An Atlas of Impossible Longing

by Anuradha Roy

  The car was parked outside the gate. The khansama got into the driver’s seat, while the two women sat at the back. Kananbala began to panic and looked wide-eyed with questions at Mrs Barnum. “Where are we going?” she quavered.

  Mrs Barnum understood the question despite not knowing the language. Gaily, she laughed, “A surprise, it’s a surprise!” The khansama dutifully translated this as he started the car.

  The car rumbled down the road. It began to move faster, too fast for Kananbala who stared bewildered out of its window, her heart thumping with the novelty of it, with the speed. She had barely focused on one tree or building or clump of bushes when, already, it was part of the past. The wind rushed into her hair and made strands escape from her tight bun. Her aanchal slid off her head; there was nothing she could do to keep it on. Bare-headed, hair flying, she put her face to the rushing air that made her eyes water. A feeling of exhilaration swept over her, something overpowering, something she could not remember feeling after she was newly married.

  * * *

  Amulya returned home at midday, as he usually did. Sitting on the bench by the front door, he took his shoes off, calling out, “Arre o Gouranga, where are you? Bring me some water!”

  He rose and in slippered feet walked up the stairs towards his bedroom. In the long verandah-room, the light streaming in through his stained-glass window was a mellow monsoon colour. Amulya paused to admire it, relishing the thought of at least a month of rain, and reached out for the glass of water Gouranga had brought. “Where is everyone?” he enquired. “The house is very quiet, what’s happening?”

  “N … nn … nothing, Babu,” Gouranga said, and, almost grabbing Amulya’s empty glass, scampered out of the verandah as if pursued. Amulya watched him disappearing and muttered, “Dolt … fifteen years and still he isn’t trained … just can’t make a horse out of this donkey.”

  He turned into his bedroom saying, “Are you there? I’m back.”

  He stepped in. “Are you there?” he said again, peering into the curtained-off dressing area.

  Amulya stood puzzled, brows knit, wondering where Kananbala could be. Then, thinking she might be – uncharacteristically, he admitted – with Manjula in her quarters, he sat down with the newspaper to wait for Manjula to call him for lunch. He flipped it open to the editorials and began to read. The silence was broken only by the rustle of the paper and the monotonous tinkle of cow-bells.

  Much time had passed, his hungry stomach told him. He pushed the paper aside as if everything in it was nonsensical and got up.

  Looking into the corridor, he bellowed “Bouma!” towards his absent older daughter-in-law.

  Manjula appeared, wiping her hands on her sari, looking drawn with worry. Like the rest of the household, she was terrified of Amulya’s temper.

  “Ma has gone out,” she stammered when he asked. “I was having a bath … Mrs Barnum … ”

  Amulya stood stock still for a moment, then turned away from her without a word. The thought that his wife had left the house, defying him – even in her disturbed state she knew the rules – that she was making a fool of herself with a stranger, that the stranger in question was an Anglo-Indian murderess! He could not stretch his mind far enough to accommodate all these facts together. He summoned Gouranga and sent him across the road to call her back. Gouranga returned after ten minutes, not daring to speak.

  They could not say at Mrs Barnum’s where Kananbala was. She had been taken away in a car by Mrs Barnum and her khansama.

  Amulya sat in his armchair by the window and stared at the wall opposite, frozen into inaction by fury and astonishment. He could not think of returning to the factory. Where would he begin to hunt for his wife? What did the Barnum woman intend to do to her? Perhaps there had been some development in the police investigation and she was going to silence Kananbala? Maybe the police had lied to Mrs Barnum and told her Kananbala was about to depose against her? Could one put anything past a woman who had killed her husband for the sake of a lover?

  He sat straight-backed, saying nothing to anyone, unable to still his mind. Manjula peeped in through the door at his preoccupied face, his rigid body, and stole away. She sat in her room eating a hurried, stolen snack to make up for their forgotten lunch. Her afternoon nap was out of the question. What if her father-in-law summoned her? “What a lot of trouble the woman is,” Manjula spluttered under her breath with exasperation. “What the hell is the old bag up to?”

  * * *

  The car sped over the smooth road and then turned into a narrower one that was bumpy. Around them were fields of stubble, the earth damp, exhaling, grass shooting out almost before their eyes with the new rain. They had left the houses behind, and now, apart from a villager’s hut or crop-guard’s shack, there were no buildings. The car bumped and lurched more and more until they passed first the rustling shade of a eucalyptus stand, then a stretch of open field, and then Kananbala knew where she was, though she could hardly believe it.

  There, across the horizon, was the spine of the ridge, its body visible too, closer than she had ever seen it. This close, she could see the slopes had trees and scrub poking out of them, and the trees continued right down to the flat ground where they became the forest and met a dry stream-bed. The same forest she could see from her window, the forest where her lion was.

  The car twisted round the dirt track and turned the corner, and Mrs Barnum said, “There! Now, have you seen that before?”

  They were before the ruins of the fort. The car had stopped. Kananbala took no notice of Mrs Barnum helping her out of the car as she stepped across, hesitant at first, then with strong strides, to the old stone walls. She touched the stone with a wondering hand and looked around. She saw the enormous, aged, banyan tree that had sent out hundreds of aerial roots, now joined with the ground. Kananbala stood among the roots, looking up at them towering past her, a forest made by just one giant tree. She noticed the bark on the tree’s main trunk had knotted up into an odd shape, and looked closer.

  “That’s meant to be the face of the Buddha.” The khansama translated what Mrs Barnum was saying. “He is said to have meditated here. This tree is supposed to bring people peace. It certainly does me!” She laughed. Then she said, “Shall we go further or stop here?”

  “Stop!” Kananbala said.

  “Right! Bring out the hamper, khansama, and the carpet, will you?” Mrs Barnum tripped ahead calling out, “Come, there’s more!”

  She reached for Kananbala’s hand again and almost pulled her along. Kananbala watched the wine-coloured velvet of shoes that had lain perfect in their tissue wrapping for years grow beige with mud. She smiled a sudden, radiant smile of uncomplicated happiness, and then she saw a shallow pool of water, faded arabesques on the floor around it. She almost ran towards the water, ungainly, wobbly, sari entangling her legs. Mrs Barnum let go, watching her. The pool was cool with water from the new rain, not much deeper than a big puddle, but Kananbala, forgetting she was a woman in her fifties, threw off her shoes as children do and sat dipping her toes, then let her feet slide in, shivering at the touch of water.

  Mrs Barnum was busy with the hamper. The khansama laid out a bright, striped duree, and on it a tablecloth that covered a portion of the middle. He took a few boxes out of the hamper, and a bottle. He laid out forks and napkins. Then he stepped back and said in English, “I will wait in the car?”

  “Yes, I suppose … ” Mrs Barnum was irresolute for a moment and then said, “Yes, go to the car. If I need you, I will call, thank you.”

  Kananbala saw Mrs Barnum crouching next to her, her peacock-blue dress trailing in the dust. Mrs Barnum had a bottle in her hand, and string.

  “Ah,” she was muttering to herself, “Now let’s see … um, yes.” She tied the neck of the bottle with string and slid it into the water of the pool. She took the other end and tied it to a tree root. Then she rubbed her palms together in glee, exclaiming, “Now our picnic begins!”

  * * *
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br />   When the afternoon was at its most silent, they heard someone at the door of 3 Dulganj Road. A servant came upstairs to Amulya’s room, followed by a stranger. It was a thin, balding man in a crumpled dhoti and a grey, sweat-stained shirt. Under his arm was a rolled-up, long, black umbrella with a wooden handle. In his other hand he held a very small, worn cloth bag of the kind people used when buying vegetables from the market. He came into the room and stood silently for a few minutes, opening his mouth as if to say something, then shutting it again. After this happened a few times, Amulya said, “Sit down. Where have you come from?”

  The man remained standing.

  “Kindly sit!” Amulya repeated, sounding a little impatient. “What’s the matter?”

  Amulya did not think the man was from Songarh. His clothes marked him out as being from rural Bengal. Amulya was filled with foreboding.

  Then the man began to speak.

  After many minutes, he finished what he had to say and left the room. Amulya’s normally rigid back drooped semi-circular, and his skeletal face caved in further. He put his hands over his eyes as if he could not bear the daylight any more.

  Gouranga, who was hovering just outside the door, heard a sound of anguish, something between a groan and a cry, from inside the room and fell back a few steps, startled. What could Kananbala have done, he wondered, to make Amulya Babu feel like this, where could she be?

  * * *

  They sat on the duree in the shade of an old spreading tree. Kananbala did not recognise most of the things Mrs Barnum laid out. There were sandwiches, cut fine and thin, wrapped in damp cheesecloth. Lunch boxes revealed cream biscuits and chocolate eclairs. One box was deep with small cakes studded with ruby red raisins. Mrs Barnum brought out cheese and a knife. She opened a tin of condensed milk and dipped a finger into it saying, “Try it, scrumptious!” She dipped her finger in again.

  Kananbala shuddered at that. How could she eat anything contaminated by someone else’s saliva? She tried to smile and picked up a biscuit. But what if the bread slices had meat in them? What if the cake had egg in it? Yet if she did not eat, wouldn’t Mrs Barnum be displeased?

  She started to babble, worried. “Slut, whore, daughter of the devil, syphilitic hen.”

  “Pity we can’t understand each other!” Mrs Barnum said, “We’d have such a jolly time.”

  Kananbala bit into the biscuit mumbling fresh expressions of horror through the crumbs.

  Mrs Barnum said, “The wine must have cooled a little by now, let me see.” She drew the bottle out of the water and tested it. “Yes, it’ll have to do.” She produced a corkscrew from the hamper and opened the bottle as Kananbala watched intrigued. Mrs Barnum poured the deep red liquid into two crystal wine glasses and then, ceremoniously, held one out to Kananbala.

  “Cheers.” she said. “Go on, there’s no-one looking, try it!”

  Kananbala knew about wine glasses. Magazines had woodcuts showing degenerate men drinking out of those glasses. Voluptuous, loose-moralled theatre actresses in Calcutta were said to drink out of such glasses. She shook her head.

  “It’s alright,” Mrs Barnum said smiling, gentle. “It’s just wine. Not liquor. Theek hai!” she said, hoping that would reassure Kananbala.

  Kananbala, uncomprehending, shook her head again and turned away to the pool. “I should have packed lemonade.” Mrs Barnum said, downcast. “I’m such a nitwit sometimes. Digby was right, I have no sense, I don’t think things through. You’re a fool, an imbecile, he’d keep saying, all the time, at the drop of a hat, my mixed blood, my bad blood, my stupidity.”

  Mrs Barnum was talking almost to herself, drinking rapid sips of the wine, not touching the food.

  Kananbala looked up at the woman next to her. She looks young, must be only in her thirties, she thought, or maybe a little older – maybe the colour on her cheeks is rouge.

  Mrs Barnum had a fine-boned face on a long neck that emerged stem-like from her dress. As she spoke, a knobble in her throat bobbed a little under the thin surface of her skin. Her fingers clutched her glass too hard and she jerked her head as she talked and paused and talked again. Kananbala watched her, fascinated. That she understood nothing did not seem to matter. She knew Mrs Barnum was saying something she needed to say, something she could say only to her, Kananbala.

  A kingfisher sliced into the pool having sat immobile in a tree for several minutes. The blue of its wings was the blue of Mrs Barnum’s dress and Kananbala, excited, tugged at the frock and pointed to the bird. The young woman looked down at the older one with a start as if she had only just realised she was not alone. Then, thinking she understood what Kananbala was saying, she chuckled, “Yes, Digby did think I was a vain strutting little bird – I suppose I am.”

  She took another sip of her wine and sighed. “What a soup I’m in, what a godawful soup.” She was contemplative for a while, listening to the birds. Then she began to talk – and talk – beginning to feel a curious sense of lightness pervade her. Perhaps because of Kananbala’s incomprehension, she felt entirely understood. She spoke into the ruins and to Kananbala, without stopping except for wine to wet her throat. She spoke about her childhood, about Digby courting her, about Digby beating her with his belt and, once, slamming her face into a door. She talked about her lover, the things he did that Digby had not done. She spoke words she had never thought she would. She spoke of the ease with which the knife had slid into her husband, first his stomach, then somewhere else, she did not know where. She spoke of the blood, of the resistance of skin, the obstruction of bones, the sick ache in her heart and between her legs and in the pit of her stomach for her lover who had to run away.

  Kananbala listened.

  At last, exhausted, Mrs Barnum stretched her arms out over her knees and buried her head in them.

  Looking at the bent head, Kananbala seemed to decide something. She picked up her crystal glass gingerly by the stem and took a long gulp, screwing up her mouth at the taste. She gasped as she felt an unfamiliar warmth inside her. Mrs Barnum looked up at the sound. Kananbala made a wry face and Mrs Barnum smiled back at her, incredulous. Kananbala took another long sip, giving Mrs Barnum a look of mingled fear and triumph.

  Mrs Barnum smiled wider, her eyes glazed with wine and the clouded sun. Bending, she brought her wine-stained mouth to Kananbala’s cheek and gave it a soft kiss.

  * * *

  Even as Kananbala was taking her first sip of wine, Amulya emerged from his room, his face composed, his back straight again.

  “Come here,” he said to Gouranga, still by the door. “Send someone to Dadababu’s college. He must run, and if he finds a tonga, tell him to take a tonga, and bring Nirmal back here. If Nirmal is teaching in a class, tell him to interrupt and go in. Get him back home immediately. Have you understood?”

  Gouranga nodded and hobbled down the stairs as fast as his arthritic knees would let him. He knew the visiting stranger must be downstairs somewhere, and he would find out what had happened from him.

  It was in the kitchen, as he had thought, that the stranger sat, holding a glass of something. Around him in a spellbound semi-circle were Shibu, the gardener, and the maid. Gouranga barged into the room and yelled, “Arre o, tear yourself away, there is a job to be done, boy!” Then, having sent Shibu off to Nirmal’s college and established who was boss in the kitchen, he sat down with a grunt next to the stranger and said, “So tell me, what’s this news you’ve brought? Nothing good, I can see that, nothing good.” He lit a beedi.

  Now, with many tellings, the stranger had got into his stride. The event, real enough five days ago, too real almost to grasp, seemed to have become a story, something that had happened to storybook people. He put his head in his hands afresh, simulating the despair he had truly felt the first few days, and with a heavy sigh that was an unconscious emulation of the lead actor in a jatra he had seen, he began again to speak.

  * * *

  When Nirmal at last returned home and rushed up to his fathe
r, Amulya, unlike the stranger, was still unable to put what he had heard into words. Being able to articulate what had happened meant being able to understand it, grasp it, digest it, even to a degree accept it. He cleared his throat, told his son to sit down, walked to the window and walked back again. Eventually, for the first time in his life, Nirmal snapped at his father. “What is it? Can you tell me what’s happened? What’s the matter?”

  There had been a great flood in Manoharpur, Nirmal’s father’s voice said. It had come into the house, marooned it. Shanti had gone into labour too early, a whole month too early. Nobody could get out of the house to get a doctor in time. The maid, who had some midwifing experience, had done her best but … only the baby could be saved. Not Shanti. A healthy baby, but at what cost? Shanti had died giving birth. Nirmal needed to go to Manoharpur right away, although it was too late for him even to see Shanti’s dead body … the countryside had been too flooded for anyone to reach the next town, where there were three telephones … a telegram or letter … nothing had been possible.

  But there was his baby. He needed to go and bring the baby back, a baby girl named Bakul, as Shanti had always wanted.

  * * *

  Perhaps an hour later, at four in the afternoon, there were sounds of car doors slamming. Then, after a long pause, Kananbala was to be heard shuffling up the stairs. She stumbled into her room, somewhat unstable, cheeks warm, velvet slippers unrecognisable, hair straggling out of its pins, sari askew.

  The silence brimmed with unspoken words. She knew she was in trouble. She ought never to have gone out of the house at all. Had she forgotten how furious Amulya could be? His fury was more potent and more frightening than Durvasa Muni’s, especially when he said nothing at all. She glanced in his direction. She had thought only of his face all the way back from the picnic. She had wanted to drink in the last of the wind through the fast-moving car’s window, imprint the landscape on her mind before being locked away in her room again, but despite trying to feel the joy she had on her way out to the fort, she had been filled with dread at the idea that Amulya would have come home for lunch in the meantime and not found her where she ought to be.