Ganesh was in bed by the time his wife came home, and her cool skin startled him. Her petticoat brushed against him, her perfume wafted around him. Humming a tune, she played with his hair. After her breathing slowed, he slid out of bed and quietly went downstairs.
In the kitchen he turned on the lights, opened the cupboard, and poured himself a shot of the strong local liquor. The drink burned his throat. Under his breath he sang the song she had been humming. The warmth of the liquor spread to his thighs. He put on his coat and trudged down the stairs to the street. The knowledge that she was upstairs, unaware of his absence, filled him with excitement. The cloudless sky, the cold, shimmering stars, granted him a strange freedom, an expansion that came to him as a release in his lungs.
Just as he was walking beneath the clock tower in the city’s center, it began to chime. Looking up, he discovered that it was three o’clock in the morning.
He climbed over the fence surrounding the Queen’s Pond, took off his clothes, and dived in, not caring whether a police squad would approach. The chill of water invigorated him as he waded through the lilies floating on top. He wondered how long it would take, if he allowed himself to sink, for the water to fill his lungs. He thought of monsters with long tentacles that supposedly lived at the bottom, and he imagined them tearing into his flesh. Would his wife be able to recognize his body?
He heard the clock tower ring out four times, and he swam to the edge. When he reached his house and slipped under the bed covers, she murmured but didn’t wake up.
Sunlight assailed his eyes when he woke the next morning. The late-morning heat on his bed had made him sweat, and his pajamas were sticking to the hairs on his chest. He reached for his cigarettes and lit one, propped up a pillow, and leaned against it. The light of day made last night’s swim seem almost unreal.
When he turned the latch to the balcony door, he heard a steady thump-thump-thump. His wife was down in the courtyard, near the tap, beating a bundle of clothes against the cement slab. A few women stood close to her, talking, waiting to fill their pitchers. A small girl, her thumb in her mouth, watched his wife’s movements while clinging to her mother, a widow who lived in the house opposite. He suddenly imagined climbing over the railing and letting himself fall down the four stories, his clothes swirling upward as the air pressed against them, the sensation of dropping underneath a clear, well-lit sky, the little girl spotting him in midair and excitedly reaching for her mother, her mother slowly turning her head, and, finally, splat, his consciousness fading, his wife’s horror as the tap water steadily gushed into a brass pitcher.
Now his wife looked up and, seeing him lean against the railing, shouted, “The railing is weak!” He moved back a step and noticed the bald man across the courtyard watching them, the muscles on his arms protruding as his elbows rested on the window bar. The man smiled and nodded.
Ganesh quickly left the balcony.
He went to the cupboard and found a large black-and-white framed picture of their wedding, his wife looking directly at the camera, as if trying to stare it down. He looked happy; his head was tilted to one side, the beginning of a smile on his lips. It occurred to him that she may not have been happy on their wedding day; perhaps she had secretly wanted to marry another man, someone with more money, better looks, a prestigious family.
As he set the wedding picture back in the cupboard, his fingers brushed against another picture, one of his mother. He took it out. She was standing on the footsteps of a temple, which he recognized as Boudhha, the city’s Buddhist temple, where hundreds of pilgrims congregated each day. It was an old photograph, probably taken right after he was born; the paper had yellowed at the corners. His mother was looking directly at the camera, the same way his wife had done. Maybe that’s what women do, he thought. The photograph of his mother reminded him of people in the neighborhood whispering, when Ganesh was young, that he was the child of her union with her lover, not with his father. Throughout his childhood he had been haunted by an image of this so-called lover: a thin man with stick-like arms, sad eyes, and an aloof manner. One day when he was seven, he’d asked his mother whether she knew a tall man with sad eyes, and she had, with curiosity, scanned his face, then ruffled his hair and said no. He watched for such a man in his neighborhood and at the carnivals his mother took him to, carnivals with games and swings and giant wheels, but no one resembled the image that returned to him, again and again.
His wife cooked lunch, and while they ate, she brought up the wedding. “The tent was huge,” she said. “It could have held a thousand guests, but there were only about a hundred. A woman was wearing a necklace with thirteen – no, twelve – big diamonds. Imagine wearing that! What a burden on your neck, and the fear you’d have while you wore it. A man there asked about you, said his office is down the hall from yours; he does the revenues or something like that.”
She talked of the evening as though assured of his interest. Her words filled his mind so that his own thoughts clamored for room. In time, he grew angry and shifted his feet. Tm not hungry,” he said and walked out of the room and down the stairs.
His head throbbed with anger. She hadn’t even asked what he’d done while she was away last evening. He felt humiliated. Outside, he took to the small road and alleys, with no direction in mind. He imagined going to his friend’s house, standing beside the bed, where his friend would be reading a silly magazine, and declaring, “My wife is having an affair.” Of course he didn’t know whether that was true, but he wanted to reach the truth, no matter what it was, even through a lie.
The streets were crowded, and brightly dressed children chased one another through the throngs of people. In Durbar Square, Ganesh came upon a group of people playing drums and cymbals. A small boy, his face painted white, taunted a large man wearing a mask with wide, thick Hps and large, glaring eyes. Peacock feathers rose from the back of his head, and frills on the seams of his vest flew in every direction as he waved his arms in circles. The little boy danced near the man and made faces at him. The masked man, also dancing, attempted to strike the boy – whether as an act or in real anger, it was hard to tell – at which point the music reached a crescendo and then resumed its normal beat. The masked man swooned with the powers of a deity, and the onlookers gave him wide berth.
Ganesh leaned against the side of a house and watched. People appeared at windows, and the crowd around the performers thickened. Every time the boy’s darting figure came close to the masked man, the spectators let out a collective gasp, and drums threatened to crack the narrow sky above. And every time the boy approached the man, Ganesh clearly saw the boy’s apprehension, the danger, the thrill of being so close to a deity whose slap could send him sprawling across the brick street. When the boy escaped punishment, however, Ganesh watched the masked dancer, saw his humiliation, the lack of appreciation from the crowd, the maddening fury of his not being able to silence the teaser.
At one point the masked man, his legs apart for a second’s break in rhythm, threw a wild look right at Ganesh, who flattened himself against the wall like a shadow, a thrill running through his limbs.