A Haunting of Shadows

Copyright © 2010 by Kaiser Jamal.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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CONTENTS

A HAUNTING OF SHADOWS

A HAUNTING OF SHADOWS

Kaiser Jamal

It started with a casual dance at a party at Anna’s. It was just a gathering of her friends and their friends. It began in the middle of a song, but Arnam could not recall which tune it was and whose voice sang the words. Perhaps it was just a line or a note, one of those imperceptible unknowns that ignite a fire, when a light touch of cheeks moves to a brush of lips. No more than that, but in the dim light, from the moment their eyes locked into each other the room swung round like a whirlpool and emptied of people, of ethics, of promises made at the altar. It was just the two of them, and they knew magic had happened. Not a word spoken but their bodies grew softer and pulled closer, and the harmony of movement freed itself from the ambience and created its own music.

A week later, on the night it began she said, I want to be wild and break free.

You have a husband, reminded a fearful Arnam.

I must leave him, she replied.

It startled Arnam into a moment of security. The finality in her voice gave her words a coverlet of steel.

You talk of travel and independence and touching like it should be, Arnam said to Anna. You say your future is in my arms and of an absent past. Do you know how all this is to be?

I must leave him, Anna said quickly, almost before he had finished, firmly laying his questions to rest.

The night had descended its awning and smeared it across the sky. The slamming of a car door cleaved at a mist-laden night. The intractable hum of an airliner ghosted in like man’s retribution against the sky. Most of the homes in the block where Arnam lived had tumbled into darkness. Wearing mischief in intent, it was the time for desires to surface. Not far in the distance a dog barked. It was an apologetic kind of bark as if it knew it shouldn’t. A scented candle in the bedroom floated waves of perfume. A movement of air suddenly played truant and flickered the image of the flame upon the wall.

They stood facing each other with Anna’s mouth lifted ready to join with his. Arnam removed his arms from her waist and placed his fingertips on her temples, anxious that she might move away. But she only moved closer toward him. As they kissed, they fumbled to remove the obstructions that separated their bodies. And when she was naked, he too stood naked. He knelt before her and kissed where it mattered, electrifying her with his lips, preparing her for things waiting to be done. And when at last they made love, Arnam’s hungry hands made love. His eyes made love. His mouth caressing hers made love, and his skin stretched to its limits, seeking total touch. At times she held him with arms that were fragile and yielding and at times fierce with passion. Her clutching fingers dug their nails into his shoulders to pull him deeper within. But there was no need. For if he could, he would have stayed forever inside, clasped tight, secure in her trust.

The small hours crept upon them and caught them unawares much the way as does the pain of the first parting of first love. Built on wine, courage, and strength that had towered only hours before now lay with the dregs at the bottom of a bottle. And senses that only hours ago had danced to perfume shuddered from an acrid smell of cigarette smoke that hung in stillness in the room. The tentacles of tomorrow had drawn in, and Anna slid off the bed, gathered her clothes, and kissed Arnam on the cheek. The assuredness that had firmed her lips on the night’s first kiss had slackened. Arnam could sense her gathering doubt. The steadfastness of reality that had been injured by wine had been restored. The wantonness of passion had given way to sobriety. He knew she couldn’t be there with him all night. It would make her absence from home unexplainable. But how he wished he could open his eyes in the morning to see her and say, I knew you would still be here.

Will you tell him about us? Arnam asked quietly.

No, not yet, she replied firmly.

Then when?

I don’t know.

When will you see me again?

Anna hesitated. He could barely see her face in the pale light. What he saw was strained and unsmiling. As she pulled her clothes upon her, Arnam stared. Bit by bit, but quickly, the warm glow of her body disappeared. She tied her hair in a ponytail and pinned it high above her head. It fell like a fountain around her neck. She looked different to how he had always

seen her.

I don’t know, she replied.

Will you phone me tomorrow and speak to me? he asked. Will you let me know?

I will phone you tomorrow, she replied without conviction.

Arnam looked away, for at that moment everything hit unsure ground. He did not know where to stand. Lovers don’t leave in the middle of the night. Nights may be for lovers, but the mornings were for affection. There was an element missing in the equation. The circle hadn’t had a chance of completion. All of a sudden he felt the futility of it all. Perhaps he did not want her to call and thereby leave the night in memorable isolation. Nor did he want the agony of never knowing when she would next be in his arms. He felt relieved she was about to leave yet longed to reach out, hold her hand, and pull her back toward him. His doubts lasted only a while. He wanted her tomorrow and all the nights to follow. But this was not the time to analyze his conflicts. It was for hiding from reality. Her firm but unequivocal indecision that she would not yet tell her husband had left his tomorrows unmapped. She was right. Tonight, this was the best way to leave things. Arnam kept his eyes on Anna as she hurriedly gathered her last bits and pieces to rush back home, back to her home and husband. He made to get up to see her to the door, but she stayed him with a wave. He heard his front door open. A moment later, a soft considerate click told her she had left. The light in Arnam’s eyes lay trapped in the folds of her dress and left a trail of darkness as the sound of her footsteps clicked into silence.

With Anna and the soft sound of her breath gone, Arnam lay exhausted. A solitary image flickered amongst the reflections on his window. It changed shapes in floating light. Gargoyles perched upon its ledge and sniggered. He peered closely to note that the image was of Anna’s husband who goaded and pushed and laughed at him. She is mine, he whispered. You have been with her for but a moment. Now you know what I have, he said. She is mine to keep, he reiterated. Arnam threw out his legs and shook his head, and the taunting ceased. The shapes scuttled into the depths of his exhaustion, leaving eyes that stared without mirth.

The barking had started again. Sometimes three barks in a row, sometimes two. The single ones were the worst. They were without pattern and made him hold his breath for the next. Later he heard a sharp yelp. He felt a grim satisfaction. He hoped the dog had been kicked hard and deep. Deep into its ribs. The barking stopped. He hoped it had stopped through hurt and pain.

Arnam slipped into sleep, and a scowling sadness wisped and slipped out for the night. A sleeping face was not a hunting ground for its demented pleasures. The curtains remained drawn. There was no one to call for an encore, but the lovers had played their parts well. And while the rapture lasted, the script for the evening of first touch seemed all too true.

But Anna came again, and their secret love flowed. Arnam did not know how she explained her absence to her husband, and he never asked. Perhaps it was fear, perhaps the mention of a husband was anathema, perhaps he was scared to know. She came and made love and more than that, for a few hours once in a while she loved him.

Before his affair with Anna began, Arnam’s days spun around dreams of play, adventure, and conquest. And the greatest of his delights was a roll call on tips of fingers of sensual nights, of names of predatory lovers. Each one an indelible entry traced upon a pleasured mind. But Anna’s touch had become his guide, and his hands, once too careless and without aim, reached to follow her hands; and his eyes, anxious for meaning, followed her eyes. When she sat beside him, she soothed his restlessness as no one had since the days of childhood when his mother would sit beside him to hum old tunes; she could sing so beautifully when she wanted to. Swept gently into a calm, he rolled through the days, persuaded that she cared, that one day she would come and she would stay.

She came to see him in his apartment twelve times in twenty-four weeks. A dozen times in just two dozen weeks. And then her visits were over, and never again did she come again.

It had been a hazy day, the standard type of day everyone waited to pass, hoping for something better the next. Early in the morning the sun had strained to break through the dank clouds, but toward the end of the day you could tell by its demeanor it was past caring. Arnam had spent an hour aimlessly wandering in and out of shops looking for something to buy. He was looking for something cheap that would occupy a vacant space on a bookshelf by a window in his bedroom. Something ornamental, something that stood out from the ordinary, yet cheap that he could buy, feel, and later forget and put away in a drawer stacked full with other such things he had bought before. He mostly liked a couple of small shops, so packed with odds and ends, it seemed half their stock was piled on to the footpath in front. Here they had everything you didn’t need, but they were so cheap, people bought stuff just in case they might do one of these days. Inside these shops two people could never walk past each other. One or the other had to draw in their stomach and press up against one of the aisles to let the other pass. The streets were busy as they always were. Arnam sidestepped a market researcher prodding with paper and pen and crossed the road when in the distance he saw a jangling charity collector, with yet another instant cause, gathering coins in a container and eagerness in her eyes. Sometimes he gave something, for not to was to land oneself with a bucketful of guilt, but today avoidance felt like the thing to do. An hour of window-shopping and not having bought anything, Arnam walked into a bar and asked for a drink. He slid his hand along the long cool glass, wiping off the dew. He watched the dew as it returned. Good, he thought to himself. Cold as it should be served. He had been to this bar once before. With drink in hand, Arnam looked back into the day. Nothing worth recalling happened that day. Just like most other days. Nothing uncommon in that. It suited him fine. Most lives were spent in such a manner. It was just as well the final reckoning of life was not measured in events, or most lives would not be worth its days. Life was not a soap opera, action filled with wall-to-wall emotion, thrusting conversation, and defined actions. Arnam was settled to the way it was. True, it made life a touch dull, but at least it was safe. Excitement ran far too many risks. It wrecked the smooth sobriety of the day.

After a while staring at his drink, Arnam raised his eyes to look around. The lights were turned down low, probably to obscure the crusted blackness of dirt ingrained in the carpet on the floor. In a corner farthest from the bar, by a frosted glass window, the seat on which some vandal had left his slashing mark had been poorly sown back, showing grey thread against a violet velvet cover. It hadn’t even been sown in a straight line. Done by the owner’s wife, on the cheap, thought Arnam. On the wall behind hung a large gilt-framed print of two horses in a meadow. It was probably once an adornment of style. But now against the backdrop of decay it appeared incongruous and in poor taste. There was a small scattering of people, mostly men, but a few stood protectively next to their women while others did the same to their drinks. The emptiness made the place appear larger than it was. In one corner a man locked to a jangling machine with sparkling lights fed coins in symbiotic need. In a secluded part of the bar, a lone player, arched forward, honing up on isolation, missed a pot, and swore angrily over a pool table. Ball snapping on ball, impinging on each other, then springing apart, made sharp clicking noises, loud enough to spread from one end of the room to another. A man at the bar leaned heavily on a woman. He talked loudly to her, perhaps in a bid for importance. She replied in a soft low voice as if hoping to set an example. The louder he spoke, the more whispered became her voice, but her strategy seemed doomed to failure. Feeling uninvolved, Arnam strained an understanding smile. The barman with an expansive grin said something to a customer in a loud Australian accent. Arnam guessed that he would not be in the job for too long. Australians were born to travel, and he was sure to be moving on, probably to another country and behind another bar. Arnam could tell by his hasty movements that he did not bother to clean the rims of glasses the way they should be cleaned. To his left a cold breath, streaming in through a badly fitted window, added desolation yet, by blending the smell of alcohol with a mist of women’s perfume, watered the seed of some kind of promise. It was the kind of place that never seemed to change. It had its own reason for being the way it was, and nothing would be the same were it to be different. Arnam would know the place years from today. The proprietors made a few changes once in a while but not often enough to keep pace with the dilapidation that time wrought.

Not far from Arnam, a man and a woman were seated opposite each other. They spoke once in a while. There was more nodding of heads than words spoken. The lengthy silences in between seemed to reflect the mood of the room. Every now and then the man would look at her as if in inspection. It was just the way he moved forward at times, his arms meeting in hands, focusing them toward her. A nebulous geometry between them suggested togetherness that had lost definition. It was as if the boundary of their closeness had lost shape and fallen into disrepair. The man wore ill-fitting trousers, but his jacket, although rugged, looked smart. He wore a green shirt buttoned at the neck. Arnam never liked too much color in clothing. Color detracted from personality. It camouflaged the real person. The woman wore a plain blue skirt and a white blouse that slipped way below her throat, just past the rim of her breasts. She wore a tiny flower in her hair by the side of her head. They were seated in the darkest part of the room, but a faint bulb shone upon them, sprinkling the flower with light, so it changed hue each time she moved. Arnam met their eyes several times, each time glossing away into a distance. Eventually the man locked on and smiled awkwardly at Arnam. An inviting smile which was perhaps a call for company, a call for help to help his flagging dialogue with the woman. Arnam smiled in return, looked down, and resumed his thoughts. This morning he had almost missed the postman who rang to deliver a parcel. The doorbell had lost its sharpness and turned into a fuzzy buzz. He had checked the batteries and decided he needed new ones. With a groan he realized he should have when he was out shopping. It was getting late now. The shops would be shut. Next time he would add it to a shopping list. Not that long ago he never had a need for lists, a crutch for the forgetful. This morning the pile of letters he received was all useless mail inviting him to buy financial services he did not want. Useless mail was easy to tell by the envelopes. They lacked personality and resembled one another. Yet Arnam always opened each one before vigorously tearing them into strips as if to destroy all traces of banality.

He glanced at the couple again. The man was broad at the shoulders, but he hid his size by drawing his shoulders together. He had a tooth missing on his upper left. It only showed when he smiled broadly. It gave him a raffish look. It drew attention to his face, which Arnam admitted was quite striking. The flaw that drew attention to his good feature served as an embellishment. The woman was much smaller, and when Arnam looked at her carefully, she was pretty. Firm but small shoulders, her hair was slightly wavy just above her forehead. Whenever she smiled, she smiled quickly and then withdrew it as if in denial. Hers was not a smile meant to travel all the way.

Arnam rose to get another drink, and coincidentally the man rose for the same reason. At the bar, he put out a hand.

Come and join us with your drink, he said.

It was an unusually friendly gesture in a city built for seclusion. Perhaps he was drawn to him, for he had looked lonely and lost in the bar. Lone drinkers in bars always elicited sympathy. Hesitant at first, feeling apprehensive, he walked back with him to their table. But he was glad he did. Not that he had a choice. Refusal would have been the crudest of impoliteness.

This is Anna. He introduced the woman who remained seated but reached forward to offer