The Blue Bedspread (6 page)

I returned from school drenched, my exercise books wet at the corners; my shoes cold and heavy, like the tiny black boats fished out of the river. Sister spread the books out on the bedspread, turned the fan to maximum, dried my hair with a towel and propped my shoes on either side of the gas stove. By evening, the books had dried, their pages flapped in the fan’s draft. The shoes had begun to steam, making the house smell of leather and rain when Father came home drunk and laughing.

Whenever Father was drunk and laughing, he would do stupid things: once, he took a kitchen knife and flushed it down the toilet. The knife got stuck, the water stopped flowing and for two mornings before the plumber arrived Sister and I kept our legs crossed as we prayed hard hoping that we didn’t spoil our pants. Later, that was to become one of our few family jokes: if we could hold our shit for two days, we could hold down anything in the world.

At other times Father would hide Sister’s sanitary napkins so that she was forced to borrow my handkerchief. Sometimes he would become violent and shave himself with neither soap nor water until he bled. It was at those times that we got frightened. My sister was a strong woman; she would grasp his shoulders and shake him, sometimes even slap him hard. He would then start crying and slowly slide down the sofa; his eyes would remain half-open and he would fall asleep.

That evening when Father came home Sister was away. She had gone to the British Council to return some books which were long overdue. Father smiled and said he wanted to see me naked. ‘Let’s see how grown up you are now,’ he said. At first, I thought it was yet another of his drunken jokes, but then he stood there in the middle of the bedroom, the smile melting away, and told me that he knew what Sister and I were up to at night. If I didn’t undress, he said, he would tell Sister all about it. Or better still, make us sleep in different rooms.

I kept listening, the battle had been lost, I kept staring at the patches of rain on the wall: a rabbit with an ear missing, a dog its tail.

Maybe I should have protested but that afternoon, with Father drunk and laughing, with Sister gone and my only secret lying suddenly exposed, I closed my eyes, undressed and on Father’s orders lay on the blue bedspread.

It was cold, the rain from the exercise books had seeped into the fabric. I could hear the sound of cars splashing the water in the potholes outside, I could hear the minibus conductors shout their destinations: Dum Dum, Howrah, Entally, Roxy Cinema.

Someone laughed from the street outside; I think I shouted, I’m not sure. Even if I had, my scream wouldn’t have gone beyond the places where buses go.

What happened later is split, torn, and then welded together, as if in a dream. I fell asleep; I remember that when I woke up, the buses had long gone, the rain had stopped leaving the street gleaming like Sister’s hair. I stood in the tiny balcony overlooking the street, I can recall crying.

However, what I remember more than the tears is the view of the street lamps through water-filled eyes: the white neon light bent and curved, split into its component colours. Through the blur of that spectrum, I could see the oil mill across the street, soft and diffuse as if in a magazine photograph. The red flags strung across its entrance drooped limp and wet in the rain. I must have stood there for quite some time since my legs had begun to hurt. I was also beginning to panic: I hadn’t done my geography homework.

By the time Sister announced that dinner was ready, the tears had dried. At the dining table, I tried to hide behind the glass of milk watching Father and Sister eat silently. I wanted to shrink, climb up the glass and dive down to its bottom, swim in circles, let the milk’s whiteness fill my body, wash the stickiness and some blood away.

‘You don’t have to go to school tomorrow,’ Father said, standing at the sink washing his hands.

‘You look unwell,’ he said, lighting a cigarette, walking up to the table and holding me close. I could hear the dinner in his stomach, my heart pressed against his groin.

That night, my sister didn’t switch on the bedside lamp. And with all the stars locked in the blackness of the bedroom, we held each other tight. The bedspread was dank from the rain, stained and crusted where the come had slipped off my legs. But my sister didn’t seem to notice as she lay, not speaking a word, her red shirt rolled up to allow my lips to shelter her nipple, my chin to rest on the small pillow of her breast and my hands pressed, warm and soft, between her legs.

We could hear Father snore in the next room, the rattle of the windows whenever a huge Bengal-Bihar cargo truck rumbled by. Light from the street filtered through the frosted glass panes making Sister’s hair shine. I could feel the rise and fall of her breasts, hear the gentle rush of her breathing.

She had fallen asleep, so I withdrew my hands, rolled her shirt back to her waist, pulled the covers over her and snuggled close. She turned in her sleep but she didn’t let me go and my head came to fit exactly in the curve of her neck, her arms came to rest across my back.

I lay there awake, staring at the darkness so comfortably nestled between our bodies, allowing it to wash my eyes, lull me to sleep. And although my body still hurt, where Father had put his entire weight on that evening, I kept drowning in a stream, a river and then an ocean of happiness.

That night happened more than twenty-five years ago. I have embellished Father’s heavy breathing, my muffled screams, with adjectives in my mind. I have made Father’s trousers black at one time, blue at another; changed that rainy evening to a hot summer morning. Or when I have felt like it, I have made it pour that night so that Sister and I, locked in embrace, can hear the drops drum against the window.

As for my sister, she walked out of home when she was nineteen with someone I hope she loved.

For quite some time, several years, I missed her as if I had walked out of an operating theatre, cured but with something missing, something that had been an integral part of me, the absence of which I would feel every waking moment.

And then, slowly, like sunrise on a winter’s day, it dawned on me, cold and clear, that perhaps my sister had to run away for me to carry on. Because, in a way, it was essential that one of us should leave never to return. It saved both of us the discomfort and the pain of sitting together as adults and talking about everything except those nights on the blue bedspread, that July night on the blue bedspread, moments that were key to our survival and yet better left untouched and unsaid.

On certain rainswept nights, when I lie in bed, I can see Father standing in the rain outside, his hair all wet, the water streaming across his face. He looks half his size, gone is the fat around his waist, the furrows in his forehead. Instead he looks weak, lost, like a child left stranded in the blinding rain.

I want to open the window, ask him to come in, change his clothes and cover him with a blanket. I want to tell him that what happened happened and it’s been selfish of me to keep using him as an excuse for failures of my own making. Or as a subject of my prose. I want him to help me understand why he failed as a father and how could so much hatred and pain have gracefully coexisted with so much love and joy.

But when I look at the window again it’s too late, Father is gone, leaving behind the rain pouring out from a dark Calcutta night, I can see it streak across the halogen lamps, tap on my window, gurgle around the Municipal Corporation tap.

I close my eyes hard, imagine my wife asleep by my side, my only child awake reading a picture book, or my two children silently conspiring in their bedroom. And I hope that my sister, wherever she is, is safe and has children of her own and when they sleep at night, maybe she sets the stars free once again and their heads come to fit exactly in the curve of her neck.

Every family has its moments. When the lights in the house dim or brighten, depending on what looks the best, when music begins to play or silence slips in, depending on what sounds the best.

If it’s June, a cool wind begins to blow, clouds cover the sun deep within their folds. And if it’s January, the sun sets later than usual, your lips don’t chap, you can take off your socks, touch the floor with your toes.

People talk in laughs, think in smiles, and for that moment, even if it lasts only one second or one minute, there’s happiness spread all around, like chocolates. You can take as much as you want, stuff your pencil box, squeeze some into the hole of your sharpener, even between the pages of your textbooks. And there will be lots left.

Some will stick to the walls, the furniture, some will fall under the bed, in those corners where eyes never reach so that when the moment has passed all you need to do is to search in the right places, keep your ears open for the rustle of the chocolate’s wrapping paper, your nails overgrown, so that when you have to chip it off the walls, you can.

This is the story of one such moment.

But because this happened on a September night long ago and because this is December and in a couple of hours it will be day, we will have to twist a few things to get it right. So I will have to tell you to close your eyes; if the wooden slats in the window cannot keep the sun out, you will have to cover your face so that your eyes rest in the dark hollow of your arm.

This should cut the sunlight off, make it easier for you to imagine that it’s night, that all the lights have been switched off in this house. Except for one, the table lamp in the room in which I sit, writing.

Because this was Father’s room.

Keep your eyes closed and when no one’s looking, when you have imagined enough so that the darkness fills the entire room, open your eyes and you can see, at the foot of your bed, a tiny yellow line.

It’s very faint, it’s coming from Father’s room and it takes a distinct shape only when the wind blows and the drapes part. It’s then that the line lengthens, even bulges in the middle.

Now, let’s get the sound right. Outside, the traffic is thin, once in a while, something passes by, maybe a truck, an empty bus, washed and ready. You can hear the fan tonight but imagine that it’s the sound of someone breathing. There may be other noises but let’s hope they don’t distract. Like a leaf falling, or one of the pigeons in the cage moving in its sleep.

Inside the room, Father is sitting at his table, he hasn’t changed his office clothes, the white striped shirt, crumpled, falls below his belt, his trousers are still on, a line of mud crusted on the black fabric, near his ankles. He has unfastened his zip, about one-third, just to relieve the pressure.

But this isn’t our focus. For there’s nothing unusual. There have been several mornings when he has woken up in his office clothes, sometimes even wearing his watch. Once, he had fallen asleep with his glass, the whiskey stained his bedsheet, the glass broke sometime during the night, under his sleeping weight, a piece cut him near the wrist. He realized it only when he was brushing his teeth and the white washbasin turned red.

Tonight, however, the room smells clean, in all the noises of the night, you cannot make out the clink of glasses, the pouring, the gulps, it’s quiet except for the radio.

It’s a Philips radio, old, the dust has got into the speaker and the dial so that you can’t make out the numbers clearly, the red indicator moves with jerks, the tip of the antenna broke long ago into a stump of steel, jagged at the top. But it serves the purpose as Father chooses short wave, you can hear the click of the knob, he is tuning. The silence breaks.

You can no longer hear the fan in your room, the radio is making a noise, whines, beeps, crackle, some music, crackle again, high-pitched whistles, foreign voices, men and women. As if inside the Philips, there’s a huge cinema hall, packed for the matinee show, where men are whistling, clapping, shouting, talking to one another, the pre-show music is on, they are waiting for the lights to be switched off, for the curtains to rise.

Father gets impatient, irritated, he can’t get the station, you can hear him curse, get up, push his chair, you close your eyes, afraid, you can hear him fling the curtains aside, the yellow light is now a giant rectangle which touches your bed.

But Father doesn’t go to the fridge, doesn’t take out any glasses, he goes back to his room, the curtains fall, the radio mutters under its breath, the yellow line has shrunk, your fear melts.

Whine, crackle, whine, crackle, suddenly, no whines, no crackles, absolute silence, Father’s got the station, then a soft roar, like when it’s raining at night and you are sitting in your room, listening to the rain through a glass window, tightly shut. A man’s voice rises from the roar, coming from thousands and thousands of miles away, across the Mediterranean, Central Asia, Iran, across the Arabian Sea, the voice carried by waves heading for the old Philips radio in Father’s room.

His hands tremble as the waves enter the speaker, through the dust, and the voice tells him that Bob Willis turns, runs away from us, and the Little Master drives him straight down the wicket, over his head, past mid-off, four more runs, Mike Brearley is worried and Father, who has never played cricket in his life, never watched a cricket match, doesn’t need to know what these words mean except that Sunil Gavaskar is nearing his double century, and India, behind by more than one hundred runs in the first innings, can now even win the match, draw the series.