KAUSHIK BARUA
Copyright © 2017 by Kaushik Barua
All rights reserved. No part of this publication, or parts thereof, may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotes in a review, without the written permission of the publisher.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barua, Kaushik, author.
No direction Rome / Kaushik Barua.
Sag Harbor, NY: The Permanent Press, [2017]
ISBN: 978-1-57962-512-2
eISBN: 978-1-57962-547-4
1. Black humor (Literature) 2. Humorous fiction.
PR9499.4.B372 N6 2017
823'.92—dc23
2017017405
Printed in the United States of America
To Deuta
September 2012
TALKING TO DEER
On Friday afternoon, Pooja tried to kill herself. But the canal wasn’t deep enough. She stood up, surprised, and tried to walk back to the edge. Then she slipped and hit her head against the wall.
Saturday was a blur. There were policemen on cycles with neon yellow jackets, tubes crisscrossing the air in front of her face in hospital, all starting in some pouch and ending inside her, her mother’s screaming face inches from mine with freshly minted rage she had brought all the way from India, my retreat—no, my charge—to the airport where I told the check-in attendant with her breasts straining against her name tag—Marina—that I was on holiday but my fiancée liked Amsterdam so much she decided to stay on for a few days, the taxi ride back from the airport in Rome when I stared at the bald patch on the driver’s head with an open sore in the middle that looked like herpes or one of those unnamable STDs.
On Sunday, I rested. Does that sound too grand? As if I’m talking about the God you pretend not to believe in, the one with the long white beard and a face like Charlton Heston. He may even look like Morgan Freeman, but definitely not like Winona Ryder. On the seventh day, He rested. Anyway, on Sunday, I slept. On Monday, I took the day off. And by noon, I was already stoned.
I had to meet a few friends in the evening. Not friends really, members of this Rome Expat Socialising Club. I walked down the gently sloping Via Claudia till I came upon the Colosseo standing massive and jagged in front of me. I had to walk all the way round the thing to reach the centre of the city. I didn’t know what the Colosseo was still doing there. It had been around for 2,000 years, I remembered reading, its massive open mouth gaping at the skies like a toilet bowl for the gods. The gods taking a dump on us all for 2,000 years. Once they had gladiators in fifty-kilo armour fighting for their lives here. Now they have freckled American college kids ooh-ing and aah-ing before getting pissed in the bars near my place. I hated them all. Also, none of them ever made it to my bed; though I walked past them often and even asked for directions to random streets. I don’t think any of them were cool enough for me. Not that I ever had a gladiator in my bed, so I wouldn’t really know about them either.
But of course I wasn’t thinking about American college kids. I was thinking about Pooja. A week before she took the plunge, we were signing forms to get married. When she was conscious in hospital, I asked her why. I wasn’t crying, but I was serious. And she said it wasn’t about me. She tried to kill herself and it wasn’t about me? That really took my trip.
I stopped near the supermarket. There was no one to ask for directions. No Italian aunty on stubby legs with the corner of her milk packet tearing against the natural-plastic bag; no girl jabbing on her phone at the bus stop; no men with cultivated stubbles and earpieces jammed in their ears, their hands all over the place fervently plucking words out of the air; not even middle-aged tourists with teenage kids making family history in front of the epic toilet bowl. The restaurants were full, but the waiters had all seen me before. So I continued on my own to the red light and turned left.
Then I saw him, the first candidate of the day. An old man, gaunt in a sexy kind of way, with grey hair that curled over his ears, wearing one of those elbow-patch jackets—he was stuffing tobacco into his pipe. I asked him if he knew the way to Via del Corso. He handed me his pipe, and raised both hands in intricate gestures as he spoke. I wondered about his life. Sometimes, I thought, he met his friends from the village in Tuscany and they spoke about what was going wrong with the country. He told them how everything worked better in the United States and even in China where his cousin stayed. After drinks in the bar where the bartender knew all the wines and all the customers by origin and vintage, he walked back home with his wife and they tried to make love but often failed. When she was away at her mamma’s place he would pull down his stack of magazines and try to jerk off but so many of the pages were stuck together it was difficult. When he was done or not done and he could feel his always-sore knees again, he would still be thankful he married his wife and not one of the paper girls.
His daughter-in-law looked like one of those paper girls. Yes, he sometimes leched at her. But never at his daughter, that would be a sin. I might lech at my daughter-in-law. I don’t think Pooja ever would, I mean lust for a son-in-law. She was too serious that way. Taking too much load. It’s a wonder she didn’t sink.
The old man finished giving me directions and I handed him back his pipe. I smiled at him, as if to let him know that everything was good. Life was good; he had nothing to fear. I have a lot of love for strangers sometimes. I’m very Buddhist in that way. I’m not sure he got my message. It was a bit too subliminal. Not too many people got the Buddha’s message either. The Buddha spent many years talking to deer in the forests.
When I reached Fori Imperiali, I found a lady. She had huge square shades and looked like Blade Runner. Or was that Blade? I asked her for directions—Via del Corso? She shook her shoulders and looked skyward. I looked up too; she was gone before I looked back. Probably hunting teenage vampires. There was a grey gurgling sky overhead. Once I rented a car whose roof slid down; Pooja and I drove to the Amalfi Coast. She threw her head back and laughed. She was a 1970s Bollywood girl. Her teeth were porcelain. I heard teeth grow forever. I would say something stupid and she’d laugh. Then I’d try my wry smile, slightly crooked. She loved that. The water didn’t kill her, the wall didn’t kill her, but life will get her in the end. Don’t burn me, she said, don’t let them burn me when I die. Someday the world will be covered in porcelain. But I won’t be there.
The Rome Expat Socialising Club was waiting. Blade didn’t know the way. But like always, I did. I walked past Trajan’s market. It had a crescent of crumbling rooms, four stories of them. In the semidarkness, the walls turned deep maroon like they might have looked when the ancient Romans were trading cattle or armour or whatever they needed. Or gladiator prostitutes.
Someone touched my elbow, I mean tapped it, not stroked it or anything. I saw a Bangladeshi with a tower of fluorescent Colosseos growing out of his left hand and my elbow growing out of his right.
Where are you going? He said it in English, Via del Corso?
I didn’t reply. I didn’t like talking to these Bangladeshi vendors. Or the Indian ones. In case they got the wrong ideas. I don’t know what ideas, but the wrong ones. Like I’m their brother or something.
Dove vai? Dove vai?
I didn’t speak much Italian, but I wouldn’t have replied anyway.
Straight, go straight, sempre dritto. He continued. I nodded him away; but he stayed a few steps behind me. How did he speak English so well?
Do you like cricket? Tendulkar?
No, no cricket.
I hated it when peop
le presumed I was Indian, or that I liked cricket, and assumed I liked Sachin Tendulkar, the twenty-year resident god of Indian cricket.
I hurried on, but I could still hear the Bangladeshi behind me. The Twenty20 Cricket World Cup is coming, he yelled. Once I looked back and his eyes were following some girl’s ass. Perv. Then he started humming an old Bollywood song: Jeena yahan, marna yahan, iske siva jaana kahan . . . To live here, and to die here, where else is there to go? The world is filled with weirdos.
I tried walking faster. I didn’t look back till I reached the bar. By then, the humming had been drowned out by the city. I thought I heard someone shout out Mr. India when I walked in, but I wasn’t sure.
I found the group I was looking for; silicon smiles flared across the table. It was a large group: fourteen, maybe fifteen. Massimo was there. He was from the office. But he was a friend. He spent half the day researching important global issues: the most violent animals in the world, the coolest animals who didn’t give a fuck, or film stars who looked the same in every poster, like Tom Cruise’s side profile. Sometimes he did a little work. Smarter than the system, that’s my only fault, he would say. He never got caught he was so good at switching screens. He could hear footsteps twenty feet away and switch screens. He was the Alt-Tab man; that was his superpower.
And there was Liesbeth, the Dutch girl. She worked in Africa a lot, doing some development project. Her Facebook was filled with photos of babies with swollen bellies. Half the time they were in her arms. I liked the photos. I mean, I “like”d them. And then I would “like” the whole album. I made sure I didn’t like every photo, only about half. There was a baby with eyes like Charlie Chaplin and a Sumo belly. It looked like he was reaching for her breasts. I liked that one.
The Indian girl came up to me. Maya, she was Indian- American, second generation or whatever you call them, the ones who are filled with angst and a longing for a homeland they don’t even know. But that’s a different story. And I don’t really care about that story.
What happened to your friend? Your family friend? She meant Pooja. She knew we were having an arranged marriage. Maya probably laughed about it and told everyone else.
She’s gone back home, I said. She wanted to spend some time with her family.
I know how that feels, Maya said.
I’m sure you do.
She didn’t spend much time on me. I saw her scurry back to the group. She was reading the wine menu with two other girls. And they were whispering to each other. One laughed. I think Maya looked back towards me. I reached for the vodka tonic and nudged Massimo to a corner.
What happened? he asked me, I got your text. Everything okay?
She’s gone. Gone back home; her mom came to Amsterdam to pick her up.
Mom picked her up? So the marriage is off?
I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t want to hurry. I didn’t want to get married anyway.
Did you guys do it? Wasn’t that why you went to Amsterdam together? So did you do it?
Almost.
Which means you held hands?
No, which means I pulled it out, last minute.
I thought that sort of thing doesn’t happen with your arranged marriage scene.
The pulling out?
No, the sex before marriage, because you don’t really know each other.
I knew her. I got to know her.
So the sex happening isn’t so rare?
Stranger things have happened. And I think she started liking me.
And you?
I guess. She was nice, but slightly messed up.
Why don’t you call her? Is she coming back to her job in London? Maybe you guys can still meet. Even try dating? Like normal people?
Maybe I will. I don’t want to lose any of my options.
How many options do you have?
Enough.
You mean right hand or left hand?
Shut up, Massimo.
He laughed. The two spots on his temple lit up. When Massimo was a teenager, he crashed his bike. He had broken his skull into twenty pieces; they screwed it back, held together with a steel frame. He spent more than a month in hospital. His mamma prayed for forty days, kneeling in the pews of her church, hands together, nails scraping each other clean. When he went back to school, he had all the girls pitying him, rubbing his back. But that’s not where he wanted their hands.
His mamma found his marijuana tree when he was in hospital. She let it grow. If that will bring him back, let it stay, she thought. And he came back, with a spaceship on his head for a year.
Mamma died when he moved to Rome. Not because he moved to Rome, though one never knows with Italian mammas. His father was still around, smoking his pipe in the backyard where the tree grew to ten feet. Smoking his pipe and wondering why he felt so happy every evening. And that’s why Massimo had the two grooves on his forehead. That’s where the spaceship was attached to his head.
When Massimo stopped glowing, we went back to the group. They were taking photos with their iPhones. Some smiled, but mostly they kept their faces at about thirty degrees from the camera. Pretending it wasn’t there. Pretending they didn’t care, and they wouldn’t spend hours obsessing over the photographs after they’d been tagged. Everyone tries the casually disinterested look. I look good from thirty degrees too. And with the crooked smile, or smirk. It was the French-Mauritian or Mauritian-French girl taking photos. Celine. I knew what she’d do—blur out the edges with Instagram, add the scratches, and upload them in a day. Hazy photos of a bygone era. Manufacturing nostalgia. About the good times.
Celine with Maya. Rome 2012, la dolce vita. Like.
Liesbeth lays out a plan for malnutrition in Tanzania. Like.
Me in apartment, scrolling down phone book. No one to call. Like.
Rome, with angel statues and Michelangelo. Like.
Massimo with head split open. Fractured leg, blood dribbling out of penis. Like.
Pooja in canal, slightly stunned. Like.
How many photos can you like in a lifetime? How many can you share? How nostalgic can you get about yesterday? About five minutes ago? These people could be nostalgic about dinner by the time dessert comes.
I was flipping through photographs. Real ones. On paper, in a magazine. I saw Michael Douglas. He had throat cancer. He was in a white linen jacket and a pink shirt, looking all dignified and sexy while he announced it. Throat Cancer could be a fashion line he looked so good saying it. Stage Four from the House of Cancer. Five thousand victims in the US every year. Must be a hundred thousand in India. Throats roasted and lungs fried out of order, like in the pictures on the packets. Eighty percent chance of survival, they said. He had a sore throat for a month.
Holy shit. I had a throat ache. Had one for three weeks. Could feel it every day. I tried to read but the lines were fading away. I blew through the straw into my vodka tonic and it burped back.
I cleared my throat. It hurt. Don’t think about it. Don’t panic. The lines came back: other symptoms include numbness in the face. I stretched my jaws. Swallowed. No spit, but something was going down. But these were the stories that happened to other people. Alien abductee. Young software billionaire. Young cancer martyr. The good ones always die young. “He was such a good soul, couldn’t hurt a fly. But you know, those are the ones God wants back.” Somewhere Charlton Heston has a stable full of young men and women.
I tried taking a sip of the vodka. Tried to feel it swirling inside my mouth. Rolling down my throat.
Some girl came to me. What does your name mean? I looked up. Krantik? It means the fighter. Fighting against what? Against oneself, against the universe, I think. Wow, that’s so profound. I smiled at her. This could have been my chance. But I didn’t have the time. Could I feel my cheeks? I wasn’t sure. I pulled Massimo out of the group.
We went outside and he rolled a joint. He could roll in a minute flat. Mix in palm, slap on paper, roll, lick, twist end closed. We were in the alley behind the kitchen.
There was a couple kissing in the dark end. We might have looked cool, like figures out of an indie movie. Sometimes I couldn’t remember if a video was on YouTube or in my memory. Everything was an image of an image of an image. But that’s not why I smoked. I liked it.
Then I remembered. I think I may have throat cancer, I told Massimo.
Don’t be stupid, Massimo said.
What do you mean? Have you even noticed: I’ve had this sore throat for a month. I can’t swallow properly.
Have a paracetamol. He wasn’t even interested; he looked at the couple. Now they were moving and grinding against each other. I thought I heard the guy fart.
I had to show a doctor. Or maybe I shouldn’t. Or maybe I would be a fighter. Shaven head, thirty kilos lighter, but always a brave smile on my face. All the nurses in the cancer institute nursing their mega crushes on me. Krantik. The lion-hearted young man. His story can’t end now.
I might be dying, I said to Massimo.
Aren’t we all?
I’m serious.
Listen, I have some brandy at home, maybe we could go over after this. Good for your throat too. We went back in.
The party people were all there. They were like the Internet. They were everywhere, I could ask them about anything in the world and they’d have some answer. But I couldn’t get to know a thing about myself. I had to leave; I wasn’t feeling well. Maybe everything was okay, but then why did I feel a ball of lead in my chest?
I had to get back home. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life talking to deer.
PALACONTO
This is happening to a hundred thousand people. 100,000.
You knew it, even before the biopsy came in. You knew, because the floor of your stomach had fallen right through your guts the first time you heard the word and you could feel your ass tighten. You could have pissed yourself, but you just held your wife’s hand tighter. And then the doctor told you he had bad news, but it wasn’t all that bad. You smiled but you squeezed even harder. Aren’t these the moments a life is made up of?
No Direction Rome Page 1