Seahorse Read online

  The writer endowed Rembrandt’s paintings with sight, envisioning how they had watched the centuries move past before them, the faces they, in turn, had seen. When I reached the end, I read slower, lingering on my treasured line: As you stand looking at them, they look back. Sometimes, a photograph reviews you.

  I glanced up. It was disconcerting, to see everyone’s eyes turned to me. I was glad I’d finished. Eva and her friend were quietly conferring; I caught Eva’s eye and she smiled.

  The blonde youth at the back was checking his phone.

  My reading was followed by one more, and then it was over.

  The wine was brought out in gaiety and an impromptu bar set up in a corner. People walked around holding long-stemmed glasses, seeming to know each other so fondly and casually. Clusters gathered around Santanu and the Nepalese artist. Out of nowhere, Eva appeared at my shoulder. “Nem, you were marvellous.”

  Compliments tend to made me nervous; I laughed. “Well… thank you,” I said, trying to salvage some degree of graciousness.

  “No, really. Tamsin thought so too…” She turned to make quick introductions. Tamsin was the in-house designer at the Institute. “She makes all those beautiful posters and programmes for our events.” Her friend, like Eva, had dark hair—though longer, falling loose over her shoulders—and she was taller, her frame more voluptuous. Something about her made me think of the British women’s magazines my grandmother collected from the ’60s. The Russian-red lips and cat-eye make-up, the slim-fit cigarette pants and beaded top. I thanked her for coming; charmingly she said it was quite alright in an accent, slight but noticeable, that I couldn’t place.

  “Are you”—I plucked it from out of thin air—“Scottish?”

  “Close.” Her mouth tilted into a smile. “I’m from Cornwall.”

  “You’re coming over later, aren’t you?” asked Eva.

  I hesitated.

  She placed an arm on mine. “Do come… it’ll be a small crowd.”

  I said I’d see her there.

  Eva reached out in a way few people did in this city. Nobody had told me London could also be terribly lonely.

  Heading to the bar for a refill, I was accosted—the blonde youth stood before me. He was still wearing his winter coat. Perhaps he just couldn’t wait to leave.

  He held out a copy of the pamphlet, and a pen.

  “Could you sign this for me, please?” He was holding it open to the page with my excerpt.

  A strange request, but who was I to argue? Isn’t this what writers do?

  “Who shall I address it to?” I asked.

  The boy’s skin was delicately pale, and reddened where it had been touched by the cold.

  “Nicholas, please.”

  My pen stayed poised above the page.

  “Is anything the matter?” the youth asked. He looked faintly amused.

  “Not at all.” I wrote it out. Nonchalant.

  “And could you sign it “From Nehemiah?””

  I was about to sign “Nem”—it was brief, convenient, and no one called me Nehemiah.

  Apart from one person.

  “Did he send you?”

  The boy cocked his head, like a bird. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Who are you?”

  Instead of a reply, he handed over a slim white envelope.

  I stood speechless as he darted back into the crowd. By the time it struck me to follow, the fleet-footed messenger was at the door. He pushed it open and was gone.

  I remember the first time Nicholas took me swimming.

  One afternoon, we walked out the bungalow and headed away from the Ridge Forest, onto Raj Niwas Marg. We edged closer to the city, the roar of traffic and cycle bells growing louder, until we crossed the wide expanse of Sham Nath Marg.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Almost there.”

  The road was narrower, and to the left rose a white, colonnaded building, set away from the street, sheltered from the onslaught of the city by a sprawling lawn and rows of palm trees. Only when he turned in at the gate did I realize where we were headed.

  A five-star hotel. One of those places I couldn’t imagine stepping into—Delhi was like that, set into levels of wealth and access.

  “Are you sure…” I looked down at my jeans, my sandals. Nicholas was in a plain white shirt, but it was pristine and expensive.

  “Of course…” He touched my arm. “We’ll walk round to the back from the lawns. They know me here… they won’t make a fuss.”

  The place was strangely empty—perhaps, because it wasn’t yet high tourist season, or the newer hotels in south Delhi were proving more popular. We crossed manicured lawns, and walked through a small latched gate.

  The pool lay clear and blue and shimmery.

  I’d never seen anything more beautiful.

  I changed and showered, and carefully tucked my hair under a scalp-tight swimming cap, straightened my trunks. I looked ridiculous. My legs too long. My stomach flat but un-sculpted. But I could do this, I told myself, looking away from the mirror. I was grateful to Nicholas for so much, and I could do this.

  For him, almost anything.

  When I emerged, he was already in the pool. And like all good swimmers, he made it look easy. Each movement perfectly timed—the push, the lift, the breath of air, the turn. I too would learn how to glide through water. I was certain of it, up until the edge of the pool.

  “Come on in… you’re in the shallow bit.” Nicholas was on the other end, hanging on to the edges with his arms up on either side, smiling.

  The steps quivered underwater, playing tricks on my sight. They changed shape and position. They weren’t really there. Sculpted only by shadow and light. But my feet found them, and I sank, lower and lower, until—a moment of panic—there was seemingly endless space before I touched the bottom.

  The water was warm, it rose up to my chest, below my shoulders. I laughed.

  I tried walking, it was like pushing through something far thicker than I’d imagined, solid and liquid at the same time. I kept my arms up, like a bird, to push myself forward. I could tell the ground was dipping lower, but I ventured forward, keen to impress. To show I was as comfortable as he was in this space.

  He leaned back, his face to the sky. In a moment I would reach him.

  But the world suddenly fell away beneath me. All I needed to do was heave myself up and move behind to safety, but I didn’t know, I hadn’t learned yet. I flung my hands out instead, reaching for something concrete; they slid through water like air.

  I lurched back, trying to throw the water off my face, my eyes, my mouth, but there was so much of it. Surrounding me endlessly.

  Underwater, something stops. There is no time. No sound apart from a low roar of silence. I remember feeling—not thinking—that this would go on forever.

  Until hands grasped me under my shoulders, driving me up and back, pulling me across to the edge, propping me against the side. The infinite safety of solidity. The bar, the blue tiles. The gritty, firm cement.

  “It’s okay… you’re standing…”

  “I can’t…” I gasped. The water was a living, breathing thing. “I’m sorry…”

  “We’ll do this slowly…” His voice was low and soothing, close to my ear. His breath warm as life. “See, you’re fine…”

  He was right. The water only reached up to my chest now. It had retreated.

  Nicholas moved closer, his skin studded with drops. “The first thing we need to do is teach you how not to drown.”

  He didn’t. For on all occasions after, I pleaded not to return. I made excuses. I was busy. I wasn’t well. I had a pressing assignment to complete. Myra accompanied him joyfully when she visited Delhi; they went to the pool almost everyday despite the winter cold. I never did learn how to swim.

  Time is tricky. You organize it into days. You break it down to a second, and build it up to a century. A millennium. You shift, and stack,
hoarding time into holidays and long weekends. You peel away the calendar pages. Carry it around in smartphones and computers. It has a shape. A design. Hands and digits. Glowing figures. And yet, it can’t be tamed. Constantly in our grasp. Constantly out of reach. All it takes is a tremor to bring it down, the carefully staged arrangement. Precarious as a falling leaf. Time is riddled with fault lines. Slim as paper. Delicate as swirls of ink.

  In the bookshop that evening, after I read Nicholas’ note, I tried to drag myself back into the present. But there’s a reason why time is likened to water. It is viscous. It resists. I drank more wine. Suddenly exhilarated. I think I conversed with strangers, my voice louder than usual, my laughter more urgent. Everything seemed heightened. It lasted even when I was in the tube with Santanu, when we were making our way to the south-west of the city, to Eva’s place. Above the carriage door, we spotted a Shaadi.com advert—The smart way to find your life partner. Neha, 25, Model, Loves modern art and boxing. Sanjay, 29, Businessman, Loves Stallone and wildlife.

  “Santanu, 34, Recalcitrant Academic, Detests everything,” I offered.

  “Nehemiah, 32, Wastrel.”

  After we’d run out of colorful insults, he told me, “By the way, when we get to Eva’s flat, look at what’s on the dining table…”

  “What?”

  “You’ll see.”

  That evening, I’d have preferred to settle for fewer surprises. “Tell me…”

  “I will. Later.”

  And I couldn’t get any more out of him as we jostled along. At the next stop, a man stepped in and stood in front of me, sporting a military-style haircut and a shiny black leather jacket. On his neck, below his jawline, a shaky tattoo of a pair of dice.

  Eva lived in Wimbledon, close to the Buddhapadipa Temple, in a compact yet quietly expensive flat. Filled with neat, contemporary furniture, stylish industrial lampshades, and edgy urban photo art—a series of images of a woman in a glass box placed at bridges, cliffs, at the edges of skyscrapers. Santanu told me her father was a wealthy entrepreneur in Tokyo—“There’s no way anyone can afford this on a normal salary.”

  There were fewer than a dozen people in her drawing room—friends from Tokyo studying in London, a colleague or two from the institute including Tamsin, a few writers and artists from the event at Wilhelmein, and a Palestinian woman with a solemn face and dark shiny hair that spilled over her shoulders in coiled ringlets. Eva opened the door to us; she was on the phone, and gestured she’d only be a minute.

  “Sorry about that,” she said, coming over to us after. “Stefan called… sorting out some dates.” Her eyes, I noticed, were bright, unusually shiny. Stefan was her boyfriend or, as was the customary title in this country, her partner, currently in Paris, or Geneva. Posted there as… she’d mentioned, but I’d forgotten. “Foreign correspondent” came to mind. I asked Santanu.

  “He’s a journalist, I think….”

  “By the way,” I said, lowering my voice, “there’s nothing unusual on the dining table.” I gestured across the room.

  “Do you see the flowers?” he asked.

  Standing in the centre was a vase of long-stemmed white lilies.

  “No matter where he is, he sends her a fresh bouquet every week.”

  The room was filled with their fragrance, strong as the scent of longing, rising above the murmur of conversation, Ani Difranco on the stereo, the tinkle of glasses.

  Later, Eva introduced us to her Palestinian acquaintance.

  “Santanu, Nem, this is Yara… she’s warned me not to introduce her as a poet.”

  The girl standing beside her smiled.

  We asked her why.

  She had the face of a Modigliani painting. Perfectly polished and oval, with a sharp, pointed chin, and long, prominent nose; only her hair and eyes were more feisty than anything he ever captured on canvas.

  “Because people look at me with pity. Like poor child… it will be a tough life.” Her voice was pleasantly gravelly, and her words rounded and deepened over the vowels.

  “What do you usually tell them?” asked Santanu. I’d never seen him look that… delighted by anyone.

  She laughed. “That I teach… but it usually elicits the same reaction.”

  Yara worked as an Arabic tutor at a language centre in the city, where, she said, most of her students were diplomats. Weeks later, she gifted us copies of her chapbook—How to Survive Breathing—bound in neat bilingual order, her lines dropping on the pages, visceral, exquisite.

  “Is Yara an Arabic name?” asked Santanu.

  “Yes, it means small butterfly… but my name seems to belong to everyone… in Brazil yara is a water goddess… for aborigines, a seagull… for the Incas a song of love and death… in Sanskrit, a bright light… I think in Hindi, it means…”

  “A friend…” completed Santanu.

  “That’s right… but my favorite, and I don’t know if this is true, is the one from a Native American community…”

  What was that, we asked.

  “The line of the horizon that separates the stars from the ocean.”

  That’s because you’re a poet,” teased Eva. “I prefer water goddess… although that also makes you sound like a swimwear model.”

  Yara said if all else failed, which considering her calling was entirely possible, she’d give it a thought. She turned to Santanu, her eyes charcoal-black, tainted with silver light. “And your name?”

  “Hardly as poetic, or as multifarious, I’m afraid… Wholesome…”

  “Like porridge?”

  Santanu had the grace to laugh with the rest of us.

  “And you?” she asked. Her lips were stained with wine.

  “Me? It’s a Biblical name…”

  “I know.” Her stare was disconcerting.

  I hesitated. “It means builder of new worlds.”

  Through the evening, we mingled, weaving our way around the room. We settled into informal clusters. Then broke away, refilled our drinks, picked at plates of canapés. Some rolled their Golden Virginia, and stepped out into a tiny balcony that barely fit more than a person at a time. Tamsin smoked too, neat little menthol cigarettes, and I could see Eva keeping her company outside, dark heads bent close together. Laughing, looking at each other in delight. At some point, I found myself next to the writer from Hong Kong—a slight girl named Xia, who reminded me of a sparrow. She was working on a PhD in creative writing at the University of London, and had recently published a collection of short stories. “They span over a hundred years,” she explained, “from the 1830s to the handover in 1997.”

  And what were they about?

  As you know, she replied, that’s the most difficult question to answer.

  We laughed in artistic camaraderie.

  “And you?” Her eyes were very dark and very shiny, like polished beads. “I mean, do you also write fiction?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Why?”

  I told her I didn’t write fiction because I couldn’t find the words.

  She was quiet—expecting me to elaborate.

  That at some point in my life they were taken away from me. By Lenny. By Nicholas.

  Just then, we were joined by the Nepalese artist, a shaven-haired youth wearing a paisley-pattern shirt and vintage lunette glasses.

  He introduced himself as Nayan, his British accent clear and crisp.

  “Have you lived here all your life?” asked Xia.

  The artist was drinking whisky, and something about the way he sipped from his glass made me want to touch his lips.

  His grandfather, he explained, had served with the Gurkhas; his parents migrated to the UK before he was born.

  “When I visit Nepal,” he said, “I tell them about autumn. They don’t have autumn there… do you like it? What it does to the trees.”

  I said I too loved the lost season. Was that one of his inspirations? For the artwork on the journal’s cover.

  He laughed. “Yes. As well as everythi
ng else.” Mandalas, the cosmos, cells, lace, brocade. The long tradition of geometric and floral patterns of the Far East, the Middle East, the Byzantine and the Baroque.

  “How,” he slung back the remaining whisky, casually, “is it possible to separate?”

  Later, I was alone with Eva in the kitchen. Helping her uncork more wine. It was neat and superciliously clean—white tiles and counters that looked like they’d never seen a grease stain, or spillage of crumbs. In short, a kitchen in which nothing much was cooked. When Eva opened the fridge, I could see why—shelf upon shelf of ready meals from Waitrose, delectable tubs of prepared food. Tea smoked salmon. Tagliata with rocket and Parmesan. Sea bass filets with samphire and vanilla butter.

  She plucked out a bottle of white wine. A clean, elegant Calvet Pouilly Fumé.

  “Who was that man earlier?”

  “Which one?” I fumbled with the opener, sending it spinning across the counter.

  “Earlier… at the bookstore.”

  “I don’t know.” And that, at least, was the truth.

  “He gave you something…”

  “That—well, I’m not sure really.”

  “A secret admirer! What did he give you?”

  The envelope lay folded in my pocket. I couldn’t feel it, but it was there, heavy as stone.

  “A note.”

  “A note?”

  “Just an old friend. Nothing important.” I hoped I conveyed a nonchalance I didn’t feel.

  Eva laughed, her hair catching the light. “Alright… I won’t pry. Now, will you come with me this Saturday? To see a show by this British-Indian artist…”

  I was thankful she hadn’t persisted. I wouldn’t have liked to be rude, not to her, especially since she seemed to have taken me under her wing, concerned I might feel lost, out of place. Although, now that I’d heard about Stefan, I wondered whether there was something more, that I was filling a gap in the shape of a figure who was always elsewhere.