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‘Lucy’s House?’ Piya looked up in surprise. ‘As in the name “Lucy”?’
‘Yes.’ A gleam came into his eyes and he said, ‘You should come and visit the place. I’ll tell you the story of how it got its name.’
‘Is that an invitation?’ Piya said, smiling.
‘Absolutely,’ Kanai responded. ‘Come. I’m inviting you. Your company will lighten the burden of my exile.’
Piya laughed. She had thought at first that Kanai was much too full of himself, but now she was inclined to be slightly more generous in her assessment: she had caught sight of a glimmer of irony somewhere that made his self-centredness appear a little more interesting than she had first imagined.
‘But how would I find you?’ she said. ‘Where would I look?’
‘Just make your way to the hospital in Lusibari,’ said Kanai, ‘and ask for “Mashima”. They’ll take you to my aunt and she’ll know where I am.’
‘Mashima?’ said Piya. ‘But I have a “Mashima” too – doesn’t it just mean “aunt”? There must be more than one aunt there: yours can’t be the only one?’
‘If you go to the hospital and ask for “Mashima”,’ said Kanai, ‘everyone will know who you mean. My aunt founded it, you see, and she heads the organization that runs it – the Badabon Trust. She’s a real personage on the island – everyone calls her “Mashima”, even though her real name is Nilima Bose. They were quite a pair, she and her husband. People always called him “Saar” just as they call her “Mashima”.’
‘Saar? And what does that mean?’
Kanai laughed. ‘It’s just a Bangla way of saying “Sir”. He was the headmaster of the local school, you see, so all his pupils called him “Sir”. In time people forgot he had a real name – Nirmal Bose.’
‘I notice you’re speaking of him in the past tense.’
‘Yes. He’s been dead a long time.’ No sooner had he spoken than Kanai pulled a face, as if to disclaim what he had just said. ‘But to tell you the truth, right now it doesn’t feel like he’s been gone a long time.’
‘How come?’
‘Because he’s risen from his ashes to summon me,’ Kanai said with a smile. ‘You see, he’d left some papers for me at the time of his death. They’d been lost all these years, but now they’ve turned up again. That’s why I’m on my way there: my aunt wanted me to come and look at them.’
Hearing a note of muted complaint in his voice, Piya said, ‘It sounds as if you weren’t too eager to go.’
‘No, I wasn’t, to be honest,’ he said. ‘I have a lot to attend to and this was a particularly busy time. It wasn’t easy to take a week off.’
‘Is this the first time you’ve come, then?’ said Piya.
‘No, it’s not,’ said Kanai. ‘I was sent down here once, years ago.’
‘Sent down? Why?’
‘It’s a story that involves the word “rusticate”,’ said Kanai with a smile. ‘Are you familiar with it?’
‘No. Can’t say I am.’
‘It was a punishment, dealt out to schoolboys who misbehaved,’ said Kanai. ‘They were sent off to suffer the company of rustics. As a boy I was of the opinion that I knew more about most things than my teachers did. There was an occasion once when I publicly humiliated a teacher who had the unfortunate habit of pronouncing the word “lion” as if it overlapped, in meaning as in rhyme, with the word “groin”. I was about ten at the time. One thing led to another and my tutors persuaded my parents I had to be rusticated. I was sent off to stay with my aunt and uncle, in Lusibari.’ He laughed at the memory. ‘That was a long time ago, in 1970.’
The train had begun to slow down now and Kanai was interrupted by a sudden blast from the engine’s horn. Glancing through the window, he spotted a yellow signboard that said, ‘Canning’.
‘We’re there,’ he said. He seemed suddenly regretful that their conversation had come to an end. Tearing off a piece of paper, he wrote a few words on it and pressed it into her hands. ‘Here – this’ll help you remember where to find me.’
The train had ground to a halt now and people were surging towards the doors of the compartment. Rising to her feet, Piya slung her backpacks over her shoulders. ‘Maybe we’ll meet again.’
‘I hope so.’ He raised a hand to wave. ‘Be careful with the man-eaters.’
‘Take care yourself. Goodbye.’
Kanai watched Piya’s back with interest as she disappeared into the crowd on the platform. Although unmarried, he was, as he liked to say, rarely single: over the last many years, several women had drifted in and out of his life. More often than not, these relationships ended – or persisted – in a spirit of affectionate cordiality. The most recent however, which was with a well-known young Odissi dancer, had not ended well. Two weeks earlier she had stormed out of his house and forbidden him ever to call her again. He hadn’t taken this seriously until he tried to call her cellphone only to find that she had given it to her driver. This had come as a considerable blow to his pride and in the aftermath he had tried to plunge himself into a short affair of the kind that might serve to suture the wound suffered by his vanity: that is to say, he had sought, without success, a liaison where it would fall to him to decide both the beginning and the end. In coming to Lusibari, he had resigned himself to the idea of briefly interrupting this quest – but if life had taught him any lesson, it was that opportunities often arose unexpectedly. Piya appeared to be a case in point. It was not often such a perfectly crafted situation presented itself: with his departure foreordained in nine days, his escape was assured. If Piya decided to avail herself of his invitation, then there was no reason not to savour whatever pleasures might be on offer.
Kanai waited till the crowd had thinned before stepping down to the platform. Then, with his suitcase resting between his feet, he paused to cast an unhurried glance around the station.
It was late November and the weather was crisp and cool, with a gentle breeze and honeyed sunlight. Yet the station had a look of bleak, downtrodden fatigue, like one of those grassless city parks, where the soil has been worn thin by the pressure of hurrying feet: the tracks glistened under slicks of shit, urine and refuse, and the platform looked as if it had been pounded into the earth by the sheer weight of the traffic that passed over it.
More than thirty years had gone by since he first set foot in this station but he still remembered vividly the astonishment with which he had said to his uncle and aunt, ‘But there are so many people here!’
Nirmal had smiled in surprise. ‘What did you expect? A jungle?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s only in films, you know, that jungles are empty of people. Here there are places that are as crowded as any Kolkata bazaar. And on some of the rivers you’ll find more boats than there are trucks on the Grand Trunk Road.’
Of all his faculties, Kanai most prided himself on his memory. When people praised him for his linguistic abilities, his response was usually to say that a good ear and a good memory were all it took to learn a language, and he was fortunate to possess both. It gave him a pleasurable feeling of satisfaction now to think that he could still recall the precise tone and timbre of Nirmal’s voice, despite the decades that had passed since he had last heard it.
Kanai smiled to