Living with them, we must maintain our charade. At night, we sleep on thin mattresses on the floor, easy enough to separate. The little touches of intimacy that come naturally to married couples prove more challenging to simulate. Each time our hands accidentally touch at dinner, I have to remember not to pull away. We rehearse some stories together so that we can occasionally complete each other’s tales. We try to give the impression that we depend on each other to survive these distressing times, that we are true soul mates.
In fact, grief does bind us together. At first, it seems like a competition—who feels more devastated over Karun, who deserves the title of most bereft? But then our individual pools of sorrow merge to form a common lake. We each swim in this lake, see each other bathe in its melancholy chill. Our grieving body of two, though small, offers us community, nevertheless. We silently stare at each other from our mattresses, reliving memories of Karun too personal to share.
After a while, though, this bond starts to become oppressive. Night after night, we return to the same crushing fact—Karun is no longer in our midst. Like our own personal cloud of gloom, the memory of that last shared encounter on the beach hovers and clings. I wonder how much time I have left on this planet. Will I squander it all pining like this?
So I resolve to leave. Armageddon or not, I want to live again, rediscover my Jazterness, revel in it. Especially since it’s begun to appear that the world’s end might not be nigh. The doom-laden signals Vincent receives seem much too robust to originate from the midst of the devastation they detail. I could journey along the coast, avoiding hot spots along the way—surely Gujarat is a wonderful place to explore, the goût de terroir is great. Perhaps it’s safe to even paddle myself back to Bombay. Anything would be better than the stifling hours spent next to Sarita, the memories that slowly tighten around us day by day.
I tell her one morning. She almost seems to expect my announcement. “I’m pregnant,” she says.
SURELY IF THE JAZTER took a poll on what he should do next, the advice would be overwhelmingly Hallmark. Let your heart melt, O hoary old scallywag! The cannoli in the belly, the tadpole of joy all curled up—take those tiny fingers as soon as they emerge grasping for love. Pledge to stay by the mother’s side, to welcome this gurgling blessing with an open heart.
Except the Jazter has never willingly abided infants. They always look too larval, too raw, like protoplasm not cooked enough. Besides, wouldn’t it be the end of everything he stood for? The end of exploration, of discovery, of experience? All those unscaled heights, those unmapped pavilions, were he to succumb to paternity’s crew-cut call?
Sarita is astounded when I say I still plan to go. “Go? What do you mean?”
“I mean Sequeira can look after you. You know he’ll be thrilled—it’s not like you’d be having the baby all alone.”
“But you’re the one responsible.”
“What?”
“You know. That night. It never would’ve have happened. You’re the father, too, as much as Karun. If nothing else, think of what he would have wanted.”
She throws herself into the campaign to make me stay, urging me to feel her stomach, shamelessly trotting out the “Can you hear it kicking?” shtick, even though it’s months too soon to detect anything. She then claims it was Karun’s directive in his dying whisper, that he grasped for our hands at the end only because he wanted to put them together. “He saw the three of us forming a family after he was gone. He always believed in trinities, as you remember—said they represented perfection in the universe.” I tell her I don’t remember—in fact, I’m quite certain he mentioned no such notion to me. That in any case, he could have had no inkling of her pregnancy. She shakes her head sadly. “He could see. He always could. You’d do as he wanted if you truly cared about him.”
Such statements enrage me. Not only is she invoking a love she’s never even properly acknowledged, she’s trying to manipulate me with what she decrees are its responsibilities. With Karun, it had always been just him and me—we didn’t get far enough to consider something as unconventional as taking in a baby. I know she’s doing it for her child, a mother trying to ensure her blood more protection. But how dare she horn in so transparently? The more she prods, the more I want to leave.
I start looking more seriously into possible destinations. By now, Vincent has pronounced both Delhi and Hyderabad radiation-free, but getting there on foot is best left to hardened ascetics. Ahmedabad, the closest big city, also gets a safety certificate—unfortunately, it doesn’t hold any particular allure for me. My thoughts keep returning to Bombay: the land of new beginnings, of opportunity; compared to overland routes, a sea voyage might be easier. Vincent still urges extreme caution, because of the many conflicting signals received. However, the most tangible evidence of nuclear annihilation to wash up on our shores no longer incriminates Mumbai. A small, recently discovered plaque attached to the tree trunk still sprawled across the harbor playground announces (in both Urdu and English) that this is the third oldest banyan in Karachi.
There’s another reason I want to make the trip: it’s the only way to definitively break away from Karun. I feel I should walk the streets I strolled with him, frequent the same beaches, the same restaurants and coffee places—most of all, revisit the shikar grounds where we first met. This is the catharsis I need, the pilgrimage that will set me free.
The more I think about it, the more the idea appeals to me. I seek out Afsan, still stranded in Diu for lack of fuel. He’s spent his time refurbishing the ferry as a sailboat—as expected, he’s itching to get back on the sea. He’s not too keen on Bombay, though—not without more evidence of its safety. Yes, he knows the debris the sea carried in turned out to come from Karachi, that Vincent hasn’t heard any convincing reports of a Mumbai strike despite two elapsed months already. “But the risk is still too great without firsthand testimony—we should wait to hear it from the mouth of a refugee.” He finally agrees to venture as far as Daman, where we could stop to reevaluate the situation.
Leaving Sarita proves harder than I think. She cuts off her pleas, stops talking to me. I expect her to enlist Sequeira to exert pressure on me, but she keeps scrupulously mum about her pregnancy. At night, she lies on her back and stares at the ceiling—sometimes, I notice her gently rub her belly. I rush to assist when she falls between the tables one afternoon, but she picks herself up, refusing my hand expressionlessly. Her silence makes me feel so guilty that I start spending my days away, stealing away from the house before she awakes.
Early one morning, I head down to the waterfront to check on Afsan’s progress with his ferry. I’m surprised to see a small crowd already gathered at the beach along the way, pointing out at sea. An enormous rectangular box-like object tosses in the waves—some cry out it’s a truck, others a shipping container. The edges rise high above the water, then crash back with great bursts of spray. For a while I think it will just lurch off, perhaps to heave up on another shore somewhere. But then, as if tired of playing with this toy, the waves lift it one final time and send it hurtling shoreward.
It comes to rest on the beach—a compartment from an electric train, as can be seen from the pantographs still attached to the roof. My heart lurches when I see the “Western Railway” logo on the peeling brown and yellow paint—indisputable evidence that it’s from Bombay’s suburban rails. For a while, I peer through the broken windows, at the metal floors and empty seats. I feel vaguely dissatisfied, as if a bottle has been delivered, but without the requisite message inside. Then I realize the message is the car itself, telling me I will not be returning, the city has not escaped. Curiously, the paint hasn’t scorched so much, so perhaps there’s hope that Mumbai has fared better than Karachi.