THAPA RESIGNS HIMSELF to a wasted day. If he sleeps now, the laughter is likely to stir the sludge of his emotions into dreams.
He begins the day by soaking his clothes. He then does the dishes, before returning to finish the laundry. Having lived alone for most of his life, he is used to the daily rituals of domesticity. No tragedy, emotion, or assault is big enough to let go of the washing.
With the cleaning for the day behind him, he steps out into the throng of trekkers, touts, beggars, bargainers, crack addicts, underaged prostitutes, and overaged lovers. Thapa cannot lose himself, even in such crowds.
The sharp drop in temperature seems to have come from nowhere. On this bone-dry afternoon, the torrential wind has incited dust devils, returning one to moments the body remembers only as sensations and the mind has lost all memory of.
The glacial breeze sweeps rain from the peaks into the valley. The crowds are given just minutes to prepare. To push the world under ledges and awnings, to leave it aside and kneel before the thunderstorm.
The soil turns moist with anticipation. Dregs of a sea that evaporated epochs ago, frothing with the breaths of those in hibernation—the stubborn few who, in their wisdom, have hung on to gills, preferring the death of sleep to the life of lungs.
The wind hits Thapa on the back. A shiver runs through his limbs, crashing into his fingernails. His skin erupts into goosebumps.
He walks into the nearest entrance to escape the imminent downpour. It is a jewelry shop, no bigger than a phone booth. As soon as he enters, he remembers his clothes drying on the terrace, naked and vulnerable in the acidic rains of Kathmandu.
“Would you like to see something?” the saleswoman asks with an American accent. “Lapis, silver, turquoise, coral?”
Thapa notices he is the only customer. “Nothing,” he says, in Nepali. “I don’t know what to buy.”
“Oh, I mistook you for a foreigner. Who are you looking to buy for? Wife? Daughter?” she asks, switching to his language.
“No one,” he says apologetically.
He searches for something to buy, something that isn’t meant for women. He looks at the curios. The floor is crammed with artifacts, the kind only foreigners love to buy. Thapa takes a closer look at the dwarf-sized brass figures. They look like gods. Or are they monsters? It is difficult to tell. Some of them are fornicating. A male and female stand facing each other, joined together at the hip like Siamese twins. In another figurine, a woman sits on top of a man as he enters her. His hands hold her waist, while she throttles him. Yet he seems to be in bliss. “Ridiculous!” Thapa exclaims.
And then he spots the monster.
Hidden in a corner, Bhairava, the Tantric deity, sits in the lotus posture, copulating with a beautiful girl half his size. He is bronze, with big angry eyes and a wide-open mouth, baring wolf-like fangs. Her naked body is painted turquoise, her nipples blood red. Her eyes are closed, her head falling back in submission.
He can feel the saleswoman’s gaze crawl over his back. His earlobes burn with shame. He casually shifts his attention to the big box of earrings adjacent to the figures.
“They are on sale,” she says. “Since you are a local, the discount will be twenty-five percent. For foreigners, it is ten.”
He picks the first pair he sees. He doesn’t wait for the change. Here he is, tinkering with earrings, while his handwashed clothes are getting drenched. He leaves the place, all too aware of the reflection trailing him in the window. An awkward, aging loner. A monster.
Thunder explodes all around him, and Thapa begins to run, though no one else is. He looks like a man with a purpose. In Thamel, he sticks out. The shadow dance of the dwarf, the clingy white woman, the nubile waitress’s innocence, they have all followed him down the street. Unable to bear it, he abruptly turns in to an alley.
It is a dead end, overflowing with the filth of neighboring restaurants and shops. He can’t stop panting. He is consumed by an odd feeling. The air here is overbearingly sticky, and the trash smells of rotting coconuts and putrid weeds, like a coastal swamp.
Crouched in the trash is a woman. Inch by inch, her silent presence swallows him, like quicksand. Her hair is clumpy and unruly. Her oversized shirt isn’t buttoned right, and her trousers are held in place with a rope. Her body has a maternal fullness. There is a massive black bruise on her left cheek, as if something heavy, like a brick or a pole, fell on her. Her eyes—they remind him of his own after the landslide. A gaze that acknowledges nothing, neither filth nor sorrow. Her blunt mountain features, sunburned skin, and nose ring are all Thapa needs to gauge her circumstances. A survivor of the recent quake that hit the northern districts. A young mother in a family of illiterate farmers.
Thapa curses the superstitious Nepalis for abandoning her. To them, she is a bad omen. Earthquakes and misery trail her shadow. He wants to reach out, somehow. He searches through his pockets. He has only fifty rupees left. He places it by her feet. He hesitates, then takes off his designer watch and pins the note down with it. She picks it up. She plays with the dial, balancing it on her head.
Thapa is encouraged by these signs of life, as childish as they seem. So lost is he in observing her that he could stand there for centuries. Entombed, like a fossil, in the moonlit sands of her sorrow.
The full moon, in its sharp ascent, has devoured the faint evening, revealing the trash in a new light. They are sea creatures, disguised, hiding in plain sight. Curled into one another, hanging on to one another’s limbs and tails for comfort. Ammonites and nautiluses that look like bottle caps. Jellyfish floating like plastic bags, entangled with snakes and eels that pass as broken pipes. Sea lilies and starfish that mimic the colors of discarded bouquets. Reptiles that are visible only as textures, lying around like broken tires and bits of metal. Asleep, they look like infants. Innocent. Blissful. Vulnerable.
She sits among them, detached from the game of explosion and extinction that life plays around her. He takes a step closer, in the hope of saying something. Frightened by his movement, she hurls the watch at him. It hits the wall instead. Thapa retreats.
At home, he inspects the watch. The dial is cracked, but it seems to be working. There is also something else in his pocket. The earrings—miniature prayer wheels carved in silver. Thapa spends his time spinning them, grazing the carved letters with his thumb.
The knock comes well into the night, when Thapa is in bed, running through the accounts for his upcoming trip. He hasn’t used this route before, and he wants to carry enough money to buy opium if he comes across a poppy cultivator.
As soon as he hears the desperate thumping, he fears it might be who he thinks it is. She calls herself Bebo, after her favorite movie star. He is only two inches taller; their build is almost the same. Yet, when he opens the door, his shadow looms over her like the shadow of a monster twice her size, fangs tinged with the blood red of her nipples.
The winds have left the city, but the rains have lingered. She has paid her obeisance to the forces of nature by staying in bed—she hasn’t gone to work.
She hates the rains. More than winter, which dries her skin into parchment. More than the harsh sun, the biggest enemy of college-girl skin. Her skin remains supple and fair in the rains. Yet it is her biggest enemy.
Thapa nods halfheartedly. If he says something, he suspects it may encourage her and this behavior of hers. But, then, why did he open the door in the first place?
“When I walk in the rains, or see it from a window, I get feelings,” she tells him. Thapa leans against the doorframe, subtly stopping her from entering. Despite his silence, she is in no mood to leave.
“What kind of feelings?” he finally asks.
Bebo dives under his arm to enter the room. In the darkness, she strides across like someone possessed. She stops by the window, admiring the view. Flooded with rain, Thamel’s streets and structures possess the artifice of an aquarium. The edges of the valley, as transparent and solid as glass. Lightning, like the creatures of the night sky, glides through water illuminated by neon colors.
In the submerged terrain of the night, the clock’s hands begin to flicker. An imperceptible crack appears in time for colors and forms to escape from. The fluorescence of deep-sea creatures reigns over the darkness. They have traveled through the eras to reclaim what is their right—this valley. It was once a trench where sunlight didn’t dare to venture. The predators were blind, impervious to their own electric glory. In the oceanic midnight, only the gullible had vision.
She laughs unexpectedly.
“The rain makes me angry, even as I laugh. It hurts me. I can’t do anything. I am trapped by the rain. After a while, it bores me.”
Thapa switches on the light. It is the only response he can think of. Encouraged, she sits on the chair she had sat on fourteen hours ago.
“I’m hungry,” she says. “Make me something.”
When he’d heard the knock earlier, Thapa had no idea what to expect and, more important, what she expected from him. He is relieved to hear she’s hungry. So relieved, he doesn’t wonder why he’s her preferred chef for packet noodles.
The child-shaped thing had almost finished his rations for the day. If she is as hungry as she was in the morning, Thapa knows he will run out. He uses a trick rebels in hiding had taught him: If you deep-fry stale bread and douse it with salt, it stays with you longer. After this signature dish, she stops asking for more.
She looks around, wondering what to demand next. “Tell me a story,” she says.
Thapa remains silent.
“You said you were old enough to be my father. So tell me a story,” she repeats. “That is what fathers do for their children.”
“I don’t know any,” he says.
“If you don’t tell me a story, I will kill myself.”
For the first time, Thapa looks at her directly. “Did you drink?”
She shakes her head. No. “Drugs?”
No.
“Smoke something?” He gestures. No again.
She is dramatically solemn. She doesn’t allow Thapa to look away, nor does he want to anymore. He is curious. Once upon a time, Thapa had contemplated killing himself. But he couldn’t settle on the method. When he finally did, the guilt prevented him from stepping over.
He mulls over her options. Jumping off the terrace of any building in Thamel cannot kill; they are too low. Sleeping pills are fatal only to Europeans. If too much sleep could kill Asians, we would all be dead by now, he believes. Slitting the wrist is melodramatic and ineffective. It suits her personality.
“How do you want to kill yourself?” he asks.
“I don’t want to jump off a building or slit my wrists, because that will make my corpse look ugly. I want to look beautiful until the end. I don’t want to take poison or sleeping pills either, because I don’t want to die unconscious. I want to experience it….Can I ask you something? But you’re not allowed to laugh.”
Thapa nods.
“What if I just stopped breathing? What if I stopped my breath for long enough to kill myself?”
He giggles.
“From what you say, drowning in the Bagmati sounds like your best option. The water will not let you breathe.”
Her eyes widen. She is visibly upset.
“How do you know my real name?” she asks, her voice quivering under the weight of tears.
“I don’t,” he replies.
“You must know my name is Bagmati; otherwise, why would you suggest drowning in that cursed river? You’re making fun of me.”
No longer a spoiled child, Bebo looks like a woman betrayed. “Why do you want to kill yourself?” he asks.
“Because I’m bored. So bored, I can’t see a way out. I have never been outside Kathmandu. I haven’t seen snow or Mount Everest, but every stinking foreigner has. Can you believe it? Nothing, no sea or waterfall, only that dirty brown garbage dump of a river. I was saving up to leave. But then a new Japanese smartphone came out, so I bought it instead. At first it was perfect. It made my skin glow and hair shine. It gave me the perfect pout, like a heroine. It made me feel so sexy, I could have fallen for myself. But then I got bored with it. How many pictures can you take? How many times can you call the same friends? They are so boring anyway. The same old rut. Now I have no money left to leave.”
Thapa doesn’t know how a phone can improve your looks, but he doesn’t want to interrupt. He too has felt the high. The best part about gadgets is that they can be bought and sold.
“I can help you sell your phone,” he suggests, and regrets it immediately. It is obvious she is not seeking neighborly advice.
The uneven clamor of rain resumes, intensified by Thamel’s plastic and tarpaulin shell. Thapa’s thoughts drift to the deranged woman, a distant smudge in the rain. She is still where he last saw her. Neither prowling rapists nor dogs, not even a deluge, can displace her. The Nepalis, heartless and superstitious, were right in the end. Survivors of calamities bring the calamity with them, for it dwells permanently within. The earthquake lives inside her. Her memories are the epicenter.
Bebo clears her throat audibly, as if to remind him that she hasn’t left the room. She removes her slippers and puts her feet up on the table. She releases her curly hair from its ponytail and begins to comb it with her fingers.
For a brief moment, Thapa forgets why he is here. Alone and alive. It is on rainy days such as this, when the land turns into the sea, that ghosts return to life. Memories, like creatures long extinct, begin to grow flesh and bone.
“Why are you here?” he asks.
“I want to hear a story.”
“Look, I have some cash with me. Take it. It’s a gift.”
“You think I cannot kill myself? Is that it?”
“No. If you set your mind to the task, you can do anything. You are a smart girl.”
“Then do you think I’m not worth it? I don’t deserve bedtime stories? I’m only good for ogling at and groping?”
“Why do you want to hear a story?”
“When I was a child, I would get bored and give up. My father would tempt me with his stories. I would finish my food, fall asleep, comb my hair, wash the utensils—all to hear a story. Now I miss them. Without his stories, life doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s my fault, not yours,” Thapa says, searching for the right words. “I don’t remember stories anymore. I am a businessman. I can import and export goods. I can’t tell stories.”
“Then tell me about you. Tell me your story.”
“Will it bring them back to life?”
“Will it kill you?”
Thapa doesn’t answer. He is left with two options: tell her a story like she wants, or leave his room and walk for the rest of the night. But they scare him too, the rains. They breed longings like the damp breeds fungus.
There is one more option. But it scares him more than the brass figure he’d confronted earlier in the day. His fingers twitch and his hands gesture involuntarily as he looks around, pleading with the walls. Then he straightens the creases on his shirt and dusts his knees. He takes a deep breath and begins.
The village is very small. There are only twelve families working on ten farms, and they are all related. There are constant fights over boundaries and water, but it’s not their fault. The only thing nature has given them in abundance is humans. The men run off to fight other people’s wars. The women and children are sold off to escape poverty.
He is a boy. Yes, he is a husband and a father and a son, but he is still a boy. He has seen enough to learn one simple thing. For the survival of his family, he must work hard and be clever. With much planning and help from his family and relatives, he succeeds in building a canal connecting his farm to the glacial stream above. This doesn’t make their life comfortable or easy. It just makes survival possible.
With consistent irrigation, they now have two harvests. His son is two years old, and the man is growing ambitious. He wants to sell a portion of his crops. The sowing season is over, as the monsoons have begun. Instead of sitting indoors, he sets off for the nearest town. It takes three days on foot.
“Why are you crying?” Bebo asks Thapa, who slouches in his chair as if confiding to the floor. The tears leave wet patches on his shirt, his trousers, even his socks. “What happened next?”
A cloud bursts over the distant peaks above his home that night. A landslide buries his entire village as it sleeps. Not a single house stands. When he returns, he sits on the rubble for days. He doesn’t have the strength to clear the debris. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t eat. An aunt from the next village tells him to cry—men who cannot are good for nothing but fighting wars. But he cannot. He leaves the village, never to return.
Bebo had ceased to matter after the story began. She doesn’t know how to get his attention. Like a toddler, she crouches by his knees and looks at him. His face, propped up by his hands, is hidden behind a swamp of tears, snot, and tremors.
She places a pink handkerchief and an orange boiled sweet on his lap. “I ate up all your food. This is all I have.”
Thapa’s fingers hold on to the gifts with the same intensity they had spun the prayer wheels with.
“We cry because of what happened,” she tells him. “We cry because we don’t know what will happen. Sometimes we also cry because of what is about to happen. Yet we can’t let it happen.”
“How do you know?”
“I love crying. It’s my favorite pastime. I understand people better when they cry.”
She takes his hands into her own. His palms, her fingers discover, are rough. The lines of fate meander like dried-up riverbeds. Life evaporated long ago, leaving only this behind.