In a Strange Room: Three Journeys Page 0,55

broken every promise you made, you’ve broken our trust in you. This wasn’t supposed to be a holiday, you were supposed to be working on yourself, now look what’s happened. I’m taking you to Bombay tomorrow and sending you home.

The anger is real but the words are a bluff, even as he speaks he knows that he can’t follow through. This is high season, the flights are very full, there is almost no chance she’d get a seat. But even if it could be arranged he can hear the nagging aunt in himself again, how churlish and unreasonable it sounds, sending her home two weeks early for puffing on a joint.

She weeps like a child, but his heart stays closed to her, the reserves of empathy are running out. When this raw exchange is over both of them feel empty, and it’s still in a state of hollowness the next morning that he decides to make her an offer. No drugs of any kind, except those that have been prescribed for her, and only one drink a day. Any deviation from this agreement and he will carry out his threat. Is it a deal, he asks.

Her numb face nods slowly. It’s a deal.

Shake on it, I say, and we clasp hands. This is not a renewal of friendship, it’s a formal gesture of commitment, a contract that binds them both. But it feels as if he’s claimed a victory, however small, over the bad other person inside her.

They go on to Madurai, where there is a spectacular temple he imagines she might like to photograph. He’s seen the temple and all the other stops on their journey before, he has planned this route only for her, he wants to give her an enjoyable time and distract her from herself. But an increasing desperation underlies this enterprise, nothing holds her attention for long. She rushes through the temple and almost immediately falls into frenzy again. This is making me depressed, she says, let’s go somewhere else. They visit a flower market and move on to a museum, but the effect is the same. Eventually he can’t take it any more. I can’t run around like this, he says, you go where you want to, I’ll meet you at the station later.

They are booked on an overnight train to Bangalore. They have left their luggage at the station cloakroom that morning, and when he meets her there in the late afternoon she’s repacking her rucksack and crying. We have to talk about what’s happening between us, she says. I don’t have anything to say, he answers wearily, and for the first time this is true. There is a fatal coldness in him towards her by now, he makes murmurous gestures of support, but his heart is vacant and she knows it. For some reason this tiny incident undoes her, she cries and cries without stopping, while he stares into space. He is just very tired, too tired to comfort her right now, perhaps tomorrow he will be strong enough again, and this is a crucial difference between them, he thinks in terms of tomorrow and the day after that, but for her there is only now, which is eternity.

Even on the train she continues to cry. Then she seems to reach a point of resolution and pulls herself together. She takes out her rucksack and starts her rummaging around. None of this is unusual, until she suddenly turns to him with panic in her eyes.

What is it.

My pills, she says. They’re not here. They’re gone. Somebody’s stolen them.

What do you mean, they must be there, look again.

She’s unpacking the rucksack now, the whole carriage is watching the scene. No, they’re not here, somebody’s stolen them, and she glares around wildly as if the culprit is right there.

The absurdity of the idea only strikes me by degrees. Who would steal your medicine, Anna. What would be the point.

I don’t know, but. Then her face changes shape as something else occurs to her. Wait. No, I remember now. I took them out at the station while I was packing my bag.

You left them there.

I think so. In the cloakroom.

They stare at each other, while the tremendous mass of the train rushes on, every click of the wheels putting more distance between Anna and the medicine that has been holding her life together. This is a disaster, and the knowledge spreads across her face in a fresh upwelling of tears. Oh my God what will