She Will Build Him a City

by Raj Kamal Jha

  Kalyani knows she cannot say six months, that’s too long.

  ‘At least a month,’ she says, ‘or two.’

  ‘I am sorry, Kalyani,’ says the HR woman, firm but polite. ‘You haven’t even joined us so you don’t get any leave, but let me tell you something. Please get in touch with me once you are well and then check if there is a vacancy. All the best, you take care of yourself.’

  She doesn’t ask Kalyani about her illness.

  On her way back, Kalyani needs to sit down at the bus stop to stop her feet from flowing away from her body like water.

  ~

  That evening, Kalyani is the first one to have dinner. Alone, in a corner. Egg curry, some rice, a slice of fish. And an apple, later.

  Pinki watches her eat.

  ‘I don’t need both eggs and fish, Ma, either will do,’ says Kalyani.

  ‘That’s fine,’ says Ma, ‘we have both today and I made this for all of us. Pinki, come and help me, let your sister eat.’

  Kalyani knows, however, that from tomorrow, this special dinner will be only for her. They cannot afford this every day, she has done the arithmetic.

  ~

  That night, after they have all had dinner, Ma says, ‘Do not tell anyone about this, do not tell anyone that Kalyani has TB. All of them will tell us to stop working and if word gets around, no one will hire us. Pinki takes care of a child, I wash dishes, they will not want us around.’

  ‘Will I also fall ill, Ma?’asks Pinki.

  ‘No, no,’ says Ma, ‘we will keep the window open, we will let air and sunlight come in.’

  Kalyani hears all this.

  ~

  Kalyani’s eyes are closed but she isn’t sleeping, her back is turned towards her family as she faces the wall. She knows she will become, if she hasn’t already, a burden on her family, a burden that each one will have to carry and because of its weight, she knows, they will stumble and fall. That’s why the least she can do is not to let them know that she has heard what Ma has said. She will also not tell them that she has a secret of her own.

  ~

  That she first spits blood when she is in Little House, that she wakes up with the chills next to Orphan, she suspects she has TB, she checks and the nurses’ handbook confirms this so that’s why she leaves Little House because she doesn’t want Orphan to catch the disease. Has she done the right thing? She is not sure. Because Orphan leaves Little House – that wasn’t part of any of her plans – and now no one knows where he is, so it doesn’t really help, does it? By not revealing her condition early, has she infected others in her home already? Has she made matters worse for herself? Well, no one in the house has any symptoms yet. Should she have told Doctor this morning that she has had symptoms for a while? How would that have helped? She is not sure. She isn’t the kind who keeps secrets inside her because these weigh her down, because she craves lightness.

  So why is this happening to her? This web of lies and half-truths, these secrets, this illness that threatens to consume her. She hears everyone settling down to sleep, Baba switch the lights off, and she cannot hold it any more so she lets the tears flow, she coughs to cover her crying.

  WOMAN

  Patrick White

  You say you have no interest in what I read but I need to tell you about a woman named Theodora Goodman because, I think, we have a lot to learn from her. Both you and I. She is the central character in The Aunt’s Story by Patrick White, one the three books they gave me as a farewell gift because White was awarded the Nobel Prize the year you were born. The book is in three parts and when it opens, Theodora is as old as I am when your father dies, as young as you are today, give or take a few years.

  I will read some lines to give you a sense of how the book sounds.

  ~

  She thought of the narrowness of the limits within which a human soul may speak and be understood by its nearest of mental kin, of how soon it reaches that solitary land of the individual experience, in which no fellow footfall is ever heard.

  ~

  Theodora lives in Moreton Bay, in Australia, and we meet her the morning her mother has passed away. The coffin – the shiny box that contained a waxwork – is in the room which was her mother’s bedroom. Theodora waits for her sister, her very beautiful sister, Fanny, and Fanny’s husband, Frank, to come down from Sydney for the funeral.

  Once upon a time when Theodora is in school, she and Frank are attracted to each other but nothing comes of it except a few awkward moments of tenderness. Theodora, who has taken care of her mother all these years, realises that she is free now but she doesn’t know what to do with this freedom. She cannot even cry like her sister Fanny. For Fanny, emotions were either black or white. For Theodora, who was less certain, the white of love was sometimes smudged by hate. So she could not mourn.

  ~

  Fanny has three children, two boys and a girl. The girl’s name is Lou, Theodora loves Lou. As the adults talk, the children play with a strange toy called ‘filigree ball’ that Theodora’s mother, their grandma, brought from India. Indians, Theodora tells them, fill this hollow brass ball with fire and roll it downhill.

  Why do they do it, Aunt Theo, Lou asks Theodora who replies that she doesn’t know.

  ‘I have no idea,’ she says. ‘I have forgotten. Or perhaps I never knew.’

  ~

  As she waits for the funeral, we get to know about Theodora’s childhood, her growing up in a house called Meroe which has deeply affected her. She loves – and she remembers – its trees, its rose garden from where, every morning, roselight enters her room and colours the wall. There’s a creek near the house which dries to white mud in the summer. Meroe is where she first meets Frank, Meroe is from where she goes to school and where she meets a girl called Violet Adams and they become the best of friends. For Theodora, Meroe is where the pulse of existence quickened, where she ran into the receiving sun.

  Meroe is where her father dies.

  ~

  After her mother’s death, Theodora moves to Paris where she checks into a hotel and runs into a cast of characters so strange it’s hard to know who is real, who is not. They have funny names, there is Sergei Sokolnikov, a general from Russia; Madame Rapallo, an American adventuress, rumoured to be the mother of a princess. They both have been guests in the hotel for years. There are twins Marthe and Berthe who walk around the hotel discussing war and language. There is Henriette, neither young nor old, who works in the hotel, whose body smells of nakedness and sun. There is a girl called Katina who is both white and black.

  Theodora befriends them all and, soon, the general starts referring to her as his sister Ludmilla and Theodora plays along. They go for long walks during which he tells her stories of his life. Day by day, she, too, begins to settle down in this hotel.

  ~

  Then one night, a night thick with quiet stars, there is a fire in the hotel. Theodora watches the flames, the smoke as everything burns, including the black beetle in the wood, the cockroach in the cold consommé. It’s the last part of the book that’s my favourite. I am not going to give the story away because, who knows, you may wish to read the book when you wake up.

  ~

  Australia to Europe to America.

  After the hotel burns down, we find Theodora on board a train in America that’s headed for California. There are cornfields as far as her eyes can see; houses and towns pass her by like notes of music that she can read. Abruptly, she gets off the train and finds herself in a small town where a stranger suggests she walk towards a guest house to stay for the night.

  Between pines and firs, she walks. In her handbag, she finds aspirin and eau-de-Cologne, pictures of children, sticky lozenges, strips and sheaves of tickets she bought in New York. She tears all of these into small pieces and she walks on.

  She is taken in by a family, who welcome her, make her a bowl of noodles and ask her to stay. When they ask her her name, she says she is Pilkington, her name torn out by the roots, just as she h
ad torn the tickets from her handbag. This way perhaps she came a little closer to humility, to anonymity, to pureness of being.

  ~

  She walks away from this house, too, her feet leading her to a thin house which is empty, where there are things old and broken. It’s here that she meets a man called Holstius. She says, I have seen you somewhere at a railway station or in a hotel.

  Possibly, he says.

  He seems to give voice to her thoughts, she can touch him if she wishes.

  She begins to live here and what happens later is something I will get you to read. To find out what happens to Theodora Goodman, who is all alone.

  Until:

  They will come for you soon, with every sign of the greatest kindness, they will give you warm drinks, simple, nourishing food, and encourage you to relax in a white room and tell your life.

  MAN

  Freeze Frame

  He will take care of Taxi Driver.

  That’s what Balloon Girl says he should do, that’s why Balloon Girl helps, she makes the entire world stop so that he is the only one who can move, so that the crowds don’t slow him down.

  ~

  That’s why when he stands on the steps of The Leela and waits for the parking attendant to get his car, he realises everything is still and he’s walked into a painting whose canvas is limitless, stretches from sky to sky, glass to glass. Behind him and in front, above and below.

  All movement has stopped.

  The giant revolving door is an unmoving blur wrapped around three women, one in a sari, one in a black dress, another in something blue. And one man in plain trousers and shirt.All four, lit by yellow lamplight. Like insects caught in amber.

  Two guards crouch holding metal detectors like boys at play hold paddles. In front, two guests stand, their arms outstretched, following orders in a drill. In a corner, on the pavement, someone cups a frozen flame to light a cigarette. The fountain in the lobby has stopped in mid-air, its water now shards of glass undecided, unsure if – and when – will they fall.

  All hotel staff wear smiling masks.

  A baby, in her nanny’s lap, sitting on a Queen Anne chair, wears a weeping mask.

  A red leather suitcase falls, is held up by air.

  Two young women stare into each other’s phones, their peach faces lit by screen blue, their four shoulders bare. One wears heels, her left shoe inches above the ground.

  There is a wedding reception in the hotel. One wall is decked with flowers, three petals have fallen off, they dot the air in points of an invisible triangle over the heads of an overweight, almost obese, couple, their fingers sparkling with jewelled rings.

  Gift boxes scatter in flecks of coloured paint. Little boys in suits lean against the escalator like dolls propped up after they have fallen. Little girls show their small midriffs in small adult clothes.

  He closes his eyes.

  He wants to undress the little girls, pluck the sequins from their hair, wash away the make-up and polish from their faces, lick them clean, restore them to childhood.

  At the bakery at one end of the lobby, a child’s face is pressed against its glass display, a cone in one hand, an ice-cream drop on his lower lip. Far away, beyond the steps, across the driveway into the hotel, over the heads of people, he can see the row of cars waiting to enter. Bumper to bumper, each one waits for Security. The first has its trunk open, on which streetlight slashes a yellow line. A hulking, black Mitsubishi Pajero sits in the hotel driveway, its doors open, three men out, three men in, all frozen in mid-step.

  Lobby clocks stop measuring time in New York, London, Paris, Dubai, Delhi, Singapore, Beijing, Hong Kong and Sydney.

  He raises his hand, just an inch or so, to check if he can move.

  Yes, he can. So how does that affect everything else?

  No, it doesn’t, because thanks to Balloon Girl, he isn’t part of this painting.

  ~

  So he lets his fingers rise, drop, rise again, he draws lines in the air.

  He takes a step forward, he takes a step back. Nothing moves except him.

  No one’s looking at him, no one looks at him as he jumps, like a child on a trampoline. He falls, he jumps again, flails his arms, he shouts, the painting goes on. No one listens, no one sees.

  The next time he jumps, he sees his car. It’s the fourth one.

  He begins to walk towards it. On the way, he passes the Mitsubishi Pajero, the driver has a frightened look on his face.

  ~

  There is no one in his car. His keys are in the ignition. The parking attendant must have stepped out before all this happened. He gets in, he smells the freshness from his clothes, the shampoo in his hair, the bath gel he used. He and his car are the only things moving through this painting. He turns the wipers on, even they move, he sprays his windshield with water and soap, the dirt clears, he can see the evening sky through the glass now, in vivid black and blue paint. In strokes and brushes.

  Oil, watercolour on canvas, on paper, charcoal sketch, line drawing, everything mixed, still.

  Taxi Driver will be at the stand, Balloon Girl says, he is waiting for his night shift to begin.

  ~

  He is on the highway now, Balloon Girl loves him so much she has ensured he keeps moving in his lane. Uninterrupted, no one behind him, no one in front, the rest of the traffic stationary, like it was this morning, the painting goes on. The highway itself is pencil-black, he can see each individual line in the shade, cross-hatches, lanes marked as white broken lines. The trees on the divider are still, green paint of their leaves drips down the wire mesh put to prevent people from walking across the highway.

  He steps on the gas, he is driving at 80 km per hour, standard speed, he goes up to 85, the lane is clear, it has opened up only for him, he is at 90 now, moving towards 100, 110, 120, that’s the speed on the autobahn, he can see the exit sign coming up, ‘Airport, Dwarka, Dhaula Kuan, Vasant Vihar’, the letters clearly written by hand, the arrow a white smudge on the green.

  He will take the Dhaula Kuan exit, turn on Ring Road, go all the way to AIIMS, no crowd, no nothing, he should be there in less than twenty minutes. Balloon Girl will be there to help him, he wants to listen to some music, turn the dashboard TV on, but just when he leans to his left to reach the switch, there it is.

  Right in front, a huge, hulking shadow in the sky, black on black.

  He slows down to 75, 65, 60, down to 40 now, no, it’s not black, it’s white, he needs to stop, there is no one in his lane.

  He gets out of the car and looks up, looks in front to see a giant Boeing 747, Lufthansa, coming in to land, from Munich, maybe Frankfurt, the plane stationary in the air. It spans both sides of the highway, its nose pointed towards the runway less than a kilometre above. He can see the aircraft’s windows lit by warm yellow cabin light, faces looking down on him, each one painted with so much care and beauty. The plane is so close he wants to climb up onto his car and touch its undercarriage, feel its wheels, the air sliced by the turbine blades.

  But he decides against it.

  No, there should be no disturbing this stillness.

  He cannot digress, he needs to see Taxi Driver. So he continues to drive straight ahead.

  Unhindered, undisturbed, the world standing still, he is guided by Balloon Girl, his only compass.

  CHILD

  Blood River

  Kalyani is in the centre of the room, she coughs blood. It stains her dress, drips down her legs to the floor where it fans into a red-brown delta, runs into the cement cracks before it begins, right in front of her eyes, to collect, like rain water rising, lapping against the edge where the floor meets the walls. She covers her mouth with her palm to dam the flow but her blood breaches the embankment her fingers make to gush through, gurgling, sputtering, so thick so fast that all she can do is to give herself up to this raging torrent from within. She stands, her arms flopped by her side, her chest hurting so hard she is afraid it will split her open. She wants to close h
er eyes but she finds she cannot because it seems someone has removed her eyelids and when she tries to blink, she does not feel the familiar touch of eyelash against eyelash, the lid gently shutting down, like a curtain, over the eye. Instead, it’s as if someone wants her to keep looking. At her blood as it now covers the entire floor, begins to creep up the walls. It slips through the crack under the tarpaulin sheet onto the verandah outside, spills over, begins to flow into the street.

  ~

  ‘May I speak to Mrs Usha Chopra?’

  ‘Mrs Chopra speaking.’

  ‘This is Kalyani, Kalyani Das.’

  ‘Kalyani, how have you been? Such a long time, I thought you had forgotten all of us, how’s your new job?’

  ‘I am not well, Mrs Chopra.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I am ill, Mrs Chopra, I have TB.’ She doesn’t know any other way to say this.

  She hears silence in which she can hear Mrs Chopra breathe.

  She doesn’t know what to tell her next. She doesn’t know why she dialled the number. She wants to hang up.

  ‘Have you seen a doctor, Kalyani?’

  ‘Yes, I am under treatment, I called to ask you, have they found Orphan?’

  ‘We haven’t heard anything, the police are still looking for him, I think. How do you know?’

  ‘Doctor Chatterjee told me that he is missing.’

  ‘You need some help, Kalyani? I can send you some money.’

  ‘No, no, Mrs Chopra, I will tell you when I need something.’

  ‘Who’s with you now?’

  ‘I am with everyone, with my family. Ma, Baba, Bhai and Pinki.’

  ‘Don’t be alone.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘When did you find out?’

  ‘A few days ago.’

  ‘TB is very normal, follow the course of the medicine. Do not slip up.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Chopra.’

  ‘Call me when you need something. Call me any time.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Chopra.’

  ‘Anything else?’