“I was passing through, then I thought that you all lived somewhere—”
Didi is standing in the kitchen doorway. “Oho, buhari,” she says. She is smiling. “What brings you here?”
Rukma’s words are disjointed. “I was … hadn’t been able to come. After the wedding—”
“You mean Tarun didn’t bring you here.”
“I wanted to come.”
“I know you did.” She comes and stands before Rukma. The old man’s smile lessens. Didi’s eyes are large and penetrating. She sits down next to Rukma and takes her hand. “Let me look at you. Tarun ko dulahi. We finally get to see you.” She lifts Rukma’s chin with her finger. “I knew my Tarun would snag himself a beauty, the beautiful boy he himself is. And I hear you are from a very good family. We were not consulted on that matter, of course.” There’s a strong kitchen smell coming from Didi, yet strangely the smell and the stroke on the chin Rukma finds comforting, even lulling. “What are these circles under your eyes?” Didi asks. “A newly married woman like you, you should be hearty, healthy, and glowing, but why do you look like a withered flower? Is our Tarun not taking care of you?” Her words are measured, meaningful, as though she knows what Rukma is going through. “Are they not feeding you in that house? Well, no matter, today you’ve come here, and dinner is cooking, so you’ll eat here.” When Rukma demurs, Didi says, “I’ll not accept no for an answer. You’re already here, it’s dark, and the dinner is about ready.”
Sumit sits on the floor while Rukma continues to sit on the bed, flanked by the Masterji and Didi, with Didi’s hands enveloping her hand. Sumit gazes up at her adoringly. He doesn’t speak much, and when he does his voice is pleasing. “Your studies going well?” she asks him at one point, and he nods and says, “Going very well, bhauju.”
“So, tell us about yourself,” Didi says.
Rukma fights the urge to spill it all out. But there’s a coziness here that’s illusory. “There’s nothing to say.”
“How’s that possible?” Didi says. “An educated, beautiful city girl like you. Your parents must be very happy. Do you go to visit them often?”
“I go when I can.”
“Tarun and I …” Didi doesn’t finish her statement.
“Tarun visits you frequently, doesn’t he?” Rukma asks.
Didi looks down at her hands.
“These days Tarun dai doesn’t come as often as he used to,” Sumit says.
“He’s a busy boy,” Didi says.
Rukma ends up eating with them, and eating ravenously. Every bite and every morsel—the mutton, the spinach, the aloo ko achar, the titey karela—is like an explosion of sensations on her tongue, and she hardly speaks as she devours the food. Since there’s no dining table, they eat on the floor near the bed. The expert manner in which Sumit unfolds the newspapers and lays them on the rug, the quick efficiency with which Didi brings over the food, tells Rukma that this is where they eat their meals every day. Didi keeps ladling food on her steel plate, a large khandethaal that has separate pockets for each dish. “No, no,” Rukma keeps saying yet continues to stuff herself. She’s filled with a hunger that she’s not experienced since her childhood, a greedy kind of hunger. By the time she’s finished she is so full that she lets out an embarrassing burp. She can barely stand to rinse her hands and mouth at the tap, so Sumit helps her to her feet. “I should get going,” she hears herself say, but there’s a flurry of protests, Didi’s, Sumit’s, the old man’s, and her own counterprotests.
“But you just ate—you can’t leave now.”
“Stay for a while, bhauju.”
“It’s getting dark.”
“You didn’t bring your car?”
“No matter, Tarun can pick you up.”
“I don’t want to bother Tarun. I’ll find a taxi, but if I don’t leave now, there’ll be no taxis.”
“We know a taxi driver who lives in this neighborhood, not to worry. Stay a few minutes longer.”
She’s drowsy, and the next thing she knows she’s lying on the Masterji’s bed, and Didi is massaging her forehead. Rukma closes her eyes. Then her head is on Didi’s lap, and it’s all so very comfortable. The voices around her are muted, coming from a place beyond these walls or perhaps even from within her own mind.
“She’s beautiful,” Didi is saying.
“Tarun must be worried about her by now,” the Masterji says.
“She’s too beautiful,” Didi says. “Too much.”
Rukma’s eyes open in the darkness, and in a moment of panic she thinks she’s in Lazimpat, in her mother-in-law’s room, until she feels a warm body against hers. By the heaviness of the breathing she can tell it’s Didi. It’s so dark that if she puts her hand out in front her, she won’t be able to see it. She remembers: this was the bed where the Masterji was sleeping, and she’s horrified that he’s also sleeping here, with her and Didi. And where is Sumit? She stops breathing: he’s not also on this bed, is he? Then she relaxes as she remembers that in the conversation before dinner it was mentioned that Sumit sleeps in the corner. Still, she needs to make sure, so she gingerly feels with her hand in the dark. They fall on a nose, a thick nose. She’s reassured, yes, it’s Didi, then she’s worried again. She barely knows these people, and here she is, sleeping among them.
“He loves you very much, doesn’t he?”
Didi’s question startles her. Had she been awake all this time? “Did I wake you?” Rukma asks.
“I don’t need to sleep much at night,” Didi says. “You didn’t answer me. He loves you very much, doesn’t he, my Tarun?”
Rukma says nothing.
“You’re a lucky woman.”
“You might be luckier. He speaks highly of you.”
After some silence Didi says, “He’s always been special, that boy. He was so beautiful when he was little. You know, Rukma, I’ve always felt that he’s come out of my own womb. Never felt that he was that Apsara Thapa’s son. And now he’s turned into such a handsome young man.”
Rukma is silent.
“You should always keep that in mind,” Didi says, “about what a special gift he is to you.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not going to betray him, are you?”
“Betray?”
Didi’s hands seek hers in the dark, and they clasp her fingers tightly. “Try to get some sleep,” Didi says. “It’s still dark out.” But her fingers on Rukma’s haven’t relaxed, and it’s becoming slightly painful now. “Sleep,” Didi whispers, and Rukma closes her eyes despite the pain.
She wakes later to a grayish light seeping into the room. Her fingers are still entangled with Didi’s, but the grip has loosened because Didi, judging from her breathing, has fallen asleep. Rukma quietly sits up, then grimacing at the creak of the bed, steps onto the floor. She can make out the shape of the old Masterji nearby, and she is startled to see that his eyes are open and looking at her. But he doesn’t say anything. She tiptoes toward the door, where she stretches her eyes wide open to locate her shoes. When she unlatches the door and steps out, she’s quite sure that Didi, too, has awoken and is studying her.
“We were so worried about you.” Sanmaya is in tears. Her voice is shaking as she comes to the gate to meet Rukma. “We thought that something terrible had happened. Tarun babu drove around at midnight looking for you. He called your parents, but he didn’t want to alarm them, so he pretended that nothing was wrong. We nearly called the police.”
Without answering Sanmaya, Rukma goes inside. Tarun is in the living room, the newspaper spread out before him. “I didn’t sleep all night,” he says.
She stands at the bottom of the stairs, her palm covering the knob at the end of the balustrade. Sanmaya has remained outside to allow the two of them a private moment. But tiredness has come over Rukma, so she makes a move to go upstairs, to crawl into her bed.
“You should call your parents,” he says. “They’re anxious.”
“Later,” she says. It’s clear t
hat he’s trying to downplay his own anxiety and confusion over her absence, but it’s too late. He stands, and he wants to say something. She’s sure he suspects she spent the night with her Newar lover.
Later that morning she wakes up to voices downstairs. Sanmaya knocks on her door. “Your parents are here,” she says. Rukma opens the door, her brain cloudy from sleep.
“I’ll be down,” she informs Sanmaya. She freshens up in the bathroom, quickly changes into a fresh dhoti, and goes down. Her parents rise from the sofa when they see her. “Where were you last night, Rukma? We were worried sick.” Tarun, sitting next to them, cannot meet her gaze.
“I ended up staying the night at a friend’s house. It was too late to come home.” No one believes her, but she doesn’t feel obligated to be convincing to any of them. She instructs Sanmaya to make tea. Her parents say that it’s nearly lunchtime, so they won’t stay for tea. Rukma doesn’t listen and goes to the kitchen to see what snacks she can offer them. Her mother follows her, asks her with a whisper what has happened. “I told you, at a friend’s place,” Rukma says, meeting her mother’s eyes squarely. “What other answer do you want?” Her mother takes her by the arm and pulls her out to the Japanese garden, which seems to be the backdrop of everything significant that happens in this house.
“Did you two have a fight?” her mother is asking.
“No, no fight.”
“Did he say something? Did he do something?”
“There’s nothing wrong, Mother. Let’s go inside and drink some tea. Father must be waiting.”
“What is a married woman doing spending the night elsewhere?” her mother says angrily. “What will people think?”
“Mother,” she says wearily.
“Is there someone? That Newar boy?”
Sanmaya saves her. She comes out to the garden, informs them that the tea is getting cold. “They’re waiting inside,” Sanmaya adds.
Inside, her father advises her to take care of her health. “Your eyes,” he says. “They’re swollen.”
After her parents leave, Tarun asks her to sit down next to him. She does, but there’s nothing to talk about. He’s going over some thoughts in his mind, the precise nature of which she’ll never know. When he looks at her, she catches a fleeting expression of desperation on his face, as though he’s asking her to understand. “Inform me,” he says in a halting voice, “when you’re going to spend the night at a friend’s place. That way no one here will worry.” She takes it that he’s accepted she’s going out to spend time with someone else, perhaps her Newar lover. It’s as though he recognizes that he’s failed to give her the minimum that a wife would need. He looks defeated, so crestfallen that she stifles the urge to put her hand on his chin and say that perhaps they can work on this more. But they’re past that stage now. It’s too late.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
IT HAS HER sitting upright in bed that night, this thought that makes her wonder why it didn’t occur to her before: he has a mistress. Yet when this thought comes, it seizes her with its logical force. It explains his disinterest in her, the guilt that appears to assail him at moments. There’s someone else who satisfies him, both emotionally and sexually. It’s quite possible that he’s even married to her already. Rukma laughs in the darkness of her room. This is indeed wild. But like father, like son.
There’s a counterargument: If he was already married, wouldn’t there have been rumors in this town of rumors? And wouldn’t this rumor have reached her by now? But if she was able to keep her Newar lover secret from the prying eyes of the world for so long, why would it be inconceivable to think that Tarun has kept a secret mistress or wife somewhere? It could also be that this woman is not originally from here. It could be that she migrated from somewhere else, and there’s no one in the city who can identify her. A woman no one knows. A woman who doesn’t need anyone else, as she is cared for by a young businessman. She is provided for—food, clothing, jewelry, an occasional trip. A kept wife, or a kept mistress, while Rukma is the official one.
The velocity of this new understanding exhausts her, and she falls asleep.
The sun is streaming brightly through the window when she wakens. She goes down the stairs to discover that Tarun has left for work. Does he stop by his woman’s place before he heads to his office, then visit her briefly again in the evening? Or perhaps this morning they are meeting at a temple. He’s not religious, but she may be. She could be praying every day that God do something so that she and Tarun may be united fully, as man and wife. But God’s intervention is not even necessary. I can make it happen, Rukma thinks, I can play God. I can slip out of the way.
She’s going to make is easy for him, for them. Today.
As soon as she has a cup of tea and piece of toast she leaves home, not in her sari but in her pants and shirt. Like the old times. The clothes free her; she hasn’t worn them since her marriage was finalized because she thought they wouldn’t be appropriate. But who is to stop her now? She’s a single woman again. Sanmaya stared at her clothes when she was having breakfast but said nothing.
Rukma is conscious that her fancy pants and tight shirt from her Newar lover days make her look like Sahara, and maybe she is meant to be a Sahara now, unmoored. She will remain single all her life, and she’ll try to be happy in her solitude.
She has no idea where she’ll look for a room. No longer does she have any romantic notions about living in the city’s ancient center with the common folk. But the suburbs don’t appeal to her either—she wants to get away now, as far as possible from this house, this type of closed-in, walled house with its rooms of madness and entropy. It certainly didn’t help her mother-in-law one bit to be so isolated; she might have been better off wandering the city streets.
She takes a taxi to the Tripureswor area, on an impulse, and she dives into lanes and alleys seeking FOR RENT signs. She finds a few places, and finally one appeals to her. It’s a two-room flat at the top of a building. It affords a view of the busy street below, and on the other side there’s a school whose yard is filled with screaming, happy children. Nearby is a motorcycle sales and repair shop. She inquires about the rent, then tells the landlady she’ll be back in the evening or, at the latest, tomorrow.
Once on the pavement below, she sees him, crossing the street in his suit and tie. He’s emerging from a building that has the sign EVEREST FINANCIAL. Her first instinct is to call out to him, pretend she’s a normal wife who has unexpectedly, and delightfully, run into her husband. Fancy meeting you here!
Instead, she observes him. In all her meanderings she’s never encountered him like this. He crosses the street, then opens the door of his car. If he turns his head he’ll spot her. But she knows he won’t. And if he does he won’t see her because—and this idea entertains her—she’s become faceless, just another woman standing on the sidewalk. This idea appeals to her.
She watches Tarun open the door of his car. He tosses in his briefcase and coat, then loosens his tie and throws it after them. He is off duty. He doesn’t get into the car. He looks around quickly, then starts up the hill toward Dharahara. She follows.
The crowd thickens near the tower. Now, even if he were to look back, she’d simply be a face among scores of pedestrians. So strong is her sense of anonymity that when she looks at her reflection in a storefront window the woman in pants and shirt who returns her gaze is not someone she knows. Ahead of her, he passes the tower to his right, and a short moment later she, too, passes it. He glances at his watch, and a short moment later she, too, glances at hers. He stops in front of a tall building, looks to his left and right, and climbs the stairs at the side of the building.
She waits under the awning of a shop across the street, watching his white-shirted figure climb the steps leisurely. It’s his second home, after all. His kept wife is waiting for him upstairs; she may even have cooked something for him. They may be planning an outing tonight.
He’s aware of the presence all along, from the mome
nt he throws in his suitcase and his coat and tie into the car in Tripureswor. He doesn’t turn to look, but he knows it’s there. It follows him as he climbs the hill toward Dharahara. It’s not even a real thing—it’s just an awareness, literally in the back of his head. This is not the same brooding presence, dark and suffocating, that hovered around him when he followed, incognito, young women around the city—he hasn’t followed anyone since he got married. This entity is more awake and intelligent and carries with it a light that’s gentle and warm. As he reaches Dharahara, he stifles the urge to look back and see what it is, if the presence is even tangible. But he’s afraid that as soon as he swivels his neck, the entity will disappear, and all he’ll see is the glum multitude that inhabits the city. He doesn’t want to jinx anything, so he keeps his head straight and continues walking. Something is about to happen: he feels it coming. Something is about to break open, and it has to do with the light that’s staying close to him, watching, observing. Where was this light thus far in his life? Why let him wander in the torturous landscape of his own mind all these years? He doesn’t know the answer.
As he climbs the long staircase to the top, and as he takes out the key, the knowledge dawns on him, gradually: what this force is or, rather, who this force is. He doesn’t need to look down at the street to confirm: now he’s certain who has been following him. His fingers tremble as he inserts the key into the padlock and twists it open. Don’t back out now, don’t back out now, he says to himself. And he has, he recognizes with a painful clarity, no choice but to allow this breakage to happen. He cannot stand in its way.
Below, the corner of Rukma’s eyes catches a movement. It’s a familiar figure. Didi. Rukma is confused. It’s a coincidence: Didi works nearby and is most likely out on an errand that has nothing to do with this building. But this conjecture is quickly abandoned when she sees Didi pause at the bottom of the building to gather her breath, then move toward the stairs.
Do Didi and Tarun meet here, instead of Bangemudha? Is this the house of a relative, perhaps, that Rukma isn’t aware of? But something is odd here, something calculated and sinister. It doesn’t take her too long to come up with a possibility that jolts her: Didi is in on Tarun’s secret. Then in rapid succession, her mind makes leaps. This is also possible: the kept wife or mistress is someone who’s been fixed for Tarun by Didi herself, which explains his reverence for Didi and the mild hostility Rukma sensed from Didi toward her. This is also not out of bounds: the mistress is someone from Didi’s village, a young woman who came here looking for work and found love. Didi thinks it’s not a bad match at all, Tarun and this girl, and she’s unhappy that Tarun caved in to Mahesh Uncle to marry someone else. It makes sense now: Didi didn’t attend Tarun’s wedding because she doesn’t want to recognize Rukma’s legitimacy. Tarun’s father and Amit and Sumit either don’t know about the kept wife, or they’re under strict injunctions not to go blabbering. At some point a conclusion could have been reached in that household: let there be an official wife; what difference does it make? Perhaps the stepmother, the fixer of this liaison, has been invited for tea today. The couple upstairs might be eagerly waiting for their favorite mother, their darling.
The City Son Page 15