Watching him look at his painting I could not help but think about Afzal as a sexual man. I took stock of his handsome frame, his full lips, desire rising in me. I wanted him to regard me with the same discerning look he was giving the woman he had painted. I wanted him to come to me.
“How I enjoy talking to you,” I said.
“Why?” He sounded almost surly, which I could understand. But what he couldn’t understand was that in spite of the fact that anything between us was impossible, I wanted him. He was smiling again. I moved to the window to stand beside him, and began to tell him about myself. I told him I’d had many friends once, but that now I had none. I told him that my life had become meaningless, that I was disgusted with myself, and lonely. My voice shook with fear, but also with desire. Fear of Haroon should he imagine for one moment where his wife was. Desire for the man who stood beside me. “Why this man?” I asked myself, as my voice turned thick and my fingers began to tremble.
I moved away from the window, the hot sun scalding my back, and sat down on the bed. Afzal took a seat in a rocking chair across the room and began to weave tales of his travels, of mountains he had climbed, of long walks near the ocean, of a stream he had followed down a mountain, losing himself deep in the woods.
I began to imagine I was with him in the places he described. That I had seen him leap down mountains and into the sea, seen him stand mesmerized by the sight of foam thrown up by the rush of waterfalls, turned silver in the moonlight; had watched him on a beach, paintbrush in hand, laying the colors of a sunset onto canvas. He showed me his paintings one by one: sun sinking into the darkness beyond a still river; a betel nut tree tossing in a storm; mountains turned black as evening rises and light retreats; a crimson slash of light emblazoned at the corners of a smoky sky; bronze reflections on the surface of a river; a dense flock of migrating birds.
“Do you like them?” he asked.
I could hardly answer. “They are beautiful,” I replied.
“I’ve heard a lot about you from Sebati,” Afzal finally said. But what had he heard—that I was a nice girl? A good bou? Was there anything else about me he might have heard? Not really. I was ordinary.
“So you have heard that I am nice? But why? Because I look after my in-laws, because I do all the cooking?”
Afzal’s laughter in response infected me, and suddenly I was smiling too. I was behaving like the person who had gone to college and enjoyed being alive. I was talking and laughing again. We began to speak about the books we were reading, about music and poetry we loved. Afzal was like an old friend.
He admired Rembrandt and van Gogh, he told me, but also he aspired to paint like Monet, though he preferred women to water lilies and haystacks. He wanted to paint the nude female in changing light, to show how flesh took on one aspect in the morning, another in the afternoon, and still another when darkness fell.
“And so, is that what you are doing?” I asked.
“How can I?” he said, his laughter turning rueful. “What young woman would deign to make herself available to me for one whole day! What woman would make herself nude for the likes of me?”
I pointed to Sebati’s cat, lying in a pool of sunlight on the floor. “Why must you paint only women? Why not paint that cat,” I said, “lying in the afternoon sun?”
“Ah. I could never tame him!”
“What makes you think you can tame a woman? But if you marry,” I added, “you won’t be lacking for a woman!”
“I refuse to settle for a marriage arranged by my parents!”
“Then fall in love!” I said almost gaily.
“With whom?”
“You’ve roamed the streets of Dhaka. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen a woman you can love!”
“There are many women I can love, but they are all married. Wives and mothers—”
“Then who is the girl—the girl in your painting, emerging from the water?” I waited for the answer. Afzal sighed and did not reply. I was sure she was no one’s wife, mother, or sister.
“Would you like some tea?” he asked, rising from his chair.
“Not really.” Actually I was thirsty, but I didn’t want to break the spell. I didn’t want him to leave, even to go to the next room. I didn’t want to suffer his absence, lose even a minute. There would be ample time for me to drown myself in cups of tea. I was gaining vitality every minute, as if breathing for the first time.
“I imagined her,” Afzal said all of a sudden.
“Really?”
“Why yes,” he said, turning his gaze dreamily toward the window. He was thinking about that woman, no question. And I was certain she was no figment of his imagination. I could tell by her brow and the set of her eyes that she was from the south of India. Who knew where she was now, having retreated from the water into the fold of mountain and forest? Afzal’s eyes returned from his dream and fixed on me.
“Your name is Jhumur, isn’t it?”
No stranger had called me by my name since college. I thought of the days when Jhumur was my name and my sister and I danced, bells tied to our ankles.
“Your face is so beautiful,” he said, “and I have seen you only in one light. How I would love to see you as the light changes. How I would like to look at you for an entire day.” It was as if we were in a dense forest, as if I were hypnotized.
“Where did you find all those colors?” I asked, embarrassed.
And he too, chose not to respond directly. Instead, he said, “Jhumur, will you allow me to read your palm?” He moved to sit at my feet and took my hand. He pressed my palm, smiling, and my whole body shuddered. I closed my eyes and contemplated my ruin. I could hardly believe that Haroon wasn’t watching through some chink in the blinds. I prayed that I could keep this moment secret forever.
Afzal, of course, had no intention of reading my palm. He spoke not of my future or my past but of his painting, telling me the story of his life as an artist, holding my hand as if we were old friends. Now the image of Haroon was growing hazy.
Then, abruptly, but fighting the desire to stay there forever, I pulled myself to my feet and covered my head again, obscuring my face. Quickly I crossed the room, unlatched the front door, and ran upstairs. I could imagine Amma’s questions as I walked into the apartment: “What did you and Sebati chat about?” “What did she give you to eat?” Fortunately Haroon’s aunts had arrived, saving me from constructing a lie. Sitting over tea with Amma, they were gossiping. “Bhabi,” Amma said to me, “would you bring some more tea?” And, as I turned to do so, “Would you add a lot of ginger?” I could feel Aunt Sahedi’s gaze at my back. She had once remarked that tea without ginger was like poison to her, which had made me laugh, and caused her to snap, “What on earth is funny about that?”
Now, in the kitchen, I chopped ginger root into bits and tossed it into the tea water. Looking out the kitchen window, I stared at the backs of the neighboring houses. Clothes were hung out to dry in the sun, a riot of colors—red, blue, and yellow—and I saw them as if Afzal had painted them. Still in the aura of his presence, I saw that red could be crimson or vermilion, yellow the color of butterfly wings or honey. Aunt Sahedi had on a purple sari, and her sister Kumud a deep green one, with a black blouse. I found myself musing that a white blouse would have looked better—a jasmine flower next to its leafy vine. Or that a red dot on her forehead would have emphasized the delicate red embroidery on the black blouse.
“Why are you taking so long?” Amma shouted from the parlor. I smiled to myself. The exemplary bou had thrown caution to the winds! Aunt Sahedi marched into the kitchen. As I hurriedly poured the tea, I spilled some. She took the tray from my hands as she asked in a stage whisper, “What is wrong, my dear? Are you pregnant?”
“No,” I replied, blushing. Pouring herself a cup of tea, she led me into the hallway.
“What’s up?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you understand me, dear?”
Of course I knew
what she was talking about, but I wanted to avoid the subject. I stood there, feigning dumbness, my head hung low. All I could think of was a cup of tea, but to ask for it would have seemed irreverent.
“Have a baby soon. A woman’s life is meaningless without children.” As I listened to Aunt Sahedi catalog the glories of motherhood, my gaze shifted from my toenails to her face and then out the window to the betel nut tree. Hard as it was, I focused my attention on her testimony about the agony she’d endured each time she’d given birth—and she had, bless Allah, five children! But she had known the pain of deprivation, at least vicariously. Her sister Kumud’s condition she regarded with nothing but compassion. Her poor bhabi had produced two stillborns and was now too old to conceive.
“Many doctors have been consulted, my dear!” Sahedi said, heaving a sigh, “many specialists! I can’t help thinking of how worthless her life has become!”
As I stood there, shifting from one foot to the other, Kumud came to my rescue, pulling me into the room I shared with Haroon. Sitting on the bed, she asked me to shut the door. “So many people about,” she said. “I don’t enjoy everyone’s company.” I fastened the door.
“What was my sister asking you?” she asked.
“Why I am not pregnant—”
“Do babies fall from skies? Have they ever?” Kumud assumed such a serious air that I could not help but be amused. She could see it on my face.
“You mustn’t take what I say lightly. Come here,” she said, “I’m serious.” And so I moved to the bed and sat facing her. She dropped the pitch of her voice as if about to warn me of an impending disaster.
“Do you know what your uncle is up to?”
“My uncle?”
“He slept with Moyna last night as well as with me.”
Aunt Kumud had already told me about her husband’s philandering. Moyna was the girl who worked for them. I bent my head as if in sympathy for her shame and picked at my nails. I had nothing to add. It would not behoove me to express disapproval. Showing respect for one’s elders was a tenet of faith in this family. Amma drummed that into my head day in and day out. She needn’t have worried. In those ways I was obedient.
“Men are not to be trusted,” Kumud continued. “They cannot be controlled. But I have done so much for him all of my life!” She sighed deeply, but then, suddenly, she seemed clear-headed. “Does Haroon get out of bed during the night?”
“Perhaps. I don’t always wake up.”
“Where does Rosuni sleep?”
“In the corridor, and sometimes in the kitchen.”
Kumud stood up and began to pace the floor. “I’ve told your Amma not to allow servant girls to sleep in easily accessible places; in fact I’ve told her not to engage young girls at all. Do you think she listens! She’ll learn her lesson if something untoward takes place. If Rosuni suddenly comes up pregnant, she’ll pull at her hair and say, ‘Ah bhabi, you were right. But how can I help it? The damage is already done.’” Now Kumud looked me sternly in the eye. “Tell me, Jhumur, you’re educated. You ought to know what’s going on!”
I was in no mood to continue this conversation. My thoughts had flown to Afzal, and instead of thinking about Kumud’s ranting, I was watching the play of light and shadow on her cheeks as she strode back and forth across the room. I watched her figure glow in brightness and then turn dim in the shade, and I longed to be able to pluck the light from the sky and dress myself in its radiance.
“Are you a light sleeper?” she asked me.
“Not really . . . ”
Kumud muttered that she was not either, that even the sound of a bomb exploding wouldn’t wake her up. “Women who sleep soundly are in for trouble,” she declared. “On the other hand, those who wake at the buzz of a mosquito or a breeze outdoors are gifted! Such women can rise at once and catch an adulterous husband red-handed!”
At that moment, I sympathized with Kumud’s husband! Anything to be free of this woman’s grasp, of her devilish harangue. “But Auntie, my husband’s a good man!”
“Are you saying that your uncle, my beloved husband, is wicked?”
“I’m not saying anything of the sort. I’m just saying that Haroon loves me and that he wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I’m sure he loves me.”
“Are you saying that your uncle doesn’t care for me?”
“Of course he does, but . . . ”
“But what?”
“Oh Auntie, he wouldn’t be sleeping with others if he . . . ”
“Your uncle is extremely fond of me, you know. We don’t have any children, yet he hasn’t remarried, in spite of advice to the contrary from many of his friends. Do you understand?”
“Of course I do, Auntie.”
“What do you understand?”
“That he loves you and that he has refused to take another wife—” I’d barely completed the sentence when Kumud shut me up.
“You talk too much, Jhumur. You run your elders down with your arguments. As a matter of fact, you know nothing at all. Men don’t need love to have sex. They feel free to take as many women to bed as they want,” she added, taking a deep breath.
“Just anyone?” I asked.
“Anyone they want. For example, if Haroon sleeps with Rosuni, it does not mean that he doesn’t love you.” Try as I might, I couldn’t bring myself to imagine Haroon in bed with Rosuni.
“Haroon will go to Rosuni if you can’t give him what she can, and, of course, my dear, she can’t give him what you can. He’ll have both of you and be pleased as can be. Men like variety. Given the chance, a man will take as many women as he can, just for the taste.”
Kumud was shuddering with rage at her own words, her eyes opening wide. If only Sahedi would come and rescue me! As Kumud continued ranting, I opened the door, pretending I had heard something, but she rushed toward me and barred the door.
“Where are you going? I haven’t finished!” Her eyes were bright with pain and indignation.
“I want some tea, Auntie.”
Outside the door Amma shouted for me. “What are you up to, Bouma? Why have you bolted the door?”
Opening the door a crack, Kumud confronted her sister, “Bhabi, don’t you wish that I talk to your daughter-in-law? Jhumur may have gone to college, but she has no knowledge of what a woman’s life is like. She’ll face difficult times, I tell you!” With that, Amma pushed her way in and ushered Auntie Kumud from the room, back into the parlor. Now Rosuni was passing pastries. It had been decided the two sisters would stay for supper.
As the conversation shifted to what we would be eating, I turned to the balcony, hoping to catch a glimpse of Afzal in the garden. I could still feel his presence, his warmth traveling through my body, leading my imagination back to his painting, the mysterious nude woman. Did she exist and was he in love with her, or was she merely a creation of his imagination? Had they played together in the rain? I was surprised by my emotions; was this jealousy? I thought about the way he’d kept looking at me, a living, breathing woman, when his painting of another woman, naked, dominated the room. Did that woman have something that I didn’t have? I wanted his gaze to turn to me, standing in front of him, disrobed. I felt as wet as the woman in the painting, just like her, in the moist darkness of my imagination.
I don’t know what led me into the bathroom, what compelled me to stand naked under the shower, directing my gaze toward my own body, what brought forth the silver liquid that made its way through the folds of my skin, the tears that streamed down my cheeks. What had enjoined me to compare my own beauty to that of the painted woman, and what, by slow degrees, had allowed the woman to dissolve as I began to feel the force of my own desire, to bring my turmoil relief?
10
As the days passed, my friendship with Sebati deepened. Sitting around talking to her in her flat, I often exchanged glances with Afzal—we communicated quite well with our eyes. One day, I kept thinking, I would model for a p
ainting. One day, he would paint my face changing as day passed and light fell to darkness. One day my body would adorn his walls, replacing my rival.
I came to feel as if I’d known Sebati all my life. I knew when she was at the hospital and when she was at home; I knew what she liked to eat, when she slept, or when she went out. We tasted each other’s cooking. She came upstairs with fish curry, and I went below with a portion of whatever I prepared. We saw each other every day, exhausting ourselves telling our stories. We talked about our childhoods, our adolescences, and there was always more to tell. Sebati told me that as a child, she had always stayed inside, watching through the window as other children played, never wanting to join the game. “And now,” she said, her eyes bright, “I’m never at home. But look at you! You were such a tomboy once, romping through rice fields—and now you spend all your days confined to the house!”
I wasn’t sure if she felt sorry for me, her unfortunate friend. Maybe she did, and that’s why she unfurled the spectacle of the wide world in front of my willing eyes, a world I had once relished but now believed I would never know again. In no time, she stopped calling me bhabi and addressed me as Jhumur, and I followed suit, calling her Sebati. Soon we even dropped the formal “you.”
I became so used to her stories about her patients that I found myself anxiously asking after them. “How’s Aisha?” “Have Rubina’s stitches healed?” Her patients were becoming my new sisters. Aisha had given birth to a girl, her first baby, and her husband had stormed out of the hospital. Poor Aisha had cried the whole night, heartbroken and full of fear, holding the baby in her arms. Rubina had a tumor in her fallopian tubes, Fulera’s uterus had become flaccid, and Jyotsana suffered from eclampsia and could give birth only to stillborns. Sebati’s detailed descriptions of her patients’ conditions began to invade my sleep. I dreamed a mass was growing in my belly, that my own fallopian tubes were twisted into knots.
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