Short Story by Lopamudra Bannerjee
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| Lopamudra Bannerjee |
Slowly,
diligently, she shoved herself away from the crumpled bed and stood up to walk
a few feet to reach the giant, wall-to-wall transparent glass door of their
hotel room that overlooked the city’s bustling downtown. There, the illuminous
Christmas lights and music had created a heady concoction the previous night as
they came back from their indolent strolls from the Market Square, the quaint
Mexican market and the tourist’s hub, the cascading Riverwalk.
“Let’s raise a
toast to our new beginnings, my wife, and a happy new year to be merry and
blessed.” Neil had touched his glass of margarita to hers and made a clinking
sound, which converged with the music being played in the local
pub-cum-restaurant, the symphony spilling over the place.
In the fresh
morning sun, Shalini looked down at the floor right next to the bed where her
flip-flops, her silk blouse, her red, flowing skirt, her silken lingerie lay
scattered since the wee hours of the night. She couldn’t remember if it was
Neil who undressed her, layer after layer, as he would often do, or if she had
done it herself. All she could remember, following the hangover of the previous
night was that he had untied her hair and caressed its strands, each stroke of
his finger awakening a bruised, pent up libido within her as the tears in her
eyes eclipsed everything around her in the silhouetted darkness of the room
like a thick, unforgiving mist.
Was it a tiny
flickering of a being, a struggling embryo that died in its mother’s inviting
womb yet again, gushing out in clotted blood and crushed, maimed flesh?
Was it a soft,
rainy dream, trampled yet again from the ruthless remembrance of a life she had
lived, as if in a previous birth?
Was it that
dangerous liaison of years back, rearing its ugly face, when all that she had
brought along with her as she ran away from it relentlessly was a breathless,
deadening terror? Was it the terror of being slashed, the terror of kicking
feet and abusive fists, the terror of the bulging walls of a dream that came
crashing down, yet again?
What was she
thinking in the waning moonlight that glimmered in the languid waters of the
Riverwalk as she sat at the patio of the restaurant? What did she say to Neil,
looking unmindfully at the other tourists who came to dine out, holding a
lobster tail dipped in garlic butter in one hand, while with her other hand,
she grabbed the glass of Margarita, wishing to crush the glass to shards till
her palms bled to death? She didn’t remember. She only remembered that a loose,
waxy dribble hung from her mouth as she chewed on the food, one that housed
memories, slanted truths, all drowning under the bottomless pit of her mouth.
Threadbare, barely out of the clumsy wraps, she wandered amid the ruffled skin of the clowns on the streets she has stalked the previous evening in her little pursuit of happiness. She thought of spooning out the thick cream out of the pie with the fork dangling in her cold hands that she remembered with queer, practiced clarity as she roamed amid the humming semblance of the relics she might have visited in some previous birth. And as she sat in the ferry amid unknown faces, relishing the placid waters of the Riverwalk, she hummed the lyrics of a dead singer-composer's songs, reverberating in the air bustling with conceited human cacophony and charbroiled animal meat.
In the deadly quiet of her hotel room in the twentieth floor, it was all about silence and waiting--a long, silhouetted wait to sleep sublime under the cocoon of thousand unknown stars in a faraway galaxy, stars who do not know the tainted flesh of the humans. Late into the night, the game of thrones between two bodies had scoured the arid air inside the room, the body of an Adam and Eve of the spoilt, betrayed earth.
For once, she longed to tumble down, far, far below the wall-to-wall stained-glass door and see her naked, unbound soul go out to hug her nemesis, to touch and grip the utmost rim of her life. For once, she longed to plant a long, wet, last undying kiss on the dribbling mouth of her man fumbling with the used bedsheets in his sleep. She glanced at him with the corner of her kohl-smeared eyes, as she longed to smash open the stained-glass door with a gash of her bleeding wrists, to slide down the expanse of the building, falling down, violent, headlong, in the vortex, waiting with sure, steadfast arms, waiting to engulf her in an avalanche of sleep.
*********************
Did he know since
the first year of their wedded life in the quiet, suburban town of Texas which
became their home, that she was strumming her obsessive thoughts in the deep,
innermost recesses of her mind? Did he know the dormant volcano inside her when
she peeled potatoes or onions in their kitchen, worked on simple dinners of
chicken and rice, when she vacuumed the carpets, or bought home her choicest
vegetables from the farmers’ market? Or did he care less? Because when the two
bodies brushed against each other, exploding, contracting, towering above each
other in the dark, frenzied bed as they made love to each other in the
messiest, yet most delicately loving way, and he savored all her feminine
juices, all he thought then was that there was a glimmering, inviting light at
the end of the tunnel, one that would suck away the most debilitating abyss
that she sometimes surrendered to?
“So, for how
long would you say such things have been going on with her?”
At the
psychiatrist Dr. Jones’ plush office cabin, Neil sat, suddenly cautious of the
urgency of his visit, woken from the stupor of his momentary daze following the
long wait.
“I told you
already, she had an abusive past, and she had a really hard time, struggling
with it, and breaking herself free from it… I should have… I should have noticed
it a bit earlier, I think.” Neil replied.
“Hmm, I see some
of that in the case study my assistant had prepared, and it is quite common
too, to have a history of this sort, for manic depressive patients that we see
on a regular basis…but yes, in your wife’s case, she seems to be acutely
sensitive.”
“First thing, can you tell me how is her equation
with her family? Anyone in her family except you, with whom she has had a
painful history? What do you think?”
“Shalini, my wife
is the only child of her parents, born in Delhi, India. Her mother had
succumbed to kidney failure in India quite some years back, and life was
difficult back there with her alcoholic father. She had a godmother in Delhi,
an entrepreneur woman named Ms. Padamsee who had introduced her to Rajesh, her
first husband in a local jalsah, a
poetry reading and musical event of sorts, in Delhi. After a few meetings in regular intervals,
she had thought of Rajesh as the antidote to all her pain at home. He appeared
to be a sweet-talker, and had his ways with women. Also, he owned a corporate
event management company in Houston, so he was quite well-off, financially.
They didn’t wait for much long after the courtship. Her godmother arranged for
a quick registry marriage and she flew away to the US as soon as she arranged
for her visa in the country.”
“I can
understand… I bet she was lured, and why not! So, do you know if she tried to
get in touch with her family, or her father in India after her husband started
abusing her?”
“It was of no use,
actually. In fact, her father is in this country now, for the past four years,
and seldom visits her. He married Ms. Padamsee, her fairy Godmother, who was no
more a fairy now, and they both moved to Connecticut soon after. The last time
I had got in touch with them was to invite them both for our wedding, and a
Thank You card reached my home, along with a gift card from Macy’s. That was
the end of it all.”
“That is sad…. Now,
if you don’t mind, I would like to ask you if you think something in the recent
past might have triggered her sudden neurotic phase?”
Neil paused a bit.
“Ummmm, not very recent though, but she had a miscarriage, quite a traumatic
one, before she separated from her first husband, and she… she remarried… me.”
“Hmmm, I see….so
does she speak of it to you? Or get hyper-sensitive?”
Neil nodded his
head in assertion, gulping a steady influx of unsaid words, words which he
would perhaps gather and break, construct and deconstruct, striving to know the
rumbling, pent up thunder that was Shalini’s world.
“And also, may I
ask, have you both as a couple thought of having a baby after all this? Now
that you have been married for over two years?”
“Yes, we have… we
have discussed this, quite a number of times….” He stammered a bit.
Some weeks back,
when he had parked his car in their garage in a rather quiet, chilly winter
evening, the loud, erratic barks from Bruno echoing from a distance seemed a
tad bit unfamiliar. As he walked into the passage leading to the family room,
the dog was in tatters, distressed and lost, literally dragging him to the far
end of the passage which led to the main bedroom. There, in the hardwood floor,
between the space of the dresser and the bed, she lay, her long tresses
disheveled, her eyes loosely shut, with crystal drops of tears coating the
corners of her eyes, streaming down her cheekbones. She sweated profusely in
her sleepwear, which was the first thing which struck Neil as he stooped down
to touch her, and then, discovered the whitish, semi-liquid discharges spilling
from her mouth, all the way to the nape of her neck.
“Oh God, she must
have thrown up a bit, just a while back”, he said to himself as Bruno started
to scratch on some sticky remnants scattered on the floor where she lay.
“Shalu,
sweetheart, wake up! What did you do to yourself, you crazy girl? See, I am
back home! Look at me for once, damn it!” He had blurted out.
In the wooden
dresser to their left, the container of her blood pressure medicines and a
number of other medicines she took lay, angled, the lids opened. He looked at
the remaining number of the pills, mocking the tumbled down promises of trust,
love and the life-long companionship with which they had vowed to each other
the day Shalini had come to his two-bedroom apartment in Sugar Lane, Houston,
burying her face in his inviting chest, desperately pleading him to arrange for
her divorce, so that she could free herself from that scumbag of a husband,
Rajesh. He had felt an inexplicable
chill climb up his spine with her tight, cozy embrace, sweetly teasing him
before the torrents broke open in that deep, sultry July evening almost three
years back.
“It doesn’t rain
in Delhi, the way it does here.” She said.
“Well, it doesn’t
rain in Durgapur, my hometown too, the way it does here.” He replied. An alien
rain with a familiar promise would unite them some day soon, they prayed
together.
He knew in his
heart of hearts, since the night they had met each other in the news year’s eve
party at Rajesh’s furnished condo where Shalini moved around, awkward, with
submissive, cat-like steps following her husband’s commands, that she was a
lost soul, stuck in that quagmire of a home that was not really hers. He would
whisper in her ears months later, in one of their passionate, clandestine
weekly meetings that one day, if he could claim her absolutely, they would set
their new house built together, brick by brick, on fire. The fire that would
consume both of them on a high tide night, when they would drown in each
other’s essence.
… He raced up to
dial 911 and call the emergency. “There has been a medicine overdose… yes, my
wife. We need to save her, quick.”
*********************
“You
bring me good news from the clinic,
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white
Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.
When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist
Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask. The nauseous vault
Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.
Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.
O I was sick.
They've changed all that. Traveling
Nude as Cleopatra in my well-boiled hospital shift,
Fizzy with sedatives and unusually humorous,
I roll to an anteroom where a kind man
Fists my fingers for me. He makes me feel something precious
Is leaking from the finger-vents. At the count of two,
Darkness wipes me out like chalk on a blackboard. . .
I don't know a thing.”
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white
Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.
When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist
Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask. The nauseous vault
Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.
Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.
O I was sick.
They've changed all that. Traveling
Nude as Cleopatra in my well-boiled hospital shift,
Fizzy with sedatives and unusually humorous,
I roll to an anteroom where a kind man
Fists my fingers for me. He makes me feel something precious
Is leaking from the finger-vents. At the count of two,
Darkness wipes me out like chalk on a blackboard. . .
I don't know a thing.”
Gazing at the pages of her favorite Sylvia Plath’s book of
poems, she lay in her bed, beneath the bland linoleum ceiling, the lonely,
cryptic walls of her room in the hospital engulfing her, tearing her into
shards and bits…. Did her story begin in the night of her nuptial bed four years
back on that grey, permissive December night in that lodge in Noida where, in
between the rough, unburdening crests of sex, she thought she had been one with
her man, Rajesh? Her man, who would revere her, nurture her like the sacred
touch of the wine he had made her sip from his glass?
“This is the best birthday present I could have ever asked
for, Minal masi!” She had splashed her long, curly hair around Ms. Padamsee’s
gleeful cheeks and bid her goodbye, along with the handful of other wedding
guests and slid under the plush cocoon of the lemon-froth curtains of the hotel
room where the man, her new husband watched her peeling away, bit by bit,
pouncing at her, laughing.
Did her story begin in the following spring of the next year,
when she flew all the way to the United States, crossing the anonymous crowd,
grasping in her palm the frothy bubbles of the promise of a new light inside
her that was flickering inside her queasy stomach?
Inside the banquet hall of a very posh convention center at
Herman Park, Houston, where the classy corporate guests of Rajesh were busy
raising toasts to their own symphony, she had turned down the glass of Bloody
Mary.
“You know, I am six weeks pregnant. I was dying to tell you,
but checked myself. If I did, you wouldn’t have allowed me to fly all alone
from India.” She had said, wrapping her arms around Rajesh’s neck as he started
to crouch on the bed beside her.
“So soon? Are you sure it’s ours, and do you want to keep
it?” She remembered him frowning, irritation flickering over his face as she
tried hard to gobble the first hard chunks of the truths surrounding him and
her moorings in the pale, yellow light of the room.
He had crushed her, trampled over her night-gown, tearing it
apart, as her petite frame lay in the middle of all his cussing, temperamental,
hysteric bouts, pleading to him in the obscure dark of the bedroom where his
kinks, his fetishism spilled all over her.
She wondered if her story began when he would suddenly come home
early in the evenings, with pink and white roses and a resplendent diamond ring
for her, looking at her middle finger with awe as they splurged on exotic
seafood in that new restaurant in town. Those were also the dimly lit evenings
when she waited for him to come back, drunk, stroking her nape and digging his
fingernails deep in her skin, as he shouted, vain, irrelevant: “Bitch… one hell
of a bitch. You’re only my bitch.”
What were the people that surrounded him in his whims, she
wondered, when he bent over to kiss her hair, and then, burst open in a sudden
fury?
“Who is it that your hair smells of? Having fun, you whore,
when I am not home?”
“You know it’s not true, Rajesh. I work from home and do not
go anywhere without you.”
The deep beige walls, the milky white of the window blinds
and the murky red of the designer curtains creaked with her hollow shrieks. She
had been a doll of his twisted desires, a doll with the perfect pout and the
thick, mascara-laden eyelashes which housed her burnt-out days, days when she
woke up to his obsessive compulsive wants, days when her limbs, her torso, her
abdomen and her loins strained with the pain of bearing the seed of his
obsessive wants that he had fostered inside her, in the name of matrimony and
the sweet seduction of a sanctioned love.
Then one day, in a violent daybreak, the seed, almost a
half-grown fruit inside her, spilled out of her in bursts of blood.
“It cannot be mine, it is never mine, you bitch! In every
party I take you to, in every party I host at home, you have to catch the eyes
of a man and flirt with him, eh? You just used me as your easy ticket to fly
away from your filthy, middle-class home, didn’t you?”
His vehement kicks and rash shoving, slapping hard at the lyrics
she had woven with him in the narrow alleyways of suburban Delhi, had sliced
through the half-formed body of a cursed embryo, breaking it into splinters and
shards.
The next day, Rajesh had come to visit her in the hospital.
He held her pale, fragile hand and kissed the diamond on her middle finger
again, convincing her that it was he who had admitted her, after all, begging
of her to forgive his drunk, disastrous aberrations, give her one last chance.
She lay there, groggy, scraped off, not knowing how long she would have to grit
her teeth and hold on to whatever semblance of sanity she still had within her.
… Was it the smell of the fresh beige paint of the walls
yet again, two years later, in the quiet suburban home that Shalini had built
with Neil in Plano, Texas, as she discovered, working with her books piled up,
working with the soapy bubble of the dishwater, that yet another seed was
sprouting in her body? Would it be the true token of her deep, basal yearning
to live, shedding her morbidity aside, she wondered. Bruno, the pet dog wagged
his tail and smelled her belly, as if sensing an omen, while she washed him
clean in the bathroom, craving for some fleeting moments to dance to the music
being played amid the sweet household mess.
*********************
“You finally are mine, Shalu. What would be the first thing
that you would wish for, in our new life together, tell me?” Neil has asked as
they had roamed, carefree, hand-in-hand amid the gentle sea breeze in Galveston
island near Houston, guilt-free, elevated with the dream of their togetherness
for the first time since Neil had met her in the presence of Rajesh as one of
his ex-clients.
“To get the hell out of this city, and make a home in another
part of this state, or a different state, for that matter.”
“You know what, I just had this surprise for you! I had
applied in a few places since the court proceedings of your separation was
going on, and just got an offer from an insurance company in Plano, near Dallas.
What do you think, we should move there?”
“Yes, it’s about time we do that, maybe.” She said, with a
sweet, lingering sigh.
“Okay, your highness.” He had replied.
Shalini still felt the sweet tug of that moment, with the sea
purring like a naughty pet cat, the music, the pull of the sand beneath her
toes, now the apparition of a faint hymn, as the salt still stung in her eyes.
She had never again visited the island after this. Her divorce with Rajesh,
obtained with the help of one of Neil’s friends in Houston, now a thing of her
past, choked her at times like a sudden siren rushing on in the distance. But
Neil had often, in the bed and in the other rooms and beyond, spoken about,
wanted to usher in new beginnings, despite being shut out from his orthodox
Bengali family in Durgapur, India for marrying a divorced north-Indian woman,
almost two years older to him. A new beginning, a luminous oasis in the midst
of a desert, a new child implanted in her womb again, at the zenith of the
consummation of a love affair that made her change her moorings all over again.
“It’s ours.” Her deep, resonant voice cut through the musky
scent of his bare breast. A He, or a She, doesn’t matter, she thought to
herself. Since its inception, Neil had kissed the welcoming spring in her
tummy, and flaunted in its ownership. The thought of the new being inside her
had engulfed her like a thick, rolling fog, like the shoulders of the lovers
who had switched roles in her life. The antidepressants that their family care
practitioner had prescribed for her during her tremendous trying times went off
her shelves, and the hypertension symptoms she had, emerged at times like a
secret tide, then slowly dipped underground again.
“Can I talk to Indraneil Sengupta? This is the nurse from Dr.
Rogers’ office, it’s regarding your wife’s pregnancy.”
“Yes, speaking. What is it, please?” Neil’s voice shook as he
received the call during the first hour in his office.
“Well, Mr. Sengupta, the preliminary ultrasound of the baby
your wife is carrying was fairly good, with a steady heartbeat and all. But the
recent prenatal screening she was scheduled for last week came out with
some… some findings… and we would….”
“What do you mean? What happened to our baby?” He shouted,
cutting the caller mid-sentence.
“Well, Mr. Sengupta, I am afraid there are good chances of
the baby having a genetic birth defect, or a chromosomal disorder. The test
results indicate a type of down syndrome, but there can be more specific
findings….”
“And can I ask, what are the chances?”
“Well, as of now, the tests indicate a good 80% chance of the
fetus growing with the disorder….”
As he stood in his cubicle, gripping the cell phone, his feet
staggered. “I am sorry again, Mr. Sengupta, for… for having to tell you this….”
the nurse stammered. “We know the medical and psychological condition of your
wife already, so we decided to contact you first, regarding this. But you both
have to come and visit Dr. Rogers to discuss the condition in details, and your
wife has to go for some further tests, so that the diagnosis is confirmed
further. And then, we would discuss with you what options you can consider.”
She added. The last part of her words, a blurry m├йlange of words and sounds,
failed to register in his senses. He flopped down on the floor, close to his
desk.
*********************
The thin mist of the fall was rearing its head as Shalini
looked up at the contours of the sky kissed by the skyscrapers and the evening
lights which were just beginning to explode in the nightscape about to descend
on them, a cool, gleaming red, blue and fluorescent yellow. At the topmost
floor in the observation deck of the Reunion Tower, five hundred feet above the
city of Dallas, an icy stillness settled in her heart as Neil caressed her
shoulders lightly in the presence of other onlookers.
“Please try and understand, be a good girl and listen to me.
We cannot keep the baby, it would be too risky for you to give birth to a
genetically challenged baby, and too risky for us both to nurture it for life.
Please, Shalu, not this time. We saw the videos and the slideshows of a baby
with such conditions, didn’t we? How could we cope with the fetus developing
abnormally, with a number of physical and mental problems? How would we battle
with it all our lives, have you any idea?” Just a week back, he had pulled her
towards him to let her thaw, melt in his arms in the blanketed warmth of their
bed. He took some time off from work, to coax her into the termination of her
pregnancy.
She walked straight towards one end of the geo-deck, brushing
aside the other visitors immersed in the panoramic views of the cityscape,
capturing the illuminating wonders of the Thanksgiving lights in their cameras
and smartphones. “Happy Thanksgiving!” The couples and the families romancing
around, taking pictures, were flashing cheesy smiles while bumping into each
other, the way Neil had done with her too, in his attempt to pull her away from
her pitch-dark private hell.
From the vantage point, she was seeing the city lights, the
sleek glass layers of the urban buildings, the dark luster of the veil of the
glass window, and wondered what to be thankful for at that moment. The doctor
whose surgical instruments probed deep inside the far end of her cervix and
ripped apart her half-formed embryo just three days back, the flesh parts and
the blood, gushing out of her, controlled with the intervention of nameless
nurse attendants? The icy, steely stare of Neil and the doctor while they
discussed the procedure of this termination and signed the paperwork? Or the
litany of his monosyllables with which he bulged into her wound on their way
back home? Their hands that moved together, seeming out of sync now, the
practiced curves of their bodies reunited in bed again, with hopes woven again,
much against the diktats of their ruthless times?
*********************
Words, in all their littered ambiguity as he called his
parents, his younger brother in India on the way, curtly wishing them a happy
new year, wishing the foamy bubbles of their estrangement would disappear at
the long stroke of the night. Words, the silky rain and their drip-drop delight
which he ardently wished and prayed, would come to their only sister Lily in their
old, cobwebbed Durgapur home, washing down the tags of an ‘abnormal’ girl that
their neighbors, their relatives, the people surrounding them had hurled on
her.
Lily, the dim, twisted smile, the dribbling mouth, the
frog-like croaks that never became songs as she sat, wraith-like in her pale
grey wheelchair amid the din and bustle of the everyday paraphernalia around
her, etched in his soul’s canvas like an unresolved story. Lily, who comes
back, by and by, to haunt him in the faraway land, the fourteen-year-old, the
brainless, ‘spastic’ girl at the threshold of her puberty who had curled up,
cold, motionless in her wheelchair one summer evening, years back, with her
eyelids shut, the dark, red river of her menstruating cycle splashing the floor
as it did sometimes. Only, that day was the finale to the grin painted with her
crooked teeth, the finale to the questions in her life’s uncharted miles,
questions which she could anyway never ask, burnt to ashes along with her in
the crematorium.
“Oh God, did she die, just like that or did they end her
life?”
A forced finale, the neighborhood gossiped, something his
family might have wanted all along, while Neil, her eldest brother packed his
bags and flew away from them all to attend an MBA program in a University in
Houston, in search of greener pastures.
Why couldn’t he tear open and show his gashes to Shalini in
all these days they had been man and wife? What stopped him as he clasped her
hands and strived hard to kill her pain, one stroke at a time, as he promised
he would tend to her wounds? What stopped him from shouting out, as she sprung
up in his arms and wished with all her might that their baby, the conjoined
flesh emerging out of both of them must be given a chance to be born, whatever
the odds might be? Could he open up to her now, peeling himself in the layers
unknown to Shalu, once they reach home, and tell her there was still a
bountiful rain waiting for them both at the end of this jagged road they had
trudged? A welcoming rain which might usher in, once he confesses, squeezing
her tight that he has also been a betrayer in her life, swallowing his own
share of thorns.
“Don’t forget the appointment with Dr. Jones, the
psychiatrist, coming up on Friday, Shalu.” He said, stroking her shoulders with
one hand while driving. The rain might plunder the streets, their home, and
their beings, any moment now.
Fate is fatal indeed. So, skilfully the narration has been traced out. Picture perfect
ReplyDeleteFate is fatal indeed. So skilfully the narration has been traced out. Picture perfect
ReplyDeleteBeautiful and vivid again.would want to read the novel.
ReplyDelete