Anuradha Roy - An Atlas of Impossible Longing

“What’s the hurry?” he said. “Sit and smell the gardenia, how wonderful it is, and the raat ki rani … all my father’s night-flowers filling the air. Won’t you eat dinner and then go? Bakul, can’t we … ”

Before she could speak, I said, “I have a train to catch, I really must be going. But I’ll come again when I can, and if you need anything from Calcutta — books? Music?”

“I never asked,” Nirmal Babu said. “What was it that brought you here? You didn’t just come to see us, did you?”

“I did,” I smiled, not looking at Bakul. “Actually, I did come just to see you.”

* * *

The train rattled me back to Calcutta and I sat sleepless again, but this time barely taking in the landscape outside. I could think of nothing but the way Bakul had clung to me, trembling, refusing to let go. To think after all these years that it was not I alone who had yearned for us to be together again! I had dozed off by that lily pond after we made love, and had woken to see her looking at me with fierce attention. “How could you go off to sleep?” she had said. “When we have so little time together?”

She ran her fingers over my face. She bent over and kissed my closed eyelids. It felt as if a bird had brushed past them. It felt all wrong and entirely right all at once.

“That tickles,” I said, still drowsy.

“What are you thinking?” she said, in a voice barely audible.

“Nothing,” I laughed. “I’m thoughtless.”

She did not reply, but I could feel her eyes on me. I opened mine.

“What is it, Bakul?” I was half drugged with sleep.

“Haven’t we done something wrong?”

“Do you think so? Are you unhappy?”

“No,” she said vehemently. “Why should I be? I feel as if I had promised myself something all my life and now I’ve done it.”

A curious serenity now gripped me too. I twisted a strand of her hair in my fingers and said, “Then why ask me?”

“We won’t tell a soul, will we?” she continued. “I don’t want you going and doing anything stupid. You have a wife and child.”

“I know,” I said, shutting my eyes again and pulling her closer. “I know. And you’ll probably have a husband and child soon.”

* * *

I now lay on my jolting train bunk, smiling happily into the darkness. After all these years I was sure we still felt a connection no-one else in the world did. Nothing else mattered, not even having to leave Bakul.

The other part of my brain was occupied with more mundane matters. I knew I had to face Aangti Babu. What would I say to him? I had not done his bidding. Far from intimidating Nirmal Babu, I had not even managed to mention the topic. I had not gone to meet Harold and Bhim or whichever hitmen were plaguing my old home, had not given them further instructions; they would certainly tell Aangti Babu about my laxity, or treachery even. Aangti Babu would suspect that I had struck some sort of deal with the inhabitants of the house. He trusted no-one in the end and had a shrewd hypothesis brewing for every possibility.

As the train took me closer to that world of wheeling and dealing and finance, and further away from Nirmal Babu, from Bakul and my old home, it became clear to me that I would have to think of something to subvert Aangti Babu’s plans to throw them out and take over the house. But what?

I must have drifted into sleep, for I awoke with an idea that made me shoot up in the bunk, heart racing, an idea that was almost absurd in its simplicity.

“You didn’t notice ,” my wife pouted in the way she knew I found irresistible. “The little one is standing up. You should have seen the look on his face when he did it!”

It was the evening of my return from Songarh.

“Oh,” I said. “It had to happen the only two days I was away.”

I picked him up to place him in my lap and tried to pay attention to my wife, who was chatting on, providing me with news of all that had happened in my absence. The milkman’s mother, a fat old lady in her sixties, had taken to delivering our daily milk and diluted it with more water than her son used to; the mango tree in the patch downstairs was finally flowering — how long had it been there? Forever, wasn’t it? And, oh yes, a cat seemed to have littered in the back verandah. Is that meant to be a good omen or bad? Champa’s mother says it means there will be more children in this house, isn’t that funny?

I thought I was listening to her, but I must have been looking far away because she stopped abruptly and said, “Tell me, what did I just say?”

“You said ‘Tell me what did I just say.’”

She frowned and said, “Don’t be annoying. Tell me what I just said.”

“Tell me what … ”

She went into peals of laughter and picked up a pillow and threw it at me. “No, I mean it,” she said. “You weren’t listening to anything.”

It is true, I wasn’t. I had been filled with a kind of wild elation since making love to Bakul and it was impossible for me to take in anything else. I felt no guilt or self-loathing, I did not see it as any kind of unfaithfulness to my wife. Making love to Bakul was an inevitable and self-contained event, natural and obvious. I was wrong, of course, but my mind had no space or time for other thoughts that evening.

“I was, it’s just that … ” I said, sounding very contrite, but my mind was racing ahead. I removed my boy from my lap and continued, “I have been thinking on this trip. I had an idea. Tell me what you think.”

She settled down with a grave look, understanding the seriousness of being consulted. I now think back with pity about that day. She was so certain all my decisions were made with a view to taking care of her and my son, that I would never do them the least injury.

“This house,” I said. “As you know, it’s not ours. It’s been a long time, six years, and Suleiman Chacha has not returned, nor so much as written after the first couple of years. It is almost ours, but not really.”

“Yes?” she said, looking a little worried.

“Perhaps Chachi and he are both dead. Who knows when some heir of his that we don’t know of may turn up and claim it? I’ve learned enough of my trade now: these things happen all the time, and then out of the blue we’ll be on the street. I want to start work on my own. We don’t need such a big place, just the three of us. Let us sell this while we can and move somewhere smaller, and that way everything will be secure and I will have some excess money to put into a business of my own.”

I waited for her to react.

“Has this anything to do with Songarh?” she said, suspicious.

In my years with her I had reminisced about the place, but my memories had always been well edited, or so I supposed.

“In a way,” I said in a meditative voice. “It made me think. Look what happened there, one brother betraying another and leaving him homeless. Who can you trust if not your own brother? And here we are not related to Chacha, we are not even the same religion!”

“But I like this house. I like the verandah and my lemon tree. And what about Champa’s mother and the neighbours? Where will we live? Somewhere strange and new and small! I don’t want the money.”

“It’s not just the money. We may lose both the money and the house. Now that many years have passed since Partition and things are not so good for Bengalis in East Pakistan, some of them are coming back. I’m just trying to think ahead.”

She lay down with a sigh and buried her face in a pillow. “I don’t know what has got into you,” she said in a muffled voice. “You go away for two days and come back with strange ideas. Why are you consulting me? Would you even listen if I said no?”