Love and the Dark Night

SIX

 “Ahhhh… No….”

“You okay?” A voice floated from far and reached me.

I opened my eyes and was looking into Anais’ face. Her hand was patting my head.

“Where am I?” I whispered loudly.

She looked at me. Our friends heads were down and close to my face, peering at me.

“I’m fine.” I smiled.

I got up in slow measures, took Anais’ hand and proceeded to the small open area where a few others and my friends were dancing. Ranee looked at us and smiled. Anais gestured her to come and join us, but she shook her head, meaning she was okay. We gave in to the rhythm of the music and held ourselves close to a slower number. Many were sitting and chatting among themselves, while some couples held each other close too. A pair of gays walked in, ordered for tequila shots each and sat down comfortably where we had been sitting. A tourist entered and when my eyes fell on him, his flaxen hair changed to glossy chocolate brown and covered his entire body. His forehead narrowed and his mouth tapered. And then the noise in my ear, and the sound in my head started.

He suddenly vanished. I looked around. Near the DJ corner, around the tables where Pink Floyd’s poster stood on the wall, at the two doors, at the corner where some party-people stood in a group, I looked all over but he couldn’t be seen anywhere. I went up to the manager.

“Excuse me,” I said, seeing the young and slim man writing something in a notebook. “Do you allow animals too here?”

He looked at me, his eyebrows raised.

“Excuse me, but what… why, why do you ask this question?”

“Could you check around? I think I saw a dog here.”

The manager called some staff and when they came back, they said no animal was around.

But I knew that something was not right. Nothing’s wrong with me. But there’s something not right here for sure.  OMG! These were the very words that reverberated in my head as said by the dog when it was going down my stairs yesterday.

Suddenly the tourist was sitting near Ranee and smiling at her. Simran was laughing perhaps at a joke cracked into her ear by Shasht. Alex and Hermen were totally immersed into their dance.

The tourist was still looking at Ranee.

On a sudden he bent towards Ranee and planted a kiss on her cheek, and then touched her lips with his. At that instant, Ranee’s hand instinctively shot out and her palm landed on his cheek with a crash.

“What the f..k, you as….e.”

We all rushed to Ranee.

The bouncer was called. Resting his thick hand on the tourist’s shoulder, he asked. “What happened?”

The tourist’s flaxen hair fell over his forehead and his thin face dried up.

“I’m sorry Madam.” He turned to Ranee. “I lost my bearings.” He turned to the bouncer now. “Believe me, I’m being followed.” He looked drained of energy.  “Actually, I was going to the 7 Eleven store when outside it I saw a dog, glossy, with chocolate brown fur, lift up its head and look at me. It seemed to tell me Go to the bar, not here. Struck by daze, I entered the bar and began to dance. When I looked at the people dancing, my eyes fell on this person,” (he pointed at me). He seemed to tell me the dog is here. I came and instantly heard the whining of a dog reverberating in the entire bar. It became louder than the music. And I began dancing wildly as if bitten by the dog.” He paused and panted. “And then this…” and he hung his head in apology.

A waiter standing close by came more forward.

“Actually, I went to our washroom and there I found a dog lying…”

“Did it have a glossy chocolate brown fur?” the tourist asked.

The waiter nodded.

“Quite big also.”

The manager extended his hand and patted the tourist on his arm.

“Anyway, please relax. It’s better you sit. I don’t know how far these things are true.”

Ranee was still under the daze.

“No, no. I’ll leave.” And saying, the tourist proceeded towards the door.

The manager told the staff to check on the dog in the washroom, before gesturing to the DJ to start. The music sounded again and we resumed our dancing. My chin was on Anais’ shoulder. I removed my head and looked into her black eyes, smiling, then at her head. Yes, the birthmark designed by nature as a root. I won’t tell her anything. A whine began coming from far away. I shook my head but the sound was stuck in my ears. Anais’ face had changed to a child’s with some stains on the cheek and forehead. Strangely, she had hair on her head. Her face was that of the roadside child’s. My eyes still on Anais, my body loosened, my head swung. Next I could faintly make out I was sinking to the floor.

“How are you feeling, baby?” Anais’ eyes were on my face and her cloud-soft voice touched my mind as a soothing balm.

I smiled weakly, nodded and shifted on the couch. No, I can’t tell all this to Anais. Or to anyone for that matter. I have to first find out. Or perhaps I will be given to find out.

            Energy returned in me in slow degrees. We looked at our watches. It was close to midnight. We decided to step into Someplace Else. Hip Pocket was playing that night. Shubhojit was belting out The Dogs of Silence. Amyt Dutta’s fingers did the talking on his guitar and Suraj Thapa’s hands beat on the various drums as they flashed from one to the other. And the dogs of the song whined.

But did my dog whine? No, no. he whimpered. Right in my ears. And in my head.

“Stop.” I yelled. “Shut up.” I yelled at the singer.

But the singer was lost in his world of dogs. He jumped on the stage, controlling the dogs with his voice. My hackles were rising. I rushed to the stage, grabbed the microphone and yelled at the crooner. “Stop this goddamn yelling and screaming. Why can’t you sing On the banks of the Ohio.”  The drumbeat stopped in the middle and the guiltar’s wailing came to a suffocating end. The singer looked at me, fingering his frayed jeans, then running his fingers over his beard, he gestured with his hands, Who the f..k are you?. By that time Anais and my friends rushed to the stage. The other music lovers sitting in different tables were quite annoyed. A general hullabaloo began. The two bouncers arrived and stood at my two sides.

“Actually he’s not well.” Hermen and Simran said.

The bouncers nodded and with their hands on my shoulders held tightly but loosely, they decently pushed me out of the pub.

“Let’s go for a drive,” Hermen suggested.

“Yes,” Shasht said as he sat behind the wheels. “A breath of fresh air is what our friend needs.

He turned the car to the right and we sped to the crossing from where we turned left to J. N. Road. The roads were quiet, and only the street lights glowed in the silence. Ranee and Simran were sitting with Anais and me, while Hermen and Alex sat in the front seat.

While we sped along, I looked at Anais. I was holding her hand as she kissed me on my throat. No one started any discussion on my sudden strange behaviour. Ranee and Simran were talking about the foreigner in Roxy and the three in front were shaking their heads to the music in the car. Our car was nearing the Exide crossing when on a sudden our eyes fell on a white Maruti van about seventy-five metres ahead of us suddenly stop, and a woman pushed out. She came out slowly and unsteadily. No sooner had she stepped on the concrete road than the car sped away. The woman staggered to the pavement.

“Let’s find out what has happened,” Hermen said. But as our car approached her, she got into the waiting taxi and the vehicle went off.

Our fuddled brains couldn’t form the words, they only moved about hazily inside.  

“Perhaps she has been r***d,” Alex said.

We looked at each other.

“I shouldn’t have slapped the foreigner,” Ranee spoke with a quivering voice. We all looked at her. Shasht stopped the car at the side of the pavement.

“Don’t stop,” Hermen cried out between clenched teeth. “Let’s reach home.”

We began discussing whose house to crash land in.

“Crash at my place,” I said.

“Anything can happen anytime,” Anais said.

“Yes,” Simran added, “life will give you the jolt any moment.”

Any moment! And the last mail suddenly appeared in my mind. Who is Damasque? Does the sender know me? Is he or she someone who knows my past, some wrong I had done in the past? What wrong? Tessa in the present! Is the sender trying to blackmail me?

The woman out of the Maruti van. Was she… was she Damasque? Had Damasque written to me because she could sense some danger alighting any moment on her?

“Damasque… Damaque…” My voice sounded in my ears. And that cry. The wail. The whimper in my ears. My head swung, it became heavy and I could see through the mist, my head tilting towards some thick mass of black shoulder-length hair next to me. Simultaneously a hand appeared, holding my head as it buried itself into the hair in slow measures. “But Anais, how come you have hair…?”

Next I remember the car stopping, faint voices of people reaching my ears from far away, a hand going round my waist, I slowly being walked through a familiar gate, the lift humming down, hauling us up, key inserting, door opening, my dropping on the living room couch.

After what seemed a long time but actually around some minutes, my eyes opened, my head light, I saw my friends sitting in the room.

“Hey, handsome,” Anais’s voice, coated with more softness, came as a whisper. She reached forward and planted herself on the floor close to me. “Feeling better? She asked.

I nodded with a smile and sat up. The picture of us together returned. Dancing, then coming out, speeding down near Exide, a woman pushed out of a Maruti van… Perhaps Damasque. Oblivion. I suddenly felt sorry for being the cause of spoiling the weekend fun.

“All of you look like a sleepy bag of bones.” I looked at my friends. “I’m sorry.”

“No man,” Hermen’s voice rang out. “Cut that crap.”

“Can’t shake that scene of the woman being pushed out,” I said. Part of it was a lie of course. I kept Damasque’s part out. Then I changed the topic. “Why don’t you guys pull out the extra mattress? I looked at Hermen and Shasht.

Very soon the extra mattress was on the sitting room floor. All the five crashed on it. Anais and I took up my bedroom. As the night closed on me under the faint glow of the 0-watt night lamp with Anais next to me, I temporarily removed away the e-mail from my bedroom and out of my mind. 

But the thoughts returned as if with vengeance.

*

A hum from far away. I got up from the bed as soft and sure as a cat. I moved the drapes to an extent. The neighbourhood was dark, and beyond it, more darkness. Thick tall trees spread over the sky. The dog lay curled up on the road. I nodded.

Suddenly a ping sounded in my cell phone.

Email. From Damasque. Go to bed, Rudi.

Yes. I nodded.

I tiptoed towards the bed and gently let loose my body on the mattress, touching my head to the upright pillow against the head side. But as soon as my phone rested on the side shelf, another ping sounded. Instinct pushing me, I grabbed it. One more e-mail? But no. Nothing. Then the whimper in my ear began to whisper:

“Listen,” whispered the voice with a shiver. “All over in the world, ninety-nine percent of people hear voices. They have not only one but more than one voice in their heads. But here, with you, it’s one sound. Whatever you call it: Wail. Whimper. Growl. They are all born of the same mother. It’s the same sound, the same rise and fall like someone's recorded voice you hear over and over. But why worry, Rudi? There are hundred and one reasons in this city for children to cry. Anyway, we can discuss this in the morning, and you can go to sleep.”

But my God. Whatever I heard as a whisper appeared as a text in the open email page from Damasque!  

No more of this nonsense, and I took my stance. “No, Damasque, or whoever you are.” I coughed. “I need to find out whose voice this is and why does it cry. Neither do I want to wake up every night in this fashion nor want this sound when I’m doing other work. But I have to find out how to stop this whimper.”

“So what will you do?” the voice whispered.

“I'll go check the street where the dog is curled up. I’ll walk a few steps up and down and then come back. Whoever’s whimpering, whispering or crying, that is. Even if it’s far away. I want to go on my own and find out.”

I walked to the other room, keeping close to the wall, careful not to trip over the mattress on the floor on which my friends lay sprawled in weird shapes, sleeping. I opened the chocolate brown wooden cupboard, took out the wooden hanger, careful not to bump it with the other ones and wake my friends up sleeping so peacefully. I went to the bedroom. Anais was deep in the arms of sleep, her chest rising and falling, her black eyelashed eyes closed, her little nose looking so pretty with the silvery moonlight on it and her shaved head, Sinead O’Conner style. For a split second, I thought of lying by her side, hold her close and with the warmth of her body fall into the abyss of a deep sure sleep.

“No Rudi. Don’t,” the voice whispered.

I nodded. I removed the red T-shirt from the hanger, slipped into a pair of black track pants with white parallel strips on both sides. Opening the cupboard noiselessly as – Macavity would have done – so as not to wake Anais, I kept the hanger inside, and looked at her. Her hand was on my part of the bed, her chest rising and falling.

Go, the whispered voice egged. Don’t stop.

I tiptoed towards the door, opened it and closing it behind me, went down the flight of stairs. The padding sound of my footsteps died away and the silence surged back.