He had fifteen blue silk ties, each a slightly different shade of cerulean.
He was as discreet as he needed to be. His trysts were not too frequent and no one was permitted to spend the night. This was as much for his own felicity as his neighbours’ satisfaction.
Like the limbs of a statutory provision, the elements of an affair needed separation, scrutiny and then synthesis. It was a question of logic, an assessment of risk. He had a fine instinct for action or delay, knowing exactly when the call needed to be made, the bouquet sent, the date arranged or, with a deadly precision, cancelled. He heard the viscous plea days before it was made, and by the time the angry accusation was hurled, he was unreachable.
There were women who would try and infiltrate his life, to slip by with a feathery casualness saying they had friends who lived on his road or wanted to consult one of his colleagues on a legal matter. The married ones would try to arrange dates for him with profoundly unattractive women, all the better to make themselves seem more desirable. They would hum and whirr for his benefit.
It was difficult for him to predict when he would tire of a lover, but when the moment came, he was flooded with relief. He had the sense that when the waters receded, all would be washed clean. And then he could begin afresh.
On occasion the parting was amicable, much of the time it was not.
‘You disgusting bastard,’ said one message on his voicemail, ‘you wait and see, I will cook your bloody goose.’
He was fortunate that no one had ever made a scene in public. One night at the Tolly, a woman had spotted him in the Shamiana and made her way to his table. She stood just inches away, her face hardening like lime.
‘Hello, Ruby, good to see you,’ he had said. ‘Do you know Rana and Mitali?’
She had given them a stony smile and then walked away, jostling against the table as she did so. Red wine sloshed on to his cuff. Later that night, he put the shirt in the bin.
He was a contented man.
She was not one of those women. Even when he asked for her number, she appeared curiously distracted. After their first encounter, he had suggested meeting again, accustomed to acquiescence, its eagerness sometimes manifest, sometimes cloaked.
She said: ‘Why not? But let’s see.’ She smiled but her expression was freckled with doubt. And that demeanour persisted. As if she was aware that she was only a temporary feature in his life, but unconcerned because for her, too, the real prize lay elsewhere.
Over the years, he had needed to make enough careful adjustments to his own conduct and had learnt to be wary of preconceptions. He considered himself to be worldly. And yet her attitude surprised him. She had proved to be even more guarded than him, having made it clear at the outset that she would not answer personal questions or talk about her life. They both knew why they were seeing each other; better to leave it at that.
Out of the dozen times they had met, they had only ever arranged to see each other once in a public place.
This struck him as odd – people generally wanted to be seen out with him. One evening he had insisted that they have a drink at a café before going on to his place. She refused and hung up, then called him a little later to say that she would come, but for no more than half an hour.
A few people glanced at him as they entered the café; with his height, that was not unusual. No one seemed to look at her. They sat at a table near the door. The light from the clusters of low-hanging lampshades softened her face but she still seemed ill at ease. She gulped her tea and her eyes flitted to the clock above the kitchen door, treating the place like a train station or a doctor’s waiting room. They talked about the constant fog in the city and a fire that had broken out at a nearby building, whether they knew anyone affected by it. It seemed to him that they could just as well have been a couple exchanging dreary endearments on Valentine’s Day or bickering about their dog.
Then he noticed a man a few tables away, sitting alone: his gaze would rest on her for a few seconds, shift and then return. There was curiosity in that look; no recognition but a sensual interest. The man had seen in her the same thing that he had noticed on that very first encounter. He felt a swift jolt of desire at this knowledge, an unrequired but potent confirmation. He made a signing motion to the waitress.
As they emerged from the café, they saw a man in checked trousers holding a giant inflatable fish. The fish wore heavy rimmed glasses. As they walked past him, they saw that he had a startlingly similar face: the same pursed lips, bulging eyes set wide apart, a gill-like crest of hair. He too wore heavy rimmed glasses. They were assailed by a puerile hilarity and hiccoughed all the way to his car. It was the only moment of levity in their relationship.
He never undressed her; he did not dare. Her movements were quick and economical, and she always put her sandals together in a corner by the wall. She was small and angular and reminded him of an implement that could be folded up after use. If one could find all the hinges.
Her only softness was the great billow of her hair. She wore it in a bun that she would undo with supreme efficiency, putting the pins into the side pouch of her handbag. Her hair would spill in dark gushes over her shoulders. When he lay on top of her, many wordless minutes later, her head having inched towards the edge of the bed, long strands would fall inkily towards the floor.
She had a staunch appetite and a bold reach. She showed no timidity about her body. Nothing would slow her down or make her pause, not the afternoon heat, not a pesky hair caught in her mouth, not the limitations of her own small heart. He would ignore his own urge as he watched her face play out the attainment of something elemental and vital, something possibly ruinous.
She always set an alarm on her phone before they had sex, a fact that greatly amused him. He wished he had thought of it first.
They had now been meeting for almost a year.
He was on the point of mentioning this fact to her, but then decided against it. There was always a slim chance that even a woman like her could see that as some sort of amorous declaration.
He watched her as he knotted his tie. She straightened the bed covers, reaching over to the far side to smooth out a tiny crease under the pillow; she aligned a hardback with the fountain pen stand on the desk; she wound his belt into a tight roll and put it on the bedside table.
Then she caught his half smile in the mirror. ‘What’s so funny?’ she asked. ‘Nothing. It’s just that you look like you’re in training to be a chambermaid.’
She picked up her handbag and walked to the door.
Without turning around, she said: ‘Don’t call me again.’
He did. Her taxi arrived at the gates a few minutes early. He was tentative at first, wondering if she would still be taut and peevish, trying to glean something of her mood from the way she walked into the room and glanced around her. When she took off her blouse, he thought he saw a quiver beneath her breasts. Or perhaps it was his imagination, conjuring up a sign of a reticence that did not exist. Later, as she slept, her lips parted and a frown flickered across her face. Her hand moved, forming a loose fist. It carried a latent energy, a force she was saving for another time, a time when she was not with him. She was no longer a thing he could fold up. Her fist unfurled. And then the alarm went off.
He had never done anything like this before. When she was in the bathroom, he found a bank passbook in her handbag and copied down the address. The last entry was three months ago so there was a good chance that she still lived there. He had no intention of knocking on the door and throwing her life into disarray. He only wanted to see where she lived.
It was exactly what he had expected – a low block of flats in a quiet side street. He parked his car in a nearby road and walked the last few hundred yards. At the corner, there was a man on a stepladder stringing up lights over the door of a community hall. Girls in school uniform rode past in pairs, lunch baskets swinging from their bicycle handlebars. A cane sofa was having its seats restored on the pavement opposite the building.
A squawk drew his eye upwards. Washing lined most of the balconies but on one there hung a cage, its bad- tempered occupant craning its neck in his direction. He did not think she was the kind of person who would own a parrot. There was no one about so he walked towards the stairway and scanned the names on the mailboxes. He saw no indication of her. He walked backwards, still looking up at the building, and stepped into the shade of a rain tree.
Some minutes later, she emerged from the stairway, holding a knotted bag of rubbish. He could not look away, where would he look? She appeared exhausted, dark circles under her eyes, a face that seemed to have almost caved in on itself. She dropped the bag into a bin and turned to go back upstairs.
There was no rational choice, only the coarsest impulse. He followed her.
Excerpted with permission from One Point Two Billion: Stories, Mahesh Rao, HarperCollins India.
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He was as discreet as he needed to be. His trysts were not too frequent and no one was permitted to spend the night. This was as much for his own felicity as his neighbours’ satisfaction.
Like the limbs of a statutory provision, the elements of an affair needed separation, scrutiny and then synthesis. It was a question of logic, an assessment of risk. He had a fine instinct for action or delay, knowing exactly when the call needed to be made, the bouquet sent, the date arranged or, with a deadly precision, cancelled. He heard the viscous plea days before it was made, and by the time the angry accusation was hurled, he was unreachable.
There were women who would try and infiltrate his life, to slip by with a feathery casualness saying they had friends who lived on his road or wanted to consult one of his colleagues on a legal matter. The married ones would try to arrange dates for him with profoundly unattractive women, all the better to make themselves seem more desirable. They would hum and whirr for his benefit.
It was difficult for him to predict when he would tire of a lover, but when the moment came, he was flooded with relief. He had the sense that when the waters receded, all would be washed clean. And then he could begin afresh.
On occasion the parting was amicable, much of the time it was not.
‘You disgusting bastard,’ said one message on his voicemail, ‘you wait and see, I will cook your bloody goose.’
He was fortunate that no one had ever made a scene in public. One night at the Tolly, a woman had spotted him in the Shamiana and made her way to his table. She stood just inches away, her face hardening like lime.
‘Hello, Ruby, good to see you,’ he had said. ‘Do you know Rana and Mitali?’
She had given them a stony smile and then walked away, jostling against the table as she did so. Red wine sloshed on to his cuff. Later that night, he put the shirt in the bin.
He was a contented man.
She was not one of those women. Even when he asked for her number, she appeared curiously distracted. After their first encounter, he had suggested meeting again, accustomed to acquiescence, its eagerness sometimes manifest, sometimes cloaked.
She said: ‘Why not? But let’s see.’ She smiled but her expression was freckled with doubt. And that demeanour persisted. As if she was aware that she was only a temporary feature in his life, but unconcerned because for her, too, the real prize lay elsewhere.
Over the years, he had needed to make enough careful adjustments to his own conduct and had learnt to be wary of preconceptions. He considered himself to be worldly. And yet her attitude surprised him. She had proved to be even more guarded than him, having made it clear at the outset that she would not answer personal questions or talk about her life. They both knew why they were seeing each other; better to leave it at that.
Out of the dozen times they had met, they had only ever arranged to see each other once in a public place.
This struck him as odd – people generally wanted to be seen out with him. One evening he had insisted that they have a drink at a café before going on to his place. She refused and hung up, then called him a little later to say that she would come, but for no more than half an hour.
A few people glanced at him as they entered the café; with his height, that was not unusual. No one seemed to look at her. They sat at a table near the door. The light from the clusters of low-hanging lampshades softened her face but she still seemed ill at ease. She gulped her tea and her eyes flitted to the clock above the kitchen door, treating the place like a train station or a doctor’s waiting room. They talked about the constant fog in the city and a fire that had broken out at a nearby building, whether they knew anyone affected by it. It seemed to him that they could just as well have been a couple exchanging dreary endearments on Valentine’s Day or bickering about their dog.
Then he noticed a man a few tables away, sitting alone: his gaze would rest on her for a few seconds, shift and then return. There was curiosity in that look; no recognition but a sensual interest. The man had seen in her the same thing that he had noticed on that very first encounter. He felt a swift jolt of desire at this knowledge, an unrequired but potent confirmation. He made a signing motion to the waitress.
As they emerged from the café, they saw a man in checked trousers holding a giant inflatable fish. The fish wore heavy rimmed glasses. As they walked past him, they saw that he had a startlingly similar face: the same pursed lips, bulging eyes set wide apart, a gill-like crest of hair. He too wore heavy rimmed glasses. They were assailed by a puerile hilarity and hiccoughed all the way to his car. It was the only moment of levity in their relationship.
He never undressed her; he did not dare. Her movements were quick and economical, and she always put her sandals together in a corner by the wall. She was small and angular and reminded him of an implement that could be folded up after use. If one could find all the hinges.
Her only softness was the great billow of her hair. She wore it in a bun that she would undo with supreme efficiency, putting the pins into the side pouch of her handbag. Her hair would spill in dark gushes over her shoulders. When he lay on top of her, many wordless minutes later, her head having inched towards the edge of the bed, long strands would fall inkily towards the floor.
She had a staunch appetite and a bold reach. She showed no timidity about her body. Nothing would slow her down or make her pause, not the afternoon heat, not a pesky hair caught in her mouth, not the limitations of her own small heart. He would ignore his own urge as he watched her face play out the attainment of something elemental and vital, something possibly ruinous.
She always set an alarm on her phone before they had sex, a fact that greatly amused him. He wished he had thought of it first.
They had now been meeting for almost a year.
He was on the point of mentioning this fact to her, but then decided against it. There was always a slim chance that even a woman like her could see that as some sort of amorous declaration.
He watched her as he knotted his tie. She straightened the bed covers, reaching over to the far side to smooth out a tiny crease under the pillow; she aligned a hardback with the fountain pen stand on the desk; she wound his belt into a tight roll and put it on the bedside table.
Then she caught his half smile in the mirror. ‘What’s so funny?’ she asked. ‘Nothing. It’s just that you look like you’re in training to be a chambermaid.’
She picked up her handbag and walked to the door.
Without turning around, she said: ‘Don’t call me again.’
He did. Her taxi arrived at the gates a few minutes early. He was tentative at first, wondering if she would still be taut and peevish, trying to glean something of her mood from the way she walked into the room and glanced around her. When she took off her blouse, he thought he saw a quiver beneath her breasts. Or perhaps it was his imagination, conjuring up a sign of a reticence that did not exist. Later, as she slept, her lips parted and a frown flickered across her face. Her hand moved, forming a loose fist. It carried a latent energy, a force she was saving for another time, a time when she was not with him. She was no longer a thing he could fold up. Her fist unfurled. And then the alarm went off.
He had never done anything like this before. When she was in the bathroom, he found a bank passbook in her handbag and copied down the address. The last entry was three months ago so there was a good chance that she still lived there. He had no intention of knocking on the door and throwing her life into disarray. He only wanted to see where she lived.
It was exactly what he had expected – a low block of flats in a quiet side street. He parked his car in a nearby road and walked the last few hundred yards. At the corner, there was a man on a stepladder stringing up lights over the door of a community hall. Girls in school uniform rode past in pairs, lunch baskets swinging from their bicycle handlebars. A cane sofa was having its seats restored on the pavement opposite the building.
A squawk drew his eye upwards. Washing lined most of the balconies but on one there hung a cage, its bad- tempered occupant craning its neck in his direction. He did not think she was the kind of person who would own a parrot. There was no one about so he walked towards the stairway and scanned the names on the mailboxes. He saw no indication of her. He walked backwards, still looking up at the building, and stepped into the shade of a rain tree.
Some minutes later, she emerged from the stairway, holding a knotted bag of rubbish. He could not look away, where would he look? She appeared exhausted, dark circles under her eyes, a face that seemed to have almost caved in on itself. She dropped the bag into a bin and turned to go back upstairs.
There was no rational choice, only the coarsest impulse. He followed her.
Excerpted with permission from One Point Two Billion: Stories, Mahesh Rao, HarperCollins India.
