Far off a ticking sound like a heartbeat kept pace with the rhythmic inspiration and exhalation of air, but that just may have been summertime rushing through the windows. I listened to the silence and became a part of it, and the silence filled me with dread.
Everything slowed down. In the absence of the storytellers, the pell-mell of the immediate past ceased, and my mind became my own again. Like the nautilus, I withdrew into my spiral shell and curled up in the fetal position. Once, when I was a boy no more than three years old—perhaps this is my earliest memory or perhaps I have re-created it as a memory out of the telling and retelling of the story by my parents and older brother, so who’s to verify its authenticity?—but on this particular occasion, I had invaded my father’s forbidden study and sat at my father’s desk and found some papers there. Turning over the sheets marked with strange glyphs and letters and symbols, I discovered the obverse gloriously blank. Like some saboteur, I uncapped his fountain pen and proceeded to scribble on page after page, drawing no doubt some design from the shoals of my imagination. At some point, I realized that this creative explosion might be unwelcome by my father, who was in certain respects a fairly stern figure. So I took the papers and threw them in the trashcan, leaving behind some forensic evidence in mislaid sheets and inky splatters. Minding my own business with some wooden blocks in my room upstairs, I was alarmed by the raised voices and commotion when he returned home from work and discovered the crime scene. I sensed I was in trouble, and so found the most hidden spot to crawl into and lie there as snug as in a grave, and there I stayed during their frantic search for me, ignoring the calls of my name, and there I slept till I was discovered hours later and carried to bed in my mother’s arms. In memory, that hidey-hole was as dark and safe as a womb.
Someone was crying. The weeping started softly and grew louder and louder till I could discern the source of such sorrow. Behind my closed bedroom door someone wept. Of course, the eighth woman in the bed. I had nearly forgotten she was there. Shooing the cat from my lap, I rose and sought the answer to my questions. Without hesitation this time around, I opened the door and found her there, lying on the bed.
Her back was turned to me as before, but she was no longer naked. Now clad in a simple white sari, the Hindu color of mourning, she appeared to be deep in her grief. Afternoon light streamed through the window and an elongated rectangle illuminated her body from the crown of her black hair to the curve of her hip. I knew who it was, had known I suppose all along, for I was in love with her. “Sita,” I called, but she did not stir.
The cat was at my feet, rubbing against my ankle. “Sorry, she can’t hear you, mate. Or see you or nuffin. You’re not here.”
Funny, but I expected some grander special effects. A more spectral nature, the ability to pass my hand through objects, chains to rattle, or the wind creaking through the walls. But it was fairly much the same as it had been since time had stopped. “Like a ghost.”
“Exactly like that.”
We strolled to the other side of the bed so I could see her face. She was lying atop the quilt of many colors, her bare feet drawn beneath her, arms across her breasts. Her eyes were open, and her makeup was smudged from the tears. Upon one of her hands, she had an intricate henna design that I would have liked to ask her to explain. I crouched down next to her, touched her hair, but I did not feel a thing, and she did not feel a thing, not even a sense of my spirit in the room. She looked sad and beautiful, and I had a thousand things to tell her, but there was no longer any way to talk with Sita. Silence blew right through me. Though it did neither of us any good, I stayed there with her for a long time.
“Why is she crying?” I asked Harpo.
“Because of the hole in your head.”
“Because I am dead?”
A figure appeared in the doorway. Tall and thin with hair brushed straight back, he looked like a Giacometti sculpture or a young Samuel Beckett. When he saw Sita crying on the bed, he bowed his head for a moment, and as he lifted it, he revealed his identity at once. Sam. My brother, Sam. As soon as I saw him, I remembered the old man in the bathroom and realized at once that he had been an older version of my brother from some distant future who had slipped in through the same crack of time. Now he was as young as yesterday. He walked into the room without acknowledging me and crouched next to her and said her name. “Sita.”
She smiled briefly and held out her hand, which he took and pressed to his face. She smiled again, holding his palm there a beat longer, and then she let him go. “Stay for a while,” she said. “Keep me company.”
“Everyone was wondering where you went off to.” He sat down beside her.