In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (27 page)

They walked across the lawn to the pool, stood at its edge, the water illuminated by underwater spotlights and very blue. One of the dogs came out of the darkness, wagging not just its tail but its whole rear end, sniffed at Bumpy’s leg, and then went over to the steps in the shallow end and waded partway into the water, lapping at it, then standing and watching them. Bumpy’s clothes fell cleanly from him, as if the buttons had been sliced off by an invisible hand. Lily pulled her blouse over her head, unzipped her jeans, placing a hand on Bumpy’s bare shoulder to steady herself as she stepped out of them. In the cool November night she felt her skin tighten, shivered, anticipating the water and not wanting to get into it, and that shivering graded into her anticipation of what she knew would come next, her hand still on his shoulder. He became still, like a well-trained horse when the rider puts foot to stirrup, this stillness encouraging her. Not shy, Lily felt the shocking intimacy of their entire bodies touching, his face bending to hers. They lay down on a soft canvas-covered chaise longue. He didn’t press her – if anything, she folded toward him. Hesitating just for a moment, she gave in. She even guided him inside her, the entry and movement satisfying, opening her eyes and looking up at the stars among the tree branches, until he finished, sooner than she wanted him to.

She held him inside her, legs around his waist, and then the emotion passed, desire crushed entirely. Pushing him off, annoyed with him, his weight on her, the cold, she whispered, ‘Come on, get up, we have to go back quickly.’

They held hands walking up from the pool – she allowed it, as if the romantic gesture would mitigate the banality of their coupling – until they came around to the front of the house, and then without looking at him she pulled her hand away and walked toward her room. ‘Tell Mino and everyone goodbye. I’ll see them in Islamabad. I have to go to sleep.’

He whispered, ‘Hey, wait. Are you okay?’

‘Forget it.’

Going into the bathroom, past her sleeping husband, she cleaned herself as well as she could, in case he reached for her in the night. She sat on the toilet, trying to pee, as the horror of what she had done struck her. Married just three months, to a man who loved her, whom she loved, she had fucked a man she barely knew and cared nothing about.
I didn’t know Murad when I married him,
she told herself.
He didn’t know me
.
We’re still learning.

Why should it matter so much?

Lily kept forcing herself back into sleep throughout the morning, until past noon, expecting Murad to come and ask if she was okay. Finally she called on the intercom and told the servants to bring her tea and fruit. When the servant knocked she asked where Murad had gone, learned that he was in Multan, would again be late. The vegetables were just being planted, the servant explained, and they were having trouble getting the right seed.

She remembered that he had been writing last night in his journal and, against the weight of her apprehension and shame, needed reassurance that all had been well, at least before he went to bed. When they first came to the farm he had shown her where he kept the journal. ‘You wouldn’t, I know, but I’ll say it. Don’t read this. I need one place where I can put down whatever’s on my mind, things that I don’t even mean.’ And she had promised.

Now she went to the drawer, took out the black notebook and read the last entry, his precise handwriting perfectly legible. It spoke for a few lines about his worries over the farm, then turned to the visitors, noted their behavior with disparagement. Finally:

Worst of all, I feel as if this house is soiled, and Lily soiled, and our love soiled. Her shrieking laughter at Mino’s vicious jokes and the affected way she holds her cigarette, drunk and sort of tapping it nervously, everything sped up – and I’m standing there like the dull host who has to be put up with – because it’s his whiskey you’re drinking. That’s not the deal I made with her. I won’t ever again be made to run away from my own house. We agreed to live decently and honorably and in peace. She says she wants all that, but I don’t think she knows how – to live in peace. For her, chaos and willfulness are the same as independence, the way to a vivid life. And then – admit it! – there’s too much genuflection in my attitude to her. Maybe I can’t be any other way, but by God and my strong right arm I will bloody well try. I’ve got to fix this right now, at the beginning.

She replaced the diary back under some papers in the drawer, as if by putting it quickly away she lessened the guilt of her spying. A flash of anger overwhelmed her – so that’s what he thought and kept hidden – and then gave way to an awareness of her husband’s right intentions and his intelligence, cooler than hers. She thought of the story he had told her early in their relationship, of seeing her for the first time beside the swimming pool at the party in the mountains, finding her there, recognizing her. It pained her to acknowledge how accurate he was in this appraisal, how correctly he identified her desire for decency and honor and peace. She thought of Mino, his world, a lakeside party with a beach made of sand brought in on a convoy of trucks, washing away in the next storm, filtering down to the depths of the lake. And what of her epiphany in the hospital room in London, the forgiveness she received, with the snow falling steadily all day? That at least was false, there was no moment of forgiveness, no renewal, just a series of negotiations, none of them final.

Lily was waiting on the roof that evening, drinking her second vodka tonic, when Murad came briskly up the stairs. She had been sitting with her stomach in a knot, dreading his first words, which would tell her the state of things. When he arrived she did not get up from the chair on which she had been stretched out, wearing sweatpants and a baggy sweater.

‘What a god-awful day. I finally ended up going to Sipahi’s farm and forcing his guys to load the seed in my jeep. I swear, it’s impossible to get anything done in this country. We just sit around scratching our fleas and telling lies. The British should come back.’

‘I’m sorry, babe.’ Relieved, she went over and kissed him on the forehead, put her arm around him.

The sunset call to prayers, the
azaan,
had just finished reverberating from the twin minarets of the Jalpana mosque, which towered above the village a few hundred meters away, hidden by trees. Far away across the flat countryside other
maulvis
were in mid-cry – they began at different times in each of the surrounding villages, making a chorus, until the last one died away and the night fell.

Sitting down again, she took an unlit joint from the table next to her and tossed it to him. Lighting one herself, exhaling a cloud of smoke, she said in a bright voice, ‘There you are. That’s my signature joint, the
Zeppelin
.’

Neatly catching the joint, he put it on a side table.

‘Not for me, my friend. I’m going at six tomorrow morning to meet old Mian Kachelu about that missing Dashti girl.’

‘At least have a drink then.’ Whenever he called her
my friend,
it signaled irritation or disapproval. ‘I’ll have another one too.’

‘All right, just one.’

Returning upstairs after ordering the drinks on the intercom in their bedroom, he began, ‘Darling, I know we’ve already been through this  ...’

‘Let me guess.’She deepened her voice, mimicking him. ‘We need to think about what we’re going to do, about making a family. About work. About partying.’ She had decided to meet him straight on, she felt defiant. He knew nothing about Bumpy. This wasn’t the time for confessions, and anyway she must clarify her own intentions first.

Above them crows gradually settled in the tall eucalyptus trees along the wall of the compound, squabbling, settling, then rising up in pairs, arranging themselves again.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘It’s true. But honestly, this is serious. What are you on, third drink? fourth? Let’s take a couple of days off. It was fine when the guests were here.’

‘You can do what you want. I don’t want to.’

‘Come on, Lily. What have you done since you got here? What happened to reading or running the house? Or setting up your collective with the village women? Remember that? I’m on your side. But you’ll go crazy like this, you’ve got to engage.’

‘You like me when I’m tied up with a pink bow around my neck like a kitten. I’m not the type to be dutiful. I’m messy and willful and self-destructive. You knew that before you married me. That’s the way I lived my life, you knew that.’

He spoke coldly. ‘Yes I did.’

‘How dare you! Either get over it or tell me you can’t.’

‘I meant your dresses, your shop. Your friends.’And then, ‘Remember, we promised never to say unforgivable things when we fight.’

They sat in silence for an uncomfortably long time, Lily fighting down the anger that washed through her, bitterness in her mouth, the vodka.

Finally, he looked up at her, with a gentle smile on his face. She couldn’t for months forget his look, earnest, serious, severe, loving, penetrating.

‘Do you know the saying? At the beginning of a love affair, and at the end, the lovers can’t bear to be alone together.’

It hit her with a crack, so that her response came out in a gasp. ‘And you warn
me
about saying unforgivable things?’

‘I was joking, darling. Leave it. This is a marriage, not a love affair, it’s different. Marriage is process. Love gets knocked around.’

‘No, I won’t leave it. I can’t live like this.’ She felt injured by him for adding to her troubles now – perversely, knowing the blame lay with her. Breaking into tears, she stood up and went quickly downstairs. Taking both drinks from the tray carried by the startled servant, who shrank back in alarm as she stormed past, she drained both glasses one after the other, then went into the living room and took a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard. Crossing the small back lawn, she found her way outside the compound, leaving through a door that led directly into the fields.

She had never been outside the perimeter walls after dark, never been outside alone, now was in the mango orchard that surrounded the house, each tree aligned with the next, the full moon casting thick shadows. A watercourse ran past her in a concrete channel, making little gulping sounds, the orchard fading into blackness at the limits of her vision. No other sounds, no footsteps, no pursuit. Murad must think that she had simply gone to their bedroom. She wanted him to chase her, yet knew that he would be sitting calmly on the roof, indulging her in his thoughts. He always expected that she would come around to his view of things; and in fact, she usually did, because it was to his life as much as to him that she had attached herself.

Behind her stretched open fields – there she might be seen and would easily be found – but ahead lay the orchard, hundreds of acres. She feared walking in the alfalfa under the mango trees. Murad had warned her about the snakes, kraits, vipers, especially cobras, which will attack instead of retreating as other snakes do. A few days after they arrived at Jalpana a gardener killed a cobra at the far end of the garden and brought it to show Murad, claiming a reward, the snake a dull black, smaller than she expected, its hood folded in death, a little dab of blood as red as nail polish smeared around its mouth.

Nevertheless, she withdrew among the mangoes. Away near the canal that flowed into the property she heard voices, one man calling to another, and then murmuring as they walked along. She approached one of the trees, bowed her head, and climbed under the canopy. Scrambling onto a thick branch running parallel to the ground, she settled comfortably, leaned against the trunk, took several pulls of the whiskey, and then exhaled hard, fighting back the nausea. Holding the bottle between her thighs, looking up into the dark branches, her mind wandered, thinking of the sounds around her, a tractor working in a field – it must be one of her husband’s – the workers were hurrying to plant the wheat, as he had told her, explaining why he came home so late one night. The land stretched away around her, the villages, the fields of wheat and trees in lines along the boundaries of fields, the tractors bumping along the roads, water running through channels all night. None of it had reference to her, she controlled nothing here.

That afternoon she had gazed in the mirror for a long time, searching, and known how pretty she looked, her skin glowing now because of their healthy life, early nights, not too much alcohol, regular food. No one saw her, and soon she would be old, her hair turning gray, having experienced so little. The world was happening elsewhere. She felt ungrateful, knew that she wronged Murad – that she had wronged him terribly by sleeping with Bumpy – and yet the tension of her past and her sense of being unworthy had disappeared. His constant little attentions exasperated her, his attendance on her. She had complained about the tea at the farm, and he sent someone all the way to Islamabad, to buy Earl Grey at Esajee’s, the expensive grocery used by diplomats’ wives.
I can’t do it, I won’t, I just won’t,
she said to herself, and knew it was much too late for that. She had proven nothing the other night, had not established her independence, if anything she had deepened her obligation to Murad. Where could she go, except to him?

Swinging her legs, about to step down, she heard a sound, movement in the dry leaves under the tree. A little crackling, then more, a weight moving very lightly, brushing through the brown dry leaves, heavy but silent. Going away. She sat perfectly still, listening, her skin prickling. The whole time it had been there. She imagined a black figure bounding up out of the shadow, not a snake but a man, with hair on his face, upon her and at her throat. The sound moved out to where the leaves of a branch touched the ground, and there just for a moment she thought that she glimpsed something black creeping forward in the grass. In a flash it came to her, a whispering voice.
Reach for it
. She slipped nimbly from her perch to the place where she had seen movement, expecting to be struck instantly, expecting a blow, like a knotted cloth swung hard against her leg. She waited, eyes closed, ready to sink down, melt – but entirely resolute. Nothing happened. Ten and then twenty heartbeats. Exhaling, she heard the night resume, spreading like spilled ink, first near her, around her head, breeze in the leaves, then sounds further away, dogs barking from distant villages, carrying over the flat landscape.