Helium by Jaspreet Singh Page B

twenty-five.’ I stayed silent. She took it as an invisible blow and started looking for the lost object and (because she was the luckiest woman on Earth) a few minutes later found it under the bench next to my luggage.
    In her hand there was an ancient-looking book, which looked more conspicuous than my luggage; she placed it between us while putting on her earring. A red binding. Mildly damaged leather spine. Kipling. ‘What I love are his stories for children,’ said Nelly. ‘My father was never able to read this man without getting agitated. He took it out on a sheet of paper. Once he drew Kipling as a monkey. Darwin’s theory was correct after all, he said. On that sheet of paper Kipling got a pinky-blue face, and Kipling ate the sun thinking it was an orange! And I don’t think the intention was to make me laugh.’
    Kipling, a hirsute monkey, an irascible old man, a bandar with a short temper. Kim is the only book of his I really like.
    ‘Stay at my place,’ she suggested. ‘It is small and I am busy with the retirement function, but you are most welcome to spend a few days. As long as you are not pesky.’
    ‘Pesky’ – I had not heard the word for a while.
    Her generous offer was hard to refuse. She stood up. The air was crisp and clear and cold. I walked a little behind her, deodars on one side and humans on the other, and monkeys swung on the canopy of branches above us. During the walk a fleeting sense of relief overwhelmed me, but I was careful not to ask a wrong question or stray anywhere near that violent strand of memory. Once or twice she stopped in mid-sentence as if processing something, processing a thought, a pain that could not be articulated.
     

     
    She lived on the slopes of Prospect Hill. A one-bedroom unit in an old run-down house. Approximately one hundred steps higher than the legendary ‘starry cottage’ and its fossilised red-brick chimney. No servants, not even an anonymous maid. She led me in. Bare walls. Two small windows, but not very bright. I tried to recognise objects. Her clothes were drying on the dining chairs. For some strange reason I had expected the place to be filled with smoke, but it seemed no one had lit a cigarette in those rooms for nearly two decades.
    I sat on the yellow sofa and closed my eyes for a long time. There I heard the squeaking of brakes; a clogged mountain road whose existence I didn’t know yet. When I woke up I noticed she had lit up two (half melted) candles. The clothes were no longer on the chairs.
    ‘Triangulars, as usual?’
    She remembered my weakness for caraway-seed parathas (shaped liked triangles) with anda bhurji and pickle. More than the ajwain, I savoured the smell of her freshly made parathas and ate more than necessary. She made tea using dried milk powder, her usual way, with a hint of medicinal banaksha, dried violet pansies. Nelly’s new kitchen had Spanish tiles, patterns that reminded me of aperiodic quasicrystals, lacking translational symmetry. Something was not quite right, and obviously this didn’t come as a shock. She kept quiet while cooking, and sat as far apart as possible and did not eat. She drank tea, but all I heard was mild slurping. Strange resonance. Between us a triple wall of silence. Dull unangry silence. How does one unlive what has been lived? The only thing that came out of her emerged with enormous effort, as if she was working against will. ‘Twenty-five years.’ Later she showed me the way to the bathroom and asked me to sleep in the bedroom.
    ‘And where will you?’
    ‘On the sofa.’
    ‘No, please.’
    She insisted. ‘In the morning you will get disturbed. I wake up early. And I will need the living room then.’
    ‘The sofa is all right,’ I said.
    She took a deep breath. ‘I knew you would say that.’
    Her voice came from some other world. She shut the bedroom door, and opened it again.
    ‘If you need anything else, don’t hesitate. Sorry there is no TV.’
    I couldn’t say a