Swimming Lessons

by Rohinton Mistry

  But it was only momentary. I was never good at such things, I’ll look foolish. He laughed at himself and left, feeling better now. As if the straining, exerting muscles of these men at exercise had kneaded away the disquietude and anxiety he had been feeling about Behroze, about Bhagwan Baba, about his parents. Nothing is a trap, I exercise control over my own destiny.

  To discover where he had been, Mother began some skilful questioning. She stalked around, observing his face for suspicious-looking marks or blemishes, his shirt and collar for questionable discolouration. Instead of ignoring this customary examination he said, “You won’t see anything. Behroze never puts on makeup when we got out for kissie-koatie.”

  She clutched at her throat with both hands. “When a son speaks so shamelessly to his mother it is the end.” And Father scolded in his mild way: “It is a disgrace when you talk like that.”

  Next evening he was drawn again to the Hanging Gardens. Lack of rain was obvious in the fading lushness of the lawns, but what green remained was still soothing. All the fountains were dry, their coloured lights switched off, and the little waterfall was a slope of grey sundried rock. After a few minutes of aimless strolling he went down to the overhang. It was the most secluded spot in the Gardens, at the edge overlooking the sea. Thick with bushes and trees on all three sides, and two wooden benches affording a spectacular view of Chaupatty Beach, from the Queen’s Necklace along Marine Drive to the modern skyscrapers mushrooming at Nariman Point.

  Behroze and he had come here once when both benches were unoccupied, on a slightly cool December evening. There was a gentle breeze. They sat down, his arm around her, watching the sky till the first star appeared. The gang of voyeurs was nowhere in sight, and Jehangir had a plan: to turn her head and kiss her when it was darker. A few moments later she reached her hands up to his face — she must have had a plan, too. But there were footsteps. He froze, then tore away from her hands.

  The newcomers, a man and woman, occupied the other bench and began kissing desperately. The man’s hands seemed to be everywhere, down her blouse, up her skirt. Jehangir and Behroze did not need to look; they could feel the heat of the feverish activity.

  When Jehangir finally snatched a glance, the man was supine on the bench, his fly undone. The woman’s face buried in his lap. Moans of pleasure. And a vague memory was transported from a great distance, pitting his intense desire to watch against an urgent need to leave, to cover up his eyes, to blot it all out: it was an evening on the veranda of their flat; the little boy stood with Mother at the window, taking the evening air and looking out beyond the compound wall. A boisterous group of men approached from the direction of Tar Gully, and down the main road three young women. As they closed the distance between them, one of the men suddenly cupped his hands around his crotch and said something the little boy could not hear, something about suck and mouth and money. There was giggling among the girls. The little boy tried hard to see what happened next. But Mother dragged him away, saying he shouldn’t be looking at the filthy behaviour of wicked mawaalis and evil women; he should forget what he saw and heard or God would punish him and their whole house.

  The evening had been spoilt. As they got up to leave, the night-watchman who patrolled the Gardens appeared. The fellating couple remained oblivious to the banging of his nightstick and other diversionary tactics. Finally, without going closer, in stentorian Pathani tones he called out, “Arré bhaisahib, lying on the benches is prohibited, please sit up straight,” and the couple broke apart.

  The night-watchman left; Jehangir and Behroze followed. Jehangir cast one backward glance: the couple was down again upon the bench, her mouth upon his lap. And fleeing the overhang, he recalled the panicked tearing of his own face from Behroze’s hands. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I just couldn’t help it.” He bundled up his frustrated desires into a tight, aching package and descended the hill in silence. Images of the couple on the bench abandoning themselves to their wild and desperate lust had danced unendingly before his eyes.

  Jehangir sat on the grass now, under a lamp just outside the overhang. The overhang and its benches. Benches everywhere. Paan-stained ones in the train were third-class seats. Bhagwan Baba’s veranda bench — sit on it and he told you a riddle. The one in the waiting-room was for drinking lukewarm Limca. And the overhang bench — reserved for sucking lessons, and wet dreams that trickled down your thighs to make embarrassing starched pyjama legs, which the gunga probably examined with interest when she washed the clothes.

  A shower of gravel descended upon him, striking his head and neck and back. He jumped up. Saw three boys sprinting away. Started to give chase, then stopped. What will I do even if I manage to catch the urchins?

  He was trembling and could not sit down again. Breathing hard. Quick short breaths. Hands shaking. Armpits damp. He decided to walk. To the children’s playground. The gym-by-night. Where children’s game equipment became the parallel bars of the poor; where the stone-broke used the see-saw to bench-press, with flagstones for weights. Yes, they would build their muscles, one way or another.

  As the twilight faded the exercisers arrived, and stripped down to lungoatee and vest. A little adjustment of the pouch with a swift downward movement. Tucking in and fine-tuning of the formation within. Then tightening expertly the knots of the waistband.

  Their bodies moved through the various exercises, and once again Jehangir felt the urge to join them, join them in their sweating, rippling activity. He imagined meeting them every evening, taking off his clothes with them, down to his shorts and sudra; they would sweat and pant together, a community of men, and when the exercises were done they would all go arm in arm, laughing and joking, for a hot and spicy shik-kabab and sugar-cane juice. He could even learn to smoke a bidi with them.

  He seriously considered taking up exercising. He was tired of being a skinny-armed, stoop-shouldered weakling. He would start in private, at home, and after his body strengthened he could join them in the open air. Surely they would welcome him. It would be a fraternity sufficient and complete.

  He would go to Behroze’s house on Saturday and say he had to speak to her about a serious matter. Make a clean break.

  He prepared a mental list. He decided to conclude by saying that their relationship was making everyone unhappy: first, his parents were; she was, too, because they did not like her; besides, she could not tolerate their influence on him. Now she could resume her life as it was before he trespassed into it. Yes, trespassed, that was a good word, he’d use it.

  The Kamala Nehru Park beckoned from across the road, through the dusk. The maali must have been at work, cuttings and twigs and leaves lay in heaps around the hedges. The sculptures looked magnificent, the birds on the verge of flight, the camel and elephant and giraffe about to lumber off into the darkness. But all of them ultimately frozen. Trapped, like Bhagwan Baba said. The words of Bhagwan Baba. Should be labelled A Philosophy For The Faint Of Heart And Weak Of Spirit. Or better still, The Way Of The Sculpted Hedges.

  Behroze was alone when Jehangir arrived on Saturday evening. Her parents were out, so was the servant.

  “You missed choir practice on Thursday,” she said accusingly, crossing her legs. Her skirt slipped above the knee, exposing part of her thigh, and she did not pull it down.

  Jehangir sensed nervously that somewhere in this was a challenge to him. The trace of hostility in the air narrowed the distance between them and made the room more intimate. Outside in the compound a game of volleyball was in progress, and the dull thud as the ball met flesh and bone could be heard inside the flat.

  “I’m sorry. I had something very important to do. It concerns us. I would like to talk to you about it.” The note of formality in his short, complete sentences sounded reassuringly in his ears. “This is the first time you’ve been alone at home,” he ventured with an echo of her accusing tone.

  “You didn’t come since last wee
kend. Maybe my parents think we’ve broken up, and they didn’t need to stick around to guard my virginity.”

  Jehangir turned away to look outside the window. He felt very uncomfortable when she talked like this. The flat was on the ground floor at an elevation that raised it above the compound, and he could see the volleyball in its flight over the net but not the boys who smacked it. A few minutes of daylight remained. When the room began edging towards darkness she reached out to switch on the table-lamp. Her movement caused the skirt to rise a little more.

  “They’ve gone to a wedding at Albless Baag. Won’t be back till eleven o’clock,” she said.

  “And Shanti?”

  “Gone to visit her family. Has the weekend off.”

  “I could not come last Sunday, I went with my parents to Bhagwan Baba —”

  “Your string is showing again,” she interrupted. He reached behind, thinking his kusti had slipped out over the waistband of his trousers.

  She laughed scornfully. “Not your kusti, I meant your mother’s extra-long apron string. Anyway, tell me about your Baba. This should be good.”

  “If you’re going to mock me even before I…”

  “I’m sorry, go on.”

  Jehangir described the visit to Bhagwan Baba and the pronouncement. He paused before announcing his own decision about them. She adjusted her skirt properly over the knee and said, “But does that make any difference? Surely you don’t believe all that mumbo-jumbo.”

  “But that’s not the reason —”

  “Your parents will try anything, you know they hate me.”

  “They don’t hate you,” he started, and stopped. His well-tempered sentences wrought for the occasion now seemed silly — he realized he had known it all along, even as he rehearsed the words in the Hanging Gardens. He looked outside. The volleyball no longer flew over the net, and the boys had either gone home or down to the bhelpuriwalla for a snack. The sudden gloom was due to the sky’s fierce clouding, which had overtaken the gradual change from dusk to night. In the window the curtains flapped, violently at times.

  The decision made in the Hanging Gardens was no comfort. No comfort at all. Refused to buoy him up. Instead, it suddenly started to dissolve. Where was the peace and serenity he experienced that night in the Hanging Gardens? How could it come and go so quickly? To recapture his elusive confidence he imagined himself in the Gardens amidst the community of exercising men, sculpted hedges, chirping sparrows. But they swam pointlessly through his mind now. It was all meaningless.

  Drawn by his anguished face, she came and sat beside him on the sofa. She slipped her hand in his; the scorn had gone out of her eyes, leaving them soft and brown. She moved closer, and he put his arm around her. His confusion and anxiety started to evaporate. He remembered the other time on the overhang bench: what would have been their first kiss had been interrupted by the unrestrained, coarse, unabashed passion of the other couple. Today there would be no interruptions. She switched off the lamp. Outside, there was the first rumbling of thunder, very distant, and the first drops of rain. The fresh, wholesome smell of earth was soon in the air.

  It was still raining when Jehangir was racing homeward. People waited, huddled under awnings of shops or overhangs of buildings, under whatever shelter was afforded till the shower passed. There was gladness on all faces at the rain which had at long last arrived.

  Outside a jhopadpatti, where even at the best of times a hundred and twenty residents depended on one water tap or the fortuity of a malfunctioning fire-hydrant, the joy of celebration was the most intense Children and grownups soaped their bodies, tattered clothes and all, and stood gratefully under the cleansing waters from heaven. Mothers washed naked babies to the accompaniment of gleeful squeals. Some women were scouring their grimy, greasy pots and pans. Little rivulets of soapy water were soon running down the pavements leading from the jhopadpatti into the main street.

  Jehangir was soaked to the skin. But he did not notice it, as he noticed nothing else around him. He was oblivious to the celebration of rain, to its freshness and abundance, to the delicious coolness and comfort that graced the air which barely an hour ago had been vile and full of threat.

  With long desperate strides he splashed through the puddles. Some of them were ankle-deep, and his shoes were soon waterlogged, but he hurried along. The rubbled pavement abandoned in mid-construction was impossible, so he took to the road.

  A car fixed his soaking figure in its headlights, honking in annoyance. Sweat mingled with the rain-water coursing down his face. Waiting for a bus back to Firozsha Baag in this weather was pointless, it would take too long. He was panting hard, gasping for breath, but did not slow down. And his wretched, anguished mind would not be rid of her seated figure on the sofa, her hair over her soft brown eyes in which there were traces of moisture.

  And to think that just a few minutes before he’d been sitting beside her on the same sofa, they were holding each other so close. Things could not be more perfect, it had seemed to him at that moment.

  “Isn’t this like a Hindi movie?” she had said smiling, adding wickedly to make him blush, “only thing is, I should be wearing a sari made transparent by rain. Even the thunder and lightning sound-track is perfect for lovers.” Lovers? Was that a hint? She had stroked his hair. “Tell your parents and your Baba they did not succeed.”

  Jehangir had rested his cheek against hers, at peace with life and all its tangled complexities. His eyes wandered around in the dark, passed over the clock (a flash of lightning showed eight-fifteen), the outline of the bookcase, the piano and the frowning bust of Beethoven.

  Eight-fifteen. Was that the right time? He had to find out. The radium-painted numbers of his watch dial would glow in the dark and show the correct time. He shifted, uneasy, and tried to move his hand. But she’d noticed immediately.

  “If you want to look at your watch don’t be so sneaky about it.” She shook off his hand.

  “I’m supposed to be home by eight.” He looked at his watch.

  “I know. You remind me every time you see me.”

  “In my watch it’s almost eight. It’s set with the clock at home. We eat dinner by it,” he added apologetically, as if that would set things right. Short, complete sentences again, for reassurance. He got up.

  “Going home on time for your mother is more important than —?” and she broke off. Her eyes rested for a moment on the cushions which lay about the sofa, comfortably rumpled, still holding the heat of their bodies, then returned to his face. He did not reply, just glanced at his watch again. Tidying up in great haste, he tucked in his shirt, put the crease back in pants, smoothed down the tousled hair: raced with the clock of Mother.

  Behroze watched in stark disbelief at this exhibition of terror, the transformation from man to cowering child. “Calm down, will you? Your mother’s world won’t end if you are late. Haven’t you learned yet? All these are just her tactics to —”

  “I’ve told you before I know they are tactics,” he snapped back, “and I’m doing it all because I want to, because her life has been troubled enough, because I don’t want to add more misery to it. Because, because, because! Do you want me to repeat everything again?”

  Then he had stooped to pull up his socks. As he was leaving he turned around, and that was when he saw what he’d least expected — two tiny tears moistening her lower lashes.

  And side by side with this image that refused to go away was the sickening thought which had struck in the pit of his stomach, like nausea — the one interpretation of Bhagwan Baba’s words which he had never considered during all his rumination in the Hanging Gardens: that the trap was the one laid by Bhagwan Baba himself. To trick him into ending it this way.

  He rushed through the streets like a madman, shivering, tormented and confused, glancing at his watch again and again. His breath was coming hard, he thought he would collapse Fin
ally, he turned into the compound and stumbled up the three steps of the C Block entrance and into the lift.

  He rang the doorbell. Just one short burst. His finger slid off, the arm fell limply to his side. There was no energy to complete the prearranged signal of rings that the family members used: two short and one long.

  Mother opened the door narrowly, leaving on the chain. “Trying to fool me or what, with just one ring?”

  Jehangir shook his head. He clung feebly to the door, wanting to speak, but the words could not form through the panting.

  “You know what time it is?”

  He nodded, holding up his watch. Eight-thirty.

  “This time you crossed the limit. Your father says be patient, he is just a boy. Just a boy, yes, but the boy has climbed to the roof.” She shook off his hand and slammed the door shut.

  Still leaning against the door, he reached for the bell and rang it. Desperately, again and again, two short bursts and one long burst, two short and one long, over and over, as if that familiar signal would magically open the door. It remained shut. From inside the flat, silence. His arm fell. He slid to the floor and settled down to wait.

  His breathing returned to normal but the wet clothes clung to him, he was very cold. During his school years, Mother used to accompany him on rainy mornings with a towel, a change of socks and shoes; at school she would dry his feet, help him into fresh socks, exchange his gumboots for the dry shoes.

  He pulled his handkerchief and wiped his face, then pushed back the wet hair. The door was exposed to a gusting wind from the balcony. It made him shiver, and he shuffled into the narrow corridor sheltered by the staircase. He looked at his watch. Still eight-thirty. Must have stopped, clogged with rain water. It was a gift from Mother and Father for getting first class with distinction in his SSC exams. He hoped the neighbours would not open their doors: the news would spread through all three blocks of Firozsha Baag. Then the boys would find new names for him. He fell into a light sleep, leaning against the wall, till the soft clanking of the chain being removed from the door woke him up.