‘Oparna is here,’ he told the phone, and pointed her to the inner door.
Arvind Acharya could not understand why this apparition always made him weak. The words he was forming in his mind, the morose declaration of separation, vanished. Like the careful notes of an orator blown away by a sudden gust. There she stood, so splendid in her long shapeless top and jeans. Her eyes, so breathtakingly tired, her face diffused and weak and adorable. He wanted to hold her and touch that mystical spot which made the heads of women fall on the shoulders of their men.
He was standing by the window. She walked over to him and held his hand. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t feel like it, Oparna,’ he said.
‘You didn’t feel like it?’
‘That’s the truth.’
‘Just a call would have kept me from going mad.’
‘You’ll be all right.’
‘I don’t want to be all right.’
‘But that’s the best we can hope for each other.’
She could see in his eyes the finality of decision. She had seen it in other men. The end of a spell and their sudden remembrance of what they called conscience or freedom or family or work, or something else. And she felt tired now. Tired of the violence of love and separation. She reached for his hand again and locked her fingers in his. She looked at the floor and wept. She tried not to, but she wept. Her grip around his fingers grew fierce. She shut her eyes tight. He could barely make out what she said. ‘I am not some holiday you take when your wife is away’ (probably that was what she had said). She untangled her fingers from his and wiped her tears, like a child. Then she walked away.
She would return four times that day, against her better judgement, to plead with him, and each time she would go back in the humiliation of having begged for love. She would do that for another three days until Acharya would tell her, ‘This can’t go on. Either I should leave, or you should leave.’ She pushed the heap of mail from his desk. She looked demented. But Acharya was capable of far greater rage, and in the fury of the moment that drove away the pigeons outside the window, he screamed, ‘Get out, get out.’
Character, Ayyan Mani observed in the anteroom, is actually blood pressure.
Oparna did not visit the third floor for days after that. But one Wednesday she appeared. She went to Acharya and said, ‘I can accept this. It’s over, I know. Sorry I behaved like an idiot. I’m all right now.’
‘I am sorry,’ Acharya said wearily. ‘I am responsible for all this. But I don’t know what is the right thing to do now.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ she said, ‘I am all right.’
‘You are?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Let’s finish the Mission. It means a lot to both of us. And then we shall see.’
‘And then we shall see,’ he said softly.
Her eyes slowly became luminous and she turned away and left the room. He stood there, feeling lonely, staring at the door that was still closing. He remembered the dwarf from another time who rode the elephant, his fate decided aeons before, like the birth of stars and the collision of worlds. Our stories, too, Oparna, were just meant to be. But this truth, there was something indecent about this truth.
PART FOUR. The First Thousand Prime Numbers
IT WAS RAINING hard and the taxi driver could not see a thing. But he was racing down the wet road, honking. There were no wipers on the windscreen, but there was one lying on his dashboard. He grabbed it, muttering something, and holding the steering-wheel with one hand, he reached out through the window to clean the windscreen. He saw, just in the time, the tail-lights of a car standing at the signal. He almost stood on the break and screamed, ‘Motherfucker.’ The taxi stopped inches from the car. Adi asked his father what a motherfucker was.
‘Tell him,’ Ayyan said to the driver, who giggled coyly.
The boy, as always, was by the left window of the back seat, his good ear facing Ayyan. Despite the freak rains, the resurgent heat of September steamed in the ancient Fiat, and their shirts were damp with sweat. But even this was marginally cooler than home. Oja had had to put a bucket of water under the fan to cool the room. Adi did not pee in it any more after being slapped for that by his mother last summer.
Adi kept removing his hearing-aid and wiping it because the streams of sweat from his oiled hair were flowing into his ears. But he did not mind the discomfort. Maybe he did not recognize it as discomfort. The torment of the weather was also a type of game for him. He was licking his sweat from the cheeks.
‘Mercedes,’ he screamed. A long silver car had eased to a halt by the side of the taxi. The dim figure of a man was visible in the back seat. He was sitting cross-legged and thoughtful, elbow on thigh, finger on the lower lip. Adi imitated him perfectly. The man in the car smiled. Adi smiled back. Then the signal turned green.
‘How much is a Mercedes?’ he asked his father.
‘What model was it?’
‘C–Class. 22 °CDI.’
‘That’s a cheap one.’
‘How much?’
‘Thirty lakhs.’
Adi howled. ‘Expensive,’ he said in English.
‘Not that much.’
‘You should save money. We should not take the taxi to school.’
‘We do this only when it rains and it is only twenty rupees.’
Adi puffed out his cheek and made a fart sound, and they both giggled.
‘Now tell me Adi, what did you do?’
The boy put his hand on his head in exasperation. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? Nothing.’
‘Then why does the Principal want to meet me?’
‘I don’t know,’ Adi said. ‘Yesterday I didn’t do anything. The day before yesterday I didn’t do anything. Day before day before yesterday, I asked the maths teacher, “Is five to the power of zero equal to one, Miss?”’
‘So why is the Principal calling me?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘She had written in your handbook, “Come with the boy to my room.” ‘
‘I don’t like her,’ Adi said.
‘We will go and find out what you’ve done.’
‘I do only what you say I should do.’
‘Good boy.’
‘What if someone finds out?’
Adi’s face turned serious as his father fondled his hair playfully. ‘So much coconut oil your mother poured on your head.’ The oil made the boy’s forehead and ears shine. He was such a beautiful, healthy boy, Ayyan thought. Then he felt the lifeless hardness of the hearing-aid in the other ear.
Sister Chastity had a scowl on her face. She was sorting out some papers on her table and getting more entangled in the muddle. Behind her, the head of Jesus Christ appeared more tilted than Ayyan remembered, as if to get a better view of her. Across her table were seated two unhappy men and a young skinny woman in a cotton sari.
‘Good morning Sister,’ Adi said, and, turning to the three other teachers, he said quickly, ‘Good morning Sir, good morning Sir, good morning Miss.’
Sister Chastity looked up with a tired face, but she brightened up a little when she saw the father and son. ‘You have come,’ she said. She asked the teachers to leave them, ‘for exactly five minutes’. The teachers carefully gathered their share of papers from the table. The way they treated the loose sheets made Ayyan curious. All he could make out before they put the papers in a file was that every sheet contained numbered questions. The teachers gave a knowing smile to the father and son, and they left the room.