Love and Longing in Bombay

by Vikram Chandra

  “What are you smiling at?” Megha said hesitantly.

  Sartaj thought about it. “How did we get so old?”

  He laughed then, and after a moment she with him, and the sound sped around the room, over the photographs, the few knick-knacks on the shelf, the stained dining table. They both stopped suddenly, at exactly the same moment.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He struggled himself upright. “Do you want some tea?” he said.

  In the kitchen he had to wash the pot, and then the teacups as the water burbled. Then he stood ready with the sugar, alert and concentrated, and the smell of the heating milk and the leaves, and the wisps of steam, sent him reeling into the first morning of their marriage, the first time they had woken together, the profound heat of her skin against him, and her confession that she did not know how to make tea. I told you I can’t cook, she giggled into his neck. But tea, Sartaj said, pretending to be angry, but after that he had always made tea in the morning. Now the heat from the stove spread across his knuckles, and he remembered the newspaper splayed across the table between them, and buttery kisses, and he felt his heart wrench, kick to the side like a living thing hurt, and he fell to his knees on the dirty floor, held his head between his hands, and wept. His sobs squeezed out against all the force of his arms, and the wooden doors on the cupboard under the washbasin rattled faintly as he bent and curled against them.

  He felt Megha’s hands on his shoulders, and her breath on his forehead as she whispered, “Sartaj, Sartaj,” and he turned away from her, from his own embarrassment, but his strength was gone, and she pulled his head back, into the solid curve of her shoulder. He shook again and she held him tight, hard, and he felt with piercing awareness the pain of her forearm against the back of his neck. He was gone, then, vanished into the familiar fragrance of her perfume, unknown for so long, with its flowers and underlying tinge of salt. He was perfectly still. Her lips moved against his cheek, murmuring, something that he couldn’t quite hear, and then he felt the brush on his mouth, a gift of softness and then the shifting suppleness, what he always experienced as a question. He kissed her desperately, afraid to stop or pause because then she would stop. But she wasn’t stopping, she held his face in her hands, her long palms strongly on cheeks and chin, and sipped at him with little murmurs. Despite himself, Sartaj curved against her, an arm up and around, and he felt the weight of her breasts against his side, and she laughed into his mouth, not here, not here.

  They almost made it to the sofa in the drawing room. He walked behind her, and he watched the sheer cloth of her skirt flap faintly against her legs, and her neck under the pinned hair, and the straight back under the expensive white cloth, and he reached with both hands to hold her by the upper arms. Again the vivid shock of the flesh. She fell back easily against him, offering him her neck. Under his nuzzling she squirmed and said, “The curtains.” He stumbled back, dizzy, found the curtains and pulled. When he turned around into the sudden dimness she was sitting on the sofa, her hands together on her knees. “I’m going to marry him,” she said, and her voice was small. Sartaj navigated towards her, one step and then another, and they peered over the sudden distance. He knew it was true and there was nothing he could say to it. He tamped down his entirely unreasonable anger and searched for words. Then she giggled. He followed her eyes and there was the unreasonable bulge in his pyjamas, his red shamiana she had called it once.

  This time they found each other somewhere over the coffee table. He dragged her over it, one hand on her back and the other in her hair. Once they would have delighted in the lingering discarding of clothes, the slow fall of silk, the shifting of cotton and slow revelations, but now there wasn’t the time. He laboured with the complications of her skirt as she shrugged off her blouse. Her pull at his nada dug into his side but his pyjamas came down efficiently with a single movement of her wrist. “Sar-taj,” she said, and took his hands away from her skirt, and with two clear snaps it came away, and then she was against him. Now he dared to look at her face, and in the dark flush of her cheeks there was that concentration, that singular look of intent purpose he had not seen for a long time, and he was no longer afraid. Under his thumbs her nipples bloomed and she shivered helplessly and smiled.

  But he buckled under the scrape of her fingernails on his thighs. She was arrogant now, full of secrets and sure, very sure, as he slid to his knees and onto his back. She pressed with her hands on his shoulders, pushing him down, straddling and hovering over him, her breasts a maddening lightness on his chest. Again her fingers moved over his stomach, scuffing, and his face contorted, saying take pity on it, my thing my muscle my cock, take pity on its loneliness, and she grasped him in her hand. She leaned low over him, breathing in the agonized relief in his exhalations. When she looked down along the length of their bodies, he looked with her, and saw her hand grasping hard, and springing from her fist, him, each pulse distinct. They had argued and talked and laughed about what to call their parts, she hated lund and chut, how vernac and crude and vulgar she said, cock and pussy and fuck felt foreign in his mouth, he said that to her and she laughed fondly and said all I want in your mouth is me and thrust her breast against his lips, me by any other name. But now she groaned, a curious groan mingling hunger and joy and defeat and yearning and she snaked down fast moving like heat over his skin and she took him in her mouth. She reached with her neck, mouth wide open, and took him in. Me by any other name. His mind drunken reeled and she made greedy little noises, slobbering, and he heard his own voice calling, and her head bobbed and weaved, and in the confusion of pleasures he remembered a long walk along a sandy beach the feeling of the sunrise ahead, and raised his head and saw with wonder her lips on him. The stretch of the flesh and beautiful and grotesque. His gasps in his mouth. A burning warmth against the side of his chest through the thin silky cloth on her hips. With his right hand he reached down and pulled pins from her hair. It uncoiled reluctantly and dropped slowly to his stomach.

  When she looked up her face was blurred, her eyes hazy from wine. “Condom?” she said. “Condom?” He was still running back, retreating from the edge she had brought him to and relieved she had stopped, and as always the way she pronounced the word with the flat “um” baffled him. “Condom?”

  “In the bedroom,” he said finally. He followed her, followed that movement of her haunches, that slight jiggle which still and now made his heart surge in tender ferocity. He found the unopened condom packet easily, in the table next to the bed. She lay back on the bed, twirled off her panties in a single arcing moment that bent her like a bow and back. Orange light spilled through the curtain on the west-facing window, across her belly and into the shadow below. His fingers fumbled at the plastic.

  “Give,” she said. She took it from him as he tumbled onto the bed. She kissed his tip with a swirl of tongue, then rolled the rubber down. Then she was over him, squatting. She held him and he thought of the other man viciously. Look where she is now. Look. But who is the cuckold, which is the husband, and he felt despair in his throat, like black and bitter iron. But then he cried out in love, from the scalding oily embrace of her. She took him in, a fraction, just so much, so little. His hips bucked and she put a hand on his stomach. Don’t move. He knew her pleasures. Her engulfing would last an eternity, little by little. She was absolutely still, not moving at all but yes slipping down eighth by infinitesimal inch. On her face an expression of indescribable luxury. Even during the first time together, which had been her first time ever, she had been confident. Afterwards she says ah that wasn’t too good but I think it’s going to get better and rolls herself in a yellow silk sari. Sartaj saw now that this was the last time, and again flickering shadows of hopelessness chased the pleasure up his spine. He opened his eyes wide, to see her breasts light and golden in the slanting light, against the black brassiere, and he wanted to touch them but he knew not yet. Her mouth was open and he knew she was on the same razor edge between excruciating delig
ht and impatience, holding by the will on to time. For in time there was joy. Children’s shouts tumbling into the room but here the harsh breathing. In Benares he is overwhelmed by time as an owl-faced shopkeeper displays for Megha his saris, he throws them in the air with a flourish and the silk billows, red and gold and deep blue and green, and Sartaj laughs as the colours float and fall but he is full of loss and afterwards on the street she asks. It’s nothing, he says. Nothing. Now she exhaled, a wail, “Sartaj it’s so good.” He considered the nuances of “it,” distilled the traces of regret and exultation in her voice, but now with another grateful sigh she gave up, gave in, reached with a right hand to their joining, under her, above him, and with a finger strummed at herself, at the centre. Through her flesh he felt the vibration. Which he remembered. When she finds out about him and someone else she cries and leaves for two weeks and three days. Later when he finds out about her, much later, he cannot believe it cannot see it in his head and then wants either to die or kill someone. She flick flickered with her finger and he could hear it in her breathing and nothing else was moving and he raised his head to watch and she leaned down suddenly and kissed him and her tongue moved in and out of his mouth furiously. He felt fucked and was grateful. She spoke into his mouth now, a cry, something, and then shook and came down on him the rest of the way, and trembled defencelessly on him, and he held her. Until she was still.

  But with his hands spread wide on her buttocks and his face in her neck, her shoulder, he found his rhythm. She stirred and moved with him. There was the fleeting awkwardness, a move this way and that and an unsatisfactory impact and a farting sound from between their bodies, but then she pushed herself up on his chest, palms spread, hair falling over his face, and together they had the movement, and he was moving in and out slicked from the sweet pocket of contentment‚ his thumbs on nipples pulled from the brassiere and rolled, and she made now small sounds on every stroke, halfway between protest and welcome, between all worlds, and Sartaj somewhere aware of the bed below, the roof, the building, and what they were doing high in the air above the earth, the eager grinding of the bodies, he in the body and out of it, mind moving and not moving, sweat on her forearms, me by any other name, the moving sun, and then she looked down at him with eyes shining with wonder, and he held her by the hip and strained up to her, rising off the bed and reaching in her, saying Megha, and she rolled down to meet him, and at the closest point of their meeting he felt the spill, ecstatic and alive, and in a last moment of thought he asked, is this me? Is this you?

  The condom made a sad plop on the floor next to the bed. As he turned over Sartaj had the sensation of time starting to stir again. He lay on his side, put a hand on Megha’s stomach and watched his fingers move with her breathing. She had an arm over her eyes, and he blinked hard, trying to read the set of her chin. He could feel the throbbing of his own heart. She turned to him suddenly. “We must be mad,” she said, but there was no sadness in her. She smiled and touched his cheek with the tips of her fingers. “I have to go.” He watched her walk across the bedroom, past the white wall with its filigree of shadow, and he knew he would remember this image forever, this person, this shimmering body moving away from his life. From the bathroom he heard the sound of rushing water.

  Sartaj was no longer angry, or despairing, but as he lay on the sheets he was possessed of a certain clarity, and he could hear the world ending. In the huge distances of the red sky, in the far echoes of the evening he could feel the melancholy of its inevitable death. He ran a hand over his chest, and the slow prickling of the hair was distinct and delicious. He got up, walked into the bathroom. Megha was standing under the shower, his blue shower cap on her head, and was lathering her stomach absently. He took the soap from her, led her by the hand into the bedroom, to the bed. He had her lie down on her back, and smoothed away the soap from her body with his fingers. He bent his head to her breasts, and found cool beads of water and underneath an evasive smoothness. He tongued the nubbly brown nipples and she stirred under him restlessly. As he trailed down her body she tugged at his patka. It came off finally and with her fingers in his hair he put a hand under one knee and lifted the leg up, away. He heard her breath, sharp, and as always the close curl of her labia against each other, under the soft slope of black hair, was once more strangely unknown to him, familiar and yet astonishing. He kissed her thigh, in the crease, and there was the lush smell of her, round and full and loamy in his nostrils. The flesh to the centre flushed and trembled and thickened under his tongue. In and into the sudden salty heat he lapped, hungrily, following the twisting trail of her shakes, losing sight of the secret and finding it again. She held his head and moved him and herself to the place she wanted and then away from it. His fingers dabbed and stroked through the folds and in the plump fluttering confusion there was time and its thousand and one tales, first flirtation, vanilla ice-cream eaten dripping from her fingers, and a Congress election poster outside the restaurant window while they quarrelled and he clung to none of them, they drifted and vanished and he sometimes himself and then vanished, his tongue moved and his lips and his fingers under her bottom, and then he heard her rising cry, and he knew she had her right index finger in her mouth, biting. Finally she drew him up and kissed him, licking his mouth and fingers. This time he put the condom on himself. They moved together and the bed creaked under them. His body bent over her and he looked back over his shoulder at their tangled shadows, rising and falling, and then down at her and at their hair mingling. He bent down to kiss her, and when he came away she was crying. With a groan he touched her cheek but she put a hand on his wrist. “Don’t stop,” she said. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop.” And so he went on. In the twilight she raised a hand to his mouth and he could see her tears. And so then a moment when everything was lost, but her.

  Afterwards it was dark and they said barely a word to each other. At the door she raised her cheek to his, and for a moment they stood like that. When she was gone he shut the door, and came back to the sofa, and sat on it, very still. He felt very empty, his mind like a hole, a black yawning in space, and he searched desperately for something to think about. He thought then of Kshitij, and his mother, and his father, and the boy’s anger, the resentful line of his shoulders, and Sartaj began as if from a great distance to see a shape, a form. He sat on the sofa and thought about it. Outside the night came.

  *

  “Alacktaka.”

  The word hurt Sartaj’s ear. His heart was racing and he had no memory of picking up the phone.

  “Alacktaka.”

  “What?”

  “We found out for you what it is.” It was Shaila, and she was whispering with great excitement.

  “Who is we?”

  “Me and my friend Gisela Middlecourt. We went to the library yesterday afternoon.” Then there was the sound of a struggle. “Gisela, stop it.”

  Sartaj waited for the giggling to subside, and then said, “Why are you whispering?”

  “Listen,” Shaila said. “We’re sort of interested in things to paint lips with.”

  “You are?”

  “Of course we are,” Shaila said. “Be quiet and listen. So we wondered what alacktaka was. Gisela said we should look in the Britannica. It wasn’t there. Then we looked in the Oxford. No. Then we thought, all right, the Urdu-English dictionary, which is down the reference shelf, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know,” Sartaj said, resting his head on his knees.

  “Obviously you don’t. It wasn’t there. So then the Persian-English dictionary. Still no. Then we found the Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Ety, Ety-mologically and Phil-lolo-gically Arranged, by Sir Algernon Algernon-Williams, M.A., K.C.I.E., and Principal A. S. Bharve, published 1889.”

  “Shaila, what’s the point?”

  “You’re not grateful in the very least.”

  “For what?”

  “Alacktaka. Page 232 of the Sanskrit-English dictionary. Alakta, rarely Alacktaka. Red juice or lac, obtained
from the red resin of certain trees and from the cochineal’s red sap. Used by men and women to dye certain parts of their bodies, especially the soles of the feet and lips.” Now there was another bout of stifled laughter. “R. 7.7. Mk. 4.15. Km. 5.34.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Rig Veda 7.7. That’s a reference. Sister Carmina told us. Do you know what Km. is? No, I’ll tell you. Sister Carmina didn’t want to tell us. It’s the Kama Sutra, which she says isn’t in the library. But Gisela’s parents have a copy which they think is hidden away on top of their shelf. We looked it up. It’s there, Chapter 5. Advice to the young gentleman, man-about-town. After your morning bath you put on balms and alakta, before you go out. I’ll read it to you.”

  “Shaila?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t.” Sartaj was staring at the top of his own head, which he could see in the mirror on the wall. He was wondering what Chetanbhai Ghanshyam Patel put on in the morning. What was his aftershave? Sartaj rubbed the skin on his wrist, under his kara, remembering again the heavy silkiness of the Rolex. Where was Chetanbhai’s copy of the Kama Sutra?

  “Why are you quiet? Are you thinking? What are you thinking about?” Shaila chirped into Sartaj’s ear, very interested.

  “Never mind what I’m thinking about,” Sartaj said. “You put that book back where you found it. And don’t read any more.” He could hear them laughing as he hung up.

  *

  Taking a deep breath, Sartaj plunged into the swamp. Above, the morning sky was low and dark, heavy with black clouds. The water came up fast to his thighs and then to his waist, and he clutched dizzily at the reeds to keep his balance. Things moved under his feet and the water lapped against his shirt, but finally he was able to take a step, and then another. The surface of the water was covered with a foamlike scum, and there were rags and drabbles of paper stuck to the reeds. After another step the thick green plants closed behind him and he could no longer see the buildings across the road. He was trying to make a circle but he could no longer tell where he was.