The Fifth Man (17 page)

Seema had had a lotus pond built on the terrace. Her parents’ home in the Hooghly district of West Bengal had lotuses and water lilies. Land was very expensive in Bombay. And so the garden was on the open terrace. The wardrobes were packed with new nightclothes and dressing gowns for the guests. Bikram had made both his cars available round the clock. You never know where someone might want to go.

‘Such attention to guests, this is incredible, Seema,’ said Esha.

Seema said, ‘A guest is an
atithi
, who arrives unexpectedly instead of adhering to the appointed date or
tithi
. You can visit me without luggage next time, Esha-di.’

Mahanam was astonished by the library and the collection of paintings and sculptures in Seema’s house. Any album he wanted was available. Including those of Ajanta. He didn’t have so many himself. Mahanam sketched to his heart’s content along with Pupu. They would be used in his book, with due acknowledgement to Seema Seal and Samiddha Chowdhury.

Mahanam asked, ‘Whose passion is all this, Seema?’

‘No one’s, Mahanam-da,’ smiled Seema. ‘Just one of the different ways of spending black money. We bought all this personally in the expectation that you would set foot in our house one day. Can’t you see, there’s not a mark on the golden embossing, no one opens the pages.’

‘Why do you have to display so much humility, Kakima?’ asked Pupu. ‘Are you cultivating it deliberately? Seema Kakima has many interests, many talents, Dr Roy, she is extremely accomplished. But she refuses to acknowledge them. Sherlock Holmes said modesty is not a quality, it’s another name for hypocrisy. Tell her, will you?’

How would Seema tell them that without acknowledgement and praise from the right quarters all talents become useless. Even if she did, Pupu would not understand. She did whatever she liked, all by herself, without caring for recognition or acclaim from anyone. Was this unique to Pupu, or a natural trait in women of the new generation? It needed observation. Seema would be very pleased if it was the latter. In her old age, as the wife of the chairman of some corporation or the other, she would mention this quality of the new generation at the conferences she would grace as a garlanded chief guest, asserting unequivocally that it was a sign of progress.

The street food vendors on Chowpatty beach were pestering Seema. Pupu was matching strides with Mahanam, an ice cream in her hand. Esha refused to lag behind. Neelam was walking next to Aritra in a white sari and blouse, Aritra was limping a little. Bikram said, ‘What a dress, Bhabi! You look beautiful. But Chowdhury-da has been widowed.’

Neelam couldn’t contain her laughter. ‘You need to be widowed too,’ she said. ‘Seema will dress this way tomorrow.’

Esha wasn’t speaking. She hadn’t said a word since they had returned from Aurangabad, only offering monosyllables in answer to questions.

‘Are you ill, Esha?’

‘No.’

‘Not depressed anymore?’

‘No.’

‘We’re taking the ship to Goa, you’ll love it. You haven’t been to Goa before, have you?’

‘No.’

‘Are you unhappy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you angry with me?’

‘No.’

‘The anger’s gone?’

‘Yes.’

Pupu said, ‘You people are walking very slowly, Baba. Dr Roy says he wants to see the Viceroys enter through the Gateway of India. Esha Mashi is saying she’s seen the Elephanta Caves already, she’s not in the mood to go again.’

Bikram said, ‘Esha-ji has to be dunked in the sea at Juhu beach. Her mood will improve at once.’

‘If I go into the sea I won’t come out again, I’ll go back to where I belong,’ said Esha.

‘You’ve come from the seabed?’ asked Seema. ‘Are you Lakshmi or Urvashi, Esha-di?’

‘Neither Lakshmi nor Urvashi,’ said Esha sadly. ‘I’m a poison pot, Seema.’

‘Neither a mother nor a wife, so far as I’ve heard not a daughter either, who can you be but Urvashi,’ Bikram told himself.

Aritra said in his head, ‘A man’s heart loses itself suddenly. His blood pounds, Urvashi from heaven.’

Mahanam said, ‘It’s a matter of choice, Esha, whether you want to be Urvashi or Lakshmi.’

‘I don’t want to be either, Mahanam-da,’ said Esha. ‘Doesn’t imagination offer any alternatives?’

‘It does,’ answered Mahanam. ‘Instead of a poison pot, you could be a nectar pot. What do you want to be, Samiddha?’

‘I don’t want to be nectar either,’ said Pupu. ‘It would bore me stiff to be immortal, much better to be a bubble, full of colour and death.’

Mahanam recited:

O wide river

Your water, unseen, unheard

Uninterrupted, incessant

Flows eternally

‘Look, Esha, Neelam, you can’t blame god. Man wanted death voluntarily. Not with pique, but with love. Not like Freud’s Thanatos, the death-wish which is a synonym for hatred—but with the kind of romantic passion that Pupu expressed. So there was death. And then, suffering from amnesia, he forgot that this was what he had wanted. He was furious. He made up all sorts of stories. Since then man has been at loggerheads with god.’

‘So you accept an anthropomorphic god, Mahanam-da,’ said Aritra. ‘A god in the mould of humans, with arms and legs. God made man in his own image, and man returned the compliment.’

Mahanam said with a smile, ‘You don’t even get rhetoric these days, Ari, have you turned completely into an officer in a commercial firm then, aren’t you a poet anymore?’

‘Ari was never a poet, Mahanam-da,’ said Neelam. ‘He had the gift of the gab, that’s all. And in youth even a bitch is a nymph.’

Esha said, ‘Ari-da was not a poet? It’s possible. Bikram was a singer too once upon a time. Now he manages his own enterprise, Ari-da manages someone else’s.’

‘What rubbish, I still sing,’ protested Bikram vehemently.

‘You may sing,’ said Seema, ‘but you’re not a singer anymore.’

‘What!’ said Bikram incredulously.

Esha spoke little, and when she did, it was with Pupu, with Neelam, with Seema, with Mahanam, even with Bikram. But Ari was left out. Ari was left out.

But what had he done? Nothing. Nothing at all. At one time he had meant everything to Esha. He had all the rights in the world over her. Esha-Presha would melt like butter on his breast. Wouldn’t she? Her hands and feet, lips and breasts were all made of soft wax, a wax that turned liquid under Aritra’s passion. It was he who had made Esha who she was. She belonged to a conservative family. Esha would say, ‘You know, Ari, among my cousins the girls are like roses or jasmines, the boys are all fair-skinned. I’m the only dark, ugly one. My aunt has been making me use beauty lotions from my childhood. But beauty never came.’ Sometimes she would say, ‘You know, Aritra, my cousins have their noses buried in thick books all the time.
Human Destiny
,
Religion Without Revelation
,
The Cosmic Blueprint
. Counting the number of scholars in this family will make your head reel. While I’m an ignorant fool, Aritra.’ Esha would laugh. But through her laughter Aritra could hear the weeping of a girl constantly criticized.

From a distance he had seen a big car leaving the Khans’ house, carrying several bejewelled fairies. Each of them with hair as black as queen bees, eyes like lotus petals, a nose like the softest of flowers, mouth and lips like ripe red fruits. Their faces demanded individual attention, their expressions were haughty, they never walked on the streets. Ravishing, they were. But no one would be inspired by their appearance to write poetry. There was Esha, coming out of the house. A willow tree. The huge front gates of the Khan mansion seemed to bow to her before closing. People all around. Cars speeding by. But Aritra could see no one else, there was no one else. Photographs don’t come out well without appropriate backgrounds, such as a temple in a narrow lane. But how perfectly Konark stood amidst a desolate emptiness of sand stretching to the horizon, in all its glory. The perspective of a conservative, blind aristocracy. A meaningless procession of innumerable faces and cars in the backdrop. Esha approached, charged with meaning. The immortal woman.

Will she sleep alone this stormy night
Crawling expectantly in the blind lane
Imprisoned in her mother’s watery womb
Where’s the surgeon on this dreadful night?
Wait in the yard with the conch-shell
Let the sound mingle with its echo
Can there be an explosion of words
Will she awaken? Will she bring a ransom?

Aritra had given birth to Esha, hadn’t he? ‘
Urrr naagin, laach naagin, laach naagin, laach
.’ The snake had danced to the rhythm of the snake charmer’s flute at the University Institute folk festival. Memories of earlier lives had flashed before her eyes. Well then? Did the incomparable Galatea whom he had built with his own hands not belong to Pygmalion anymore, did she belong to the entire world now?

Aritra tore his hair out, sank his teeth into his hands, biting them like the crocodile in the fairy-tale. Then, bleeding profusely, he died. And, in a laughing procession over this death they walked with their luggage up the gangway to The Condor, bound for Goa—a heroic Bikram, a brightly smiling Mahanam, a detached, distracted Esha-Presha; and in orange slacks, orange lipstick, orange nail-polish, and with an orange bag on her shoulder, a shiny Seema wrapped like a lozenge, and, bringing up the rear, a limping Aritra Chowdhury forced to rise to his feet and dust himself off.

The steamer sounded its horn. The Condor would now unfurl its gigantic wings and fly across the wide sky of the Arabian sea. Like dolls—although they weren’t dolls— ranged along the railing on the deck, stood Seema, Aritra, Mahanam, Bikram, Esha.

Why hadn’t Neelam come? Despite all the cajoling and imploring? Beseeched to join the travellers, why did she still remain, impenetrable, on the distant shore they had left behind? The waves in the wake of the steamer were turning the blue water white. As frothy as a waterfall. As fearsome as a whirlpool. As though the water was playing the cymbals of death with both its hands. Why hadn’t Neelam come? Esha was afraid. Was it just because of Pupu? Pupu was even more comfortable than Seema’s son Tito in Bikram’s house. Tito visited once a year, but Pupu went as often as she liked, for as long as she liked. Without her parents. Sometimes with her friends. And yet Neelam hadn’t wanted to come. As though, clasping Pupu to her breast, she had bid goodbye to Aritra forever. Had Neelam left Ari for good? She was supposed to have fought, she was supposed to have lived with deprivation, but the question of abandoning him had never arisen. Ari had not understood. How terrifying! Esha could understand, but Ari was too besotted to realize that the ground beneath his feet was shaking. That he was floundering in bottomless water. He hadn’t realized. Neelam, Neelam, you have been cruel to many people, directly, indirectly. Don’t do it anymore. You must not pick up the scales of the blindfolded goddess of justice. You cannot be the deity who judges. Don’t be. Esha seemed to be knocking her forehead against an uninterested Neelam’s feet while Neelam stood in an empty sky. And The Condor kept flying regally, holding people in the span of its wings and in its beak. People who could neither stop the ring from whirling, nor escape it with a tremendous leap. Their actions had pinned them to the rim. Not because of their karma from another lifetime, but from this one. This one alone. And all of them, almost all of them, were silently adding the blue of their agony to the blue of the ocean with its restless waves. No one could see how the Arabian sea was turning darker in consequence. Currents of blood, blue in colour, were spreading from one coast to another. Charged with an electric force. So powerful was this blue stream of pain and desire that it would silently suck in anyone who fell into it.

Pointing with her wistful orange arm, Seema said, ‘There, Esha-di. Flying fish. There’s another, and another!’

Looking out of the corner of his bloodshot eyes, Ari saw a seagull swoop down on the water and pick up a fish in its beak. His heart leapt into his mouth, he shivered. He looked at Esha from a distance. She wasn’t looking in his direction. What was she gazing at, so engrossed, so blue? Had she never seen the sea or water before? Had she never seen blue or green or white? Or was she gazing at all this so as to not look at him? Her eyes were riveted.

The colour of the day deepened. You couldn’t look at the sea. Sharp knives flashed in its swells, there were fewer waves here at a distance from the harbour, the swaying was far less, but still it was a rough sea.

Esha sat in the dining hall with tomato soup and dry toast. Aritra was nauseous, Seema had opened her trove of delicacies. Bikram was eating, Mahanam was eating. Seema was watching, eating. Esha was eating with concentration. Aritra toyed with his food. What was Esha eating with such attention? Had she never tried tomato soup with dry toast before? Or would she not look at him, would she never look at him again, which was why she was eating this way, with heart and soul?

Esha and Seema were chatting with a family on the upper deck. An animated conversation. He couldn’t tell whether they were Punjabis. Two fat-cheeked children, the woman was probably the same age as Seema. She was dressed in a churidar and kurta, Seema was talking to her, Esha was smiling, she got up and left, she was going towards the stern of the ship, what would she do if Ari followed her? She would certainly move towards the bow, if Ari went upstairs she would go downstairs, if he went lower she would go higher, much higher, much further, the gulf between them kept widening. Their journey from Pune station to Priyalkarnagar on that cool, pleasant night was so far behind them now, on the Siddheshwar Express from Kalyan to Pune, Aritra standing, Esha sitting, somehow they had found a seat for her. Many passengers between them. But still they were not far apart. Esha’s cheeks were visible, sometimes her forehead, perhaps half her face, but still she was Esha, entirely Esha. But now, her body wrapped in a pink sari, Esha was moving constantly, indefatigably, sitting, standing, in his view, but this was Esha in fragments. She had no smile on her face for Ari, no eyes for him. One of Ari’s eyes told him the separation was complete. The other said—impossible, this is impossible.

Mahanam sat in a deck chair, lighting his pipe. A fragrant smell. He had been immersed in the
Avadanasataka
, legends about Buddha and Ashoka, all afternoon. With the sun setting he had put his book away and lit his pipe. When he saw Aritra coming up to him he said, ‘Want to taste my tobacco, Aritra, Bikram? I have a dozen pipes in my suitcase. Should I get them?’

‘Not a very strong smell, Dada,’ said Bikram. ‘My brand is Charminar. Sometimes a Capstan. I don’t care for Dunhill or anything like that. Can I say something, Dada? Shall we have some Scotch? Along with Goan seer cooked in wine and fried chicken liver. I’ll make arrangements.’

‘Why not?’ said Mahanam. ‘All right, Aritra?’

Aritra’s breast was splitting with thirst, his heart arid. Can you lend the Gobi desert a rain-bearing cloud? He said, ‘So be it. But don’t get too drunk.’

Bikram left for his cabin with great enthusiasm, bringing Seema’s case. A portable icebox and the liquor were inside.

Snacks to go with the drinks in a hotbox.

‘Cheers, cheers!’ The glasses were emptied rapidly. The evening passed. Night fell. Cheers, cheers. Deckhands in uniform walked past them. Vendors offered biscuits, coffee, nuts, cashews, cold drinks. Cheers, cheers. Kissing the bottle, Bikram said, ‘Well, Chowdhury-da, am I drunk?’ He was slurring his words a little. Aritra had to drink a lot. He was used to drinking very slowly. He was lively now, but not drunk. ‘Ten highballs, right?’ he said. Right now he was avoiding reality. Later, he would start slurring too. His limbs would give way, he would start talking, talking far too much, and then . . . ?

Bikram said, ‘Then, fuck it, I’ll die. Fall to the ground with a thump, the undertakers will drag me away by my feet. Roy-da, my Roy-da. Won’t you save me? What’s this, the girls aren’t drinking. As if they don’t. My wife drinks, she’s shy because all of you are here. She turns into something else when she’s drinking. Tight as a whip. Crisp fried prawns. Crunchy. Ray-da, you may be a bachelor, but you’re not celibate, are you?’

Mahanam said laughingly, ‘It seems you want to bare your heart. Go ahead, do it.’

‘That’s not it, Dada. I like you a lot. No pretence like Chowdhury-da here. Have you ever tasted a Santhal woman, Dada?’

Mahanam burst into laughter. ‘This question must have been lurking in your mind for a long time. The alcohol has loosened your tongue today.’

‘Not alcohol, Dada, whisky. Don’t laugh, all right? No laughing matter. Santhal women best. Sophisticated women not like them. No, never. I challenge you. Fight. Prove it. I, Bikram Seal, I’ve tasted them all. I’m telling you. Adivasi women sexiest. All the sisters are here. Ask them. Hey, Seema.’

Aritra slapped Bikram coldly. Mahanam said, ‘Empty the rest of the bottle on his head.’

Aritra said, ‘Should I? Really? No one will be happier to do it than me.’

‘Coffee! Here,’ said Mahanam.

Bikram had an attack of hiccups. Mahanam poured the Scotch out of his glass and poured coffee into it. ‘Drink this like a good boy, Bikram Seal,’ he said.

Seema and Esha were downstairs, they were coming up the stairs now. Seeing the state Bikram was in, Seema hurried up to them. ‘Oh god, you’ve spoilt the evening. Did you have to drink so much again? Can you support him from the other side, Ari-da, let’s put him in the cabin, or he’ll create a scene.’

‘Ari and I will take him, you’d better go,’ said Mahanam.

Esha wasn’t even looking this way. She seemed to be walking in a dream. As though there was nobody here, no one else. To the right or to the left, in front or behind, there was nobody else on this ship. As the night deepened, the wind picked up speed. It was difficult to sit here. The deck was emptying out. Those who had cabins had entered them. The doors couldn’t be opened against the wind. Despite his reluctance, Aritra had drunk so much that he was sleepy. Like a limp fly-whisk he had slumped on his bed. As he sank into sleep, he tried to find something through a dream. Dreams could not be dictated. Desiring to dream of Vivekananda or Sri Aurobindo, you could easily dream of dragons instead. So, instead of a pleasurable dream, Aritra was having a nightmare. An accident. Not on land, but on the water. His personal ship had shattered, the frame coming apart on both sides. The bow, the stern, the deck were all crumpling, falling into the sea.

Was that someone banging on the door! The wind? Aritra roused himself emphatically. Esha, Esha, after making me suffer so much, have you come to me finally? Have you? Aritra opened the door with his eyes closed. ‘Seemachal, what is it?’ As soon as Seema entered the wind whipped the door shut. Seema’s eyes were blazing. ‘Where’s Bikram?’ she asked. ‘My Bikram? Where have you taken him?’

‘Bikram? What are you saying, Seema? How should I know? Why should I have taken him anywhere?’

‘What else can it be? I made him lie down with such care. As soon as I fell asleep for a bit, I find he’s disappeared. He was prepared to stray, Ari-da, and you had already got him drunk and out of his senses by letting loose your beautiful wife and your sexy girlfriend on him. Did you have to add alcohol? What else is this but abandoning him? Now he’s gone off in search of someone. Someone else. He doesn’t want me anymore. Doesn’t want me, doesn’t want me.’

Seema flung herself on Aritra’s chest, weeping uncontrollably. ‘What will happen to me, then? What will happen to me?’

Standing ramrod straight, Aritra switched the light off in the cabin and told himself with a cruel heart, ‘That’s right. Why not this? All women have the same body in the dark. It’s the same tree. The same flowers and fruits, the same roots and hollows. The main thing was hunger. Desire, desiring strongly with everything in one’s life.’ And so in that terrible darkness all the orange colours on Seema’s body were shed and tossed away, and so in that icy darkness Seema’s arms were torn out, legs were torn out, breasts were torn out. Filling the entire canvas, Picasso began to paint the Guernica of the civil war with twisted, mangled body parts, crying and burning, including the final whimpering cry of the dying she-horse. Drinking Seema, filling himself up to his throat, it was Esha whom Aritra drank. Drank with the thirst of the desert. He poured Esha into his goblet and drank her, dipped his brush into Esha’s colours, he painted. Through Seema’s body Aritra struggled with all his strength to overcome Esha’s eternal resistance. But as soon as he sensed Seema’s unique existence in the bitter, astringent taste in the heart of his heart, his soul screamed, ‘There’s no Esha, no Esha, Esha is an illusion, Esha is a mirage.’ His body trembled with despair. Throwing Seema away from him, unfinished, he stood up, wobbling like a blind man. ‘What is it Ari-da, what happened?’ asked Seema, her voice thick with tears. Aritra’s face was twisted, flooded by the grief of losing his beloved. Heartache, defeat, sorrow. Aritra could find his own voice no more. He groaned:

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.