The Vine of Desire Read Online Free PDF Page B

mother! Of course you’ll have more children. And isn’t Dayita your own, too? Even Sunil can see that—why can’t you?”
    “Yes,” Anju says. It is a sound like a sigh. But what is she agreeing with?
    There are things she doesn’t tell me about her marriage. Isee their shadows on the wall, shivery-brown and thin, like diseased branches. I try vainly to untangle silhouettes.
    We do not discuss him again.

    It began on the very first night, the night Dayita and I came into their house. I know because I dreamed it.
    So much talk and tears. So much catching up with pain. So much still left unsaid between Anju and me, that would perhaps never be spoken. We were afraid to touch each other’s pasts, the way one is with a cut that’s just stopped bleeding. We read, in each other’s eyes, the questions that couldn’t be asked, couldn’t be answered. Why did you really bring me here? Why did you really say no to him? We fell to sleep exhausted on the carpet in my new room. Lying between us, lulled by our voices, my daughter, too, slept awhile. Then she awoke.
    In the living room he was sitting at his computer. Staring at the screen, which for once could not save him from his thoughts. A can of Coke, gone warm and flat, stood untouched beside him. He wanted whiskey, though he wasn’t a drinker. Whiskey to dull the points of all those thoughts whizzing at his head like jugglers’ knives. But that would have been a victory for the women. ( The women , that’s how he thought of us.) An admission that we’d gotten under his skin.
    Sleepless in front of that opal flicker, he felt thankfulness. He could see that, with my coming, some of the sadness had fallen from Anju. But he was annoyed, too. We made him feel unnecessary. At dinner I had enquired about his work. Anju had asked if he wanted more lasagna, more pudding. Still, he knew he was an interruption to our reunion.
    The last knife, the last thought. When it struck him, a tense joy spurted forth. To him I was more beautiful than before. He wanted to lick away the worry lines at the corners of my eyes. Like a glass flower, blossomed in fire. The words hummed like wasps inside his skull. He was light-headed with his need to take care of me, and knew he must not.
    He heard the snuffling noises Dayita was making. At first he didn’t know what to do. Should he let her cry until we awoke? But that might take forever. The poor child was starving—he could tell by her shrillness. He stepped gingerly into the room. He tried to keep his eyes away. There’s a nakedness about sleeping people—Anju and I lay with our arms around each other, as if we were girls again. Needy, unabashed. We embarrassed him.
    But here was Dayita, kicking with vigor. Screeching like an entire chorus of harpies. Her face was splotched more with rage than hunger. For the first time since we came, he was amused. You don’t like being ignored either, do you? He leaned carefully over us to pick her up. It amazed him how light she was. And yet how solid, how real. Suddenly it was very important not to wake us. To have her to himself. She was quiet now. She stared at him, her eyes smoky with intelligence. She knew all the ways, he thought, in which he was hurting.
    Shyly he laid his cheek on Dayita’s head. Curly, pulsing. She smelled like every baby on earth. Like herself only. Like grass. He was thinking—he didn’t allow himself to do that often—of Prem.
    He fed her with the baby formula I had kept in the refrigerator. There was a rhythm to her sucking, a code he needed to decipher. He changed her and put her in the middle of his bed. He piled all the pillows he could find around her to keep her safe. Until he fell asleep he talked to her. Nonsense words at first,then adult to adult. He told her he was afraid of what might happen to us all in the next few months. He used words like craziness. Conflagration. He didn’t mention my name to my daughter. (Of that I am thankful.) But he was happy she