The City Son (16 page)

With trembling fingers he opens the lock on the door,
and there it is, their sanctuary. It has a mattress and new sheets and pillows. There are two chairs, not expensive but decent looking and with padding. Next to the bed is a small table with a lamp; he doesn’t expect them to be there after dark, but he doesn’t want to rule it out entirely. His heart beats rapidly at the prospect of their staying here in each other’s arms in the evening, as dusk falls over the city, with the knowledge that in Bangemudha his father will be waiting for Didi, and in Lazimpat Rukma will be wondering where he is.

“Tarun, what is this?” she says, standing at the door.

“For you,” he says. His hand holding hers is damp, but he’s unwilling to let it go.
“Bhitra aunusna.”

“I’m afraid to,” she says. Her voice is soft because she’s so happy. “When did you do this?”

Tears roll down his cheeks. She quickly embraces him. “I didn’t know my son had gone through so much trouble for me.” She takes his face between her palms and implants fervent kisses, on his eyes, cheeks, neck, lips, where she lingers until he can no longer distinguish between his breath and hers. Their lips enjoined, she pulls him to the bed and lowers him, makes him lie down. Her lips still attached to his—the thought flashes through him that he’ll never be able to extricate himself from her—she loosens his tie, unbuttons his shirt. Her right hand slips into his undershirt, and she plays with his nipples. Her lips finally let go of his—God, they feel mauled—and now they move down to his neck. She kisses and probes the soft parts of
his neck, runs her tongue on his throat. She pushes up his
ganji
so she has access to his bare skin, and she lovingly licks and laps on his nipples. Her head moves down to his belly, his navel, where her tongue darts in and out, then burrows itself deep for a few seconds. He writhes and moans. Now her right hand is on his crotch, and she’s lightly rubbing it. “Please, Didi,” he says. Her tongue still flickering on his navel, she deftly unbuttons his trousers and pulls them down to his knees. In no time his underwear is down, too, and she’s stroking his member. She brings her mouth up to his ear and whispers, “Does that wife of yours do this for you?”

He can’t think—he doesn’t care.

Her palm is sliding up and down his hardened penis. “Do you love her more than you love me, your mother?”

“No! No!” He’s crying again.

“What will you tell her when you go home?”

“That I don’t love her.”

Her hand pauses.

“Please!”

“That won’t be enough.”

“Please, Didi, what should I tell her? Please don’t stop.”

“You know what to tell her.”

“I’ll tell her that I love you more than I love her.”

Her fingers resume their play, and soon he arches his back and spurts his semen all over her palm, on the bed. “
La hera, la hera
,” she says as though he were a child who’d made a mess while eating. She reaches into her
dowdy bag, pulls out a white handkerchief, and wipes him with great care.

Their bedroom turns into a painful space. At night Rukma changes into her nightgown in the bathroom, then slips into bed, still hoping that something will be different. He lingers in the living room, either reading or talking softly with Mahesh Uncle. Then the two men come up. Tarun enters their room, and she hears Mahesh Uncle shut his door. He, too, changes into his pajamas. He tries idle conversation with her, but she knows it’s to mask the discomfort he feels. He slides into bed, and both of them lie quietly. She doesn’t want to initiate anything because she feels that she’s tried enough, that now it’s his turn. And he doesn’t want to start anything because he knows there will be no completion.

One night he takes her hand in his, strokes it. She won’t look at his face because tears have come to her eyes, and she doesn’t want to appear vulnerable to him. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“I’m not right for you,” she says.

“It’s not that.”

“You don’t like me.”

“No, no, you’re wrong about that.”

“It’s not this, it’s not that. Then what is it? Why are things the way they are?”

She takes his silence as proof that he considers her inadequate.

Every day he can see the small damaging effects he’s having on her. He rationalizes then that she has also chosen her fate, which is to be with him, so she has no choice but to accept it. Just like he’s had to accept his life with a stepmother with whom he’s so tightly entangled. You are bound to your Newar lover and I am bound to Didi, that’s our fate, he thinks. We can think of it as a marriage of convenience, a functional marriage.

Neither Mahesh Uncle nor Sanmaya nor her parents, who have visited a couple of times, have an inkling that anything is amiss. There are moments when he’s assaulted by guilt regarding her, what she may be going through, and he thinks: Rukma, you should make it easy on yourself and leave me.

PART 3

CHAPTER NINETEEN

D
AYS SLIDE BY
, and she doesn’t leave. She can’t because she has no desire to make her parents suffer any more. What would she say to them? That something is not right with their marriage, with him? They would respond that it’s too early, that her expectations are too high. Her mother, in her exasperation, may even comment that she should not expect it to be like her Newar lover, smooching lips and honey talk all day long. Her mother may even say,
Do you see the two of us, your father and mother, besotted with each other? Yet, no one can say that there’s no love between us
. Her mother’s example of the solidity and immovability of her own marital love is a self-enclosed argument: it doesn’t tolerate exceptions and departures. In such a closed system, would it make a
difference to them when Rukma says that she and Tarun, weeks past the wedding, barely embrace in the privacy of their bedroom? Would it make a difference if they learn that their daughter has yet to consummate her marriage? Her parents may recognize that something is off, but they will be loath to admit it.
It’ll eventually work out
, they’ll say.
With some people it takes time
. Her mother, ignoring her own discomfort, might even ask,
But surely there’s some amorous activity in bed? Some petting? Kissing?
She might even blush at this bold conversation she’s having with her daughter.

And Rukma, too, can’t imagine saying to her mother that the kisses, if there are any, and there are hardly any anymore, are perfunctory.
I am the one who has to crawl over to him and put my hand on his body. He doesn’t respond. I rub my hand over his shoulder, his chest. If he turns toward me, there is a vacant look in his eyes. I think of an animal who is playing dead at the approach of a predator. I whisper his name. I lick the skin around his neck and his earlobes, but either there is no response or he moves farther away from me. I move my fingers down to his belly, then farther down, but there is no movement, not even a flicker. He lies there placidly like a mannequin. I fondle him, first gently, then hard with annoyance. He lifts my hand in the dim darkness and pushes it away, gently—he’s a gentleman about it!—then turns to the other side
.

She can’t think of telling any of this to her mother. She can’t imagine telling her that when she’s trying so desperately with Tarun and he’s not responding, she begins to think of
her Newar lover. Her Newar lover was, if anything, a master of licking and crooning and whispering sweet nothings. His fingers were soft and sensitive as they meandered over her body and touched and tormented her. He knew how to move forward boldly and to withdraw, to bring his breath close to her ear and tell her how special she was, and oh what would he do without her. He composed poems about her, and he read them to her with his lips burning with love.

Rukma can’t imagine saying to her mother that one morning in bed she asked Tarun whether they should go see a doctor. She was careful to say “we” instead of “you.”

“What for?” he asked, not meeting her gaze. He was fiddling with the radio.

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s something medical.”

He found the station he was looking for. “You think it’s a medical issue?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Tarun,” she said, raising her voice. “I just want to solve this.”

He turned to her. “Look, I know you’re having difficulties with me, but I don’t want to visit any doctors.”

She said nothing more.

There’s a melancholy quality to his face. A sad child, that’s what he looks like: shoulders hunched, eyes large and bewildered, trying to understand an incomprehensible and unpredictable world that has thrown him around quite a bit. She can’t even imagine how disorienting and traumatic it must have been for him to move away
from Bangemudha to Kupondole and to have his mother’s mental state deteriorate so rapidly. But whenever she has prodded him about his childhood, he’s been reticent.

One day when the two are in the living room she brings up the topic of his childhood. He tells her that in the end, things haven’t turned out so badly for him, have they? Although Mahesh Enterprises suffered a blow, business has started to recover. He doesn’t lack for money, and he has Mahesh Uncle as a father figure. When she asks him whether he misses his mother, he says that her mental illness prevented his mother from being present in his life when he needed her the most. His face becomes transformed. “Now Didi is my mother. She’s everything.”

The “everything” pinches her, but she decides to ignore it. “Aren’t you going to take me to visit her?”

“One of these days.”

“But, Tarun, it’s been weeks since our wedding, and you yourself said that she’s more like—”

“She’s a bit possessive of me.”

“Possessive?”

“Yes, she has a tendency toward—how shall I say it? She can be—”

“Jealous?”

“You could say that.”

“Jealous of me? But I’m your wife.”

“She just needs some time.”

“What are you saying? I’m married to you, and she’s like your mother. Wouldn’t she also want to see me?”

He stands from the sofa and moves toward the stairs. “She’s not ready for you.”

She has to hide her hurt and shock because Mahesh Uncle has come down for tea. “What’s the conversation between the newlyweds?” he asks. He still calls them newlyweds, even though close to seven weeks have passed since the wedding. “Nothing,” she mumbles. Is Mahesh Uncle blind to the strained relationship she has with Tarun? But increasingly Mahesh Uncle does resemble a man who feels like his duties are done, both at work and at home. He lounges in his room all day, drinking his frothy coffee and listening to his
raag
. He has cut down on most of his social events. “I’m too old,” he says, and he acts old, shuffling around the house in his robe, his back slightly stooped, holding a newspaper in his hand that he seems to read and reread throughout the day. When he comes down, he peers for long stretches at the Japanese garden. He’s still attached to that garden but not enough for him to open the French windows and step out and muddy himself. When Tarun and Rukma sit with him in the living room, he is pleased but shortly afterward he goes upstairs, to give them privacy, Rukma presumes. This is your house, not mine, he appears to be conveying, and increasingly his demeanor is one of a long-term paying guest who is waiting for a message to come so he can pack his bags and leave. And Sanmaya—she is so giddy in her own world, so beside herself that her Tarun babu is married and that there’s another woman in the house, that she is blind to clues about things not right
between the couple. But Rukma can’t blame her: her world has been one of men, of serving men and taking care of their needs. So it wouldn’t cross her mind that the wife may be unhappy.