When Ulrich’s brother told him that he should read a short story by an American named John Cheever, Ulrich immediately thought of better ways to spend the evening. He could gather the two- and five-rupee coins scattered in the corners of his room and go downstairs to the Irani restaurant and exchange them for paper currency. He could go to the laundromat across the street and collect his socks and underwear.
Or he could just stay put. Why do anything? His smallest movement would only add to the mayhem around him. Clare Road was a gaudy mix of hair salons, coffin makers, churches, cheap boutiques, and—worst of all—schools. Screaming brats had managed to hijack Clare Road, and now everyone and everything in the area had that unbearable quality most children possess.
“Just read the Cheever,” said Moses. His brother was still looking for the key to his motorcycle. Ulrich knew, but did not say, that it was lying on the floor, at the foot of the table. “This guy, this loser American rich type, he’s at a pool party, and he suddenly decides to swim all the way home through people’s backyards.”
“How the hell do you swim through a backyard?”
“Through their pools, yaar. He’s tipsy and decides to go pool-hopping. But that’s not what the story’s about…”
“What do I care what it’s about?”
“You’re a swimmer, so I just thought…”
Moses had finally spotted his key. It was on a terrible keychain for a motorcycle, one engraved with Moses’s fiancée’s name.
Ulrich pulled up his white T-shirt, revealing his round belly. “Do I look like a swimmer to you?” Ulrich slapped his belly; it felt hard. That was the strange thing about his belly: it looked like fat but felt like muscle. Today it was extra firm—he’d been constipated for two days. “I’m a coach, man,” said Ulrich. “Very different from a swimmer. Swimmers swim, coaches sit and watch.”
“Then just sit there for the rest of your life. Just sit there and stare out the window.”
“Why does it bother you so much?”
“Because that’s all you do. It’s embarrassing.”
“So is your fucking key chain.”
Cussing always got to Moses. His brother had always been more polite than Ulrich, had been the darling pupil at school, whereas Ulrich’s brain retained nothing; every line that he read passed through it, the way hot chai passes through a strainer. The only thing Ulrich excelled at was sport.
“I’ll be back late,” said Moses.
“So why are you telling me? I’m not your mother.”
As soon as he said this, Ulrich regretted his words. Moses was trying to bridge the distance between the two of them with simple gestures; by asking Ulrich to read a story, he no doubt hoped the brothers would have something to talk about at night.
FROM THE VERANDA, ULRICH STARED out at Mongini’s, the cake shop opposite. He envisioned his mother buying sponge cakes there. He could still see her, eight years after her death, wiping the edges of her mouth with her small white handkerchief, two dabs on the left and two dabs on the right. It was as if the white handkerchief and the dabbing had ensured that nothing cruel ever came out of her mouth. Unlike what came out of his own mouth.
Below, Ulrich could see Moses wiping the seat of his RX 100. Why did he wipe the seat five times? It was not a baby’s bottom. It was a goddamn bike. Ulrich fought the urge to spit on it.
A year ago, he wouldn’t have stopped himself. At thirty-nine, spitting would have made sense. But turning forty had changed things, forced a reckoning. He had lost almost all of his hair now, except for a meaningless tuft, an apologetic afterthought, at the back of his head, for which he still had to pay barbers’ fees. And he was now a man with a moustache, a look he had always despised.
As he walked back into the living room, he spotted the book by John Cheever lying on the sofa. What the hell, he thought. Cheever’s company in the bathroom might do his bowels some royal good.
ULRICH READ THE STORY THROUGH and through, but he did not know what to make of it. There was a distinct tempo to it, and each time he thought of closing the book, he found himself turning the page instead. His bowels were now empty, but his mind would not stop racing. For one thing, he could not understand why the man in the story, after completing a marathon swim through countless private pools (and a noisy public one), and even crossing a highway on foot, ended up standing outside his own home, which was locked, peering into it through a window, thinking his wife was waiting for him when the home was empty and deserted.
But the question that really burned him was this: What the fuck was Moses trying to tell him?
In the time since his brother had left, two hours ago, Ulrich had guzzled five beers. He was tipsy now, like Cheever’s swimmer. A thought occurred to him: Had his brother finally learned to fight, to spit back? Suddenly, Ulrich circled the flat, a man on the verge of an important discovery. But when nothing came, and there was only the lazy grey of dusk to contend with, he had a sixth beer and went to sleep.
An hour later, he woke up with a start. He sprang out of bed with the liveliness of a sudden hard-on and rushed to the mirror. “I’m Ulrich!” he shouted at himself. That bastard is messing with me; I’ll show him.
The name Ulrich, he knew well, was a distinctive one. Even in the Catholic community in Bombay—the Macs, as they were affectionately called—no one shared his name. His mother had named him after Saint Ulrich, and whenever he said his name out loud, as he had done just now, it seemed even more German than ever. Germans were tough. They did not shy away from confrontation. And Germany had his favourite football team. Its players had the precision of machines—machines that could produce sweat and were made of blood. As a swimmer, too, one had to be the perfect combination of human and machine. That had always been his belief.
Ulrich found he was perspiring, even though the ceiling fan was at full zoom. He took off his T-shirt and threw it on the bed, but this wasn’t enough to cool him down. He took his shorts off too, and stood stark naked before the mirror. Then he put his Speedos on, stuffed some money in the side, and walked out the door.
On his way down the stairs, he passed his next-door neighbour, Sunita, who let out a shriek. Or maybe it was a squeal. Her husband was a scrawny man with toothpicks for legs. Clearly, Ulrich had done her a favour by showing off his muscular thighs.
With an air of confidence, he stepped into the street.
IT DID NOT MATTER THAT PEOPLE were staring at him. What did these morons know anyway? Cheever’s swimmer had enjoyed the advantage of limpid pools and soft lawns and the occasional fancy drink to help him along his journey; he had not contended with the mocking stares of the Bombaywala. When a Bombaywala showed disapproval, you felt it in the very marrow of your being. Tonight, vowed Ulrich, he would use those waves of disapproval to build muscle.
The hot shoplights along the footpath made his dark skin shine as he took a left towards the fire station. Soon he was walking through Madanpura, a cocoon for the underworld and its contract killers and loan sharks. Yet Ulrich found the darkness of the streets soothing. If he were to walk here, dressed as he was, in broad daylight, he’d be sure to get a nice tight slap from someone. But now everyone was busy buying sweets or getting their beards shaved, and he strode along undisturbed. It was only near the Salvation Army that a lady in a burka gasped at him. He did not falter but hurried on towards the YMCA.
“I lost my keys,” he said to the man at reception, and walked past him.
“But coach…” said the man, leaping up to follow him.
“Just chill, yaar,” said Ulrich. “I’m doing only one lap.”
“But…I thought you are here because you lost your keys.”
“I lost them in the pool, man.”
Ulrich dove in with perfect technique. When his large belly hit the water, it slid in smoothly, along with the rest of him, with minimum fuss. In his enthusiasm, he had forgotten to remove his rubber chappals and the money that was tucked into his Speedos. The chappals he let go after the first few strokes. They rose to the surface and stayed there, lolling about, as Ulrich reached the other end. Just like Cheever’s swimmer, he refused to use the ladder to get out of the pool.
He remembered the fat kid whom he had trained that very morning, and how upset he’d been when the kid struggled to get out of the pool even with the use of the ladder. It was pathetic how this kid’s pudgy arms had no strength; full of milk and butter and biscuits, his body did not deserve to be in the pool. “What will help my son?” the kid’s mother asked Ulrich after the private training session.
“Iraq,” Ulrich had wanted to reply, although he did not.
Now, dripping and sufficiently chlorinated, he coolly walked towards the exit near the canteen. The canteen owner nodded nonchalantly at first, but then, as he registered Ulrich’s attire, his expression changed to one of bewilderment.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m broke,” said Ulrich. “Have to walk around in my chaddis. Tell the committee what a state I’m in.”
Outside, stray dogs were tearing apart a piece of rotten meat the butcher had thrown their way. Ulrich spotted a taxi and slid into the back seat, despite the driver’s protests.
“I’ll give you seven hundred rupees,” said Ulrich, thrusting his hand inside his Speedos and withdrawing a wet bundle of crumpled notes. “I want to go to Marine Drive, with two stops in between. That’s all.” Ulrich spread out all his money on the back seat, assuring the driver that none of the notes were torn. When the driver nodded, he handed him the cash. The driver put it in the glove compartment and took off.
A STALE WIND HIT ULRICH’S CHEST and sent a shiver through him, so he rolled up the windows even though the air inside the cab was hot. The first stop was a newly constructed building at Saat Rasta.
Ulrich got out of the car, walked up to the building’s security guard, and told him to buzz Tony.
Tony was the only school friend Ulrich had kept over the years. He was now the creative director at one of the biggest ad agencies in the city. Ulrich disdained all the long-haired, goateed lunds Tony worked with. They walked around pretending they were geniuses, when all they’d ever done was come up with a byline for soap. It pissed Ulrich off, it really did. But it pissed him off even more that he did not have a single creative bone in his own body.
“Boss, what’s wrong with you?” Tony asked, arriving at the security desk. “You smashed or what?”
“I need to use your pool.”
“My pool?”
“Ya, men. It’s urgent.”
“The pool’s closed,” said Tony. “They had some issue…”
“Fuck,” said Ulrich.
“Are you okay? Coming here in trunks and all…”
“All okay, men. All good. But I need a favour,” said Ulrich.
“Sure, men,” said Tony. “Anything.”
“I need to swim at the Willingdon. Can you get me in?”
“Willingdon? No chance! Even I’m not a member. Those chaunts don’t take any new members. Even if you have the cash.”
The Royal Willingdon was the city’s most elite sports club, with a pool surrounded by bougainvillea and coconut trees. Ulrich had only seen it up close once, when he’d applied for the job of swimming coach five years ago. He thought he had nailed the interview, until the hiring committee asked him to interact with the members’ children. They wanted to see how effective he was as a coach. That’s when he knew he was screwed. Not because he was a bad coach—far from it. He was a terrific coach. But that day from the pool he had looked up and caught the eye of a member who lived near the YMCA. This member had recognized Ulrich as the same sick man who had shown Jaws to a group of young boys at summer camp. Ulrich had told the boys that if they could watch Jaws and then get into the pool the very next instant, they would be able to swim anywhere, anytime. The kids had jumped with gusto into the pool immediately after the film—except for one. That boy had made an unnecessary fuss, and called his mother to take him home. No one at the YMCA had cared much about the incident; in fact, it had garnered Ulrich some accolades from old-timers who felt that kids nowadays had it too easy and needed some mental discipline. And even though Ulrich did a great job of interacting with his pretend students that day at the Willingdon, the member who’d recognized him had grinned and showed his teeth, and Ulrich had felt this old shark catching up with him, nibbling away at his ankles, and then his knees. And then came the final gash in the thigh, in the form of a polite “no” when he’d called the next day to ask if he had gotten the job.
“But why do you need to swim there now?” asked Tony.
“I have to,” said Ulrich. “I just have to.” Then he put his hand on Tony’s shoulder, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “Will you help me?”
“I’ll get you into another pool.”
“No. It has to be the Willingdon.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s on the way.”
“To where?”
Ulrich did not answer. He just mumbled that Tony was the best friend he’d ever had, and forced him into the taxi. On the way to the Willingdon, Ulrich slapped Tony’s thigh. “What times we’ve had,” he said wistfully. He adjusted himself in the back seat, and his wet, naked back made a squishy sound against the Rexine, like some small animal being squashed against the wall of a cage.
AT THE WILLINGDON, URICH, ASKED the driver to wait in the parking lot. It was dark now, and he and Tony stayed close to the bushes as they approached the pool. It was impossible for anyone to enter the Willingdon through the main entrance without being seen, but the pool entrance was separate and the only obstacle was the man at the reception desk who handed out towels and placed your wristwatch in a drawer. Tony’s job was to distract this man, which he did by telling him that a stray dog was running amok in the gentlemen’s dressing room. This was easy to believe, because stray dogs did walk the lawns of the club from time to time, enjoying leftover sandwiches that patrons fed them from the leisure of their cane chairs.
As soon as Tony led the receptionist into the gents’ change room, Ulrich entered the pool area through a white gate that resembled a pretty picket fence. He picked up a fresh towel, slung it around his shoulder, and scanned the pool. There were only three people in it: an old man who lay sprawled on the descending steps like some raja with his eyes to the heavens, his tummy partly outside the water, forming a half watermelon; a woman who was conscientiously doing laps, although her technique was all wrong—the way she stuck her head out of the water would surely lead to a neck injury at some point; and a teenager, his muscles rippling with stupidity.
Ulrich threw the towel aside and took a couple of deep breaths. He had arrived at the realm of the rich and successful, men and women who rang a small bell to summon a waiter and order Kejriwal on toast—which was just egg and cheese, but when these people ordered it, it had weight and taste—and when stray cats rubbed against their leather shoes, they threw scraps of food towards them, the same way life had thrown scraps of luck towards Ulrich, causing him to jump into the air for more, like a circus animal, only to bite into thin air.
But now, swimming at the Willingdon as if he were a member, as he was about to do, he would have the illusion of success, a temporary confidence and strength that would help him face these people as equals.
He expanded his chest and dove.
The first lap was purely functional, to get the arms and legs moving again, and adjust the body to the pool temperature, which was nice and warm. Once he had his breathing right, which occurred during the second lap, he felt as if he was on autopilot, and that was the trick, to conserve energy until, during the third lap, he forgot about energy completely, took his mind out of the equation the way yogis discard all thought during meditation but retain a simple and humble awareness.
The pool lights were on. They provided a gentle glow from beneath that reminded him of something—yes, of early mornings spent with his mother as dawn came, so softly, treating all humans like babies, all Earth creatures like fragile, magical beings who needed whispering and encouragement. But the water was too sharp, too chlorinated for him to keep his eyes open. He closed them, his body settling into an easy rhythm the way the heart settles during an afternoon siesta, that beautiful sinking feeling of falling through the mattress; even though he was on the surface of the water, in a sense he was going deeper, and he made a perfect turn when he hit the other end, his body curling into a fetus then gracefully springing to life, moving towards the other side with newborn energy. He was at home in the water, and it was from here that he would find ways to live, reasons to live. Suddenly he went deeper and cut across the pool, as though he had spotted an old acquaintance at a marketplace or among a crowd of strangers. No one could see him here, no human eyes could touch him, and he felt secure, un-judged, happy to pull in a modest salary and have enough money to buy the occasional pair of jeans or a round of drinks for a friend or two. Here, inside, it was warm and kind, and he came to the surface not because he needed air but because he had received something he could take along with him to his final stop. It was not what he had expected to receive; he had expected something electric, but he’d ended up imbibing a soft light instead, which was so much better. He stepped out of the pool, wrapped the towel around his waist, and left to find his cab. Tony would be okay to take a different taxi back home.
BACK INSIDE THE CAB, ULRICH ROLLED the window down. As the car took a left turn at Wilson College, Ulrich stuck out his chest and let the wind from the Arabian Sea bring him its salt. At Wilson, Ulrich had been one of the cool students, smoking joints, wearing jeans that he rubbed for hours with sandpaper to give the area near the thighs an almost-torn look. While others had studied history and literature, he gave drug-induced sermons on why “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd was one of the greatest songs ever written, and how music could get you in an instant, it was the heroin of life, whereas books took their own sweet time and hardly gave you a lift, which was why, even though he was studying the arts, he refused to read. It was at one such free-falling campus lecture—delivered under a large banyan tree to about four or five regular stoners—that he managed to impress Angela, the hottest Catholic girl at college. He liked that she did not put any powder on her face to make her skin lighter. She had a dark radiance to her, an inner fuck-you shine that resonated with Ulrich. She was like Ulrich, he felt, but she had a brain. So one day, as she was talking to her friend, he picked up her copy of Chaucer, tore out a couple of pages, put some weed in them, and tried to smoke it. “It’s useless,” he said to her. “But if you and I smoke a large, healthy bugger and listen to Floyd, we’ll be flying.” Angela had liked his guts—although that came much later, about a year after she slapped him for wrecking her book.
Now, as the taxi took the stretch towards Marine Drive, Ulrich longed to be that age again, to smoke joints and bite Angie’s dark, juicy, Christian thighs during long summer days and nights. But they were both forty now, and in different worlds. He was suddenly hungry for food; but in the next instant, the thought of eating repelled him. Perhaps he was nervous.
“Boss,” he told the taxi driver as they approached a white building. “Just stop here.” He looked at the taxi driver and smiled—the smile of a man who was thankful and defeated at the same time. The taxi driver nodded, let him out, and drove away. For a moment, Ulrich watched him go, imagining the notes in the glove compartment drying up and taking on the strange crispy shape of silver foil.
He climbed the steps to a ground-floor apartment and rang the bell. The door opened almost immediately.
“Angie…” he said, startled. “I…”
She looked as if she had put on some weight, and that made him perversely happy. She had also lost some juiciness; there was no doubt about it.
“Ulrich?” she said. “What are you…You know you can’t come here.”
“I know, I know. But I wanted to see you.”
Angela seemed not to have noticed that Ulrich was wearing only a towel; she was clearly bothered by the very fact that he had shown up.
“How’s…”
“She’s not here,” said Angela.
Ulrich felt relieved. It had been seven years, and even if his daughter were to stand before him this very instant, he might not know she was his. A baby can grow into anything; there are multiple permutations and combinations. The current man in Angela’s life, the man who owned this expensive flat on Marine Drive, this man who was a Willingdon member, had once been Ulrich’s friend. Angela had borrowed money from him for her dental work, without asking Ulrich, and this had hurt Ulrich deeply, so deeply that he had slapped Angie, and beat the shit out of his friend. This had been soon after his mother’s death, a time when he was so raw that he eventually drove them into each other’s arms. A slap had started his relationship and a slap had ended it. But perhaps Angie was not the person he’d thought she was. She had chosen money over love. Perhaps the reality of spending the rest of her life in one room, in a small flat on Clare Road that Ulrich shared with his brother, had been too much for her. The divorce had been swift and the deal sweet: the friend would not press assault charges if Ulrich gave Angie full custody of their daughter.
It was not the threat of criminal action that had scared him. Ulrich had signed his name in disgust on that sheet of paper because he knew he would never be able to provide for Angela and their child the way he wanted to. His signature was the clearest anyone could make, as clear as his self-loathing.
“I’m sorry,” he said to Angela. “I shouldn’t have come.”
Here he was, apologizing once again. He saw how Angela leaned against the door, half her body shielded behind it, as if he were a common criminal. Slowly, she was closing the door, inch by inch, but just before she did, she looked into his eyes, and his body gave a tiny shiver. The sound of the door closing coincided with a stiff ocean breeze hitting the side of his neck and stomach. He suddenly felt very exposed.
He waited for the light on the corner to turn red, quickly crossed the road, and walked towards the huge black expanse of the Arabian Sea. He wrapped the towel around him like a shawl and stood on the sea wall. Below, large grey boulders were all that separated him from the water. During the monsoons, water levels rose so high the boulders were submerged and the waves lashed the shore relentlessly, until fissures appeared in the walls and made them crumble.
It was one big swimming pool out there, and if he swam in a straight line, he would reach the Gulf of Aden and enter Oman or Yemen, far away from Angela and his daughter, where he could earn much more money as a swimming coach. Around him, the promenade was littered with lovers, holding hands and cooing promises to each other in the same way he and Angie once had. He slowly lowered himself onto the boulders and, in doing so, lost his towel. It didn’t matter. Paper cones were strewn across the boulders and a few plastic bags floated in the wind. To his right, the skyline of the city glittered, the lights in skyscrapers burning passionately, the stars above less electric, less powerful. Tomorrow was Sunday—a working day for Ulrich. While the rest of the city read the morning papers, he would instruct a new batch of swimmers.
Perhaps, before going to work, he would wake Moses and tell him what he thought of the story. That Cheever’s swimmer was not mad to look into his own house through a window. That he was looking at his past, trying to make sense of it, as all humans do, as Ulrich had just done. And perhaps Ulrich was luckier than the swimmer because Ulrich knew where Angela was. She wasn’t his anymore, nor was his child, but at least he knew where they lived.
Perhaps Ulrich would also tell Moses the true ending of the story. How, long after Cheever’s words ended, the swimmer walked around the perimeter of the house to the pool, to his very own pool, where the water was green and slimy, and slid in, without technique, without grace, just a body slipping into nature, the chlorine and algae and bacteria touching his skin, causing a chemical reaction, changing him, working on his brain, dissolving all its memories, one after another, the way acid does—moments shared with his wife and daughter turning into nothing, or perhaps returning to water, to nature itself, as nature had always intended, while the swimmer, always a mammal, shrank, collapsed, exhaled, inhaled, and sighed a final breath of relief as the world turned another day.
