I don’t but a big question is burning in my mind. “Excuse me asking, Anjali, but after we came up here, what exactly happened?”
“What happened? That too you’ve forgotten?”
“Please tell me.” Surely it can’t be. What vile and malicious fate would give me my first fuck then completely erase the memory?
“Did we…do anything?”
“Last night,” she says, “you wouldn’t stop talking. You talked of old times, when we knew each other before, all your friends. Oh don’t look worried, it was interesting, I enjoyed it, we had a laugh. Then you got all dowly, said you were the only animal that never would find a mate because there’s only one of you, no female like you there’s. I said, not surprising have you seen how you look, well, you resembled a wild rainbow, so then I got this idea, I found some Holi colours, we painted each other.” Leaning there in bed she seems quite happy to chatter, I become aware of her bare breasts, hanging near my face.
“So we didn’t do anything?”
“Darling, don’t look at me like it’s my fault.”
“Well, did we or didn’t we?”
“You fell asleep.”
Seeing my dejected expression, she says, “Aha, so you’d have liked it? I did wonder whether your friend was taking the piss.”
What can I say? Of course I wanted that thing for which I’ve been lusting so long, plus I used to be fond of this girl. Almost pretty she’s, her face is fully pocked, what in Khaufpur we call naqsheen katora, an engraved bowl, but her smile is certainly friendly, plus of course she’s naked, never have I been so close to a naked woman.
I think maybe she has guessed what’s going through my mind, for a look of mischief comes to her face, she says, “O ho, so now after all you’d like to do it? Today is a new fee, let’s see your money. Give.”
“I haven’t any.”
She bursts out laughing, “I am teasing you. Your friend paid, you’re still owed. I guess I could throw you out if I wanted, but you know what, Animal, I always liked you, I used to wonder what it would be like to do it with you. And that was even before I saw this thing you’re toting around.”
“Please, I am so embarrassed,” I’ve mumbled. This sets her off in fresh peals of laughter. “Wah, hark at this gentleman. Comes to a place like this and wants to show off his Lukhnawi manners. Come on, do you want it or not?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Oh my!” Suddenly she’s got it. “You haven’t done it before. Your first time.” She’s laughing at me.
“Never mind,” says I, whose head is full of pain. Naked, covered in colours as I am, let’s try to recover whatever dignity a person like me can have.
“Don’t be that way,” she says. “I’ll show you what to do. Look, you could touch me if you want. Here, like this. And I could touch you, so. See, if we lie like this, if I’m like this and you are there…”
Well, I would like to touch her. I reach out a hand but at the last moment hesitate. She takes my hand and presses it on the breast which is warm and full, the nipple’s tickling my palm.
“Take more.” She offers the other one. “Do you want to kiss them? Or lick? Do you like to suck them? You can bite too, if you’re gentle.”
“I just wanted to touch. To see what it’s like.”
At last I take away my hand from her breast. I’ve made no further move, after a while she begins stroking my back. “So strong, beautiful the top half of you, such a fine chest, strong shoulders. So good-looking a face. And this thing of yours…” She’s reached out and taken my heavy monster in her hand, “If only the rest of you matched, you could marry a princess.”
So then she begins doing stuff which, Eyes, I don’t want to tell, nor is there a reason why I should. Let it be enough that at this moment, when at last I could have my desire, enjoy that pleasure of which I’ve so long dreamed, you know what, my big, boastful, out-of-control lund won’t wake up. Deep asleep, it’s, or else cringing in fear.
“Don’t worry,” the girl says. “You and me, sweetheart, our life is tragedy. Come here.” She gives me a cuddle, this I like a lot. We two rainbow-coloured animals lie curled together in the dawn light of that small room.
“Anjali, did you really like me? Before?”
“Yes I did.”
“But why?”
The cot’s narrow, our bodies are touching. My hand is on her side, I let it slide to where her waist narrows and on over the high curve of her hip.
“We were both in the shit,” says Anjali, “but you were always laughing. So I laughed too.” She looks so sad, it comes to me that she’s hardly older than I am.
“Anjali, how did you come to this life?”
Her story’s the same as so many you hear. She had gone to the fields near her village to cut grass. A woman came, accompanied by two men. They took her to Lucknow and put her in a kotha. “That’s where I learned the trade. From there I was brought here. I can’t escape, it’s my life now.”
“Sounds like you hate it.”
“What’s to hate? Automatic it’s as namasté. Undress, close your eyes, after that, what can I say, time passes.”
“You want to leave? Walk out of here. Come, we’ll go together.”
“It’s not that easy. I have no money.”
“You don’t need money,” I told her. “I can show you how to live without it.”
“Dreaming, you’re,” she says with a bitter sigh. “Madam paid money for me. Think she’ll let me go just like that? A girl tried to run away, the pimps caught her, they beat her, then they threw acid in her face.”
“Don’t worry. I have friends who can deal with those bastards,” says I.
“You’re crazy. Better not even to think of such things.”
We lie in silence a while, each with our own thoughts. At last she says, “Sorry I couldn’t do anything for you.”
“There is one thing I would like.” I whisper and she looks amazed.
“Just that?”
“I swear, nothing else.”
So she lies back and obliges. Now this is the third naked woman I’ve seen, this one has a figure like a Coca-Cola bottle, and plump brown legs. When I spied on Elli and Nisha all I saw really were dark shadows, never did I get a good look. Now at last I’m seeing from close up, just a few inches, in all its detail, this mysterious thing, this alluring grace of which I have dreamed, for which I’ve lusted, over which I’ve disgraced myself and behaved like an idiot.
Dark it’s, the outer parts look like the swelled lips of a large cowrie, within it’s more like a canna lily, two whorled petals whose edges are almost black, tinged with purple like the bloom on a grape. These edges are also somewhat frilly, do not join below, at the top they collide in a small peak that resembles a woman with her head veiled. This is it, the most powerful thing in the world because all men go crazy for it, more precious than gold since for its sake rich men lose fortunes, sweeter than power because craving for it makes leaders of countries risk their jobs, more powerful than honour because it makes fools of respectable men. What is this thing? It feels wrong to call it a thing, from nowhere the word grace jumps into my head.
“You can touch if you want,” she says, but I don’t want to, I just want to look. So her fingers open the petals to let me see, a glistening rosy cavern is revealed. How delicate the skin is, of such softness, threaded with tiny veins, like you find in leaves or petals, really it is most like a flower and reminds me of the hibiscus at the base of whose petals is a tube filled with liquid, you pick a flower and suck, it’s joyous as honey. She shows me how the rose cave leads to a tunnel whose mouth at first was hidden, this is the way that leads to the womb, where life begins, where I began, where we all began. I try to imagine the womb and realise that it’s an empty space, which means there’s nothingness at the very source of creation. No wonder by some this grace is worshipped with incense and flowers and prayers. I said it was the most powerful thing in all the world, I was wrong, it’s more powerful than all the world for it contains the whole world plus heaven and hell beside, in its depths is the whole of the past plus all that will be. I’m thinking of le pouvoir et la gloire that Ma Franci’s always talking about, the power of this grace makes nuclear bombs look like firecrackers, the glory is that it makes its home between the thighs of this child whose thighs are bruised by the hips of drunken men, not one of whom, I’m willing to bet, has ever understood what he is defiling.