Indian Tears

Touring India was not going to change her life. Winning the $20,000 for the trip had already changed it: she felt lucky for the first time in two years. When it was all right to travel, she’d go to India for laughs. The airline laid no conditions on the tour prize-winner except that the flights had to be Sydney/Delhi and every cent had to be spent in India. Fantastic: she wasn’t after anything cultural or meaningful, it would be one long blast. So the destination wasn’t going to change her—she could have entered a competition for anywhere.

Aman of course would say that it was an Indian prize she’d entered for, so deep down she’d been seeking not so much good fortune as something from India; but he used to do that kind of thing too often—open those eyes and manipulate the hell out of her soul. No, she was capable of recognising a pure, no-strings piece of luck when it fell into her lap.

Aman’s auntie, who lived just down the road, was prepared to give Susan a few tips about this first trip overseas without breathing a word to anyone, especially not Aman. Auntie said Aman lived in Calcutta now—a city not that tough to avoid, surely.

The little book appeared that morning on the doorstep, just as Susan left for Auntie’s place. She nearly stepped on it. She felt annoyed because she was in a hurry but she brought it inside because it looked vulnerable lying there, not to mention untidy.

It had a lovely soft black leather cover and seemed new so she didn’t fan through it, she opened it delicately to the first page in case there was a neighbour’s name and she could return it pristine.

There was no name and the gorgeous linen-white pages were not numbered.

The first and second page were just white, but the third had writing on it.

The handwriting was Aman’s.

The pages

[Square brackets contain thought balloons by Susan]

• White

• White

• 4 April 2019 met Susan

[True but it was like just a quick eye contact amongst friends.]

• 5 April saw her again

• BIG night at Robbie’s

[True except at Mimi’s to begin with. But ok big, yeah. This happened at end of April, so there’s no method to these entries. Typical.]

• We went on the harbour. I asked Susan the question about closing your eyes and imagining coming to water and how she’d get over it, what would she do, she said she’d step over it. Whoa! Question is secretly about love. Whoa! Exact opposite of expectation—thought she’d say an ocean and she’d save up to go on a cruise.

• Of course this means she thinks love is narrow, like a creek. Or a gutter. She can take care of it in one stride. When over it, what to do—move on?

• Stupidly went into all this today over the phone. She just laughed. Couldn’t read the laugh because I didn’t see it—need the eyes.

• She tried to tell me the weather’s warm enough to go to the beach. In JUNE? I went with her because the water is freezing so we’d spend the whole time on our towels. Embarrassing, embarrassing, and we got told to move on by a concerned man with a house near the sand.

[True and quite funny.]

• Got her into bed last night after I persuaded her to watch Kal Ho Naa Ho at my place because it is one screaming ocean of emotion and the hero has my name. She was super excited about the music and the dancing. I knew it was a risk because I usually cry in KHNH and I didn’t want her to see that, but I needn’t have worried—too shocked watching her laugh. I DIED ON SCREEN and she was MASSIVELY UNMOVED. Afterwards she started making fun of all the weeping and I threw myself on her just to shut her up.

[Hang on a minute. Let’s count. They cry when they say they’re in love, they cry when they pretend they’re not. They cry when they can’t marry, they cry all over their elaborate costumes, jewellery and makeup before, during and after the day when they do marry. There is a forgiveness scene played by three generations of weeping women, and a deathbed scene when a little girl in tears accepts a marriage proposal delivered with quivering lips and faltering breath by a man who pretends to bring happiness to everyone’s lives but has just poured a torrent of sorrow over them all. That said, it was the most beautiful and dangerous night and if I hadn’t been so utterly sold on Aman I’d have fallen for Shah Rukh Khan FOR EVER and where would that have got me. Like nowhere. Like now.]

• Susan agrees that the scene with the little black book, a clever pinch from Cyrano de Bergerac, is a classic—a classic classic? She made me replay it. I had to borrow the DVD again from Auntie.

• White

• White

• White

[Except on second glance there are words thinly inscribed in white-out. The words on each of these three pages are WHITE NIGHT. No comment.]

• August ҉

• September ҉

• October ҉

• Is it just sex that she wants? She’ll never talk about the future. I mentioned this to Robbie today and he asked me what the fuck I was complaining about.

[No comment. It’s beneath my dignity, really.]

• Our skins love each other. Mine coffee, hers cream. Our eyes sometimes brown and sometimes blue. Our hearts are purple.

• We study together, her place or mine. The doorsteps are the same, sacred.

• I enter her family house with honour and don’t have to bend and touch her father’s feet. There are no barriers. If I wanted her for ever I don’t believe her Dad would say her nay, he worships her. He’s hosting the family to Lord Howe Island for Christmas and if she pushed for it they’d invite me too.

• No invitation.

• No invitation.

• No invitation.

• Summer without sex looms on my horizon.

• I haven’t begged to go to Lord Howe Island. She hasn’t even noticed my excruciating restraint.

• Drastic moves required. If not she’ll spend December in Lord Howe, take one stride back over the Pacific and me in January and I’ll drown in her wake.

• OK doing the love thing is drastic but if I don’t make her love me I’m going to lose her, simple as that.

• Doing love. Hadn’t foretold quite the level of pleasure.

• This whole groove is amazing. Amazing. [Bastard.]

• Am seeing Lord Howe as a gigantic phallus. Lingeshwara, it’s me or you.

• I’ve been using the tropes, can’t help it. Fingertips lifting hair back. Murmurs against her throat. Holding her gaze. I haven’t said love and she’s not saying it back but speaks with her eyes. Oceans.

• Whoa. The last night before she flies to Lord Howe is at Mimi’s tomorrow and Susan goes straight home to her Dad’s after dinner because the flight’s early next day. What is going on? Did she engineer this, so we have NOT ONE SECOND alone before she leaves? The frustration is epic. The fear. Never thought she could drive me this far.

• Black [That is, a page with a thick black diagonal cross in the middle]

• Gone for ever, for ever, for ever

• Black

• Black

Susan stopped turning the pages. She closed the book. She flicked her thumb savagely across the edges. The final pages were all black. She threw the book across the room and it skittered like a scared magpie-lark into a corner.

She relived the dinner at Mimi’s. There were other friends there but she had hardly looked at them. She’d just watched Aman’s face across the table, loving the beauty of it. But love, even at the height of its ecstasy, was the cruellest thing in the world when she couldn’t tell whether he was making love or making it up.

If he’d said love she would have asked Daddy at the last minute to take him with them to Lord Howe, and then Christmas, summer and the rest of her life would have flowed into their natural shape. But he wasn’t going to pronounce the word. Far from it. That night at Mimi’s, whenever he met her gaze his lips pressed together and his eyes glittered as though he were peering at her against the light, from a great distance.

Well, the black book had all the evidence: she’d been right to hesitate, to suspect, to doubt, to not commit. He’d used every trick in a calculated repertoire to play her his way. He had wooed her, Bollywood style.

Mimi was surprised Aman wasn’t doing the holiday with Susan. ‘I thought you guys were going together!’ Mimi stared across at Susan and then aside at Aman. ‘How are you going to cope with being apart? You’re just about joined at the hip!’

Aman grimaced and Susan didn’t think he was going to answer. But he put his elbow on the table and rested his chin on the heel of his hand, looked at the table and said, ‘Wrong, Mimi.’ The tone was ironical but not unkind. ‘We can never really be together. I try, but nothing works.’ He looked sideways at Mimi’s startled expression. ‘When you’ve made all the classic moves and they’ve all failed, what’s left?’ He avoided looking at Susan; his eyes, fixed even more intently on Mimi, were fathomlessly dark, mournful. ‘If she doesn’t feel love …’ There was an uneven intake of breath and his lips quivered as he said softly, ‘There’s nothing to be done.’

The whole room was speechless. Everyone saw with horror that his eyes gleamed with tears. He blinked and a teardrop welled over and ran down the side of his little finger where it lay against his cheek. ‘And crying doesn’t mean a thing.’ He closed his eyes and instantly his cheeks were wet, gleaming. ‘She doesn’t believe in Indian tears.’

Susan got up, just as she had that night, and left the room.

She wanted to run and run but she went into her garden and took deep breaths. He’d made her a slave to his body. He’d manipulated her. The worship, the tenderness, the gestures of love, the final mocking tears, had all been outrageous lies. She had been right never to see him again, never to contact him.

Then she went back inside and picked up the book.

She smoothed it flat. She opened it again and reread it.

When she got to the black pages she examined them one by one, hating them, wishing each time that there would be an end to the story, not just another cross.

It came on the penultimate page.

• All that time I was trying to stop Susan from leaving me behind, I played every love card that I held, but I never said I loved her—because I couldn’t bring myself to lie to her. But love was the shocking truth. I realised it at Mimi’s when I was about to play the last, desperate card. I loved her. The tears were true. I loved her—but it was too late. The tears were true—but they could never move her. I had to let her go. I stayed at the table and wept without being able to say another word until Mimi got fed up and sent me home. I have made it impossible for Susan to believe me, but I will always love her.

With the book in her hand, Susan rushed out of the house and ran down the street to Auntie’s door.

Aman opened it and she burst into tears.