LOST SOULS

Eden had met Hector a long time ago. A time when Patrick still lived. The two of them, Patrick, and she, had been so footloose then, with that mad commitment in their eyes, and heart. Now she wasn’t sure about what. About a free, equal world? A world where there would be no wars, no nuclear tests, no thalidomide babies, no rich and poor? And things had happened without their doing anything. Or maybe, as she sometimes thought, they had done a bit too much: Too many protests, not enough organizing. They marched out holding flags, but hated sitting behind a desk, doing the paperwork. All they had was their anger, their ideals that everyone else laughed at, that everyone else gave up, at the first easy successes or prosperity.

Patrick had introduced her to Hector, who turned up one evening at their apartment on Benjamin Franklin Parkway. It was high on the 10th floor with a good view of the city’s art district. It was a pity, Eden always thought, the museum always closed early, for she longed to take a long leisurely look inside, instead of the quick tour Patrick had given her in their early days. ‘It reeks of privilege,’ he had scoffed, looking at the Rubens’, and the Van Dykes. ‘And all these artists with their rich patrons. You do know how they made their money.’

Eden had loved the Philly apartment and did it up as best as she could, with colorful Indian fabrics for the two sofas bought at a yard sale, the old blue streaked cabinet, the threadbare carpet that she felt had character, and then the foldable beds picked up from an Ghanaian diplomat who was returning to his home country. Patrick had not wanted to take it for free, though the man had been insistent. ‘These are of no use to me. I would have left it here, anyway.’ Patrick had pulled out some dollars, and the diplomat shook his head again, laughing (derisively?) as he shook their hands. Eden had been so embarrassed.

‘It’s a poor nation, so exploited,’ Patrick said on their way back. ‘And we have a lot to atone for. A lot.’ And every time he said that he would sink into one of his weird bouts of silence, and there was little Eden could do to help him. After six months of living together, she knew these silent spells lasted for a week, and if they were lucky, for three-four days. They did not know then that there was a term for it.

Hector had come one sudden rainy afternoon, his shoes made a squelchy sound on the stone floor, and he burst out laughing. ‘You are bang in the lap of luxury, my friend.’

Patrick flushed, and Eden had replied, startled by this stranger who had suddenly filled up their apartment. ‘It helps us keep the city in mind always.’

She pointed to the city outside, turning gray in twilight. ‘There’s Fairmont Park,’ and moving her hand a bit to the right, she indicated Girard College. ‘It’s right in the middle of history, you might say.’

Hector began dropping in on them, especially the nights he worked late at the NAACP office. He came with books, and old yellowing magazines, and sat on the couch, working long hours on some write-up, some pamphlet or the other. One morning, she had surprised him as he lay stretched out, positioned half on the couch, and the rest of him on the floor, his long legs bent at the knee. He rubbed his eyes, shook the sleep out of his hair and said in a low voice,

‘This work will never be over. It’s not meant to get over.’

His unwashed, sweaty smell lingered on that couch long after he left, and after a while Eden gave up worrying about it. She was tired of scrimping and saving, of always doing some kind of mental arithmetic in her head over everyday costs, the savings needed till the next paycheck came, and the constant lookout for discounts. She hated asking Patrick for help. The apartment was his, leased with money from his father, who owned large amounts of real estate and was into construction, though Patrick always said it was a loan. To be paid back. Patrick acted as if the loan sat on his head like an unbearable burden. Some days, he skimped on things, ate little, dressed in things bought at Goodwill store. He scoured the Friday farmers’ market for fresh-grown veggies, untouched by pesticides. He wore faded bell bottoms, frayed jeans, and his underwear smelled.

`She found it unsettling, for his fads, like his moods, whether with clothes, or food, or his hair, never lasted. She never knew what to expect next. On a whim, he would go off to Macy’s and buy himself new clothes, for a sum that left Eden shocked. ‘A whole month’s groceries,’ she made the mistake of saying once, making Patrick glower. ‘Well, it’s nothing out of your pocket,’ he said. She swallowed back her humiliation. At that moment, she had nowhere else to go.

Maybe that was why she had warmed to the cat so readily and easily. It was but a small kitten the day she first saw it, on the ledge just over the entrance door, and she held out her arms long enough for the animal to jump onto her. For some weeks, Patrick too had liked it. Later, Eden thought it was because she too had been something like the cat when they had first met. A homeless, loveless person, drifting, waiting for something, for someone to take her in.

***

She was on the staff of the Democrat senator, Walter Mondale, when she first met Patrick. Like her, he was part of the publicity campaign, writing up notices and briefings the papers would carry the next day. Patrick, of the long hair, loose-fitting jeans and colorful shirts was popular with women. One late evening, when just a skeletal staff remained in the office, they began talking. He missed the bagel place back home, he said, though he was otherwise tired of his huge family home in upstate NY.

‘The best sesame bagels with honey and cheese,’ he said. Sometimes when his mother was traveling, and their father too not around—which was mostly the case—his older brother, William, would get them bagels from that shop. He felt grown-up then, almost like his brother who was five years older. It was only much later, when Eden saw him checking his bagel a few times before biting into it, that he told her why. That he had once eaten his way half through his bagel, despite its very strange taste, before his brother, nearly choking on his laughter, admitted rolling it in the grass before repacking it. ‘The taste of nature,’ Patrick said ruefully, ‘I was sick then, and had to be taken to hospital.’

That summer of 1984, Eden visited San Francisco for the first time. It was the venue of the Democrat Convention, and there was every expectation that the man she worked for, Walter Mondale would be nominated the party’s presidential candidate. For her, the city in those days had been the nearest thing to heaven. Even Patrick felt the same way.

The senator was finicky and demanding. She felt his attention to small details gave away his nervousness. He had come this far, and now he did not want to be President, let alone stand for elections. Ronald Reagan, the sitting president had a clear head-start. Reagan was popular, and had such a distinct message: The Soviets, their nuclear missiles, and their communist ideals had made beggars of everyone who lived there. Everyone who heard Reagan felt proud of themselves, their way of life. America had been right all along. The Soviets, it was also rumoured, were collapsing.

Mondale looked out of sorts. So many times, Eden had seen him looking out of the window, his hand on the telephone, a moue on his lips. He was always finding more and more mistakes in her drafts. The word, absolutely, had appeared twice, he pointed out, jerking the paper in her direction. Even his criticisms of the Soviet Union were frazzled, and defensive. The administration wasn’t tough enough to the Soviet Union, and there were still Soviet troops in Afghanistan. It was a risk, he told a New York Times reporter, deploying so much of the military in the Pacific, when there were confrontations elsewhere, in Asia, and Africa. It really required a Kennedy to handle the Soviets.

His other assistants, and the all-knowing senators had shaken their heads. It was not quite savvy to mention Kennedy. For what readers and viewers would do was compare not Reagan with Kennedy, but Mondale with Kennedy, and he would come up short. They said Mondale should have focused on Iran, where the ayatollahs had started a war with Iraq that was never going to end. Reagan was shaky in the Middle East, where there seemed little hope of peace since Sadat’s assassination, and the Hezbollah was getting bolder by the day, but Mondale didn’t want to step into that quagmire.

At the convention though there was an atmosphere of bonhomie, of wild, riotous fun, as senators, their assistants, the reporters, and volunteers descended on the city. It was heady, the sense of equality, and overwhelming love that loomed everywhere. People walking in groups, arms around each other, open in their love. There was music on every street, and the late afternoon breeze was heady. All these sensations gushed into Eden, though she was rushed off her feet with work. She was always on the typewriter, and Patrick was on the phone, and they sometimes exchanged tired, rueful smiles across many tables. She was always cheered up by that smile. Even that smile fitted in with everything else she came to love about the city: its sunniness, its freedom, the love everywhere.

The Reverend Jesse Jackson made a rousing speech as he announced his withdrawal, but spoke for a world where everyone, of color, of gender, gay and lesbians, was equal and free to love. Those words sent a hush through the crowd. It was so quiet Eden felt she could hear the buzz of faraway insects, and even the slow blinking of stars through the thick glass dome. The next moment, there was thunderous clapping, unending and forceful, like something had broken, and no one knew when to stop. It was the first time those words, spoken in quiet tones, about people whom all blamed for the disease now killing young people, and for which there was no cure yet, had been uttered loud. Everyone rose, still clapping, even after the chairperson asked for silence.

In waves they raised their arms, united in all the motions suggested, and then passed. One after another the senators and delegates came up, made their speeches, and all she had to do was hold up the banner, right where the television cameras could see it. It got monotonous after a while. She could sink into a meaningless quilt of comfort and bonhomie and lose all sense of thought.

When it was all over, there was no sign of Patrick. Couples hung around the rapidly emptying venue, with its upturned chairs, torn flags, streamers, and banners, muddied and trampled over. As she walked, feeling the lightness in her head, she wondered how the atmosphere of just a few minutes ago had disappeared so quickly. It was like an atom bomb had wiped away the happiness and joy, leaving her alone, in the empty convention center.

She caught herself peering into the face of every man she passed on her way out, even the few stretched out in exhaustion on the plastic chairs. Outside, it was a clear quiet night, where the homeless were already settling themselves on the benches, and a couple of lovers stood by the curb, kissing each other. She stopped when she saw two men holding each other desperately tight at a drugstore doorway. They split apart as she neared, and she hastened past, remembering another speech she had just heard. Bobbi Campbell, frail and barely able to make himself heard despite the microphone, who spoke about this new disease and pleading for more understanding and love. Love is beautiful. And in the fifteen seconds of silence he had called in honor of those who had succumbed to AIDS thus far, Eden had felt truly part of a giant living breathing being, slumbering under the glass roof of the convention center, that would waken any moment, and breathe the love fire into everyone.

She sat with her coffee in a still open café on Howard street and watched a homeless man trying to make a bed for himself with newspapers that crackled and fluttered every time the wind came racing from the corners. As he clamped down on one end, another end of the paper lifted itself up in another corner. He made her laugh, for he kept changing position. He plonked himself down in one corner and stretched out to secure the other, but a third corner would soon lift itself. He moved around all corners, stashing himself down triumphant one moment, doleful another, as he saw a bit of paper rise behind him, flapping wildly and urgently. He tried everything. Falling flat to hold onto one end, and then rotating himself a full circle, stretching out a leg, both legs, and then his hands, and then at last, he lay spent, utterly exhausted. It was like a comic film and then she knew she was being watched. The man lay stretched on the ground, his face turned toward her, his eyes focused right on her as she sat at a window table, a lone light full on her.

She rose, bought a croissant, wrapped it carefully and ran out with it. But to her horror and shame, he shook his head and turned away from her.

‘Why were you so obsessed about it,’ she asked him. ‘I was watching you.’

‘And you were laughing, yeah?’ he grunted.

‘Not at you. At the whole situation,’ she was defensive. ‘I have just come from a meeting, and now it makes no sense. It went on for hours and hours and I don’t remember anything.’

***

The cat was with them a good six months. Terry, Eden called it, but she was always giving it new names. ‘As if you can’t make up your mind about him,’ Patrick would say.

‘I like things to be a bit uncertain,’ she responded, trying to figure out a smart reply. ‘A name grants ownership. Does this cat really want to be owned?’

Patrick shook his head, and said she was becoming soft-headed. ‘That’s the danger my brother used to say. Too much activism, and you will become indecisive, uncertain, not even able to tell good from bad, black from white.’

One day, the cat vanished. It just wasn’t there in the evening when she came home, there was no brush of fur against her bare legs, when she turned in at the front door, no soft purring, or a quick nimble jump down from the kitchen cabinet. And Patrick too wasn’t home.

She waited for the cat, half in fear and half in expectation. Every time she heard a padding, she thought it was the cat back after a forage somewhere, and looked back hopefully, but it was nothing, someone else going past in the hallway, or a drumming sound somewhere. She called for it with every name she could think of. Even Patrick.

At night, feeling the walls of the apartment close in on her, and the emptiness like a deep well, she knew she couldn’t stay on. She had grabbed a coat, a flashlight and gone looking out for the cat. The doorman asked her in a kind tone, what the cat’s name was, and she reeled off all the names she had called it by, never realizing the strange look the doorman gave her.

Her steps took her all the way to her office at Arch Street. She now worked for the Philadelphia social services monitoring foster families, and the children in their care. It was dreary work, most times she was rewriting reports, or checking up on errant parents who really couldn’t look after their own children. It was a sad weary-looking place, with the smell of old paper, and typewriter’s ink. She thought she would complete some work, and began looking over the old files, of children gone missing, and the accidental death of a child in an old well and thinking that a similar fate might have happened in the case of Terry, George, Sultan, Raja, Shah, all the names she called him by, she burst out crying.

***

Thirty years later, Eden met Hector again at the Buddha Bar on Chestnut Street. He held her hand in his and told her how sorry he was about Patrick. It was thirty years too late, she thought.

‘Patrick…but I really don’t know,’’ he was saying against her ear as they walked toward the bar. ‘He thought you needed help, you took things too seriously. He was afraid for you.’

‘It was Patrick who died, remember?’

‘He was trying to help everyone,’ Hector shook his head, ‘and he didn’t trust the love he had.’

She looked down at her glass, and around. The bar was filling up, and the lights were a dim red, and purple, and she knew they could never have a serious conversation here. She was glad. She didn’t want to talk of Patrick any more.

‘Do you remember the cat?’

She looked up startled. The cat she had gone looking for, had never come back. She had spent days in the office, and there was always more work to catch up on. A woman called Roxanne rang her at 2 a.m., to report that her husband had abducted their child, and two hours later, someone from the police came to ask about the two children who had driven away in their grandfather’s car. It seemed monstrous to worry over a cat in these circumstances.

After a week, Patrick himself came by. It seemed to her he was trying hard to place her, that it had taken him some effort to even remember her name. But he called a cab, and on the way home, he murmured things into her ear, calling her his waif, his lost Eden. ‘You went looking for the cat,’ he said, after she had been silent for too long, ‘I went looking for you, and no one will ever come looking for me.’

Patrick talked of getting her another cat, of wanting to travel. He found the city stifling, and he had had too much of the apartment, he said. He talked of visiting Kerala, Venice, and Singapore. The world was like a hopscotch board, one could just step on it to be transported somewhere else.

‘Patrick had also wanted me to take away the cat,’ Hector now said. ‘He said you were much too attached to it. Patrick, he wanted to be the only one for you. But he couldn’t bring himself to be selfish. All that free spirit, free love, the hippieness, Patrick didn’t want to be a hypocrite. Love, of all things, couldn’t be possessive.’

‘Forgive me,’ Hector said, moments later, as he saw her stunned face, ‘I have been thinking of those years too. I wonder about what we did, if we achieved anything. But even that, as Patrick might say, is such an egotistical thought to have.’

***

When the cat had been gone for three months, and she knew it was never coming back, she traveled with Patrick to his family home in Albany. It was Thanksgiving time, and they had taken the train to Penn station and then the bus up to Voorheesville. Patrick was already looking drained and spent, and she had to lug their two rucksacks out of the overhead bin, as they waited for his brother. ‘Knowing William, he will be late,’ said Patrick dolefully.

He had stretched out, right on the grass, his cap over his head. He looked thin then, his ribs visible under the thin cotton of his shirt, his face falling into the hollows of his cheeks. She felt a dread then, knowing for certain where he disappeared for hours on end, the time he spent in the bathroom, his distracted behavior, but they were already drifting apart by then. He wanted her attention, but she had nothing to give any more. But Patrick was wrong about his brother, for barely had she wandered away a few meters, she heard the screech of a Corvette close. It was William, who smiled, as he jumped out. ‘You must be Eden.’

He had the same easy smile as Patrick, but his eyes were more calculating. They roved over her red flared pants, her pale blue shirt, her hair done up in ringlets. She saw herself as a cheap floozie, and she stared back, defiant. He smiled, and looked away first, bending down to shake Patrick awake.

Eden saw the gray stonewalled house as the driveway, a half mile long, dipped over a hill. The trellised balconies covering the entire length of the second floor came into view, the large bay windows with the light of the early sun, and the elm trees looming on either side. The stone keeps the house cool in summer, William said, catching her eye in the rearview mirror. ‘In winter, we go down to the Capes in Florida, and then it gets quite gloomy, like a batty old cave. The wind howls through the exposed attic and Patrick, at one time, would get scared.’

Patrick smiled, looking absent. But his eyes lit up when his mother appeared. Marge held herself straight, with her hawk nose, her thin square glasses, and elegantly coiffured silver hair. Her face broke into crinkles as Patrick rushed to embrace her. Her eyes as she looked at Eden, from over Patrick’ bent shoulder, were appraising but warm and curious.

It was William who introduced her, and Marge, for she insisted that was how Eden must call her, said she had heard about Eden. ‘It’s good to finally meet. Patrick hardly comes home.’

‘Since Dad died, two years ago,’ offered William helpfully.

Eden tried not to show her shock. That was around the time she had first met Patrick, and he had not mentioned this to her. ‘I am sorry,’ she said.

Marge drew her into a hug. ‘He was old and suffering, and he went in peace. Patrick said he was happy with you.’

Eden flushed then as she caught William staring at her. The one week she spent at the house in Voorheesville was the most luxurious one in her life, and also unnerving. Marge was involved in various things, in local art committees, in organizing the book festival. She was on committees that met once a month in New York to help differently abled and impaired children in education and she was also editor-at-large for a magazine run by the New York Buddhist Society. Her busyness was enviable, like the way she would excuse herself every morning after breakfast to sit in her office, at the west corner of the house. A pentagonal shaped room, with a huge Georgian desk and landscape paintings on every wall.

‘Done by my husband,’ Marge told her during a tour of the house. It was then Eden noticed the spherical white protuberances that hung over the paintings. A small green light blinked repeatedly, as if winking at Eden’s prolonged stare. ‘Don’t let that worry you, my dear,’ Marge said, drawing Eden away. ‘William has had those installed. His security gadgets, he tells me, to keep me safe. He’s at the other end of the house, with his own set-up, all these machines he works on.’

Eden nodded, shy of this immensely busy woman who still had time to talk to her, make her feel so welcome. ‘I will leave you to work then,’ she said.

‘Very well, my dear. You might like to see the library or take a walk to the village. Visitors here say it’s very charming.’

***

She wanted to model herself as a social worker in Marge’s mound, with that genteel dignity, and her insistence on some time for herself. It was easy, Eden thought, especially if one had a house like this. She liked the library, its well displayed books, and bric-a-brac, including Chinese lacquerware, Japanese calligraphy hangings and photographs of illustrious ancestors. They were venerable looking judges, and legislators, all of whom had done more to enshrine privilege, just by denying rights to others. This was what Patrick told her one evening, when he had finally shed his lassitude and come down early for dinner.

Marge had smiled, ‘They were men of their generation, and did what they could.’ William looked up from the top of his glasses and said laconically. ‘Clearly you are not doing much to right it.’ And Eden caught the frown on his mother’s voice, as Patrick replied, ‘It does make me sick. I want to get away.’

He sat morose all through dinner, while his mother tried to make small talk, slipping in the occasional gossip, and joke, and William looked at her in the way he had, all-assessing and amused. It made her gather courage to ask him about his work.

‘A tech firm, all very secret,’ he said laughing. ‘We are developing cameras and x-ray imagery to understand a city’s terrain, and its topological maps.’

He wiped his lips quickly on his napkin before going on, ‘Excuse me please, I will try and explain it simply. So we train our equipment over the city, on satellites, and hope to study its underground terrain. It’s pretty useful to study water systems, rock formations, and maybe vulnerable areas too.’

Patrick spoke up then, ‘The Saudis are particularly interested in it too. That is why Will’s so excited.’

‘If it helps keep an eye on suspicious things, stops dangerous activities where innocents become victims, I’d think we are doing a great human service. More than you are, dear brother.’

He said it in such a smooth clipped way that Eden knew he was a man not to be crossed. But she was more careful. She saw the cameras almost everywhere. The sleek pen holders in the hallway, a rounded object on a stand, almost like a table lamp in the library, the headlight shaped ones in the hallway to the kitchen. It unnerved her and for the rest of her stay in the house, she switched off the light every time she entered the bathroom.

On the way back, she told Patrick she had really enjoyed her time at his house. ‘I’d have liked it,’ Patrick said, ‘had my brother not been there.’

And Eden knew it was true. William scared her, as did his cameras. ‘His cameras,’ Patrick said, as if he was answering her, ‘he says they are for security. But there’s no privacy. No wonder governments seem especially interested in them.’

Years after his death she would understand how prescient he had been. Patrick had seen so far ahead, and he was already in deep despair. Maybe that was why he had given up.

A year later, when Patrick died of that illness that no one understood then, Hector drove her to the airport. She had received the news midway through a conference in Atlanta. Her colleagues, and the other attendees were all very sympathetic. She had driven straight to the hospital. The family, the nurse told her, had already left for their hotel, the funeral was the next day. Would Eden like to see him, she asked gently.

Eden looked dazed, and the nurse holding her hand, drew her forward. Patrick looked ravaged, his eyes in hollows, the fluffed purple area around his eyes, and his sunken cheeks. She brushed his hair away from his forehead, and heard the nurse say from behind her. ‘His mother wanted him in his graduation suit.’

Eden looked at the nurse, a middle-aged woman in her neat blue uniform, her hands clasped below her waist as she stood by Patrick. ‘The family couldn’t take it. But it's nice of you to come. It is this time when the soul needs reassuring, whoever that is crossing over needs to be watched over.’ Eden licked away her tears, and following the nurse’s example, she bent to her knees and prayed for Patrick.

Over the next few days, with William, she managed the funeral, and later, the memorial service in their plush lawns attended by almost the entire village, family friends, Marge’s social work associates, and some of William’s colleagues. It was quiet, sad, and peaceful. No one really needed to say much. Patrick had been very ordinary, and nice. People came up and spoke of his helpful nature. His errands as a newspaper boy and then a delivery store guy. No one wanted to dwell on the more unpleasant things. The drugs, the hippie living. The majesty of death had erased it all.

She thought always of how gently the women bit into their sandwiches and stirred their coffee. And talked of death. Later, as she threw herself into caring for the dead, preparing their bodies, and their families for the great journey beyond, she found the calm she had been looking for. The prayers read at farewell ceremonies, the songs that were sung, the fragrance that blew from the incense sticks, and over the mourners, everything was gentle and forgiving. She would invite those gathered to sing along, songs she had learnt at a vigil for a Buddhist monk and meditate for a few moments. Later they would tell her how their spines had tingled, of the prick of their gooseflesh, and she tried to answer their fears. That it was okay to be frightened. The soul was part of the universe, and the universe was huge, and ever expanding. One had to let go of life in absolute peace, to allow the soul to lose itself in the universal soul that was everywhere.

But the truth of course was that she was still trying to understand what it, Death, was all about. Or that she was trying to atone for the one death she could never explain, even to herself: Patrick’s. All that happened later was an atonement of sorts.

Adity Kay: I live in New Jersey, and have lived in India, SIngapore, Maryland, Vermont and various other places. I studied for an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and my work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Common, Catamaran Literary Reader, The Missouri Review, The Dalhousie Review. and elsewhere. My novel, The Kidnapping of Mark Twain, appeared earlier this year and was published by Speaking Tiger Books, India.