“…and when I had finally settled down to write, I think maybe the church let out. Because all these people started gathering around my little house. They spread out blankets, they brought out food, they had a good old picnic all around.” He is talking to Rupali. It is nighttime, after dinner; the view from the window is utterly black, one fluorescent bulb lights the room, and the scents of coconut and curry leaf still ornament the air. He does not add that the ruckus on his porch was unbearable, a party going on outside his windows. He could not concentrate for a moment on this new version of his book. Less was frustrated, so furious, he even considered checking into a local hotel. But he stood there in his little Keralan house, with its view of the ocean and the Last Supper, and pictured himself walking up to Rupali and saying the most absurd sentence of his life: I am going to check myself into an Ayurvedic retreat unless the picnicking stops!
Rupali listens to his story about the picnic, nodding. “Yes, this is something that happens.”
He remembers the pastor’s advice. “Why?”
“Oh, the people here, they like to come up and look at the view. This is a good place for the church families.”
“But it’s a retreat…” He stops himself, then asks again: “Why?”
“Here, this special view of the sea.”
“Why?”
“It is—” She pauses, looking down shyly. “It is the only place. The only place the Christians can go.”
Less has gotten to the root of it at last, but again it touches something he cannot understand. “Well, I hope they had a good time. The food smelled delicious. And tonight’s dinner was delicious.” Less has realized that there is no refrigerator at the retreat center, so everything has been bought today at the street market or picked from Rupali’s garden; everything is fresh simply because it must be. Even the coconut has been hand shredded by a congregant named Mary, an old woman in a sari who smiles at him every morning and brings his tea. Unless the picnicking stops! What an ass he is, everywhere he goes.
Rupali says: “I have a funny story about the dinner! This is the meal I used to bring to work when I taught French in the city. Every day, I took the train, and, you know, it is so hot! One day, there are no seats. So what do I do? I sit in on the stairs by the open doorway. Oh, it was so refreshing! Why did I not do this before? That was when I dropped my handbag right out the door!” She laughs, covering her mouth. “It was terrible! It had my school identification, my money, my lunch, everything. Disaster. Of course, the train could not stop, so I got out at the next station, and I hired a rickshaw to take me back. We were there for so long, searching for it on the train tracks! Then a policeman came out of a hut. I told him what had happened. He asked me to describe the contents. I said, ‘Sir, my identification, my wallet, my phone, my clean blouse, sir.’ He looked at me for a moment. Then he asked, ‘And fish curry?’ He showed me the handbag.” She laughs again in delight. “It was all covered inside with fish curry!”
Her laughter is so lovely; he cannot bear to tell her that this is no place to write. The noise, the creatures, the heat, the workers, the picnickers—it will be impossible to write his book here.
“And you, Arthur, you had a good day?” Rupali asks.
“Oh yes.” He has left out details of the barbershop he visited, in which he was shown to a windowless room behind a red curtain, where a short man in the pastor’s same shirt quickly dispensed with his beard (unasked) and the hair on the side of Less’s head, leaving only the blond wisp at the top, and then asked: “Massage?” This turned out to be a series of thumpings and slaps, a general pummeling, as if to extract military secrets, ending with four resounding wallops across the face. Why?
Rupali smiles and asks what else she can do for him.
“What I could really use is a drink.”
Her face darkens. “Oh, there is no alcohol allowed on church premises.”
“I’m just kidding, Rupali,” he says. “Where the heck would we get the ice?”
We will never know if she gets the joke, for at that moment, the lights go out.
The outage, like most partings, is not absolute; every few minutes, the power returns, only to be lost a moment later. What follows is one of those college theatrical productions in which the lights come up spasmodically, revealing the characters in various unexpected tableaux: Rupali clutching the arms of her chair, her lips pursed in concern like a surgeonfish; Arthur Less about to step into nirvana, mistaking a window for a door; Rupali openmouthed in a scream as she touches some paper fallen on her head that surely feels like a giant fruit bat; Arthur Less, having stepped through the correct portal this time, blindly fitting his toes into Rupali’s sandals; Rupali kneeling on the floor in prayer; Arthur Less out in the night, catching sight of a brand-new horror in the moonlight: the black-and-white dog trotting toward Less’s cottage, carrying in its mouth a long piece of medium blue fabric.
“My suit!” Less yells, stumbling downhill and kicking off the sandals. “My suit!”
He makes his way down toward the dog, and the lights go out again—revealing, nestled in the grass, a breathtaking constellation of glowworms ready for love—so Less can only feel his way into his own cottage, cursing, carelessly stepping barefoot across the tiles, and that is when he finds his sewing needle.
I recall Arthur Less, at a rooftop party, telling me his recurring dream:
“A parable, really,” he said, holding his beer to his chest. “I’m walking through a dark wood, like Dante, and an old woman comes up to me and says, ‘Lucky you, you’ve left it all behind you. You’re finished with love. Think of how much time you’ll have for more important things!’ And she leaves me, and I go on—I think I’m usually riding a horse at this point; it’s a very medieval dream. You aren’t in it, by the way, in case you’re getting bored.”
I replied I had my own dreams.
“And I keep riding through this dark wood and come out onto a large white plain with a mountain in the distance. And a farmer is there, and he waves at me, and he says sort of the same thing. ‘More important things ahead for you!’ And I ride up the mountain. I can tell you’re not listening. It gets really good. I ride up the mountain, and at the top is a cave and a priest—you know, like in a cartoon. And I say I’m ready. And he says for what? And I say to think about more important things. And he asks, ‘More important than what?’ ‘More important than love.’ And he looks at me like I’m crazy and says, ‘What could be more important than love?’”
We stood quietly as a cloud went over the sun and sent a chill across the roof. Less looked over the railing at the street below.
“Well, that’s my dream.”