Love Story: That Obscure Object Of Desire

He arrives tonight. He바카라�s staying the weekend. I am making dinner, although I바카라�m not a very good cook. This time I haven바카라�t bothered with new sheets or sprigs of cut flowers, although I went out and got the whiskey and soda he likes to drink, and cheese and salami and frozen berries, just to have some snacks on hand. And I바카라�m staying in my jeans. I have an idea, or a superstition, that if I prepared too hard it might bring bad luck, and something would happen so he can바카라�t come at all. 

That is what happened the last time we had arranged to meet. He bought flight tickets and I got my hair done and picked up new shoes. But the day before he was to fly out, another doctor 바카라� his colleague 바카라� tested positive for COVID-19. The hospital superintendent said it was terrible luck and he was ashamed to say it, but he would have to fill in for the sick coworker. So instead of getting a taxi to the airport he drove himself to work in the evening as he did five times a week, and I called the restaurant and cancelled our reservation and put away the racy red lingerie I바카라�d hoped to wear. He called and apologised the next day and said that he hadn바카라�t slept, a woman had died from post-chemotherapy complications, and I said I was sorry, too; we could plan another trip in a while. This was true, but I was also relieved, even pleased, that the trip had been aborted by a crisis that had nothing to do with his wife. 

I didn바카라�t ask how he explained to his wife. I try never to think about his wife. He loves her. 

As I cleaned my rooms, I had another thought: such decorous rituals, such elaborate prelude to lovemaking might do well for people in real relationships, a thing I have usually been clumsy and awkward at, something he doesn바카라�t want to become embroiled in just now. He doesn바카라�t like me saying we바카라�re having an affair, or a fling; he finds these terms deprecating. So I try never to think about what might happen to us, either. 

Why do you need to name what we have? Why is it so important?

Oh, you know. I suppose it바카라�s convenient.  

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We had stopped at a rundown little restaurant on the highway 바카라� really one long, low room under a tin roof. He ordered coffee and a woman brought us Nescafe in Styrofoam cups. We sat on a wood bench in the front yard, where a block of daylight illuminated the quiet, stippled the damp, old wildgrass and brush and the woolly little pink and white flowers jutting out of the scrub like joss sticks in their holders. There was nobody else around, and the woman explained that we had stopped by at a good time when the breakfast crowd had left and the lunch fare 바카라� pork slices in gravy and curried beans 바카라� was still cooking. She had time to chat, she said in the rough dialect I followed uncertainly, she would finish making gudok while she talked. She dipped a ladle into the crock of bright green mush she held 바카라� no, cradled 바카라� against her stomach and held it out under a beam of yellow September sun. That was it, that was gudok, she said.

바카라�Try it. You won바카라�t get this so easily outside Tripura.바카라� And, then, 바카라�You aren바카라�t from around here, are you?

No, I said in Bengali, I don바카라�t need 바카라� 

바카라�I바카라�d better get you some rice, this is spicy stuff,바카라� the woman said. 

It was much hotter than I was used to, and an unfamiliar tart tang broke sapid and warm on my tongue with every mouthful. I ate without an appetite 바카라� we바카라�d had fruit and cereal before we left the hotel 바카라� but never mind, he said, spooning up dollops of mush and sticky rice in his businesslike way; we were early for the airport and this might be the last meal we would have together in months. 

We바카라�ve already taken our last walk together, I thought. Had our final round of drinks. Made raging valedictory love.

He was talking to the woman, telling her I was a writer, that I was collecting material for a book on the lives of tribal women in the Northeast. This was very nearly a lie; I was only contributing a chapter for an anthology he was editing (he has worked in government hospitals for a decade, but he바카라�s really a poet.

He runs a small press and publishes two or three books a year.) I had sent in an essay and we had begun to talk, at first, about how it could be edited down to half its length, and then about our political beliefs and our lives. In weeks, I had fallen hectically in love with him, and to my confused surprise, he with me. But there was his wife. She would never divorce him. And he did love her, she was inextricably tied to him, they had shared more than meals and a bed.

Did his friend like it here, I heard the restaurant woman ask from far away. When would the book be printed? Would I keep coming back to Tripura to 바카라� what was it 바카라� gather material? 

#

To make gudok, the woman had said in Kokborok and he바카라�d translated, the first thing you need is a thick, deep round-bottomed pot. This is where the raw ingredients go in 바카라� the chopped bamboo shoots, the snake beans and the onion and the potato, the minced garlic and the pinch of salt, with enough water to cover it all. You let it stew and soften and add berma 바카라� dried fermented fish 바카라� and crushed green chillies to get the full-flavoured, pungent taste. You drain any excess stock and beat the soft mash down to a pulp and serve it with plain steamed rice. The Tripuri people would dish gudok in bamboo pipes, but nobody did that anymore, the woman from the restaurant had said regretfully, wiping her hands on the bleached out rignai she had wrapped around her nightdress, and had retreated to the back of the room, behind a hillock of vegetables she would chop and cook for the evening.

I was going to plate up the gudok I had made in a gold-rimmed blue ceramic bowl. I couldn바카라�t get bamboo shoots or the right kind of fish, so I had used broccoli and asparagus to give the dish to some body and put in cubes of boiled basa. And I slit the chillies instead of squashing them in. I took the bowl and a hand mixer and went to the window which looks down into the street. I saw him push the gate open and walk into the compound. 

Carrying flowers. Long-stemmed roses, red or dark pink. I바카라�d have to trim the stalks to put them in my water glasses. I didn바카라�t own a real vase. 

He stopped and crouched. Probably he바카라�d dropped something. 

But no. He바카라�s bending low over the rear-view mirror of a car somebody hasn바카라�t bothered to park right. Half the bonnet is jutting into the driveway, and he바카라�s looking in the mirror and running his fingers through his hair. 

Preening. He has a mop of heavy curls, crinkled like the edges of clouds in children바카라�s drawings. 

Then he was upstairs. A rush of overflowing relief. A sapping of strength, a tremor in the tips of my fingers. Immobilizing. Like the furtive dulling of some chronic pain. 

And the ache returning in deep, friendly stabs as he made his way inside me. You whore, he murmured. He flicked his tongue against my nipple. Hungry. All het up. 

바카라�Whore whore ho ho ho,바카라� he whispered.  

He was 바카라� he always is 바카라� the first to set in motion the operation of unhitching our bodies. He got tissues from the bathroom and wiped me expertly between the legs. 

We ate at the table. The food had gone cold. The rice was undercooked. 

바카라�Nothing like the real thing,바카라� I said, contrite. 

바카라�Doesn바카라�t matter,바카라� he said. 

(Malini Bhattacharya studied English literature at Jadavpur University, in Kolkata and writes fiction, creative nonfiction and (very rarely) poetry. Views expressed in this article are personal and may not necessarily reflect the view of Outlook Magazine)