Seahorse Page 9

“You’re a student there? I hope you aren’t thinking of going back for classes today.”

  Our October term holidays had started, I said, but didn’t offer to explain why I hadn’t traveled home.

  “Good, so you’re free to help me clean this…” he gestured to the aquarium. “I think our friend in the bowl may have an infection… I hope it hasn’t spread…”

  I peered at the tank, at its carefully orchestrated landscape. “It’s beautiful.”

  The fish, with delicate lacy fins, were edged in red and blue. They darted through the water plants, hiding in the nooks and crannies of an arrangement of rocks.

  “Firefish. Terribly shy… but, as you just saw, with a surprising propensity to leap when startled.”

  The water was pristinely clear, and sliver-leafed plant ribbons swayed gently in an invisible current.

  I pointed at a creature hidden behind a swirling conch shell. “And that? Is that a…”

  “A seahorse.”

  It was the first time I’d seen one, real and alive. “I didn’t think they’d be so… small.” Its delicate swerving body, a punctuation of orange-gold, could easily fit in the palm of my hand.

  “Yes, deceptive creatures. There should be two in there somewhere…”

  “I can’t see it.”

  The art historian leaned over beside me. He smelled of faded musk, and something else, for which, at the time, I had no name.

  “There.” He pointed to the back. The other seahorse was hidden among the plants, its tail curled around a leaf.

  “My sea monsters,” he said. “From the Greek Hippocampus…”

  “These belong to you?”

  He nodded. “This aquarium was lying around, unused and empty… so I thought, why not get some fish? Amazing what you can find in the alleyways of Chandni Chowk.” He laughed. “This man, who owned the shop, told me he could get me any water creature in the world. So I thought I’d test him. ‘Seahorse?’ he said, ‘No problem, sir. I get for you next week.” And what do you know, he did.” He shook his head. “I have no idea how… or from where. Perhaps it’s better not to know.”

  I think it was at this point—despite the bungalow’s other sights—that I felt I’d discovered a new world. Entirely unfamiliar, removed from anything I’d known before. Looking at the firefish, the seahorses, I felt a low, electric thrill.

  “I could watch them for hours.”

  The art historian leaned casually against the door. “You’re most welcome to.”

  Was it, could it be, an invitation to return?

  Something like joy weled up inside me. Then I thought of Lenny, and it subsided.

  “Devi might think you’re crazy, but she’s patiently put up with all my eccentricities.” Devi, he explained, dropped by on weekdays to help with the housework. “If you sit—” he gestured to a chair, “and keep very still… you might see them better…”

  I followed his instruction.

  Soon, the firefish emerged hesitantly from their hidden places, darting like miniature arrows. The seahorses remained unmoving, patiently watching, their patterned skin intricate and ancient.

  All this while I was also keenly expectant, waiting for the art historian to ask a question. He’d want, I was certain, an explanation.

  Why I’d been in a tower in a forest, at that time of day.

  “I was wondering…” he began, “if you’d like some tea.”

  “I—yes, please.”

  He called for Devi, and a woman glided into the drawing room, clad in a floral salwar kurta, loose and comfortable. She carried the authoritative air of having worked there for years.

  “Ji, sahib.”

  It was her voice I’d heard last evening when they brought me into the house. I wondered whether it was her hands that had bathed me and changed my clothes.

  “Could we have some chai, please, Devi? Over there…” He pointed to the garden, to wicker chairs under an umbrella.

  She nodded and disappeared through the doorway.

  After tea, I was resolved, I’d change and leave.

  What can I tell you about that morning?

  It must have been sunny, for I remember him, for a moment, shading his eyes.

  Was I staring? Inadvertently. It might make him uncomfortable. And I, deathly embarrassed. I looked around, pretending that the rest of the lawn’s aspect offered as much of interest. In the far corner the gardener coiled a hose pipe; at the gate the watchman dozed.

  I wondered who’d rushed to help us yesterday.

  What a peculiar sight it must have been.

  A disheveled stranger half-carried by the sahib of the house. No odder than now, though, me sitting there in my oversized pajamas, holding a teacup, nibbling on a biscuit.

  I was most aware of it at first.

  This strange, abrupt unreality. My anomalous presence. The vastness between worlds separated by the Ridge Forest.

  “Devi will have them washed for you… although I think your tee-shirt might be ruined.”

  “Oh.”

  “You can keep mine if you like…” He glanced at me; my cheeks burned. “The one you’re wearing.”

  I protested, it was kind but I couldn’t possibly.

  “Why… don’t you like it?”

  I did, of course, I did.

  His mouth flickered in amusement. “Then it’s settled.”

  Was he being kind? Or did he feel this piece of clothing might somehow be… tainted?

  “Besides,” he added, “it looks much better on you.”

  I sipped my tea and burnt my tongue again.

  “Now”—he settled back in his chair—“there are matters of greater importance to attend to…”

  “Yes…” I looked down at the lushness of the grass, his feet, perfectly shaped, shell pink, networked by veins.

  “To begin with… your name.”

  I looked up to see him smiling—and I laughed. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t told him yet.

  “Nehemiah… but everyone calls me Nem.”

  “And I’m—”

  “Nicholas. I know.” It sounded much too bold. I added quickly, “I mean, I saw you… I attended your talk in college. It was very good, your talk.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it, Nehemiah.” He glanced into the distance, his attention caught by something hidden to me. Over the time we spent together, this would happen often; a moment when he was suddenly, inexplicably elsewhere. An odd habit, annoying, endearing, that I learned to pay no heed to later, but for now, I wasn’t sure whether to speak or stay silent. The gardener had disappeared, and the watchman also was nowhere in sight. It was only us in the garden.

  This close to noon the day was beginning to grow too warm for comfort—I supposed we’d be moving inside soon. I would then have to leave.

  From somewhere rose the cry of crows, and the muted honk of a passing car from the road. It was quiet here, quieter than I thought Delhi could ever be.

  “Is this your first time?” I asked. “In India.” Then, I regretted it, certain he was similarly queried by everyone he met.

  “Why?” He asked with no trace of annoyance or impatience, only curiosity.

  “Because… you’re not from here. At least, I suppose so…?”

  In the shade, his eyes seemed darker, the color of evening mist.

  “The places where I am I always feel I’ve been to before… isn’t that why we’re drawn to them? Else, why one city and not the other? Why the mountains? Or the sea? It’s fathomable to long for home, the familiar… but why places you’ve never traveled to? Because somehow we’ve been there before, and they never leave us.”

  I looked at him with a quiet grief, remembering Lenny’s map on the wall.

  “Is that why,” I asked quietly, “you bought a house here?”

  He laughed, jostling his tea cup, “God no!” This was the family home of a friend. “Malini.” He said her name softly, as though speaking it to himself. He’d studied with her in London. She was in Florence, wo
rking on her PhD, while her parents were away in the States, living with her bother, for a year.

  “She asked if I’d like to be caretaker… while I’m here on fieldwork for my post doc.” He glanced over the expanse of the lawn, the sudden, startling expanse of sky, the patient, overhanging trees. “I don’t think I’ll ever leave.”

  Malini. They were from her. The letters lying on the table. I want you in me.

  Otherwise, no one would give up their homes to a stranger. Allowing them into their sacred space.

  All my love, M.

  I placed the tea cup on the table and said I should be leaving.

  “To go where, Nehemiah?”

  I told him, wondering if he could have forgotten already.

  “Didn’t you say it was term holidays?”

  “It is.”

  “Will you not be the only one around?”

  Technically, I explained, my roommate hadn’t left for home either. “But—I went with him to a party… and he still hasn’t returned.”

  “That’s because he’s someplace that offers greater delights than a student residence hall.”

  It wouldn’t, I admitted, be too difficult.

  He added, “As are you.”

  What did he mean?

  He smiled, a rare, precious gesture brimming with untold kindness.

  I was in his closest, most secret circle.

  “I think we always arrive at the places we are drawn to.”

  I will be honest.

  My first few days at the bungalow weren’t quite the ascent into paradise you might like to imagine. Rather, they were filled with bewilderment.

  (And copious amounts of cheese. But I’ll get to that in a moment.)

  At first, it seemed utterly unbelievable that I was there. And I tried, most fervently, to decipher Nicholas’ motives. Was he merely being considerate? Is this what it looked like—the plain, unadorned face of human kindness? No. For it was tinged also by solicitous intent. What Lévinas called rapport de face à face. I remembered Nicholas’ hands, in the tower, reaching out in concern, hauling me through the forest, lifting me onto the bed. An encounter, made personal, face-to-face, that had installed within him a sense of responsibility for me.

  He might have also been provoked by the simple desire for company. Yet his options were undeniably many. From the sophisticated to the fawning, the witty to the erudite. Why did he settle on—for he didn’t quite select—me? Convenience perhaps, I was strewn on his path like some hurt, grieving creature. He’d had no choice.

  Worse, he probably thought me somehow… unhinged. Emotionally unstable, capable of self harm. He hadn’t yet asked why I’d ventured into the forest, the tower. That could only mean he’d come to his own conclusions. All this amounted to one verdict.

  Pity.

  That most wretched thing.

  Well-meaning, misplaced, acerbic.

  I tried to catch it in his eyes, when he was unwary, when they alighted secretly upon me, but I found his features cryptic—or maybe they held what I was least expecting, or hadn’t imagined. Amusement. Yes, that was it. Perhaps I entertained him. Like a new toy or a disarming pet. Is that what I’d sometimes catch flickering on his face?

  Although in my recollection now, I might be inordinately encumbering that time with questions. For there must be something said for youth, its easy, thoughtless flow, and joyous pliancy. He asked me to. And so I did.

  I can think of nothing more thrilling.

  I wouldn’t be able to shape Nicholas’ words, to wrench them out of his heart, but apart from all other things, the reason I stayed on at the bungalow was because, there, I never felt unremarkable.

  One evening—perhaps the first?—after a shower in luxurious solitude, uncommon in a communal residence hall, I joined Nicholas in the veranda. He was seated on the divan, the lamp in the corner burning low, coaxing the areca palm to cast serrated shadows on the floor. The air was summery yet cool, spiked with a fragrance I couldn’t place—something rich and pungent.

  “Do you smoke?” He tossed something at me, a solid, dark green lump.

  A friend of Malini’s, passing through town a few days ago, had left behind a tola of Manala hash. Regretfully. But he was flying to Switzerland, and couldn’t bank on their inefficiency. Or his ability to stuff it… “You know where.”

  “You mean, his–?” I couldn’t mask my alarm.

  “His what?”

  It was a word I’d only ever used in front of friends, people my own age. Nicholas was at least a decade (or more) older than me. “His ass…”

  “Perhaps. Although, usually, people take the ink cartridge out of a pen and replace it with a joint.”

  In the dimly lit veranda I was thankful he couldn’t see me flush.

  I said I’d share the tola with my roommate Kalsang. If he ever returned.

  “And this…” he gestured to a parcel on the table, “you’re welcome to share with me.”

  It lay unwrapped and open, source of the mysteriously pervasive odor in the room. Malini’s friend had gifted Nicholas a selection of cheeses. Hard, aged, and unbeaten by his travels from Europe. Piave, Gouda, Sbrinz, Comté—names I could hardly get my tongue around. Fat pale or straw-yellow slices, each reeking of the unfamiliar.

  “Help yourself to your favorites,” said Nicholas generously.

  “I don’t know,” I faltered. “I’ve never tried any.”

  He seemed unperturbed. “Let’s find out then…” and he sliced them there with a pen knife, using Time magazine as a cheese board. (What, I wondered, would Devi think?)

  The golden Piave tingled, its sharpness filling my nostrils and mouth, while the Sbrinz resisted, its hard surface crumbling easily into flakes. “Oldest cheese in Europe,” said Nicholas, and all at once I felt its age, spiced and heavy, on my tongue. Pale and creamy Comté tasted lightly nutty and floral, like a spring pasture. Before he opened the rest, Nicholas halted, saying that this called for wine. He stepped out and returned shortly with glasses and a bottle. He’d brought it with him to India, and hadn’t yet found occasion to open it. “Since tonight we simply must have red…” the cork slid out with a gentle pop; he held it to his nose. “Ah… perfect.”

  The wine was from a vineyard in Italy, in the north, a dark, ruby Nebbiolo. “The name,” he said, swirling the liquid in his glass, “comes from the Italian word for fog… nebbia… In October, during harvest, an intense fog settles over the region… they say even the earth weeps, reluctant to give up these beautiful grapes…”

  I took a sip and gasped.

  “Or it could refer to your hangover the next day.”

  Even for someone accustomed to frequent doses of Binnie Scot, the Nebbiolo was immensely strong.

  For a few days, though, with or without the wine, our meals were a feast. We paired the cheeses with anything we could find in the kitchen—chappatis, fresh mango, lychees, lime pickle—and lived, as Nicholas put it, gloriously lentil-free.

  On another evening, we stepped outside.

  It was exceptionally pleasant, clear, mild and almost full-mooned, and beside me—I could still hardly believe—Nicholas. Moving in his silent, delicate way.

  The ground is all memoranda and signatures.

  As the night deepened, the world lost its edges.

  Around us, the trees were not trees. They were forms freed from their names, soaring into the sky in sudden freedom. Intricate, elaborate mysteries. That is what the darkness does—it removes the burden of having to appear as we usually are.

  I could see better than I ever had in daylight.

  Somewhere in the east, a pale orange glow throbbed over the horizon; the distant, unsleeping city. Here, though, we were removed, and the universe seemed heightened, offered up solely to us. We may have been its last two remaining inhabitants. That is how I felt, walking with him in the garden, the air shifting in the space between us. That it could only be now, it could only be here, it could only be with him.

  This alm
ost happiness.

  When we sat, on wicker chairs damp with dew, he threw himself back, looking up at the moon, high in the sky now, veiled by a sheet of rib-bone clouds.

  Nicholas. I said his name in silence, wondering when—whether some day I’d dare—say it out loud. Ni. Cho. Las.

  I too leaned on my chair, tipping back, precariously balanced. A vision upturned, of silvery darkness and the fringes of trees. We’d drunk some wine earlier, and it had settled somewhere behind my eyes, humming in my ears. For now, all the caves that Lenny had hollowed within me were filled with smoke, and sadness—the kind I knew would never go away.

  All we are not stares back at what we are.

  I must have murmured out aloud, for Nicholas asked if I liked Auden.

  “Not me. Lenny… Lenny liked his poetry…”

  I don’t know if his name brought a heaviness into the air, or into my heart.

  “Who’s Lenny?”

  “He–was my friend… he died.”

  Nicholas stayed silent, watching from across the table.

  There were some complications…

  He waited until I’d finished, my trimmed, clinical version—Lenny was “unwell”, a mix-up with the medication—then leaned over, placed his hand on my arm, warm, alive. “Cavafy says… hetani sintomos o oraios bios… Come,” he added quietly, “Shall we go inside?”

  He stood and I followed. The garden was wreathed in deepest shadow now, the lawn a dark pool, the moon shielded and lost. Before we reached the bungalow, I stopped and turned toward him.

  “What did that mean?” My voice sank in the silence; I hardly dared to look at him.

  He leaned closer—I could feel his breath on my face, all mist and seaweed, something sweet—and held me.

  “The beautiful life is brief…”

  Other nights, long and restless, saw me lying awake in the room with no clocks or calendars, staring into the darkness. It would creep back, the feeling that I’d splinter into a million pieces. That my breath was caught in my throat.

  That’s why I’d climbed the tower.

  Because I thought from the top, I could breathe.

  I’d sit up, listening for the sound of life. It was usually near dawn before I fell into a fitful, dreamless sleep. At times, when I’d wait for the shattering, it would not come. Yet it would still be there, a dull ache, running along my sides, in-between, changing its course when I shifted. I began to realize that was how it was always going to be. Death. Loss. They left their absences, filled with oddly shaped emotions that didn’t quite fit, that pressed on this nerve and the other. Life chips away at flesh and bone.