Ayesha had left the next day. They had been through partings before, when she had gone, her body a porcupine’s, fending off touch, her silence the threat that she would never come back. This time too, after she left, he had told himself it would pass.
It would pass, he repeated to himself now, and meanwhile there was Johnnie Walker. Before he could think another black thought, Suraj swung himself up from the bed, washed one of the glasses in the minibar, dried it and poured himself a drink. He took a sip, placed the glass by his lamp, listened to the ice cubes clink. For a while he sat staring at the squat glass. He could hear the hum of the air conditioning, the fridge vibrating. It felt unbearable, the quiet. Alone he would plunge into deeper and deeper gloom; he needed company. It was about eight-thirty, purpled darkness, just the right time. He held his glass and bottle and stood up.
His room had French windows that opened onto a strip of garden shared by all the rooms on that section of the ground floor. The strip was divided by tall hedges and shrubs into sections, each with two chairs and a stone table so that you had the impression of owning a private garden. So private, that when Suraj stepped into the patch next to Nomi’s room, he found her clothes drying on a bush. He smiled. She was saving money not giving her clothes to the hotel laundry. Or, like him, she knew laundries were hothouses for germs. It felt strangely intimate knowing this, to be with her drying clothes. His bottle-free hand went out towards them: a soft, damp, white scrap that must be the shirt she had been wearing in the morning. A pair of white knickers with lacy edges. A dark blue brassiere. He had just touched its strap when he sprang back. She was standing there in the half light, hunched, wrapped in a sheet as if it were cold — although stepping out of the air-conditioning of his room, the briny air of the outdoors had felt to Suraj like a warm, moist slap.
He shuffled through his head for an explanation he could give her. Stepping closer to attempt an apology he saw that she was staring outward, mumuring to herself. She was glassy-eyed, and as he watched, a tremor shook her.
He spoke in a voice soft enough to be a whisper. “Hey? What’s up?” Was she on coke? Did she have some on her? That would be interesting.
He heard her gasp of surprise and saw her eyes come back into focus. It took a few seconds before she said, “Nothing, just listening to the sea.” And then, “Did you hear that strange sound? Such a hollow, scary, groaning sound.”
Although their hotel faced the sea, it was at a distance from the water. A stretch of grassy wasteland that was now a mass of shadows stood between them and the pale sky over the sea. The sound came from that direction.
“Probably a buffalo.” Suraj gestured at the expanse of the wasteland. “Someone must have left it tied there. I heard it too, there’s nothing scary about it.” He had already settled on a pretext for seeking her out. “Look, I’m sorry I was a bit. . you know, rude this morning when you left the temple. Didn’t want to. . Anyway, I’ve a peace offering here. You want to get a glass from your room?”
Nomi went in and fetched a glass, then tucked herself into one of the two garden chairs. She drew her sheet closer, like a shawl, and nestled in it. Her head popped out about above the cloth, making her look like an anxious child at the barber’s. Suraj said nothing. If she wanted to wear a bed sheet, who was he to ask her why. He set his bottle and glass on the table, and his mobile. Then a lighter and a packet of cigarettes. He poured whisky into the glass she had brought for herself and pushed it towards her. A tea light in the centre of the table cast a golden pool between them.
Nomi finished her first drink in two gulps. Suraj was surprised because he thought he had poured her a stiff one, but he filled her glass again without comment. Her eyes were on the candle’s light as she spoke. “I should say sorry too — but I don’t know what got into me. . Can you believe it, I spent ages convincing them Jarmuli was the place to film — because of that temple? I plotted and planned. . The fact is I’ve been wanting to come here for years, never had the money.” She took a long sip. “I think I might have been born here. I’m adopted. And you know how it is, adopted kids have this well-known need to go back to their roots!” She shrugged, waggled her head as if she was not entirely serious.
She had a high voice and bright, very black eyes. She still wore her big beads around her neck — she was a jingling mass of beads, bangles, braids, and threads. He thought of the tattoo at her navel, felt a surprisingly violent need to examine all the others.
“Where did you grow up?” He looked only at his glass. “When did you leave here?”
“Oh, years ago. Years and years ago. And growing up — all over the place — mostly Oslo, I guess, but zillions of countries and trillions of airports. This is the first time I’ve come back. And guess what? On the train, I got down at one station and it left without me! Just slid off. Didn’t whistle, nothing. One minute it was standing and the next minute it was moving off. I travel all the time and I’ve never done this kind of thing: I ran like hell after it and managed to climb back on. Thought my heart would explode.”
Suraj looked up from his glass towards the shadowed trees. “Yeah, that happened to me once, and you know what, I didn’t run or anything. I just let the train go. I saw it leaving and I thought, What the hell, let it go, I don’t give a damn. I spent the night on a bench on the platform.”
The hardness of that bench, the black gloom just beyond the dim-lit platform, the dark huddles nearby of postal bundles and sleeping tramps: he remembered it well. He was expected home that evening from a work trip. Ayesha was waiting up for him. Later she told him she had been sleepless all night trying to reach him and failing, phoning friends to ask if they had news of him, dreading the thought of the calls she might need to make next: police stations, hospitals. Morgues. “Such a simple thing to call! Why the fuck didn’t you call?” She was so angry she had asked the question again and again, each time punching him in the ribs. “Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you?” But he hadn’t. He couldn’t. He had kept his phone switched off. He had dropped off the map for the night. The next day, back home, he sat out the raging storms of her anxiety and anger without a word. He would not tell her what had happened, nor explain why he had not called. He had no explanation for it himself.
To Nomi he said, “I hadn’t a clue what station it was until I woke up. All my luggage was gone. Camera too. I didn’t care.”
“Didn’t it feel good? Didn’t it feel great?” Nomi was half out of chair with delight, sheet falling off, revealing the thinnest of noodle straps underneath, over a bare shoulder. It appeared and disappeared under her mass of hair. The shoulder was smooth and shiny, the brown of dark honey. If you dipped in a finger for a taste it would be sweet. The brown shrimp. She did not look such a shrimp in candlelight.
She gathered the sheet around her again and said, “Like stepping out of your life. Like leaving your own story. Like disappearing. Don’t you feel like disappearing from your life sometimes?”