Manil Suri - The City of Devi

Neither the night nor the heat has lifted when my eyes next open, but something has changed. Karun’s breath comes in rasps—he still holds me, but his body seems further away. Abruptly, he arches back his neck, and I feel the fullness of his manhood press into me. I think he’s in the midst of a dream, but through the darkness, I glimpse his eyes are open. He subsides, then pushes forward again, his whole body arching this time, his legs and torso meeting at the focal point of his groin. Seeing me awake, he buries his face in my neck and covers it with kisses. As he presses forth, he pulls me to him, so that my body bends against his in the same arc, like in the yoga asanas we once practiced. I feel his penis climb up my thigh.

His hands caress my breasts, his lips work down the hollow of my throat to my chest. Thrown off by his movements, my body nevertheless responds to his touch. He groans as I take him in my hand. I’m unsure what drives him, but I want him to continue, I will help any way I can.

That’s when I glance beyond. At first I think it’s just an aberration, the darkness massing together into a shadow more substantial. As my eyes adjust, I realize it’s Jaz. Naked and awake, engaging Karun in what way, I can’t exactly tell. Instantly, I retract. Karun tries to hold on to me. “Wait,” he gasps.

Jaz wraps an arm around Karun’s chest and draws him away towards his own body. “Wait,” Karun says again. “No, not yet.” His eyes close and his words trail off as he leans his head back. Jaz twists around as if preparing to devour him—clamping his mouth over Karun’s, silencing him before he can utter anything else.

For an instant, I watch as Karun lolls helplessly in Jaz’s control. Limbs flash, chests strain, muscles flex. This is the image I never had: what it looks like between the two of them. Not content to be just a spectator, I latch onto Karun’s waist. As their conjoined bodies thrust towards me, I grasp Karun again and guide him into myself. He cries out my name, his pelvis pushing forward, his shoulders tilting back.

Matching their rhythm proves elusive. I lose Karun, have to repeatedly tuck him back in. To my amazement, he neither wilts nor fades, unlike any of our previous attempts.

Perhaps Jaz decides my lack of synchronization hampers his efforts as well. He positions Karun prone over me, caging him against my person, splaying his hands on the floor as if he might escape. Lying under Karun, I now feel the sensations reach deep inside me—every time he presses in, every thrust that drives into his body. I try not to think of these thrusts, try to ignore the sounds from Jaz’s heaving frame. Instead, I concentrate on the rising throb of pleasure and pain within me, the same interplay I see mirrored on Karun’s face. The realization that he feels every stimulus when I do, endures a version of every sensation he inflicts, fuses my experience with his. As the tides gather and the wave begins to build, I have a flash of intuition. I suddenly know what it feels to be Karun—the passivity at the core of his being, his need to be a conduit, the passion he can experience only when thus initiated. I want to share this insight with him, assure him that I empathize, that I accept and forgive. But the wave is already too close, its waters too high—before we can slow down, its obliterating form thunders in. Karun’s features dissolve, my insides turn liquid, and as Jaz labors on, the two of us are simultaneously swept away.

Surely supernovas explode that instant, somewhere, in some galaxy. The hut vanishes, and with it the sea and the sands—only Karun’s body, locked with mine, remains. We streak like superheroes past suns and solar systems, we dive through shoals of quarks and atomic nuclei. In celebration of our breakthrough fourth star, statisticians the world over rejoice.

Afterwards, I lie on the mats as before, with Karun at my side. I savor the familiar smoothness of his ankle, the steady sound of his breathing, the reassurance of his fingers clasped with mine. A bubble of optimism buoys me. We will complete our journey to safety, set up a house in another city, live once again in normal times. Even the dream of realizing our family trinity seems within reach now—the door has opened to this opportunity, to finally trying for a child.

Then an alarming thought occurs to me. What if our trinity is already complete, with Jaz forming the third element? Surely he doesn’t plan on leaving—Karun would be unprepared to let him go anyway. More critically, wouldn’t the union we just experienced have been impossible without Jaz? Wasn’t he the catalyst, the very engine, without whom Karun and I would have never made it past the foothills of the slope we climbed?

I feel chilled, even though the air around remains as oppressive. I imagine a lifetime of sharing, of deference, of compromise, the role of a less privileged wife. What allowance would I get of Karun’s day, what part of his attention, his love, his life? Given Karun’s hopeless passiveness, wouldn’t I have to struggle with Jaz over every day, every minute? And sex—would it play out like tonight, Jaz calling the shots each time? The indispensable savior, the proud conqueror, riding in on his own wave a few seconds after mine?

The sky slowly lightens in the hole above us. I watch the dawn advance, swallowing the stars most weakened from their vigil through the night.

A TERRIBLE THIRST, much worse than the accompanying hunger, afflicts us all in the morning. We look longingly at the coconuts sprouting from the unreachable tops of the nearby palms, fantasizing more of their sweet juice than their meat. Jaz breaks into a cluster of shuttered stalls just off the beach, finding the first three completely stripped of their wares. In the fourth, he gets lucky while feeling around under the counter, discovering both a one-liter Pepsi bottle filled with water and loose Marie biscuits in a plastic bag—someone’s personal stash, perhaps. “Not quite Gluco,” he tells Karun as we eat the biscuits, and they both smile. I feel left out at the private joke, but nothing like the shock I experience when Jaz leans forward and plants a kiss on Karun’s lips.

“You shouldn’t mind him,” Karun says, while Jaz is off trying to break into another stall. “The Gluco biscuits—when we first lived in Delhi, we shared a packet for breakfast every day.”

I look at the sea, at the resurgent tide, at the frothing waves. Perhaps I need to take solace from their exuberance. Perhaps I need to tell him I can’t do this, he has to choose, pick a side. “He’s actually very nice. You’ll see when you get to better know him.”

As if to prove Karun’s point, Jaz returns with some salted gram he has found, which he divides between us, scrupulously to the last grain. “There’s a bit of water left, too,” he tells me, “if you want it.”

Jaz’s prediction of the beach narrowing quickly comes true—in fact, the sea sweeps right across our path along several stretches. The waves force us to clamber over the rocks stacked as reinforcement against the water. Behind the rocks rise walls, some topped with spikes and barbed wire, which enclose towering skyscrapers—or their bombed-out hulks. The barbed wire continues across the mouths of several of the lanes running perpendicular to the shore—a post-war addition, no doubt, to keep out beach riffraff like us.

The trio of fighter planes appears as we make our way over a particularly challenging tract of rock. They pass harmlessly overhead as we try to scramble up and flatten ourselves against the wall. “The enemy’s,” Jaz says. “I used to think that could only be Pakistan—now I’m not so sure. But we should be safe from them—they must be looking for something bigger to bomb.” Before I can offer a correction based on my personal experience, we hear a fourth jet—one with a lower-pitched drone (could it be the same one that shot at me on Marine Drive?). Fortunately, the wall has an overhang of sorts under which we can all squeeze in, so the pilot probably doesn’t see us. My unease is well-founded—seconds later, we hear him farther down the beach, strafing the rocks.