Seahorse. Janice Pariat

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      Contents

      Chapter I

      Chapter II

      Chapter III

      Epilogue

      About the Author

       I

      AND SO I BEGIN WITH NICHOLAS’ DISAPPEARANCE.

      The moment I discovered he was missing. I remember like it was yesterday.

      Although perhaps that isn’t an accurate way to phrase it.

      Yesterday may be further away than two years past, than seven, or ten. I can’t recall my supper a week ago, but that morning remains palpable in my memory—like the touch of sudden heat or tremendous cold. It’s a wine I’ve sipped, and sipped so long it colors everything else on my palate.

      It was July, but early enough in the day for the air to still be mild, sunshine glimmering white around the edges, warning of the warmth to come. I’d arrived at the New Delhi railway station at dawn; even at that time clamorously crowded, with hustling coolies and families recumbent on the platforms. I hurried back to my room in the north of the city in a taxi, the roads clear and quiet. Through Old Darya Ganj, along the wide length of Raj Ghat, the pale fury of the Red Fort. Everything, I felt, was touched by unimaginable beauty. After only a quick shower to wash away the grime of a two-day train journey, I headed to the bungalow on Rajpur Road. I was in a hurry, I took the shortcut through the forest. When I reached, the security guard wasn’t at the gate, and the wicker chairs and table on the lawn nowhere in sight. Around the fringes of the garden, flower beds glowed with early-blooming African daisies and hardy summer zinnias.

      I remember, as I walked up the porch, dusty and littered with leaves, how it crept into my heart, a rush of something like love.

      When I tried the door, it opened easily. The bungalow lay still and silent, everything in its place. The dining table set, as though for ghosts, with plates and cutlery, the drawing room tidy with cushions, neatly brushed carpets, an arrangement of dried flowers. I headed straight for the bedroom, expecting to find Nicholas sleeping, tangled in a sheet, dream-heavy. Above him, the patient creak of the fan, swirling. The smell of him in the air, sweet and salty, the tang of sweat.

      He wasn’t there.

      The bed was made in neat, geometric precision. His things—an extra pair of glasses, a fountain pen, a comb—missing from the bedside table. I walked down the corridor to the study; in all my months at the bungalow I hadn’t ever seen it so uncluttered, loose papers swept off the floor, the table relieved of tottering piles of books. I looked for a painting, the one that had stood on the table, of a woman holding a mirror, and it was gone.

      Only when I reached the veranda did something splinter, and it rushed in, the fear that had been waiting in the wings. In the corner, the aquarium, that bright and complete universe, was empty.