Objects in the Mirror

by Nicolò Govoni

  Tentacles of electrical cables hanging down close to her head and streams of sewage accompanying her steps, Mel paces through the narrow alleys winding through the shacks and turns just after the cracked bridge, where the streetlights disappear, giving way to a semi-absolute darkness. She counts one, two, three, four, five steps and turns into an alley dominated by a burst arc and, inhaling the familiar sulfur smell, and here it is, one of the only working lampposts in Budhwar Peth. Blackness shrouds all. Nothing moves around her.

  Without hesitation, Mel finds the wooden two-story house. The weak light of the lamppost slotting its contours makes it look smaller than it is, its edges beveled by the shadows cast by the half-collapsed balconies on the second floor, concealing the fractures decades of relentless sun has carved into the wood. A beautiful villa from a remote time, it looks like som who has seen much but has no voice to tell its stories.

  Mel climbs a step, pushes aside the pink curtain and, the suffused light of candles welcoming her, joins her hands in greeting. Val is waiting for her.

  “You’re late, girl,” Val says, a wry smile animating the half of her face where her worn nerves are still in control.

  Mel bends to touch her feet. “As always,” she says.

  “Won’t you even ask me how I knew you were coming?”

  “No, didi,” says Mel, taking off her Hermés scarf, “I wouldn’t be surprised anymore, anyway.” She makes a ball of the scarf and stuffs it in her bag.

  “Ask me,” says Val.

  “How—”

  “The little one told me.”

  “She still awake?”

  “She had a nightmare, she says.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Sure, if not for the fact that she asked for you last night and the night before and that of two days ago. She has been saying that you were coming everyday.”

  “I’ve been busy,” goes Mel, moving towards the steep, narrow stairs.

  Val shows no signs of moving. Mel glances at that face covered in wrinkles, the big breasts and those plump, ringed fingers, the features of woman whose appearances guise her biological age.

  Val stares back at her without moving. “Someone has to take care of her.”

  Mel says nothing.

  “She’s worth a lot,” says Val, her chapped lips stretching over her perfect teeth.

  Focusing on the black bindi on the forehead of the Madame, Mel finds herself unable to hold her gaze. Instead she pops her Chanel bag open and searches for the wad, but before she can take it out, Val grabs her wrist, and though she does so gracefully, Mel feels a chill to the depths of her loins.

  “Later, dear,” Val says. “First check the product.” She winks, she lets go of her wrist and starts climbing up the stairs.

  The wood creaks beneath her bare feet, under her considerable weight. Taking off her Versace shoes and putting them in the bag, Mel follows Val on those stairs so soaked with urine and mold that they are essentially made of it. The usual sickly sweet scent precedes and follows Val wherever she goes, her black thong appearing and disappearing with every step. On the first floor, muffled cries fill the air.

  The bitch turns baring a mischievous grin, but Mel keeps her composure, holding her eyes this time without smiling or looking away. They glide through the corridor, winding between curtains and the fleeting shadows cast on them from behind: a curved neck here, the profile of a breast there, a bare foot protruding from beneath the dirty fabric, moving jerkily, accompanying the gasps of an urgent, almost desperate intercourse. Val gives her a knowing look.

  The steps leading to the second floor flex and moan even louder than the prostitutes, puffs of dust clinging to their feet, and Mel can’t help but think back to that protruding foot, the gasps shaking those worn enamel-covered fingernails, and all of a sudden she realizes that the girl’s toenail was torn from its root. Val is panting and her feet bang on the wood—heavier with every step.

  The second floor is cleaner, better lit and, in contrast to the sighs populating the lower level, filled with childish cries. Four identical doors look out onto the landing, from each frame a wreath of wilted flowers hangs low. Val opens the second door on the right and does so ever so gently, her eyes turned to the ground, a thief opening the entry of a safety vault. She motions to Mel to follow her inside.

  Rage. Mel had requested the room to be aired daily, yet the air smells like dust and old mattresses. A thin curtain marks the entrance, beyond which an old four-poster bed stands filled with colonial pride, the mosquito nets falling on it in a cascade, lit up by the flickering light of a solar lamp. The child, sitting on the bed, is flipping through a pop-up book that Mel gave her long ago, touching the pages with light fingers, as if it were a treasure of some kind. Her dark hair falling on her narrow shoulders, the child raises her head as if she heard something moving, though neither Mel nor Val have made a noise.

  “Blond girl,” she calls.

  Mel lingers for a while, her back muscles tensed, her eyes closed. She inhales and, opening her eyes, pulls the curtain.

  Chameli smiles from ear to ear, a smile so wide that her eyelids are touching, hiding her almond eyes, digging a pretty dimple in her right cheek. She gives out a sharp cry and crawls up to the edge of the bed and runs towards her. Mel crouches, opens her arms, smiles back—she can’t help it—and the child leaps into her open arms. Mel holds the fragility of that body carefully, smelling the smell of shampoo in her hair. She is glad that they have lost their old stench, at last. When she loosens the embrace, she hears Chameli sighing in disappointment.

  Mel pulls a lock of hair from her eyes, checking whether the child is properly dressed, her nails not encrusted with dirt or covered with enamel, or torn. Relieved by the physical state of the little one, she glances at Val with approval, but the woman, as always, didn’t cross the curtain. She is hidden by it.

  “You came,” says Chameli, watching her with overwhelming joy.

  Mel takes her hand and leads her back to the four-poster bed, pulling the mosquito net and sitting on the mattress next to her, pleased that the sheets are clean. The book, abandoned beside the pillow, shows off a pop-up paper home haunted by ghosts, filled with cute, black cats and vegetarian vampires, packed with cardboard doors ready to be opened.

  “This was one of my favorite books when I was little,” says Mel touching the corner of the cover.

  Chameli laughs and with the index traces the edges of Ferang’s watch, which Mel is still wearing around her wrist, and from there strokes the back of her hand. When she rests her cheek on her shoulder, Mel puts her arms around her.

  The blue plastic bucket in the corner of the room is clean, on a stool lies an open packet of biscuits, at the foot of the bed a bottle of water. Certain that Val is watching, Mel looks back toward the entrance, but the curtain hangs still. Val, despite her wide figure, knows how to go unnoticed.

  “Today cat come,” says Chameli in broken English, raising her arm, pointing to the narrow crenel next to the mirror.

  “A kitten?”

  “No, didi, a big, big, sleepy cat.”

  “Did you touch it?” Mel hears a trace of apprehension in her own voice.

  The child shakes her head. “No, didi, he never let me.” Chameli makes a funny face as she chooses the words, her eyes darting as if reading the pages of an invisible dictionary. “I think it someone cat.”

  Mel strokes her hair. “Why do you think that?”

  “He only told me.”

  Mel chuckles rubbing the palm of her hand.

  “He also said you were coming.”

  Mel glances at the packet of biscuits, asking, “You didn’t feed him, did you?”

  “No,” replies Chameli, looking up, alarmed by the sudden change of tone. “Just one.”

  “Where is it?” says Mel, her voice sweetening.

  “He took it away with him.” The girl searches for words. “He put it in his pocket.”

  “Chameli...”

  “
I promise, didi, I didn’t eat it,” she exclaims. She seems about to cry.

  Mel hugs and cuddles her, leaning her chin on the child’s head where the whorl of her hair reveals the fair skin beneath. She closes her eyes, breathing in the childish smell.

  “Well,” she says. “That cat comes from outside, you shouldn’t touch it.”

  “What’s out there?” asks Chameli with a muffled voice, speaking with her mouth resting on Mel’s breasts.

  “Nothing good.” Mel opens her eyes. “I brought you something.”

  Turning, she takes her bag, fishes an old hardcover book out and hands it to Chameli, mirroring the smile in her eyes, a smile full of silent expectation. Chameli caresses the cover, studies the image, taps with what seems like a bit of reverence on the two bipedal and fully dressed piglets standing at the center.

  “Auntie Mame,” Mel reads out. “You know, when I was little and I couldn’t yet read, my—”

  “Whore!”

  Mel winces and Chameli looks up. The child follows Mel’s gaze, peering at the curtained door, but Mel is looking a little further than that. Moments of brutal silence follow, interrupted only by their breaths. That of the child echoes rapid, broken, while Mel’s is regular, deep, made of endless pauses. The mirror.

  Mel looks back at Chameli and speaks in a soothing voice. “It’s nothing, don’t worry,” she says. “I thought I heard something. Maybe it’s that cat again.” She rests the palm of her head on Chameli’s narrow forehead, lying her down, tucking her in, and lying down beside her, resting her head on her own folded arm and, holding up the book with her free hand, she starts reading. Chameli plays with her blondish hair, her fingers mild, attentive, her eyes studying the illustrations of fairy tale first and then Mel’s face, always lingering a little longer on the latter. Chameli smiles without exposing her rotten teeth. Mel rests her cheek on the child’s head.

  “Bitch!” shouts the Little Girl, but Mel doesn’t lose her composure this time and, holding the book with renewed strength, she relaxes and reads on, and by the end of the first chapter she feels filled with a sugary warmth.

  She peeps at Chameli out of the corner of her eye, hoping to find her asleep. She knows she isn’t. Chameli never falls asleep when she is there. When Mel closes the book and sits up on the bed, Chameli doesn’t complain, doesn’t ask for more, she simply observes her with quiet eyes, her serene little face and dark hair resting on the pillow, a crown of thorns around the face of an angel.

  “I like it very much,” she says.

  “Next time we’ll read the second chapter.”

  For a moment Chameli seems to be about to ask, “When?” but she doesn’t. She just keeps looking at Mel, taking in her every move. Mel thinks about leaving the book on the bed but hesitates and puts it back inside her bag. Once she finds the way between the folds of the mosquito net, she lingers again, and turns, and kisses Chameli on her forehead.

  “Filthy whore,” says the Little Girl in the mirror.

  “Good night,” says Mel and starts walking to the exit.

  “Blonde Girl,” calls Chameli. Mel turns. “That sound... It wasn’t the cat.”

  Mel smiles. She doesn’t know where to rest her eyes. Her gaze bounces from one corner of the room to the other, then the bucket, the stool, the mirror.

  In the mirror, the Little Girl stares at her intently, her eyes animated by a madman glow.

  Mel pulls the dusty curtain and gets out. The corridor is empty, the moans of the girls downstairs quieted almost completely. She’s still for a moment before closing the door behind her.

  On the first floor, she can hear the voice of Val talking to a much younger woman, but when the last step creaks under her weight the conversation fades and Val emerges from behind a curtain. At first her smile seems almost sincere, then she rights herself exhibiting the usual grin.

  “Satisfied?” she asks, stroking her rings.

  “The room is not properly ventilated. Open the windows in the morning. She won’t escape.”

  Val’s smile widens more than the Mel thought possible. All her teeth are healthy, and white, and straight.

  Mel opens her bag, takes out the scarf and with deliberate slowness wraps it around her head, then pulls out an envelope bulging with bills. Val eyes it with shameless lasciviousness. Mel hands it to her, and Val makes it disappear under the edge of her black sari.

  “Our mutual friend showed up in the afternoon,” says Val casually.

  Mel nods. “Does he know?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “How did he react?”

  Val cocks her head. “Positively,” she says and pats the bulge where the money is hidden.

  The sound of trousers sliding up someone’s legs and a belt running through the buckles rises from behind a curtain. While Mel covers part of her face with her scarf, Val leads the way down the stairs to the ground floor, where candles burn close to the wood, and pulls the front curtain so that Mel might slip out into the night.

  “When?” asks Mel, turning.

  “Soon.”

  Her heart stops pounding in her chest only when Mel sees the statue of Bapu emerging over the roof of a hut, and the Royal Enfield, loyal and meek, waiting for her, as well as the boys. Both maintain a respectful distance from the vehicle now, but Mel knows that in her absence at least one of them has tried to ride it. Mounting the saddle, she hands them the other half of the hundred rupee note, guns the engine, turns on the light, steers around.

  “Do you want drugs, ma’am?” the children say.

  Mel drives off.

  The half dilapidated hovels of the Old Town slip away while Mel whizzes on Grand Trunk Road dodging vehicles, throwing herself into a drive that dries the sweat on her skin, making the shirt she’s wearing a second skin, which she doesn’t mind. She doesn’t mind the heat, she doesn’t mind the noise, she doesn’t mind the chaos or the pollution. Indeed, Mel feels self-possessed, of the vehicle she’s driving, of the road she’s plowing, of the city she’s crossing, of the country whose recognition she longs for.

  Mel speeds through the New Territories, the northern ward of Ayodhya. As she curves, the Fence disappears, replaced by a slew of buildings with five, seven, ten floors, and railed windows, under which old-but-kept-with-extreme-care cars are parked—the bulwark of an emerging, silent middle class.

  Mel likes to observe these squared windows imagining the little lives that lurk beyond them, thinking about how nice it would be to give up everything for a few hours and enjoy the peace of a life without opportunities or expectations, a life of which the present moment is composed only by the dim light of light bulbs, mismatched chairs in the living room, walls bare of decoration except for the gray fingerprints of children. Maybe one day, she tells herself, when all this is done with.

  The flats give way to offices and foreign banks, the windows of which betray constant movement, day and night, night and day, and they in turn give way to the beautiful villas of Juhu, with its neat rows of faux-L.A. palm trees, its neat sidewalks along which are parked a parade of luxury cars. It’s East Ayodhya, the financial ward.

  Home. Mel entrusts the keys to the parking attendant, an unreliable-looking man in his forties, unkempt mustache and bloodshot eyes but well packed in a uniform newly washed and ironed. Mel has never seen him before.

  When the elevator doors open at the top of Scheria, the smell of the hall filling her lungs, Mel crosses the room without turning the lights on, enjoying the contact with every piece of furniture, so familiar, so predictable, even in the absence of visual confirmation.

  Henry’s room is down the corridor in the east wing, the door closed, a dense darkness accumulating in the corners of both the floor and the ceiling, giving the environment a semi-cavernous atmosphere, one that commands reverence and inspires a sense of security at the same time.

  Mel walks through the corridor minimizing the sound of her footsteps, like a child who’s sneaking where it is forbidden. In front of the door, she
tries to eavesdrop, but no sound crosses the solid cherry barrier of the door, so she moves her hand near the lock, from which a thin beam of light filters, stroking her skin, and finally she rests her cheek on the door, brushing the paint, closing her eyes.

  “Hi, Henry,” she whispers. “Yes, everything all right. No, I didn’t go at the party, I went to the Pit—yes, alone, in a brothel, but don’t worry, I didn’t get fucked—I’m here now. Goodnight.”

  Mel clenches her jaw, lowering her hand to the handle but not daring to touch it. She brushes the door with her lips, a shiver running through her nerves, crossing her face, skin, neck, nipples, hips, to which she responds by leaning against the wood with the entire weight of her body, returning the door’s kisses, pushing her pelvis forward, silently but with force, closing her fingers into a fist and then stretching out, breathing hard, full of urgency. Her nails follow the grooves of the wood, draw on it, and she presses her breasts against the door for it to feel the turgidity of her nipples, and she wants it to be aroused by it, she wants it to desire her, desire her again, and grinding her teeth she holds in a hiss, keeping herself from scratching the door. Mel grabs the handle. Pure electrical charge sledgehammers through her hand.

  She is panting. Closing her thighs shut, she withdraws her hand and walks away from the damn door. The sense of satisfaction is fleeting, the darkness of the hallway closing in on her. Mel is quick to run into the shower. She throws herself fully dressed under the jet—to hell with the Armani shirt she is wearing. The cold water empties her lungs, a feeling of emptiness winning her over, growing evenly, inflating like a balloon in her chest. Mel comes out and does a line of coke.

  Taking twenty-five drops of Valium from the bottle, Mel undresses, dries herself and lies down on her bed watching the flickering light of the air conditioner and thinking that drugs, although necessary, give her no more pleasure.

  She wakes up early in the morning and snorts a line of coke, then does half an hour of cardio at the Gymkhana before class.