The Two Krishnas (27 page)

Atif clasped Rahul’s hand tightly, held it close to him, against his thudding chest, as if in that grip they held a common heart. His tears unbounded, Atif cried now not only for the love that he knew Rahul felt for him, but also the loves that he had lost, for his mother and father, all the rejections he had suffered up until now, and the realization that when at long last, love had arrived, it had been so that he would be able to neither claim nor keep it.

* * *

It would have sufficed to be cocooned in a local luxury hotel, but they managed to head northwest to the lush Ojai Valley, a little over an hour from Los Angeles and nestled at the edge of the Los Padres National Forest. Revered by the earliest settlers, the Chumash Indians, as a place of healing and mystical powers, the serene valley was often referred to by many spiritual seekers as “The Nest.”

Atif remembered Carl Berman, over his many gin and tonics at the Roosterfish, recommending The Nest, an intimate Spanish-styled landmark inn built in the 1940’s over oak-covered land. He had made a mental note of it then and there, and now that the opportunity had arisen from their reconciliation, Atif had combed the property on-line and made all the arrangements for them. Although Atif had never been to Tuscany, from photos he’d seen, he thought that this is what it might look like.

They drove up in Rahul’s car, the trunk packed with only an overnight change of clothes for Atif but a hefty suitcase for Rahul containing a freshly pressed Armani suit and tie, laptop, several bulky files, the accouterments necessary to make it look like he was going on a business trip. In his satchel which lay on the backseat, Atif also carried a copy of Coleman Bark’s version of Rumi’s poetry, bottles of pink dragonfruit-flavored Vitaminwater, bags of potato chips, unopened bottles of Gewurztraminer, a bar of imported chocolate-covered marzipan, his red rosary.

“I was thinking,” he said, fingering Rahul’s knuckle as it rested on the gears, the platinum band from his finger removed and tucked away for the time being. “Do you know what song they were playing when we had that first drink?”

“What drink?” Rahul asked, keeping his eyes on the road as the car began its descent into the valley.

“You know, the song, at the little bar in Santa Monica, that night.”

Rahul snorted funnily, “What, now we have a song?”

“‘Detour Ahead.’ Billie Holiday,” Atif said, keeping his hand over Rahul’s. “Now that should have been a sign right there.”

Rahul gave him a look, unfamiliar with the song, so Atif began to sing it in a lazy, raspy voice, a bit out of tune:

Smooth road, clear day

But why am I the only one travelin’ this way?

How strange the road to love should be so easy

Can’t you see the detour ahead?

“Nothing else? Just that?”

“Not even the ring on the finger,” Atif said sardonically. “Life was scoring the moment.”

After the initial talkativeness—the tempering of the weather, the demons that fueled Billie Holliday’s art, caused her addictions and penniless demise, the idea to invite Carl Berman for a drink back at the bar when they returned—they drove the rest of the way in contented silence, their hands webbed together for much of it even when their eyes were away from one another. The city slowly faded into carpets of lush green landscapes and little towns whose names meant nothing to them but which now, away from the city that made it difficult for them to be together, felt like little havens. Atif had printed out a map that now lay discarded on the floor next to his leather sandals, forgetting that the car came equipped with a navigation system, one that Rahul didn’t even need to consult. This confidence in him, as he drove them, imbued Atif with the kind of assurance a child would derive from his father.

What he could not have seen is that by the time they had left the city limits, Rahul had started to feel displaced, his mind pulling back to his home, his chest filling up. He held on to Atif’s hand but in his mind, he replayed the excuse to be away on a Branch Managers’ retreat in Irvine, and realized that the awkwardness of a lie might have seeped through. Pooja had cleared the dinner table, looked at him strangely, more than ever convinced that this job was robbing them all of a quality life together. She let out a soft sigh as if to say:
When can we stop working so hard? We are getting old. Isn’t it that time now when we can just reap from the years we have already toiled?
And somehow, as she had sat in the kitchen, her hands fluttering over the canisters of fragrant spices that had become her faithful legion of confidantes, she left him with the distinct feeling that he was yet again abandoning her.

For a while they were stuck behind a cargo truck and Rahul recognized the company name on its mud flaps, a shipping company in Westchester that he had solicited with one of his business bankers. He skirted around the truck, picked up speed as they left it behind. They passed an outlet mall, landscapes spotted with grazing cows, barns with rusted roofs, small communities of farm workers, groves of lemons, oranges and avocados. And as they streamed down the ribbon of tarmac, the cars dispersing with each mile, the skies cleared, mountains revealing themselves in all their majesty against wisps of puffy clouds flirting with the summits.

Eventually they turned down a long dirt road fanned by tall sycamore trees, stones crunching under the tires, the aroma of orange blossoms, sage and dense forest permeating the air. Except for the inn’s wooden sign, made by a local artisan, there was nothing to mark where they were going and at first there was no structure visible. Then they came to a clearing where they found six intimate, old mission-style bungalows with arched entrances and terracotta curved roofing nesting behind a low wall of ochre-colored stones. In the center was a fountain burbling crystalline water into a tiled basin, studded with colored stones. A Labrador peeked out at them forlornly from the porch of the middle bungalow, his tail wagging in anticipatory delight as they pulled up next to a parked Saab and Atif thought of Anaïs with a sudden, sharp pain but said nothing.

No sooner had they turned the engine off than the dog bounded over to them and as if alerted by the excitement, a heavyset, tanned woman in a floral cotton sundress appeared from the cottage. She ambled over, calling after the dog and trying to calm him down, and introduced herself as Dottie Wharton. She swept the honeyed bangs away from her sparkling blue eyes and asked questions about their journey with genuineness, making Rahul feel uncomfortable, as if she were prying. He flashed her a smile and looked away, letting Atif make niceties. The dog darted around by their legs, seeking affection, and although Atif hesitated, Rahul reached down and gave him a good cuddle.

They were given the keys to their cottage after a quick sign-in process in the office where jars of scented candles slogged unnecessarily to create an atmosphere already prevalent in the surroundings. If Dottie Wharton, drenched in magnolia perfume, had been the least bit curious about her two male guests, she didn’t show it. When she handed them copies of signed paperwork and a map of the town, Dottie also offered suggestions on how they could spend their time in what she proudly called “the city of pink sunsets,” although actually witnessing one was not on her list of things to do. They could go golfing, cycle over to the picturesque arcade downtown where dozens of shops, restaurants and spas awaited, go hiking. But all they could think of was banishing the outside world.

“So, welcome, Mr. Ka-Poor” Dottie beamed with her hands tightly webbed together in anticipation as they slung the bags over their shoulders and prepared to leave through the screen door where the dog mewled away. “Oh, I just know you and your son will have such a neat time here!”

* * *

Now, removed from a life that had to be choreographed to the ticking of minutes, they found themselves uninterrupted, in a self-contained bungalow that stood in for the home they would never share, the desperation of their lovemaking metamorphosed into an ease found only in couples who could take time for granted, feel the reassurance of the years ahead of them.

They stood at the foot of an expansive rustic brass bed, enclosed by ochre walls finished to an aged look, and could hear the narcotic melody of quietude. There was an abundance of windows opening up to private gardens and mountain vistas. Sunlight streamed into the room through the wrought iron-grilled windows, etching trellis-like shadows onto to the polished wooden floor. The air was lightly perfumed with lavender potpourri, placed around in small earthenware jars around the room. Black and white photos depicting the inn before a fire razed it in the late fifties hung on the walls.

This time, they regarded each other not with desperation, but like grateful survivors. They put aside their shields, removed their guards and breastplates, and looked at one other with tenderness and the exhaustion that comes from the end of a shared and infinitely demanding ordeal. Somewhere else, as the world clattered away, Atif and Rahul held each other in an embrace, comforted by the beating of their hearts, their solitudes slowly merging.

There is such an alchemy, Atif was reminded, where two people can dissolve in each other, a closeness where tragedy and loneliness can, at least momentarily, be expunged, and every earthly cause that has driven us to trauma finds a cure. This, Atif thought, savoring the taste of what he knew may be certain blasphemy, is what religion tries to teach us and miserably fails in: abandonment. Here is my Islam. I have submitted completely to him—mind, body and soul—consequence be damned. He knew now the meaning of the Sufi poems he had pored over, as if he had been given the key to their secret door, no longer shrunk down to just poems and love songs translated sometimes in a language in which there couldn’t possibly be a word to describe the kind of fire he felt inside, but expanded infinitely like a sky within.

Standing there, it occurred to Rahul that although Pooja and he had spent a whole lifetime building a house, brick by brick, over a dungeon full of painful memories neither one of them could bear to confront, Atif was now reacquainting him with his past, to a part of himself he had been unable to accept. The thawing brought hope. And where there was hope, there was life.

Atif sensed Rahul’s pain and looked up at him, cupping his face in his hands, feeling the stubble prickle his palms. “I would have liked to age better than this,” said Rahul. “Just to be more, give more, something of real meaning.”

But you have!
Atif wanted to say.
Can’t you see that?
He had created a son, of whom Atif knew nothing about, but was certain was a model child, the kind who would surely enter some coveted college and become the proverbial Indian engineer or doctor, anything other than a striving, tortured writer or underpaid bookseller. And he had not walked out on his wife.

Atif wanted to tell Rahul that he had brought happiness into his vacuous life, replaced the family that he had lost, given him, despite the shortcomings of their relationship, the chance to love.

But Atif said nothing, covering Rahul’s face with kisses, knowing that there was nothing he could do or say that would make Rahul feel absolved about being there with him; that ultimately, the guilt of abandonment would always linger, no matter how small.

“This will sound banal, I know,” said Rahul. “But I still want to say I’m sorry.”

“Well, you know ‘love means never having to say…’” and they both laughed at the reference to
Love Story.
Atif held Rahul’s face and looked deeply into his still-brimming eyes. “They say that life is about balance. That it trades one sorrow for one joy and so forth until it finds some kind of harmony. Well, I want none of it. I’ve never been as dead as I was when I was balanced. I don’t want life to be contained. I want it unbound, inspired. Alive.”

After they made love, they held on to each other like children recognizing tactile sensation for the first time. No one came to disturb them and they had nowhere immediate to go. When Rahul slept, Atif would look at him, studying all the lines and contours of his face. After he had looked his fill, graphed Rahul’s image in his mind, Atif would shut his eyes and still see the face; when he opened them again, he would see that Rahul was really there, the face just inches away from his, his breath warming Atif’s neck.

Atif remembered Rumi and fell into sleep’s comforting embrace, the words of another love, dancing in his mind:

I am happy tonight,

united with the friend.

Free from the pain of separation,

I whirl and dance with the beloved.

I tell my heart, “Do not worry,

the key to morning I’ve thrown away.

* * *

Patterned moonlight poured into the room. Atif slept deeply, the strain gone from him, his face as clear as it must be when he was feeling completely safe. Every now and then he smiled, cajoled by some dream, and said words that meant nothing. Rahul should have slept soundly as well, allayed by the thought that both his worlds, at least momentarily, were spinning in perfect axes. He slipped out of bed and leaned up against the bedside window to look out into the night, the pearly light bathing him like celestial waters from above. Crickets and occasionally the lawn sprinkler thrummed over the silence, the world outwardly quiescent in the realm of the subconscious.

He had a sense of being here before. Could it have been a dream or a trick of his consciousness, a moment that had just happened, suddenly being remembered? He remembered reading somewhere that a sense of déjà vu was a validation of your destined path. Somehow, someone was showing you milestones to reassure you, to confirm that you were accurately following a predetermined course.