For a moment—for a moment it’s him who is the reflection. For a moment, Ferang gazes at his own reflection in the glass, and the Bear is real, and Ferang his doppelganger. The Bear is what the others see. Ferang is just a bad copy.
The paunchy man looks back at the road. He guns his Honda and disappears. He doesn’t look back.
The bus stops at the station near the Breach. Here as well people have lost their vitality. Fatigue animates their every movement. The fruits have rotted, the flowers withered. Ferang stops an auto-rickshaw raising his arm. A nearby street vendor seems to recognize him, but Ferang ignores him. He growls the address to the driver. The auto-rickshaw moves. Lose him. Lose the Bear, but there he is on the body of every car, on the scratched surface of the light poles. The Bear is waiting. He doesn’t say a word. He waits. Disappears and reappears. He observes. He judges. He’s infallible, after all. Ferang wants him dead. He needs to break something. Let’s break Nil, he thinks. A horn penetrates his skull. Fuck.
***
An hour later, Ferang pays the driver. He hardly sees the granite staircase or the LED lights illuminating the immaculate gravel path. The guard recognizes him and bobs his head. Ferang ignores him. The guard smiles shily. Ferang hops into the elevator. Punches in the code. He presses the button. “When a Man Loves a Woman” by Percy Sledge permeates the air.
When the golden sliding doors open wide, she appears.
Ferang kisses her. He holds her by her shoulders. Inhales the scent of her cheeks, trying to rob her of it, of her lips, her own face. He closes his eyes. She doesn’t, he knows that. Ferang conducts a wet investigation of her chin, her cheekbones. Her cheekbones are the colour of amber. He kisses her pinched nose, her non-nose, as he often jokes. He kisses her, kisses her eyes and he finds them open, as expected. Her eyelids flutter close under his lips and open again. Ferang opens his eyes, too. The whites of her eyes are too bright: almost phosphorescent. It’s violent. Still, Ferang kisses her eyes, one first and then the other, forcing them to shut. Forcing her to passion. And she returns his kisses, and does so with something resembling abandon, but her arms hang inert.
They walk as one. Her legs slamming against furniture. He pushes her. Grabs the flaps of her garments. He’s pushing her into the intricacies of her palace in the sky.
Darkness envelops the house. Room by room they move. The hallway floor is covered in dark parquet. The walls are coated with brownish wood. The ceiling is—
Mel grabs his wrist. Firmly. Her green eyes are deep, her pupils black cylinders, and looking into them, Ferang feels dizzy. He staggers. She smells of laundry soap.
Mel is now pressing her lips on his. Dragging him to her room, she grabs his forearms and puts them around her waist and her knee slides up between Ferang’s legs. And then she stops. She pushes him away. The shirt she’s wearing flies over her head. He motions to touch her breasts, but can’t. He can’t. Mel gives him a vague smile. She seems to say, “It’s free.”
They meet halfway. The collision of their bodies shakes the air. It hurts, but they keep going, Ferang feels her tight abdomen against his lower belly. He caresses her jutting and narrow hips, at once welcoming and prohibited. He searches her small nipples sliding his fingers up over her ribs, trailing the well-defined curve of her collarbone with his mouth. He stares at the point where her shoulders, neck and chest join, and it’s the work of a great artist.
They are in Mel’s room.
They fuck.
Her skin is warm against his. And Mel’s body is totally, absolutely
MEL
shaved.
Mel draws him to herself, holding Ferang in her arms, kissing his face, stroking his back from the buttocks until she touches the soft hair on the nape of his neck. They roll on the mattress together, their embrace breathing fire. Mel looks deep into the moist eyes of her young lover, she pierces through his eyes, looks straight into his soul, and feels like a little girl again. She feels like a little girl but screams like a slain beast.
At the end of the intercourse, Ferang’s arms hold her from behind. He is partially covered by the sheet, and she is completely exposed.
Spooning, their thighs touching, her back against his belly, his fingers in her hair, his breath warm on her cold sweat-covered neck, they lie worlds apart, and when he gets up on an elbow, she feels the smell of his skin tickle her nostrils and smells the smell of their skirmish on the sheets—the already old mark of something their fleeting bodies left unfinished.
“Marry me,” he says. Mel is silent. Ferang goes on saying that they are old enough, that they will take the Enfield and leave. “Tonight,” he says, and Mel feels his eyes trying to meet hers, but she shuns them, focusing on the daffodils in a vase on the window sill. “We drive till morning,” he goes. “We find a small church, a gaunt and withered priest. We ask two farmers to be our witnesses.”
On her back, the touch of his fingers make her shudder, and he, perhaps mistaking it for her feeling cold, draws closer.
“We’ll travel around the world on a sailing boat. We will see the world from New York to Seoul to Cape Town. And our children will grow up as artists or writers or musicians or painters. We’ll bring them up absolutely free minded.”
The lights of the hall go on and shine on the cherry parquet in the gap under the bedroom door.
“And when it’ll be time for us to dock and put an end to our wanderings, we will choose the place that we liked the most, and go down hand in hand...”
Mel doesn’t retract to his touch, she remains motionless, sinking inside of herself, turning her body into a shell so he can’t really touch her. It’s not him she craves the touch of.
“We have our whole life ahead. But only tonight to start living it.”
“Get out,” Mel goes.
“Excuse me?”
“Get the fuck out of here.”
She turns to look at him. He is wearing exaggerated surprise and dramatized outrage as a mask. Mel stares at him until he starts getting dressed, stumbles on the gray shorts she abandoned, picks them up, throws them at her, and gets out of the room, forgetting his ostentatiously cheap watch on the nightstand—but taking his iPhone away.
Mel wears it, despite it being a scraped, a two-bit Casio watch, and wrapped in the linen sheet, she waters the vase with the daffodils and then walks toward the living room, squinting at the bulb light, a white trailing following her. She feels like a princess.
Mel’s father is in the kitchen, his strong arms raised above his head looking for something in the cupboard, his black shirt puffed on his back where his muscles stretch out. He takes a pot, fills it with water, places it on the cooker, presses the power button and turns with a smile. His smile wrinkles around the mouth. His face is tanned, his hair blond, thinning at the top, but still strong otherwise. Mel breathes in every detail. He’s smiling as he makes tea, but then he turns and sees her.
“Want some?” he asks, holding two tea bags. His smile has vanished.
“Did you hear us?”
Henry turns around again and drops the tea bags in the pot, careful to leave the strings out of the water.
“Did you?” she insists.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I think it’s not fair to Nil. He has eyes only for you.”
“He has eyes only for me,” she repeats, clutching the sheet. When Henry stirs the water in the pot, a Kerala-flavoured puff raises in the air. Mel frees her right arm from the sheet, lifting her wrist and aligning it with her eyes.
“It’s late,” she says without even looking at the watch dial. “Good girls go to bed early.” The sheet slides down revealing her bare shoulder and part of her chest. Henry looks away, glancing around the room as if searching for something he lost. The water starts to boil.
“I thought you were going to that party tonight.” His voice is full of anxiety.
“Maybe. Why, you don’t want me to?
“Sure, you can do whatever you want. It is
at Imal’s?”
“It’s at the Dome.”
Henry glances at the tea.
“I could stay at home and you could read Auntie Mame to me.”
“Mel...”
“Henry?”
“Don’t call me by name, I don’t like it and you know that.”
“Does it make you feel uncomfortable?”
Silence.
“Sorry,” she says. “Dad.”
“What are you waiting for? Go get ready, or you’ll be late.”
“I can’t just yet,” she says in a childlike voice. “Who will drink my tea?”
“Right.” Henry runs his strong fingers on his forehead. “Sorry.”
The water bubbles.
When Henry turns to remove the pot from the stove, Mel approaches on tiptoe, listening again to the faint rustle of the bedsheets trailing her on the floor. She cautiously rests a hand on the kitchen counter and looks up at him. He stops for a moment before continuing to tinker with cups and spoons feigning nonchalance, and Mel leans in, at first without daring to touch him, stretching her body, bringing her lips to his ear, but then not knowing what to whisper, she gently brushes up his shoulder, one hand holding the bed sheet to her chest, the other drawing patterns on the black fabric of his shirt. She blows into his ear.
“Enough,” says Henry, his voice hard, retracting as if she were a reprehensible creature.
“I fucked him.”
Henry grits his teeth, his jaw muscles bulging.
“I felt his cock in me as he possessed me. He rubbed my nipples, clitoris, and anus. I liked it more than with anyone else. Yes, anyone else.”
Henry pours the steaming water in Chinese porcelain cups.
“The next time we’ll do it in your studio. I want to suck him off, Henry. I want to listen to ‘Wicked Game’ while he fucks me.”
Henry sets the table with two pretty crochet placemats, two linen napkins, two antique silver teaspoons.
“He said he will love me forever, Henry. Forever.”
Henry places two cups at the center of the placemats and gestures at Mel to sit down, sitting down himself, taking a first sip only to get back up and take the sugar bowl and add three spoons in both cups of tea, while Mel stares at him tirelessly, her face impassive but her breath labored. Anger. Longing. Guilt.
Both of them drink in small sips, looking as if absorbed in the contemplation of an intriguing but unfathomable thought.
“How did college go today?” Henry asks, breaking the silence.
“All good,” she says, smiling. “I mean, Theories of Communication is a bore, but the cinema-related courses are quite the thing. Animation, for example, that’s cool.”
“Who teaches Theories of Communication?”
“Savitri. I suppose the subject could be decent, but she just cannot teach at all.”
“I know her uncle.”
“Congress?”
“BJP.”
“So I guess it’s useless to hope that they’ll throw her out?”
Henry chuckles. “I’m afraid so.”
“Animation, though!” Mel trace the contours of the cup with her finger. “You know, a few days ago they taught us how to create the introductory clips for YouTube videos. And now they’re teaching us to animate logos, for example of multinational corporations. Maybe in the future I could animate something for Worlds United.”
“I’m sure you’d do a great job at it.”
Mel smiles. “I really should go now,” says Mel, looking at the watch. Since Henry is watching her, Mel feels the need to hide it under the sheet now. Breathing in, she pushes her chair away from the table and, careful not to let the sheet uncover her body, she gets up.
“Be careful when you drive,” Henry says. “In fact, maybe you should ask the driver to take you.”
“Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll swing by your room when I get home—to show you I’m alright.”
Henry hesitates a moment before answering. “No need.”
Her smile fades just a little, but she forces herself to look happy.
At the door, Mel would like to stop and say, “I love you, Henry,” but when she turns, he is looking straight ahead, absorbed in the contemplation of that same old thought, something intriguing but unreachable, or maybe just never quite known.
Once she’s ready, Mel takes an Addwize pill, gets into the elevator, presses for the garage, to which an instrumental version of “Welcome to the Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance fills the air, while the cabin falls through countless offices and apartments. When the music stops and her own image is cut in two by the opening sliding mirrored doors, a new guy brings her the Royal Enfield. Wobbling his head he gives her a shy smile. Mel rises her hand in mid-air in response, doing her best to commit to memory his features. She must remember him. She must not mix them up. But, alas, they all look the same.
“What happens to old guards,” she asks the boy, smiling, “do they feed them to the dogs?” She meant it as a joke, but hearing herself saying it fills her with bitterness.
The boy doesn’t understand, of course, and his smile falters but just a little, and so she accepts the keys without looking at him, relishing the greeting roar of the engine, and slices through the night, bent over the tank, the headlights of the cars melting around her. She accelerates, owning the road, swerving to avoid the other vehicles dotting Grand Trunk Road.
The parched riverbed at her right, Mel follows the Fence to the Old City. The buildings get shorter at every turn, the ultra-modern apartment complexes giving way to Candil, where alongside the exquisitely renovated colonial villas, the colonial complexes where labourers used to be housed during the British rule now lie in ruin, the walls covered in mold and lichen, the upper floor parapets cracked.
Mel glances at a girl leaning out of one of these buildings, her chin on the palm of her hand, her old shawl lost in the hot breeze, her gaze roaming along the street, waiting for something or someone that might never come.
Then the buildings get more dilapidated, the aggressive smell of the hot tar stronger in her nostrils as the road curves along the Fence. Mel pushes the speedometer needle past the limit her father bribes the police for, riding along the ubiquitous concrete wall, which towers hostile hiding poverty from the eyes of the privileged.
Old Ayodhya. Mel balances the motorcycle and crawls in the night-time traffic while the air filled with urine and laundry soap makes her shawl swell, uncovering her shit-blond hair. The heat dries up the skin between her fingers, the dust infiltrates beneath her bit fingernails, but despite the chaos, Mel loves the Old City. She loves the immortal magic of it.
The statue of Bapu. Crouching on the pedestal, Vikas and Vinod, the usual stray children, overlook the area, probably commissioned by a local gang leader, certainly related to the Cartel, standing guard as if the enemy were to show up at any time, stones and knives in their hands. They recognize her at once.
Parking on a bed of bird shit, Mel smiles and the kids leap down from the pedestal and start stroking the Enfield like the body of a woman. Their legs spread out, puffing out their chest, they start talking, a bad impression of some old Bollywood actor.
“Ma’am, the price has increased, ma’am,” goes Vikas, the smaller of the two, hands on hips, flaunting self-confidence.
“Yes, ma’am,” confirms Vinod.
“Is it so?” says she, in Hindi.
“Yes, ma’am,” repeats Vinod, a chubby kid, fat in the typical fashion of those who love eating but can only afford rice.
“And how much would that be?” asks Mel.
“One hundred,” says Vinod.
Vikas gives him a nudge.
“One hundred now, and one hundred when you come back,” he says.
“And what would be the reason for the increase?” Mel leans toward them. The boys look at each other.
“It’s getting hotter, ma’am.” Vikas retracts a little.
“Yes, ma’am, it’s getting hotter and we have to buy water
.”
“Yeah, water...” says Vikas, laughing.
Both children giggle conspiratorially.
Mel relaxes her back muscles. Nods.
“Okay, ma’am?” A trace of surprise in Vinod’s voice.
“Yes, fair deal.” Mel fishes on the bottom of her bag, a lock of hair escaping from the scarf.
“One hundred,” goes Vikas, his eyes shining.
“One hundred now, and one hundred when you come back, ma’am,” says Vinod.
Mel takes out a hundred rupee bill, unfolds it, and observing against the yellow light of the only street lamp, she hands it to the kids, who for a moment watch her motionless, speechless. Then Vikas reaches out, hesitating as if fearing that she’d take it back at the last second. But then his thumb and index finger close on a corner of the bill, and looking up, he meets Mel’s eyes. Smiling, she twists her wrist and tears the bill in two, leaving one half in the hands of the boy and waving the other in front of his face.
“One hundred now, and one hundred once I get back,” she says, sliding the half bill back into her purse, pulling that wild lock of blonde hair back under her scarf. Before anger can take over the child, she adds, “Tell your boss to find himself a new job. The Cartel is living on borrowed time.”
The torn bill in his hand, a shocked look on his face, Vinod stares Mel in the eyes, and nods, and shoves the money in his pocket.
Mel turns and starts walking, unable to keep a smile from spreading her lips when she hears the kids mumbling.
“The bitch’s smart,” says one.
“Street smart,” goes the other.
Crossing the Breach, Mel steps into the outer crust of the Pit, a layer of leather shops, plastic shops, cookware shops, Chinese toys shops and plaster statues shops, some shuttered, some not, forming a maze through which she’s proud to walk with confidence, her shawl bloating around her head like a mane draped on her shoulders, proclaiming, step by step, her fearlessness, her claim for belonging.
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