‘Go! Go! Look ahead! Come on! Fast!’
by Salil Chaturvedi
After all these years, she can still see the bubbles — three of them, two large, one small — stuck in her sister’s armpit, held loosely in place by the week old stubble. Silver and round, the bubbles wobble in the soft, cupped darkness of the armpit as her sister glides over her in the water, then looks down and smiles.
From the muffled depths she hears her father’s voice go on like a metronome.
‘Go! Go! Head up! Head up! Don’t look down! Fast! Fast!’
She comes up for air and then dives back in as her sister returns with powerful strokes. She holds herself about three feet under water and watches her sister — at first a faint liquid shadow, then a dark patch of blue, miraculously being birthed by the water right in front of her eyes, taking shape from nothing till the slender dark-skinned body slides over her, tickling her with its underwater eddies and leaving a trail of million sparkling bubbles. She rushes upwards and pushes her face into the bubbles, letting them break against her cheeks, a shower of tiny round underwater kisses nibbling at her nose, lips and eyelids. One or two kinky bubbles get inside her ears.
She still remembers the light when she’d look up from the depths of the pool. An irregular dancing window of white light. She’d wait till her lungs were ready to burst, knowing that beyond the luminous window lay the unforgiving voice.
‘Go! Go! Look ahead! Come on! Fast!’
Once, as she had come up, she had seen a red dragonfly on the surface of the water. She had held herself just below the surface and had looked into the dragonfly’s large round eyes. It seemed the dragonfly was in some sort of a trance because when she broke the water it remained on her forehead for a few seconds before flying away. She had smiled and looked around. No one had noticed.
‘The fishes are at it,’ she had once overheard a man comment from the edge of the pool. ‘And the tortoise is at it, too.’ That was obviously meant for father, walking along the edge of the pool, a stop watch in one hand, telling them to ‘Come on… Come on… Two more …’
On Sundays they go to the pool a little late and by then the sun is out. She always feels an excitement in anticipation of seeing the spangles of light dancing on her sister’s legs. The rays enter the water at an acute angle, moving like rubber bands, long golden fingers of light searching for something, for a place to rest, a place worthy of their journey through interstellar space. Her sister’s legs don’t disappoint. Straight and supple and always moving, the flesh on the thighs going taut and then flaccid, the light creates magical moving patterns on her sister’s chocolate-coloured thighs, then on the buttocks, where her sister’s slender body is widest. When her sister floats on her back after a grueling round of laps, she watches the light create dancing patterns on the soft bulge where her sister’s legs meet.
Sometimes, as her sister passes her, she reaches out and lets her fingers slide on her sister’s calves, only to receive a friendly kick in return.
She doesn’t feel resentment as much as a slight disappointment. It’s not that she didn’t enjoy the water; it was one of the deepest pleasures of life and at the same time a place of refuge, a place of liquid calm, and it was true what everyone said — the sisters were meant for water, but she now feels it would have been nicer if father had given them a wider horizon. All she remembers are the square blue tiles of the lane and the black ones on either side. She now hates lanes on roads and does what she’d learnt to do in the pool — cut across lanes at a gentle diagonal, charting an imaginary lane of her own. There’s another thing that her sister had taught her, which she has used for the rest of her life. You put your head down in the water and with every stroke you scream out your anger at the top of your voice: ‘Arsehole… Arsehole… BASTARD … BASTARD…’ You come up for air between strokes, put your head back in and scream your head off again, letting the bubbles of disgust rush past your face making their way angrily to the surface where they burst like boils, releasing all the emotional pus to the skies. What do you know? Water cleans everything.
Still, there’s no resentment. After all, father offered them the best he could. And she took her sister’s legs. There was also that day when the rain came down. Everyone runs for cover. Just she and her sister in the pool and father going on absurdly from under a beach umbrella on the poolside, ‘Come out or you’ll get wet.’
She dives deeper into the water. She looks up to see the raindrops pinging on the surface of the pool. A liquid roof dotted with thousands of sparkling silver pellets. Her sister swims close to her and gives her a cloth to hold. Before she can understand, her sister takes a deep breath and goes underwater flipping like a dolphin. She looks down into the water and follows her sister’s nude body. She’s in some fairyland, the silver rain-dotted roof overhead, and her sister wearing the silver-and-pink swimming cap and red swimming goggles spinning in the water beside her — dark breasts and the fuzz, dark buttocks. She grips her sister tightly between her own legs and pulls her close and kisses her on the mouth. She is surprised by the intensity with which her sister kisses her back.
Her husband stirs and turns his side. She is aware of him only in a light far-off way. She is busy caressing her sister’s legs. She feels someone’s hands on her breasts. Are they her husband’s, or her father’s? How many people have felt her breasts? Men are attracted to bubbles. She’s known that since she was very young. And whose voice is it?
‘Faster, faster! Don’t stop! Come on, come on!’
She tries to block out everything and concentrates on caressing her sister’s legs deep between her own thighs until a million white bubbles explode in her head.
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Salil Chaturvedi writes short fiction and poetry in English and Hindi. His stories have appeared in Indian Literature, Out of Print, Himal, Indian Quarterly and various anthologies. He currently lives in Goa.