Last Labyrinth Page 12

She was made for the hills. She laughed at little things, talked a lot. I discovered the fineness of her Urdu. But her Urdu also brought, gliding into the firelit evenings, the ghost of Aftab, until one evening I had to ask, ‘Did he teach you?’

  ‘Yes.’ After a pause she added, ‘Is he still your rival?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Are you still fighting with him, if not for his company for... for something else that is...?’

  ‘That is his?’ I finished the sentence for her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But are you his?’

  ‘Am I not?’

  ‘You don’t sound certain.’

  ‘I am not certain.’

  That did not set me at rest. If she was not Aftab’s nor, perhaps, was she mine. To lift my spirits, I drank.

  Then one evening, when I began my drinking she said she too would drink. It was the first time she had asked for a drink since that evening at the Intercontinental. I was surprised, happy. Buoyed up with whisky, when I moved alone across moonless skies, I had never been sure where she stood. Curled up on the frayed velvet arm chair, her eyes fixed on me, she had bothered me at times. I was glad, therefore, that she too was coming where I went every cold evening.

  She drank easily with just that extra swiftness that marks out the novice. She held to me the empty glass, the fire and the alcohol suffusing her face with a new glow. She stared at me, her eyes black, unfathomable, shining in the firelight.

  When was it, how many drinks later, when I imagined myself at last aloft from the dark planet, when was it that, naked, she walked unsteadily to a window, peered into the darkness, tapped the glass panes as though she knocked at a door. I followed her, wanting desperately the warmth of her body. I stood beside her, my palm against her belly. In a voice flat and ambiguous, she said, ‘There is a god up there.’

  ‘Up where?’

  ‘In those mountains.’

  There were the mountains all right, a purple mass, as they might have been the night of the first volcanic upheaval that gave them birth. And, there, high above them, were the snow-covered peaks, glowing in the light of the moon.

  ‘How do you know?’ I said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Rubbish.’ I said.

  ‘There is a temple there. On a hill lined with lepers. You must come with me.’

  ‘I am not a leper.’

  ‘I did not mean that. But you must come. God will cure you.’

  ‘Cure me of what? A bad heart? Fears? Disappointments?’

  She said she could not explain. I looked into her drunken eyes and, in a way, I understood. Deep inside my heart I knew I was a leper, that I needed a cure. But I refused to yield ground.

  ‘You are absurd,’ I told her.

  And while I was telling her how absurd she was, she fell into my arms, trembling and very cold.

  I picked her up — I had the strength, then — and carried her to the bed near the fire. She lay still, inert, her head in my lap, shivering every few seconds. In my unquenchable hunger I made love to her. It was like making love to a corpse. She just wasn’t there. Later, I sat by her slumbering body and, unaccountably, wept.

  I lay awake angry with myself, angrier still at her dragging God into that room which until that moment had been the stage for satisfying my wildest fantasies. A mountain wind howled around the Guest House. As I sank into sleep its howl turned into the tired ancient cry: I want. I want. I want.

  All of the next day we wandered in the bright sunlight. I searched her face for traces of the god that had so possessed her the previous night. There was none. All she said was: ‘Did I pass out?’ ‘You did,’ I said, my voice hoarse with tenderness. To counter this shadow that had so unexpectedly fallen between us, I took her up a hillside, into a copse of pines, and made love to her. ‘Not here,’ she cried in awe, blushing, but she liked it and it was only when I saw her loving it, stretching her body to the limits of pleasure, surrendering to the moment, that I, at last, felt reassured.

  We sat on the verandah of the Guest House. The setting sun dropped between two trees, a ball of orange fire. We watched it sink. The air became chilly. The last rays focused for a moment on Anuradha’s face making her irises glow. With the light gone, I felt the return of the phantom of the previous night. He was palpable, whoever it was that had joined us on the darkening verandah. Anuradha was aware of him, too, but pretended otherwise. She laughed unnecessarily, called for tea although we had just had some. She made fun of the honeymooning couple who stayed next door.

  ‘If I got married I could never have worn red bangles like those.’

  ‘Aftab talks as though he did marry you.’

  ‘He lives in a dream world. Anyway, what difference does it make?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to be married to someone?’

  ‘I can imagine I am married to Aftab. I can imagine I am married to you. My mother used to imagine she was married to Krishna.’

  I squirmed at the mention of the word.

  ‘Whenever that man in Gwalior asked her to marry her she told him she was married to Krishna.’

  ‘So he killed her.’

  ‘Probably.’

  The laughter, even a pretension of it, was gone. I could see her sinking rapidly down the abyss.

  ‘I wish it would never grow dark,’ she said.

  That night she drank again. She drank with a new intensity but in silence. She did not even talk of God, which, perversely, disappointed me. For some reason, as I rose higher, it was about God that I wanted to hear. But Anuradha did not talk, did not explain. When she spoke at last, she tottered on the brink of hysteria. She wept and struggled to keep her weeping down. When I tried to touch her she moved away, her tear drenched face reflecting emotions that I did not understand. She went to her bed and, presently, fell into a drunken stupor. In the morning she said, ‘Som, I want to go back.’

  11

  I addressed Gargi: ‘There is a lizard, Hatteria, on the islands of New Zealand, that has a third eye, just like Shiva’s. The other reptiles of its class went extinct at the end of the Jurassic, about a hundred million years ago.’

  This was the sort of odds and ends that at one time I was a master of: the circumference of the earth; temperatures of Terra del Fuego, the structure of the DNA, electron shells, atomic weights, computer circuits. Nothing had interested me more than the secrets of the universe. Blessed little good all that curiosity had done me.

  I did not know what had triggered me off. We sat in Gargi’s house. It had been raining when I arrived from the airport. They were waiting for me in the Blue Room, Aftab and Azizun. Anuradha walked in a little later. I could hear that rustle of her sari before she appeared. She was dressed as if for a wedding.

  ‘It is Janmashtami,’ Aftab said, as though it explained all. ‘Let’s go.’ To me it explained nothing, but I went.

  At the temple a minor stampede separated us. Alone, I sat smoking on a marble slab under a concrete awning. Crowds streamed past me and across the rain-soaked yard of the temple. It was still raining. The slab I sat on was meant to be fixed on the floor but had not yet been fixed. It tilted every time I leaned a little too far. Some time back a band of dancing bhaktas had rammed into my sector of the crowd, separating me from the rest. There were lights everywhere. Also shadows. My slab was in shadow. I had rolled up my trousers. My feet were bare and wet. Sitting there, I smoked and peeled my toe nails.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Anuradha hurrying by. I called out to her. She came running through the puddles holding her sari off the ground. Her face was flushed.

  ‘I have been looking for you all over.’

  ‘Well, here I am.’

  ‘Come on, then. There isn’t much time.’

  ‘For what? For the Lord to be born?’

  ‘Oh, you! Aren’t you coming?’

  I thought of her standing naked near a window saying, ‘There is a god in that mountain.’

  ‘I am not coming,’ I said.r />
  ‘Please.’

  ‘Too crowded for my taste.’

  ‘I’ll go then.’

  ‘I’ll wait here.’

  She went off, her figure marvellous in the shadows. I felt frustrated, jealous. Of whom, I did not know. She had said another thing that first night standing by the window. She had wanted me to visit the god, walk up a steep mountain road and pay my respects.

  ‘Rubbish,’ I had said.

  Finally, an unbelievable tumult engulfed the temple. Conches were blown, bells struck. A chant arose from the multitude which might as likely have been a wail. The god had once again been born.

  And, now, we were back in Gargi’s house. It was nearly dawn. I felt better, encouraged by Gargi’s presence.

  ‘So, there is this lizard with a third eye,’ I looked around. Anuradha smiled. She somehow seemed drunk to me. Aftab stared back, impassive.

  ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, I returned to Gargi.

  ‘So, the earth burning, whirling in space, gradually cools down. The seas and the swamps appear. Great upheavals occur, on the top of mountains, in the beds of the seas. And all the time, the earth is whirling through space. Water plants and algae appear. The protozoans, the jawless fishes, the cartilage fishes. Four hundred million years ago fishes developed gills and lungs.’

  ‘Are you listening?’ I asked Gargi which was a stupid thing to say.

  Gargi smiled, nodded.

  ‘So the fishes develop gills and lungs. Fifty million years later some of them venture out on land. The amphibians arrive. It wasn’t easy for them to survive. They had to fight gravity — and much else. But they did survive. There was mutation and selection again. The reptiles evolved. The earth began to be populated for the first time. The age of reptiles began, producing the snake, iguana, the dinosaur.

  ‘After a hundred million years, selection developed another great improvement — the placenta. It was a revolutionary development. The mammals’ future was guaranteed. Or, so at least, it seemed. The mammals led to the primates, to man himself. The brain grew; hands could clutch; eyes moved towards the front; vision became stereoscopic. Man gradually took his place.’

  High on Aftab’s hospitality, stirred by Gargi, I soared. ‘And now, a totally new development takes place, something happens along an altogether different dimension. An animal shape is developed that can shelter the spirit, mind you, the Spirit, something that hadn’t existed before. Revolution of quite unpredictable dimensions is on the way. You see my point?’

  Gargi nodded.

  ‘The Spirit was already there at the time of the Cro-magnons, more than forty thousand years ago. You can see it at Lascaux.’

  ‘And of course,’ I added, ‘it is still there.’

  My excitement fizzled out as quickly as it had erupted. I came crashing down from my starry heights. ‘You see what bothers me is why this should have happened?’

  ‘Why what should have happened?’ said Aftab.

  ‘Why should there be this turn to evolution? Why should Man be equipped, burdened, with this strange... this strange sensibility, or urge or drive? Is it by chance? Or, is there a meaning to it? Is it superstition? The moral influence of others? I have my doubts about all those explanations. Moreover, how did those others get the morals in the first place?’

  ‘What is your explanation?’ Aftab said.

  ‘I don’t have an explanation. But that does not matter. The point is that this Spirit is there. And if it is there, if Man has inherited it, then what is he to do with it? In other words, what precisely is expected of him, of you and me, of Anuradha, of everyone else? Darwin didn’t say how we are supposed to evolve further.’

  There was a long silence. Then, Aftab said, ‘It is a matter of visions.’

  ‘Visions?’

  ‘There must be men and women who see what you want to see.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘You don’t take me seriously,’ he said sullenly, his attention beginning to wander.

  ‘Oh, I take you seriously enough...,’ I said, trying to pierce the curtain of his goggles. ‘… Except I don’t think it is a matter of visions. Visions are dime a dozen.’

  ‘Ha, I must explain to you one of these days,’ said Aftab and got up. ‘You are very headstrong, you know,’ he added.

  I kept quiet.

  ‘I must go now,’ he said, abruptly taking leave.

  ‘When do we meet again?’ he said from the door.

  ‘I am leaving in the morning.’

  ‘You come and go like the wind. That also is not good. Anyway, good luck to you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  After Aftab was gone Anuradha said, ‘Maybe Krishna begins where Darwin left off.’ Her remark surprised me. She was like the ocean; one could never reach the bottom of her. Her mother never told her about her father. For all I knew, he might have been a genius.

  ‘I never thought of it like that,’ I said.

  ‘But what is Krishna?’ I wanted to add. All of a sudden, though, I wasn’t much interested in the argument, I wasn’t interested in Darwin or Krishna, or the spirit of the Cro-magnons. All I wanted was her. I wanted her body and soul, every bit of her. I wasn’t willing to share a hair of her body with anyone. She looked like I had never seen her before: draped in a sari of heavy silk, its muted colours woven on the loom of some exquisite ancient craftsman of Kanchi, she looked like a medieval courtesan around whom wars might have been fought. There was a diamond in her nose which had not been there before. She sat against the wall, chin on her drawn knees, dainty feet together, watching me. There was mehndi on her hands. All this preparation, I knew, was for Krishna, but I could make believe it was for me. She straightened suddenly as though in a spasm. Her sari slipped from her shoulder revealing one full breast. For an insane moment I thought I could feel between my knees the firm flesh of her thighs. We stared at each other, consumed by our hunger, oblivious of Gargi’s presence. Finally, with effort, she turned her face away towards the window beyond which the rain still came pouring down.

  When the rain stopped, Anuradha and I stepped out. We came slowly down the stairs, trying to muffle the noise of our feet. Going past Azizun’s quarters, I thought I heard the sound of ghunghrus and of singing. Aftab was awake and happy.

  Although the street was blanketed in darkness, the sky above had turned light. It took an hour before these cliff-like houses allowed the sun to break in. In Benaras, nothing was straightforward. One was always running a hurdles race.

  We passed the spot where the young man had been stabbed the other night. I told Anuradha the story and Aftab’s peculiar reaction — a mixture of horror and gloating.

  Anuradha maintained silence until I began to wonder if she had heard me at all.

  ‘What do you make of Aftab?’ she said all of a sudden.

  ‘Of Aftab?’ I was not ready for her question. ‘I don’t know,’ I said at last.

  ‘Everyone gives the same reply. “I don’t know.” “I don’t know.” I am beginning to wonder if I know.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘You think I don’t?’

  ‘Does he know you have been unfaithful?’ I was surprised to discover that I wanted to hurt her.

  ‘You can never tell what Aftab knows. But let me tell you one thing, Som, I have not been particularly unfaithful, not to him anyway.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’ I asked her, astonished.

  ‘You will not understand. I told you about my mother. My father never married her. You know that. My mother was also very religious.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So? I don’t know. I can only feel something inside me, like one may feel a baby, growing stronger and bigger every day. Ever since I met you I have been feeling it.’

  ‘Feeling that you are the daughter of a religious singing woman?’

  ‘Don’t make fun of me. I have never talked like this to any one. I should not have talked to you. You are like the rest too... t
o...’

  ‘Too ignorant?’

  ‘I don’t know what. And I don’t want to know.’

  In a burst of speechless love she clasped my hand, put it to her cheek, I kissed her hair. I was hopelessly in love with her.

  A fine rain began to fall, making no effect, however, on the stream of pilgrims who filled the narrow lanes. Anuradha covered her head. With her tattooed bindi and slanting eyes she looked a bit like the women in Ajanta murals. We passed the spot where the carnival had been held the other night.

  ‘Do you remember the juggler at the carnival?’

  She did not answer but her smile left no doubt that she remembered. Again, I experienced the same sensations of frustration and jealousy that I had felt at the temple; once again I suppressed them. A little later, we reached the ghats. Under our feet, rain had turned the ground into slush. At every step, the slush pulled in my shoes, making a peculiar sucking sound. The slush mingled with filth, banana peels, cowdung and urine. Anuradha’s chappals slipped frequently until she simply chucked them aside and stepped barefoot on to the slimy bank.

  The sun, up for some time, was hidden behind the clouds. Along with the misty rain, a ghostly light fell from the sky, lighting up every stone, each decrepit shrine, the funeral pyres. The city’s celebrations of the Lord’s birthday were not yet ended. I could hear the sing-song of half a dozen aaratis. Every temple bell was being rung. Every conceivable sect was present on the mushy steps. Men and women sang, beat drums, clanged enormous cymbals, pirouetted. Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna. Hare, Hare. An American junkie, a bare skeleton, grinned: ‘This is it, baby. This is it.’ Indifferent to the shit under their feet, indifferent to the smell of a thousand bodies, the pilgrims jostled from step to step, ecstasy on their faces, when I would have expected disgust. Anuradha was no different. Her face suffused with a strange ecstatic glow, she muttered prayers, made offerings at every possible shrine, thought nothing if the hem of her sari got soaked in dung. The leper’s guard had been doubled for the occasion. His membranes an extra red in the morning light, a tongueless boy gurgled at us from his mat of sack cloth. Anuradha bent down and put a coin on his outstretched hand, another on the stump of a noseless young woman, some more beside the knotted body of a man, his ankles flat on the ground beside his ears.