—38—
My room had been lit with oil lamps, one burning by the bed, one on the dressing table. The drapes had not been pulled, and the storm beyond continued to slap rain against the windows. I went to the window, feeling that sense of warning, and looked out. What was coming?
A quiet knock came at my door, and I forgot everything as I flew across the room to let Tanveer in.
He had shed his English clothes for a kurta and pajamas, his turban left in his room, leaving his hair in a knot on his head, pieces of it falling around his face.
I swallowed, so consumed with want that I almost could not move.
“May I come in?” he said quietly, his hands behind his back.
All of the moments of our times came back to me in a rush, weaving together the boy who had drawn tigers with me, and the one who’d shown me the stars and taught me to swim, and taught me to kiss and to make love coming together into a braid of love that shimmered through me, expanding out of me to enfold him, too.
I reached for his hand and drew him into the room, tangling arms and then mouths and tongues and hope and longing.
I unbuttoned my blouse and shed my chemise, he discarded his kurta, and I stepped out of my skirt, and then he led me to the bed.
We took off the rest and pressed bare skin to bare skin, and hands to curves and angles, and everything else moving together until we were one being, woven back together at last.
Much later, curled against him, I said, “Do you believe in people seeing the future, like the spiritualist tonight?”
He brushed hair from my forehead, ran his fingers down my face. “I don’t know. I am quite sure she believes.”
“She was very frightened.”
“Perhaps there is a feeling of things in the air, something she can access. It is true there is much talk of war. And that would certainly change everything.”
I thought of her looking at the cards, nearly in tears. “Is there going to be a war?”
“It seems there may be. But let’s not think of that tonight, shall we? I just want to be here with you.”
“It appears we are together,” I said laughing.
“Tonight, I thought of all the layers of you, the yous I have known. I should like to paint all of them.” I drew my finger along the top of his nose.
“Your nose, and your eyebrows, they’ve stayed the same.
” I brushed his eyelashes, so thick and dark, and drew a line around his eye socket, the lid, as if to create a spell to remember the depth of his iris.
So close, it was not unbroken darkness, but layers of earth and sparks of amber. It made me dizzy, looking so closely.
“I would paint your mouth before the beard arrived, when you were small,” I said, tracing the dip in the upper, the curve of the lower, and then the line of the beard that was new to me.
“And I would paint your beard now, before it’s as full as your father’s.
One day, it will have white streaks in it. ”
He listened, watching me as I moved my fingers down his throat, to his chest where sprouts of hair had begun to show. It moved me so that I bent in and kissed the place.
“Elsie,” he whispered, and nudged my face up to look at him. “If it were mine to paint, I would draw your face full of light, as it is now.” He kissed me softly, his fingers on my chin. “I would draw fire in your pupils, and burning in your heart, and I would show those fires the same as my own.”
How can I ever let him go now? I thought, but I didn’t say it. I only closed my eyes and let him touch me slowly, looking, and whispering about the wonders of the terrain. And so we began again, and it was holy and it was ours and I vowed I would remember it always.