The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai [55]
Was there a strange atmosphere in the room?
But Sai and Gyan seemed immersed in the newspapers again, and he confused their sense of ripening anticipation with his own, because that morning, two letters from Biju had arrived in the post. They were lying under an empty tuna fish tin by his bed, saved for the end of the day, and all evening he’d been savoring the thought of them. He rolled up his pants and departed with an umbrella as it had begun to pour again.
______
In the drawing room, sitting with the newspapers, Sai and Gyan were left alone, quite alone, for the first time.
Kiki De Costa’s recipe column: marvels with potatoes. Tasty treat with meat. Noodles with doodles and doodles of sauce and oodles and oodles of cheese.
Fleur Hussein’s beauty tips.
The handsome baldy competition at the Calcutta Gymkhana Club had given out prizes to Mr. Sunshine, Mr. Moonshine, and Mr. Will Shine.
Their eyes read on industriously, but their thoughts didn’t cleave to such discipline, and finally Gyan, unable to bear this any longer, this tightrope tension between them, put down his paper with a crashing sound, turned abruptly toward her, and blurted:
“Do you put oil in your hair?”
“No,” she said, startled. “I never do.”
After a bit of silence, “Why?” she asked. Was there something wrong with her hair?
“I can’t hear you—the rain is so loud,” he said, moving closer. “What?”
“Why?”
“It looks so shiny I thought you might.”
“No.”
“It looks very soft,” he observed. “Do you wash it with shampoo?”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
“Sunsilk.”
Oh, the unbearable intimacy of brand names, the boldness of the questions.
“What soap?”
“Lux.”
“Beauty bar of the film stars?”
But they were too scared to laugh.
More silence.
“You?”
“Whatever is in the house. It doesn’t matter for boys.”
He couldn’t admit that his mother bought the homemade brown soap that was sold in large rectangles in the market, blocks sliced off and sold cheap.
The questions grew worse: “Let me see your hands. They are so small.”
“Are they?”
“Yes.” He held his own out by hers. “See?”
Fingers. Nails.
“Hm. What long fingers. Little nails. But look, you bite them.”
He weighed her hand.
“Light as a sparrow. The bones must be hollow.”
These words that took direct aim at something elusive had the de-liberateness of previous consideration, she realized with a thud of joy.
______
Rainy season beetles flew by in many colors. From each hole in the floor came a mouse as if tailored for size, tiny mice from the tiny holes, big mice from big holes, and the termites came teeming forth from the furniture, so many of them that when you looked, the furniture, the floor, the ceiling, all seemed to be wobbling.
But Gyan did not see them. His gaze itself was a mouse; it disappeared into the belladonna sleeve of Sai’s kimono and spotted her elbow.
“A sharp point,” he commented. “You could do some harm with that.”
Arms they measured and legs. Catching sight of her foot—
“Let me see.”
He took off his own shoe and then the threadbare sock of which he immediately felt ashamed and which he bundled into his pocket. They examined the nakedness side by side of those little tubers in the semidark.
Her eyes, he noted, were extraordinarily glamorous: huge, wet, full of theater, capturing all the light in the room.
But he couldn’t bring himself to mention them; it was easier to stick to what moved him less, to a more scientific approach.
With the palm of his hand, he cupped her head….
“Is it flat or is it curved?”
With an unsteady finger, he embarked on the arch of an eyebrow….
Oh, he could not believe his bravery; it drove him on and wouldn’t heed the fear that called him back; he was brave despite himself. His finger moved down her nose.
The sound of water came from every direction: fat upon the window, a popgun off the bananas and the tin roof, lighter