Anjali Joseph - The Living

I keep thinking about death, as though death were the answer to life, an answer that removed the uncertainty. But maybe simply to be answered is consoling. She knows this, and when she is angriest with me she says nothing. The timing is confusing. It’s not straight after I’ve done something I shouldn’t. For example, nothing happened immediately after the episode with Ratna. Though my wife didn’t, I think, know about it, but she might have, for superstitiously I find it hard to believe she doesn’t know everything I do and think. And then, at times, when I realise I can pass unnoticed, get away with things, I become callous and think I don’t need her approval. That’s when she stops paying me attention, and I suffocate. It’s not that she stops talking, or stops cooking, nothing obvious. She doesn’t sound angry or depressed. I just stop existing.

It’s a living death. She is still there, but the invisible current that irritates me, the thread between me and her, is not only gone but it’s as though it never had been.

The first time it happened, after Ratna, I watched myself, as though I were my own ghost; I pitied my lumpy existence as I shambled from my room to the kitchen. This poor fool, this clod of matter. He had just enough spark of consciousness to suffer from the hostility of everything that was not him.

Even now, I did whatever I could to annoy her, to get a reaction. I made a noise when getting up at night. I banged the bathroom door. I dropped the soap. I talked to myself.

What’s the matter? I said loudly the next afternoon. We were sitting silently in front of the television. The news was on, and a reporter was talking about the rape of that child, in Kolhapur. There’d been an outcry, and the police said they had a suspect.

Why are you watching this? I said. It’s depressing. I turned off the television.

She looked at me without anger.

What’s the matter? I approached, put my face close to hers, felt her forehead. You seem ill, I’m worried about you! I said. I peered into her face. What’s wrong?

After we had been home a day she relented. I knew it wasn’t because of my manoeuvres. I didn’t care. All that mattered was that she relented. It’s not that she is unable to maintain her solitude, or that she gets angry — that would be a victory.

I think what happens is that her belief in her rightness wavers. She isn’t sure whether she should, after all, feel sorry for me. Her compunction, her being a good person, or is it her weakness, I don’t care, it gives her doubt, it creates a chink. After all, I see her consider, the fair part of her, which is enormous, which has shaped all our lives, after all, perhaps I should come back. Perhaps he needs me.

In this way she never gets whatever it is that she needs; she is always brought back to earth, to the ugly world of truck horns and the cracked plastic bucket; the groove in the latrine floor that never looks clean; to our pots and pans that are blackened and wearing out; to my inadequacies, which never come to a final crisis, but simply limp on. I do it to her every time. And then I breathe again, and am comforted, and insensitive, as before.

Shouldn’t you meet the doctor? she said.

I pretended not to hear.

About your problem, she went on.

I raised my head. I’d just sat down, after going out to check whether I needed to go and finding, no, not really. It’s not as bad when I’m working. Perhaps it’s all in the head after all, the problems of my cock. I looked vaguely at her and went back to sewing on a belt.

There’s a new doctor in the clinic, she said the next evening, the clinic near the workshop.

Oh?

Yes. He sees patients after five.

I felt a shiver of anxiety, down there. I’d gone to see the doctor once before, when I stopped drinking. All kinds of health problems began then. My back started to hurt; one knee became weak. My stomach roared with acidity. The doctor was a young man, new to the practice and the area. He didn’t last. He told me the drinking had caused the problems. I said more likely it was the stopping. Still, something told me it might be an idea to take a break.

That was the start of old age. Perhaps I was merely accepting the inevitable.

What was the point of doctors? I had to pay him so that he’d tell me I was getting older, I should eat on time, take exercise, and so forth. Things anyone knows.

On Sunday I heard my wife saying to Prakash, Talk to him. He should see someone, about his problem.

I don’t have a problem! I shouted from the inside room, startling my grandson. I’m going out, I said.

But Anil is here, said my wife’s voice behind me. It was no use. In the moment of losing my temper I saw the next step, which was to walk out. I took it. Even as I began to march off in the direction of my usual walk I thought that it would have been possible to react otherwise. But I hadn’t. I felt defeated, and irritated. It was too hot for all this, and I’d eaten well at lunch. I carried on walking, and salty sweat ran in a line down my neck.

I found myself going towards the workshop. That same dusty lane, and a page of a newspaper blowing outside it. I turned in a different direction, into back streets. Before long I was passing Ratna’s house. How treacherous of my feet to lead me here. I hadn’t thought of her in a long time. The door was a different colour. Was it the same one? Yes. A child came out, and stared at me. I resumed walking. The things your family drives you to. If they could only let me be as I was, we would all get along. And if they fixed the small things they ought. My wife has few flaws, but it’s exhausting to live with someone who’s always right, someone who’s so self-sufficient. Since the time we were first married, she’s kept things to herself, what things I wouldn’t know, but there’s been a part of her that wasn’t available to me. She liked to spend time alone. Everyone in the house used to comment on it. She’d go to wash clothes, and would be some time returning. I wondered if she had a friend she talked to, or even a man she was meeting.

One day my sister-in-law told us all, laughing, that she’d seen my wife sitting under a tree near the river, just staring. It became a joke.

What do you do, when you go off? I asked her, and she only smiled, or waved a hand, as though she wasn’t to be questioned.

Over time you get used to the unknown areas of the person you live with. They become familiar, or that’s what you think.

I seemed to have brought my wife on this walk. I turned, no longer angry, and began to go home. I saw things: a hoarding for a new film with Akshay Kumar, a myna sitting on top of a wall, chattering, looking at me with friendly brown eyes; the carcass of a crow on the road, worms coming out of it. I would forgive my family, I decided, despite their lack of respect and their annoying behaviour. Also, it was time to get home in case I needed to piss. I walked a little faster, and passed the market, and the office with the black glass window, the white lettering, Dr Nitin Sonawane.

They had to leave, my wife said when I returned.

But they hardly got here, I said. Did you all have tea?

There’s some in the pan, she said.

*

That night, returned from the outhouse, I said into the darkness, It’s true, it is bothering me. I settled heavily on to the bed. I’m so tired, I said.

The silence was attentive.

You want me to say you’re right, is that it? I said. I feel very cranky, I added after a pause, perhaps unnecessarily. I sighed loudly. The weight of the world, existence, etc.

What will a doctor do anyway? I said.

The silence had a quality. It wasn’t sullen, or expectant.

I said, I could go and see him, I suppose.