Garbo’s Faces

a Novel — Part 24: Departure and Visit

I got the call the following Friday, a little over a week later. It was the 24th of November, a day clearly marked with purple crayon on my wall calendar. And right next to this date: “Arnby Presentation,” in the same purple crayon.

Mr. Arnby was one of my main clients, a textile magnate from Manchester wanting a Frank Lloyd Wrightish cottage springing up from the ground in Essex by his very own stretch of river. I had finished it, all details worked out and organically supporting each other. I was pleased with it, especially with its not so very Frank Lloyd Wrightishness. I was about to leave for the office, and the presentation, when the phone rang.

It was Harriet, too distraught to speak coherently.

“Harriet?” I said.

The handset changed hands at the other end and Mrs. Renshaw came on the line.

“There’s nothing we can do,” she said, and I then knew that Attra was dying.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I am not sure,” she said. “I think it is his liver, or kidneys.”

“But they were okay,” I protested.

“Were, yes.”

Still trying to find my mental footing, “How long?”

“Hours, maybe a day,” she said.

“Can I speak to Harriet, please?”

“Just a moment,” she said. She spoke with Harriet, I could not make out the words, then my mother came on the line.

“Nachiketa,” she said.

“What happened?” I asked again.

“This morning,” she said, “he fell off the radiator.”

“Radiator?”

“He had taken to sleeping on the sitting room radiator, he loved the heat. He fell off it and didn’t move.”

When I didn’t answer, she continued. “I called Ann.”

“Ann?” I didn’t understand.

“Mrs. Renshaw,” she explained. “She came right away, and we brought him down here.”

“Has he said anything?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “He said not to worry.”

“That’s what he said?”

“Yes, not to worry. And that he was sorry.”

“For what?”

“He didn’t say.”

I was too stunned to notice my reflection in the hallway mirror, but it must have been a face drained of all blood, not noticing me.

“Shall I come?” I asked.

“There’s no time,” she said.

I was about to argue that point when I asked myself, instinctively, what would Madhuri do. And Madhuri answered: life goes on. Matter-of-fact wisdom, and a smile.

“Does Madhuri know?” I asked.

“No.”

Still, my impulse was to rush to the airport, find a plane and get to him. And still she smiled back at me, at my anxiety, and said to go on, do your presentation, that’s what I’d do and what Attra would expect.

And as if to give me a hand, Attra chose that very moment to leave. Mrs. Renshaw came back on the line. “He’s gone,” she said.

The man in the hallway mirror sat down on the floor, and out of the mirror’s range. “Gone?” he said.

“Yes,” she said, and her voice conveyed sincere regret.

“Harriet?” I said.

“Just a moment,” said Mrs. Renshaw.

“He’s gone, Nachiketa,” said Harriet.

“You want me to come?” I asked again, different reason this time.

“No,” she said. “I want to be alone. I think I will go home now.”

She didn’t say anything else, simply hung up.

The man in the hallway mirror rose into view again, and replaced the handset, seemingly unaware as yet of the pain seizing the man who was born alongside and who had known Attra all his life.

I struggled with the presentation — better than half of my mind was in New York, with Harriet and Attra — but apparently that wasn’t noticed and the client went away happy, ready to proceed.

Hawkes, who sat in, was very pleased too, but noticed my concern.

“Chin up,” he said, and gave me a fatherly hug. “It went rather well, I think.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “It’s my grandmother.” Under the circumstances that was an ethical lie, I felt, and indeed partially true.

“Some bad news?” he said.

“Yes,” not prepared to discuss it. Hawkes saw that and tactfully left me alone. “Anything we can do,” he said at the door and left it at that.

“Thanks.”

Attra came to me that evening. “You’re hard to find,” he said, in a voice that was icicles shattering as they hit me.

“Attra?” I asked, although knowing it could be no other, but not knowing exactly what I had heard, if indeed anything.

“Why, yes,” he said. Clear as day: here, wholly present.

“How,” I began, as I looked around to find him, but there was no him to find. No scales or fangs or proud hood or tongue smelling the air.

“It’s me,” he said again. “Me.”

And then I had the curious feeling of leaving; no, not London, or my flat, or my body, or maybe leaving is a bad word. Dissolving is probably more like it. As if all things around me, body included, were dissolving as I entered still and bright air. A little chilly.

“Me,” he said again, and though I could not see him — for there was nothing to be seen — I still saw him more clearly than I had ever seen him.

“Attra,” I said again. “Where are we?”

“In-between,” he said.

“Lives?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly I was quite concerned about what I had just left sitting in a chair in London, and this must have been quite apparent. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’ll take care of itself. You’re not done yet.”

“I feel like I have to breathe, like I have to make it breathe,” I said.

“You must ignore that. It is part of the harness. It’ll breathe fine on its own, you’ll see.”

This was indeed easier said than done. I felt like the in and out of air and lungs was such an integral part of me that I could not possibly exist without it. Yet, I did exist in this chilly somewhere, this somewhere in-between. Attra noticed my struggle.

“Just be,” he said. “Here. Be nowhere else. Hear me. Hold on to my voice.”

I did. Though voice is also a misnomer. I held onto him, being his words to me. And holding on, being what he said and being what I replied, suddenly the feeling of lungs was gone. Released.

“Attra,” I said again, for what else could I say?

“Nachiketa,” he answered.

“You died.” It was not a question, nor quite a statement.

“Apparently.”

“But not.”

“Apparently not.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“I died many days ago, in Madanapalle,” he said.

”But,” I managed.

“You try getting hit to bits with a pole, without dying,” he said.

“But you were alive.”

“Not really.”

“But I saw, and the doctors. They said your vital organs had not been damaged.”

“I think that was conjecture, since I was still breathing.”

“How?” I asked, but that wasn’t it. “Why?” I asked instead, that’s what I wanted to know. “Why did you do that? Why, then, did you stay alive?”

“For the Princess,” he answered. “To give her something to care for.”

“You stayed alive for Harriet?”

“Yes,” he answered. “I left, or tried to leave, after the attack, when Madhuri carried me back into the house. But Esh came to me and asked me to stay. When I asked why, he showed me Harriet and her grief, and her wish to restore me. ‘Let her act on this,’ he said to me. ‘Let her care for someone but herself, if only for a little while. It will do her much good,’ he said. And who was I to argue? Her need was obvious, and very strong.”

I looked back at Harriet on the floor of Madhuri’s bedroom, on her knees looking at Attra’s battered, broken and bleeding body, stroking his head in what she hoped was comfort. I could see the need, too. “I see,” I said.

“Did it hurt?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered.

“All the time?”

“They gave me medication at times,” he said.

“That,” I said, “was an amazing thing for you to do.”

“Yes,” said Attra, “it was.” Ever the un-humble.

“And now?” I asked.

“I will visit Esh, and see what he needs.”

“He is Athansor, is he not?” I asked.

“He is Athansor, and also two or three of his favorite monkeys.”

“Manini?” I asked.

“For one,” he answered.

“Will you tell Madhuri?” I asked. I had not had the heart to call her yet.

“I have already told her,” he said.

“So, Attra,” I asked. “Who are you then? Really.”

“I am a speaker of troll talk,” he said.

“As am I,” I said.

He nodded. If a headless once-snake in a nowhere place can nod. It felt like nodding.

“And now?” I asked again, not wanting to let go. Wanting more than anything to stay with Attra, to not-breathe this cool calmness, this brilliant in-between.

“Take care, Nachiketa,” he said. “And take care of the princess.”

“I will,” I said.

And with that, London, my flat, and my body re-solved and I was sitting, breathing quite comfortably, in my living room, hands in my lap, strangers to me for just a second or two, before I picked one of them up and reached for my tea — which had gone cold by now.

© Wolfstuff