The Other Language (29 page)

The first week she had worn her own clothes, light fitted shirts and cotton pants, her nice sandals. It turned out that these had too many straps and were an inconvenience to put on and take off each time they entered a shop or a temple, so she got herself a pair of
chappals
. That was the beginning of the transformation. Then came the kurtas, the long shirts women wear over their
shalwar
pants. She found them so comfortable that soon she had to get the pants as well, in matching colors, and then the
dupatta
, the scarf that women so artfully throw across their chest. The
dupatta
for him was the last straw. It turned her outfit into a dress-up
costume, plus it kept falling off her shoulders so that she was readjusting it every five minutes.

He loved her—that went without saying—but they’d been together for almost sixteen years and it was normal to find her tiresome at times. He had to admit that it was lovely, the way she found so many things interesting and worth being investigated; it was a sign of her vitality, and he cherished that. He only wished she had stuck to wearing her own clothes instead of those Indian outfits that were slowly multiplying inside the suitcase, which she didn’t know how to wear.

He came out to the garden terrace, where they served breakfast. It was still chilly in the morning. A thin fog had descended over the river, blurring the contours of the forest on the opposite bank. Its outline, with its wide canopies and dangling roots, reminded him of a faint watercolor on the jacket of a Kipling novel he had owned ages ago, painted by one of those nineteenth-century British women artists who’d traveled all over the East in search of exotic flora to draw. The river was still, unperturbed, save for a slim boat, a
shikara
, slowly breaking the surface with its oars.

There she was, alone at the table under the trellis, wrapped up in the new pashmina dyed with natural pigments that had taken the place of her black sweater (“Black? Who wants to wear black anymore, once you see all these vibrant colors?”).

“Hi, darling,” she said, smiling. She was usually in a good mood in the morning. She always said that it was her happiest time.

“Would you like to see the paper?” She slid
The Hindu
across the table. It was another ruse she had taken up, this pretense of being interested in Indian internal affairs, with all those intricate party names and corrupt politicians. However, in only a couple of weeks she’d become an authority. She knew the candidates for the
next elections by name and had even picked the one they should root for.

“No thanks, not now,” he demurred. Every now and again, he resisted her voracious curiosity; it was his way of keeping her in check.

What about his own enthusiasms? Why had they dwindled, why did he no longer take pleasure in discovering new things? He feared there might be only one answer to that, and it was age. He was only forty-seven—just three more years to go before the old writer’s epiphany—yet he felt his scale had already tilted over to one side. Surely the portion of future available to him as a youngish-looking, energetic and still attractive man was much smaller than what he had put behind already. Shouldn’t he make an effort, make the best of it? Why could he not gather the energy to feel passionate again about what lay outside his own head?

He had figured he no longer did because by now all he really cared and worried about were the books he still needed to write before it was too late and he’d have nothing more to say. “Egotism—necessary/essential trait,” he’d once scrawled in a journal, thinking that one day he might use the idea in an essay. At this point in his life all he actually longed for was to be able to sit still in one place with as little disturbance as possible in front of his computer, waiting for the words that would, line after line, compose the unformed story in his head. He knew he wasn’t alone in that; every other writer had said the same thing when asked about the mystery of their profession in any interview: the act of writing was a sedentary, solitary work, where no other people were needed. He had stashed away enough experiences when he was a younger man; now he just needed to elaborate on that material, organize it. He didn’t need to live it again, did he?

It was either that or depression,
this lack of want for life.

Secretly, a year earlier, he had seen a psychiatrist, a friend of a friend whom he’d met at a party. “Only half an hour of your time
is all I really need,” he had told the kind-looking doctor. But the minute he sat across from him in his luscious, book-lined studio, he poured out his unpleasant thoughts of death, how his appetite for life seemed to be tapering off. The older man, with his gentle face and sympathetic expression, had said he didn’t sound depressed—depression being a serious clinical condition. But he’d be happy to prescribe something mild if he felt he needed “just a little help.” He said he didn’t need it and came out of the doctor’s studio both relieved and disappointed. The idea of “a little help” was humiliating; he’d somehow wanted his mental condition to be either all or nothing.

He realized in the taxi home after his session that what he forgot to tell the psychiatrist was that his novels didn’t sell nearly as well as they had in the past. There were reasons, of course. New, younger writers for one, to whom people were more drawn because of their looks, their reckless lives, the wordplay they used. There was also the fact that he, along with so many other writers of his generation, had lost his luster (the author’s photos on the jackets had had to change, no more leather and ruffled hair, but tailored suits and receding hairlines). And lastly, possibly, he had to admit to a certain repetitiveness in the plots of his novels. Like most writers, he’d always had a specific theme and followed the same thread (wasn’t that a quality rather than a flaw? Didn’t great writers essentially always write variations of the same book over and over again?). His particular theme had revolved around the existential musings of a character who had been the protagonist of most of his novels. Throughout the years the character had kept the same name, the same job, he had grown, aged, lost his hair, just like him. Somehow though, as of late, his readership too had thinned. Not dramatically—he still sold enough to keep his publisher happy and enough money coming in—but the phone calls from his agent to keep him up to date on the sales were not nearly as effervescent or as frequent as ten years earlier.

The trip had been her idea. He knew he owed it to her. It was only fair for her to demand they spend time alone together, have a few weeks with nothing coming between them. Yet he couldn’t help thinking of it as a duty rather than a gift. She’d proposed that after handing in the last draft of his novel he take her to India. Since they’d been together, he’d promised just this. But something had always come up and the trip had always been postponed.

“I’ll divorce you, otherwise,” she’d said jokingly.

In the fall he rang an expensive travel agent who organized upmarket tours in the vein of Paul Bowles followers. Then he wrapped the itinerary and tickets in a golden envelope and gave it to her for Christmas.

They’d been at the Fort three days now and so far they’d been the only guests. She had instantly fallen in love with the place and had asked him if they might lengthen their stay instead of moving on to their next destination. He was relieved at the idea of canceling what was left of their exhausting itinerary and settling down somewhere. He didn’t mind that some of the hotels had already been paid for, he’d never been fussy about money. What was more important was the relief of no more hours spent driving on those terrible roads risking their lives, always too close to the
HORN PLEASE
signs on the backs of those overly painted trucks; no more dark temples with sticky floors,
poojas
, milk poured on shiny lingams, no more beggars, fumes, swarms of motorcycles carrying husband, wife and two children squeezed on one seat with no helmet; no more ghastly bazaars selling dusty junk, no more haggling with rude rickshaw drivers. They could sit still, make this beautiful place their home, so that he might be able to jot down some lines at last while his wife read and went looking for the handloom textiles the region was famous for.

The hotel had been the family home to a dynasty of maharajas
for four hundred years. It was an impressive fortress perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the banks of the Narmada River. It had only a handful of exquisitely furnished rooms open to guests; the rest was still the maharaja’s private home. He was the last heir to the dynasty, a handsome man in his midfifties with a slender, elegant figure, who spoke fluent French, Italian and English with a pleasant American accent, due to the years he’d spent there in college. He joined them every morning for breakfast on the terrace in the rampart, overlooking the river, in a beautiful coat cut in Mughal style, and he reappeared in the evening in a starched kurta and woolen vest and a ruby on his little finger. The maharaja had a Danish wife, who was in Copenhagen at the moment, but they’d seen a picture of her in a silver frame on one of the tables in the drawing room. She was beautiful and wore her sari like she’d been born into it.

Being the only guests had enhanced the feeling of being at home and allowed the fantasy of owning the place. They dined each night in a different courtyard lit by hundreds of candles that flickered in the dark, designing graceful geometric patterns. Every night his wife engaged in conversation with the maharaja—she was of course enraptured by his elegance, his knowledge of the local traditions, but also by his worldly manners and his wit. She was delighted to have the prince all to herself.

He joined her at the beautifully laid breakfast table. There were flowers arranged in small clusters, linen napkins and silverware polished to a glossy shine. An attendant immediately came to pour his tea.

“Where is our prince?” he asked his wife.

“He just left. We had a lengthy discussion about food. He wanted to know about fried zucchini flowers, believe it or not. Apparently he had them in Rome once and has never forgotten
them. He wants me to teach him the recipe. Isn’t it hilarious?” She laughed. “You must come and take a picture of me in the kitchen while he and I cook together. Will you?”

He nodded absentmindedly. They both knew that he’d find an excuse not to and that eventually she’d find someone else, either a waiter, the cook or the woman who swept their room—people whose names she’d already memorized—and hand over the camera. It was the kind of photo she most sought to have and to show: immortalized in her
shalwar kameez
, next to her charming prince, intent on cooking in his kitchen! That would show their friends how far inside real India they’d managed to reach.

“Tomorrow he’s organized a classical dance performance on a tiny island upriver for a group of friends who arrive tonight. We’re invited, of course. Would you like to go?” she said.

He nodded vaguely.

“Let’s see how the day goes.”

“His friends are from Delhi,” she added, as if to stress that the level of familiarity they’d accessed with the prince woudn’t be offset by the arrival of a bunch of foreigners. It was an all-Indian soirée they’d been asked to.