She took a sip of her whisky and said, “There were these women on the train, three ancients, coming on a holiday here. They were like schoolgirls, so thrilled. At first I thought, I’ve never felt this — this kind of straightforward happiness — they were full of it. They thought I wasn’t listening to anything because I had my headphones on, but I’d kept the volume really low, because I love eavesdropping — don’t you? Turned out they were sad old things, complaining about their children and their aches and pains. Like this was their last chance of fun.”
Suraj shrugged. “They might go on twenty more trips and live longer than either of us.”
“Sure.” Nomi shook her head, impatient. “We’ll both be hit by a bus tomorrow.”
“Haven’t seen too many buses in Jarmuli.” He clicked his lighter on and his face turned into hills and dark hollows. He took his piece of wood from his pocket, began to work on it with his knife, and a woody perfume drifted across the table. A faint scraping from him, the whisky going down their throats, and then the lowing again, a deep sound of anguish that filled the night. Beyond the stone wall that enclosed their garden and beyond the darkness of the waste lot was a line of coconut palms that told them where the beach was. A new, cool breeze came from that direction, ruffling the air.
“I think it’ll rain.” Suraj looked up at the sky.
“What are you doing with that wood?” she said. “I saw you at it on the beach too. It’s sandalwood, isn’t it? I can smell it. Despite your smoke.”
“Just helps to kill the time. Stops me smoking more.” The lit cigarette dangled from his lips.
“Can I see the knife?” She put her hand out.
“Careful. It’s sharp enough to kill.” He handed it over. It looked much too big in her palm and that made him feel good somehow. It was a man-tool. Its dark wooden handle was silky with use. The handle was sheathed with brass at its tip and brass rivets and bands fixed the steel blade to it. His father had used it for years, it was a knife he had bought in Berlin. Suraj tapped his cigarette into the bowl on the table and told her that. He should have stopped — there was no need to say more — but he found himself telling her about his father, how he used to be good with his hands, especially making things with wood. He could make shelves and chairs and all of that, but what he really liked making were miniatures — model houses, minuscule windmills, boats. Everything he made actually worked: the doors and windows of the houses would open, the windmill would turn in the breeze, the boat would float. It was their yearly ritual to make one perfect boat, then go off together somewhere, to a river or a sea and float it away.
“But then you’d lose it,” Nomi said. “Or did you have it on a string?”
“No strings. The whole idea was to let it go — we made it as perfect and seaworthy as we could. But after that it was on its own.”
“Yes, but a thing I had spent months making? I wouldn’t be able to abandon it like that.”
“Not to abandon it, no. It was, well, supposed to be ready for life on its own. It felt like that. We’d stand on the shore and watch it going off. And keep looking till it became invisible. Never saw one sink, not in all these years. And I make one every year even now.”
“With your father?”
“He died years ago. I was fifteen.” Suraj stubbed out his cigarette. “I always give the boat a name. What do you say I call the new one Nomi? S.S. Nomi. And if I finish it in the next few days, we can put it into the sea right here.”
She went so quiet he thought she had gone all glassy-eyed and weird again. What the hell was wrong with the kid? Wrapping herself in a bedsheet and getting spaced out this way? He felt a twinge he had not felt for a long time towards anyone, of concern.
“Not a boat. I’m not a boat girl.” She seemed to shake herself awake. “I’m a plane girl. I love airports — always bright, noisy, full of people, hot coffee and noodles round the clock. I feel like they should give me a room at an airport — you know — like that man in Terminal? I could live like that, easy. When you make a plane, you can name it after me.”
“Planes don’t have names,” Suraj said “They have numbers.” He saw a mosquito take position, spear Nomi’s neck, rocking back and forth as it drew her blood. Its needle sucked her blood unnoticed for the moment. He stared at the mosquito, mesmerised by the silky brown of the skin it was feasting on. He felt the need to look away. Soon she would feel the sting and slap it off.
She did. Stared at her palm and screwed up her face. “I didn’t go back to my coach on that train,” she said. “I wonder what happened to those women. They must be here somewhere, no? Maybe next door? Maybe the fat one is drifting around in the maze inside that temple, lost forever. Maybe she’ll forget to go back to her family. She’ll turn into a holy woman. Years later her awful children will come here and fall at her feet.”
She spoke faster and faster, riveted by the scenario she was conjuring up. “Don’t you wish it could happen? Your mind wiped clean, like a hard drive? Start again without memories?”
Thinking of the day of the dog, he knew he would like his mind scoured spotless. He thought of his wife with her new man — his old friend. They played cricket together on Sundays, she had met him at one of their games when she brought them beer and chicken sandwiches. The three of them had had a picnic by the pitch. And then, all those times Suraj was away, travelling on work, more sandwiches. More than sandwiches. Plenty of memories he’d be better off without.
They had not heard the buffalo for a while. Perhaps the owner had taken it away. But for the far-off restiveness of the sea, there were no sounds. It seemed to Suraj that they were the only two people left alive on the earth.
Nomi began a vigorous scratching of her neck and in the light of the lamps concealed under the bushes near them Suraj saw a red patch form on her skin where the mosquito had bitten her. It was swollen, it would feel hotter to touch than the rest of her skin. Saliva. That’s what made these weals subside.
He looked away from her neck. He thought out what he would say next with some care and spoke slowly after a pause, sounding tentative. “Do you usually talk so much with people you’ve just met? I don’t. I haven’t told anyone else that stuff about staying back at a random station.” His voice was gruff, as if the words were being forced out of him. She was pleased, he could tell from the way she looked at him speechless with surprise. Every woman he’d ever known melted when you said this kind of rubbish. They felt they had some special quality that made men confide in them.
Nomi spoke only after she had drained her glass and risen from her chair. “I’ve no idea. It must be because we know we’ll never see each other again after this assignment. Like people talk on planes and trains.”
“Won’t we? See each other again?” The thought made its slow way into his drowsy mind and never seeing her again appeared unlikely. They would see each other again and again. He sensed a tiny, almost imperceptible current between them. It would grow if he were careful. It had potential.
He felt drops of water on his face and looked up. “Here comes the rain,” he said. He picked up his knife and the bottle and pushed back his chair.
*
Night seeped from the ground and spread from tree to tree and house to house, gathering them into a mass of darkness. In one alleyway a portly old man heaved himself into the rickshaw he had hired for the evening and grunted, “They’re all like smelly old towels, and as much life in them. Get me a fresh young girl. With tomato-tight skin. With juice that spurts when you bite.”
On a nearby rooftop, Johnny Toppo lay with his bundle of clothes as a pillow, gazing at the bloodshot sky. His money was in that bundle too. In his head he counted the notes. Ninety-six rupees. Not enough, but something. The wind had died down. It was so airless now he thought it would rain again. He had put a tarpaulin over his tea cart. He had weighed the tarpaulin down with bricks. His pots and pans and jars were locked in his trunk. Nothing to worry about. He wiped the sweat from his gaunt face. He would sleep now. His knees did not ache that much tonight, his back did not hurt. He breathed out a deep sigh and closed his eyes.