Odysseus Abroad Read Online Free PDF Page B

sleep.
    —
    No, Mandy was definitely up. She’d just cleared her throat; a female throat-clearing, melodious—but threatening. He and Mandy had a sort of duet going—of noises, of complaints. The first time was soon after he’d moved into the flat; term had begun, his parents were still staying with him before they flew back. It was early October, warm, and the window was three or four inches open, allowing in footfall, snatches of song, a shout from near the tube. Then there was an intrusion of another kind, of atmospheric noise as he lay back, head on the plump pillow. A hubbub with a wash of background music, as if he were, without warning, in the centre of a metropolis, roaming in the town square. He must have dreamed this, sound and image mixing with one another as he dozed off. But no, on second thought, he was awake and conscious of floating above the crowded hubbub. Ah, a party! In the flat downstairs! He couldn’t believe he was privy to this bonhomie. He asked his mother, unconvinced he wasn’t dreaming: “Can you hear it?”
    After midnight, not bothering to change out of his pyjamas, he went down, knocked on Mandy’s door, and—sensing fleetingly the figures in the background—told her he couldn’t sleep.
    —
    Mandy was in her twenties. Sometimes she looked older, as if she might be in her early thirties. She kept uncertain hours. She’d come home at three in the morning, shut the door with a bang, turn on cheery music. She told him that she did her aerobic exercises at that hour. She’d shared this information when he’d pointed out to her indignantly: “Mandy—what about you?—must you, must you playthat music at half past three or four in the morning?” His question was meant to counter hers: “Must you sing in the morning? It drives me crazy! It’s like Chinese torture.” “I
have
to practise at half past nine,” he’d said. “Besides, it’s well after the day has begun.” “I know, but I come home very late—I work at a bar twice a week.” “I’m sorry, Mandy,” he’d said, attempting to shrug. “I do have to practise.” On some days, she worked as a temp—probably a receptionist. She went out in the morning with the music playing all day—low, but continual, inoffensive, except that it was bubblegum pop. He queried her about why it was necessary for the music to play in an empty flat, and she told him it wasn’t empty; the music was for her budgies, so they wouldn’t be frightened or alone.
    Ananda had never seen or heard her budgies; it was the first he’d become aware of the birds. He’d never seen the inside of her flat except once, when she’d knocked on his door and nonchalantly asked him to help her change a light bulb. There was an erotic charge running beneath the way they chafed and got on each other’s nerves—or was he imagining it? It had seemed, as she spectated upon him climbing a chair and reaching for the ceiling (again, in his pyjamas), that she was capable of dealing with the light bulb herself. But he was very proper and a little cowardly too—he barely glanced at her after he’d fixed the bulb and made for the door. Another time he did glance at her, when she’d kept her door ajar and, half stepping out of the bathroom, partly wet but in her bra and panties, shouted over the doorbell: “Can you see who it is, please? I think there’s a package for me.” And he’d noticed the diaphanous curve of the brassiere, and how palely luminous her stomach was, and also the faintest smile on her lips, because she’d noticed him noticing.

She’d had her revenge for their constant tit for tat once the payphone incident occurred—that night when the Patels and Cynthia’s incongruously studious-looking brother Rahul had dislodged the BT coin box from the landing between the first and second floors and taken it to the attic, breathing heavily with exertion and laughter. Ananda had heard it all—it must have been past 1 a.m.—the rushed activity,