Anuradha Roy - An Atlas of Impossible Longing

“Well, life is always unexpected, isn’t it? Nothing happens as we expect or dream it,” she said, looking preoccupied. “Our chat will have to wait a bit — we should go in and see to that man — what’s his name, Harold? What can he be doing in there so long? I can’t believe a word he says, and he looks more sinister than anyone I’ve ever encountered. Mukunda, how can you work with such people?”

As if on cue, Harold walked into the verandah. He looked hot and irritable, brushing his hair and his tie free of dust. He had been ordered to find the deed or wheedle it out of the occupants and vanish with it, but given the size of the house this was a tall order, and he had obviously made no progress. Now he gave Bakul a belligerent look and said, “The place is a mess ma’am. I’m afraid it’s in no fit state to be bought or sold. An’ the papers, please. Show me the papers before I can say anythin’ about our decision.” Harold cast a glance in my direction for confirmation, saying, “Eh Mukunda, nuthin’ goes further without the papers, right?”

As he looked to me for agreement and support, I had an idea in one of those flashes that seem blindingly obvious later. Why had it not occurred to me before! Harold was relying on me to back him up: we had been on many similar assignments together, too many to count! He trusted me and assumed Aangti Babu did too. If I convinced him I was better suited to extracting the papers from Bakul, that my familiarity with the house and its owners would work where his threats and blandishments had not, and that I would deliver the papers on his behalf to Aangti Babu, it might suffice for the moment and remove him from the scene.

“The deed is not here. I’m sorry I haven’t found it,” Bakul said.

“Maybe we can, ma’am, me and my friend here.” Harold looked at me.

“You do need to show the deed to sell the house,” I said to her, and then to Harold, “I know this lady’s family. Aangti Babu asked me to follow up here because I inspected the property with him some years back … you know that. We couldn’t seal the deal at the time … ”

I looked at Bakul, carefully turning away from Harold so he could not see me signal to her with a look she knew from our childhood: “ Say nothing, trust me. ”

“Give me and my friend here a moment to discuss a couple of points,” I said to her. “Then we can reach some suitable decision on how to proceed.”

“I’ll wait inside,” she said. “For you and your friend .”

I took Harold aside. “Either she really hasn’t got the papers, or she doesn’t mean to part with them,” I said. “Whichever it is, we can’t force the thing out of her. She’s tough. I know how to handle this. We’ve got to take care. I know the family. I can convince her we’re genuine buyers, but it’ll take a while, she has to trust someone enough to fish out the documents. There’s no point us both hanging on here, she’ll feel even more intimidated and cautious than she is already. You go back and report to Aangti Babu. I’ll get the papers out of her or her people over the next couple of days, I’m sure of it.”

He looked doubtful for a moment, but the logic of the situation and of what I was saying, and the fact that I was Aangti Babu’s blue-eyed boy, were sufficient. He had an agile mind and did not vacillate. “O.K., m’n, best of luck,” he said, with a quick punch on my shoulder. “I’ll push off and tell the boss, but play it carefully, m’boy, miles to go before you sleep.” He waved me a goodbye and shuffled off towards the driveway. I followed to make sure he really was leaving.

I had done this kind of thing before in the course of my work, but I had never had a personal stake in any of it. By the time Harold’s leave-taking at the gate was done, I was exhausted by my arguing and trickery. My neck ached, and a spot behind my right eye throbbed with pain. I had almost forgotten that Bakul was waiting.

She had never liked to wait. As soon as she saw me approach, she said. “Have you managed to get rid of him? When did you learn to be so persuasive? Two men despatched inside an hour! Shall I call in the next buyer so you can work your charm on him too?”

“Can you be quiet for maybe a two-minute stretch?” I said.

She turned away, looking hurt. But I was too angry to stop.

“How dare you come here on your own? Yes, you can do everything, yes, you’re not afraid of anything, that’s how it’s always been. But would it have hurt to bring your husband along? Just as a prop, even if you don’t actually need him? Don’t you know how dangerous all this is? Property disputes attract dealers and thugs. Why couldn’t Nirmal Babu have come? Isn’t selling his wife’s home important enough? Staying back for a dog ! What if Harold had hurt you?”

It emerged as a tirade. She cut me short. “Dealers and thugs like you?” she said with her crooked smile.

“You can smile, Bakul, because you don’t know how rough it can get.”

“Baba!” she said. “Of course! You must have come because my father told you to. He thinks I can do nothing on my own, doesn’t he? I should have known it. I guessed something like this must have happened the moment I saw you, but you came with that other fellow and you looked like you wanted to buy me out! I wasn’t sure how things stood until I saw you fend off that Rathin Mullick.”

“Rathin Mullick is a lamb compared to Harold — the things Harold does — I can understand Nirmal Babu, he’s never lived in the real world,” I burst out again, “but your husband … I shouldn’t say anything about him of course, but all the same Bakul, how could he?”

“Why are you going on about a husband, Mukunda? Don’t you know … I mean, didn’t Baba tell you?”

“Tell me? Tell me what?”

She looked at my face and threw her head back and laughed. “Did you really think …?” she managed to say between bursts of laughter. “Oh, you look so … ” I knew I looked confused and angry, sweaty, dishevelled, and absurd. My impulse was to reach out and slap her face if she did not stop laughing. In the end she did.

“I have no husband, I never had one,” she said. “Didn’t Baba tell you the marriage was called off? I thought he wrote to you all the time! I thought you knew.”

“Called off?” I repeated, almost in a whisper.

“Yes,” she said, her impish smile back again. “They found out — that I’m not a virgin, that I slept with a married man — and they ran for their lives! The groom ran the fastest of all. I had only to swear one cousin to secrecy and tell her I had had an affair with a married man, and that was enough! With just seven days to go before the wedding, they called it off! I turned cartwheels for joy. Baba was livid; he muttered for weeks about what an archaic lot the groom’s family were, and what an escape for me. He blamed himself because the groom was some history teacher Baba had thought would be perfect for me. I don’t know why I ever agreed to the wedding — sometimes, living in Songarh with no change — such loneliness, such boredom, and no hope of release — sometimes I’d think anything would be better, even marrying a stranger. He looked pleasant enough and he lived in Bombay — but as the wedding day approached I felt I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. It all seemed too impossible and there was no other way of getting out of it but to spread the rumour and pray that it reached him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me? I was there at that time: I came to Songarh! I was there knocking about in some miserable hotel room, killing myself thinking of you with another man!”

I looked at her smiling face. I was furious: how she could be so light-hearted about something that had almost wrecked our two lives? How could I have gone all the way to Songarh and not actually met her, thinking she was married? How simple it would have been if I had not run away that morning! And how could she have been so stupid, never telling me what had happened? All those wasted years since that miserable spring when I lost her and my wife and my child all at once. What if Bakul and I had never met again?