The Temple-goers (15 page)

‘So what, man? I’m not saying –’

‘No, Aakash. I know what you’re saying and we’re not doing it.’

I walked back to the others, leaving Aakash with some words still on his lips. He looked incredulous, then his face showed a hurt, dazed expression.

Ra pranced up to him. ‘Come on, lover boy, stop being such a kebab me haddi.’

Aakash looked down at him, and his face clearing, he put one hand on Ra’s stomach and said, ‘I’m going to make you fit, man.’ They began to walk up the street. Aakash spoke to Ra with the same energy and interest with which he had spoken to me. Ra shed his cynicism and was slowly seduced. His eyes turned from playful and flirtatious to hungry; I heard him invite Aakash to a party while we were away. He kept prodding his chest and stomach with a single finger, and saying, ‘Hash-man, oh gawd, how disgusting, all veins and muscles.’ They spoke about Delhi being quiet and peaceful in the summer and how it was possible to do things one didn’t ordinarily do, like have breakfast in the old city. I heard all this and was jealous, miserably jealous. I knew now that Aakash wanted me to feel that way.

The rain, not being genuine monsoon rain, was sucked up by the atmosphere. An uneasy peace held between dry and humid heat, and the air, with its varying temperature, felt like a lake in spring. The drains clogged, and puddles heavy with dust and petals formed on the sides of the street. The double line of laburnums, prematurely stripped of their petals, the remainder discoloured, were like a regiment that had suffered a terrible defeat.

Ra’s chauffeur-driven car, which had followed us, making our run in the rain seem even more of a pretence, now nosed its way down Amrita Shergill Marg. Mandira who had grown tired of Aakash’s neglect jumped in.

‘Ra, come on, no? Drop me home. Back to hubbie.’

He seemed reluctant to leave, offering to drop us all back.

‘No, don’t worry about it,’ Sanyogita said. ‘I want to walk back.’

I would have liked the ride home, but something in Sanyogita’s mood made me feel it was better to stay. Aakash looked between the car and us, then specifically at me.

Sanyogita, with strange bloody-mindedness, intervened. ‘Stay, Aakash. It’ll be so nice. We’ll walk back together.’

Aakash, not to be outdone in this perverse show of strength, agreed. The car drove away, leaving us alone on Amrita Shergill Marg.

Having been a different man to each of us that night, Aakash now became in those final moments a friend of the relationship. He walked between us, in his soaked red shirt, his heavy arms sprawling over both our shoulders. His smell, deodorant thinly holding back a damp stench from his armpits, lingered, now rising up when he rested his head on Sanyogita’s shoulder, now meeting me as he leaned in to kiss my neck and tell me how much he loved both of us.

For those moments, he seemed to believe that even Sanyogita’s and my relationship was only possible because of him. He spoke of trips we would take together in the hills; he said he would make every effort to come and see us in Europe in the summer, but wasn’t sure he’d be able to get away this year. I knew he didn’t have a passport, but he spoke as if he travelled all the time. He insinuated himself into our lives and we didn’t stop him because it seemed harmless. But all the time, a mistaken idea of his importance was forming in his mind. When he slipped away a few moments later to take a pee, he went with the knowledge that the world turned on his axis. He peed brazenly, standing on the pavement, facing the street. Looking to see where he’d gone, we caught sight of him under a lamp post. He laughed joyfully, leaning back on his heels and pushing his black uncircumcised penis forward into the light. A smooth yellow sheen struck it and from its wrinkled nozzle, urine spirals fell to a puddle of spinning petals. His blackish-pink lips whistled the shrill tune of a film song.

His contentment was so deep and his exhibitionism so self-assured that the expression of fatigue it brought to Sanyogita’s face would have come as a shock. And before I turned away, before he masked it with playful rowdiness, I saw in his eyes the rage of an Indian man insulted by a woman. His next action came so suddenly that later I thought I had seen it before it happened, the way one feels one might have saved a falling glass. I had barely looked forward again when I felt solid muscle smash against the back of my neck and a hand wrench my shoulder down. The street zoomed up in front of me as I was pulled to the floor, managing to squat just before I fell; Sanyogita crumpled.

The moment I saw her strong body thrown on to the tarmac, my mind flashed to the image of the skiing accident that had broken her thigh and given her the caterpillar scar. As she lifted herself from the street, I saw her pricked palms and a four-inch graze on her elbow. The long, colourful Rajasthani dress, with its mirrors and tinsel, was torn at the knees. Seeing her childlike face, mystified at the injury done to her, and Aakash retreating in horror, I did something for which Sanyogita never forgave me. Instead of attending to her, I jumped up and yelled at Aakash, telling him to apologize and help her up. I did it because I thought that if in that instant he begged her forgiveness, it might come; later it would be harder, much harder. But seeing her wounds and her eyes now full of tears, he hesitated; and in those seconds of hesitation, there was no one to help her up. By the time I gave up on him, it was too late. Sanyogita’s pain had turned to anger. She slapped my hand away as I tried to help her up. Then she stood rooted in one place, the hem of her skirt hanging into the street, the crook of her arm exposed and softly bent where hurt. She stood perfectly still, breathing heavily, staring at me through her glistening eyes, wanting me to see what Aakash had done to her. Her head was cocked to one side and her long wavy hair glued in places to her face. She wiped it away furiously, looking still harder at me. There was an expression almost of curiosity in her eyes; it was as if she was trying to understand how I could have betrayed her. Then pushing me back, she turned around and ran. Despite her injuries and her flimsy slippers, she ran fast in the direction of Jorbagh. In seconds, she was swallowed up by the darkness and the steam now rising from the street. Aakash had gone too.

I left Delhi on a Virgin flight. The airport was in a state of great confusion. It had always had a makeshift quality: passages with tinted windows in peeling frames, grey stone floors coated in a fine layer of dust, idle men in olive-green uniforms. But now a private company, promising an airport of the future, had begun a renovation that left it barely standing. Cement and water dripped through the slats of a dented, white metal ceiling; a brown water stain crept across a wall hanging of a plump horseman; coloured wires grew out of their sockets. The warm, sweet Indian air infused here with government office damp, there with urine, now also smelt of chemicals.

On the flight, blonde air hostesses with jarring accents went past in red suits. Sanyogita sat next to me in a maroon velvet and white lace skirt. It hid the scabs that were forming on her knees. The grazes on her elbows were raw and visible. She made no display of them as she went about the small tasks of settling down for a long flight. She took down her magazines, rummaged in her handbag for lip balm, then reopened the overhead compartment and brought out an old toosh. Wrapping herself in it, she curled into her seat and slipped her long arms into mine. She had spent a miserable night, but she wasn’t angry any more.

I had returned to see her bathed and in her nightdress. Vatsala had woken up and was tending to her, cleaning her wounds with Dettol, making her tea. Sanyogita was quiet, and even smiled when she saw me, but Vatsala looked fearfully up at me, like a dog who had just been beaten. Whenever I looked back at her, she’d hurriedly lower her head. But as soon as I turned away, I felt her eyes follow me. She packed Sanyogita’s bag while I lay on the bed, making a point of taking down all her best suitcases, jewellery and shawls. She gave a short family history of each article, as if reminding me that Sanyogita was not alone, not without people. Just as we were about to go to bed, she tumbled in with her bedding, wanting to spend the night on the floor next to Sanyogita.

‘Vatsala,’ Sanyogita said, laughing, ‘it wasn’t him.’

‘Bebi,’ she said aghast, ‘then who?’

‘Just someone. But don’t worry about it. You don’t have to sleep here.’

Vatsala folded up her bed, smiled apologetically and crept away.

That night I received a number of text messages. At two a.m. in three instalments: ‘What I’ve done tonight can never be forgiven or forgotten. I think of you as my brother. I’ve had an amazing time with you in these past few months. I wanted us to be friends for life, but destiny had other plans. Please from now on, don’t call me, don’t text for a long, long time. I can’t be your trainer, but I will organize someone for you when you come back. I hope one day Sanyogita will find it in her heart to forgive me for what I have done. She will always be my bhabi. Ash-man.’ I replied, ‘Don’t be so filmy, just send her some flowers in the morning.’ At three a.m.: ‘Man, not giving film lines. If she forgives me, I’m happiest man in the world. What are her favourite flowers?’ ‘Lilies,’ I replied. At five a.m.: ‘My dear Megha, tonight I have lost my best friend in the world. Now, you are all that I have in the world. Your boyf, Aakash.’ ‘Huh?’ I replied. ‘Who’s Megha?’ No reply.

And it was like this that I discovered what, if my mind had been clearer in those last days in Delhi, I would have seen anyway: Aakash had found a girl. The next morning, just as we were leaving, the chowkidar brought up a little cane basket containing a great deal of fern and foliage, six pink gladioli and a note of apology in neat, rounded writing.

12

Months went by though I don’t know how.

The first two were spent in a village in the south of Spain. Sanyogita knew an English family who owned a hotel in the hills above Seville. They were of red earth, covered in orange, cork and olive trees. In the evenings, the long light and the silvery olive trees made the hills appear purple. The sky was cast in one pattern before evening fell. Then no matter how strong the wind in the hills became, it could never put the arrangement of clouds and clear sky out of true. Against the filters of this hung sky, the light distilled into darkness. From the semicircular window of the one-bedroom annexe we rented for 750 euros a month, we could see the white village of Cazalla. The red-tiled roofs on some of its houses were flat, smooth and new; and on others, rounded, mildewed, with browning stalks growing out of them. On all the bell towers and spires, great stork’s nests had appeared. The chattering from them at night, mixed with the croaking of frogs in a field below, and that most Mediterranean of Mediterranean noises, the whirr of a Vespa, kept me awake for hours.

It seemed at first that we had salvaged our relationship. The quality of life and produce in the village was deceptive. It briefly made the small, borrowed idea of our stay in a European village ring true. In the mornings, we’d have breakfast in a shaded bar with high stools. A stern, leather-faced man brought us long pieces of bread with tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, salt and fresh orange juice. We posed as regulars, watching two inches of black coffee drip into clear glasses. The bartender assembled a saucer, a spoon and a large sachet of sugar as the milk heated. His self-assuredness stood out against our pretence; to him it was just another morning, café con leche just coffee with milk. And when the milk had heated, the saucers slid across the bar with a brief clatter. At lunch, in another place with tiles and a high wooden bar, there was fresh fish, salad and giant tomatoes with flakes of salt; all things that we hadn’t tasted during the summer in India. They created the illusion of happiness, of the good life.

But it was also these things, and the settled world they spoke of, that made India recede. For as long as sensual pleasures lasted, it didn’t matter. But when those satisfactions ran out, I realized I had no way into this kind of life. There was no context for Indians in Spain as there was for the English or Americans. The falsity of my situation overwhelmed me. Sometimes, late in the afternoon, I would look out of the semicircular window in disbelief at the cobbled streets and red-tiled roofs. The heat in the village dwarfed the heat of the subcontinent and this also added to my sense of futility. The streets were empty all day but for the occasional figure of an old veiled woman in black. The image might have been emblematic of the little village, perfect down to the late-afternoon blaze on the white houses and the bronze-faced lion spitting spring water into a mossy basin, but I wouldn’t have known; I was on the outside, with too little knowledge, knowledge I took for granted in India, to enter that picture of village life.

I joined the village gym. It was a single room, with modern frosted-glass windows embedded in an old façade. A beefy, middle-aged man who taught spin cycling classes to the women in the village charged me thirty euros for the month. One half of the gym was taken up by old weights machines; the other by the spinners, spinning on through a haze of coloured disco lights and techno music. Teenage Spanish boys, with bad skin and short-sleeved T-shirts, worked out around me, eyeing me with suspicion. A metal wall fan circulated the warm, stale air in the room.

It was after one of these sessions, almost six weeks into my time in the village, that my mobile, now carrying Movistar, beeped with a voice message. I stepped out of the gym. It was seven p.m., but the blaze had not subsided. It was late at night in India; I could hear the beeping of scooters and the tinkle of bicycle bells in the background. ‘How’s you doing, man?’ the voice began in English. ‘I hopes you feeling good, man.’ Then in Hindi, ‘Yaar, I miss you a lot. What’s this going and leaving your friend? Please, man, come back soon. There’s so much fun still to be had. OK, well, call when you get a chance. Your friend, Ash-man. Oh, and please say my sorry one more time to Sanyogita bhabi.’

Walking back through these empty cobbled streets, with their narrow pavements and leather-faced men staring vacantly at me, I knew I had to leave. I just didn’t know how I would tell Sanyogita. Money had become a problem as well. In India my mother had helped me with a small allowance and the few thousand I had left in sterling from my job in London had gone far. The village was cheap, but many times more expensive than India. Every meal was out; Sanyogita always ordered fish; we must have been spending fifty euros a day at an increasingly unfavourable exchange rate. The only hopeful news was that the revised version of my novel was complete. It was not an inspired revision, but I’d had detailed notes and had followed them closely. The manuscript was already with the agent in New York and I was awaiting a reply.

That night at the village casino, which was really just a restaurant with red velvet curtains, deep leather chairs and tiled walls, I tried telling Sanyogita that I needed to go home. But I framed my reasons around my confusion at being in a little village in Spain. Sanyogita seemed receptive. She listened quietly, sipping a small glass of sherry and occasionally wrapping a finger around a piece of acorn-fed ham. When I’d finished, she responded with a sweeping gesture which left me, like with the study, reaching in desperation for adequate feelings.

‘Baby, listen, I’ve been thinking the same thing,’ she said, ‘and since this was all my idea in the first place, I feel I should do the cleaning up on my own. I wasn’t going to tell you this till later in the month, it was going to be a surprise, but since you’ve brought it up, I’ll tell you now. I have this friend, Nargis, who’s a publisher in the East Village. She’s like a big Buddhist and a Free Tibet person. And basically, she’s decided to extend the privileges of her citizenship, especially since America has done so little for Tibet, by marrying a Tibetan in Delhi so that he can escape the tyranny of the Chinese and come and live in the States.’

I felt the frost round my glass of Cruzcampo start to melt.

‘But if he’s living in Delhi, hasn’t he already escaped the tyranny of the Chinese?’ I asked, feigning concern.

‘Yes, yes, all right,’ Sanyogita said, laughing, ‘but Nargis doesn’t know that. She’s a big-hearted person, you know, a real do-gooder, so maybe she hasn’t thought of that part. It all seems the same from America, anyway. But that’s not the point.’

‘What is the point?’

‘That I’ve done a flat swap with her! She needed a place to stay in Delhi and so I’ve lent her Jorbagh for two months. In place of which, we have the most adorable little flat in the East Village with a cat called Kuku. You can work, I can do my thing. We’ll have breakfast at the Clinton Street Bakery, we’ll watch films, it’ll be so nice.’

It wasn’t that I didn’t have a flat in Delhi where I could return to; I had my mother’s. It wasn’t that Sanyogita, in feeling she had to clean up this summer mess, had already bought our tickets to New York; I would gladly have reimbursed her, thinking of the money I would save by not having to live in New York for two months; it was that I knew Sanyogita, and I knew the place from where the gesture had come. This was no entrapment; it was a heartfelt and hopeful gesture, from the depths of Sanyogita’s fairy-tale imagination, dreaming always of escape.

And so, despite great misgivings, I gave in.

After a summer of boredom and waiting, I left New York under these circumstances.

I had heard nothing from the agent. For two months, I waited, viewing every ending week with sinking hopes and every new one with fresh, but misplaced, anticipation. I checked my emails constantly, and if I was away from the computer for too long, I felt an ache at the thought of what news the little blue orb in my inbox might have brought. I tried to live my agent’s life, thinking of when she would come into work, when she might be having lunch with a publisher, when – shaking off the effects of a bottle of red wine – she would write to me to tell me of what he had said. I thought of how she would have half-days on Fridays in the summer, and of where and for how long she would go on holiday. I thought obsessively of these things even as my agent sat in an office barely a few miles away. But I couldn’t bring myself to contact her first. I felt certain that this action would turn good news to bad. I played games with myself. Every changing light – would I make it across the street while the little man was still white? – every arriving train – would the next train be an express train uptown? – every Sunday book review – would it contain any indication of what was popular these days? Indian writing still in? – became heavy with significance. I started to believe that the world around me, the minutiae of life in a big city, contained signs of whether I was to be a writer or not. If this feeling had come from a genuine wish to be a writer, it might have had a foundation in hard work and reading that would have given me solace. But it was an empty wish; it was like my novel, a wish for a lifeline.

One hot afternoon, when Sanyogita had gone to see an aunt in Long Island, leaving me to take care of Kuku, I stepped out to have an iced coffee. I felt in my pocket for the keys and let the door slam behind me. But even before its metal teeth had closed around the powerful cylindrical bolt, I knew that what I had thought were my keys was in fact loose change. I stood in an airless corridor, permanently lit by a yellowing fluorescent light, staring with aimless intensity at a floor of many tiny hexagons. I didn’t have a phone; I had only enough money for an iced coffee. I didn’t want to leave the building, as that would lock me out of the building as well as the flat. I could hear Kuku mewing, no doubt rubbing his scrawny body along the door, reminding me that I had to feed him. I felt an irrational hatred towards the cat for not being able to help me.

It was then that I had what I can only describe as a swarming of nerves. Already close to some kind of lip, they cascaded over. My body turned cold with sweat, I felt some kind of essential life-giving liquid drain from me and I had the desire to curl up on the floor by the door, with the strange belief that if I kept my face close to the centimetre gap of cold air between the door and the floor, I would be able to restart the flow of oxygen into my body. The city beyond terrified me. When I thought of it, I could think only of the crowds and commotion around Times Square. And it was like this, hardly able to walk, that I made my way down three flights of stairs, banging on every door in the hope that someone would be able to help me cope with the blackness rising around me.

On the ground floor, a girl in a summery dress opened the door. She had a garden flat, with an open window and a large white fan. I broke into the tranquillity of her room and collapsed on a purple futon, trying slowly to explain my situation. She listened, nodded, emitting a few comforting ‘uh-huhs’, then picked up a red telephone and called a locksmith. After a rapid conversation, she said he would be there in eight minutes.

The man who arrived was a Romanian, slim, blond, in a vest. He had been at a nearby café drinking an iced coffee, he said. He looked at the lock with dismay. He said that this was not the kind of lock his tools could open; he would have to drill it. Two hundred dollars. I had no choice. It was Friday and Sanyogita was not back until Monday. He took his drill to the brass lock and bore into a single point just above the keyhole. It was as violent a thing as I had ever seen; I could hear, as brass flakes flew, the lock’s interlocking components break one by one. Then he took a wrench to the lock, and after many failed attempts pulled its little brass face from its place in the door, leaving an empty hole. But the door didn’t open.

‘It has a double-lock,’ he said, ‘but you didn’t tell me.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘We’ll have to drill that one too. It’ll be expensive. It’s a good lock. Yeah, yeah. Another two hundred at least.’

He bore into the second lock now. The brass flakes flew and the lock’s components broke one by one; it was wrenched from its place in the door; a second empty hole appeared. The door fell open, the room reappeared, Kuku rubbed up against a sofa. But the door couldn’t be left like that; the locks had to be replaced. Two hundred dollars each. I gave him the money in two-hundred-dollar instalments withdrawn from an electric-blue ATM outside a deli. It felt like cutting away parts of my body. He gave me two sets of brass keys in return.

I went back upstairs and wrote to the agent.

The following week, once Sanyogita had returned, the blue orb in my inbox brought this letter, a letter within a letter, of which painful snatches remained with me:

Aatish – Since I had to go off on a long weekend after your delivery of
An Internment
, I asked a colleague here – formerly a highly placed publisher and now with us part-time as a reader – to read your novel, and below you will find his report. For reasons you will appreciate (since the report does not pull its punches), I have debated whether to send this to you – but, on balance, feel it will be more helpful than otherwise to you to contemplate a neutral professional judgement. Of course, you are entitled to reject the judgement, but I hope you will find something of value in it.

Best wishes, Marie

AN INTERNMENT – BY AATISH TASEER

Although Tasser can write with fluency and intelligence at times,
An Internment
is a seriously flawed novel. It is far too early for him – or us – to be thinking about securing a publishing deal for his work…

The line-by-line style needs serious attention. There are so many awkward and over-elaborate sentences. I’d encourage Tasser to be as ruthless as possible with his own writing – to stop trying too hard – and to work on developing clarity and simplicity in his style…