The Blue Bedspread (3 page)

For now we are sure, none of those women will be your mother.

To our left is the new flyover that leads to the airport, two lanes on either side, separated by a concrete divider along which they have put little plants in wire cages, all waiting to be trees. So far, I have only seen the flyover in the newspaper, these plants, the giant halogen lamps that change night into day, the reflectors, bought from Japan, dividing the lanes, but tonight we won’t look at all this.

Because even if there’s a beautiful woman, all alone, walking down the flyover’s ramp that merges with the main road, it doesn’t matter. We know she cannot be your mother.

Your mother is dead, she was cremated an hour ago.

If this city were flat, if all buildings were only as high as the people inside, if all the lights were switched off, the sky washed clean, the factories gone to sleep, we could have seen the smoke from her pyre. I would then have made an exception, rolled the taxi’s windows down, let some of the smoke glide past you, your mother’s last touch.

They lift her off the trolley, slide her into a stretcher, the white sheet still covers all of her, and they walk past the Out-Patient Department into the lobby where the neon lights spell out the hospital’s name.

They put her down, four people, one in each corner of the stretcher, three strangers and I.

‘We’ll arrange the van, sir,’ says one. ‘Let’s get it over with tonight itself, why wait?’

‘Do you have some money with you?’ asks another. ‘We may have to pay extra for the wood.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘How long will it take?’

‘Not long,’ he says. ‘At this time, there aren’t many people. Most wait for the morning.’

The van is white, its rear doors open, the hospital’s huge red cross split into two halves, like pieces in some sad jigsaw puzzle. They slide the stretcher into the back, on the floor, between the two seats.

Her sheet has slid off half of her left foot, her toe is exposed, I can see the nail, still clear and neatly cut, reflect some light coming from the outside, maybe a street lamp. A passing vehicle’s headlights.

I want to look at her face, I don’t want to look at her face.

We must have passed the flyover now, without looking out I know. Since its halogen lights are far behind us, the inside of the taxi is darker, much darker.

I’ll see the flyover some day, especially the little plants in their cages, waiting to be trees. If the rains come to the city on time, if the sun shines as long as it should, these plants will not have to wait for long.

What kind of trees will these be? Not the eucalyptus, like in the hospital compound, not the one with flowers, like in the park, nor the banyan across our house. These will be nameless trees in a concrete garden. And below these trees will live nameless people who will gather in a flock, head for the landfill at Tangra, and like birds who pick up things for their nests, one twig at a time, they will gather, for their houses, tarpaulin, bricks, strong nylon rope, sometimes even something to adorn, like a broken doll or a calendar, its pictures not yet torn.

‘Ten more minutes, sir,’ says the taxi driver.

This should be Main Circular Road, we are about to reach, the taxi shudders, we are now on the tramlines, the taxi slows down, below us are the cobbled tracks, the potholes caused by the rains that wash away the concrete and it’s only many months later that the Calcutta Corporation people come, with rollers and huge drums, they switch it on and work the entire night, lighting fires, mixing stone chips to make the tar which will then be carried in black buckets and poured into the holes.

Two boys jump out of the shadows, run to the van as soon as we enter, the hospital men tell them to clear off, we walk down the steps to the yard where they have marked out the rectangles for the pyres.

‘Wait there, we will get the wood,’ says one.

I wait, the river is one big black table top glistening in the dark. Far away I can see the steamers, their lanterns flickering, the dark shapes of the Howrah Bridge, there is one pyre to my left that has burnt down, must be at least two hours ago, because there are no embers left, no smoke, just ash, its heat coming to me in waves.

She is ready now, the sheet still on her, the toe now covered, a priest comes from nowhere. ‘One hundred rupees,’ he says, and then stands beside me.

I put you down on the bed, place two pillows on either side, to rest against your tiny hands, each smaller than my finger. The time has come, I go to my room, take out the paper, they placed the wood on her body, one log at a time, the thick ones at the bottom, the thin ones at the top, I have had these sheets of paper for quite some time, the ones at the top are yellow at the edges, the ones below are still white and crisp, the priest asked me to hold the splinter and walk around the pyre, I could begin with my name but why waste time, she begins to burn, they poured oil, the wood made noises, the van was lit by her flames, I write about my trousers, their white lining, the smoke gets into my eyes. There isn’t much time, the man and the woman are coming to take you tomorrow, the fire was still burning when we left, let me tell you about the doctor with arms as white as milk, I am seven years old, she was gone, you were waiting at the hospital, why should I cry.

Three stories and you haven’t cried, I have to get up to check.

I walk on my toes, I hold my breath. My slippers go slap-slap on the cement floor; when I inhale, the air and my body make a noise, when I walk at this time of the night, you can hear my arms rub against my white nightshirt. I have to be careful.

The door to your bedroom creaks. Its hinges have moved, opening and closing, about four or five times a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, thirty years. At the bottom of the door, the edge is chipped, a sharp sliver of wood has given way, it scrapes the floor every time the door moves.

That’s the sound which puts me on the edge, I don’t want you to hear it. So I spend one full minute pushing the door, millimetre by millimetre, until it opens. Just enough, about a foot, for me to pass. And I see you haven’t moved in your sleep.

The two pillows I propped up on either side of you are exactly as they were. I used my hands to fluff one pillow, the hollows my fingers left are still there. I stand by your bed and watch you, your tiny hands, each smaller than my little finger, the night draped over your head.

I bend down to look at you closely, the fragrance of your new life comes rushing to me, I blow gently in your two-day-old hair, you still don’t move.

You are like your mother.

When she slept, it was as if she had walked into a photograph and then never came out of the glass frame the entire night. Even if her arm was caught in an awkward angle, even if her head was half on the pillow, half outside, and her neck hurt, it didn’t matter.

Her hair across the pillow stayed exactly the way it fell when she first closed her eyes. It was only on some summer nights, when I got up, covered with sweat, to turn the fans regulator from two to three to four, sometimes even five, that her hair moved. Caught in the sudden rush of air, it rustled over the pillow, brushed my face like thin feathers in the dark.

But she didn’t move.

Once, I asked her why. She laughed, she said there was no reason, some people move in their sleep, some don’t.

I asked her again, she laughed again. Until one night, just before going to sleep, she told me to close the door, switch the lights off and then she whispered why.

There is this dream I have every night, she said. Sometimes, it’s the first dream of the night, sometimes it comes in between two dreams, and sometimes it’s played out in slow motion, lasting the entire night.

It’s early winter in the city, the air is cool, I am in a park, which park I don’t know. It’s very quiet, I can’t hear any buses or trains, even people. There’s fine green grass on the ground, like in front of the Victoria Memorial, the wind is light, I can feel it in my hair, on the grass.

I sit on a wrought-iron bench, in front of a marble palace. Swans glide past me on the grass, white against green against the blue of the sky. And about ten feet away from me, sits a man, his face covered by a large rectangular canvas propped up on a dark brown wooden stand.

It’s like in the pictures of artists in story books. I can’t see him in full, I see only a flash of his elbow when he moves his hands, I can see his knee, he’s wearing dark trousers. His face I can’t see.

Once or twice, he bends to his left to look at me, to check if he’s getting the lines right, but I cannot remember his face. All I remember is what he tells me from behind the canvas. One sentence, at least three or four times: ‘Don’t move,’ he says, ‘I am painting you, please don’t move.’

Maybe that’s why I don’t move in my sleep, she said.

‘What do you see?’ the doctor asks.

‘There’s a street lamp,’ I say. ‘And there’s an empty road. There are small houses on either side. They are coloured red, green, blue, silver and yellow. Each house has two windows and a door.’

‘Who do you think lives there?’

‘People,’ I say.

‘What kind of people?’

‘Rabbits and bears, pixies and gnomes like in the story book where the faraway trees whisper wisha wisha wisha at night.’

‘Good boy,’ she says.

It takes me half an hour to say all this and by the time I’m done, I have fallen off the chair, I lie on the carpet, my chest hurts, my ears are burning, my eyes are wet with tears.

She gives me a glass of water, offers her hand, helps me get up. She’s a beautiful woman, the doctor, much more beautiful than my class teacher Miss Constance Lopez. She wears a sleeveless blue blouse, her bare arms are as white as the milk I have for breakfast. Her sari is red with black flowers all over.

It’s a July afternoon, three days before my seventh birthday, the rain’s coming down in sheets so thick that the black umbrella buckles under its weight. We are travelling in a taxi, my father and I, to the doctor, who has her chambers in a white building on Russell Street near Jamuna Cinema.

The driver has rolled up the windows but they don’t go the entire way, they don’t close tight and through the four horizontal cracks at the top, between the glass and the window frame, the rain keeps squeezing in with the wind.

So we keep moving away from the windows until we sit real close, Father and I, like two friends huddled in the rain.

It’s the day after the Parent-Teacher meeting in which Miss Lopez suggested that Father take me to the white building on Russell Street near Jamuna Cinema so that I got cured.

‘He’s a nice boy,’ she said. ‘He needs to get over this thing,’ and she ran her hand through my hair as if she were looking for a place, a soft place in my head. ‘Usually, parents can be of great help in all this, they can make a great difference,’ she says.

And Father looks at her, then looks sideways at the blackboard where there’s nothing, no teaching today, except for a world map rolled up. I keep looking at the stapler and the Scotch tape on Miss Lopez’s desk, feeling Father’s guilt pushing at me.

‘I’ll certainly take him there, Miss Lopez,’ says Father. ‘You are right.’

It’s an apartment building, as in American films, Venetian blinds on windows, complete with a lobby and an elevator, plants lined up along the wall. There is a brass plate with names written, who is on which floor. There is a guard, in a blue suit, his buckles shine, he is also wearing a cap and he’s watching the rain drum on the steps that lead to his chair. He asks Father where we are going and Father shows him something written on a piece of paper and he points to the stairs. Third floor, he says.

We climb the stairs up to the third floor where it’s quiet and dry. Father looks funny in his raincoat, my hair is wet, I can feel the rain squeak between my toes in my shoes.

We wait in the lobby, dripping onto the green carpet. Once again, like in the taxi, we keep moving from one place on the sofa to another so that the carpet doesn’t get all wet in one place. We are embarrassed but it doesn’t matter since there’s no one present, just two red sofas that stretch from one end of the wall to the other. And a money plant in the middle of the room.