Last Labyrinth Page 19

  We emerged at last on the steps of the temple and were led through the leper’s guard. On the narrow bridge our guide bid us good bye.

  That night we sat in Vasudev’s house. My spirits were down. I felt somehow defeated. Even physically I felt feebler than I had at any time during the trip. We sat on cots, wrapped in quilts. K smoked.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he said, turning towards me.

  ‘It’s too complicated.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I was thinking about what you told Gargi. I don’t believe it. And if I do, I can’t get over the fact that Anuradha should give me up for a gimmick like that.’

  ‘What gimmick?’

  ‘This thing that Gargi presumably did the night I had my attack. And Anuradha promising to give me up and the gift of the shares to Krishna etc. etc.’

  ‘Why do you think it was a gimmick?’

  ‘What else should one think? What do you think?’

  K smoked in silence. He finished smoking, extinguished the stub against the floor and flipped it out of the doorway. Without looking at me he said, ‘It may not have been a gimmick, you know.’ ‘It need not have been a gimmick,’ he repeated, turning towards me. ‘As I told Gargi, as far as I was concerned, I had entirely given you up that night you had your attack.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You don’t understand. There are cases where a doctor feels the patient has a chance, howsoever small. There are other cases where he knows the patient has no chance whatsoever.

  ‘One in a million? In ten million?’

  ‘You are splitting hairs. You were ninety-nine per cent dead that night. The balance one per cent would have died within twenty four hours. Anuradha came there that night. I told her you had no chance.’

  I realized now that I was fidgety and irritated. Maybe it was K, or what he was saying, that was working on me. Maybe it was the medicine that I had just taken.

  ‘So you think a miracle took place?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why can’t you decide?’

  ‘It is you who have to make up your mind. And there is no need to lose your temper.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said. And that was the end of our discussion. Neither of us probably wanted to get too involved with it.

  A little later, K fell asleep. I sat by myself, staring at the flame of the candle. It was unnaturally still, as though carved out of stone. There was the outer yellow ring growing lighter as it moved inwards, until it melted into the little blue drops of pure heat at the core. Maybe, this flame and that other flame in the temple were somehow connected, as all fire was connected. Its perfect stillness could hypnotize. I had heard of people who, staring into such flames, had enjoyed the Eternal Bliss. It was always spelt in capitals. Others had discovered their Oneness (another capital-prone word) with the Brahma. A man I once travelled with — one of the most sophisticated I have ever met — claimed he had seen in such a flame his previous incarnations. He had been a teacher, a butcher, a dancing girl, he said.

  This little flame of mine, however, yielded nothing beyond an ounce of tranquillity which, of course, was not to be laughed at. And, then, through the tranquillity, came the old sorrow. It had always been like that. ‘What do you know of sorrow,’ Aftab had once said. I did not know about his definition of sorrow. Just because one did not brood around in grim havelis did not mean one was unacquainted with sorrow.

  Staring at the little flame I was back in the circular chamber of the temple where the man-high flame burnt. It reminded me. I knew now, of that cave of Ajanta on which I had felt the first onslaught of the voids. What could be a greater void than a void in which a flame consumed all.

  Damn, I said. Damn.

  I was still saying ‘Damn’ and ‘Damn’ when I went to sleep. I dreamt that I was back in Lal Haveli. I saw lamps everywhere. A wedding was on. Aftab said Anuradha was getting married. ‘But she is married to me,’ I cried. He laughed. Then the lights were gone. Aftab and I sat in a room that I had never seen before and played chess. He said, ‘Can you fly? Like a bird?’ I said yes. We went up numerous stairs. ‘You must jump from here.’ Aftab said. And he pushed me.

  As I fell through the air I awoke. My heart was palpitating. I was drenched in sweat. I considered awakening K but thought better of it. I took a strong tranquillizer. I didn’t want any more dreams, for God’s sake. But I had them anyway. I dreamt that I was crying. I sat alone and cried in my house in Bombay. Aftab came in and said. ‘It is very hot outside. Why not let the hot air dry your tears.’ And then he was chasing me down the beach and in a narrow Benaras lane. There were people with him carrying long knives, the ones they used for the slaughter of goats. There was people in the side lanes as well, Aftab’s friends, ready to kill me as they would kill a dog. I dashed into a house and discovered it was the Lal Haveli. I was crying for help. I ran up flights of stairs. I could feel the pounding of feet behind me. On the landing, I ran into Gargi who put her arm around me and pressed her thighs against mine.

  When I awoke it was still dark. I did not feel rested. I felt more exhausted than I had during the whole trip. Very soon, I knew, K would be awake and I would have to tell him if we were going back to the temple. I lay next to a window with narrow slats. I reached out and opened one of them. A fine mist laced with wood-smoke filtered in. Lying in bed, wrapped in my sleeping bag, I could see a little distance into the swirling fog. It soothed my tired eyes, cleared my brain a bit. I wondered where one went from there, from that room, that hillside.

  Was this it, then? The terminus? The last of the labyrinth? A tobacco-stained house; a register with my father’s signature; a temple on a hill; flags in the wind; a deaf-mute priestess; hints of a miracle? Was it this that I had wanted all my life? Was this the answer to the relentless chant ‘I want, I want.’ Why was it so unsatisfying? Or, may be, the labyrinth hadn’t ended. Something else lay ahead, something more fundamental than a miracle, something I would know only if I took the shares from Gargi. If God existed, if a miracle had taken place, and now if I walked off with the shares — and with Anuradha — I should perhaps die.

  That was a hell of a thought to be burdened with but I didn’t think I had a choice. All I knew was that I wasn’t prepared to give up Anuradha on these grounds.

  The fog moved in cones and circles and curlicues and watching it, I fell asleep again.

  When I next awoke the sun was high. K stood by the door, smoking. The fog was gone. Vasudev brought us tea laced with cinnamon. Half-way through the tea, I said to K, ‘I think we shall go back to the temple, after all.’ He didn’t answer. After an interval, he said, ‘You go there alone. I will not be accompanying you.’

  Vasudev, who had been listening to the little exchange, now pitched in. ‘Forgive me for putting my head where I should not,’ he said. ‘But I am also your humble servant and must have my say.’

  We turned to look at him.

  ‘Somji is unhappy. I do not want him to be unhappy. I do not know what the difficulty is but I think Somji should do exactly what Gargi Mata tells him.’

  ‘But Gargi Mata does not say a thing. Nothing at all.’ I could hear the frustration in my voice.

  ‘In that case you should ask her,’ said Vasudev.

  He had a point.

  So I covered the last bit of that journey alone. Gargi was there, sitting on a cot, out on the courtyard facing the Tibetan shrines, sunning herself. I thought of my dream about her and wondered what it meant.

  ‘I have come for the package,’ I said. ‘I am sorry the doctor could not come,’ I added irrelevantly.

  She did not hesitate, or ponder, or look grave as I had imagined but went inside and quickly returned with a sealed cloth bundle, a bit like the parcels carried around by postmen. Gargi handed it to me with her usual smile.

  I took the package. ‘Let us sit down,’ I said gesturing towards the cot. ‘I want to ask you something.’ We sat down. I said, ‘I think I can be honest with you. I think you wi
ll understand what I am going to say. I can do without these shares if I find a reason to do so. I had bought them because I had a score to settle with Aftab and Anuradha. I didn’t like the way Anuradha ditched me after the illness. But, after what K said yesterday, I have become confused. Did Anuradha and you do something to save me when I had that heart attack? If so, you must tell me. You must advise me what to do.’

  Gargi looked as though expecting me to go on. If she remains mum, I said to myself, if she remains mum, by God, I am going to walk off with these shares.

  Just then she wrote something on her pad. ‘There is no harm in believing that God exists,’ the note said. She had a neat precise hand.

  So I was back with Pascal! I said, ‘It is easier to believe that He does not exist. It is more convenient that way.’

  Gargi nodded, smiled.

  ‘No, don’t misunderstand me. I want to know. Probably, I want to believe. But one can’t order belief. I must have evidence. You see what I mean? I cannot give up Anuradha, you know that. In the absence of evidence I intend to challenge the whole thing: I want to take not only these shares but also Anuradha. It scares me but I have no choice.’

  Gargi laughed, then wrote on her pad, ‘God does not work in this simple manner, God does not seek revenge. Man’s...’

  She faltered, handed me the pad and went inside. She came back with a heavy book. It was a Hindi-English dictionary. She completed the sentence. ‘Man’s vanity (ahankar) brings him revenge enough.’

  I looked at the note for a long time. Gargi got me tea. I studied the note as though it were a hieroglyph, a coded instruction to a mysterious destination. Finally, I said to Gargi: ‘I want to assure you I am not vain. I am not arrogant. I am curious. I want to know. May be over-curious but not vain. So, I’ll take these shares with me.’

  Gargi wrote again: ‘We are all children trying to reach up to a crack in the door to peep into a room.’

  She laughed as she handed the note to me. ‘You mean I am like a little child.’ She laughed again. ‘As for Anuradha,’ I repeated, in an unsteady voice, ‘as for her I can’t give her up on these... flimsy grounds. I can’t live without her. You should know that.’

  She smiled, patted my cheek, made a gesture as of a blessing. On an impulse I bent down and touched her feet. Then I left.

  I came slowly down the stairs feeling apprehensive as though the package was going to explode any minute. Gradually, my apprehension faded away.

  It was a mild afternoon. The sky was sharp blue and cloudless. Beyond the lepers the valley was a soothing green. The mountain range glowed in the sun. I crossed the bridge, then walked a little way up the stream. The water shimmered in the sunlight. It gurgled so one could hear nothing else. I touched the water. It was extremely cold. It might have been snowing that morning.

  I lay down by the stream, the bundle under my head. Above me, the vast canopy of the sky suddenly appeared as though I had never seen it before. I was reminded of Prince Andrew, knocked down like a dummy without firing a shot. He had imagined himself to be ambitious. He had hoped Austerlitz would do for him what Toulon had done for the Bonaparte. Lying in the mud, canon balls flying over him, he had stared at the vast cosmic impersonal dome of the sky and had wondered: ‘My God, where have I been all these years. Why had I never looked at the sky before.’

  ‘We are like children trying to reach up to a crack in the door to peep into a room,’ Gargi had said. I wished she had elaborated. I wished she had told me what lay in the room. Maybe she did not know herself. Maybe, it was better she did not tell me. Maybe I would not have believed even if she had told me. One had probably to rise up to the crack by oneself.

  I got up, gathered my package, and started to climb down.

  4

  It was raining. The overcast gave an idea of dusk before it was dusk. There was little activity in the streets around Lal Haveli.

  Aftab and I sat on the porch near the fountain. It was the first time we had sat there. Without Anuradha and Azizun, the Blue Room could not perhaps be entered. There was no thunder from the silent sky but rain poured without a break. There would soon be another birthday of God. Tarakki sat at the far end, his eyes wide in wonder as though seeing rain for the first time. Aftab saw my glance.

  ‘Tarakki waits for the snakes to come out,’ he said.

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘You will see for yourself. Some poor snake is bound to come along.’

  We went back to silence. Somewhere in the haveli Azizun carried on her riyaz. ‘The rain has stirred something in her.’ Aftab said. ‘It does the same thing to her every year.’ Anuradha was probably in her room dressing for the evening. I did not remember an instance when she had not dressed for the evening. I thought of the times I had had her in the middle of her dressing. A feeling of frustration grew upon me. I said, ‘I have bought the control of your company, Aftab.’ ‘Oh!’ he said after a long pause, his eyes glancing in the middle distance. He did not seem surprised. ‘It was possible some such thing would happen.’ In the corner of my eye I caught a brown and yellow splash. A snake struggled in the trough of a drain pipe fighting the cascade of water. Tarakki was upon it in a fl ash. He whirled it holding it by the tail, then, with one violent heave, smashed its head against the fountain. Little splinters of something flew out of the snake’s head. The incident took a couple of seconds. ‘Good God,’ I said, fighting back a fit of retching.

  Aftab quietly shook his head.

  ‘That was horrible,’ I said, feeling a new indignation.

  ‘Horror is a part of life,’ Aftab said. ‘Perhaps the greater part.’

  We sat in a darkened Blue Room. The power had gone off. Azizun’s riyaz had ended. I had not yet seen Anuradha even though I had been at Lal Haveli for several hours.

  Aftab offered me his cigarettes which I turned down. ‘You have been to the hills, haven’t you?’ he inquired.

  ‘How did you know?’

  He kept quiet, lit a cigarette. I watched him smoke, ‘I had hoped you would not come back,’ he said.

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘I had hoped you would die climbing those rocks.’

  ‘I nearly did.’

  ‘Nearly is never the same thing.’

  ‘Are you disappointed?’

  ‘Very much. Unfortunately, I like you. I wish you had left us alone. Anuradha and I need each other.’

  ‘So you imagine. You treat her worse than you treat that Azizun girl.’

  ‘That is what you think. I told you, you are different. You don’t understand us. You work by logic. By your brain. You are proud of your education or what you consider education. There is an understanding that only suffering and humiliation bring. Anuradha has that. Even I have a bit of it. You are empty of that understanding.’

  ‘I wish you would stop lecturing me and do something about the electricity.’

  ‘That is not in my hand,’ he chuckled.

  Time passed. It was still raining. There was still no electricity. Tarakki had come and put a lantern between us.

  ‘So you have our company,’ Aftab said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you want Anuradha now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You learnt nothing in the mountains.’

  ‘Is that a question?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shall I explain?’

  ‘No.’

  I started to speak, say something caustic. I had had enough of this polite exchange. I was interrupted by what sounded like a sob. Like the cry of an animal in great pain which it could no longer bear. I leaned forward and there, sure enough, in the yellow light of the lantern, Aftab wept. After that initial wail he cried in silence. Tears welled inside his goggles and spilled over on to his cheeks, his lips, his throat. He made no attempt to dry them.

  Still crying, he got up. ‘Good night,’ he whispered through his tears.

  ‘Good night,’ I said. ‘I want to see Anuradha before I go.’

  ‘I’ll send
her,’ he said.

  I sat alone smoking, feeling very tense. Anuradha was certainly taking her time. I looked around restlessly. That room had never been fully lighted. There were objects in it that I might have seen just as I could not imagine all the strange happenings, happy, sad, and cruel, that must have occurred within its four walls.

  At the far end, it was completely dark. I could see neither the arch nor the broken fountain. Against the stone of the courtyard the rain beat harder than ever. Minutes passed without Anuradha making an appearance. My tension grew. I took a few steps towards the courtyard, stumbled against a hump in the carpet and returned to the sofa. It was true one could lose one’s way in the maze of that haveli.

  Finally, I heard steps, someone running across the courtyard. Anuradha came in through the arch wiping her face with her sari. I rushed towards her, took her hands in mine. I wanted to say something but my voice choked. She tried to free her hands but I wouldn’t let her go.

  ‘I love you,’ I said at last.

  ‘You must go away now.’ There was an unfamiliar urgency in her voice.

  ‘You must come with me,’ I said.

  ‘Come with you? You talk like a child. But you must go away. Return to the hotel. Go back by the morning flight.’

  ‘Come with me to the hotel. Stay with me the night. Tomorrow we shall return to Bombay.’

  ‘You don’t understand. You don’t know these people. Things could happen to you in this haveli and no one would ever know.’

  ‘I shall return Aftab his shares.’

  ‘That is not the point. It is not a question of the shares.’

  I tried to argue. She put her hand on my mouth. ‘Don’t argue. Go away now and we might still have a chance. I have called a taxi for you.’

  There was the sound of a car moving to the front of the building. ‘Go away now,’ she said pushing me towards the door. Maybe she was right. Maybe she needed time to handle Aftab Rai.

  ‘I’ll go now,’ I said. ‘But I’ll come back in the morning. Tell Aftab I’ll give him back his shares.’