The Other Language(56)
“Not immediately. But I think it would be polite to let him know by tonight, don’t you?”
“Fine. We will. Can you pass me a piece of toast, please?”
He began to butter the slice of brown bread and she went back to The Hindu.
She still looked beautiful, despite her age. She was already forty-two. Good bone structure—that, she had. High cheekbones, a straight aquiline nose, lips still full and thick eyebrows. It was a handsome, strong face. There were lines, of course, there was sagging and creasing in places. But she was still holding on graciously. Men still looked at her and found her attractive.
“You look ravishing today,” he said, feeling guilty. He knew he had been unpleasant.
She immediately touched her face.
“Really? I can’t look at my face, it’s so drawn. And my hair is a horror.”
“Don’t be silly. You are glowing.”
She rested her hand on his.
“Thank you. That makes me feel a lot better.”
He needed a little time alone, he’d said as they finished their breakfast. They would meet again for lunch, after the zucchini flowers experiment. She was used to this kind of announcement, it had been such a big part of their marriage, the off-limits zone he declared at random that had to be immediately cleared. Whenever he said he needed to be alone it meant he had to think and when he had to think it meant he had to walk. Apparently moving at a fast pace produced a parallel flow in his mental processes, facilitating an entryway into the story he was beginning to shape in his head. This rule she had learned to observe with respect, even awe. The first few years they were together she took it as a sign of his artistic temperament and had been proud of his mannerisms.
He left her reading the paper at the table and walked down the steps that led from the Fort to the ghats below. The riverbank was quiet in the early-morning light. There were only a few women washing clothes or bathing in their saris, slowly combing their long, wet hair. The water sloshed quietly against the steps, lapping at the feet of the small marble nandis that lined the bank. Each one of the divine bulls carved in stone had an oil lamp at its feet, and at night people would light them. He had seen their glow from the Fort’s terrace at night. Who took care of that? And since when? Perhaps those oil lamps beneath the feet of the nandis had burned nightly for centuries and there would have been someone attending to this ritual every night. Even at this time of day, so early in the morning, the white marble bulls had already been laden with garlands of fresh jasmine and marigolds. He also wondered where all those flowers came from. Every morning all across India, from the north to the south, whether there was snow or desert, people bought garlands to crown their gods. He assumed thousands of tons of flowers must be strung in garlands every day. Yet he never saw flowers growing anywhere, all he had seen in weeks of traveling was red dust, burned grass, yellowing reeds. How did all the flowers travel, how many trucks drove across the country at night, loaded with marigolds and jasmine? How come these garlands always looked fresh, undeterred by dust and heat? Surely his wife would love to research this conundrum.
He walked some more, all the way to the Shiva shrine at the end of the ghat. He had had no useful thoughts about the story he was trying to crack. India wasn’t a place conducive to creativity, he decided; it occupied too much space with all its unanswerable questions. Despite his efforts not to be distracted, he too had been encumbered by India’s too many layers, its multiple souls, by the myriad messages it sent everywhere one looked.
She went back upstairs to their room and sat on the cushions by the bay window overlooking the river. She was relieved to be alone again. Looking through the latticed shutters she was able to make out the silhouette of her husband walking slowly on the ghat right below her, heading toward the Shiva shrine. In his blue polo shirt and khaki pants, he stuck out like a sore thumb among all the women standing knee-deep in the river. As usual, he walked with his head down, looking only at his feet. He didn’t look happy, or inspired by his walk, that much she could tell. She wished that every now and then he’d make the effort to look up at what was around him rather than gazing constantly inward. They had been three weeks on the road by now and she’d begun to feel how tiresome it was to travel with someone who never seemed to enjoy himself. As usual, she had had to do all the work, like a puppeteer moving all the characters across the stage, or a ventriloquist doing all the voices, in order to keep the audience entertained. Sometimes it became too demanding. Though she knew that if she stopped working at it they would both sink into a silence and that could get scary. Once she had tried it: she had allowed herself to plunge into a wistful silence and he’d begun to question her relentlessly, not because he sincerely worried about what might have upset her, but rather, she felt, because he was alarmed at the idea that his private jester may have gone on strike.
Although she hadn’t formulated this thought in its entirety, she knew exactly why she’d come up to the room and what was going to happen next. She watched herself open her husband’s laptop and go online. Watched her fingers tap her ex-lover’s name. She just wanted to check how difficult it would be to find him. She could look for his name on Skype first. That would be easy and quite innocent. No need to call or send a message. All she wanted was to find a way to get in touch with him, so that someday—and only if she wanted to—she would know how.