Bombay Time (29 page)

It was also a shock to realize that, in a break with family tradition, Adi’s father had bequeathed the farm to his wife and not to his son. As far as Adi knew, this was a first in the annals of the Patel family. For generations, the farm had passed on to the oldest son, with an implicit understanding that he would provide for the womenfolk and his other brothers from the profits of the
chikoo
trade. Adi tried to muster up some outrage when he saw the will, to call up some remnant of bruised pride. The will was a slap in his face, he knew, the ultimate statement of how unworthy he was in his father’s eyes. But the fact was that he understood his father’s reasons for entrusting his wife, rather than his drunken son, with his legacy. It was Pillamai who was angry about the terms of the will, swearing to Adi that she had no idea when her husband had changed it. But she had more pressing things to think about. Within hours of her husband’s death, Nari had made Pillamai an offer to buy the farm. She had kept the news from Adi as long as there was any hope of her son agreeing to run the farm. Adi now understood the reason why his mother had been so desperate that he take over the family business—Pillamai detested Nari almost as much as he did. But Pillamai was a realist. When her son warned her that he would drink up the profits in six months, she believed him. Pillamai knew that Nari’s offer was far below the market value, but she also realized that none of the other landowners would bid on her land now that Nari had expressed an interest. Also, Nari had promised that she could live in her house as long as she was alive. And with Adi’s drinking, it would be nice to have some money to invest and bequeath to her prodigal son. God knows, he would need it to survive if the drinking ever got totally out of hand.

In the end, the Patel farm was sold to Adi’s old tormentor. Both mother and son wept after the deed was signed. “Sorry, Mummy, sorry,” Adi said. “I wish there had been some way to keep the farm.” Pillamai opened her mouth to say the obvious but then thought the better of it. Besides, she could see that her weary son was ready to wash his hands of the whole matter and return to Bombay. Adi was relieved that the money from the sale would assure his mother a comfortable life. He had halfheartedly suggested to his mother that she move to Bombay, but she had refused. “This is your family home,
deekra,”
she said. “Even if the farm is no longer in the family, at least one Patel should still walk upon this land. After I’m dead and gone, it will be a different story. Besides, my beloved’s spirit is still here.”

Some part of him understood what his mother was saying. Also, perversely, he appreciated the awful logic of this final capitulation to Nari. He had fled the family farm because of Nari, had been driven from it because of events set in motion by the old man. The sale only legitimized that fact, brought out in the open what had happened years ago. Nari had owned his soul for years; now he would also own the soil that had nourished that soul. The trees that his ancestors had proudly planted had yielded bitter fruit for Adi; maybe it would take Nari’s foul seed to make them sweet again.

He returned to Bombay even more quiet and inward-looking than before. The past engulfed him like a fire. He had daily conversations with Saraswati, angrily asking her to leave him alone or pleading with her to forgive him. He imagined Nari stalking across the farm, uprooting the trees he and his father had so lovingly planted. He tried hard not to think of his mother, living alone in that big house, surrounded by ghosts and the fragments of her former life.

It took Philomena Pinto to drag him into the present.

Philomena was the new clerk, whose desk sat diagonally across from his. She was everything he was not—gregarious, boisterous, sensual, assertive. The first time he saw her, he was filled with a lust that shook him to the bottom of his feet. He felt amazement and gratitude at the knowledge that he was capable of so much feeling. That the unholy trinity of Nari, Saraswati, and alcohol had not destroyed every nerve ending, every ounce of emotion in him. For days, he watched her out of the corner of his eye, followed the line of her legs to where it melted into her hemline, thrilled to the sound of her sudden spurts of laughter, noticed how she talked in the same breezy way to everyone, from the bosses to the teenaged boy who delivered tea to the office. He knew he had to talk to her, get to know her, but each time she glanced at him, he looked away hastily. For the first time, he wished he had a close friend in Bombay, someone who could advise him on the best way to endear himself to this girl who was driving him mad.

She saved him the trouble. One afternoon, when most of his colleagues were on their lunch break and he was chewing a dry
batatawada
at his desk, she approached him and stood in front of him with a hand on her right hip. “Say,
men,
whatcha staring at me all day long for? You want to talk to me, why don’t you just come up and say hello, straight off, like a regular gent?”

He opened his mouth to protest, but no words came. She held his gaze and he was the one who looked away first.

Two days later, while waiting in line for the BEST bus to take him to his favorite after-work bar, he spotted her standing about twelve people behind him. Stiffly, he raised his hand in greeting and then immediately turned back around. Seconds later, he felt her tug at his shirtsleeve. “Move over,
men.
Why should I wait back there when I have a friend ahead in the queue?” When the man behind them muttered about people breaking the queue, she silenced him with a look.

“I’m sorry about the staring,” he said to her after they had boarded the bus and he had paid for their tickets. “I meant no harm, I assure you.”

She pinched his arm. “I know that, silly fellow. Okay, I meant to tell you, I’m sorry about my little lecture the other day. I don’t mind you staring at me. Kind of flattering, even. You see, I just wanted to say hello, that’s all. Didn’t know how else to talk to you.”

He laughed and then, amazed at the unfamiliar sound of his laughter, he laughed some more. He felt bewitched and out of his element, like a man breathing underwater. He was simply not used to a woman this warm, so disarmingly honest. When they first started going out, he was so paranoid about anybody at the office finding out that he would concoct elaborate schemes to throw them off. After years of secrecy, of living in the shadows, he was not ready to be pulled out into the blinding sunlight. At the office picnic, which he attended for the first time ever because Philomena was going, he refused to sit beside her, for fear that someone would read on his face how he felt about this woman. He did not trust himself to sit next to her without glowing. Philomena indulged his desire for secrecy for about two months. Then one day, she refused to speak to him at all. When he looked up from his paperwork to glance at her, she resolutely looked away. He went half-mad with apprehension, terrified that she would not show up at the Chinese restaurant they had planned on meeting at after work. But when he got there, she was waiting for him. The waiter had barely taken their order when she lit into him. “I’m telling you,
men,
I don’t know how much longer I can take this. You act as if you’re ashamed of me or something, like I’m some disease that has to be hidden. I’d rather die than go on like this. You make me feel like a common whore.”

He flinched. “Philomena. Don’t be silly. I was just thinking of you—you know, your reputation and all.”

“Are you a politician or a Mafia man, that my reputation will be hurt if people know I’m going out with you? Come on,
yaar.
It’s not like we’re nine-year-olds or something. Anyway, Adi, I’m a frank, open person. I’m telling you, I cannot live like a thief. If you can’t handle that, I’ll just leave this very minute. Either you’re proud to be with me or you’re not. Besides, darling, I think it’s
your
reputation you’re worried about, not mine. Dating a non-Parsi and all.”

“Not at all, not at all,” he replied, shaking his head vigorously. “Not being a Parsi has nothing to do with it.” And it was true. He had already decided that if his mother ever resented the fact that Philomena was a Catholic, he would play his ace. “Mummy, listen,” he would say. “So Philomena isn’t a Parsi. But this
chokri
is so good for me, I haven’t touched a drop since I’ve met her.” Which was not a lie. The urge to drink had dropped away from Adi like an old coat that no longer fit. And Philomena seemed to have exorcised Saraswati from his life, too.

Philomena brought back to life some part of him that the encounter with Saraswati had snuffed out even before it had fully bloomed. He marveled at how easily she awoke the dead parts of him. That day in the Chinese restaurant, he told her, “Darling, I am so proud of you, you have no idea. If I was hiding you, it was only because I don’t want anybody to steal the treasure I have found. But if you want people to know, if you don’t mind their stupid gossip, I don’t care.” To his astonishment, he found that he believed what he had said.

He began spending Friday evenings playing cards with her friends. He was amazed at how comfortable he felt with this boisterous, youthful group of people, at how easily they accepted him. His uncle and aunt made good-natured comments about how little they were seeing of their nephew these days and were rewarded by his happy, shy smile. He knew he would have to bring Philomena home sometime soon, but he was eager not to rush things, afraid of anything or anybody interrupting his period of hard-earned bliss. Some evenings, Adi and Philomena would go to Apollo Bunder after work and sit by the banks of the sea for hours. Or he would take her to Chowpatty Beach and they would find a secluded spot to neck furiously on the brown sands. Despite his incredible longing for this woman who gave herself so fully to him, Adi always managed to keep himself from going too far. When he made love to Philomena for the first time, it would be in a real bed with clean white sheets, he decided.

So he was stunned when, after a spell of frustrated necking, Philomena turned to him and said, “Adi, this waiting is getting too hard,
men.
Can we not get a hotel room or something?”

He stared at her. Where he came from, women who asked for sex were considered to be whores, loose women of poor character. It was the man’s job to keep asking for it, to beg, plead, and cajole, until he succeeded in wearing the woman down. For a second, he was offended, as if Philomena had somehow stolen his role and his lines. But then he felt incredibly lucky and happy. A woman loved him enough to want to sleep with him. Instead of whimpering or cowering from him, a woman had openly, frankly expressed her lust to him. She had thought of herself as his equal and not as his victim.

That Saturday, they checked into a hotel on Juhu Beach. From their room, they could hear the tossing and turning of the sea. The sound steadied Adi, made him feel as though what they were about to do fit in with the natural order of things.

It was only his second time with a woman, the first having been the unhappy episode with Saraswati. Somehow, Philomena seemed to grasp how fragile and insecure the man she held in her arms was. In contrast, she seemed experienced and confident, guiding him, leading him on. He closed his eyes and told himself to concentrate on the wonderful things Philomena was saying and doing to him. But perversely, he kept seeing Saraswati’s blank face in front of his eyes. Adi’s body was hot, but his heart was ice-cold. Philomena was warm, passionate, trusting—everything that Saraswati had not been. She removed her clothes hastily, eagerly, and then undressed him— something that Saraswati had not done. Philomena talked during sex, told Adi how much she loved him, wanted him—something that Saraswati hadn’t. The hotel room was cool, clean—unlike the fetid, steamy hut on the south side of Nari’s fields. Their bed was soft, wide, solid—unlike the narrow, hard cot where he had destroyed Saraswati. But when it was all over, at the moment immediately after his climax, Philomena made the same sobbing sound back in her throat that Saraswati had. Or at least that’s how it sounded to his hot, fevered ears.

Nothing to do now but to go through the motions. Nothing to do but smile and say, Darling, that was so good, hope you enjoyed it, too. Nothing to do but pretend to be spent and toll onto your side and take an afternoon nap. Nothing to do but to be wide awake, to feel a single line of sweat trickle down your face and know that you are doomed. To admit to yourself that even love cannot save you. To know that your sin is too great, the stain too deep, that even this sweet, generous, bighearted girl breathing next to you cannot save you from your old nemesis. To know that Saraswati is here, in this room, souring it with her presence, her blank dark eyes staring accusingly at you, ruining your only shot at happiness. To know that an illiterate peasant woman has finally managed to destroy you, you, the son of a landowner.

His mouth was so dry, all he could think about was that he needed a drink. He was suddenly irritated by Philomena’s heavy presence next to him, as if he wanted her to read his mind and disappear. To leave this room, this hotel, his life.

He took her home as soon as he could tactfully do it. If she noticed his unease during the cab ride home, she didn’t comment on it. After he dropped her off, he continued in the same cab to the bar he hadn’t visited in months.

He went through the motions with Philomena for a few more days, answering her worried questions about his remoteness with a false heartiness. “Darling, what’s wrong? You’re not having any regrets, are you?” she asked him during a coffee break.

“No, of course not,” he said, looking away from her. “It’s just, I don’t know, maybe I’m getting a cold or something. I better go directly home from work tonight.”

He turned away from the suddenly knowing look on Philomena’s face. And he was unable to look her in the eye when he called off the affair a week later. They were sitting in a private cubicle in their favorite Irani restaurant—the same cubicle where he used to take her over their lunch break to neck. “Something has come up,” he mumbled. “I have to break off this affair, right now.”