With her right hand idly sweeping through the water, she drifted wherever the wind and waves carried her. Listening.
That evening she paddled back to the dock with a mild sunburn and a growling stomach. Priya and Rama were steaming rice in a clay pot and cooking fish in grass bundles on a pile of coals in the sand. They were talking about their favorite shades of black and laughing.
Asha cleared her throat and plopped down on the warm grass beside them.
“Catch anything?” Rama asked as he handed her a cup of tea.
“No,” Asha said. “Nothing unusual out there at all. Just a beautiful lake.”
“Oh, never underestimate a lake,” he said. “Certainly not one like this.”
“What do you mean?” asked Priya.
“Well, I’ve only lived here a short time, but I know something about living on the water, and no matter how much you think you know about a place, there is always more to find. Everything is always moving, always changing. The fish find new places to hunt or hide. A shift in the seasons will wake up some poor creature that’s been sleeping in the mud for years and years. Things fall in and get lost. Things wash up and are found.” Rama smiled his beautiful smile. “A lake is a living thing.”
After supper, Priya took Jagdish to one of the neighboring houses to play with the children as the first pale stars began to appear in the blue-black sky. Asha and Rama went to sit on the little walkway around the edge of his dark house with their feet dangling in the cool water. A warm breeze spiced with pepper and sweetened with mangos blew across the water, and from the other houses the soft sounds of laughter and off-key singing mingled with the rustling of the fiery palash blossoms above them.
“So this is your life?” he said. “You travel the world listening to peoples’ stories and floating around in their boats?”
“Sometimes I climb mountains to find rare flowers, or cross deserts for strange fruits, or stalk through forests for strange beasts.” She smiled. “But mostly, yes, I float around in strangers’ boats to enjoy the sun. Speaking of which.” Asha reached back into the house to fumble through her shoulder bag in the dark. A moment later she leaned forward again with a small jar in her hand. “You’ve been alone here for a long time, haven’t you? I’ve been alone for a long time, too. It comes with the job, I suppose. I don’t mind it, usually. But sometimes, well…” She began gently spreading the lotion on her arms and face.
“That smells good.”
“It’s just aloe, but I mixed in some rose petals.”
He shifted closer. “Can I help you with that?”
“To rub the lotion on my skin?” Asha smiled. “We’re not that young anymore, Rama.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t want to waste time going through the motions.” She reached over and pressed her lips to his. He tensed for a moment, and then kissed her back, slipping his hand through her hair to cradle her head and hold her close. Asha pulled her legs under her to kneel beside him, holding his face with both her hands. She led him through the kisses, pressing hard and pulling back, opening and closing her mouth to taste the traces of pepper and mango still clinging to his lips.
When his hands began to roam down her neck and chest, she wrapped her fingers around his and pulled him up to his feet and led him into the dark house. They stood together on the tangled blankets, slowly undressing each other. She untied his trousers. He unwound her sari. Their clothes fell silently to the floor and she pushed him gently down onto his back. Kneeling over him, she eased down against his warm flesh, and felt his hands exploring her hips and belly and breasts.
His hands continued to rove across her shoulders and neck and face, but only when his fingers grazed her right ear did she move his hand back down to her chest. They rocked gently together in the darkness, in the silence. Asha closed her eyes and listened to the crickets chirping and frogs croaking and the children singing just down the shore. Rama’s breathing was long and deep, his hands hot and strong holding her tightly against him as he quickened and moaned in the dark.
She held him tightly, still rocking and gliding her hips until she shuddered, and exhaled.
For a moment she sat very still, letting the night breeze caress her body and carry away the heat in her skin. Then she lay down beside him, wrapped herself up in his long arms, and closed her eyes.
“Asha?”
“Mm?”
“Would you stay here with me, if I asked you to?”
She listened to the rhythm of her heart beating and his heart beating, and to the world outside laughing and sighing and gathering in to rest for the night. “You barely know me.”
“I know. But life is so short, and joy can be so rare.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about staying anywhere in a long time.” She sighed in the dark. “I take what little joy I can find, but I’m not looking for more than that. Not now, anyway.”
“Oh. I see.” There was a hint of disappointment in his voice, but his warm arm didn’t move from her belly, and she put her hand on his to keep it there.
Asha had almost fallen asleep when she heard a soft trilling in the distance like tiny bells ringing in a faraway shrine. But she could only hear it in her right ear.
6
Asha opened her eyes and saw the soft dawn’s light on the wall. Rama was gone and his boat was gone with its line stretched out far across the lake. She sat up and saw Priya sitting just outside the door.
The nun stroked her mongoose’s head and smiled. “That was fast.”
Asha shrugged and stretched. “Life is short, or so I’m told.”
“For some more than others.” Priya offered her a cool cup of tea. “Will we be staying a while longer to study the local wildlife, or will we be moving on to a certain nearby temple?”
“Not yet,” Asha said. “There’s something I need to do, something I need to check. I’m going out on the lake again.”
“I thought you already looked. Or listened, as it were.”
“Maybe not enough.” Asha untied the second boat and paddled out across the sparkling waters of the lake. She leaned down to place her right ear near the water and closed her eyes, but this time she went on paddling, driving the boat back and forth across the lake again and again all day long. But the lake was massive. It took nearly an hour to cross once and return, and she knew that anything swimming in the deep might easily slip past her on her long trips here and there and back again.
Still she paddled and listened. She heard the fish and the grass and the birds and the trees, and as the hours passed she began to wonder if she had really heard the soft bells the night before. It was early in the afternoon when Asha put the paddle down and she lay back in the narrow boat to rest her arms. Cradled in the rocking boat and warmed by the sun, she was slipping into a welcome nap when she heard the bells again. And again, she only heard them in her right ear.
Asha leaned over the side of the boat, staring down into the water at the rocks and sand, at the grass and weeds.
A thin black shape darted past and the bells tinkled louder. Asha grabbed her paddle and propelled the boat forward with a few rough strokes and then leaned down with her nose just touching the water, watching and waiting. The muddy bottom of the lake was very close here with the reeds and trees standing at the water’s edge only a stone’s throw away.
The black shape darted past again and Asha struck. Her hand stabbed down into the lake, her fingers closed, and she drew the snake up out of the water. She held it gently, pressing only as much as she needed to keep it from escaping. With one hand around its throat behind the jaw and the other hand around the end of its tail, she drew it out straight in the glaring sunlight.