Thoughts streamed in and out of him as he swam. He went back to the evening before, he and Nomi drinking again in their private garden at the hotel, she telling him about her visit to a village sculptor’s and he telling her about his afternoon with government babus sorting out permissions to film. He had sat with her sipping his whisky, smoking his cigarette, fiddling with his half-finished boat, thinking how pleasant it was to spend evenings this way, rather than alone as he was trying to get used to now. Nomi had turned out fun to be with after working hours. She changed. She cracked jokes, chattered about nothing in particular, and laughed at his stories until she had tears in her eyes. He liked that. It was sexy when she laughed that way, throwing her head back, helpless, showing a beautiful long neck. But now there were only a couple of days left. And after that? More internet searches?
By degrees, the swell of the waves was below him, and he was swimming with long strokes. There were no big waves, the water was gentle against his skin. A long distance from the shore he found the absolute solitude he had been hungering for at dawn. It was as if he had become a shark slicing through water unnoticed, no connection with human life. Across an infinite stretch of aquamarine was the arc of the horizon holding in the sea. Last night, after leaving Nomi in her garden, he had idled in bed, typing a text message to her which said, “The bottle’s finished, but the night is not.” He had neither sent it nor deleted it, and was now relieved he had not been drunk enough to send her such corny drivel. The future was obvious. She would go home to some Nordic hulk of a boyfriend and he would go back to divorce papers from Ayesha.
Floating on his back, he opened his eyes against the light. The sky was now a bright cobalt and an aeroplane crossed it miles above him, toy-sized. After the boat was done he would make a plane. He hadn’t told Nomi how in each of his boats he tucked in a letter to his father. Nobody knew about it. A handwritten note, barely legible, on a piece of paper that he then wrapped in cling-film and twisted into a roll that fitted inside the boat’s cabin. The letter would sink unseen, along with the boat, somewhere far away.
He felt weightless, his limbs loose and limp. Nomi’s story of missing her train came back to him. How she had said, “Don’t you feel like disappearing from your life sometimes?”
He stopped moving his legs, felt his feet fall away down, felt them pull him in after them. Something was sucking him downward and outward.
The dog he battered had lived. Lame, blinded in one eye, but alive. He had fed it scraps of meat and bowls of milk every day in atonement. The dog would drag itself away when he came with the food to its street corner. It would inch back to eat only when Suraj was out of sight.
He would not move his arms. He would not move at all. The sea could have him. Out there somewhere his wife was drinking beer, eating sandwiches, making love with his friend, and that dog was dying.
His legs followed his feet, his hips followed his legs. He sank further down. Nothing mattered any longer but this sense of letting go and never having to try again. Not his wife, not her lover, not the dog, not the first boat that he made at sixteen and sailed alone after his father died. When the water closed over him, all sound disappeared. Not another living thing in the world, nothing to go back to.
Just when his lungs felt as if they would blow up and he was about to open his mouth and let the water fill him and take him, he found he had instead erupted into the air gasping, coughing and flailing. He struggled to stay up, sank, let out a choking cry for help as he swallowed a bellyful of seawater. Thrashing around with all he had in him, he fought himself out of the water again. A boat had appeared from somewhere, it was bobbing next to him. It was painted green and yellow. Four fishermen were looking at him over its side, saying things he could not hear. One of the fishermen pushed an oar in his direction. He managed to get his hands on it.
He was dragged into the boat, fell against rusted tin and nets and ropes. The four men looked at him, pulled at their oars. He was very far from the shore, they said, these were dangerous waters with strong undertows and people were often sucked under. The fishermen were bare-bodied, their arms were sinews and muscles and veins held in by parchment-skin. Each man wore a head-cloth against the sun. It was more than half way up the sky now, fierce enough already to have burnt away the dawn.
Suraj sat gasping for breath, listening to the fishermen cackling about their lousy luck, tossing insults and jokes back and forth. After an entire night at sea all they had caught was a man! What’s a man good for, eh? Can you eat a man? Can you fry it and feed it to your children? Now a fish: you can use all parts of a fish from its head to its fins to its tail. You can chew on its spine. You can fry its roe or eat your rice with its oil. The tiny ones you can eat whole: heads, bones, eyes and all, fried to a salty crunch. Fish can swim and sing and fly, they can even kill men. If not fish, a woman was a better find. If you fish a woman out of the water you can lay her or sell her or set her to work. But what use is a man? If you had netted a man you might as well throw him back in.
One of the fishermen pointed at him and said, “You’ll be back as a big fish in your next life. And we’ll catch you.”
The boat stank of fish and kerosene oil. Suraj could see damp boards, cans and rags, a tangle of dead squid in a net. The oars sliced the water with slow splashes. One of the fishermen bared a mouthful of yellow teeth and said, “Wanted to die? There are better ways.” Suraj heard their words as if from far away. His head was brimming with water.
When they reached the shore the men forgot all about him, busying themselves hauling their boat in, unloading their nets. The beach was more crowded with early morning walkers and fisherwomen. Suraj needed to find that tea stall, but did not know which way to go. Sand in both directions, infinity curving inward and out. Where was his hotel? He had thought he had swum straight, but he must have gone far out in a diagonal. Nothing was familiar on this stretch. He sat on the ground, limp as a puppet without its strings. He could not move, not yet. He watched the fishermen. It was hard work, pulling in those heavy nets and ropes, tugging and rolling in unison. Their teeth jutted out in their thin faces as they grimaced with the effort. They were like their own boats, bony spines for keels, ribs for frames.
He watched them until the sun had dried the seawater on him into sparkling, itchy salt crystals. When they had finished their work and were about to leave he went up to one of them and said, “I’ve got no money on me now, but tell me the way to the hotels and if one of you comes with me, I want to, I mean. .” He had nothing but the trunks he was wearing, he was crippled without his clothes and mobile. He wished he had his wallet and could give them all the money in it.