As the sequence unfolded on the screen, I suddenly realised that the film I had seen in the cinema near the clinic had been Solaris. So I had watched it. Like an after-image it had entered my memory and lodged quietly, sedated, as if by the sadness of that cold, wet afternoon.
That sadness soon turned to despair, compounded by Anna’s resolute silence. I wanted to tell her that I was convinced I had lost her forever and that by losing her I had also lost any hope of being happy in this life. But no, I didn’t say anything.
On my return to the clinic that dreadful evening I had found Anna lying on her side, looking away from the window, avoiding the sight of some plastic flowers poking out of an ugly vase perched on a wobbly bedside table. The white paint on the metal top had peeled off, exposing rusty scabs.
She must have heard me come in, but she didn’t turn. I sat on the edge of the bed peering at the flowers, soiled, clammy and superfluous. The clock in the corridor outside ticked and ticked. Then she turned and allowed me to hold her hand.
‘Where were you?’ she asked, but didn’t wait to hear my reply. She told me to go home and get some sleep, and come for her tomorrow. She tried to smile but failed and turned her face away again.
I left the ward without saying a word. I should have said something, I know. I don’t know why I often fail to find the right words when they are needed most. It isn’t because I am shy or clumsy. I think I am selfish. I truly am.
The return trip in the train that night was terrible. The carriage was almost empty and there was enough room to lie down on the seat. But I couldn’t sleep. Outside the window the snow glowed in the moonlight. Whenever I leaned my head against the cold window and shut my eyes I was woken by the same vision. I am not sure if it was a dream because it felt as if I were awake. I saw water in my cupped hands and in the water there was Anna’s moon-like face trickling through my fingers.
I knew it wouldn’t be easy to exorcise what had happened. And any hope of redemption would have to be indefinitely postponed.
Anna
Should I have told Vasu I was pregnant? Yes – he deserved to know. After all, she was his baby too. Why do I say ‘she’? I always felt that my first baby would be a girl. Not telling Vasu was selfish and cruel. But I didn’t want to have babies, at least not then, and I knew he loved them. He would have argued for keeping our child as he often does: never raising his voice, listening carefully to whatever you say and responding. I didn’t tell him because I was afraid he would persuade me to change my mind. And I didn’t want to because I knew what was good for me. I was sure about that, dead sure. Of course a baby would have given me more power over deciding our future together. Sounds manipulative. Perhaps it was and perhaps that’s why I didn’t tell him anything until the last possible moment.
I did what I felt was right then. There is no need to feel guilty about it.
Why couldn’t he understand the sheer hopelessness of our life then? Hadn’t he learnt anything from Shurik? There was room for love but none at all for dreams.
‘We are dying slowly,’ I tried to tell him, and I knew that this disturbed him because it meant the slow death of his own dream for his people. ‘People’, what does he mean by ‘people’? How does he know if ‘people’ want his help or that he can help them? For God’s sake, who gave him the right?
He would often tell me that I was too cynical, that I had lost faith in the idea of progress, that I didn’t want to think about the masses living in abject poverty for whom freedom was nothing but a hollow word. If I talked about freedom or the lack of it, it was only because the state that I criticised so vehemently had been instrumental in creating the conditions for people like me to worry about freedom. I hated this Marxist mumbo-jumbo but I did like watching him upset and animated. I never missed a chance to stir him up. ‘So you agree,’ I needled him, ‘that my reluctance to demand freedom means that the great experiment of social engineering has failed and that there isn’t anything wrong if people like me ask for more freedom?’
‘QED,’ I would yell, pleased that he had realised he had fallen into another of the traps I had so deliberately set for him.
He would look at me bemused and I would want to kiss him. But I knew he wouldn’t let me.
It sounds like a harmless game, but harmless it wasn’t. It did make him unhappy, and even though I didn’t want to hurt him in any way, I also wanted him to stop being so naïve. I feared for him because I loved him. His only defence was to return to his shell. He sulked and brooded, wrote long letters to Uncle Triple K and went back to his books: Marx and Engels, Plekhanov and Lenin, Morris, Lucas and Sartre, reading them over and over. I felt sorry for him. His books seemed to reinforce his beliefs, purge his doubts and restore his confidence.
Aunty Olga suggested we go to Yalta for a few weeks, to enjoy the sea and the sunshine and drink Crimean wine. The travel and the sea air would ‘heal your wounds’, she said. Papa arranged a place for us in the Academy of Sciences rest-house. I decided to take my Bach with me and rehearse his cello suites.
Vasu
I was miserable that Anna hadn’t told me she was pregnant. I despaired that she didn’t ask me if I wanted her to keep the baby. Was she afraid that I would argue with her and force her to change her mind? Of course I would have argued. I would have pleaded, but in the end I would have left the decision to her.
Perhaps she no longer believed that I loved her.
That something was troubling her had been obvious. I should have asked her. She had been suffering and yet I had said nothing.
Did I really love her?
Vika had asked me the same question. I had phoned her to find out if she knew what was wrong with Anna. She told me she was behaving oddly at rehearsals: edgy, lost and at times teary.
‘I bet she’s pregnant,’ Vika had announced, unable to hide her excitement. ‘Talk to her, you idiot.’ But I didn’t. I was stupid and now I would definitely suffer.
I knew very well that Anna didn’t want to have a baby – at least then. She wanted to travel, see the world and do exciting things. It would have been impossible to make her change her mind, even though she believed that I could have. Perhaps that was why she didn’t tell me anything.
A few weeks after our trip to Yalta I received a letter from Jijee-ma. Anna saw the letter and wanted me to read it to her.
‘For several months after your departure from Delhi,’ I read, ‘everyone was very upset with you, but now we have come to accept your decision. Many thanks for sending us her photos. Anna (is that her name?) looks so pretty and has such a nice, kind face. I would love to meet her and tell her everything about you and the family. Radha Bua (I hope you haven’t forgotten Aunty Radha) is very pleased. “Your grandkids will be fair and white like the moonlight with eyes bluer than the sky,” she teases me. She is mad. “What’s wrong with the colour of our skin?” I tell her. “Not too dark and not too white. Wheatish, that’s what we call it, tanned gently and lovingly by the sun.” Radha Bua always wanted to marry a gentleman from England, and did you know that when she was sent to London to study business management, she got engaged to a black man from Jamaica? Our dear father was distraught. But your Uncle Triple K is very proud of Radha Bua, although this hasn’t stopped him from calling her a greedy capitalist.
‘When are you coming back to India? I hope it happens soon. We are planning a big wedding, with two brass bands, fireworks and a huge feast. I hope Anna doesn’t mind going through the ceremony again. I also hope she isn’t intimidated by us. We can be overbearing at times, but she should know that a marriage over here means marrying the whole family. Tell her that we’ll love her more than anyone else and that we’ll do our best to make her feel at home and happy. Please explain to her that she’ll be very dear to me. I hope her father and her aunty can come to the wedding too. It would be a novel experience for them and I am sure they will enjoy the ceremony.
‘I can understand her misgivings. I’d be frightened myself. Be kind to her, m
y son. Let her come here, stay for a while and if she doesn’t like it, you can both go back. I won’t mind. No one will mind. The main thing for me is to see you happy together. Please make this absolutely clear to her.’
‘You really want to go back to India, don’t you?’ Anna asked.
I wanted to say ‘Of course’, but settled for ‘I suppose so.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, and I felt sorry for lying. The reason was simple. Anna, I know, was frightened of going to India and I didn’t want to upset her. Not then.
‘I mean that I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘I would like you to come, but—’
‘But you aren’t sure,’ she said.
Anna
Vasu received a letter from a reputable university in India specialising in engineering, offering him a job. He was thrilled. It was one of the most venerable institutions of its kind in the country, he told me, more than a hundred years old. The hill station of Mussoorie and its nearby snowfields were only a few hours away. We could ski in the winter and there was even a skating-rink in the town.
I understood why he was so keen to tell me about the snow. He was silly, trying his best to please me.
‘We can buy a house or some land in Mussoorie and build our own cottage,’ he said. Then I asked him if they taught archaeology or history at this university. Of course they didn’t. His smile disappeared.
‘But they teach Russian,’ he added after a pause to think. Instantly he realised the stupidity of this remark. I was annoyed. I wouldn’t really miss archaeology, but having a job of some sort was important. To turn into a full-time housewife was beyond me.
Perhaps I could give music lessons. But who would be interested in Western classical music, let alone the cello, in a small Indian university town?
We knew Vasu could easily get a job in Delhi, Bombay or Calcutta, but he feared that I wouldn’t enjoy living in any of these big cities. Delhi was too large and chaotic and next to unbearable during the hot dusty summers with their lengthy power cuts, he said. Bombay was even larger and had a humid climate with rains which could go on forever. The washing never dried, the walls were damp and swarms of mosquitoes hovered around, he told me.
Calcutta was better, less chaotic and more Western, but was one of the most humid places in the world, where you sweated all the time. A cold shower provided some relief but as soon as you dried yourself the sweat reappeared.
‘And there are snakes, lizards, flies, rats, cows and monkeys,’ I teased him. ‘They’ll bite me and gradually eat me alive.’
‘And then there’s the noise,’ he went on, ‘relentlessly following you everywhere, and an awful smell of piss, shit and dung that lodges in your clothes, gets under your skin and never leaves you.’
But most tiring of all, he explained, were people continually present around you, their sweaty bodies pressed against you, trying to touch and feel you.
I looked at him unable to see if he really hated India or was just trying to wind me up. I was sure it couldn’t be as bad as all that.
‘In India,’ he said, ‘you have to be very rich to live a comfortable life. On the salary of a junior academic we’ll only be able to afford a few basic necessities.’
I soon realised that he was testing me, hoping to hear the words he so desired. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he wanted me to say, ‘and live with you forever.’
But I didn’t say anything.
Like me, he understood that although we had committed ourselves to living with each other, this often extracted a heavy toll, eroding our own sense of being in the world. To be happy or to make those we love happy, it is sometimes prudent, and perhaps kind, to let them go.
‘We’ll try and see if it works,’ I said. That didn’t satisfy him, although he didn’t say anything. Doubt; the inherent frailty of our plans and wishes; the transience of our desires, affections and commitments, were all hidden behind the words ‘we’ll try’. This was evident to both of us, and whereas for me doubt and uncertainty were part of life, to him they were nothing more than minor obstacles, easily overcome.
What really troubled him was the thought that I didn’t love him as dearly as he loved me.
‘I know you wouldn’t mind settling down in Moscow,’ I told him, ‘but you need to understand that this place has lost meaning for me. It’s my home, I agree. But I want to run away. Perhaps not forever. You believe that with time the system will change, grant us more freedom and allow us to exercise it without fear or force. But I’m not so sure. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps one day everything will suddenly become better and people will treat one another well. But I don’t have time to wait. The only way I can drag myself out of my inertia is to leave – and as soon as possible.’ She paused. ‘I know it sounds awful but I don’t want to lie to you. You know I love you. And you love me even more. So let’s be completely honest with one another.’
Two months after the letter from Jijee-ma, Vasu received a letter from Uncle Triple K which carried dreadful news. I saw him reading and re-reading it and asked him if he were all right. He said no – and showed me the letter.
The news was so bad that I realised no words from me would comfort him.
‘Your Jijee-ma has been diagnosed with cervical cancer and the prognosis isn’t good. She asked me not to tell you but I know she wants you to know. But don’t drop everything and rush back. She wants you to finish your studies and to pray for her. “Don’t worry about me”, she says. “When the time comes, I’ll be at the airport to greet Anna and Vasu.”’
I suggested he should go home to be with her. The thesis and the book could wait. I said that I would come with him. He looked at me surprised and I realised that this wasn’t the right thing to say. That I had lied, both of us understood at once. What he had really wanted to do was finish the thesis and the book as soon as possible and take me back to India with him to stay. He feared that if I went for a week or a fortnight and took a dislike to the place, the doors would swing shut.
I knew how much he loved Jijee-ma. The idea of her being in pain was intolerable to him. But I didn’t know how to comfort him. That night I pulled him close, but he resisted, asked me not to worry about him and went straight to sleep.
I lay awake listening to the wind and trying to order the scattered thoughts wandering through my mind. Suddenly a strange and rather wicked idea floated in. I was aghast that I was capable of entertaining such a dreadful possibility. I got up to go to the bathroom, turned on the light and looked in the mirror, feeling ashamed of myself.
The next morning Vasu appeared calm and composed. This irritated me but I needed to confess what I had thought. He laughed guiltily after I had finished, which infuriated me even more.
‘Annushka, my dear,’ he said, ‘such thoughts have also crossed my mind. They make me feel bad and incredibly selfish too. But of course you’re right. Once Jijee-ma is dead, I am free of her— and of India.’
I was shocked. ‘What about Uncle Triple K?’ I asked. He just smiled sadly. ‘He’ll understand. He’ll feel bad – perhaps let down – but he’ll understand.’
Vasu
Yes, Uncle Triple K would have understood my predicament. But to forgive me would have been hard. He was, I am sure, very disappointed in me and although I had tried a few times to explain my situation to him, his brief ‘I know’ and ‘It doesn’t matter’ had left me feeling more disgusted with myself than ever.
The fact that I had now decided to go somewhere quite different, not return to India, would upset him even more.
A year earlier a professor at the School of Architecture in Venice had come to Moscow to attend a conference. He didn’t know Russian but spoke English and I was asked to be his interpreter. I was surprised that he had read my paper on Vastushastra in an obscure German journal. Perhaps that is why he then asked me to work with him on a collection of essays on the role of emotion in designing urban spaces.
He had wanted me to show him ‘my Moscow’, which wasn’t easy. I had no
idea where to start. I had to ask Anna for help and she readily agreed to accompany us. She also invited the professor to a concert at the conservatorium where she and Vika were playing Shostakovich. After the concert we took him home to meet Leonid Mikhailovich and be shown his jazz collection.
‘He likes you,’ Anna had said after we had seen the professor off at the airport.
It took more than eight months for the invitation to work in a temporary position at the university in Venice to arrive.
‘You deserve it,’ Anna said after reading the letter. ‘I hope you are going to accept it,’ she added.
‘I’m not sure,’ I replied.
We didn’t talk about the letter for a week. Then one evening walking home from the station Anna said that she wanted me to call Shurik and talk to him about the offer from Venice.
‘Why Shurik? Have you told him?’
‘I have.’
‘And?’
‘And he wants us to go.’
‘Are you sure? Because he said something very different to me.’
‘What did he say to you?’
‘Don’t ever go there.’
‘Why?’
‘He said: It will ruin you both.’
‘Did he say that? Really? I don’t believe you.’
I didn’t tell Anna that Shurik was convinced that Russians such as he and Anna had lost the habit of freedom. Its sudden appearance would hurt and impair us both.
Instead I lied: ‘Yes, he wants us to go.’
‘You aren’t lying?’
‘No,’ I lied again.
‘Then why do you look so sad?’ she demanded.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’re worried about Jijee-ma. Aren’t you?
‘Yes – but not as much as I was. The chemotherapy is working. She’s feeling much better.’
After Love Page 14