The Blue Notebook (16 page)

For all its grandeur, the room was dominated by the wall decoration directly facing me. Splayed across the wall were the skin and head of a tiger. The head faced downward, as if the tiger were trying to crawl off the wall. He and I locked eyes; he seemed to be smiling, perhaps because he was happy to have been killed and hung up for his eternal rest in a palace as lavish as this. Below the tiger’s head, two crossed silver swords hung on the wall, to suggest that the tiger had been killed with these weapons. I doubted the tiger was slain in a just sword-fight; man rarely relinquishes power for the sake of fairness.

Impulsively, I started to walk around the room. The softness of the carpet made me feel as if I walked on clouds. The man in the light blue suit was looking in his wallet for something
and did not seem to be in a hurry. I went from chair to chair touching their soft backs, over to the dining table and then to the entrance of the bedroom. Although I was flooded with things to see and smell (the space smelled so clean), I did not lose sight of why I had been brought here. I turned to face the man in the light blue suit, who had remained standing by the door and who was now looking at me while turning a small white card in his hand.

As I looked over to him, he called out “Hita” in the direction of the bedroom. I half expected to see the nurse from the hospital appear with her huge, lovely chubby smile. An amazing thought flitted through my mind that Hita had married well (obviously not the teacher) and had come to rescue me and have me as her daughter (this would have been fine with me). Such fantasies have the lifespan of a raindrop; by the time you see it, it has landed, exploded, and disappeared. The Hita that emerged from the bedroom was trim and had none of the transparent happiness of her namesake. She marched through the bedroom door as if she had been called for an important business meeting. She looked straight ahead of her, her face like her body, lean and purposeful. “Yes, Mr. Vas?” she asked in a clipped but polite tone. She wore a plain white cotton suit with red-and-white lining. Everything about her outward appearance was plain and functional, but I could sense other depths to her that she hid. The man in the light blue suit said, “Here is Batuk.” He turned to me and said, “Hita will clean you up and look after you; anything you need, just ask her. I will see you tomorrow.” He smiled without warmth and left.

The door closed behind the disappearing suit of blue; it appeared that the elderly doorman had fallen asleep, for he jumped as the emissary left. Hita turned toward me and looked me up and down like a dress. She folded her arms and said to me, “Little whore, don’t you ever forget that I know exactly what you are. Don’t you dare play princess with me or you will see my hand.” I did not say a word but I knew that she would never lay a hand on me, as I was obviously here to please a master of hers, perhaps the man in blue or perhaps someone else. Even if she did strike me, her threat was toothless since, from the looks of her, she could not possibly inflict sufficient pain on me that I would care; you see, I am quite inoculated to pain. However, I recognized that buying favor from Hita might be convenient and so I feigned subservience.

Puneet would have loved to have seen my performance. Actress Batuk fell to the floor in front of Hita, knelt, and placed my forehead on the carpet’s softness. I implored her, “Oh mistress, I beg of you. Please, please do not strike me. I have been hit so often, mistress. Whatever you order me to do, I will. I promise.” Yes! I even managed to command tears to my face so that when I looked up at her from my prostrate position at her feet, my eyes were swollen. She was obviously moved by my performance; she actually leaned down to me and offered me her hand. “Batuk, come, stand up; there’s no need to cry. I really won’t hurt you; you have my word. Come on, sweetheart, get up.” I took her hand, pulled myself up, and felt guilty for my well-acted deceit.

I then started to cry. The first tear rolled down my left cheek. The second tear followed the first. Then I felt a tear from my right eye, this one not born of duplicity but of pure, torrid, and unfettered despair. The first tear had slid down my cheek, hung upon my chin, and fell to the carpet; the other two tears followed the first. And then I was sobbing. I had not cried since the day I had been left with Master Gahil many years before. All my feelings of being alone in a world awhirl with evil erupted and all the feelings of being cut off from the strands of my true life compounded. Suddenly, the lakes of love that had become buried deep within me started to pour out of me. Hita held me to her thin chest and I closed my eyes to enter the darkness.

She lowered her chin to my head, stroked my hair slowly, and said nothing. And then I knew that it was not Hita’s touch and it was not her person and it was not the beautiful room and it was not the hundreds of men and it was not the black ink; it was the smell of the river on Hita’s clothes that had released the flood of tears. As I inhaled her I smelled the river, the same river that as a child I had bathed in, washed clothes in, swum in, and drunk from. On her, I smelled the same source as my own. But then, as my spirit opened into this woman, I understood that it was she who smelled of the river and not her clothes, it was she who was the river. As I cried, rivulets of tears dripped into the channel that formed naturally between her meager breasts. I melted into that river and she with me. We were neither as two lovers nor as a child suckling, but we were as one because we were one water together. If you mix water from one cup with water from another, can you distinguish them? No! They are the same water; there is no separation. The
bodies of women, so gently carved, are the skins that carry water over the earth. Like one glass of water poured into another, I poured into Hita and she mixed into me so that we became a single drop.

Men are seekers. Men seek to stream into us from their wet mouths, their sweat, and their sex. All that they seek, however, is to return into the river that is woman. Why is that? Man emanates from the water of woman; he is carried there, until at birth he swims from it. Then, what is the first thing man does when he leaves us? He seeks to suck and draw the river into him, for without woman, he is empty. For the rest of his life man deposits his sins and waste back into the river. In the end, his dead body burns before returning to the river that is woman.

What is hardship—that I am the vehicle of his want? His sex emptying into me or dribbling down the edges of my mouth—is that truly hardship or is that my role as his vessel? If a seeker is all that man is, then I am a bowl. It is nature for him to seek his source. Here I stand, thrown from earth’s clay, pigmented for his delight, and then hardened through extreme heat. Here I am, his bowl. He may smash me but it is folly to do so, for it is I whom he seeks. It is his nature to want to empty into me and mine to receive him. The hardship of woman knows this. But be cautious. Some of us have holes, others are cracked, and still others are so delicate that one knock can destroy us. Some of us are not glazed and, to be frank, some of us appear ugly but have a remarkable capacity. It does not matter, for as bowls, we receive them and in us they reside. Swishing around, we carefully approach the river and pour them back from where they came.

I am a lake of unimaginable depth and inestimable volume that is a confluence of all men.

As Hita and I separated she said, “Batuk, let me run you a bath.”

The bathroom was as magnificent as the other rooms in the Tiger Suite. It was walled with light brown polished stone. There were two polished sinks with silver taps, white towels, a toilet, and a bathtub. The toilet was made from white stone and shone like the sink. It had its own cover that lifted upward. To the left of the toilet, built into the wall, was a paper roll with a tongue of paper hanging down ready to lick your bottom. The bath was big enough to fit an ox. Three stone steps led up to the bath, the same stone used for the walls. The water in the tub was steaming and the layer of soap bubbles that floated on its surface was so thick that it looked as though you needed a knife to cut it. I walked up the steps as if I were ascending the Queen’s throne and stepped into the bath like a drunkard cutting his top lip into a glass of beer. As I sunk into the heat, I remembered the last time I had been immersed in a bath full of hot water; on the last occasion it was the old woman who had scrubbed me and on this occasion it was to be Hita.

First, Hita cleaned my hair. Her fingers massaged the shampoo into my scalp and she rubbed my long, thick hair between her palms to clean it. She applied the shampoo three times, each time showering off the soap with warm water. Soap streamed
down my neck into the bubbles; water returning to water. She wrapped my hair in a towel and I lay back in the bath and she washed my body. The pressure of her fingertips was intense and almost painful as she moved her hands back and forth over my back, shoulders, and neck. My body arched in response. But when she cleaned my arms and my breasts she raised her fingertips off my skin and sunk the palms of her hands downward, giving an altogether different sensation. When she washed my breasts my nipples became firm. Although my breasts were only the size of oranges, there was fullness to them. Her hands lingered there and her back-and-forth hand motion slowed. With each hand action she accentuated the friction of her palms on my now-erect dark nipples, and without prompting, my legs flexed imperceptibly under the hot water.

She next started to clean my legs. Both of her hands encircled my left ankle and moved along my calf in long, firm strokes. She pressed hard into the muscles and I felt tension that I did not know existed release. Her sunken hazel eyes followed her hands as she repeated these movements on my right calf, but from there she started to strongly massage my thigh. As her hands cleaned my inner thigh, a belt tightened around my belly and a soft sound slipped from my lips. Her hands moved across to my left thigh. My eyes shut and her hands rhythmically washed up and down the whole leg but this time with each long caress, the edge of her hand nudged against my bunny rabbit’s ears. Reflexively, I let my legs part a little. Feelings from my belly showered downward. She pulled her hands from the water and lathered soap onto her right hand, which she then placed flat against my swollen ears and rubbed firmly back and forth to clean it. I opened my eyes for
an instant and I saw that she was now staring at me. “Batuk,” she whispered, “let’s get you out.”

I stepped from the bath into a large white towel that Hita held for me, being careful not to let the towel on my head fall off. “Darling, go and lie on the bed,” she said, “and I will be there in a second.” I went and lay facedown on top of the pale green bedspread, my head turned to the bathroom entrance, watching Hita. She came from the bathroom carrying a tray, with her sleeves rolled up and a soft, self-assured smile on her face. She placed the tray next to me on the bed and said sweetly, “Batuk, I want you to relax … would you like me to put on some music?” I nodded. She knelt down and switched on the radio built into the bed’s headboard, tuning it to a station playing sitar music. “Lie on your back,” she instructed. As I rolled onto my back Hita undid the towel with a gentle confidence and it fell open. I lay naked except for my hair. She said, “Just relax and put your arms over your head.” With a big brown brush she wiped cream under my armpit nearest her and using a razor shaved off the early grasses of womanhood. She repeated this on the other arm and then wiped my shaved armpits with a towel that had been moistened with warm water. She told me to relax my arms and I let them fall by my sides. She took the brush from the tray, dipped it in cream, and wiped it over my entire rabbit face. The ears were quite swollen from the rubbing and the heat of the bath and the cream felt tingly “Just relax,” Hita said as she shaved, down to up. She started at my inner thigh and swept upward with short strokes. I squiggled a bit with the feeling. Once she was finished, she used another warm, moist towel to clean me. My dew was leaking from me and I could smell myself.

“There, finished,” Hita said. “Come slip under the covers.” I obligingly did so and she smiled at me. “You have a long day tomorrow and you need your rest. Sleep well.” I looked up at her to return her smile but then had to look again, for all I saw was emptiness. That night, I had no dreams.