Anjali Joseph - The Living

There was a sound — a motor, and an automated glugging. I looked out from the balcony and saw a borewell. Near the house, the tank and a young woman in a wrapper washing cucumbers.

You’re done? Deepak asked.

I looked behind the temple. An electricity pole leaned like a falling cross into a field of banana trees. And amid a sea of sugar cane, a single gulmohar.

Then I saw the ruined house, behind the tree.

There, I said. I just want to go and look at …

I came down the steps and set off. A breeze was blowing. I shivered. I should have brought a shawl, I said. Winter’s starting.

It’ll get cold after Diwali, Deepak said.

Yes.

Why did they have the wedding now?

Something in his family. His brother’s moving, so they wanted someone at home.

We passed the woman at the tank, and she looked up. Deepak greeted her. She smiled at us. Behind her house, a path led out to the ruin. But the forest had retreated. Now it was an island.

What is it, this way?

A place we used to play as children, I said.

Silent, faithful, he walked beside me, and didn’t point out that we should return for breakfast, so we could get ready to leave.

We turned off the track, and there it was: the ruin, and, in front of it, the well. As we neared, pigeons flew up from inside.

Has someone cleaned it up? I wondered.

Cleaned what?

This well. It used to be old and blocked, dirty …

We reached it, and looked down. Yes, it was clean. There was a little ornamental ledge inside that I’d forgotten. It looked like a balcony on a haveli. Out of it a young peepal tree was growing, and the pigeons perched there. Below, small birds sang happily. The water smelled fresh.

It looks in use, Deepak said.

Yes.

Do you want to sit for a minute?

Yes, I said. We sat on the remains of the old wall, looking across the fields. I saw the temple’s flag.

You found me yesterday, I said. But I’m not drinking again, I want you to know that.

My son’s reasonable, mild face.

You were the one, I began. The last time, before I stopped. I’d never discussed it with him. That time I was sick at home, I said.

He said nothing. I heard the dry, rhythmic sound of grasshoppers, then a songbird, wind in the fronds of a coconut palm.

It was after I’d been drinking for months with Borkar and Satpute, after Ratna had left. I’d begun to feel it was time to take control. I experimented with not drinking for a while. And then, certain that it was in fact fine, and there was no problem to speak of, one evening I went drinking homebrew with them, talked God knows what rubbish — I try not to think what, if anything, I told them — bought another bottle of haathbhatti, came home, and finished it. It was still early. She looked at me and went out. Deepak was home studying. I put on the radio, made a lot of noise, talked to myself, sat down with the newspaper, and began to be sick in the corner.

The odd thing is that while I was being sick, which went on intermittently for a long time, I was aware of myself. Not exactly of what was going on. For instance, I had no thought of getting up to go outside. Yet I kept bending down and continuing neatly to vomit quantities of acidic water in the corner. After it began Deepak was sitting next to me with a bucket, wiping my mouth clean. You’re fine, he kept saying. You’re fine. You’re all right. Of course I am, I said once or twice, rather haughtily. What was his problem? You carry on, I added, continuing to leak. I hadn’t eaten — probably that’s where things had taken a turn for the worse.

After some time, I’m not sure how long, but I remember being surprised at the voice on the radio and what it said the time was, I had finished. Without further ceremony, I went to sleep. The next day, at first I felt things had gone off rather well. Yes, I’d drunk a little too much. But I was absolutely fine. But a creeping sense of shame began to overtake me, and by the afternoon, as I carried on working, only half aware of what was happening, I began to remember, with hot surges of horror, things I might or might not have said to Borkar and Satpute near the old godown — about Ratna, among other subjects.

Deepak went to school that day, and behaved normally in the evening. To repay him for his care I was particularly ill-tempered and gruff. My wife ignored me. I pretended not to notice. Rather than remembering the things I had said, I remembered my friends’ faces, amused and distorted by drinking, shouting, and boasting. How much had I given away? What was the point of keeping it a secret, all that time, sad and reduced by it, only to spurt it out?

During the next few days the episode faded, but I no longer wanted to meet the person who came out when I’d been drinking. A year later, Deepak went away to study in Pune, and then to work. He found his wife, my daughter-in-law. They were training at the same hotel.

You know, I said, looking out at the fields of sugar cane, the year before you went to Pune. The last time I was drunk.

The sun was hazing over the fields, and it was starting to become warmer. But the year was changing; there had been a chill in the morning, no question about it.

You looked after me, I said. I was — I was sick in the corner of the room.

I heard the sound of the well, its old pump, the busy water.

The last time, I said, before I stopped drinking. Before you went to Pune.

I don’t remember, Deepak said.

Yes you do. That time I was sick.

He shook his head. No, he said. I don’t remember this at all.

Again I heard the pump, saw, oh, a yellow butterfly, and heard in the background the well, busy, clean. A songbird punctuated the voice of the water with a trill. Ahead, a flash of impossible blue. A kingfisher had flown to an electric wire. It folded its splendour.

The moment unfurled, like pages in an open book.

A few days later, after we’d been home for a while, when we were having lunch, I said to her, We should have had a daughter.

She looked at me. We had never discussed my escapade with Suresh on the evening of the wedding. When Deepak is there he cushions me from his mother, and his mother from me. Or maybe she just didn’t care. The whole wedding had passed off chaotically. The bridegroom’s father liked a drink, it turned out, and some of his family had had to take him away and put him to bed when he was trying to dance with one of the neighbours’ daughters.

Deepak told me all this on our way home from the Narsoba mandir. So the party became interesting just as I left, I said. He smiled, then laughed.

My wife now smiled slightly. This is where Deepak gets it from, the ability to remain light-hearted. Though in him it is real amusement. In her, something more like irony. Yes, she said, We should have had a daughter.

It’s not such an outlandish thing to say, I said.

No no.

There would have been someone … I said. I thought, someone who always loved me.

She smiled. Yes, she said, we should have had a daughter.

I said, You always –

I always what?

You always just agree. But it isn’t really that you agree. You just say something and underneath — I said. I shoved away my plate. I need — I said.

Silence. Outside the door I heard a bird singing loudly.

I need affection, I said. I felt terribly stupid, then angry. I need to talk to someone. This –

You’re unhappy with me? But she wasn’t worried. She was just getting things clear.

I don’t know, I said. Perhaps I’m being a fool. If only someone would comfort me, I thought. I said, I know I haven’t been the perfect husband.

She got up to take away the plates. I don’t think about it, she said.