Anuradha Roy - Sleeping On Jupiter

“A boy! And I’m a baby born yesterday, aren’t I? What is it to you if he hasn’t come? You don’t pay him, do you?”

“Pay him?” Badal stammered. “Why would I —”

“What would you pay him for? The money going down the drain is mine. He’s a waste of time, Babu. Look at me: now I have to wash the pans, make tea, collect money, attend to people — everything — did I hire the boy just so I would do his work for him?” He spotted Gouri faltering a few feet away. “Babu, I have customers, I’ve work to do.”

Badal turned and saw the customers Johnny Toppo was getting agitated about. He looked away to avoid meeting their eye. The garrulous fat one who had sat on his scooter the day before — the woman’s mouth opened and shut like a frog’s all the time and words, words, words, endless words spewed out. Pointless observations, prying questions. And that thin red-haired one who had mocked him at the temple. There were questions he needed to ask Johnny Toppo about Raghu, who had not been seen since the night Badal had spotted him with the monk. But not now, not with these women around. He walked off swiftly as Johnny Toppo shouted past him, “Chai! Chaaai!” putting on a kind smile for the two women to forestall a migration to some other stall.

Gouri had already decided to have his tea, however, and now she hurried towards him in her wobbling, lopsided way. She leaned against his handcart and called out, “Look, Latika, clay cups!”

Latika followed saying, “I’d give anything for some coffee.”

“Didi, biscuits? Will you have some biscuits also? Sweet and salt, jeera and elaichi?” Johnny Toppo pointed to the jars he had on his cart. His tea bubbled in a big dented saucepan that was leathery with old layers of burnt grease. A rag stained to dirty brown bandaged its handle. Johnny Toppo held the pan high up as he poured from it into the clay cups that he had lined up in a row. A finger of pale froth formed against the rims of the cups. It was a trick he had devised over years of practice, to half-fill the cups this way with froth.

Latika blew on her hot tea, dipped a chunky biscuit into it. It had an earthy crunch different from the packaged biscuits at home. Should she buy some to take with her? Of course it would not taste the same if it were eaten sitting alone at the coffee table in her seventh-floor flat, waiting for the phone to ring. It was different eating it here, out in the windy open, with Gouri next to her and the teaman crying “Chai, Chai!” every now and then. Soon the sun would begin its dip into the sea and the day would be over. She would not think of that. Gouri murmured, “The days go so fast.”

Johnny Toppo had no other customers. Even so, he kept stirring the pan of milky brown tea on his stove, his way of telling the world he was still in business. He talked to himself in a mutter. “I’ll sack the bastard, pity is the root of all trouble.” Then, switching thoughts, he hummed lines of songs that Latika tried to follow, blocking out Gouri’s chatter and every other sound. Was he singing of a village? Where was it?

Emerald green are the paddy fields, my love,

Black is the back of the crow,

But nothing is as dark or as deeply black

As those eyes that look at me now.

Your eyes are the light of my life, my love,

I am tied in the strands of your hair,

That red flower bush by the stream, my love,

It’s for you. I planted it there.

Latika wanted to ask him — why should she not ask him?

“Is that a folk song?”

“Ah Ma, it is nothing, I make these things up in my head.” Johnny Toppo laughed his gap-toothed laugh. “And they all have the same tune. There is only that one tune. It’s a tune from my village.”

He turned away, busying himself with soaking a stack of new clay cups in his bucket. Latika wondered why he wore a thick twist of cloth around his neck even when the day was so hot. That was another thing she wanted to ask him, but she could not.

“Mostly, you know, Ma,” he said over his shoulder, “I don’t even know what I’m singing. I never sang before, not until I left everything and came here.” He laughed again, his face creased, his eyes turned into lines between his crow’s feet, and Latika wanted to sit on his bench and ask him, What about the woman in the song? Who is she? Where has she gone?

But Johnny Toppo now had other customers and was asking if they wanted the sweet biscuits or the salty ones in exactly the tones he had put those questions to Latika and Gouri. Latika turned away, disappointed that his voice was so indiscriminately distributed. Her discontent returned and she wished again that her tea were coffee.

It was when they were drinking their second cups of tea that Latika tugged at Gouri’s hand and whispered, “Isn’t he. .?”

For a while, Gouri couldn’t tell what Latika had seen. “Who are you talking about?” And at that moment, she saw.

It was Vidya’s son, Suraj, idling at one of the stands. With a girl. The stallkeeper urged trinkets upon them, picking up one thing, then another. Latika saw him thrust by turn a stone temple, a sea lion, and a key-ring at the girl. Then a long shell necklace. The girl stared at it as if she had never seen a necklace before, turned away abruptly. The stallkeeper offered it to Suraj next, seeming to coax him into buying it. After some resistance, Suraj dug into his pocket, paid the man, then followed the girl. He held the necklace out to her, got no reaction. He said something, touched her elbow. She seemed to pull herself back to the present. She smiled at him and took the necklace.

“That isn’t Ayesha, is it?” Gouri adjusted her glasses. “I’m sure Ayesha has short hair. But maybe I’m mistaken. I have a bad memory for faces.”

“Of course it isn’t Ayesha, can’t you see?” Ayesha, Vidya’s daughter-in-law, was at least ten years older and ten kilos heavier than this chit of a girl who was now fingering the shells on the necklace.

“Can’t you see, Gouri! It’s the girl who was with us in the train!”

“In the train? What train?”

“God, Gouri! In our compartment! The train in which we came from Calcutta. That girl — you even spoke to her, you exchanged seats — the girl in our compartment who got off and never came back. Remember?”

Suraj and the girl began to stroll towards the tea stall and the women started away from it in a confused hurry. Johnny Toppo ran after them, scolding, “My money, my money!”

“We were going to have one more cup,” Latika said to him. “We weren’t leaving.” She searched her bag with an urgent hand for the right amount of money, keeping an eye on Suraj, telling Gouri to carry on ahead, placating the vendor as he eyed a wavering pair of customers at his stall and complained, “Quickly. My boy hasn’t come today, I’m managing alone.”

On their way back to the hotel the two women didn’t speak, too full of things to say. When they reached the hotel’s gate they looked at each other and Latika said, “Not a word about this. We can’t spoil the holiday for Vidya.”

“But Latika, maybe the girl’s just a friend of his. I thought she smiled politely, nothing more. You know how friendly children are with each other these days. Why the other day when —”

“Friendly! What’s she doing walking on the beach with a married man, making him buy her necklaces? Didn’t you see how come-hither she looked?”

“No, she didn’t. Really, Latika, you’re making too much of it.” Gouri said in a soothing voice. “Just because your —”

She stopped herself, but it was too late. Latika’s lips had tightened, her face had crumpled as if someone had let the air out of her. She straightened her back, said, “Never mind me.” She took a breath to steady herself. “Vidya doesn’t need to know about this right now. Forget that this ever happened.”