It must have been the sight of the bleeding lip that made Badal sit closer now than he had dared before. Raghu said nothing, he held out his packet of gutka to Badal. They looked at the water. They never spoke much, but Badal had only to be within sight of Raghu to feel a deep contentment, as if he needed nothing more in the world than silence and the knowledge that Raghu was in it somewhere. He sensed that Raghu felt this too. Once or twice he had hidden himself behind the hull of a boat and watched Raghu look up each time a man approached the tea stall and droop with disappointment when it was just another customer. He was not a hundred per cent sure, but then what was a hundred per cent sure?
Badal’s days now existed for the mornings and afternoons when he could escape clients, family, customers, priests, God himself — and run to the beach to sit holding a clay cup of Raghu’s tea — just sit with his voice within hearing, his body within touching distance. Raghu brushed past him — on purpose, he was certain of it — as he went about serving customers, rinsing cups, doing whatever he did at Johnny Toppo’s stall.
Ten days ago when he was at the tea stall and Johnny Toppo not there, Raghu had asked him out of the blue, “Have you ever been beaten? Thrashed?”
Raghu had not called him “Babu”, as Johnny Toppo did. Badal paused over the thought. Raghu did not call him anything. He used neither his name, nor the deferential Babu, or Sahib, or Dada. It felt loaded with meaning, how he took care not to distance him that way.
“Many times,” Badal had said. “After my father died, my uncle used to clobber me till my teeth ran around in my mouth like dice. With anything at hand — his shoes, his belt, even with the stick the bastard killed rats with.” He smiled as he answered Raghu’s question. He had suffered, he wanted Raghu to know, but he was nonchalant about it.
Raghu pulled up his shirt to show Badal a welt on his back. “Yesterday.” He had said nothing more.
The rage and tenderness that had flooded Badal that afternoon came back again. He wanted to ask Raghu about the wound — had it healed? Was Johnny Toppo the bullying swine who had done it? The boy was gazing at the sea, a finger in one of his ears, then scratching something on his leg, his jaws working the tobacco in his mouth. The lusciousness of that itch, that hand moving from ear to leg — a boyish, scarred, beautiful hand, the wrist bone jutting out in a knob. What beauty — how could such beauty possibly exist?
A red bead of betel-juiced spittle trickled from the corner of Raghu’s mouth and he sucked it back in. The sun turned the sea into jagged blades of light. A faraway white-topped breaker gathered speed as it began its run for the beach. On the horizon was a grey, indefinable shape that might be a building or a small island. Was it an island Badal had failed to notice all his life? Arrow-like boats streaked past, criss-crossing. A group of brown dogs chased each other up and down the sand and into the water. Near Raghu’s feet a coin-sized crab dug itself out of the sand and skittered away. Badal looked up from the crab, saw that his island had moved west. And then after a while, further west. Everything stood still and speeded up all at once. The faraway breaker came closer, it grew taller, it roared and bellowed, it flung itself at the sand, and without warning or preparation Badal found his lips on Raghu’s, his hand roaming his smooth bare chest, following the line of the fine hair down into his shorts. The blood on Raghu’s lips tasted of salt and sea and rust. He sucked the grainy tobacco off Raghu’s tongue and felt it going straight to his head, making him dizzy, sending his hand deeper down. And then the boy pushed him off and ran away along the beach, leaving him empty and short of breath.
He clambered up. Everything was in disarray. He stumbled, hunting for his slippers. They had travelled over the sand in two different directions. His legs had turned into stilts, his feet would not fit into his slippers, as if he had grown extra toes. By the time he managed to put them on, Raghu was nowhere to be seen.
He would not try to find him. Not right then. It was a kind of slow magic that had overtaken the day. The sky blazed. The sea shone. The waves came at a stately pace as if they had all eternity. There was time. He searched his pocket for his comb. The feel of its hard plastic teeth on his scalp made his eyelids droop with pleasure. There would always be time. He would give Raghu his gift the next time they met. They would talk, he would buy him a bottle of cola and Raghu would tell him everything. Who had beaten him, where his parents were, where he had come from, where he was headed. Badal knew the answer to that one. Raghu’s wanderings were over, his lonely days were over. He would not go away. And if he did, Badal would be with him.
He covered his mouth and nose with his palm to breathe in the scent of Raghu. He touched his own lips to see how they had felt to kiss.
He wandered the beach that afternoon for longer than he knew, half expecting Raghu to return, running his tongue’s tip over his lips at times. Where had he run off to? How had the boy vanished from a beach so empty? It was almost four by the time he snapped out of his stupor and remembered that he needed to get home, wash himself, change his clothes — all that to be done before he went to meet the Calcutta group at their hotel. Day after day, evening after evening, it was the same: gaggles of squawking hens in starched saris rustling through the temple in his wake without a notion of what it meant to be wasted, scorched, flayed, devoured with the passion of pure devotion. Was his whole life to pass in this way?
He hurried to his scooter. It was not far. He had not thought so — it now seemed further.
When he reached his parking place he saw that a tiny puddle of oil on the road was all that remained of his scooter.
He felt in his pocket for the key. There was his almost empty wallet, his green comb, a soiled handkerchief with which he mopped his sweating neck and face, but no key. He began to wonder if he had come on his scooter. Calm down, he said, starting an urgent conversation with himself: You didn’t walk, did you? No, of course not. You came on the scooter. You locked it and put the key in your pocket. Maybe the other pocket — but no, the key wasn’t there either.
He began to walk, trying not to run. He must have left the key hanging in the ignition, an invitation to any passing thief. He walked as if he had to reach somewhere, although he had no idea where he was going. Go home and tell his uncle the scooter had been stolen? What then? Scooter-less, how would he get to places in time for all his waiting clients? He was all of a sudden back where he had been after his father’s death: a blubbering boy cringing from his uncle’s blows. Grow up, Badal said to himself, what can he do to you? You’re stronger than he is now. He needs you more than you need him.
He walked fast. He was alone on the road. He had not imagined a daytime street could be as eerie as this. It looked different. There was a powerful smell of rotting fish he had never noticed before. The doors of the houses on either side of the street were closed against the afternoon sun. The heat had made a shimmering ribbon of the road, the sky pressed low upon it, and far down its length squares of water hardened into tarmac just when they came close enough to wet his feet. There were no shops. There were no people: not one person, not a dog or cat or cow — what street was he on? When he heard a scraping behind him and sensed rough feet dragging on the dirt, his heart thudded. Only an empty cardboard carton pummelled into imbecility by the late afternoon breeze. He walked on, faster. The sliding door of a van roared on its castors inches from him. The van’s windows were covered with black sun-film and gave nothing away. But he could see in them the dark windblown reflection of his own high cheekbones and jutting chin. His hands went up to his chin, then his hair, and he smoothed it down before he remembered there must be someone inside the van looking at him — the person who had just slammed the door shut.