Seahorse. Janice Pariat

see the silvery gleam of pine trees, and far away, the uneven shape of hills, the brittle disc of the moon, precariously balanced. From where I am, the town lights are too distant to be visible. Night after night sleep would not come. For sleep, he said, was pressed into small white pellets, chipped away from the moon. Arranged neatly, like his night clothes, in a row, washed with clear, spring water, in which it dissolved like star dust, and swam to the tips of his fingers, his toes, somewhere to the crown of his head.

      I wondered when he started gathering sleep—the pellets dispensed after dinner. The lady in white was meant to watch him swallow, but she was careless, a little impatient. She had many sleeps to give away. He stored them in a pen he’d hollowed, throwing away the cartridge. He’d have collected enough when it was full. Enough sleep, so he wouldn’t need to wake up to the brightness of this room. This square cell. The world that was too green and hurt his eyes. So he wouldn’t need to see the way they looked at him. Wracked with this sickness. Under his breath, he murmured lines from memory. He’d read somewhere that when an earthquake buried an entire city, people underground kept themselves alive reciting poetry.

       But now all these heavy books are no use to me any more, for

       Where I go, words carry no weight: it is best

       Then, I surrender their fascinating counsel

       to the silent dissolution of the sea

       which misuses nothing because it values nothing.

      He too would do the same. Recite from memory, each syllable marking the passage of time.

      But for how long? And why?

      How slowly time passed in the dark.

      See, barely a minute.

      Here we are, still waiting.

      For something to drop.

      In his hand, I imagined, sleep lay in neat clusters, in the centre of his palm. He unscrewed the pen cap and filled it up, a boy collecting treasure.

      Did he remember dark skin, how it quivered below him? Hair a thousand shades of dusk and light. It was a thing of shame.

      Out the window, the moon would be wakeful. The trees hushed in the breeze. How he longed to be beneath them, to curl his hand into the earth. He said he often thought of all the times we’d done that, him and I, his young friend. Going to the forest behind his house, smoking cheap cigarettes, lost among the trees.

      Once, in the deepest part of night, when darkness had unfurled to its full, long length, he stepped out of bed, and moved to his desk. A small table by the window. In the light of a milky pre-dawn, mingled with the last sprinklings of the stars, he drew faces. His mother, when she was most vulnerable, when she checked on him at night in his room and thought he was asleep and couldn’t see her face as she looked into his and tried to fathom what she had brought into the world. His father, always twisted with rage. Such a deep and secret anger. The stranger. But this one he crumpled. Then he smoothed it out and filed it away.

      Me. His friend, with a face that looked to him with love.

      He sketched each portrait with care and precision. Emptying his memory of them on to paper. Marking his name at the edge of the page, over and again—Lenny, Lenny, Lenny. He would send them away, his memories. So he was lighter. So sleep would take him easily and lay him down with her in a dark and hollow place where he could rest for all time.

      Of all the parties I attended in my years in university, there’s one I remember in particular.

      For many reasons.

      The venue was in Hudson Lines, a neighborhood of tottering multi-story houses, packed tightly together, close to a wide, sluggish canal choked with garbage. On still evenings, the air was ripe with the sickly-sweet stench of decay. No one seemed to mind. The kids playing badminton on the sidewalk, the aunties wedged around the vegetable cart, prodding papayas-cucumbers-tomatoes, the pot-bellied men lounging in their vests and lungis, demurely dressed young ladies walking home from tuition. Living with the perpetual smell of decay. Perhaps it is possible to get used to anything.

      Kalsang and I rattled along the potholed road on a cycle rickshaw.

      “Bas,” he said. We stopped in front of a biscuit-colored house, with a narrow unlit staircase. We climbed, stumbling over sleeping dogs and garbage bags, to a flat on the fifth floor. From behind the door came the dull leaden thud of music. Even now, before I enter a party, when I’m standing outside the entrance, listening, I wish, for an instant, I hadn’t come. I feel I’m intruding on some secret ritualistic practice of a tribe I don’t belong to.

      We stepped into a large terrace space, dotted with people sitting in dark corners, standing with glasses against the railings. It seemed everyone, apart from my roommate, was a stranger. People called out to Kalsang, saying hello, asking him if he had any “maal”.

      A stereo in the corner spilled tunes into the warm night air—But it’s just a sweet, sweet fantasy, baby… several voices sang out, rising from a mesh of bodies swaying to the beat… When I close my eyes you come and you take me.

      I stood by the bar—a rickety wooden table strewn with glasses and bottle tops—and watched the others dancing. There’s no beginning and there is no end.

      “I’ll be right back,” said Kalsang, and disappeared for the rest of the evening.

      I poured myself a drink. Cold, frothy beer. Behind me, the lights of the city flickered between tree tops and wires. I wondered whether I could see the mutiny memorial from here. Rising above the treetops. Far below, bathed in orange-yellow lamplight, the road was beginning to empty. A few couples marched by, intent on an evening walk. A man selling chuskies did brisk business. Stray dogs circled each other in suspicion.

      “Hey, do you have a light?”

      “What?”

      “Got a light?” She swiped her forehead with the back of her hand; her bracelets tinkled.

      “No, sorry.” But I wished I did.

      Someone close by threw her a lighter.

      “Thanks,” she yeled. I could smell her perfume mingling sweetly with sweat.

      “You were very good…” I blurted.

      “I was?” She exhaled, and her face was lost behind plumes of smoke.

      “In Midsummer Night’s Dream…”

      I expected her to be pleased, but she rolled her eyes. “I’m beginning to think that’s the only theatrical role I’ll ever be remembered for…”

      Of course, I should have known. What a ridiculous thing to say! Haltingly, I apologised.

      She waved it away, with a cool, careless hand.

      What should I do next? Perhaps offer her a drink…

      Our conversation, aborted as it already was, swiftly came to an end as Lari danced up to her, skirt swirling. She pulled Titania, laughing, back to the dance floor.

      It was almost a relief. I wondered whether they’d ever invited the art historian to a house party. They probably didn’t have the nerve. And this wasn’t the kind of place where we were likely to find Adheer either. I poured myself another beer; it would be, I was certain, a long evening.

      After several pints, I stumbled indoors, looking for the bathroom. The flat was mostly empty, probably because it was uncomfortably hot inside, and ceiling fans swirled around warm, sticky air thick as soup. I walked through, what was presumably, the drawing room, strewn with thin, folded mattresses, a battered TV set, dirty cushions, slippers, and tottering bamboo shelves holding brimming ashtrays and old magazines.

      Eventually, I found a bedroom. The mattress placed on a rickety foldout bed, with