father, she doesn’t have a father for a very long time and that’s why she’s never happy. She always misses her father.

And you laugh before the sentences, the words, have even registered themselves on those standing around you. Their faces look startled, their smiles awkward. They are all looking at me now, they know I have heard but you act as if you think I am not there, you slap the man next to you on his back and say, let’s go for another beer. They fidget, they turn, I hide myself in the washroom, I lock myself in for at least ten minutes because I don’t want to come out, because I am frightened. I even cry, I think. What happens next I am not going to write down, that’s something you know. What you may not know is that that is when I fall in love with you.

Only yours

K.

~

His eyes closed, he can see Kahini sitting across from him when they first meet for coffee.

She talks, she talks, she talks.

He listens.

And they laugh when she tells him her name means a story and he says, so sit still so that I can read you. She tells him he is right, her father is dead, she asks him how he knows about her father and he says I have the sixth sense and they both laugh over that. She tells him he frightens her. She tells him
The Exorcist
is released the year she is born and maybe that’s why she loves things that frighten her. And they laugh over that, too. She tells him the small things first. Like how the window pane in her bedroom has a thin crack and although she has taped a cardboard strip to it, it gets so wet in the rain that the paper gives way, the wind keeps slipping in through the tear. Like however hard she tries, she is a terrible student in college, in her final year, and she has no idea how she got through the first three years. Like how difficult it is for her to fall asleep and how she is trying to find a way to get around that. And when she runs out of Alprax, which she gets by bribing the boy who works in the pharmacy, she does the train thing in her head. She imagines she is lying down on the roof of a train hurtling in the dark, very high speed, faster than sound, maybe, and all movements are such that she is perfectly balanced so that if she moves even a fraction of a millimetre, this balance will get disturbed and she will roll off the train’s roof to certain death. She, therefore, lies still, hears the wind whistle and screech in her ears, the howl of the engine, sometimes she can smell the engine’s exhaust, the odour of burnt diesel, and as night falls harder, the sounds begin to fade away, the movements get smoother and smoother, and all this stillness, all this concentration helps because soon the only sound she hears is the shuffle of the coaches, rhythmic, as they glide over the tracks, push her deeper and deeper into sleep.