The weight of this disappointment makes the water less manageable, more lung-penetrating. With trepidation, I float and paddle my way through the remainder of the hour, jerking my head out every two seconds and breathing deeply, to continually shore up a supply of precious, precious air without, at the same time, seeming too anxious and losing my dignity.
I don’t attend the remaining classes. After I’ve missed three, Ron the instructor telephones. I tell him I’ve had the flu and am still feeling poorly, but I’ll try to be there the following week.
He does not call again. My Surf King is relegated to an unused drawer. Total losses: one fantasy plus thirty dollars. And no watery rebirth. The swimming pool, like Chaupatty beach, has produced a stillbirth. But there is a difference. Water means regeneration only if it is pure and cleansing. Chaupatty was filthy, the pool was not. Failure to swim through filth must mean something other than failure of rebirth — failure of symbolic death? Does that equal success of symbolic life? death of a symbolic failure? death of a symbol? What is the equation?
The postman did not bring a letter but a parcel, he was smiling because he knew that every time something came from Canada his baksheesh was guaranteed, and this time because it was a parcel Mother gave him a whole rupee, she was quite excited, there were so many stickers on it besides the stamps, one for Small Parcel, another Printed Papers, a red sticker saying Insured; she showed it to Father, and opened it, then put both hands on her cheeks, not able to speak because the surprise and happiness was so great, tears came to her eyes and she could not stop smiling, till Father became impatient to know and finally got up and came to the table.
When he saw it he was surprised and happy too, he began to grin, then hugged Mother saying our son is a writer, and we didn’t even know it, he never told us a thing, here we are thinking he is still clerking away at the insurance company, and he has written a book of stories, all these years in school and college he kept his talent hidden, making us think he was just like one of the boys in the Baag, shouting and playing the fool in the compound, and now what a surprise; then Father opened the book and began reading it, heading back to the easy chair, and Mother so excited, still holding his arm, walked with him, saying it was not fair him reading it first, she wanted to read it too, and they agreed that he would read the first story, then give it to her so she could also read it, and they would take turns in that manner.
Mother removed the staples from the padded envelope in which he had mailed the book, and threw them away, then straightened the folded edges of the envelope and put it away safely with the other envelopes and letters she had collected since he left.
The leaves are beginning to fall. The only ones I can identify are maple. The days are dwindling like the leaves. I’ve started a habit of taking long walks every evening. The old man is in the lobby when I leave, he waves as I go by. By the time I’m back, the lobby is usually empty.
Today I was woken up by a grating sound outside that made my flesh crawl. I went to the window and saw Berthe raking the leaves in the parking lot. Not in the expanse of patchy lawn on the periphery, but in the parking lot proper. She was raking the black tarred surface. I went back to bed and dragged a pillow over my head, not releasing it till noon.
When I return from my walk in the evening, PW, summoned by the elevator’s gutang-khutang, says, “Berthe filled six big black garbage bags with leaves today.”
“Six bags!” I say. “Wow!”
Since the weather turned cold, Berthe’s son does not tinker with his van on Sundays under my window. I’m able to sleep late.
Around eleven, there’s a commotion outside. I reach out and switch on the clock radio. It’s a sunny day, the window curtains are bright. I get up, curious, and see a black Olds Ninety-Eight in the parking lot, by the entrance to the building. The old man is in his wheelchair, bundled up, with a scarf wound several times round his neck as though to immobilize it, like a surgical collar. His daughter and another man, the car-owner, are helping him from the wheelchair into the front seat, encouraging him with words like: that’s it, easy does it, attaboy. From the open door of the lobby, Berthe is shouting encouragement too, but hers is confined to one word: yah, repeated at different levels of pitch and volume, with variations on vowel-length. The stranger could be the old man’s son, he has the same jet black hair and piercing eyes.
Maybe the old man is not well, it’s an emergency. But I quickly scrap that thought — this isn’t Bombay, an ambulance would have arrived. They’re probably taking him out for a ride. If he is his son, where has he been all this time, I wonder.
The old man finally settles in the front seat, the wheelchair goes in the trunk, and they’re off. The one I think is the son looks up and catches me at the window before I can move away, so I wave, and he waves back.
In the afternoon I take down a load of clothes to the laundry room. Both machines have completed their cycles, the clothes inside are waiting to be transferred to dryers. Should I remove them and place them on top of a dryer, or wait? I decide to wait. After a few minutes, two women arrive, they are in bathrobes, and smoking. It takes me a while to realize that these are the two disappointments who were sunbathing in bikinis last summer.
“You didn’t have to wait, you could have removed the clothes and carried on, dear,” says one. She has a Scottish accent. It’s one of the few I’ve learned to identify. Like maple leaves.
“Well,” I say, “some people might not like strangers touching their clothes.”
“You’re not a stranger, dear,” she says, “you live in this building, we’ve seen you before.”
“Besides, your hands are clean,” the other one pipes in. “You can touch my things any time you like.”
Horny old cow. I wonder what they’ve got on under their bathrobes. Not much, I find, as they bend over to place their clothes in the dryers.
“See you soon,” they say, and exit, leaving me behind in an erotic wake of smoke and perfume and deep images of cleavages. I start the washers and depart, and when I come back later, the dryers are empty.
PW tells me, “The old man’s son took him out for a drive today. He has a big beautiful black car.”
I see my chance, and shoot back: “Olds Ninety-Eight.”
“What?”
“The car,” I explain, “it’s an Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight.”
She does not like this at all, my giving her information. She is visibly nettled, and retreats with a sour face.
Mother and Father read the first five stories, and she was very sad after reading some of them, she said he must he so unhappy there, all his stories are about Bombay, he remembers every little thing about his childhood, he is thinking about it all the time even though he is ten thousand miles away, my poor son, I think he misses his home and us and everything he left behind, because if he likes it over there why would he not write stories about that, there must be so many new ideas that his new life could give him.
But Father did not agree with this, he said it did not mean that he was unhappy, all writers worked in the same way, they used their memories and experiences and made stories out of them, changing some things, adding some, imagining some, all writers were very good at remembering details of their lives.
Mother said, how can you be sure that he is remembering because he is a writer, or whether he started to write because he is unhappy and thinks of his past, and wants to save it all by making stories of it; and Father said that is not a sensible question, anyway, it is now my turn to read the next story.