Buddha's Orphans, page 23
“I was only talking, Raja. You don’t say anything anymore.”
He faced her. “To say something I have to feel like saying it. But I don’t feel like it anymore. Especially with you . . .”
She began to weep, quietly, but it had nothing to do with what Raja said. It was a reaction to how dark and gloomy the mornings had become, how tough the days.
One evening during dinner—in a burst of energy after school, she’d made some rotis, Raja’s favorite—she said, “Sometimes I think that had you not gone to Kakani, things would have been different.” She hadn’t planned on saying this; until the moment she heard her own voice saying the words, she hadn’t consciously formed the idea. She knew full well that Raja hadn’t wanted to go to Kakani. But she was convinced that, had he been in the city, he’d probably have joined the march, the very crowd that had prevented her from taking her son to the hospital. In fact, as Maitreya’s body had gone cold in her arms, a picture had flashed through her mind: Raja in the horde outside, his arms lifted. What if Raja had indeed participated in that march? Every time she thought of this, Nilu closed her eyes.
But Raja had indeed been in Kakani, bored out of his mind by the incessant chatter of his boss’s relative, who was going to build a “world-class” resort, one with an auditorium, a luxurious garden for evening receptions, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and a terrace jutting from a cliff for an even closer view of the white Ganesh Himal.
“And what will support the terrace if it’s going to extend so much in the air?” Raja had asked.
The man had paused for dramatic effect and said, “Plexiglas.”
Now Raja stopped chewing and looked at Nilu. “Will you ever stop? Why are you always after me?”
His tone surprised her, for she hadn’t thought she was accusing him. “I meant to say I might have been able to call you, and . . . you could have picked up the Third Person sooner, before the crowd blocked the way.”
“Third Person?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to call him that. It just slipped out.”
He leaned forward on the table, rested his head on his palm, and said, “You want to talk about what ifs? Do you? I could accuse you of having been the one with him, and you didn’t even try to find another way to rush him to the hospital. Instead of waiting for the damn taxi, I’d have carried my son in my arms and leapt through the crowd, kicking the people out of the way if I had to.”
She laughed derisively. “Yes, correct. They’d have recognized you for the great man you are. They’d have thought you were Jung Bahadur Rana himself, the daredevil, leaping across the gorge to save your son. They’d have genuflected. They’d have said, ‘Finally here’s our savior.’”
Sometimes he came home after she’d already gone to bed, at eleven or midnight, and he’d quietly let himself in and stand in the doorway while she lay on the bed in the dark, holding her breath. What she expected of him, she didn’t know. He’d seem not to move for a minute or two, as though orienting himself, taking stock of his surroundings. She sensed that he was contemplating what it would be like not to be faced with this anymore: the small lamp she left on for him in the living room, the dark bedroom where she was sleeping, waiting.
He’d stand before sitting on the sofa, which creaked. Then there’d be silence again. When finally he’d come to bed, he’d have visited the bathroom to brush his teeth, and the smell of alcohol would be replaced by mint. He’d gently put his hand on Nilu’s arm as though he was about to wake her to give her some important but devastating news, and her heart would tremble, and she’d come close to putting her hands over her ears and saying, “I don’t want to hear it. Keep it to yourself.” But he’d just stroke her arm for a moment or two, then turn to the other side and go to sleep.
At night his body jerked and thrashed like a child’s, and he cried out for his mother, not Kaki, not Jamuna Mummy, but the one who’d abandoned him. “Ama!” he’d wail, then mutter something incoherent, his eyebrows twitching under the lamp she’d turned on.
Once Raja came home and grabbed Nilu and kissed her passionately. His cheeks were moist. She unbuttoned his pants and stroked him, trying to make him hard. He massaged her breasts as though he was kneading dough. When her strokes didn’t work, she took him in her mouth and felt him harden, slowly. He was grunting, his eyes closed, giving it all he had. She slid her mouth away and slipped her body up, adjusted herself so he’d be able to penetrate her, but within minutes he went limp. “It’s pointless,” he said, and put his clothes back on and left the room. When she checked on him later, she found him reading a book, but he wasn’t concentrating; he didn’t flip the page even after several minutes. Nilu sat on the sofa, waiting for him to speak, but he didn’t. Only when she stood up to return to the bedroom did he say, “Looks like I might go to Delhi for a few days. There’s been an invitation to a conference. The boss wants me to go.”
“You should go.”
“Yes, that’s what I’m thinking.”
“It’ll be good for your career.”
“Yes.”
“It’ll help you become the chief editor.”
“Hmm.”
After the funeral people had said, “Your heart will remain sad, but slowly everything will turn out all right. You have to trust time to take care of this. Slowly, slowly, your days will become brighter. Remember, your son’s soul up there in heaven would also want you to move on with your lives. Remember that.”
Two days after Raja returned from the conference in Delhi, he told Nilu that it would be better if he lived by himself somewhere.
“Did something happen in Delhi?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then why now? What will it solve?”
“I didn’t say it’ll solve anything. Did I? Did you hear me say that?”
“Then why?”
He shrugged, sighed.
“What are you thinking, Raja? Are you thinking about us separating?”
He looked at her glumly, reached out and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Lately everything has just become impossible. Maybe, if we lived apart for a while . . .”
She didn’t disagree with him; still, when he proposed it, it felt like rejection. “What happens if it leads to a permanent separation?”
From the way he stared at her, it became apparent to her that he hadn’t really considered that possibility. In a way, it gave her hope, for it meant that he did envision their coming back together. But in another way it rankled, for it signaled that his urge to move away was impulsive and childish, that he hadn’t taken into account the possibility that they’d remain separated forever. “It won’t,” he finally said.
“Raja, we might become more estranged.”
“Didn’t I say it won’t?” he said, quickly, dismissively, making her flinch. “Why can’t you think a bit positively about this? Why do you always have to be negative?”
He moved to a flat in Dillibazar. She packed two suitcases with his clothes and bed sheets, and they arranged for a truck so he could also transfer a couple of plastic chairs, a small lamp, and a large bookshelf, which two boys Amit had sent from the office carried to the truck.
After Raja was gone, Nilu sat on the living room couch, listening to the traffic in the distance, near the Chabel market, thinking that soon there’d be a rap on the door and he’d be there, saying, “You really didn’t think I’d leave you, did you, mitini?”
He called her later that night. He asked her how she was doing and she said fine. “Are you in your flat now?” she asked. He said yes; he was calling from a shop below as the flat didn’t have a phone. Only then did she note the background noises: voices talking, a bicycle bell, a machine whirring, someone’s name being shouted. Come home, she wanted to say, but she didn’t. He told her he’d talk to her soon and hung up.
For a couple of days he called daily, either from the same shop or from his office in Nepal Yatra if he was working late. He’d ask her how she was doing and she’d say she was doing fine. Then the gaps between the calls got longer. He had given her the downstairs shop’s number so she could also phone him. Once, she did dial it, but she put down the phone as soon as a gravelly voice, presumably the shopkeeper’s, said, “Hello?”
Ganga Da came knocking early one Saturday morning. After Raja left, Nilu had let the servant woman go, so she herself served Ganga Da tea and sat next to him, asked him how he was, how often he visited Jamuna Mummy at the hospital.
“Forget about me and Jamuna,” Ganga Da said, getting emotional. “She’s going to die in that purgatory any day now, and she’s going to drag me into her hell with her. But you and Raja—you have your whole lives ahead of you. Yes, Maitreya passed away well before his time, but we’ve mourned for him. Now I have to be aggrieved over you and Raja? What’s wrong with you, Nilu? What’s wrong with that idiot?”
“Nothing, Ganga Da. It’s just for a short time.”
“Then how long are you going to allow yourself to bleed like this?”
She had no answer for him. She didn’t want to bother explaining to him the darkness that constricted her head, drained away the everyday colors from her world.
“How long, Nilu?” He appeared unable to speak. The weight of events in the past years—Raja’s dismissal of Ganga Da’s wish for a traditional wedding, Maitreya’s death, and, always, Jamuna Mummy’s steadily declining condition—had taken their toll on him. He looked increasingly haggard and worn-out. He’d lost weight, and blotches marked his skin. For long after Maitreya’s death, he blamed the “hoodlums of democracy” for snuffing his grandson’s life. He didn’t accuse Raja, didn’t point a finger, but the stiffness with which he stood when he was around Raja indicated that he did consider his son’s foolhardiness, his deluded thinking, partly to blame for the tragedy. But his resentment didn’t last long, and one day, a couple of weeks into the grieving period, he broke down and embraced Raja, crying, “What happened, Raja? How could something like this happen?”
Lately, he’d been preoccupied with putting Jamuna Mummy in a private mental clinic; a couple had recently sprouted in the capital. In the government hospital where she was treated now, patients still roamed the hallways unsupervised, and the nurses neglected to give them their daily pills. The few times Nilu had been to visit Jamuna Mummy there, she’d had to cover her nose with her sari—so strong was the stench floating through the building. In contrast, the new private clinics had clean, well-lit rooms and nurses trained in counseling. But these clinics were also outrageously expensive. Their fees would leave Ganga Da bankrupt. And though Ganga Da had indeed saved the money that he’d collected as rent from Nilu and Raja over the years, he’d recently given it away to charity in his dead grandson’s name.
But these days Nilu was getting tired of Ganga Da’s constant complaints.
Sensing her displeasure, he placed his hand on hers and said gently, “Try, okay? You can’t just let your life slide by like this.”
She nodded. “I’ll try, Ganga Da.”
“Shall I talk to Raja? Ask him to return here?”
“Give him a few days, then I’ll talk to him.”
“You will?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
She nodded.
But she didn’t. Days drifted by, and Raja still lived in Dillibazar, and she still didn’t turn on the lights when she got home in the evening. In the meantime, Ganga Da had visited Raja, Nilu was sure, to persuade him to go home. She could picture Raja telling Ganga Da the same thing she did, that right now it was good for both of them to live apart, that he would return home. In time.
She thought about leaving the city, packing some clothes in a suitcase and taking off. She could just go someplace else, perhaps Pokhara, where the scenery—the lake, the close mountains—could give her some solace. With her résumé detailing her years of experience at Arniko Academy, she ought to be able to find a teaching position. Private boarding schools were cropping up in Pokhara, she’d heard, so an English teacher would probably be in demand. It also wouldn’t matter if the salary was less than what she made now—she had no one but herself to provide for.
But when she mentioned this casually to Prateema at school one day, she received a sound scolding. “You’re going to give up so easily?” Prateema said. “What’s wrong with you, Nilu? You’ve been such a strong person all your life, and suddenly you’re just going to surrender?”
“Who says I’m surrendering?” Nilu said, slightly peeved. “All I’m saying is that maybe living in another city for some time will help me become more . . . balanced.” She almost said “mentally balanced,” but the phrase evoked Jamuna Mummy, so she caught herself.
About a month after Raja moved to Dillibazar, Nilu was in Bhotahiti, about to step into a stationery shop, when she saw Maitreya in the crowd some distance away. There was no mistake about it—the same blue shirt speckled with tiny white fish, his favorite; the same dark black hair, which covered his ears, fell over his eyes; the same intense expression. He was gazing up at the cricket bats strung outside a sports store. Her heart in her throat, Nilu stared at him. She strode toward the store, his name ready on her lips. Then, for a split second a group of college girls blocked her view, and when they moved away, Maitreya had vanished. She looked up and down the crowded street, glimpsed his shirt about two hundred yards away, weaving in and out of the mass of people in Asan. She ran after him, but when she reached the crossroads, he was gone.
Neglecting her shopping, she wandered aimlessly through the city, berating herself for being so mired in grief over her son that she was beginning to see him in open daylight. Her dreams about Maitreya were so frightening that she woke up yelling. Earlier, when Raja was still with her, he’d turn on the light and ask what the matter was, and she’d cling to him, shaking.
Darkness had fallen, and she found herself in Thamel, in front of the house where Maitreya was born. The second-floor flat where they’d lived was cloaked in darkness, and the streetlamp threw light on the same old TOILET sign next to the window. Was the flat unoccupied still, after all these years? The dark made it hard to see clearly; still, she could tell that the crumbling house hadn’t been renovated. All the time Nilu and Raja had lived there, Bhairavi’s mother-in-law kept mentioning how bit by bit she was going to modernize the house, use Chinese bricks to change the façade, install a bathroom on each floor.
Sounds of dinner preparations came from the first floor. The wall prevented Nilu from viewing the kitchen window, where she imagined Bhairavi was cooking, wiping her hands on her dhoti between stirring, whipping, tossing, and mixing whatever she was conjuring for her family Bhairavi loved to cook and was constantly making new dishes that she’d then bring up to Raja and Nilu: korma, momos, biryani, stuffed okra, samosas, chana masala. “Happy stomachs make for happy families,” she used to say. Right now an aroma of fried fish pierced the air. For a moment, Nilu savored the smell, pondered whether she should walk in and knock on the door. But she wasn’t sure she’d have enough to say. She hadn’t spoken to Bhairavi for ages now, not since Bhairavi came to offer her condolences.
Nilu caught a fume-spewing Vikram tempo to Chabel. At home she sat in the living room in the dark, her hands between her knees, looking at the floor. Soon the chants started, a small echo in the back of her mind, of people shouting slogans. The words were indistinct, low-key; someone was encouraging others to do something, to perform a momentous deed, change the course of history. She hated these voices, their muted insistence, their sanctimony.
The phone rang, startling her, dissolving the chants. It was most likely Ganga Da, so she let it ring. Then she wondered if it was Raja. She hadn’t heard from him in close to three weeks now. Perhaps he needed to talk to her, perhaps he had begun to miss her. Come home, sweetie, she’d tell him. She had to tell him that she’d seen Maitreya in Bhotahiti today. In the dark she fumbled toward the phone. Her voice was hoarse as she said hello.
“Nilu?” It was Muwa.
A wave of irritation coursed through Nilu, and she put down the phone. What did Muwa want? She’d been calling over the past few weeks. The first time, Nilu had talked with her briefly, sensing all the while that Muwa wanted to ask her something, a request, a favor, but before she could do so, Nilu had hung up. Since then Muwa had been phoning every few days, and every time Nilu had heard her voice, she’d hung up.
Soon after Maitreya died, Nilu dreamt of Muwa’s charred face as she burned during her funeral on the banks of the Bagmati River. Nilu woke up from the dream deeply satisfied, then chagrined that such an awful image—the cremation of her own mother—would give her pleasure. The last time she’d seen her mother was when Muwa had visited briefly to offer her condolences after Maitreya died. While Maitreya was alive, Muwa had seen her grandson only a handful of times. Once they met outside a tailor’s shop where Maitreya, in nursery school then, was being fitted for his uniform. After the tailor took his measurements (Maitreya squirmed with laughter when the tailor’s hands touched his armpits) and gave him a lollipop, mother and son emerged from the shop, and there was Muwa, clinging to Sumit—yes, almost dragged by her lover’s arm—her eyes glazed, a contorted smile on her lips. She was wearing a sari Nilu recognized from her childhood days—so old that the colors were beginning to fade. Why was she wearing it when she had so many new saris to choose from? Because she was drugged out of her mind, that’s why; the shoes she wore were garishly new, a loathsome pink color.
Muwa, barely coherent, exclaimed that she couldn’t believe how much Maitreya had grown, while he sucked on his lollipop and turned his face away in shyness. He had no idea who the woman was. One of Muwa’s front teeth was missing; her hair looked different, darker, richer, but slightly askew—she was wearing a wig. Had she gone bald? She appeared giddy, both in mind and body, ready to crumple to the ground if she weren’t holding on to Sumit, who had aged too, with graying hair at his temples and new lines on his face. The sight of the two, together even after all these years, nauseated Nilu. Sumit was grinning and looking at Nilu with that all-too-familiar gleam in his eyes, and she felt demeaned again, as she had when she was sixteen and he first moved into the house. Nilu offered an excuse about being late for something and made her escape, dragging Maitreya, who was slightly intrigued by Muwa’s questions about whether he recognized her or not. “Bring him home to see me,” Muwa had called out as Nilu and Maitreya walked away.
