by Shruti Swamy
And then, the slipping. I could see it happen before it did. But I needed something, some courage. I climbed up and brought the bottle down. I stood it alone on the counter. Looked at it. Some days the sight of the bottle was the most beautiful thing I would look at all day. Rectangular with rounded corners, the lettering was in big, blocky letters, that jaunty blue cap. The liquid in it was entirely clear, just like any piece of the sky would be, if you separated it from the rest. First just a smell, bracing, with my nose to the mouth of the bottle. Then the small beautiful first taste, like a door opening. Then there was a second taste. Then I would put the bottle down. I may even go so far as to put the bottle back on its shelf. I would pop the blue bead into my mouth and suck it as though it were a candy necklace. But the thought of Krishna often made me ashamed. I spat the blue bead out and let it dry against my chest. I climbed back up and took another few swallows standing on the counter. Put it back in the cabinet. Climbed back down. Stood with my hands braced against the counter, with my eyes closed. There was the perfect state in which I could still paint, that dulled me but didn’t make me sloppy. I could still paint and I was happy. I felt truly happy. But not enough alcohol and I would feel itchy, physically itchy to drink more. And too much made me want to lie down on the floor and watch the sun slide across the ceiling until noon or later. It was the difference between two shots and three, or three shots and four, or the difference between nine sips and ten, or nine little sips then one big sip and ten normal sized sips. I found the state often, but only too late, after I had already drunk more and was only able to pass through it. Like being on a train that would slow down but not stop at your station, and you were late, and in a panic you would watch the station go by. I tried to keep track of the magic number, but it was a shifting target: one day the amount I drank sent me into a stupor, the next day it was not even enough to get me drunk.
I lost many days.
I found myself one afternoon at a park; I had an idea that I had wanted to be around people, not to talk to them, but just to be near them, and to see their faces. It had gotten warm. I sat down in the grass. It was nice to feel the sun on my arms and the grass itching against my legs and palms. There was a couple sitting on a blanket and I sat down behind them, just to hear them speak. From where I was sitting I couldn’t see their faces, only the way their bodies turned to each other, like matching parentheses. The man with his hand in the woman’s black hair. I didn’t want that man—or any man’s—hands in my hair. Just to hear her voice moving above the sounds that children made on the playset, the tinny music projected from a cellphone some feet away, the bird chatter that rose like mist from the ground and the trees. To know that on this afternoon a man and a woman sat in a park and talked about her mother.
After a while they lay on their backs on the blanket and dozed. Three separate enterprising people offered to sell me a weed cookie, or a weed brownie, or a sandwich made with weed hummus, all of which I declined. Each time a person approached me it was a shock to remember that I existed in the human world, along with everyone else. I didn’t feel like a human at all. I felt like a dog that sniffs around and eats pizza crusts he finds in the trash. Or, less: a bird and her crumb. Or maybe I was the worm.
It was evening when I woke up from the chill and walked home. The fog was coming in. In my mouth, a metallic taste hummed, and my body felt strangely heavy. When I got home, I realized that all of my plants were dead, all but one: a scrappy fern that was holding on for dear life. I stroked his yellowing leaves with my thumb. I took him to the sink and ran the tap over him to wet down his soil and let the water drain through. The rest I couldn’t look at.
I have strong thoughts.
I have strong thoughts.
I have strong thoughts.
My hands shook. They were lazy, distracted, like two toddlers who didn’t listen to their mother. Big, square hands, ill-suited to the delicate work I asked from them. They wandered. They weren’t mine.
In front of the Rothko I sat and sat. It had never looked more beautiful to me. It existed outside of space, time, pain, and longing. It was just itself, just color. Blue and red, and the color they made when they touched. If I could understand it—I felt like I must. I sat there and tried and tried to understand it. At the same time it was clear to me that there was nothing to understand. It had nothing to explain and needed no explanation. Yet I felt like I must say something for it. My mind twisted itself against the problem, knotting tighter and tighter, and I began to cry. I was not sad, only tired of not knowing. Rothko was gone and could say nothing now, and even if he could, he may not know the answer himself. In fact, I knew even he wouldn’t know, because there was no one, no answer. There wasn’t even any question.
I felt a gentle hand on the small of my back and started. I thought it was the guard, who eyed me wearily as I entered the gallery, come to ask me to leave. But it was Krishna.
“I thought I might find you here.”
“Were you looking for me?”
“You were looking for me.”
I wiped my face with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “I don’t want a riddle right now.”
“What do you want, Radika?”
I shook my head.
“Have you ever been to the Rothko Chapel in Houston?”
“No.”
“You’d like it so much. It’s a very clean, simple space. A person can feel very quiet there.”
“Yeah, but you’re in Houston.”
“Some people can even feel quiet in Houston,” he said. I didn’t want to look at him; I didn’t want to see myself reflected in his face. I wanted to delay that moment for as long as I could. I didn’t know exactly what I would see there, but it would be one of two colors, pity or disgust, or some blend. I saw this color on so many faces now, as they passed me, if they saw me, and I didn’t want to see it on his. “There are skylights that sort of diffuse the light over the paintings. The paintings change as the light moves. Imagine it. Light paints them, and cloud. They exist in the world and outside of it.”
“Rothko died, didn’t he? He killed himself before the chapel was finished. How peaceful could it be?”
“It’s different from this one. There’s nothing violent about it. He doesn’t distract you with color. He’s not asking.”
“I’ve seen pictures.”
“Pictures aren’t enough sometimes. You should go.”
“Okay, I’ll go. Someday I’ll go. Happy?”
Very quietly, he said my name. The same way a mother said “sweet pea” to her kid. But I didn’t want his gentleness: didn’t need it, didn’t ask for it, didn’t deserve it, couldn’t use it. It was like a birthday gift for a dead girl. I got up and began to walk away, and I knew he was following me though I couldn’t hear his cat steps. I walked down the huge granite staircase that always felt to me like the staircase of an Egyptian tomb. Then I began to run. I ran across the lobby and pushed the door open. It was cold outside, and the street was crowded. Where was I running? I crossed the street and stopped. I was standing in front of a fountain that spurted cold, dirty water. I sat down on the ledge of it and stuck my fingers in. I was waiting for Krishna to come, and he came, and sat down beside me. I took those deep, jagged breaths until I was calmer. Then I was calm. I looked at him. He was wearing saffron: cotton T-shirt, colored jeans. He was the most vivid blue I had ever seen.
Wedding Season
The bitter smell of the mosquito coil woke her, just before dawn. Tejas had not slept deeply. But Al was already up, standing at the dark window.
“What time is it?”
“Five o’ seven,” said Al. She was wearing her flannel pajamas, which looked so out of place here. The walls were painted a sick green and it was cold. Through the window, Tejas could see the city’s rooftops, shining flatly with the last of the moon.
“Why didn’t the alarm go off?”
“Broken maybe.”
“You should have woken me up.”
“We
slept bad last night,” said Al, and shrugged. She sat down on the bed. Her hair was rough and gold, even in this light, as Tejas’s eyes adjusted. She was wearing a gray wool sweater, which itched Tejas’s bare arms as she held her and kissed the top of her head.
“Your hair’s sticking straight up in the back,” said Al, smiling, and put her fingers in it to smooth it. “You hungry?”
“It’s too early.”
“Me neither.”
They dressed and left the room. The rickshaw dropped them at the north gate, from there they had to walk. Dawn was rising over the city, the sky was pink with it through all the pollution. It smelled, even here, like rubber burning. A man followed them with a basket full of snow globes, called after them down the long gravel path though they didn’t heed him, and kept walking with a deliberate quietness. He held one out to them, and called to them as they bought their tickets, a little plastic dome with a model of the Taj inside, chips of whirling glitter. Then they passed through the gate and the gardens and were rid of him. Early, but still a crowd was gathered. The sound of the morning call to prayer spread thinly out.
“It doesn’t even snow here,” said Al.
“People will buy anything, I guess.” Tejas said. She examined Al, standing with a hand on her hip. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she was wearing jeans and that rough sweater. The color had come into her cheeks. She looked like a farm girl. “If you sell it hard enough.”
They hung around, at that gate, for a few minutes, then went in. It wasn’t as beautiful as Tejas remembered. She had remembered the feeling of walking through a dream, being lifted out of herself. Here, she felt ordinary, was ordinary. Al took a picture with her digital camera, examined the screen, frowned, and deleted it. By the time they left it was mid-morning, and the crowd had swelled. Still, the same vendor who had followed them on the way in remembered them, and called out to them again. He shook a globe in his hand. Tejas wanted to say something nasty to him in Hindi, and began to prepare the words on her tongue. But Al turned to him, and put her hand out. “How much?” she said.
“Three hundred for you, madam.”
Al went to her money belt, and counted it out.
“He’s ripping you off,” Tejas hissed.
“It’s okay,” said Al. She gave him the money.
“Why encourage him?”
“I want it,” said Al.
The man handed her the snow globe. He had beautiful hands, pink palms, thin wrists, expressive hands. She tried to look at his face, his eyes, to find a clue of what his life may be like. Agra was a desolate city, they had found, killing time when they arrived the day before but couldn’t yet check in at the hotel. The landscape was gray and strangely industrial, and they had strayed into a part of town that seemed to regard them with suspicion. They kept a steady stream of banal conversation up between them, which grew more desperate as time went by. They had reached the end of the world, here, cold and dusty. Tejas felt she was losing the thread of herself.
Nothing in the man’s eyes gave him away. He didn’t smile, met her gaze evenly, didn’t flinch, didn’t turn lascivious. He was a good man, thought Tejas suddenly. Al shook the snow globe in her hands as they walked away, the water frothing at the top, the shards of glitter spinning crazily, nothing like snow, anyway.
In Goa they lived for a week in a little hut, right on the beach. It was deserted this time of year, close to the rains, they could feel it gathering. The air they moved through was hot and thick, had a physical weight, pushing against them like gravity. The beauty of it: they could hold hands, kiss if they wanted to, there was no one to see them, and perhaps no one would have suspected them even if they saw. Still, they were cautious. Tejas waded into the water while Al stayed onshore. The water was thick with salt, and soft, luxuriously so, like bedsheets for the rich. She was wearing a one-piece, modestly cut. She looked out at the shore, where Al was. She wore a skirt over her swimsuit and had taken her shoes off. They were separated by ten, maybe fifteen feet, but Tejas could see the ten flicks of color on the points of her feet, orange. A few paces away, a cow curled up like a dog and slept in the sand. The palm trees at the shore all leaned in toward the sea. Tejas waved at Al. “Why don’t you come in?” she called.
“Later,” said Al. She pointed at the things they had brought, their money belts and books and sunscreen and the keys to their little hut.
“There’s no one here.”
“Better to be careful.”
Tejas nodded. For a minute, facing out to sea, she was alone on all sides. The ocean felt different from the Pacific, more forgiving, and the air was thicker than back home. Almost like she was dreaming, as she dove in, feeling alone, and the water against her. She closed her eyes and moved in it, kneeling in it, wetting her hair. The water was so beautifully warm she felt as though she were dancing in it, and knelt again, bobbed up, laughing, alone. Like a creature moving, moving by instinct. Blind against the water, she knelt again, dove down into it, the shallow tide. The pure, hollow space of herself was filled with nothing, not even worry.
She wiped the salt out of her eyes and looked back at Al. A group of local boys had appeared some ways off, kicking a soccer ball between them. Al watched them with interest. They were all teenagers, the boys, wearing shirts and shorts and no shoes, skinny calved. One would kick the ball into the surf, and the waves would wash it back out. A massive kick and they ran, moving brightly, bounding like dogs.
Al was up. She had met the ball, and kicked it back to them. The boys gave out a cry of surprise, and pleasure, the waves swallowed their words, but the tone Tejas could hear, and the edges of Al’s laughter. Then they absorbed her into the game.
Tejas left the water. She sat on the shore and dried herself, rubbing her arms down too hard, and when Al returned to her, laughing and sweating, Tejas took her polished foot in her hand and pressed it.
“You left our stuff.”
“I didn’t go very far.”
“They could have robbed us.”
“Don’t,” she said, and tugging her foot away.
“My other cousin married a white girl.”
“That’s different, though, isn’t it?”
“Maybe. Anyway, he was on my dad’s side.”
They lay in bed, long after dark, with the mosquito netting around them. There was a dog barking, the hum of the fan, and the swooping, eerie call of some night bird. In the dark, Al’s legs showed blueish white.
“Can I confess something to you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I used to watch straight porn. Does that gross you out?”
“Did you like it?”
“I don’t know,” said Al. “Sort of, I guess.”
“It doesn’t gross me out,” said Tejas. “Bertie?”
“Yes?”
“Will you tell me you don’t love me anymore?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just have this feeling, like I want to hear you say it.”
“But it’s not true.”
“I know it’s not.”
The fan switched off, and the light shining in from the yard out front went dark. The room became hot and still. Tejas was lying on her side, facing away from Al. All at once the dogs were barking in a frenzy outside.
“Again?” said Al. “They’re really going to get us now.”
“There’s the net.”
“There’s holes in it.”
“They like me more,” said Tejas. “Anyway, would you say it?”
“I don’t know why you want me to.”
“Bertie,” said Tejas, “please?”
“Alright,” said Al. Tejas could hear her inhale as she sat up. “I don’t love you anymore. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Tejas. She tried it on. It felt worse than she imagined. “Okay.”
“You’re feeling sorry for yourself,” said Al, wonderingly.
Tejas had fallen in love with Al quite suddenly, and noticed it only one morning before she wa
s about to leave for work. It was raining outside, and Al was drinking from a mug of half-coffee, half-milk at her kitchen table, reading a three-day-old newspaper. She went to work later than Tejas, and had slow, warm mornings that Tejas envied from the start, though she came home later and more tired than Tejas too. It was nothing, a smile, as she glanced up from the page.
“You’re going to bike?”
“I guess so. Otherwise I’ll be late.”
“Be careful.” Then she said, “What?”
“What what?”
“You’re looking at me funny.”
Tejas felt uncontrollably shy and looked at her feet. “Nothing,” she said. Two weeks later, it was Al who held her close while they were dancing, pressing her damp cheek to Tejas’ own, and shouting the three good syllables in her ear.
Walking together became normal, holding hands. Al stood up straighter and moved through a crowd like a blade, pulling Tejas through. They were in the park for a free concert, and Tejas took off her shoes, the grass crushed cool under her feet. The music moved her. On stage, a man playing the evening ragas of her babyhood. He held the long instrument against his body, moving his fingers quickly up and down the neck. Al’s fingers moved in unconscious sympathy with the musician’s. How solidly she stood on the ground, never resisting. “You like it?”
“I like it!”
Eyes filled with each other. Love, perhaps, not a feeling, but a way of looking. Flooding open.
Bombay was hot, and thickly moist, dusty, crowded, and endless. It was impossible to get a grasp on time and space. You could spend an hour pushing through just a single mile of the city, fall off the map and spend hours trying to find your way back on it, suddenly it was dark, and the dogs followed you hopefully, and little kids too. Deeper and deeper the road ran, into what felt like a village, where shacks with open doors showed rooms lit in harsh fluorescent and the flicker of the TV, and mosques leaked prayer into the hot night. Their entourage had fallen away, and there was no way out but to retrace their steps: the night gave them a sense of anonymity and a piercing sense of aloneness that was not unpleasant. They found their way back to a busy road, and hailed a rickshaw, which took them home.