Seahorse (12 page)

There wasn't any requirement to leave; I could stay here until someone came looking for me. But how long would that be? I supposed I
mustn't overreach my welcome.

Yet if I could, I'd climb back into bed, its own kingdom, and pull the covers, cool and smooth, over my head, and pretend, for days, and years, to be asleep.

Finally, I pushed the door open and stepped into a corridor.

To my left, an empty dining room, with the table set for ghosts. On my right, an archway that opened into a spacious drawing room.

This is what I would do: I'd find my host, say thank you, and leave. And ask for my clothes, of course. I couldn't walk away in these.

Yes, I'd say, I was fine now, thank you.

Yesterday… well, I'd come up with an explanation when asked for one. Something probable if I could manage it, fittingly credulous. I ventured into the forest for a walk, and decided to explore the tower. No, I hadn't noticed the sign. How silly of me.

Feeble, but I wasn't sure I could do any better.

I greatly appreciated their kindness, I'd add, the much needed rest, and now I must be on my way back.

Out the door, through the lawn, and the gate. Down the wide, quiet road. The forest. At the other end, the college building. At the back of the campus, the residence hall in which I shared a room with a boy from Tibet. No one else need to know. I'd attend classes, sit for tutorials, write my assignments, speak when spoken to, drink and eat, get into bed and out, one foot in front of the other. Like I was doing now. Like I'd keep doing until I missed a step, or found, like yesterday, that there wasn't any ground to stand on.

I wandered through the bungalow, larger than my house or Lenny's back in my hometown, and different in almost every way—the high ceilings, the bare, cool stone floors, the large, airy windows. Our houses were braced against the weather, long rains and cold winters, everything compact, sternly economic.

Perhaps my impression was reinforced by the emptiness.

Where could everyone be?

Was I the only one there?

It didn't feel right to walk around someone else's house—even if it wasn't done in stealth and secrecy. So instead, I decided, I would wait, politely, in the drawing room, until someone showed up. Surely they'd remember they had an unusual, unlikely guest?

The drawing room windows overlooked the lawn, where a gardener wielded a shovel in one hand and a wicker basket in the other. The length of a large wall was crammed with knick-knacks—souvenirs, I presumed, from journeys around the world. Miniature windmills and wooden clogs. Wooden carvings of human figures. A replica Fabergé egg. Sunny, smiling matryoshka dolls. A pair of Indonesian laughing-weeping masks. A snow globe—the only thing I lifted and shook—with miniature figures of skaters on a pond.

For a while, I sat on an armchair, examining, during my wait, a set of paintings opposite, large canvasses dabbed with flat blocks of rich earthy shades and intense whites.

They hadn't struck me as extraordinarily remarkable then, but some years later, I attended a retrospective of Amrita Sher-Gil's work, and left wondering whether the ones in Rajpur Road were by her hand.

What also drew me was a writing table, littered with letters, written in a long, rounded swirls, each line slanting up at the end. Without willing to, I caught a few phrases—
tonight, I long for you… how many months apart… these trees they only show me your absence…
My eyes moved, inordinately, to the end of the page, where it was signed
All my love, M.
So was the next one, and the next.

They were all from the same person.

I want you in me.

I flushed, placing them back, trying to remember the order in which I'd found them, and moved away from the table. I walked to the opposite wall, covered by thick velvety curtains. What would I see from
there? A view of the back garden? I drew them aside to reveal a sliding glass door opening into a sheltered veranda.

And there he was, the art historian, bent over an aquarium.

Standing barefoot. His hair falling over his face. The sleeves of his navy cotton shirt clinging wet and limp to his wrists.

He was trying, carefully, to net a fish.

(How vulnerable a person who doesn't know they're being watched. Even the air around them shifts to accommodate their unguarded gestures.)

When I pushed the door open, he looked up, startled, and almost dropped the net. Something leapt out, and slid across the floor. It was a fish, lying there, flapping, gasping for breath it couldn't reach.

“I'm sorry…” I rushed to pick it up.

Silver and blue, on my palm, with eyes like shiny raindrops.

“Come over here, quick.” He held out a glass bowl filled with water.

I dropped the fish in; it darted around in fright.

He turned to me. “You're awake.”

His eyes were light grey, flecked with silver—or gold?—a peculiar color. Once, I had traveled with my family to Puri on the coast, and we rose early to catch the train back to our hometown.

His eyes were the color of the sea at dawn.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“I'm well now, thank you.”

“That was quite a fall…” I tried to decipher the expression on his face, but it was cryptic, like the tone of his voice.

“It was stupid of me… to go up.”

“Despite the warning.”

“Yes, despite the warning.” I could feel the warmth climb up my neck, my face.

“I thought I'd take you to the hospital, but you seemed more dazed than hurt. Nothing broken.”

If he only knew.

“Thank you… for bringing me back here.”

“That's alright.” The art historian laughed. “I wasn't sure where else to take you.”

“I live close by…” I told him where.

“You're a student there? I hope you aren't thinking of going back for classes today.”

Our October term holidays had started, I said, but didn't offer to explain why I hadn't traveled home.

“Good, so you're free to help me clean this…” he gestured to the aquarium. “I think our friend in the bowl may have an infection… I hope it hasn't spread…”

I peered at the tank, at its carefully orchestrated landscape. “It's beautiful.”

The fish, with delicate lacy fins, were edged in red and blue. They darted through the water plants, hiding in the nooks and crannies of an arrangement of rocks.

“Firefish. Terribly shy… but, as you just saw, with a surprising propensity to leap when startled.”

The water was pristinely clear, and sliver-leafed plant ribbons swayed gently in an invisible current.

I pointed at a creature hidden behind a swirling conch shell. “And that? Is that a…”

“A seahorse.”

It was the first time I'd seen one, real and alive. “I didn't think they'd be so… small.” Its delicate swerving body, a punctuation of orange-gold, could easily fit in the palm of my hand.

“Yes, deceptive creatures. There should be two in there somewhere…”

“I can't see it.”

The art historian leaned over beside me. He smelled of faded musk, and something else, for which, at the time, I had no name.

“There.” He pointed to the back. The other seahorse was hidden among the plants, its tail curled around a leaf.

“My sea monsters,” he said. “From the Greek
Hippocampus
…”

“These belong to you?”

He nodded. “This aquarium was lying around, unused and empty… so I thought, why not get some fish? Amazing what you can find in the alleyways of Chandni Chowk.” He laughed. “This man, who owned the shop, told me he could get me any water creature in the world. So I thought I'd test him. ‘Seahorse?' he said, ‘No problem, sir. I get for you next week.” And what do you know, he did.” He shook his head. “I have no idea how… or from where. Perhaps it's better not to know.”

I think it was at this point—despite the bungalow's other sights—that I felt I'd discovered a new world. Entirely unfamiliar, removed from anything I'd known before. Looking at the firefish, the seahorses, I felt a low, electric thrill.

“I could watch them for hours.”

The art historian leaned casually against the door. “You're most welcome to.”

Was it, could it be, an invitation to return?

Something like joy weled up inside me. Then I thought of Lenny, and it subsided.

“Devi might think you're crazy, but she's patiently put up with all my eccentricities.” Devi, he explained, dropped by on weekdays to help with the housework. “If you sit—” he gestured to a chair, “and keep very still… you might see them better…”

I followed his instruction.

Soon, the firefish emerged hesitantly from their hidden places, darting like miniature arrows. The seahorses remained unmoving, patiently watching, their patterned skin intricate and ancient.

All this while I was also keenly expectant, waiting for the art historian to ask a question. He'd want, I was certain, an explanation.

Why I'd been in a tower in a forest, at that time of day.

“I was wondering…” he began, “if you'd like some tea.”

“I—yes, please.”

He called for Devi, and a woman glided into the drawing room, clad in a floral salwar kurta, loose and comfortable. She carried the authoritative air of having worked there for years.

“Ji, sahib.”

It was her voice I'd heard last evening when they brought me into the house. I wondered whether it was her hands that had bathed me and changed my clothes.

“Could we have some chai, please, Devi? Over there…” He pointed to the garden, to wicker chairs under an umbrella.

She nodded and disappeared through the doorway.

After tea, I was resolved, I'd change and leave.

What can I tell you about that morning?

It must have been sunny, for I remember him, for a moment, shading his eyes.

Was I staring? Inadvertently. It might make him uncomfortable. And I, deathly embarrassed. I looked around, pretending that the rest of the lawn's aspect offered as much of interest. In the far corner the gardener coiled a hose pipe; at the gate the watchman dozed.

I wondered who'd rushed to help us yesterday.

What a peculiar sight it must have been.

A disheveled stranger half-carried by the sahib of the house. No odder than now, though, me sitting there in my oversized pajamas, holding a teacup, nibbling on a biscuit.

I was most aware of it at first.

This strange, abrupt unreality. My anomalous presence. The vastness between worlds separated by the Ridge Forest.

“Devi will have them washed for you… although I think your tee-shirt might be ruined.”

“Oh.”

“You can keep mine if you like…” He glanced at me; my cheeks burned. “The one you're wearing.”

I protested, it was kind but I couldn't possibly.

“Why… don't you like it?”

I did, of course, I did.

His mouth flickered in amusement. “Then it's settled.”

Was he being kind? Or did he feel this piece of clothing might somehow be… tainted?

“Besides,” he added, “it looks much better on you.”

I sipped my tea and burnt my tongue again.

“Now”—he settled back in his chair—“there are matters of greater importance to attend to…”

“Yes…” I looked down at the lushness of the grass, his feet, perfectly shaped, shell pink, networked by veins.

“To begin with… your name.”

I looked up to see him smiling—and I laughed. I couldn't believe I hadn't told him yet.

“Nehemiah… but everyone calls me Nem.”

“And I'm—”

“Nicholas. I know.” It sounded much too bold. I added quickly, “I mean, I saw you… I attended your talk in college. It was very good, your talk.”

“I'm glad you enjoyed it, Nehemiah.” He glanced into the distance, his attention caught by something hidden to me. Over the time we spent together, this would happen often; a moment when he was suddenly, inexplicably elsewhere. An odd habit, annoying, endearing, that I learned to pay no heed to later, but for now, I wasn't sure whether to speak or stay silent. The gardener had disappeared, and the watchman also was nowhere in sight. It was only us in the garden.

This close to noon the day was beginning to grow too warm for comfort—I supposed we'd be moving inside soon. I would then have to leave.

From somewhere rose the cry of crows, and the muted honk of a passing car from the road. It was quiet here, quieter than I thought Delhi could ever be.

“Is this your first time?” I asked. “In India.” Then, I regretted it, certain he was similarly queried by everyone he met.

“Why?” He asked with no trace of annoyance or impatience, only curiosity.

“Because… you're not from here. At least, I suppose so…?”

In the shade, his eyes seemed darker, the color of evening mist.

“The places where I am I always feel I've been to before… isn't that why we're drawn to them? Else, why one city and not the other? Why the mountains? Or the sea? It's fathomable to long for home, the familiar… but why places you've never traveled to? Because somehow we've been there before, and they never leave us.”

I looked at him with a quiet grief, remembering Lenny's map on the wall.

“Is that why,” I asked quietly, “you bought a house here?”

He laughed, jostling his tea cup, “God no!” This was the family home of a friend. “Malini.” He said her name softly, as though speaking it to himself. He'd studied with her in London. She was in Florence, working on her PhD, while her parents were away in the States, living with her bother, for a year.

“She asked if I'd like to be caretaker… while I'm here on fieldwork for my post doc.” He glanced over the expanse of the lawn, the sudden, startling expanse of sky, the patient, overhanging trees. “I don't think I'll ever leave.”