The Fifth Man

by Basu, Bani

  Pointing with her wistful orange arm, Seema said, ‘There, Esha-di. Flying fish. There’s another, and another!’

  Looking out of the corner of his bloodshot eyes, Ari saw a seagull swoop down on the water and pick up a fish in its beak. His heart leapt into his mouth, he shivered. He looked at Esha from a distance. She wasn’t looking in his direction. What was she gazing at, so engrossed, so blue? Had she never seen the sea or water before? Had she never seen blue or green or white? Or was she gazing at all this so as to not look at him? Her eyes were riveted.

  The colour of the day deepened. You couldn’t look at the sea. Sharp knives flashed in its swells, there were fewer waves here at a distance from the harbour, the swaying was far less, but still it was a rough sea.

  Esha sat in the dining hall with tomato soup and dry toast. Aritra was nauseous, Seema had opened her trove of delicacies. Bikram was eating, Mahanam was eating. Seema was watching, eating. Esha was eating with concentration. Aritra toyed with his food. What was Esha eating with such attention? Had she never tried tomato soup with dry toast before? Or would she not look at him, would she never look at him again, which was why she was eating this way, with heart and soul?

  Esha and Seema were chatting with a family on the upper deck. An animated conversation. He couldn’t tell whether they were Punjabis. Two fat-cheeked children, the woman was probably the same age as Seema. She was dressed in a churidar and kurta, Seema was talking to her, Esha was smiling, she got up and left, she was going towards the stern of the ship, what would she do if Ari followed her? She would certainly move towards the bow, if Ari went upstairs she would go downstairs, if he went lower she would go higher, much higher, much further, the gulf between them kept widening. Their journey from Pune station to Priyalkarnagar on that cool, pleasant night was so far behind them now, on the Siddheshwar Express from Kalyan to Pune, Aritra standing, Esha sitting, somehow they had found a seat for her. Many passengers between them. But still they were not far apart. Esha’s cheeks were visible, sometimes her forehead, perhaps half her face, but still she was Esha, entirely Esha. But now, her body wrapped in a pink sari, Esha was moving constantly, indefatigably, sitting, standing, in his view, but this was Esha in fragments. She had no smile on her face for Ari, no eyes for him. One of Ari’s eyes told him the separation was complete. The other said—impossible, this is impossible.

  Mahanam sat in a deck chair, lighting his pipe. A fragrant smell. He had been immersed in the Avadanasataka, legends about Buddha and Ashoka, all afternoon. With the sun setting he had put his book away and lit his pipe. When he saw Aritra coming up to him he said, ‘Want to taste my tobacco, Aritra, Bikram? I have a dozen pipes in my suitcase. Should I get them?’

  ‘Not a very strong smell, Dada,’ said Bikram. ‘My brand is Charminar. Sometimes a Capstan. I don’t care for Dunhill or anything like that. Can I say something, Dada? Shall we have some Scotch? Along with Goan seer cooked in wine and fried chicken liver. I’ll make arrangements.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Mahanam. ‘All right, Aritra?’

  Aritra’s breast was splitting with thirst, his heart arid. Can you lend the Gobi desert a rain-bearing cloud? He said, ‘So be it. But don’t get too drunk.’

  Bikram left for his cabin with great enthusiasm, bringing Seema’s case. A portable icebox and the liquor were inside.

  Snacks to go with the drinks in a hotbox.

  ‘Cheers, cheers!’ The glasses were emptied rapidly. The evening passed. Night fell. Cheers, cheers. Deckhands in uniform walked past them. Vendors offered biscuits, coffee, nuts, cashews, cold drinks. Cheers, cheers. Kissing the bottle, Bikram said, ‘Well, Chowdhury-da, am I drunk?’ He was slurring his words a little. Aritra had to drink a lot. He was used to drinking very slowly. He was lively now, but not drunk. ‘Ten highballs, right?’ he said. Right now he was avoiding reality. Later, he would start slurring too. His limbs would give way, he would start talking, talking far too much, and then . . . ?

  Bikram said, ‘Then, fuck it, I’ll die. Fall to the ground with a thump, the undertakers will drag me away by my feet. Roy-da, my Roy-da. Won’t you save me? What’s this, the girls aren’t drinking. As if they don’t. My wife drinks, she’s shy because all of you are here. She turns into something else when she’s drinking. Tight as a whip. Crisp fried prawns. Crunchy. Ray-da, you may be a bachelor, but you’re not celibate, are you?’

  Mahanam said laughingly, ‘It seems you want to bare your heart. Go ahead, do it.’

  ‘That’s not it, Dada. I like you a lot. No pretence like Chowdhury-da here. Have you ever tasted a Santhal woman, Dada?’

  Mahanam burst into laughter. ‘This question must have been lurking in your mind for a long time. The alcohol has loosened your tongue today.’

  ‘Not alcohol, Dada, whisky. Don’t laugh, all right? No laughing matter. Santhal women best. Sophisticated women not like them. No, never. I challenge you. Fight. Prove it. I, Bikram Seal, I’ve tasted them all. I’m telling you. Adivasi women sexiest. All the sisters are here. Ask them. Hey, Seema.’

  Aritra slapped Bikram coldly. Mahanam said, ‘Empty the rest of the bottle on his head.’

  Aritra said, ‘Should I? Really? No one will be happier to do it than me.’

  ‘Coffee! Here,’ said Mahanam.

  Bikram had an attack of hiccups. Mahanam poured the Scotch out of his glass and poured coffee into it. ‘Drink this like a good boy, Bikram Seal,’ he said.

  Seema and Esha were downstairs, they were coming up the stairs now. Seeing the state Bikram was in, Seema hurried up to them. ‘Oh god, you’ve spoilt the evening. Did you have to drink so much again? Can you support him from the other side, Ari-da, let’s put him in the cabin, or he’ll create a scene.’

  ‘Ari and I will take him, you’d better go,’ said Mahanam.

  Esha wasn’t even looking this way. She seemed to be walking in a dream. As though there was nobody here, no one else. To the right or to the left, in front or behind, there was nobody else on this ship. As the night deepened, the wind picked up speed. It was difficult to sit here. The deck was emptying out. Those who had cabins had entered them. The doors couldn’t be opened against the wind. Despite his reluctance, Aritra had drunk so much that he was sleepy. Like a limp fly-whisk he had slumped on his bed. As he sank into sleep, he tried to find something through a dream. Dreams could not be dictated. Desiring to dream of Vivekananda or Sri Aurobindo, you could easily dream of dragons instead. So, instead of a pleasurable dream, Aritra was having a nightmare. An accident. Not on land, but on the water. His personal ship had shattered, the frame coming apart on both sides. The bow, the stern, the deck were all crumpling, falling into the sea.

  Was that someone banging on the door! The wind? Aritra roused himself emphatically. Esha, Esha, after making me suffer so much, have you come to me finally? Have you? Aritra opened the door with his eyes closed. ‘Seemachal, what is it?’ As soon as Seema entered the wind whipped the door shut. Seema’s eyes were blazing. ‘Where’s Bikram?’ she asked. ‘My Bikram? Where have you taken him?’

  ‘Bikram? What are you saying, Seema? How should I know? Why should I have taken him anywhere?’

  ‘What else can it be? I made him lie down with such care. As soon as I fell asleep for a bit, I find he’s disappeared. He was prepared to stray, Ari-da, and you had already got him drunk and out of his senses by letting loose your beautiful wife and your sexy girlfriend on him. Did you have to add alcohol? What else is this but abandoning him? Now he’s gone off in search of someone. Someone else. He doesn’t want me anymore. Doesn’t want me, doesn’t want me.’

  Seema flung herself on Aritra’s chest, weeping uncontrollably. ‘What will happen to me, then? What will happen to me?’

  Standing ramrod straight, Aritra switched the light off in the cabin and told himself with a cruel heart, ‘That’s right. Why not this? All women have the same body in the dark. It’s the same tree. The same flowers and fruits, the same roots and hollows. The main thing was hunger. Des
ire, desiring strongly with everything in one’s life.’ And so in that terrible darkness all the orange colours on Seema’s body were shed and tossed away, and so in that icy darkness Seema’s arms were torn out, legs were torn out, breasts were torn out. Filling the entire canvas, Picasso began to paint the Guernica of the civil war with twisted, mangled body parts, crying and burning, including the final whimpering cry of the dying she-horse. Drinking Seema, filling himself up to his throat, it was Esha whom Aritra drank. Drank with the thirst of the desert. He poured Esha into his goblet and drank her, dipped his brush into Esha’s colours, he painted. Through Seema’s body Aritra struggled with all his strength to overcome Esha’s eternal resistance. But as soon as he sensed Seema’s unique existence in the bitter, astringent taste in the heart of his heart, his soul screamed, ‘There’s no Esha, no Esha, Esha is an illusion, Esha is a mirage.’ His body trembled with despair. Throwing Seema away from him, unfinished, he stood up, wobbling like a blind man. ‘What is it Ari-da, what happened?’ asked Seema, her voice thick with tears. Aritra’s face was twisted, flooded by the grief of losing his beloved. Heartache, defeat, sorrow. Aritra could find his own voice no more. He groaned:

  I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,

  But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,

  Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;

  And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,

  Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:

  I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

  TWENTY

  ‘You were drinking too, Mahanam-da, I saw,’ said Esha. ‘Weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes of course I did. I drank quite a lot. I’ve been drinking since I was twenty-one. It doesn’t affect me at all. I don’t get drunk. I have no addiction. See this pipe? I can give it up in an instant if you tell me to.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really? All it does is help me think. Like they say, smoking out the ideas. But habits can be changed.’

  ‘My life is devoid of men, you see. I don’t trust these male entertainments that you people indulge in. May I sit here safely?’

  ‘Considering I called you here, how can you not? Can I ask you something personal, Esha?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why is your life so devoid of men, anyway? Why did you leave that gentleman? Was he a very bad man?’

  ‘No Mahanam-da, not at all.’

  ‘What was it, then?’

  ‘Whatever went wrong was always my fault. Amidst a crowd of people, my own habits make me aloof.’

  ‘Tell me what these habits of yours are.’

  Esha remained silent. And remained silent. Much later she said in a small voice, ‘He was a very mechanical man. I’d accepted that too. But then he wanted to be a father.’

  ‘Was that wrong?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’ Esha lifted her eyes, looking through Mahanam, at the wall behind him. ‘Not wrong. But I’m not just a womb.’

  ‘You’re right, Esha,’ said Mahanam. ‘When the world needed to add more people, the idea that motherhood is the ultimate fulfilment was ingrained in women. Society no longer has this need, womanhood should not be equated with motherhood anymore.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Esha said, ‘all I know is that unless my heart is full, an exhausting mechanical act will not fill my womb. I cannot give birth to a child that way. I could not. Can a unique creation like Pupu come from a factory, tell me.’

  Mahanam looked sharply at her. He put his pipe down beside the ashtray. ‘Do you know the history of Pupu’s birth?’ he asked.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Did you know beforehand?’

  ‘No. Only a few days ago.’

  ‘Why are you crying, Esha?’

  Esha looked up. ‘But I’m not.’

  ‘I feel you’re crying, trembling.’

  ‘I’m not crying. Not trembling either, believe me. Why couldn’t you hold on to Neelam?’

  ‘Perhaps I didn’t want to strongly enough. I was quite immature myself then. Neelam was the only woman whom I could touch without sinning.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  Mahanam smiled. ‘The history of my birth is also something like Pupu’s. She has parents. I have no antecedents. The person who gave me her affection and property, Dr Kasturi Mitra, was not really my aunt. She had brought up an abandoned child in a hospital. Whenever a woman appeared attractive to my young eyes, I used to imagine that my unmarried mother had given birth to her after getting married. Or perhaps my father. In which case that woman was my sister.’

  ‘You didn’t think that way about Neelam?’

  ‘No. She was Kasturi Mitra’s friend Savitri Joshi’s daughter. Savitri married a Gujarati. I knew Neelam’s background through and through. And Kasturi Mitra had told me that my mother was a Bengali woman whom she did not know.’

  ‘Do you know how old she was?’

  ‘Not a particularly tender age.’

  Esha said, ‘My mother died while giving birth to me at just sixteen. I was a caesarean baby. My mother was rent apart giving birth to me. There is no way I can be your sister, Mahanam-da.’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘Do you want to know my entire genealogy? My father observed perfect widowhood for three or four months. He didn’t eat meat or fish, dressed in white cotton only. When anyone asked, he said, “If I had died this is what you would have forced her to do. So I’m doing it.”’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Unable to bear it anymore, he willed himself to die. The larger family brought me up.’

  ‘Which means you too are the creation of pure love. And you were born when your mother was sixteen, before she was even of marriageable age. Like Draupadi or Sita, you too have come out of moist earth.’ Mahanam sat up. ‘And this is the immaculate whom Aritra rejected.’

  ‘Aritra was probably not to be blamed,’ Esha said softly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I realize it now. Aritra is the kind of man who cannot tolerate a second sun in the sky. He has to be the one and only. I did not understand, but his soul had understood that I was breaking out of his spell, the spell of his words, very rapidly. Thanks to your company. Gradually I shed the lies from my life and leaned towards the truth. Towards you. Asato ma sadgamay. Lead me from the unreal to the real.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, that was probably why he took Neelam and tried to break both you and me together.’

  The wind had thrown Mahanam’s shawl into disarray. Esha said, ‘When Ari left me at that time, I must have been furious. My self-confidence, my faith in the world, my pride, all of it was in pieces. But even before you recognized me, it was I who went to you first, with all the questions in my life, expecting correct answers. When you ignored me and chose Neelam, what I felt was the dirge written in the Padavali—my shrine is empty. Although I had not understood its nature then. But my work, my studies, living, Aritra’s flattery, all of it tasted bitter. Nothing felt good, Mahanam-da, nothing.’

  What she said about Mahanam began to widen like a ripple in water. My shrine is empty, my shrine is empty.

  Mahanam said intensely, ‘It was to fill your shrine that I have kept mine empty all these years. Is there anyone who cannot recognize the first one, the eternal one? If she is still not desired, it is only because history and myth create a treacherous gulf in the middle. I’m thirsty for nectar, but I quench my thirst with other things. Esha, you are my pitcher of nectar which came out of the churning of the seas.’

  Mahanam’s passion was stronger than the passion of the sea. He spread himself out wider than its waters. He was loftier than the waves. His body pulsated to a sense of expectation, but what he got was far beyond even those expectations. In astonishment he saw that this was not Praxitales’s generously endowed Aphrodite with formidable thighs, the contours of whose headless body of inanimate stone were so alive that viewers still ran up to embrace her. He saw—how pe
rfect!—that this was Sandro Botticelli’s Venus, whose entire body was made of the light and shade of suggestive poetry. Sa Esha. She is this woman. Esha sa. This woman is she. Balanced on pearls like teardrops in an ocean of desire, she stood with her face pointing upwards. Because her feet were on the ground and her face was in the sky, no one understood her. As in the Egyptian imagination, a body of clay and heart of fire. Her expectations were not to be met by earth or fire or the world or the sky alone. She was shrouded in linen like a mysterious melancholy. Her promise was unfathomably deep. He would never be able to measure it. He could never reach its shores. One wave after another crashed on his familiar boats, setting them adrift. With a broken rudder and ripped sail, he set off on an exquisite voyage to an unknown destination. He had an abundance of supplies, but he himself would never be equal to this journey.