Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [101]
Now he whispered in her ear, nibbling it ever so slightly before he spoke. "What sort of precautions have you taken?"
"What precautions do you mean?" Heavens, she thought, if I took precautions, I wouldn't be here in your apartment, would I?
"You know, devices. The pill?"
She smiled at him shyly. Subodh Mitra hadn't bothered to ask. Things move slowly, like glaciers, until they erupt like tsunamis.
Torn silver foil fluttered through the air. She heard a zipper, and the thud of heavy trousers falling to the floor. Mr. GG's fingers soothed her itch. "I've been thinking of you since we first met," he said.
It seemed that all the strollers in the park and on the footpaths had stopped and were looking up and pointing in her direction. Everyone in Cubbon Park saw the naked girl in the window. The naked girl in the window looked down on Bangalore. She moved from the window, turned, and faced Mr. GG, who was hopping on one foot to free himself from his trousers. His shoes were still on. Coins were dropping from the pockets and rolling across the floor.
"Please to sit down, Mr. GG," she ordered, and he did. For the briefest moment she thought, If I want to get out, this is the time. He reached down to unlace his shoes. "I will do that. Please sit back." As she bent forward, he groped for her bra strap.
Not her bra strap, exactly. It had been Husseina's black silk lift-and-thrust.
"Please," she insisted, this time louder, and he retreated. She made a lightning calculation: If I'm to give myself away, it might as well be to a well-established man who saved me and performed favors and kindnesses. A well-connected man who would owe me. A girl in a fancy black bra and half-discarded salwar, kneeling before a man on a sofa, pulling off his shoes: she's in control.
She remembered a Gauripur ritual, her own father coming home from the office at the same minute every day. Tea would be waiting, he would sit at a chair by the door and hold his feet out, and her mother would kneel and pull his shoes off—dusty or muddy shoes, depending on the season—and Anjali would bring him his indoor chappals and kurta-pajama. He would unbutton his shirt and slip on the kurta, then unbuckle his trousers and cover his shorts with the pajama. Every night of her life she had performed the same little task, as had her mother and her grandmother and probably her sister too. If all those generations could see her now! Except this time, she was on her knees and nearly naked, and the man was, essentially, a stranger. And she remembered the lines of women in Nizambagh crawling over the trucks, ghost women, spidery thin, fighting each other for access to the drivers, and she hated the price of being a woman, and India, and every man she'd ever known.
"Let's see that famous smile," said Mr. GG. And so she smiled.
She got his shoes off, and the socks—such small, soft feet, such hairy toes—then tugged his trousers by the cuffs and draped them over the back of a dining chair. He was a plump, hairy little man in bulging boxer shorts. He probably had not dressed that morning with the thought of being undressed by a lady before lunch. He made himself busy throwing cushions off his sofa, then pulling out a folding bed.
"What are you looking at?" he asked. She flashed a shy smile, which seemed to satisfy his vanity, but in truth she was fascinated by a couch converting into a bed by one pull from a near-naked man with a hairy back. Nor had she ever stood completely naked and alone, even in her own bedroom or bathroom. Back home she had bathed as older women did, in a sari. The important thing was to be able to tell herself that she'd accepted a ride from a friend,