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By Root 258 0

than the official, but still incomplete, evidence of his death. We spent an hour together, and then we went back into our own lives. She was no demon, no fool. I suspect she had not “evolved,” as Ramadhin had wished her to, but Heather Cave had settled into a life that she herself had chosen. She had a young authority within it. And she was careful, and cautious with my emotions. When I first brought up the name of my friend, she diverted me easily with some questions into talking about him myself. I proceeded to tell her about our journey by ship. So that by the time I asked her again, she knew the intimacy of our relationship and painted a more generous version of him as her tutor than she might have presented to a person who had not known him.

“What did he look like in those days?”

She described his familiar largeness, the languid walk, even that quick smile he would give out, just once, as he was leaving you. How strange, I thought, that it was only once, for such an affectionate man. But Ramadhin would always leave you with that very genuine smile, so it would be the last thing you saw of him.

“Was he always shy?” she added after a moment.

“He was … careful. He had a weak heart he had to protect. It was why his mother loved him so much. She did not expect a long life for him.”

“I see.” She looked down. “What happened in the bar … what I heard was, it was only noise, there was nothing violent. Rajiva’s not like that. I don’t see him anymore, but he wasn’t like that.”

There was so little to hold on to in our conversation. I was clutching wisps of air. The Ramadhin I fully needed to understand in order to bury was not catchable. Besides, how could that fourteen-year-old have comprehended the desire and torment he had felt.

Then she said, “I know what he wanted. He’d go on about those triangles and math riddles about a train going thirty miles an hour … or a bathtub holding so much water and a man weighing ten stone gets into it. That was the kind of stuff we were learning. But he wanted something else. He wanted to save me. To bring me into his life, as if I didn’t have my own.”

We keep wanting to save those who are forlorn in this world. It’s a male habit, some wish fulfilment. Yet Heather Cave, even in her youth, had known what Ramadhin probably wished for her. And yet, in spite of having asked him to do something for her that night, she had never accused herself of his death. His participation was governed by his own needs.

“He has a sister, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” I said. “I am married to her.”

“So that’s why you came to see me?”

“No. Because he was my closest friend, my machang. One of my two essential friends, at one time.”

“I see. I am sorry.” Then she added, “I remember that smile so well, whenever he left the flat, as I closed the door. It’s like when someone says good-bye on the phone and the voice becomes sad. You know that change that happens in a voice?”

When we got up to leave, she came around the table and gave me a hug, as if she knew that all of this was not for Ramadhin’s sake, but for mine.

ONE SUMMER NIGHT, in our garden flat on Colliers Water Lane, as I walked back into the living room during a party, I saw Massi, across the room, nudge herself off the wall to dance with someone we both knew well. They danced at arm’s length so they could see each other’s faces, and her right hand lifted the shoulder strap of her summer dress and shifted it slightly—she was glancing down at it, as he was. And she knew he was.

All our friends were there. Ray Charles was singing, “But on the other hand, baby.” I was halfway across the room. And without needing to see anything more, or to hear a word being said, I knew there was some grace between them that we ourselves did not have anymore.

Such a small gesture, Massi. But when we are searching for an example of what we no longer have, we see it everywhere. And it was a few years since we ourselves had ridden bareback out of the loss of your brother, something neither of us could deal with on our own.

When Massi and I broke up, it was in truth most