Love Story #1 to 14

by Annie Zaidi

She got off at her station and hung around near the snack stall, looking at the men who were eating there. She especially looked at those who seemed to fit the voice – men with the beginnings of a stoop – large, jowly men who could barely keep their belts on.

  She looked at them ferociously, wanting to grab and hit a man who might have been him. She wanted to beat him up for doing this to her, for making her desperate. Why was he playing these games? He couldn’t possibly expect her to take the 8.22 in her old age. Why couldn’t he make announcements in other trains?

  She stood on the platform a long time, glaring at the men who stood, wearily eyeing the indicator. One by one, they all got into a train. They disappeared.

  She didn’t know what to do next. There was nothing to do, really. She should cross over to the opposite platform and take a train back home. Still, she hung around, waiting for something to happen.

  There was another young girl, sitting on a bench, waiting silently. For whom? When she moved closer, she saw that the girl was not moving at all except for her cracked lips.

  Other women huddled in little groups and threw sidelong glances. The girl looked like she hadn’t bathed for days. The smell was inescapable, and the sound of her awful monotone whisper was enough to scare off anyone who came too close or tried to sit down on the bench.

  She came over and sat down on the bench. She leaned closer so she could hear what the girl was saying. Over and over, the same whisper: ‘I told you. Didn’t you know? Didn’t you remember? When I tell you things, why do you forget?’

  And then, the answer came. She remembered now. That time when she had jaundice, when she was so weak she could barely stand, he had come to her side. He had sat on her bed, put warm towels on her skin, and then he had whispered in her ears – ‘You know why, don’t you?’

  Of course. It made sense. He had already explained everything, hadn’t he? He told her – it was for her. Only for her. No wonder she couldn’t find him on the other trains. The other trains were for other people, not for her. Why would he be making announcements for them?

  She should have understood him better. When he told her, she should have remembered. Then she wouldn’t have suffered as she had the last few months. She should have remembered and trusted him. What do lovers have but trust?

  Calm now, she made her way to the opposite platform. While she waited for a train to go home, a man who must have been in his early fifties walked past, carrying an ancient briefcase. He had lost most of his hair but in a small, foolish attempt to conceal the loss, he had brushed the remaining strands across the top of his bald pate. The stringy, oily strands emphasized the pitiful lack. It made her giggle.

  The man turned around. He had a mole on one cheek and a slender moustache. A firm paunch, striped shirt, cheap polyester pants – there was ‘government servant just waiting to retire’ stamped all over him.

  The train pulled in and pulled out again. She didn’t board it; neither did he.

  He didn’t seem like he was in any hurry to go anywhere. She let the next train go past as well. For a full hour, she stood there watching the man. He too stood there, briefcase tucked under his arm. He read a tabloid. Then he walked to the railway snacks stall, drank a cutting chai, ate a plate of ragdapattis. She followed him to the stall and asked for a samosapav.

  He bought another tabloid at the paper stall and he read it, first page to last, including the blur of wanted property and job advertisements that were crouching beside the discreet Russian models offered for friendship. Finally, a slow train chugged in. He boarded it and half-glanced over his shoulder, towards her.

  It was the 9.55 slow. She noted down the route, and waited until the train disappeared from sight. Then she boarded the next train home.

  LOVE STORY # 1

  (aka The one that ended)

  She began it. Always, she. Often she’d determine that tonight it would not be so. Let him begin it if he wants to. But every night, not having the patience to figure out whether he wants to or not, she would reach for him.

  She had her little ways. Always, the little ways. She would touch his collar, as if checking to see whether it was clean on the inside, and then she would pat it down. And his serious face would crack open a little, and he would look down at her, and smile. She would not look back up into his eyes because that would make her breath catch in her throat. It still embarrassed her to let him see how easily his smile could throw her off balance. So she would grab both ends of his collar with both her hands, and perhaps she would begin to talk. Ask him how his day was. He would still be smiling when he told her it was alright, and the meeting ended early, but the boys wanted to sit over a samosa afterwards, like they did some evenings. And she would pick up on some random word he used, like samosa, and she would repeat it over and over. Her fingers would undo a button on his shirt.

  His whole face would melt into a smile that he still didn’t know he had. Sometimes, he would lift her right then and carry her to the bed. Other times, he would play with her fingers, asking her if she was looking for something. And she would look up innocently and say, no, why?

  Then he would list the possibilities. All the things she could possibly be looking for when she began undoing his buttons. She would begin to do up the buttons again, or step away from him. And then he would carry her to the bed.

  It would all be over soon. But while they didn’t know it, it was smooth as the chocolate mousse she had learnt to make. He had a thing for Western desserts. Western food. It was simple between them to that extent – Indian food, Western food, Chinese food. That was their vague, personal code. Smooth, stuffed omelettes, smooth whipped cream with sliced, tangy strawberries, smooth sweet mousses. They were easy enough to fix and she learnt to fix them for his sake.

  On Sunday afternoons, he would fix something. Something easy, like dal and rice. And she would eat, sitting in his lap sometimes. He didn’t like being hand-fed, so she stopped trying to do that. But he liked her to be near enough to touch. On Sundays, he wanted her near all the time.

  She stayed near. In the afternoons, she would lie next to him, his curls unwinding between their two pillows. She would shove her straight hair over one shoulder, so it wasn’t between them, and she would lie there, looking up at the fan, or the shelves, or the tapestry he had brought back from a place she had never been. He would reach for a book although he may not want to read. Slowly, her fingers would seek a curl of his hair and begin wrapping it round and round before giving it a very gentle tug. He would know, even before feeling that tug. His face would turn, all serious, towards her.

  Sometimes he would look at her as if he wasn’t very pleased. And she would look back, unblinking, as if to say that she wasn’t afraid of him, even if he wasn’t pleased. And he would have to put the book away.

  It would soon be over. She hadn’t thought it would be so soon. Not like this. She had often thought of what might happen if he showed up home one night and his smile wasn’t real. Or if his meetings began to get too long. Or if phone conversations had to be taken outside, on the balcony. Or, what if the next time she brought up a reconverted glasshouse bedroom on a hill on the outskirts of town, and then went on and on about the texture of the curtains that she would put up there, he snapped at her and brought it all smashing down? What would she do?

  She had thought of all these possibilities when she lay alone in the long afternoons, when she changed the sheets and folded the coverlets, and dusted the television and borrowed a DVD from the library. But she hadn’t thought of the lingering, bankrupting alternative.

  She had delayed looking at it for a while. For days, there was that stitch. It was a strange thing to happen. A constant stitch in the side. Like a joke that you just didn’t get.

  She was trying to understand. The doctor had kind eyes. Sad eyes, really. She was patting her shoulder. Patting, patting. Trying to pat away her lack of comprehension. Something about rarity, one in ten thousand cases. Something about the five or six different options
that could be tried, because they were being tried abroad. Something about a twenty or even thirty per cent of a chance.

  She was listening intently, doing quicker mental math than she’d done since the school summer holidays, when she was the kid designated to figure out how many ice creams ten rupees would buy, and how to distribute it between six cousins. All she remembered from that first diagnostic visit was that it was rare. There wasn’t any simple, take-this-three-times-a-day-after-meals solution. There wasn’t even a this-is-a-simple-procedure-we-have-laparoscopic-facilities solution. She had turned the plastic file over in her hands, rubbed her thumbs along its edges. She had stared at the report, at the HCB and RBC and LCG and the numbers written alongside. How much should have been, how much was . . .

  The doctor was saying, tomorrow, if you could bring somebody from the family . . . and you must drink a lot of water.

  She had looked at the sad eyes again and wondered if the doctor was married. If there had been a ceremony with red lipstick and huge rose garlands, and if the man had curls.

  Then she was home, lying on her back like she always did when she was sick. She had put away the plastic folder in a drawer. The file might get fatter, she thought to herself. It would, she supposed. She hadn’t changed out of her sari yet. Somehow, the thought of loose clothes became intolerable. Sick people wore loose clothes.

  She had given up jeans a few months ago. Voluntarily. He had laughed at that. What is this strange new thing, he had asked. But his eyes had approved of the flowing fabric, its gentle drape, its waist-revealing candour. It made her blossom into beauty instantly.

  So it had become an easy, everyday thing. The bare arms in sleeveless blouses. The A-line petticoats. The soft saris. Around the house, swish-swish. Get up, the pallu falls, pick it up, cover up. It was all awfully romantic. It felt like playing house-house, except that she wasn’t the child. She had become the doll. Every so often, she would pause to look into the mirror behind the bed, blinking at herself. At the new fabric of beauty that lay languid upon her body so that she wasn’t simply beautiful; she raced across the whole spectrum of beauty. It was as if beauty held her in its palm, touching her at all points, but not fusing with her form.

  But it would be over soon. Now that she knew, she was almost impatient. She wanted it to be over in a week. Over the weekend, perhaps. But of course, it wouldn’t. It would take months. Months in which there would be lots of hospitals and corridors and tubes and the smell of chemical disinfectant and the sight of cotton wool in metal dustbins and the chatter of voices in unfamiliar languages. And people, so many of them. People to remind her that this wasn’t especially sad. Not even all that rare. Some bug in the system, a joke you didn’t get. You just got a stitch in the side.

  That day, he came home to her, sad. It was odd, the way he just stood in front of the doorbell. She knew, like she always knew when she heard his old car sputtering up the drive, that the doorbell was going to ring in a minute. She would always glance at the mirror before rushing to the window and peeping out, waiting for him to glance up and catch a glimpse of her, then running downstairs to open the door for him.

  That day, she couldn’t. She was lying on her back, willing the doorbell to ring so she could drag herself off the bed. But it never rang. So she dragged herself off the bed and went to the window. She drew back the curtains and there he was. Just standing in front of the door, not ringing the bell. He glanced up and the moment she caught sight of his face, she ran downstairs to open the door.

  He stepped inside the house, but there was no kissing. He went straight to the sofa in the living room and sat down. Like he was expecting something to happen. Like he was under a spell and he expected her to break it. Like he was going to cry, except he was determined not to.

  For one wild moment, she thought: he knows. Maybe he has found out somehow. Called the doctor, swung by the hospital to pick her up, asked a few questions. But a moment later, she calmed down. It couldn’t be. She was thinking of the sickness because it was topmost in her own mind. Something else must have happened.

  She stood behind the sofa and put her hands on his head. For a few seconds, she just kept her hands there. Then slowly, slowly, she began to run her fingers through his curls. She undid the black band that held back his shoulder-length hair. She put her hands underneath his collar, wrapped his warm, salty neck in her fingers, stroked his Adam’s apple with her thumb. Once, twice, thrice. He raised a finger and placed it on her thumb. She stopped stroking. She leaned forward a little, drew his head up backwards and pressed it against her stomach. The stitch throbbed. She pressed her fingers over his eyes.

  He said, I lost the job. She came around and sat in his lap and said, okay. He was afraid he was going to cry. She was afraid too. She didn’t think it would last another minute if he started to cry and then she started to cry too. So she kissed his face, letting him blink back his tears. His face turned to mousse under the caress of her lips. The hardness melted away and he didn’t crumble, after all.

  It would be over soon but it wasn’t over yet, she reminded herself. It shouldn’t be reduced to a fat file in a bluey-green plastic folder. Fat files get fatter. Fat files aren’t what it should come to. So she locked the drawer in which the folder was kept. And she made each day one of their Sunday afternoons. He would make a couple of calls, staying on the phone a long time. She would put her hands on her soft, chiffon-wound hips and mutter loudly about people who didn’t do a thing to make themselves useful.

  Sometimes, she would say the same thing with a large tomato stuck between her lips. And he would laugh. He would offer to make a special cheese-mince omelette and she would clap her hands and waltz. She hadn’t waltzed around the house like that before. At least, he hadn’t seen her do it. He looked at her with wonder and held out his arms, although he didn’t know how to waltz. She would waltz right into his arms and hold him so close, he wouldn’t mind just standing there, breathing, for the rest of his life while the omelette cooked itself.

  Then, he began to take an interest in the saris. He would stand beside the almirah while she tried to get dressed. She would be in her towel and he would be in his shorts and T-shirt. And each time she reached out towards one sari, he would make a face. She would grow exasperated and he would promise to buy her something new, something he liked. And he would throw a T-shirt and his boxers at her, and she would laugh and put them on. And it would not feel so much like sick people’s clothing after all.

  Then two weeks were up, so he went back to collect his severance pay and filled in the forms to withdraw his provident fund money and it was enough to make them laugh a little bit that evening. And then, there was work. Freelance work. Work he could choose. His whole body began to unclench itself. The idea of not going to an office was so tempting, he didn’t bother to look for a new job. And besides, there was her. There was her simple talk of a bedroom with three glass walls and heavy curtains, and a hillside view, and getting up to birdsong and plenty of sunlight. And he would joke about how the villagers living around the hills would come in and peep into their bedroom, what would she do then? And she would pout and say, well, then we’d give them something to remember. And he would burst into a loud, delighted laugh, and carry her to the bed.

  Then, suddenly, he remembered that there had been a stitch. So he asked her what happened about that? She made some random joke about stitches in time, and saving. But after lunch, he asked again about the stitch and going to the doctor’s. She said she wasn’t in pain. He asked if she had ever been to the hospital. She said, no.

  And then, all hell broke loose. He knew whenever she told a lie. He would catch her out, then accuse her with a ‘Liar! Liar!’ and she would pout, and finally tell him the truth after giving him half a dozen reasons why she had lied in the first place. This time, he smelt the lie before she even told it. She didn’t look guilty like she usually did when she lied. She didn’t even meet his eyes or look coyly from under her lashes to see if he was going t
o be angry.

  So he brooded. He went out for a walk alone. He thought of going to the hospital himself, trying to figure out which doctors she had seen, what they had said. But it felt so cheap to go snooping around on his own woman. He couldn’t do it. So he came home and watched a cricket match on TV, late into the night.

  Her heart beat with worry. But when he came to bed, she pretended to be asleep, so she wouldn’t have to talk to him.

  And then he found the locked drawer. He shook the drawer hard. Nothing in their home was ever locked, not even the hidden compartment inside her wardrobe where she kept her gold earrings and silver anklets. So he tried the lock with a bent hairpin. He tried it with a tiny screwdriver. Then he went to the kitchen where she was stir-frying beans and corn to go with the pasta, since he had once again demanded ‘Western’ for lunch. He went to her and put his arms around her body. She leant back against his chest. He ran his hands down her neck, feeling his way down the strand of gold she always wore around her neck, the one with a little gold heart for a pendant. He felt the fine line of down on her navel, and all around her arms, and around her waist where the sari was tucked in. The cotton fabric was getting damp from the kitchen afternoon, and it was weighed down by one of those traditional silver key holders. But there were no keys attached to it.

  Her glass bangles tinkled as he felt his way down to her wrists, slowly, working his way around the delicate, brittle sound. There were safety pins hanging from the bangles. No keys. Suddenly, he let her go. He hated himself for wanting to know so badly, but in the evening when she went in for her bath, he opened her purse. And there were the keys to the drawer.

  And then, she stepped out of the bath in her towel. She went to the cupboard for a shirt, but he was standing in front of it, just looking at her. As if he had been waiting for her. And he looked so steadily, his eyes not giving out one particle of light or warmth.

  She looked at him, top to toe, trying to understand. After a long moment, she noticed the plastic folder he held in his hands. He was turning it slowly, over and over, running his fingers along its edges.