Serious Men

Ayyan had seen one morning, many months ago, when she had come with her hair untied and dressed in clothes that seemed to have a purpose. She had come to propose then. Now, there was a deep wound inside her and it showed on her face in a slanted smile. It was a misery that he recognized as a fate of love. He had seen this many times from very close, very close – that perilous distance from where the face of any woman would look ugly, and in the agony of being spurned must quickly choose to either kiss or spit. In the pale rooms of the lodgings where he used first to soften his aspiring wives with caresses, and then bid them a final farewell with a clear head – which is another form of cruelty in love – he had seen this face of Oparna. And that made him grin. At how he had escaped from the treacherous minefields of freedom unscathed, into the safety of marriage. While one of the most intelligent men alive was about to be mutilated.
    Free love, Ayyan knew in his heart, is an enchanting place haunted by demented women. Here, every day men merely got away. And then, without warning, they were finished. The girl would come and say, like a martyr, that she was pregnant, or would remember that all the time she was being raped, or her husband would arrive with a butcher’s knife. Such things always happened in the country of free love. Ayyan Mani had fled in time from there into the open arms of a virgin. But Acharya had fled the other way.
    Oparna found her man exactly the way she had imagined. Acharya was sunk in his massive black chair, his beautiful facestaring in blank confusion, like an infant’s. She sat across the table from him and smiled.
    He asked in a voice that was without force or expectation, ‘Why, Oparna?’
    She made an exasperated face as if she had hoped to talk about more interesting things.
    ‘What did you expect, Arvind?’ she said, almost with compassion. ‘You sleep with me till your wife comes back from her vacation and then ask me to get out of your life.’
    ‘I thought you understood,’ he said, and at that moment, when he said it, he conceded to himself that he didn’t know what he meant by that.
    ‘No, Arvind,’ she said, her words hurried and angry now. ‘I did not understand. And I’ve never understood it when men tell me “it was fun but now we have to get rid of you”.’
    ‘So you do this?’
    ‘Try to understand. All my life, men have humiliated me. I don’t know why but that’s what I remember of men. Then I go mad over an old man. And he too dumps me. I wanted to kill you. I really did.’ She studied her palm and the slender fingers which she thought looked a bit too bony and aged.
    He did not recognize this woman who was sitting in front of him. He felt an excruciating sympathy for her, and then he remembered that it was he who was on the verge of being destroyed. ‘What do we do now?’ he asked feebly.
    ‘We are finished. That’s all. Together. Your reputation is now over. And no one will hire me again,’ she said in an informative way. ‘It’s a mess, Arvind. Even if you scream from the top of the water tank that you are innocent, you’re finished. And there are enough vultures here who want you out. They already know what they must do.’
    ‘So there was nothing in the sampler?’
    ‘Is that what you are worried about? If there were aliens in the sampler? That’s very rude, you know.’
    ‘Tell me, Oparna, was there anything in the sampler?’
    ‘There was nothing in it. Just air.’
    He found it ridiculous that what pained him more at the moment was that the Balloon Mission had completely failed. He turned to the window and tried to accept the shock of the failure. He had the courage to accept the punishment of Oparna, and the wisdom to understand that it is in the nature of love to be disproportionate with both rewards and retributions. But he was shattered by the fact that he had to now forsake the joy and relief of having found aliens in the stratosphere. He suspected that he might not get another shot. And for the first time in his life he understood the fear of a bleak, vacant future.
    He went to the window and stood looking at the calm sea. He felt the presence of Oparna beside him. He did not find it strange that they stood there like that without a word, like an ancient couple who had no need for language. They stared through the window with unflinching eyes, but never before, not even during their first naked gazes in the basement,