Walking along Dixon Street by himself on the afternoon of the 31st (Abhay had taken the girls for a bush walk), Ashim noticed me and my friend Tony seated next to one another at a table in the Dixon Street Deli, where we were meeting for lunch. This is what precipitated his great moral crisis, and caused him to disappear for a day the following morning.
The ‘crisis’ to which another response might have been to walk into the café, and go ‘Hey, Lena!’
Ah, but that wrings all the drama out of it.
Abhay decided to go on the trip on the 3rd as planned with Ashim and Tulti — fly to Auckland, drive to Coromandel, two days at Hahei, then a couple more in Auckland before seeing them off on the Friday and flying home. He said it would be a win-win: the alternative — given that I was sure I couldn’t be around Ashim any longer — was five awkward days in the house in Wellington, and also it gave Abhay some time alone in which to think.
I pointed out that he wouldn’t be alone — his brother would have unhindered days to influence him any way he liked. He said have some respect for me, Lena; I now know, as I probably didn’t before, who I’ll be travelling with.
Famous last words, I didn’t reply. But then again, what worse could Ashim do, short of actual murder? He’d already struck out at our marriage, aimed his blow straight at our home. Tony was evidently my lover, he’d decided (and perhaps even told Janaki), based on that passing glimpse.
‘Maybe I need to give him more rope, see his next move; watch what the man will do who has dared, so far from home, to try this. But he hasn’t succeeded, Lena, don’t you see? Our having this conversation, our still being in the same bed, proves that.’
We’d also just had some incredible sex, primarily because Abhay (yes, and OK, me slightly as well) had suddenly got so turned on by the very substance of Ashim’s accusation, and that had been the fantasy we fucked out (kind of like that late scene in Sideways, one of Abhay’s favourite films). I think it was also great because it was fuck-you sex — for the very fact of us being so close despite what Ashim had just tried to do, and also because we left him in the living room after I’d done the girls’ bedtime and then never came out of our bedroom again, which was right next door. We’d supposedly gone in to talk, but if Ashim had hung around in the living room, he would surely have heard me barely twenty minutes later. I for one sure hoped he had.
We lay for a long while in an embrace. I thought a whisky would be nice but didn’t want either of us to run into Ashim outside.
‘Or else it could just be that I cannot bring myself to abandon him again. I have to see them off on that plane, which is what I implicitly promised when I agreed to host them.’
I pointed out that all the hold Ashim had over Abhay was expressed in that single unfair, inaccurate word he’d just used — ‘again’. ‘Don’t internalise the idea that you “abandoned” him once. It wasn’t abandonment, and it wasn’t you.’ I had previously always urged him to assign to their father his full share of responsibility for the decision, rather than blame himself or even characterise his Ma as having played some wicked stepmotherly part. But now, and I said it to Abhay as soon as the thought came to me, after what we had seen, I could imagine Sulekha’s role in the decision without immediately jumping to judgement.
‘Maybe she sensed something, from having watched him for two years. She could have believed that he meant you harm. I mean, even when you’ve described the factory to me where you spent the night, in which there probably were snakes and scorpions, if not homeless people, as a mother who’s now seen how low Ashim can go, I can imagine Sulekha believing this wasn’t an innocent plan gone wrong, that Ashim wanted you alone and at his mercy out in the middle of Howrah for some sinister reason. I mean, don’t you see that your conviction of his blamelessness and subsequent ill-treatment and misfortune stands entirely on one certainty that is in fact quite open to question — did he genuinely lose his way that night or was that a ploy?’
We were talking in whispers, which I guess means we cared more right then about Ashim overhearing this than our sex. And that makes sense — one was defiance, whereas this was strategy.
‘Lena, I agree Dada has a lot to answer for with his behaviour on this trip, but the ridiculousness of this conspiracy theory that you’re ascribing to a twelve-year-old is underlined by the fact that I’m lying here beside you. No snakes bit me, which might have just been luck, but also no accomplices of Dada’s were waiting in the darkness to abduct or finish me off. We were lost, for sure, but there wasn’t one moment when I felt in any immediate danger from him or anyone else. And the other thing you well know is that the idea of taking shelter in the factory most probably came from me. I’m not a hundred per cent certain of this, I admit, but I remember the long discussion we had at the end of that road with the river before us, and I definitely recall listing the advantages of returning to the factory.
‘But let’s not do this, Lena: even legitimate hatred has its limit. In an era before mobile phones, how on earth would a twelve-year-old even go about arranging such a scheme? Don’t forget Didi could easily have come along with us; plus we only reached that end of Howrah station by chance, from where Dada spotted the market he knew.
‘And most of all, and let’s allow this to be the final nail in that particular theory — although I’m happy to entertain the pretty valid-seeming possibility that this fucker didn’t come to New Zealand meaning us well — we need to remember that the idea of exploring the station only came about once we got there and learnt that Thamma’s train would be late. It was just something to pass the time: it might even have been Baba who suggested it. So nothing about the rest of that night could have been planned in advance.’
Abhay’s expression, facing me, lying on his side — both of us naked under the duvet — was of a schoolboy who’d rousingly closed out a debate. It was amazing (really the right word) to see him defend so strongly a version of an incident that had only made him feel awful for what … three-quarters of a lifetime?
But glad to be close, not to mention apparently undamaged, though I was after what had been unleashed on us that afternoon, I was far from done with hating just yet.
‘What if on the spur of the moment, he decided to give you a scare? Get you lost in the bowels of Howrah, where your only way out would be through your big brother, and for once you were totally dependent on him? He saw himself as living in your house, sharing your room: suddenly, at the sight of that market, an opportunity had arisen to have you in his neck of the woods, unable to take a step without him.’
But the boy debater only smiled at my stubbornness; then, to his mind, skewered me. ‘Again, you’re letting your emotions rule you. You hate him so much for what he tried to pull on us that you’re losing sight of facts you know. Right now he works for the Public Works Department in Hazaribagh, and I grant you that he might just be able to swing a stunt of that sort, by asking a friend or something, or else he just needs to request his mahatantrik to snap his fingers, but back then I doubt he possessed the amount of sorcery necessary to conjure up a power cut on demand. If the lights hadn’t gone out, even if we had been lost, I would have been able to find my way back to the market. Sorry, Lena, anything you want to surmise about his behaviour in the last fortnight, I promise I’m on board, but let’s not make this mistrust retroactive. It’s much more plausible and likely that the subsequent path his life took, the obstacles he feels he’s endured, have made him as manipulative and suspicious as he is.’
‘Admitting which, you nevertheless want five days alone with him, and suggest taking Mira along as well? Why, Abhay, why the fucking fuck? Why don’t we call Singapore Airlines instead and see if we can bring forward their flights? I’d not just be happy to lose the money on the holiday, but also to spend this extra bit just to be rid of him.’
But Abhay was more concerned that Ashim would lose face with Moushumi and Tulti if for no apparent reason they returned home early, than with him trying his utmost to humiliate me a few hours before.
Anyway, that was when I gave up and stayed back the following day in Wellington with Mira, which turned out to be the hardest part, because she had known about our upcoming trip and simply didn’t see why she should miss out on five days with her cousin as well as two plane rides, not to mention the beach and Auckland Zoo which had rhinos and hippos and elephants, unlike Wellington. Abhay had wanted to take her along, but no matter how lovely and unspoilt Tulti was by her sociopathic father, every voice in me screamed out against allowing Ashim any more time near our daughter. Ever again.
To avoid talking about a family quarrel, I used the excuse with Mira that I wasn’t feeling well, and that the places we would have gone to would be too far from a doctor.
‘Well, why can’t I go then? Baba can look after me.’
‘Well, who’ll look after me? I’ll be alone in the house. What if I’m sick in the middle of the night?’
It didn’t even trip her up for a second. ‘Nana can come and stay with you. I want to go.’
It took Mira pretty much all of five days to get over her disappointment (the mornings and bedtimes — oh, and every bathtime too — were the worst), and we had to go through all the reasons three times a day for us staying back (‘Mummy, why didn’t we go to Auckland?’), which were struck down with equal assurance by her rock-solid objections, and followed by renewed bouts of grieving and accusations, even though every day we found extra-special things for her to do, including a repeat visit to Mission Inflatable (where Abhay had taken them a couple of weeks before), two play-dates with her friends Ella and Anna at our house, a trip to the beach in town, and finally an afternoon out at Kapiti, first riding the old tram in Paekakariki, followed by a play on the great splash-pad near my aunt’s house in Raumati and another dip in the sea there, which was cut short only because dozens of jellyfish had chosen that same afternoon to float about in the shallows.
Abhay and I had judged it best not to Skype during this time, as much because the sight of Tulti might have upset Mira as that the proximity to Ashim, even if he didn’t appear on screen, would repel me, so we basically stayed in touch by text. I asked him if he was free to talk on the second night at around ten, and he called me back from the motel courtyard in Hahei, but spoke almost solely of what they had done during their trip — driving around Coromandel to get an overview of the scenery, Hot Water Beach this afternoon, disappointing weather otherwise and all that. I asked twice if Ashim had ‘tried anything more’, and he said no, except to say once in the car that he admired the amount of trust we shared. Apparently he’d added that he’d only done what he would have wanted his brother to do for him in the same situation.
‘Why don’t I trust a single word he says, Abhay, even if you’re right and life hasn’t been fair to him? I can take that into account and still say I don’t like or trust the person he has become.’
Abhay changed the subject to say it was strange to be driving the RAV4, because the car rental at Auckland airport wouldn’t change their booking to a small car at such short notice, and so it was the three of them in the biggest car Tulti said she’d ever been in. She apparently loved the reversing-camera screen on the dashboard, which she hadn’t come across before, and had also said several times each day that she wished Mira was there, and asked when she would see Mira again.
I didn’t reply ‘Only if you visit Calcutta or New Zealand with your mother sometime, sweetie. Or else I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until you’re both adults.’