All the Fabulous Beasts

by Priya Sharma

  Jessica grants me another reprieve. Air has never seemed so sweet. I surface with aching lungs but all I can manage are shallow breaths. Not that there’s much air left, only a few inches between the water level and the roof. I have to tip my head back to keep my mouth and nose clear.

  It’s not over though. Jessica comes up in front of me. I take a deep breath and tip my head so that I can keep her in sight. Her eyes are empty, like everything’s been poured out of her. Her arms slide around me, like a lover’s, her legs twine about mine. She’s a dead weight. We sink like a stone.

  The sea is vast. I’m weary of the struggle. I want to give in but the fear is physiological, my cells fighting to save themselves. The pain is surprising.

  Then it comes. I have to gasp. I’m stunned as cold water floods my lungs, freezing me from within. Bubbles escape from my nose and mouth. Stars explode at the periphery of my vision.

  Jessica releases me, which makes me sad because it’s now that I want someone to hold me. I drift.

  Being lost brings me a contrary clarity. My life returns to me. Mum, when she was still alive. It was dusk and I was in the garden of the cottage at Molleston, watching her as she stood at the sink. She looked up and saw me, giving me a broad smile.

  I remember the afternoon sun sliding around a classroom. The algebraic symbols scrawled on the board finally rearranged themselves from a jumble into something I understood. In that moment I had the joy of intuition, of a knowledge as complex as my father’s, and it thrilled me because it was mine.

  I remember kissing Tom in a darkened room that was washed by the light of a mute television. Kissing him until my mouth felt bruised and swollen.

  And Jessica’s sweet, trusting smile.

  The last bubbles escape into blackness.

  Down at Newgale beach the sea is wide and the tide carries on rising.

  The Englishman

  Never has God been in such profusion as he is in India. He is in the dust, for every common man. He is in the bazaar, Shiva’s hooded serpent, dancing in a basket; in Krishna’s bony cow, lying in traffic; He is among the Dervishes as they whirl, sand flying from their skirts and He is in the stark white church, tended by wizened brown nuns in habits of navy polyester. He is in tiny shrines by the roadside and in the grand temples, carved from single mountains.

  God is everywhere. And once in your blood, India, like God, will never leave you.

  *

  The Englishman puts down his newspaper. He’s irritated by the waiter, who stands before him, dithering, despite the Englishman’s request in Hindi for another cup of coffee. Then the Englishman realises his mistake. He has the half-remembered, half-forgotten words mixed up. He repeats himself in English. “Another coffee, inside.”

  Embarrassment makes him brusque.

  “Of course, Sir.”

  The waiter is a smooth, delicate creature in a Nehru jacket, tiny in contrast to the Englishman. The narrow man glides away, bearing the Englishman’s empty cup and saucer aloft on a lacquered tray.

  The Englishman leaves the veranda for the dining room. It’s barely midmorning and there’s already sheen of sweat on his forehead. As the doors swing shut behind him the cold blast from the air conditioning raises goosebumps on his arms.

  Inside are wooden panels to waist height and a black and white diamond chequered floor, punctuated by potted palms. Only sixty years ago this was where the cream of English society took tea after polo. There had been music on a gramophone and dancing. The only Indians allowed would have been servants.

  The Englishman surveys the social advancement around him; tourists in shorts, Indian businessmen having meetings and talking on their mobiles. Then he waits for his second cup of coffee and carries on reading. He is shocked by the stories. Kidnapped children. Brides burnt for dowries of washing machines and motorbikes. He hardly knows this India at all. He’s not sure if he is more ashamed of her or himself. In his mind she is a place of genteel corruption and colour. When did she become so modern and brutal? In his memory India is vermillion and turquoise. She is orange and gold. She is a peacock of a country.

  On his return, the Englishman was seated next to a girl on a gap year, her future on her bright face. She listened with eagerness as he told her about the colours. Together they peered from the window of the plane. Below, piled up matchboxes organised themselves into rickety shelters with corrugated roofs. As they lost altitude, the ants crawling over them became people. The Englishman realised that this impossible town was perched precariously on a rubbish dump. Its inhabitants scavenged with the gulls and dogs. The colour was somewhere between brown and grey.

  The colour of Delhi was mud.

  Stepping off the plane he was overcome by heat and moisture. It was saturated with smells that made him a child again. Humidity and dust. It was India. She lodged in his windpipe and he didn’t think he would ever breathe again.

  He’s glad that Elsie hadn’t seen this India. When they were in bed together, sharing a cigarette, she would say, Tell me about India. Will I like it?

  He would pull the bed sheet over their heads, making a tent, through which the afternoon light would filter. In that place there was only the two of them. Next year, Elsie. Next year I will take you. India is beautiful but not as beautiful as you.

  Her pale hair tumbled across his chest. There had always been a next year, until the years ran out.

  Each morning the Englishman smiles as he passes the hotel guard, a man in khaki uniform, rifle tucked upright against his body. Looking back, the Englishman can see his hotel with its colonnaded verandas and grand portico.

  He walks through the tree lined avenues of bungalows that are not-so-New Delhi, each building a chronicle of the Raj. The sunlight makes a heat blaze on the tarmac. He can see no order on the roads. Cars, lorries, buses packed beyond the comical to the precarious, all move in different directions. Weaving in and out of them are black and yellow auto-rickshaws and mopeds, carrying families stacked together like interlocking puzzle, the women perched side saddle in their saris. He recalls sitting in polite traffic queues on a Cheshire by-pass during his daily commute, taking for granted the calm, the sense of order, that had been such a wonderment to him as a young man.

  As he walks, sweat pools in the crooks of his knees and elbows. He puts up his black umbrella for shade. As a child, his mother would sit him on a blanket. There was brightness and the feeling that his bones were always warm, not this oppressive heat, beating him down. Little wonder India is indolent at the height of summer, in temperatures that can kill a man.

  The Englishman passes into Old Delhi, a different city. Here are the remnants of the Delhi Sultans and the Moghuls who left behind graceful minarets and stone latticework.

  As he nears the bazaar, the street narrows and suddenly he is upon it. Or, rather, it is upon him, this swell of bodies, this riot of women in saris, coloured bindhis and eyeliner on their faces, who jostle and flirt with narrow hipped men, in nylon shirts over white vests.

  There are fabrics, the colour of jewels, piled up in rolls. Spices are displayed in cloth sacks, their mouths ripped open, revealing dusts and powders in all the colours of the earth, from rich red turmeric to pale brown cinnamon. Tinsel garlands. Brass idols from the pantheon of Hindu gods. Men sell bottled Limka, a fizzy drink the colour of limes, from rusty fridges and cook fried parathas in blackened pans of oil.

  On the floor sits a beggar, in a faded white mourning sari with glass bangles in a row upon one arm, looking impossibly small to fit over her bony, gnarled hands. They clink with the slightest movement. Before her is a piece of tatty cloth, containing a few lonely rupees. The hem of her sari is pulled down over her face and she bows her head, but the Englishman sees her chin continue onto her chest. She has no neck, just a lump in its place. The skin overlying it is stretched and ulcerated. The tumour is mottled, as though it is dying independently of its owner.

  A woman nearby waves a shawl at him from the bundle at her feet. It is red sho
t through with gold. “For your wife. Twenty rupees. Very good price.”

  Elsie would have liked that, he thinks dully, she loved bright colours. She made me laugh. She didn’t mind my accent or strange cooking. She was my friend. I miss her.

  When she died the Englishman buried her in the ground at their local church. He converted, to please her family, even though she didn’t want him to. She said it didn’t matter. She was the only one to whom it didn’t matter at all. Her father slapped him on the back and asked him what cricket team he supported, like it was a test. He walked through their town, with its cobbles and Tudor beams, the only brown face. Elsie always put her arm through his. People wouldn’t look at them. Sometimes women spat at her. He thinks a lot about the nature of God these days. His father would come home from the post office where he worked. Son, he would say, you can’t be made a Hindu. You are born one. No matter where you go you can’t turn away from it. Or India.

  Elsie didn’t believe in God. She believed in love and laughter and having a smoke. She believed in seizing life and shaking it. She believed in herself, because if I don’t, no-one else will.

  I believe in you. He took her hand. Marry me.

  The Englishman wonders whether he is being punished for turning away. From India. From his family. From Hinduism.

  *

  He passes a boarded up shop that smells strongly of urine and he turns his face away in disgust. He starts as a snake hisses, close to his eyes, curling off the shoulder of a man in tatty robes. Its tongue flicks in and out. The man has three horizontal lines marked on his forehead, marks of Shiva, the Destroyer. The Lord of Death. His hair is long and matted, part of it tied up in a topknot. He is laughing, hoisting the giant serpent onto his shoulders and carrying it off. A laughing Shiva, walking through the streets. His throat is blue from drinking the poisoned oceans at the start of creation.

  The Englishman feels dizzy.

  “Come,” Shiva beckons with a smile and a nod of the head.

  The Englishman looks at the stone doorway he has indicated. He says its name. “Madir,” and the words sound foreign in his mouth. Madir, temple. Doorway to the heart.

  He slips off his shoes and stoops to enter.

  Shiva smiles again. His mouth is red from chewing betel nut, the beloved Indian carcinogen. He lowers the cobra into a basket and then knocks the lid shut with a flourish. The walls are unplastered and the altar is made of rough hewn stone. On the floor is rush matting. Ganesha, the elephant-headed, pot-bellied son of Shiva sits on the altar.

  “Ganesha.”

  “Yes,” Shiva replies. “He is at the start of all journeys. How long have you been away from home, Englishman?”

  “Twenty-five years.”

  Home. The Englishman thinks about the word. He has not been to India for twenty-five years. So where is home? In the house where he grew up in Jaipur? In the semi-detached he shared with Elsie? Washing his car on a Sunday, just like his neighbours. Investing in electricals, desirables, collectables. Being slapped on the back by his workmates. You’re just like us, aren’t you Kris? A proper Englishman.

  When they ventured to a city they would encounter Indian faces that would look at the Englishman and his bride. He saw their features contort with disgust. Coconut, they would say in Hindi as they passed him by. Brown on the outside and white on the inside.

  So, where is home?

  “In Britain?” Shiva’s guttural accent makes it sound exotic.

  “Yes.”

  “What is your name, Englishman?”

  “Krishna Sharma,” replies the Englishman.

  Just Kris, he would say. In England, their tongues would stumble over the extra syllable, the ‘na’ in his name that made it foreign.

  “Your family? They are with you?”

  “I’m a widower.”

  “Children?” Shiva’s interrogation is merciless.

  “No. No children. My wife. She was called Elsie.” He feels like he is confessing.

  “English then.”

  “Yes.”

  Shiva shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. God can see her. He can see you. You are bound together. Die and be reborn together. That is the way it is. That is what it means to be on the wheel.”

  He laughs and when he does Krishna can see the sea churning in his mouth.

  “All that love, it has to go somewhere. Like all energy in the universe, it can’t just disappear. It changes, from one form into another. It is a good way, yes?” He puffs out his chest with pride, as though this is his personal plan.

  Shiva takes the puja tray from the altar. It is stainless steel, containing dishes of rice, betel nut, tulsi leaves, honey and sandalwood paste. He takes his thumb and presses it into the paste and smears it across the Englishman’s forehead. Three times into three horizontal lines.

  “Bless you. For the start of your auspicious journey home, Krishna Sharma.”

  *

  The Englishman stands outside the madir. He is crying. For Elsie. For India, who has so little and is so much. And England, whom he has come to love but is a void without his wife. For Krishna Sharma.

  He has been given back his name.

  To be reborn he has to die. That is the wheel.

  Krishna walks through the crowd, not sure where he’s going. If he has anywhere to go. The world is empty and full.

  Children stand before him, little stick limbs jutting from ragged t-shirts. They are bare foot. The smallest one at the front holds out a hand, his black eyes liquid in his dusty face. “Please.” He keeps his arm out straight, the other hand at the elbow locking it into position. They have formed a circle around him.

  A girl in a ruffled, dirty skirt holds a naked baby at her hip. Her hair is plaited. At her elbows are patches of eczema, crusty from scratching.

  On her forehead are three horizontal lines.

  He gets out his wallet from his shirt pocket. First the little boy, then the girl with the baby. Encouraged, the others press in, pleading and crying in low moans that rise to a mourning wail. He empties out the money, passing the crumpled notes out as fast as he can to the eager little hands. They feel like soft cotton between his fingers as they are snatched away.

  The baby clutches at his shirt front as the girl presses closer. He can feel the camera strap being cut, sliding from his neck and he catches a flash of sunlight on the casing as it is whisked away into unseen hands. Never mind. Let them have it.

  There are more and more of the little bodies, all clamouring for him, a sea of them. A writhing mass, from which hissing tongues and dextrous hands dart. The Englishman feels his clothes being moved by tiny fingers. The flaps of pockets lift, as if by a breeze.

  The watch falls from his wrist. The girl holds it in her hand, brazen, and then it’s lost somewhere in the folds of her skirt.

  Never mind, let her have it. It’s just a watch. Nothing is irreplaceable.

  Growing bolder, they fish under his waistband, pulling shamelessly at his money belt, like an insistent lover. It comes away. He feels lighter. It’s only money after all. Let them have all of it.

  The little hands slide around his belly, engulfing him, kneading him. One of them pinches the hanging flesh of his arms. He feels an experimental nip on his calf, drawing blood. He looks down to see a boy squatting by his leg, knees up by his ears. The girl, angry, bends down to slap the nibbler away.

  She licks her lips.

  Never mind, they look so hungry.

  All this energy can’t just disappear. One form into another.

  As they lift him, he hears their groans, but they manage, being so many. The Englishman is carried away into the darkness of the alley.

  Never mind, he thinks, this is what it means to be on the wheel. Let them have me. Let them have all of me.

  The Nature of Bees

  Vivien Avery came into her summer late. She blossomed at the age of thirty-eight, a time when most women are past ripeness, their fruit sampled and discarded.

  The men buzzed a
round her, enthralled.

  *

  The bee is praised by ancient Greeks and our own captains of industry for its philosophies of order and productivity. There is no self in this honeyed utopia, each member a willing sacrifice to its machinery.

  As much as we would emulate its nature, we also emasculate it. The bee is reduced to a fuzzy bumbler, nectar drunk amid the blooms. We do not heed the warning of its colours. Such sweetness always comes with a sting.

  *

  When Vivien stepped inside the cottage she knew her choice to be correct. Built into the walls of an estate, it contained sunshine and shade, heavy oak and threadbare rugs. The manager showed her around without embarrassment at the stained hip bath beneath the dripping shower head, the tired Formica of the kitchen and the rattling windows. Vivien was happy to endure such deprivations. It had character.

  He led her through the kitchen into the suntrap yard, the stone slabs warm. There was a washing line strung across it, wearing tea towels like a row of flags. There was a rotten door in the far wall, askew on its hinges.

  “I keep meaning to fix this,” for the first time he sounded like he was apologising.

  “What’s through there?”

  “The orchard. The estate. It’s better that you stay out unless they invite you.” He stood and looked at her. “You will remember that, won’t you? Only if they ask you to.”

  “Of course. Are you in charge of the estate?”

  “Good God, no. Just this.”

  She followed him up the twisting stairs. From the windows under the slanting roof, she could see the yard, then hives scattered in the orchard, a kitchen garden and finally the roof of the mansion, made of crumbling ochre stone. She could see figures moving among the trees and between the rows of vegetables.

  “You’re not allergic to bee stings, are you?”

  Vivien frowned.

  “No, but I’m not fond of them either.”

  “This used to be a beekeeper’s cottage.” He nodded towards the big house. “They produce the caviar of honey.”