An Atlas of Impossible Longing

by Anuradha Roy

  I said, “Let’s think of something sad.” I held my breath, bit my cheek and looked straight at her. I was thinking of her lips touching my flute where my lips had touched it once. A sentimental, stupid thought, but it pleased me nevertheless.

  “You look as if … ” she giggled again and I chuckled too.

  “Now what is it? Can’t you try to be serious, Bakul, for a minute? It’s not as if we’re ten years old and can’t do without fits of giggles.”

  She put the flute aside and said, “I can’t imagine laughing like that any more, can you? It seems so long ago. Can you imagine us being little enough to swim in this pond? Do you remember?” She waited for me to say something.

  I lay back on my arms looking up at sky through the leaves, softer coloured now in the late afternoon. Birds had begun calling again, as if revived by the prospect of a cool evening. What did she remember? What did she want me to remember? Or had she forgotten everything and was just making conversation? Had anyone touched her after me, made her forget?

  When she thought the time for an answer from me had passed, she lifted the flute to her lips and what I now knew to be Sibelius’ flute melody floated out, limpid and heart-wrenching. Her notes trembled a little as if she was nervous, and one or two went wrong, but she began again each time. She had shut her eyes. Her lips were pursed, and her cheeks hollow beneath her sloping cheekbones. I could see a small brown spot on her left cheek. In the evening breeze, her hair began to fly against her cheek. She shook her head to get rid of the hair. I did not want her to stop playing. I reached out and brushed it away, hoping I could do it without her noticing.

  It was merely an excuse to touch her of course, and she stopped.

  I had touched her though, and now I could not stop. I stroked her cheek. I traced the line of her jaw. I felt the shape of her eyebrow with my fingertip and the fragility of her closed eyelid as if I were a blind man memorising it for later. I twisted the gold stud piercing her earlobe and felt the petal-soft skin behind it.

  I do not remember why the flute did not break between us, or when she put it aside, or how her sari fell away.

  I remember how her lips felt, her tongue, her breath smell like fresh-cut grass, and the way, despite my mouth on hers, she managed to keep saying, “Why didn’t you come back? Why didn’t you come back? I waited.”

  When we laid beside each other on the grass it was dark, and through the circle of leaves above us, we could see the stars starting to poke out one by one from behind the purple sky. From some distance, a rich old voice sang out the opening notes of a song that was popular then, “Babul Mora,” the voice went, “Naihara … ”

  “Heard music is sweet, but music overheard even sweeter,” I murmured, smiling into Bakul’s hair.

  “Terrible,” she murmured back. “Is this what Calcutta has done to you?”

  “Afsal Mian, isn’t it?” I whispered. “He still sings.”

  She shifted so that her chin rested in the hollow of my neck and I did not need her to tell me she was thinking about that night we had run back from the old ruin together and then kissed each other in an empty dark meadow, stunned by starlight and the shooting star streaking through the black sky.

  * * *

  When we reached the house, Nirmal Babu was sitting at the far end of the garden in the darkness. The red point of his cigarette drew us to him.

  “I have to go,” I said to his starlit face as he patted a place on the swing next to him.

  “What’s the hurry?” he said. “Sit and smell the gardenia, how wonderful it is, and the raat ki rani … all my father’s night-flowers filling the air. Won’t you eat dinner and then go? Bakul, can’t we … ”

  Before she could speak, I said, “I have a train to catch, I really must be going. But I’ll come again when I can, and if you need anything from Calcutta – books? Music?”

  “I never asked,” Nirmal Babu said. “What was it that brought you here? You didn’t just come to see us, did you?”

  “I did,” I smiled, not looking at Bakul. “Actually, I did come just to see you.”

  * * *

  The train rattled me back to Calcutta and I sat sleepless again, but this time barely taking in the landscape outside. I could think of nothing but the way Bakul had clung to me, trembling, refusing to let go. To think after all these years that it was not I alone who had yearned for us to be together again! I had dozed off by that lily pond after we made love, and had woken to see her looking at me with fierce attention. “How could you go off to sleep?” she had said. “When we have so little time together?”

  She ran her fingers over my face. She bent over and kissed my closed eyelids. It felt as if a bird had brushed past them. It felt all wrong and entirely right all at once.

  “That tickles,” I said, still drowsy.

  “What are you thinking?” she said, in a voice barely audible.

  “Nothing,” I laughed. “I’m thoughtless.”

  She did not reply, but I could feel her eyes on me. I opened mine.

  “What is it, Bakul?” I was half drugged with sleep.

  “Haven’t we done something wrong?”

  “Do you think so? Are you unhappy?”

  “No,” she said vehemently. “Why should I be? I feel as if I had promised myself something all my life and now I’ve done it.”

  A curious serenity now gripped me too. I twisted a strand of her hair in my fingers and said, “Then why ask me?”

  “We won’t tell a soul, will we?” she continued. “I don’t want you going and doing anything stupid. You have a wife and child.”

  “I know,” I said, shutting my eyes again and pulling her closer. “I know. And you’ll probably have a husband and child soon.”

  * * *

  I now lay on my jolting train bunk, smiling happily into the darkness. After all these years I was sure we still felt a connection no-one else in the world did. Nothing else mattered, not even having to leave Bakul.

  The other part of my brain was occupied with more mundane matters. I knew I had to face Aangti Babu. What would I say to him? I had not done his bidding. Far from intimidating Nirmal Babu, I had not even managed to mention the topic. I had not gone to meet Harold and Bhim or whichever hitmen were plaguing my old home, had not given them further instructions; they would certainly tell Aangti Babu about my laxity, or treachery even. Aangti Babu would suspect that I had struck some sort of deal with the inhabitants of the house. He trusted no-one in the end and had a shrewd hypothesis brewing for every possibility.

  As the train took me closer to that world of wheeling and dealing and finance, and further away from Nirmal Babu, from Bakul and my old home, it became clear to me that I would have to think of something to subvert Aangti Babu’s plans to throw them out and take over the house. But what?

  I must have drifted into sleep, for I awoke with an idea that made me shoot up in the bunk, heart racing, an idea that was almost absurd in its simplicity.

  FOUR

  “You didn’t notice,” my wife pouted in the way she knew I found irresistible. “The little one is standing up. You should have seen the look on his face when he did it!”

  It was the evening of my return from Songarh.

  “Oh,” I said. “It had to happen the only two days I was away.”

  I picked him up to place him in my lap and tried to pay attention to my wife, who was chatting on, providing me with news of all that had happened in my absence. The milkman’s mother, a fat old lady in her sixties, had taken to delivering our daily milk and diluted it with more water than her son used to; the mango tree in the patch downstairs was finally flowering – how long had it been there? Forever, wasn’t it? And, oh yes, a cat seemed to have littered in the back verandah. Is that meant to be a good omen or bad? Champa’s mother says it means there will be more children in this house, isn’t that funny?

  I thought I was listening to her, but I must have been looking far away because she stopped abruptly and said, “Tell me, wha
t did I just say?”

  “You said ‘Tell me what did I just say.’”

  She frowned and said, “Don’t be annoying. Tell me what I just said.”

  “Tell me what … ”

  She went into peals of laughter and picked up a pillow and threw it at me. “No, I mean it,” she said. “You weren’t listening to anything.”

  It is true, I wasn’t. I had been filled with a kind of wild elation since making love to Bakul and it was impossible for me to take in anything else. I felt no guilt or self-loathing, I did not see it as any kind of unfaithfulness to my wife. Making love to Bakul was an inevitable and self-contained event, natural and obvious. I was wrong, of course, but my mind had no space or time for other thoughts that evening.

  “I was, it’s just that … ” I said, sounding very contrite, but my mind was racing ahead. I removed my boy from my lap and continued, “I have been thinking on this trip. I had an idea. Tell me what you think.”

  She settled down with a grave look, understanding the seriousness of being consulted. I now think back with pity about that day. She was so certain all my decisions were made with a view to taking care of her and my son, that I would never do them the least injury.

  “This house,” I said. “As you know, it’s not ours. It’s been a long time, six years, and Suleiman Chacha has not returned, nor so much as written after the first couple of years. It is almost ours, but not really.”

  “Yes?” she said, looking a little worried.

  “Perhaps Chachi and he are both dead. Who knows when some heir of his that we don’t know of may turn up and claim it? I’ve learned enough of my trade now: these things happen all the time, and then out of the blue we’ll be on the street. I want to start work on my own. We don’t need such a big place, just the three of us. Let us sell this while we can and move somewhere smaller, and that way everything will be secure and I will have some excess money to put into a business of my own.”

  I waited for her to react.

  “Has this anything to do with Songarh?” she said, suspicious.

  In my years with her I had reminisced about the place, but my memories had always been well edited, or so I supposed.

  “In a way,” I said in a meditative voice. “It made me think. Look what happened there, one brother betraying another and leaving him homeless. Who can you trust if not your own brother? And here we are not related to Chacha, we are not even the same religion!”

  “But I like this house. I like the verandah and my lemon tree. And what about Champa’s mother and the neighbours? Where will we live? Somewhere strange and new and small! I don’t want the money.”

  “It’s not just the money. We may lose both the money and the house. Now that many years have passed since Partition and things are not so good for Bengalis in East Pakistan, some of them are coming back. I’m just trying to think ahead.”

  She lay down with a sigh and buried her face in a pillow. “I don’t know what has got into you,” she said in a muffled voice. “You go away for two days and come back with strange ideas. Why are you consulting me? Would you even listen if I said no?”

  I knew she was crying inaudibly into her pillow at the thought of leaving our tree-fringed home, but I had begun to believe my story. Often, I told myself, events showed you the way. I had always been insecure about the house, living in it and not really owning it. Why should my life – and now my family’s life – be spent in a house on loan? Now my dilemma was morally urgent too: how could I stand by as Nirmal Babu, who had brought me up, was made homeless?

  * * *

  I went to work the next day with some trepidation, wondering if Aangti Babu would agree to my plan. All morning I got up from my chair each time I heard someone enter the two-room office, but he did not come in until the afternoon. I waited by the door. He gave me an unsmiling grunt of recognition when he arrived and said, “Into my room. In five minutes.”

  He did not ask me to sit down this time. He busied himself extracting a paan from his box and then stuffing it into his already reddened mouth. Then, his mouth filled with betel juice, he waved me to the chair and mumbled sounds I interpreted as, “Sit down, tell me the news, are they out of the house?” Harold, Bhim & Co. were not back from Songarh, so he could not know of my perfidy yet.

  I told him what in essence I had been inspired by in the train: I wanted an exchange. He could have my Calcutta house, far more valuable than an old house in a small town, if he gave me the one in Songarh. On condition that nobody knew of the exchange. It was to seem just a simple sale. And he would give me money to make up the difference in value between the two houses, so that I would have the capital to start my own business. I spoke too fast, somewhat breathless, but what I said was lucid and my tongue did not get tangled up as my thoughts made their way into words.

  Aangti Babu had been wiping his bald, sweaty head with his usual grimy handkerchief. He had been offhand rather than attentive when I began to speak.

  But soon enough he was looking at me, a slow, cunning smile curling a side of his mouth. He gestured at me to stop, picked up his stained brass spitoon shaped like the face of a woman with her mouth open, aimed a stream of red spittle into it, then wiped his mouth. I looked away, queasy despite being accustomed to his habits. Two thin lines of red betel juice were now engraved into the wrinkles near his mouth. He scratched the back of his neck and then examined his nails as he spoke.

  “So,” he said, measuring out each word, “do I understand you right?” And he repeated precisely what I had said to him.

  I wanted him to agree to my proposition, of course. But as his protégé I had thought, or perhaps just hoped against my better judgment, that he would have my welfare at heart. Even as I put my idea to him that day, I had expected him to dissuade me, to say, “Mukunda, don’t be a fool. It’s a stupid deal and I’m warning you off it because I have your interests at heart. If it were anyone else I’d have held my tongue and let him diddle himself.”

  But he agreed without hesitation and said, trying hard not to look crafty, “That’s intelligent, Mukunda, very clever. You’ll be getting a huge property, with lots of unbuilt land, and it’ll appreciate enormously. And I’ve been thinking for a while that the time’s really ripe for you to start off on your own. I’ve taught you all I can, you know. You’ll go far, Mukunda, mark my words! As for this small old house in a Calcutta bylane that you’re offering me, well, it is all so uncertain, no real papers, no deeds. Should I risk it? But perhaps I must, to help you on your way, the extra money will let you set up your own business, as you say.”

  The alacrity with which he agreed made me feel relieved as well as disgusted. Suleiman Chacha’s house was in a prime location in Calcutta and he knew it. Possession was ownership as well as nine-tenths of the law, one of the tenets of his trade which he had instilled in me. And after six years, even if an absentee Muslim’s heirs turned up, what chance would they have against Aangti Babu and his thugs? He would have the house sold and the money pocketed in two months flat. In exchange for this virtual certainty in his favour, from Aangti Babu’s point of view I was taking on the opposite: risking possession of a disputed house in a provincial town that might never fulfil its grandiose prophecies. Aangti Babu did not want to know the reasons for my lunacy. He may have been curious, he may well have had his surmises. But he wanted the sale and exchange done before I saw the light and changed my mind. He was the embodiment of diplomacy, behaving as if I had just proposed a life-changing deal for myself. I had, but not in the way he thought.

  Despite his haste, however, he managed to make me lower the amount I wanted for the Calcutta house, so that I was left with less than I had expected.

  Any innocent belief of mine in his wanting to act out of some fatherly or mentoring impulse towards me was dispelled, but as I walked out of his room, what dominated my feelings was immense relief: Nirmal Babu and Bakul’s future was in my hands. The ownership papers of 3 Dulganj Road would soon be mine. My childhood home was s
afe; it would not go to strangers to be broken down and built upon.

  A few days later, when it had all been formalised, I sat down at the table I had along the corridor at Aangti Babu’s office and began to compose a letter. “Dear Nirmal Babu,” I wrote, “It is difficult to explain all this, but by chance I discovered I know the property dealer who bought your house from Kamal Babu and I have been able to persuade him … ”

  I redrafted the letter seven times. It was ready to be posted only at the end of the day. My letter made it clear that Nirmal Babu need not think about looking for other living arrangements for at least as long as I had a say in the matter, and that I expected this state of affairs to obtain indefinitely. He would be able to live on at Dulganj Road without worry. By return of post there was a letter from him, alternately bewildered, grateful, curious, and apologetic, struggling to retain his dignity. He seemed to have believed and accepted what I had said in my letter to him. His reply confirmed the house was no longer besieged and expressed great gratitude to me, mixed with perplexity, that the days of harassment were over for Bakul and him. I felt sorry for him, and I put his letter aside without sending a reply.

  * * *

  Our move from Suleiman Chacha’s house was not without trauma, even for me. My wife and I fought bitterly over what to take with us. I did not want to part with Suleiman Chacha’s books, which had become old friends; my wife was determined to sell them to a secondhand dealer. Noorie had never endeared herself to my wife, who was not amused at being called names and sometimes pecked. But I shouted down her pleas to give the bird away or set it free. My wife wanted to take some heavy bits of furniture with us that she had been given as dowry, but I knew our new home would be too small for four-poster beds and enormous carved cupboards. All evening battle raged. If I gave in and said yes to a cupboard, I blackmailed her about Chacha’s desk. We went to sleep silent and fuming and woke up sullen with stored-up rage.

  Despite it all, I was intoxicated at being Bakul’s saviour, knowing she was safe in her own home because of me, that even if absent I was looking after her. Those few hours with her in Songarh had changed me irrevocably and I knew I could not live the rest of my life as I had been living it the past few years. I felt something fundamental in my personality shifting and reshaping itself. I was now consoled by the thought that human beings were made to love many people. I did not try to explain it to anyone; I clutched at it almost as a kind of epiphany, some divine illumination that had chosen to shine on me alone. After all, did we not love our parents, our siblings, our friends, our spouses, and our children simultaneously and in different ways? If at that moment my wife had announced that she loved another man as well, in addition to me, I was sure I would have been happy for it, because I was certain that I could – I would – love both my wife and Bakul in different ways. I saw it as my destiny. This was fortification against the guilt and sorrow that attacked me when I saw the pain I was causing my wife and the pain my son was too little to know I was causing him. I was never going to abandon my wife and child, of this I was sure. The thought of my world without Bakul may have become inconceivable, but equally the thought of life without my baby boy was a sterile vastness I could not bear to contemplate.