ISSUE 40

The clothesline on the balcony is empty, like a broken and abandoned spiderweb in an abandoned place, swaying on its own in the breeze, the few pegs still clinging on. It won’t be too inaccurate to call this place abandoned. My flatmates have all left, disappeared like magicians in the three days since news broke of the first confirmed case in the city. The City of Joy. So joyless now. The hallway is empty and lonely, only echoes responding to my stalking movement. The kitchen sink is always dry. Nothing on the counter I have to clean after.

Sitting now on the plastic stool on the balcony, I can hear coughs coming from the next building. I see nobody. Far enough away, I think. No need to hold my breath or shrink back or cover my face with my handkerchief, but I remember to wash my hands later. The smoke from my cigarette rises upward with no wind to interrupt its ascent. There is not a cloud in the dusky sky. No stars in sight either.

I have three more days before I leave the city to go back home – the first time in two years. Four more nights of pining for home; time, slowing with anticipation. My bags are packed and ready to go, to leave behind fear and loneliness. But I am not certain either can be really left behind.

I take a drag and blow the smoke eastward, where I hope to be in four days’ time. I try to think nothing will happen, but the more I try, the harder I fail. Instead, I think of yesterday. Friday. The Friday that was.

It was drizzling in the morning. The cold woke me up three hours earlier than the time my alarm was set for. I closed my window and went back to sleep. What else would I do anyway except brood and smoke and brood and smoke? All incentives were gone. Classes were cancelled on Monday. We all met one last time on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday were thunderclaps that sent most of my classmates skittering back to the safety of their holes in different states, different countries. Wednesday was long, Thursday was longer. Yesterday was an eternity. Monotony upon monotony. And the flood of news … couldn’t escape it, not when there was nothing better to do, nothing else to do. Maybe there were better things to do, but in light of everything, I couldn’t recognise what those better things were. Maybe I did recognise them, but in the blinding light of it all, I couldn’t summon the will to do them.

Walking out of the building was a gamble, and I wasn’t a gambler. Regardless of the level of risk, I wouldn’t step out if I didn’t have to, but I needed stuff, so I did. The streets didn’t seem to care all that much. They coughed, sneezed and spat like they had done six months ago, six years ago. What virus? Although, some people and their children had their masks on. I didn’t. Pharmacies and other stores had run out of them days ago, run out of sanitiser too. I went into a grocery store. Customers stood in queues; the shelves were emptying. They didn’t have what I needed. I exited, spending no longer than three minutes in there. I pushed the door open with my knuckles and returned. I would simply have to ration what was left in the kitchen cupboard.

I look at the time. It is half past five. The Friday that could’ve been drifts into my mind. I can almost hear the squeaking of my rubber sole against the waxed floor of the museum as I would wander along, moving from paintings to photographs to sculptures; dressed up, hopeful. There wouldn’t be many people, but I wouldn’t have found her yet. She wouldn’t have found me yet. I would’ve waited till the end of the evening. Closing time, I would’ve seen her, one of the few stragglers, spending twice as long as anyone on one piece of art. She would’ve seen me, smiled, waved. I would’ve smiled and waved back. We would have talked, walked out of the museum together. Dinner. Numbers. The Friday that could’ve been.

The museum was closed yesterday. I checked. My Friday was cancelled. Life was cancelled.

Even as early as Monday, I knew things wouldn’t go as planned. They cancelled the course, which had just fifteen days left to go. Three years of wanting to get into it, three years of procrastination. Maybe I am served right. A lesson. They’d stood in front of us, solemn. We knew what they were going to say before they said it. Effective immediately. It was affective alright. But what could be done about it?

Nobody wanted to leave that day. We hung about, pushing back lunch. We took pictures, we shared stories, we shared fears, hopes, wishes. Wishes – there were a lot of them. A week ago, and they could easily have been plans. I felt sorry for them all, and for myself too. My Friday plan was degrading into a wish.

Tuesday afternoon, the last time we would all see each other, I preponed my flight – third of April to twenty-fifth of March. It didn’t seem too far away then. Now, three days … three weeks, it feels equally far away. It’s hard to imagine that I had been sitting with a room full of mates, surrounded by books, exactly where I wanted to be, doing exactly what I wanted to do. All that surrounds me now, apart from the twilit breeze and the cigarette smoke is an inescapable gloom.

I stub my cigarette and dropped the butt into the ashtray. The person in the next building is coughing again. I feel the urge to cough too, but I resist. The feeling is akin to wanting to jump when standing on the edge somewhere high. I eye my pack for a few seconds before I take another cigarette out, the last one in it. Might as well just finish it. Maybe I should stop after this. I have another unopened pack, but I could throw that away. Out of sight, out of mind. ‘Cancer sticks’, a friend once said. But if the worst comes, what difference does it make?

I light up my last cigarette. I think of her, of the museum, of the music, of that Friday a week ago that now feels like years ago.

The cab finally arrived at fifteen to five. We were later than I would’ve liked. The museum walkthrough was supposed to start at five. With traffic, it would take at least twenty minutes to get there – a generous estimate.

We got there at half past five. The walkthrough had already begun, so we wandered on our own. The place was more than I expected. I hadn’t been to as many museums as I would’ve liked, but you always more or less knew what to expect when you visited one. My annoyance at being late was soon forgotten as I lost myself in the absorbing world on display, documenting the life and history of the city, of the people that lived in it, and those that made the city.

I lingered at each artwork as my companions moved on from one to the next, wanting to cover the place inside and out before the live musical performance by a purportedly great local band began. They were the reason we were there. But it was hard to tear myself away from those cityscapes, those colonial structures, from those candid closeups of Tagore, of Ray.

The band, in the courtyard, began their soundcheck as I was making my way up the stairs to the first floor. The walls along the stairwell were lined with black and white photographs of the city and the people in it, through history. I thought I’d spend more time with them on my way down.

The lights were dim in the last room that I entered after exploring whatever else the floor had to offer. The works on the walls were lit up from tiny spotlights hanging from the ceiling along the centre of the room, the metal frame stretching from one end to the other. There weren’t many people in there. I stepped in, and at the other end of the room, I saw her. She had her eyes fixed on an etching, bending forward a little, small notepad and pen in her hands and a small bag hanging off her shoulder. The few people in the room moved around and about her, conversing, only casually interested in what the walls offered, and she seemed not to notice them at all.

I moved, slowly, starting from one corner, inward, distracted, mind torn between two interests.

I ignored the texts from my companions asking me where I was, telling me the band was getting ready to begin. I was on the cusp of something much more interesting than a bunch of musicians I’d never heard of three days ago, playing songs I’d never listened to. I put my phone away and moved on.

Faint music and voices on the microphone invaded the quiet of the room. The rest of the people filed out steadily, talking about this and that, presumably to head down to the courtyard. She was alone, facing a charcoal drawing of a village woman carrying a child on her back in the foreground, a dreary village road behind. The frames held less of my interest as I closed the distance between us. But just when I was about to take the last few steps, two women entered the room and called her, telling her the performance would begin shortly. She did not seem interested. Instead she beckoned them in and told them to look at what she was looking at.

Her two friends entered after some protest and stood with her and pretended to have the same interest in the charcoal as she did.

I spent a minute longer than I thought was natural, whatever natural was, on a sketch in front of me, and then I moved past them. They were still in the same spot. She was doing the talking. It was hushed and I couldn’t make out what she was saying.

My phone rang. I decided not to take it.

They seemed to have hardly moved when I was nearing the exit. Time seemed to both pass slowly and quickly in that moment, but I knew I couldn’t linger on much longer without seeming strange, not that I thought they were paying me any attention, even though I hoped, or wished, she might have, at least to a degree.

Just as I finally exited the room, I heard one of the women telling her to come down when she was ready.

In the stairwell, I waited, determined now. The two women passed me, their heels clacking against the marble steps and echoing, merging with the amplified voice of the emcee in the courtyard thanking everyone for coming out tonight and being a part of the beautiful event.

Eventually, she emerged from the landing above me. She made her way down the stairs, looking at the photographs I was staring at without seeing much.

Her hair was beautiful. Her dark curls flowed down past her shoulders and they hung in the air as she bent forward, her riveted gaze fixed upon one of the photographs. She scribbled something in her notepad. I took two steps up and, praying that I wouldn’t startle her or present myself as something untoward, told her I liked that photograph.

‘It’s intense,’ she commented. The photograph was of the faces of a group of men, young and old, ‘criminals’, with dry, dark and calloused skin, looking at the lens through rusted bars metal. ‘I wonder what’s on their minds. Knowing you’re living numbered days couldn’t be as calming as this photograph kind of makes it seem.’

I had no answer to that. I simply agreed with her, and then added, almost as an afterthought, that photographs convey different emotions than reality does. I didn’t know if that was true, or what I actually meant by that, and hoped I didn’t sound like I was reaching for it. She nodded, her eyes hardly straying from the sombre faces in front of her, and said, ‘I agree. And taken out of context, some of them have their own stories. Independent from everything.’

She moved on to the next one silently, and a few seconds later, she wrote something down in her notepad again. I asked her what she was writing. She said she was making notes of her favourites.

We descended, step by step, spending as much time on one photograph as the next, while the band began with a melodious acoustic song, their female lead’s soulful voice carrying through the empty hallways and stairwells, accentuating the warmth that was blooming in my heart and spreading to every sinew in my body as our conversation flowed.

There were no more stairs, no more photographs, and I learnt that she wanted to be a mathematician, that she’d only just handed her thesis in, that she was back about a week after four years studying in London and that she missed home, that she loved sculpting and welding, that that museum was one of the best she’d been to, and she learnt as much about me. She then told me she would be back next Friday, less for whatever event that was going to happen and more for the unexplored parts of the building, and she asked if I was going to visit again. I told her I would, to explored the unexplored parts of the building, and maybe we could together.

‘I’m Vanya, by the way,’ she said, and offered me her hand.

I shook it and I told her my name.

We went out into the multicoloured courtyard together. Music filled the air. People were rocking, some were clapping. Her friends found her, and they wanted to move to the front. She told me she’d see me at the end.

I hardly heard the music, but at the same time, the music moved me like no other music had done before.

At the end, she saw me. We were outside. I was waiting for her. I wanted to get her number but she was in a hurry. Her cab was waiting for her and she was with her friends who insisted they had to leave. We hurriedly said it was very nice meeting each other. She waved bye to my companions and I waved bye to her companions.

And she said, ‘Next Friday?’

I replied, ‘Next Friday.’

Yesterday was Next Friday.

I stub out my cigarette halfway because I feel a bad cough coming. A gust blows in and I feel a chill riding up my body.

Lights are now on in the grey buildings surrounding me, and the western horizon has turned a faint purple. Not long now before dusk becomes night. Not very long at all.

The person coughing in the next building starts up again. I take a deep noisy breath, but I have to hold to prevent myself from coughing as well. Four more nights, three more days, I think. On the fourth day I will be home. I think of her. I wonder where she is, how she is; I wonder how many days until I see her again, if I will ever see her again. I wonder if she’s counting days as well. What is she counting down to?