I have been thinking about you. I know
that you are not. But, you see, if he has
gone anywhere, I must think it is you
he has gone to.
I ask, therefore, that you meet him, give him
a cup of tea, and take him for a walk
through your best sunshine and high lands. Let him
tell you, for he loves to make friends and talk
to them, let him tell you, as you walk,
about the time he heard my mother shout
from outside their tent and jumped out
into the cold grass and colder wind and
stood there freezing, seeing Pahelgaon breaking
into gold, but shivering
for quite another reason.
Or he may tell you of the time we went
for a stroll that morning in Puri by
the silver coast of the silver sea in
the silver light of the young sun.
I took my camera, which was really
his camera, and he took
his younger daughter’s seashore-warm hand. I watched
as the two set out hand in hand and matched
the rhythm of the sea wave for footstep
to footstep for wave and edged closer
and closer to the water until the
sea felt that enough
was enough
and came up in one delicious surge and
licked them wet and salt and
as the water ran from them they glittered
as silver as the morning
they stood in.
Or he may tell you of things I cannot
imagine and only he and you know
of. He would tell you them as he would wend
time telling old tales to an old friend.
Walk with him. There is rhythm and spring and
stories in his step. You will see. Only
walk with him.
Dying was new to him, and he was not at
all sure how and not at all sure when and how
to go about it.
Not sure, even at the last, that he even
wanted to go about it.
You will tell me (will you tell me? are you
listening?) that such a thing cannot be,
and I am wrong, because it cannot be.
But I always think of him as a young
father. Like I grew up, and he did not.
Like he is always the man who swung
me on his shoulders or hung
me off his arms or walked with me
and walked with me
as one day when I was eight I stubbornly
tried to follow one of the oldest rivers
of the land to its youngest moment
as it fell away from a glacier
and became water.
But back in the day, when he really
was a young father, and I really
thought you were, he used to sing a
song all the time.
There is joy going through the world.
It overflows the earth all
day and all
night and passes into the sky. The sun and
the moon drink of it.
Why do you sit, then, lost in yourself?
Open your eyes and your heart and
look around you to see
how small our griefs can be.
Only fill up your life with love.
There is joy going through the world.
Only fill up your life with love.
A writer of great loneliness but greater
love and music wrote this song many years
ago. It was good poetry, but that
poet, and he was of the best,
had done better. I did not see
why this should be
the song my father should keep singing
again and again, as if the words had
magic for him—or did he make magic
of the words? My mother explained, suddenly
setting aside her long work day
and falling into the woman who had
fallen in love with him
and married him
against all advice and interdiction
from family and friends, that he loved
this song best. Then, as if to explain,
she simply said again,
he loved this song best. There is joy rushing
through the world, he went, and I went along
with him, for how could I doubt the sense when
he picked up the words and the tune and the
joy in his voice and just as if to make
his point at the end of the refrain,
picked up me and whirled me round and flew me
down and pecked me on the cheek, bristly moustache
and all. I tried to wipe the itch from the
bristle off. At which he went for a peck at
my other cheek. I gathered my crayons
together and got up and fled. There were
other songs too, many others, but this
one very often. I heard it when he
was in the same room as I was, when he
was in the next room,
and soon,
when he was nowhere close by at all.
His mother visited him the day after
we came home and the day before he died.
Back in the day, when he had no children
and his parents had four, and all of them
growing up in one small room stuck suddenly
in the middle of a crumbling building
in Calcutta stuck in the middle of
the century and they, his parents, did
not know how they would feed four mouths, he used
to sit, I am told, on a swinging door
and while his day away watching the big
world going about its work and his known,
smaller world coming in and going out
through his perch of doorway. Until
the boys from across
the street called, and he gathered
up his shirt and was gone. The
game lasted hours and hours and
he came home with the evening and with a
hunger that would not keep in his little frame.
His mother visited him the day after
we came home and the day before he died,
and the two were the same day.
Stairs are difficult for her now, and anyway
I had thought that this, of all things, she did
not have to see. She had the stories, and
I thought they were enough, the stories, and
we would live with them. Stories of nineteen
forty-seven and three years after and
the forty days and forty nights before
they came to the city in their old land
but new country. Of him at her
breast through days of homelessness but also
discovery in the unfamiliar,
familiar
city they would make their own.
His mother visited him the day after
we came home and the day before he died.
She climbed the stairs, slowly, the stairs that he
had built and up which we had last night
carried him up, because he could not walk
anymore, she climbed the stairs, and came to
sit by him on the bed.
She stroked his head
and stroked his head
and prayed.
She hadn’t anything to say that I
heard. Just the name she has for you, over
and over
and over.
I looked
at her as she looked
at him for a long time. He used to call
me mother, do you know? Is that not a
strange thing for fathers
to do—call their daughters
mothers?
I am no mother yet, though I had wanted
badly to give him what life I could, and
have him live, I am no mother yet.
On this day, I was looking at one. She,
my father’s mother,
the mother to his infancy and boyhood
and youth and fatherhood,
my father’s mother
found somewhere in the vast oblivion
that pressed upon the world and nearly stopped
my breath right there, something to say blessings
with. Called you by the name she has for you,
and gave back her son. I looked at her, not
believing a word of it, and all the
words she said was your name, and I did not
believe a word of it. But if you had
heard her (did you? for she was speaking to
you, you know?) you would have known what she was
giving, giving
up, giving
back.
I know you think you know,
and that you know
there is little to our poor round world anyway.
But she made him just as you did, and she
called your name and blessed him and gave him back
to you. So, you see,
I have been thinking about you. I know
that you are not. But if he has gone
anywhere, I must think it is you
he has gone to.
Listen to him. He is always making
plans. And he speaks with love and yearning
even when you think he must be past
it all. Listen to him.
When they still thought they could do something
about it, and we still thought I could do
something about it, and I still thought I
could go back to thinking you were, they
gave him medicines
and advice and more medicines
and he still raved far into the night, and
would not sleep. I tried to tell you how he
could not sleep. Until one day they said they
had no more help for him. They kept the straps
and the medicines but took away the hope
and left him to go ungently into
the good night, for what else could they do,
with his raving.
But come the night, when the doctors
were gone and the nurses were gone
and the medicines were gone
and only the restraints
remained,
and I did,
we talked
and he told me of all the travels he
had planned and would surely go. Not long, now.
I listened. Sometimes, when I wept, and he
knew I was there, he reached for my hands and
took them in his
and said that all would be well,
and I must not cry
and he would tell me why
for did I not want to listen about
this place he had heard of (from a friend, he
said), and where we would surely go. Not long,
now. I listened, my head in my hands
in his hands.
Surely, I thought, in a journey that would
never happen, anything was allowed?
And I said yes to everything. Green fields
in a huge bowl between white mountains
against blue skies. Deep light. A river. Not
yet seen, but heard. A river. A long walk
broken by a sleep on a rock
warmed with the sun’s day. Endless day. Wheeling
stars. More day. My mother feeling
his hand. Grassflowers. The scent of pine.
A flatbread just removed from the iron
grill and so hot
that the butter does not
stay on it but runs and soils our clothes so
that we must eat it quickly. Woodsmoke. Sun
light on red rhododendrons. Hot, sweet milk
tea. My mother, in a blue dress, ahead.
At the end of a long walk’s day, a bed.
He was caught between the above and the
below, he said, and felt terribly
responsible for it all. If he took
his mind away from it, even for an
instant, the sky would part from the earth and
did I really wish for such a thing to
happen, and would I please therefore not
disturb?
I said yes to everything. Soft sunlight
on his bare arm. Sunlight on his closed eyes.
Waking up. Leaving. Leaving again.
My sister and I setting out. She in
red, in blue, I. Setting out so he could
follow and know the trail from our footsteps.
Fireside. A dark gray (or was it green?)
jacket. Cold water, as much water as
he wanted to drink. A terrible thirst
made sweet by the sweetness of the water
that quenched it. The silence of grass growing.
Night. A moon and a wait. The rest of lying
down encircled in a pair of arms. I
said yes to everything. although he
was desperately listening,
and no longer listening,
for an answer.
He asked for water. I gave it to him.
He emptied the glass and looked into it,
turned it around and turned
it upside down. Looked
deep into it. He could not make it
out, he said. They had told him that it he
drank it all, it would fill up again. He
could not make it out, he said, that
the glass was empty. Only one way to
fill the glass up, he said. To drink it all.
Did I know why the glass was empty?
I said yes to everything.
He talked about the sound of the sea.
Back in the day, when he really was a
young father, and I really thought you were,
his work took him to a young town
where the land cliffed over the
green waters. He had a house, and around
the house a garden and in the garden
a neem tree. We climbed it, we
swung off it, we slept on its branches, and
we ate, with absurd delight, its
bitter leaves. He cooked for us, and kept home
for the months we would spend with him. In
the months we did not, he wrote us letters
of the sea,
and of the neem tree,
and of the shadow it cast dappling the
sunshine in his room. He would lie in bed,
he said, and the tree would make dreams for him,
because it made play of the light, and broke
it into green and dark and the sea made
the sea-sound at his window. What was a
sea-sound, I asked, in the painful slowness
of my young writing, and the terrible
stretch of the time it took for my letter
to reach him. I started to check for his
letter the day after I posted mine.
And many years later, as it seemed to
me, there was an envelope, and I knew
just from looking at it that it had the
sea-sound in it. It was, he said, the sound
of someone calling that you wanted to
meet, and were dreaming about,
and in the dream, too,
they were calling you.
That was the sea-sound. And it only worked
when the sun and the tree played in the wind
rising from the sea.
I said yes to everything.
Listen to him. There is always yearning
in what he says. Listen to him.
Who knows but you may discover some
magic in the world you made, after all.
His mother visited him the day after
we came home and the day before he died,
and the two were the same day.
The day ended. As one day it had as we drove
beside the river and over the bridge
across the river that had flowed thousands
of miles over the land and was now near
the sea. Back in the day, when he really
was a young father, and I really thought
you were, we made a young pilgrimage, the
four of us, to the huge snowbound mouth of
this river. My sister barely three. And
I young enough that I thought I should walk
forever as long as the river
grew younger
beside me and at night dissolved into
a thousand thousand stars supporting the
mountains around. At night, when the walk
caught up with us, and the cold of the high
places, he sat us down and to make sure
we ate well before the next day’s walk, broke
into stories. Did I think it was a
river and mountains I was among, then?
How if he told me it was a great god
with great unkempt hair with the crescent of
the moon stuck in it, and the river a
flow of mazy wandering from out his
locks into the great land the great god stood
upon? How if he said the river
was a mother who looked after a
thousand thousand lives every day on that
great land? How if he told me that at this
moment, there was the river almost a
mile wide where it was getting ready to
meet the sea, and along the banks, all the
way of her journey, there were those who drank
of her, prayed to her, grew their grain with her,
and at the last, brought to her their dearly
beloveds so she would take them with her
to the sea? I didn’t hear any more, for
the smoke of the campfire grew curling to
touch the stars that held the mountains and I
remember only that he held me warm
(though did he really, do you know? for I
think I saw him then holding my bundle
of sister. And I think I remember
both him and my mother walking out to
the river’s dark noisome shore and entering
my eyes as they came silhouetted by
its dark light silken glow), that he held me
until the last light left the sky and the
day ended entirely on stars. And the
day ended many years later as we
drove beside the river and over the
bridge across the river that had flowed
thousands of miles over the land and was
now near the sea, and we talked in the car
about the other day that had ended
under the stars. The day ended now as
one day it had as we drove beside the
river talking about the day we had
ended on the stars.
Hold him as his dearest friend did, at the
last. We kissed him goodnight, this time the
bristle of his cheek on my lips. I kissed
him goodnight, knowing that I kissed him towards
quite another night than opened for us
under the dark green warm summer sky in
the land where our river met the sea, we
kissed him goodnight. But she went to sleep
beside him on his bed, which was also
her bed. Held his hand, held him, although he
may already have been past all holding.
Then, as she slept,
he went to sleep at last. Which woke
her up. Even you can guess the rest. But,
as I was saying, hold him. Hold him and
tell him how all our anger, anxiety,
urgency, and to everyone their own
anger, anxiety, urgency, became
an absurd love that we could finally
do nothing about. That we can do
nothing about. Tell him something that you
don’t really need to tell him, because he
knows and is very smug about already,
but tell him anyway because it will
make him smile.
Tell him he is all ours.
Take me, for instance. One half his, and since
my mother had a friend she loved that she gave
everything to, another half also
his. His to make, love, let go, and love still.
When he slept at last, he was full of
farawayness and a terrible
repose. He slept like a man who falls
asleep after making love and knows
that when he wakes up he will see his
lovemade beside him. And he did, for she
was holding him when he woke up for you.
Hold him like his friend did. When he could still
ask for things, like that glass of water,
he had asked to be held.
Hold him. And he may hold you too. And you
will see what warmth he brings to it. Who knows
but you will find out
what warmth is about
a pair of arms.
Sit down and talk to him. Perhaps over
a sunset, with the clouds beneath you in
the day’s last gold. He never tired, you see,
of the beauty of your world. And almost
against my better judgment, because he
gave me no choice when he gave me his eyes,
I too am still taken in.
Sit down and talk to him. He will have such
things to tell you. Sit down and talk to him.
