Seahorse. Janice Pariat

      Contents

      Chapter I

      Chapter II

      Chapter III

      Epilogue

      About the Author

       I

      AND SO I BEGIN WITH NICHOLAS’ DISAPPEARANCE.

      The moment I discovered he was missing. I remember like it was yesterday.

      Although perhaps that isn’t an accurate way to phrase it.

      Yesterday may be further away than two years past, than seven, or ten. I can’t recall my supper a week ago, but that morning remains palpable in my memory—like the touch of sudden heat or tremendous cold. It’s a wine I’ve sipped, and sipped so long it colors everything else on my palate.

      It was July, but early enough in the day for the air to still be mild, sunshine glimmering white around the edges, warning of the warmth to come. I’d arrived at the New Delhi railway station at dawn; even at that time clamorously crowded, with hustling coolies and families recumbent on the platforms. I hurried back to my room in the north of the city in a taxi, the roads clear and quiet. Through Old Darya Ganj, along the wide length of Raj Ghat, the pale fury of the Red Fort. Everything, I felt, was touched by unimaginable beauty. After only a quick shower to wash away the grime of a two-day train journey, I headed to the bungalow on Rajpur Road. I was in a hurry, I took the shortcut through the forest. When I reached, the security guard wasn’t at the gate, and the wicker chairs and table on the lawn nowhere in sight. Around the fringes of the garden, flower beds glowed with early-blooming African daisies and hardy summer zinnias.

      I remember, as I walked up the porch, dusty and littered with leaves, how it crept into my heart, a rush of something like love.

      When I tried the door, it opened easily. The bungalow lay still and silent, everything in its place. The dining table set, as though for ghosts, with plates and cutlery, the drawing room tidy with cushions, neatly brushed carpets, an arrangement of dried flowers. I headed straight for the bedroom, expecting to find Nicholas sleeping, tangled in a sheet, dream-heavy. Above him, the patient creak of the fan, swirling. The smell of him in the air, sweet and salty, the tang of sweat.

      He wasn’t there.

      The bed was made in neat, geometric precision. His things—an extra pair of glasses, a fountain pen, a comb—missing from the bedside table. I walked down the corridor to the study; in all my months at the bungalow I hadn’t ever seen it so uncluttered, loose papers swept off the floor, the table relieved of tottering piles of books. I looked for a painting, the one that had stood on the table, of a woman holding a mirror, and it was gone.

      Only when I reached the veranda did something splinter, and it rushed in, the fear that had been waiting in the wings. In the corner, the aquarium, that bright and complete universe, was empty.

      Nicholas disappeared in the summer of 1999, when I was twenty, and in my second year at university. Although perhaps I need to rephrase that as well. He didn’t disappear.

      He left.

      Who’s to say they’re not the same?

      At first, I searched wildly for a note, some sort of written explanation—taped to mirrors, or doors, or walls. Weighted down by books or bric-a-brac so it wouldn’t be blown away.

      Behind me, a shelf bearing a small seashell and stone collection, to my right, a spacious divan covered in a densely embroidered bedspread. Next to it, a tall areca palm, its leaves sharp as knives, quietly wilting. The day’s heat seeped ferociously through the jaali screen, the light turned bleached and blinding. I didn’t switch on the fan, or retire inside for shelter and shade.

      Later, around mid-day, when the silence grew deep and thick around me, I left.

      This time, I took the long way round, back to my room in a student residence hall in Delhi University, along the main road, willing the noise and traffic to somehow jolt me back to life. That this, as clichéd as it may sound, had all been a dream.

      At first, it felt similar to the time I heard about Lenny. Many months ago, my sister’s voice faint and grasping on the phone. I’m sorry… there were some complications…

      Yet this was not death.

      For death leaves behind modest belongings, the accumulated possessions of people’s lives, their books and jewelry, a hairbrush, an umbrella. Lenny had been my friend, I had his letters, his VHS tapes, his cassettes, and folded away in the recesses of my cupboard back home, his faded leather jacket.

      With Nicholas it was as though he had never existed.

      No life can be traceless, and leave behind scarcely any imprints. Yet his hadn’t. A great rushing tide had swallowed the shore and wiped it clean.

      That day passed as all others do. In my room, I worked through my unpacking slowly—socks in the drawer, books on the shelf, slippers under the bed—filled not with anger or despair, but faint, lingering anticipation. Something else had to happen, this couldn’t be all. This wasn’t the end. I’d receive a letter. Nicholas would return. Someone would come knocking on my door, saying there was a phone call.

      A message. An explanation.

      That night I went to bed in hope.

      And even now, I sometimes awaken with it wrapped around my heart.

      We are shaped by absence. The places that escape our travels, the things we choose not to do, the people we’ve lost. They are spaces in the trellis on which we trail from season to season.

      Perhaps this is why people write.

      And this careful arrangement of lines is a way of saying “Let it always be there.”

       Everything held still and held together—radiant, everlasting.

      A way of defying memory, shifting slide-slippery thing, that refills as much as it empties. When I lay down these words, this is what

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