The Guru of Love (17 page)

Every few hundred yards, he found himself out of breath, disoriented, and had to find a place to sit. By the time he reached Pandey Palace, beads of perspiration were running down his neck, even though the air was cold. For a moment he stood outside the gate, catching his breath, wondering what to say. The Pandeys' large Alsatian dog came bounding toward the gate, barking. It recognized Ramchandra and wagged its tail. He opened the gate and walked in, the dog dancing around him.

Mr. Pandey was on the porch, smoking his hookah, and when Ramchandra did his namaste, Mr. Pandey motioned to him to sit beside him.

“What happened at home?” Mr. Pandey asked.

“Just a minor disagreement,” Ramchandra said.

“Goma has never done such a thing.”

“Sometimes with a family there are arguments. It's not a big deal.” He glanced inside. “Is she in there?”

“I think she's sleeping. The children have gone to the market with their grandmother.”

A servant brought Ramchandra a glass of tea, which he gladly accepted. There was hardly any conversation between the two men. Mr. Pandey seemed to be lost in his own world.

Ramchandra set his glass on the floor and said, “I'll go talk to her.” Mr. Pandey didn't look at him. He walked up the stairs and knocked on the door of one of the bedrooms, and Goma answered that she didn't want anything to eat.

“It's me,” he said.

She didn't come to the door despite his repeated pleas. After a while he went down to the porch, and Mr. Pandey asked, “So, it's serious, eh? You must have done something really bad, son-in-law. I don't like to meddle in other people's business, but whatever it is, you'd better fix it now.” Before Ramchandra could answer, Mr. Pandey pointed to the rose garden and said, “That bastard gardener is not doing his job. Look how those roses are turning out.” He tried to engage Ramchandra in a discussion about the pamphlets people were reading, filled with articles mocking the royal family, calling them names. “Spewing venom against royalty,” Mr. Pandey said. “What has this godforsaken country come to?”

Ramchandra abruptly cut him off. “I'll come back later,” he said and headed toward the gate. The Pandeys' Honda passed him a few hundred yards down the road, and he caught a glimpse of Sanu and Rakesh in the back seat, talking to their grandmother. He waved. They didn't see him, but for a brief moment Ramchandra thought they were pretending not to see him, as if they were already looking at him through their mother's eyes.

Ramchandra wandered around the streets for a while, and, as the emptiness inside him grew, set off toward Tangal.

Malati's stepmother opened the door. “Oh, the professor,” she said, tightening her lips. She invited him in and called Malati, who came to the living room holding Rachana.

“So, how is my daughter doing with her studying for the S.L.C.?” Malekha Didi asked.

“I think she'll pass.”

“You only think? Or will she actually pass?”

“She'll pass.”

Malati asked Ramchandra to sit down, and, handing Rachana to Malekha Didi, went to the kitchen to make tea. Malekha Didi kissed the baby, who was straining her neck to look at Ramchandra. He snapped his lingers at the baby and said to Malekha Didi, “She looks just like her mother.”

“Maybe she looks like her father, too. We don't know.” Abruptly she added, “What's happening between you and Malati?”

“What do you mean?”

“You two... are you?” Her face twisted into an obscene smile.

“There's nothing.”

Malati returned and asked what they were talking about, and Malekha Didi said she'd been inquiring about the two of them. “You,” Malati said to her stepmother, slapping her on the shoulder. “There's nothing. You are so nosy.”

The conversation was too casual; it made Ramchandra uneasy. After Malati brought in the tea, Malekha Didi talked about her recent coup, the large order of chicken for a wedding party. Ramchandra listened, but her words flew past him; his mind was on Goma and the children. A short while later, Malekha Didi handed Rachana to Malati and went outside.

“You don't look well,” Malati said.

“Goma has left with the children.”

“I know—'' Then what he'd said seemed to dawn on her. “You mean... she knows?”

“I told her.”

She stared at him.

“I couldn't not tell her. It was eating me.”

She set Rachana on the floor and covered her eyes with her hands. “What will she think of me?”

“It's not your problem. It's mine.”

For a long time, Malati kept her hands over her eyes. When she revealed her face again, he saw that she looked startled. She glanced at the door, as if expecting Goma to appear. “What are we going to do?”

“I don't know. I went to her parents' house, but she wouldn't open the door.”

“The children...?”

“They think they're with their grandparents just for a while.”

Malati rested her chin in her hand and said, “I am not right in the head.”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm strange; I don't know what I'm doing. Everyone is better off without me.” She began to cry. “Bhauju treated me like a sister, and I betrayed her trust.”

Ramchandra shook his head. This was not what he'd come here for. He hated this kind of self-pity, so he said, “That's going to do no good, Malati. This isn't your fault.”

“Why is my life like this?”

“Stop it,” he said, a bit louder.

She stopped, walked over to him, and took his hand. “I am so sorry this happened,” she whispered.

He ran his index finger across her chin, wiping away the tears. “I don't know what's happened.”

She stroked his hair, and soon they were kissing. “I am so sorry,” she repeated again and again. She grew passionate as she uttered those words, and it was he who gently pushed her away, saying, “Your stepmother will come,” even though he found comfort in her kisses. Rachana had stood up and, holding the sofa arm, began wailing.

“What are we going to do?” Malati said. “Bhauju must hate me.”

“She never hates people.”

“What will you do this afternoon?”

“I don't know. I'll go home and try to sleep. This evening I'll try to talk to her again.”

“Why don't you stay with me?” she said. “Here?”

“What about Malekha Didi?”

“She's going to leave in about an hour. She's spending the day with her elderly mother in Bhaktapur.”

“Then I'll come back after an hour,” he said.

As he passed Malekha Didi, near the chicken shed, she called out, “Oh, professor-ji, what makes you leave so early? You had enough time with our Malati?”

Ramchandra looked around to see whether the neighbors had heard her. “I have some work to do.”

“Don't leave her alone. She needs you.” She laughed. Vulgarly, thought Ramchandra.

The sun had taken some of the chill from the morning air. What would he do for an hour? He walked toward Bhatbhateni again. Much of his disorientation had vanished, and he walked quickly. Two blocks from Pandey Palace he ran into an old friend, a teacher from his days of working as a part-timer. They chatted for a while. The friend asked about his family, and Ramchandra said everything was fine.

He walked past the Pandey Palace gate, then turned around. Goma was sitting by herself on the porch, looking toward the garden. He couldn't make out her facial expression, but he heard Rakesh shout something from inside the house. When Goma turned her head to respond, Ramchandra quickly moved to the side so that she wouldn't see him. He leaned against the wall, his eyes closed. Slowly, he moved toward the gate and peeked in. She had gone inside.

He circled the block a few times and then went to Malati.

 

The city was alive with the energy of the festival. A parade walked the street of Ranipokhari on the day of Fulpati. The next day, goats, sheep, and buffalo were slaughtered at the numerous Devi Temples throughout the city. People consumed meat as a divine blessing from the goddess. They fried goat blood and ate it with relish. They boiled goats' testicles, dipped them in salt and chili powder. Goat ears were barbecued on gas stoves and passed around to the children. People ate until their stomachs were bloated, until they became sick and had to be rushed to the hospital. Other people ate until, heavy with food, they fell asleep, dreaming of riches raining on them directly from the open mouths of the ferocious Durga.

For a brief while, people forgot the city's tensions, ignored the newspapers that spoke of a revolution brewing in dark corners of its streets. Occasionally rumors rippled through the city: the king is contemplating martial law; the communists are plotting to massacre the royal family; the Indians are working with the panchays to crush any rebellion. Such talk appeared and disappeared, and the spirit of the festival made the city's streets cheerful.

 

On the night before Tika, Ramchandra lay in bed in Malati's closet-sized room, Malati beside him and Rachana sleeping against the wall. The bed was so small that Ramchandra's left arm dangled over the side. Under the blanket, both he and Malati were naked, shivering slightly because it was cold. They'd done their lovemaking carefully, because of the lack of space and their fear of squashing Rachana. They'd moved slowly, their hips grinding against each other. Even at the height of excitement, Ramchandra couldn't thrust his hips at her, for fear of shaking Rachana, but he found that this control made the experience even more pleasurable.

After they were done and she'd closed her eyes for a few minutes, she said, as if the idea had come to her in a dream, “Bhauju must hate me.” For a long time, he tried to console her, but she had cried out, “I am wrecking a family. I should stop studying with you.”

In annoyance, he'd retorted, “Then why don't you? What's stopping you?”

“I don't know,” she said. She shivered. “I don't know why I feel this way about you.”

“What do you feel about me?” he asked softly.

She took his hand in hers. “When I'm with you, I feel that I am really someone.”

“But you are really someone, even without me.”

She shook her head. “Look at my life. What do I have? This''—she gestured around the room. “That little girl who doesn't have a father? And Malekha Didi. She could kick me out of this house any moment, and then where would I go?”

“What kind of a woman is she? She seems...” He wanted to say
vulgar,
but that would sound too harsh. “She's like a different kind of person.”

“She's unpredictable. One day full moon, the other day no moon.”

He reached over her and stroked Rachana's head. “Does she care about you? And Rachana?”

“I know she loves Rachana, but sometimes she doesn't want to see her face.”

“And you? Does she love you?”

Malati lifted her arms and stretched. “Sometimes she does. Other times she treats me the way any stepmother would.”

“You don't have to live with her, you know.”

“But where would I go? How would I take care of Rachana? That's why I want to pass the S.L.C., so that I can go to college, get a good job, move to a place of my own.”

She paused, as if she were envisioning the possibilities. Then she said, “Now the exams are only a few weeks away, and I'm afraid I won't pass.”

“You will,” he assured her. “If you focus on getting out from the clutches of that woman, you will.”

“Malekha Didi isn't so bad,” Malati said, although she didn't sound convinced of her own words. “She could have thrown me out of the house, but she didn't.”

“She seems strange.”

“I think it's because of her dubi,” Malati said, referring to Malekha Didi's albino skin. “She must have suffered all her life. You know how people in our society act toward anyone of that color.”

“How did she end up marrying your father?”

Malati said that after her mother ran off to India with a truck driver, taking all the money and jewelry in the house, she and her father had come to Kathmandu. Malekha Didi had helped her father get a job in a government office in Singha Durbar. Malati didn't remember when her father and Malekha Didi became lovers, but she knew that her father began spending more and more time at Malekha Didi's house. Soon, they moved in with her, and the two adults slept together in the same bedroom. When Malati was sixteen, they got married in a small temple ceremony, and about three months after that, her father was hit by a motorcycle outside Singha Durbar and died in the hospital of a brain hemorrhage.

“Whatever Malekha Didi's faults, she really loved my father.”

Ramchandra played with her navel, and they fell asleep again. They woke near dawn to the crying of Rachana, who was hungry. Ramchandra's watch read six o'clock. Across the city, people were preparing for Tika, getting their jamara ready, cooking food for the people who'd flock to their houses throughout the day to receive tika, planning when and how they'd go to their elders to receive tika. And here he was, in this cramped room with Malati. He should go somewhere, do something, but what? Malekha Didi had asked that he stay today and put tika on Malati and Rachana, and he'd said yes, he'd like to. But right now, he grieved at the thought of being away from his children, from Goma, on this important day.

He watched Malati try to feed her daughter, who was shying away from her mother's breast.

“I have to make some formula for her,” Malati said. “Can you watch her for a second?”

Ramchandra picked up the crying baby, and Malati went to the kitchen. Rachana didn't stop crying, so he sang to her, a song he used to sing to Sanu when she was a baby cradled in his arms. Sanu would gradually stop crying and look intensely at his face, as if she were savoring each sound. But the song didn't work for Rachana, who began to wail even louder.