by Marisha Pink
TWO
THE door to Catherine’s study loomed ominously ahead when Aaron reached the top of the second floor staircase. At Arthur’s suggestion he was to focus his clearing efforts there in case he found material useful for the medical degree he would be commencing at Oxford University in October. Dr Catherine Rutherford had spent decades building up an enviable collection of books, journals and unusual case studies from her work around the world, and the contents of the study had been her pride and joy. Anything that Aaron did not want or need was to be donated to the university where she had occasionally lectured until the illness had forced her to stop.
Aaron’s pulse quickened when he approached the door, the palms of his hands soft and clammy from the sweat of apprehension. He had been inside the study countless times, yet without her there, and without her permission, he felt like an intruder trespassing on her very soul. Her life’s work lay within its walls and logic told him that each item held at least an intrinsic value, or else his mother would never have kept it. The very thought of giving, or worse throwing, away her belongings felt like waving goodbye to small pieces of his mother herself. It was a responsibility that he would have preferred not to shoulder, but categorically he knew that the room could not stay as it was. Neither he nor his father wished to use it – it was too painful somehow – but left untouched the many shelves of books and files would simply gather dust and they both knew that she would not have wanted her efforts to go to waste.
Drawing a deep breath, Aaron turned the polished bronze knob and gently pushed back the door. Stepping inside, he was at once struck by how small the room felt. Floor to ceiling bookcases lined all but a single wall, creating the foreboding sense that someone was standing over him. To his left, a small sash window permitted a soft stream of light to enter the room, but the mountain of paper that littered the executive desk positioned beneath it restricted his view of the garden below. He stared into the small space before him, his right hand still clasped firmly around the doorknob for support. As a child the room had always seemed much larger, infinite even. The bookcases had towered over him from their great height and he had barely been able to see over the desk. He had passed entire afternoons sprawled on the circular red rug at the centre of the room, playing contentedly with his toys whilst his mother busily worked at putting the world to rights. Now he virtually matched the bookcases in height and at best he would be able to sit cross-legged on the faded red rug. Time seemed to have moved on, almost without him realising, and looking despairingly around the room he heard himself sigh, uncertain how or where to begin.
Tentatively approaching the nearest bookcase, he lightly stroked his index finger across a row of thick spines, clearing a line through the thin layer of dust that had already accumulated there. Kumar and Clark’s Clinical Medicine, Gray’s Anatomy for Students and Rang and Dale’s Pharmacology; all titles he recognised from the recommended reading list that the admissions tutor had sent to him. He pulled the heavy volumes off the shelf one by one and stacked them in a neat pile at his feet. Continuing along the shelf he paused to inspect each title in turn, trying to recall if it too appeared on the list, and slowly the pile began to grow. Aside from the odd book that piqued his interest, he placed everything else neatly into the sturdy cardboard carriers that Arthur, ever the pragmatist, had left for him to use.
By mid-morning he had cleared one whole bookcase and made a respectable start on a second. The pile of books he intended to keep now constituted three short stacks that easily reached to his knees, and the countless cardboard carriers had assembled themselves into a small brown fort surrounding him on all sides. Methodical in his approach, Aaron had become entirely absorbed in his task, the concentration and physicality of it providing a welcome distraction from the emotional fragility he felt whenever he allowed his mind to wander back to his mother. When he reached the third bookcase, a cursory glance at the gold carriage clock that adorned its top shelf alerted him to the fact that it was lunchtime. Ordinarily his stomach would have been crying out for food by this time, but his appetite had severely diminished since the loss of his mother and, still full from breakfast, he decided simply to take a short break.
The third bookcase was crammed full of box files, which his mother’s erratic, doctoral scrawl informed him contained archives of niche medical journals. Pulling the box labelled ‘Journal of Tropical Pediatrics 88–89’ from the top shelf for company, Aaron lowered himself cross-legged onto the rug, exhausted from the graft of the morning. He leant back against the dense cardboard fort and clicked the box file open to reveal around a dozen faded journal issues, each one as illegible as the next. The sun had obviously gotten to them long before filing and Aaron wondered why his mother had deliberately kept texts that she would not be able to read. A former specialist in paediatric medicine, it was possible that the journals contained her own article submissions, or that collectively they were of some financial value, but whatever the reason his mother had never done anything in her life without just cause and he was certain of a logical explanation.
He held the February 1988 issue up towards the light and peered closely at the front cover, squinting while he tried to make out the faded images. A thin slip of rough, off-white paper fell from between the pages and drifted slowly through the air before finally coming to rest in his lap. He glanced down at it in surprise; the ends were somewhat dog-eared and both sides were covered in a large and unfamiliar inky black scrawl. Instantly intrigued, he set the journal to one side and, lifting the scruffy piece of paper from his lap, began to read in earnest.
P.O. Box No. 21, Puri H.O.
Baliapanda Road
Puri – 752 001 (Orissa)
India
05/03/12
To Dear Catherineben,
I am hoping this letter is meeting with you in the very best of healths. And for your husband also I am wishing it.
I am very sorry for writing again but it is a very much long time that I am not hearing of you. Am I saying something too bad for you? I am so much hoping that it is not something I am saying wrong for upsetting you. Maybe you are not receiving my last letters? I don’t know how these things are working in UK exactly but we are not such problems having before.
I am sad very much in my heart for not hearing of you. Always before you are writing and giving pictures of Arun and like this I am knowing that my boy is okay. I am smiling all the days when your letter is coming, but now is only very much worrying for something bad happening with Arun.
I am praying to God every day for bringing me some news of my boy. My pujari is telling me to being patient and I am in my heart knowing that God is doing only what is best for me, and for Arun, and for you, even I am not understanding his ways.
I am thinking how very much busy you are being with your important doctor work. You are having very much a kind heart and I am thinking maybe now is more important you are helping people like you did helping me and so much time not having for writing maybe?
I am promising I am trying to being patient Catherineben, but now is so long for waiting and I am scary for the time is not enough. I am with all my heart asking you again and I am praying to God for making this one thing for you important also. I am staying everydays sick in my bed now, not even to the mandir I am going, and the doctor cannot anymore helping me.
Hanara and Lakshin are giving me the care and for this I am knowing already I am very much lucky. To having here two children is a blessing truly, but it is in my heart always the one who is missing. I am knowing it is not much time more for me in this world Catherineben and I am wishing for see my dear son Arun only once time more.
I am understanding that this is not in our agreement and for this I am really very much sorry again. You are so much giving to me and my family and it is not for not thanking you and certainly not for making a trouble in your life. Only it is to seeing with my own eyes the man my boy is becoming. To be knowing surely that he is happy in his life from my choices so that peacefully I am resti
ng when the time is coming.
After this I will not anymore asking for you Catherineben, this is my really promise.
I am waiting for hearing from you very soon.
With very best wishes,
Your friend Kalpana