'That's right,' said Murugan. 'Fact is we're dealing with a crowd for whom silence is a religion. We don't even know what we don't know. We don't know who's in this and who's not; we don't know how much of the spin they've got under control. We don't know how many of the threads they want us to pull together and how many they want to keep hanging for whoever comes next.'
'You mean,' said Urrnila, 'they may keep the rest for someone else to put together – some time in the future?'
'I'd guess that's the case, yes,' Murugan said. 'These guys aren't going anywhere in a hurry. They've been planting carefully selected clues for the last century or so, and every once in a while, for reasons of their own, they choose to draw them to the attention of a couple of chosen people. Just because you and I happen to have been included doesn't mean they've closed the list.'
'So where is it all going?' said Urmila. 'Where will it end?'
'It won't,' said Murugan. 'Let me tell you how this works: they have to be very careful to pick the right time to turn the last page. See, for them, writing "The End" to this story is the way they hope to trigger the quantum leap into the next. But for that to happen two things have to coincide precisely: the end credits have to come up at exactly the same instant that the story is revealed to whoever they're keeping it for.'
'So what are they waiting for?' said Urmila.
'Could be any number of things,' said Murugan. 'Maybe they're waiting to find some previously unreported strain of malaria. Or maybe they're waiting on a technology that'll make it easier and quicker to deliver their story to whoever they're keeping it for: a technology that'll be a lot more efficient in mounting it than anything that's available right now. Or maybe they're waiting for both. Who's to say?'
He was cut short by a roll of thunder. Looking quickly around, Urmila noticed a sheltered spot under the overhanging roof of the derelict outhouse. She squeezed under it and seated herself on the ground, pulling her knees up against her chin. Murugan followed, crawling in beside her and creakily crossing his legs. Within minutes the rain was pouring down before them, off the edge of the overhang.
Urmila stared into the glassy wall of rain, hugging her knees. It was all so unclear now: the call from the Club, the fish-seller in the morning, Romen Haldar, Sonali Das. It was so hard now to know what was a part of it and what wasn't: the kitchen window which looked out over the Haldar house, was that a part of it? Her parents? Her brothers? Her sister-in-law? (No, not her.) Was it a part of it that she was dressed in this horrible, dirty sari, spattered with turmeric stains and fish-blood; was it a part of it that she'd knocked on the Gangopadhyayas' door and woken them up this morning? And so strange to think that all this had happened when the only thing she was thinking of was how she had to cook shorshe-ilish as soon as possible, so she would be able to catch the BBD Bagh minibus and get to the Great Eastern Hotel on time for the Minister of Communications' press conference. Now, thinking of it, it seemed so long ago; she could hardly remember why the Minister of Communications and his press conference were so important, why she had been in such a hurry to get there, why the news editor had been so insistent: what would the Minister have said anyway? That communications were good? That ministering to them was his life's mission? How odd it would have been to sit at a keyboard, trying to think of a good sentence to lead with: Today the Minister of Communications announced at a press conference that he believed strongly that communications were the key to India 's future. In a way it seemed less odd to be here, almost, sitting on this leaky veranda, with the smell of shit everywhere, than to listen to some fat old man from Delhi talking into a screeching microphone; it was easier to understand why she was here, crouching in this damp corner of this decrepit outhouse than it was to know why she had been trying to cook a fish so that her brother could get into a First Division football team; it made more sense to be listening to Murugan going on about Ronald Ross than it did to be worrying about whether she would be able to fight her way into a BBD Bagh minibus so she wouldn't be late for a press conference at the Great Eastern. This even though she had never heard of Ronald Ross before, never met this man before, this man sitting pushed up against her now, his leg against hers. He wasn't like anyone she knew, but there was nothing wrong with that, of course, it was nice to meet someone new, and his beard was nice too, sort of like a stiff brush. What would it be like to touch it – his beard – she began to wonder, and then to her surprise, she realized, why yes, she was touching him, but not his beard – his thigh was against hers, pleasantly warm, not clammy. Out on the road the buses were still roaring by, in the rain; she could see people huddling behind the misted windows, hurrying along down the pavement, under their umbrellas, rushing into the Nandan cinema complex and the Academy of Fine Arts. How odd to think that all that separated them from her and Murugan was a paltry little wall, just one little wall, yet it did the job just as well as if it was the Great Wall of China, for they couldn't see her or him. In a way it was like being in a test tube: that was probably what it felt like, to know that something was going to happen on this side of the glass but not on the other; that there was a wall between you and everyone else, all those people in the buses and the minibuses, hurrying to work from Kankurgachi and Beleghata and Bansdroni, after their morning rice, with the smell of dhal still buried deep in their fingernails; they were so far away, even though they were just on the other side of the wall; they wouldn't know even if he had his shirt off and she was running her nails down his chest to his belly; they wouldn't know if he had his trousers down, around his ankles, and her hand was in his lap instead of her own, her forefinger picking through the curly hair of his groin; they wouldn't know if her blouse was off and his arm was around her shoulder, his hand cupping her breast and his thumbnail rubbing on her nipple; they wouldn't know, they wouldn't have the faintest idea, rushing past on their way to work, and actually, it wasn't so hard to imagine, his arm around her shoulder and his hand upon her breast. It would be like an experiment too; that was exactly what it would be like, the feel of him between her legs, his lips on her neck the sense of something animated deep inside her. What other word could there be for it, but 'experiment', something new, something which she knew was going to change her even if it lasted only a few minutes, or even seconds; something that was happening in ways that were entirely beyond her own imagining, and which she was powerless to affect in anyway.
Chapter 33
AFTER MAKING SURE his message to Tara had gone through, Antar went to the kitchen to fetch himself a glass of water. Tara 's apartment was still dark but her white lace curtains were billowing spectrally in the gentle evening breeze. She had left her windows open again, an inch or two at the bottom. Antar bit his lip: it was odd that he hadn't noticed before. He always worried when she did that. He still hadn't grown used to the idea that there was someone else living here now; opening her own windows, closing her own doors.
Another time when she left the windows open, a storm hit unexpectedly, in the afternoon. Ava warned Antar early, interrupting one of her interminable inventories to let him know that bad weather was on the way.
He went around his apartment, shutting the windows. It was when he got to the kitchen that he noticed Tara had left her windows open – not all the way, but a good four or five inches. The white lace curtains in her living room were flapping in the gale.
He checked again half an hour later, and the curtains were gone: the wind had torn them off the rails. The rain was pouring in, driven by the wind. Over the next couple of hours Antar found himself drawn to the kitchen window again and again. He felt somehow responsible; as though he was to blame.