An Atlas of Impossible Longing

by Anuradha Roy

  She tugged Mukunda’s wrist under the table. They got up and crept out. Once out of earshot, Bakul said, “I know you don’t like it, so I made you leave. You looked scared.”

  “Me?” Mukunda retorted. “Me scared? Hah! You’re the coward!”

  Some time after they had left, Larissa Barnum pulled off her silk frock and sat at her dressing table in her old lace-edged satin slip. She began to remove her hairpins, regarding her reflection with a quizzical air. A long face, with sharp, narrowed, hazel eyes divided by a prominent bony nose, and thick, arched, greying eyebrows. The skin on her thin neck looked a little as if someone was pulling it down into her collar. She fingered her neck, pinching up loose skin, then pulled her hair out from its net and squinted in the mirror at the grey strands at her temples. She removed the emeralds from her ears and played with them as if she would not have them for long. Her household had for a while been financed by the jewellery she got the khansama to pawn for her.

  The house felt larger and emptier in the late evenings, when the khansama retired to his quarters. Mrs Barnum wrapped a dressing gown over her satin slip, went to her chest of drawers, and took out a crystal tumbler, chipped at the bottom. She half filled it with whisky from a squat-looking bottle and then went to the living room to sit at the piano. She thought she would play something with big, crashing notes, crowd the house with noise, imagined people, a party. She began flipping through her music books.

  Leaning on the parapet of the roof, Nirmal tore open his third packet of cigarettes. He listened to Mrs Barnum’s piano crossing the road with its clamorous dissonances, and in a tentative, reluctant, uncertain way, he began to feel as if he had come home.

  * * *

  Bakul moved a piece of fish from side to side on her plate as if that would make it disappear. Mukunda, who was always hungry nowadays, wondered if he could have some more rice.

  “The boy will eat us out of house and home!” Manjula exclaimed.

  It was a Sunday some weeks after Nirmal’s return to Songarh. Nirmal sat opposite his brother, lingering after lunch, amused by Bakul’s surreptitious efforts to hide her fish under a spinach leaf on her plate.

  “So, Nirmal,” Kamal said, with a chuckle. “Quite a comfortable job you’ve got yourself. You don’t have to do anything but stroll down to that office! I wish I had such an easy time. The factory is full of problems. Cheaper versions of our things all over, made with artificial stuff, but who cares? Then this war cutting government budgets and to top it all we’re asked to fight the British … and if that weren’t enough, Salim is now too ill to work.” He drank in a loud gulp of water and put the glass down with a thud.

  “We’re starting the dig in a few weeks,” Nirmal said. “Not all work is visible, there is a lot of material to be bought, a lot of organising to do.” Things were going slower than he wanted – too slow, he knew. They did not treat his requests with enough urgency at headquarters; everyone was preoccupied with the war in Europe – he was in a small town, and perhaps nobody else set much store by his dig. Besides, every item he requested had, it seemed, to be cleared by five different desks.

  “Oh come, don’t take me seriously, Nirmal, why are you getting annoyed?” Kamal said in a soothing voice. “So is the end of our local tourist attraction imminent? No more ruined castle?”

  “You’re digging up the ruins?” Bakul said to her father, accusing. “How can you do something like that?”

  “Don’t talk about things you know nothing of, Bakul,” Nirmal said, sharp-voiced, impatient. “And don’t butt into grown-up conversations. I’ve noticed this tendency in you.”

  “I’m not butting in, I’m just asking,” she mumbled.

  “I’ll explain later,” Nirmal said. “Just eat up now.”

  Bakul pushed her plate aside and scraped back her chair, then stopped as she saw Meera’s frown and gesture. She waited for her uncle to get up first, drawing circles on her plate.

  “Don’t play with your food, Bakul,” Manjula said. “Crocodiles that play with prey soon get eaten themselves, don’t you know?”

  “Don’t you know?” Kamal said, imitating Manjula’s tone as she looked at him angrily, “Don’t you know, Bakul, your father is here to dig up that ruin and see if there’s another ruin underneath. The things the government will spend money on when so many people have nothing to eat in this country!”

  “We’re not digging up the ruin,” Nirmal sounded weary. He had had to explain this to countless people. “It’s not done like that.”

  “Then how is it done?” said Kamal, plaintive. “If you want to see if something is under something else, don’t you have to dig up the first thing? I may not be an archaeologist in His Imperial Majesty’s A.S.I., but I’m not so stupid, am I? And what do you hope to find anyway?”

  “There could be a much more ancient civilisation we don’t know of. The lower hillocks in front of the ridge may be mounds hiding ancient cities, who knows?”

  “And who needs to know?”

  “If archaeologists had not dug anywhere, we’d have had no idea of India’s antiquity,” Nirmal said, pompously he realised.

  “Beheeyoo,” Manjula burped deeply, and then she sighed. “Will you people finish so that Meera and I can eat?”

  Nirmal pushed his chair back and started to get up. He looked at Meera who was sitting there, ladle in hand, waiting to serve more food if someone asked. She was thin, he noticed for the first time, her collarbones jutting out, her eyes too large and dark-circled in a small face. She looked fragile next to Manjula’s stout self-assurance. The widow’s diet, he thought, all fasts and hardly any proteins. When would things ever change?

  * * *

  Nirmal unpacked his collection trunks that same day, after lunch. He was impressed, as he put his things away in rows, by his own tidiness. His shelves used to look so different when he was younger. He had only to open his cupboard in those days for a jumble of clothes and books and digging implements to tumble out pell-mell. But his profession and his travels had made Nirmal methodical. His father had always thought him a scamp beyond reform, even after he was a married man. What would he have thought to see him now?

  Nirmal paused and sat down with a cigarette. He thought of the work that lay ahead: he had never been in charge of a dig before. He remembered the times he had spent in the ruins, first as a boy, then as a young man, stealing a smoke, walking all over the crumbling walls pretending to be an ancient king, then scraping in the dust, imagining that he could see the glint of an ancient coin. Once, he had found a curved piece of metal that looked like a weapon. Possibly bronze. It was only after he had excitedly brought it home and washed it that he realised it was ordinary tin, a part of a can. Yet he had kept it for years.

  He got up, stubbing out his cigarette. The trunk had rocks and fossils, bits of flint and potsherds, things he had collected during his digs. He unwrapped them from their cotton wool and placed them on the windowsill where he could see them. Something struck him, interrupting his orderly movements. He thrust his head into the stairwell that descended from the roof to the first floor and called out, “Bakul? Are you there?”

  After a minute, annoyed now, he called again, louder, “Bakul!”

  He saw his daughter’s upturned face emerge at the foot of the stairwell.

  “What?” she said.

  “Come up here,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Don’t ask so many questions, Bakul.”

  “Why not?” she said, but he could see she was coming up the stairs.

  “I need some help unpacking,” Nirmal said to her as she emerged onto the roof.

  “I have to finish my homework. Chaubey Sir will come soon.”

  “It won’t take long, Bakul, we’ll just put some things into the cupboard in the landing. I’ll have to make a dozen trips down the stairs if I don’t get help.”

  “Can’t you wait for Shibu?”

  “Can’t you be less sulky for a change? Why can’t I get a str
aight answer out of you?”

  Immediately, he tried to placate her. “Look,” he said, “I know … ”

  But Bakul had rushed down the stairs again. Nirmal felt heat surge through his face, his forehead began to hurt. He followed her to the stairs. Must be firm. He called out to her again, heard a barked “Bakul, come here.” Bakul came back up the stairs, frowning at her own hand on the banister.

  “When I ask you to do something, you are not to rush away. It’s time you started to behave yourself. Is that clear?”

  Bakul was said nothing.

  “What did I say?” Nirmal demanded, “Can’t you hear me?”

  “Alright, alright, tell me what to do, I have to go.”

  Nirmal had lost interest in unpacking his trunk and showing Bakul the things in it. It’s all a mistake, he began to think: he had imagined he would be a different father, different from the father he had himself had. He would not be stern and distant and fearsome, he would instead do interesting things with Bakul, they would be friends, especially as she didn’t have a mother to be friends with. Had he left it too late?

  Bakul looked resentfully at the red tin trunk, its paint more chipped than before. She had seen it many times. It came and went with Nirmal on each of his trips. She was still filled with rage by Nirmal’s ticking off at lunch. How dare he, how dare he do that to me in front of everyone else, and all of them sniggering at me, how dare he! She wanted to spit on the trunk. She would not speak, she had decided, she would not speak to anyone.

  “Do you know, Bakul,” Nirmal persisted, kneeling by the trunk to open it, “we would go to such faraway places on our digs. The dust, the heat, the tents flapping in the wind. And then some days eating just roti and onions and a little daal. That’s how I got sunstroke once. But it’s all worth it, when you find a small piece of pottery, even a broken bit. One day I’ll take you on a dig, the one here.”

  He was waiting to be interrupted by eager questions. Bakul continued to pile up the books that emerged from the trunk, stopping only to scratch a scab on her knee now and then. She would not meet his eye. It made Nirmal want to scoop up his daughter and hold her close. Instead, seeing her lift a worn-out, hardbound volume from the trunk, he said, “That’s not just an exercise book, you know. Open it.”

  Bakul looked at him with studied boredom.

  “Here, let me show you. I have seven of these.”

  He opened one and began to turn the pages. Each turn of the page revealed the fragile shape of a dry leaf. On some pages you could still just about discern the colour of the leaf when fresh and alive on a Himalayan tree. Even in their desiccation, some had flecks of red, some were pale ochre spotted with black, in some the veins stood out like skeletons, the body bleached of all colour. On every page Nirmal had recorded the species and the place where he had found the leaf. There was chestnut and oak first, then treasures harder won: the remains of a blue poppy, bits of birch bark, a leaf from the Brahma Kamal, all from the high Himalaya. His notes seemed a superfluity: he recalled to the last detail where he had plucked each leaf and pressed it, the colour of the light that day, how icy the wind had been, how lonely the steep slope.

  Nirmal turned the pages, forgetting Bakul. Sometimes his forefinger touched one of the dried leaves with infinite gentleness. He stroked one that was still somewhat red and green and smiled to himself. He did not notice her leaving the room.

  * * *

  That evening, Nirmal sat in his newly settled rooftop room and began to look through his music. He had not touched his box of records since Shanti’s death. He did not know if the record player still worked: it had wheezed and scraped even then as they lay on their bed listening to the sarangi, watching the luminous night sky sliced up by the window grill. Now that he had opened the box of records again, he thought he would look at the record player next, and maybe get a new needle for it, clean it and oil it, then try winding it up again. He used to be good at that kind of work.

  Nirmal poured himself a drink, and with his cigarette smoke curling towards the open door of the verandah, rummaged through his old records, discovering treasures he had forgotten. He settled into a chair with four of them, to read the sleeve notes.

  Time passed. Dinner was being laid and Nirmal had not come downstairs.

  Mukunda was despatched to call him. He went to the roof, peeped into Nirmal’s room and then ran down the stairs to the ground floor where Manjula was sitting behind the dekchis, looking for the ladles. The room smelled of roasted moong and ghee, bay leaf and fried fish. Manjula felt hungry just being there and hoped the men would eat quickly so that she could start. Steathily, she popped a piece of potato into her mouth.

  Mukunda announced, “Nirmal Babu will eat later. He is drinking.”

  “What?” Manjula gasped. “Drinking? Hari, Hari! In the house?” Dropping her ladle with a clatter, she pushed back her chair, gathered her sari and lumbered up the stairs. Meera followed, pleading, “Didi, Didi, let it be, he can eat later, I will heat it up … ”

  “Quiet!” Manjula hissed. She had reached the room on the roof and she strode to the door and swung it open. She wanted to see for herself.

  Nirmal, she saw, was not just drinking. He was smoking too. The incriminating bottle of rum stood on the table with no attempt at concealment. The room smelled to her like a house of vice. She had only imagined what such places were like.

  “My god!” Manjula yelped, shutting her eyes in alarm. Then she took another determined breath and tucked her sari firmly around her. “Nirmal,” she called out, opening the door again, but not stepping into the room. Nirmal had stubbed out the cigarette and was standing up, taken aback by the invasion.

  “Don’t you remember there are children in the house? Growing children! How can you bring yourself to do something like this?”

  Meera flapped about behind Manjula saying, “Please calm down, let’s go downstairs.”

  Mukunda had followed them to the terrace. He took a quick look into the room again on the pretext of announcing, “Kamal Babu is waiting for dinner.”

  “Run down and start the rice,” Manjula ordered him. “We’re coming.”

  Turning to go, she sent a parting shot in Nirmal’s direction. “What would your father have said, Nirmal? This is a decent house. If you must do … all this … do it somewhere else!” She gathered her sari again and flounced away, throwing one last righteous glance in the direction of the rum bottle.

  Nirmal leaned on the parapet looking out, his shoulders hunched with annoyance. It was an unusually clear night, stars piercing the black shadows of the trees, the moon hanging in the sky, a fat yellow melon.

  “Don’t mind her,” Meera’s voice said in the darkness. “She doesn’t mean badly.”

  Nirmal turned and saw her moon-washed face, startled she had not left. He chuckled and then sighed. “We must seem like such junglees to you. How can you bear to live with us?”

  For a moment they listened to the foxes beginning their exchanges in the forest.

  “Do you like it here? In Songarh, I mean,” Nirmal said, to fill the silence.

  “Yes,” Meera said. “Yes, of course. As long as I can go for walks, I’d like anywhere.”

  “You came here … when? … the same year as Mukunda, wasn’t it?” Nirmal said. “Yes, it was the same year. I was here in Songarh, waiting – waiting in fact for you to write and let me know if you’d be able to come. I went and brought Mukunda then. I’d been a few weeks at home. I was very restless. And then one day, nothing else to do, I went to the orphanage to see who our family had been supporting so long. I saw him, we liked each other and I came back with him. And you arrived soon after, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a good thing he was taken out of there,” Meera said.

  “Yes, of course, that is when you arrived,” Nirmal said. “You met him before you saw Bakul and you said, ‘I thought it was a girl I was to look after.’”

  “You remember that?” Meera laughed. “I was really taken aback.
”

  “I left for Rajasthan so relieved,” Nirmal said. “It … ”

  Mukunda’s voice floated out to them in the darkness, hesitant: “Dinner is getting cold … Manjula Didi is very angry, she says she’ll put the food away … ”

  * * *

  That night as the house slept, Meera awoke. She could not be sure, but she felt that Bakul was not in her bed across the room. Maybe in the bathroom, she told herself, and drifted back to sleep. But woke again the next instant. She got up and stumbled to Bakul’s bed to check. Had she fallen off the bed as once she had? The sheet was creased, the pillow flung to one side, the bed empty.

  Is she ill? Meera wondered in panic. Why didn’t she wake me?

  The room was ominous in the darkness. Meera had never liked the house. It had seemed gloomy and full of foreboding from the start. She was reluctant to open the door that shut their bedroom off from the corridor, but she went to it, and pushed it open a crack. Manjula and Kamal had the next room. She did not want to wake them and made herself navigate in the dark.

  The corridor outside was eerie, the high ceiling disappearing into the darkness, the floor bathed in the light of the moon. She could not help glancing backwards, tense at every creak. She could hear something from the direction of the stairs and stole towards it. Could it be true the house had a ghost? Don’t think of all that, don’t be a fool, just find her. She felt her way up the stairs until her eyes got used to the different clarity of moonlight, and she found she was beginning to see quite clearly. She walked up a flight of stairs and came to the landing.

  The cupboard on the landing was open and Bakul was on her knees at its base. She sat in the centre of a pile of torn paper and fragments of leaves. Savagely, panting, she was tearing up Nirmal’s books. When she noticed Meera and looked up, her eyes were glittering, unseeing.

  * * *

  Before school the next morning, as on every morning, Bakul peeped into Kananbala’s room. Her grandmother was babbling in her sleep, drool spilling from the side of her mouth, darkening her pillow. “Take the lion away,” she was muttering. “There it is again, so large, its fangs are red … with blood, look it’s clawing his chest, it’ll kill him like this. Is anyone there, is anyone listening to me? Nobody listens to me … ” Kananbala struggled to open her eyes; she knew she was awake, yet she could not wake up. She could see the sunlight streaming through the window, she was cold and wanted to pull her blanket closer to her chest. She sensed Bakul in the room, but there was the lion to be chased away.