One

Vincent is a waiter at Coffee House. It’s called just that—Coffee House. The name hasn’t changed in a hundred years, even if the business has. You can still get a good cup of coffee here, but it’s now a bar and restaurant. Not one of those low-lit bars with people crammed around tables, where you come to suspect that drinking may not be such a wholesome activity after all. No, this place is airy, spacious, high-ceilinged. Drinking here makes you feel cultured, sophisticated. The walls are paneled in wood to shoulder height. Old photographs hang on the sturdy square pillars in the center of the room, showing you just how beautiful this city was a century ago. The photographs evoke a gentler, more leisurely time, and somehow Coffee House still manages to belong to that world. For instance, you can visit at seven in the evening when it’s busiest, order only a coffee and occupy a table for two hours, and no one will object. They seem to know that someone who simply sits there for so long must have a thousand wheels spinning in his head. And they know those spinning wheels will not let a person be. Eventually, he’ll be overwhelmed, just like the serene spaces in those photographs that buyers devoured and turned into the cluttered mess we have around us today.

But let all that be—I don’t mean to brood. Getting back to this Vincent: he’s a dark, tall fellow, a little over middle age, but strong, without the hint of a belly. He wears a white uniform against which it’s impossible not to notice an extravagant red cummerbund. On his head is a white turban, its tuft sticking out like Krishna’s peacock feather. I can’t help feeling when Vincent is around—serving coffee, pouring beer at a practiced angle, betraying the faintest of smiles as a patron affectedly applies knife and fork to a cutlet—that he can take us all in with a single glance. By now I suspect he knows the regulars at Coffee House better than they know themselves.

Once, I came here when I was terribly agitated, and found myself saying out loud as he placed a cup of coffee in front of me: “What should I do, Vincent?” I was mortified and about to apologize when he answered, thoughtfully: “Let it go, sir.” I suppose it might have been a generic response, but something about his manner made me take his words seriously. It was soon after that that I abandoned Chitra and whatever there was between us. My life then took a turn that led to marriage. Now, let me not give the impression here that I believe in the supernatural—I don’t. But then, neither do I go hunting for a rational basis for everything that happens.

Today, I’ve been sitting in Coffee House longer than ever before. I’m desperate for a sign of some sort. Part of me longs to speak to Vincent, but I’m holding back—what if his words hint at the one thing I don’t want to hear? It’s afternoon. There are few people around. Directly in my line of sight is a young woman in a blue T-shirt, scribbling something in a notebook. She’s at a table that looks onto the street outside. Two books, a glass of water, and a coffee cup sit on the table in front of her. A lock of hair has drifted across her cheek as she writes. The girl is here at least three times a week at this hour. Sometimes a young man joins her for a coffee and then they leave together. It’s the same table where Chitra and I used to meet.

Just as I begin to wonder if her friend will turn up today, I see him at the door. He takes the chair across from her. My gaze drifts away, then returns to their table with a jerk when I hear shouting. She’s on her feet now, leaning across the table. One hand holds his collar. The other slaps him across the face. He’s blurting explanations, forearms raised to fend her off. She releases his collar and throws one of her books at him, then the other, all the while screaming abuses that implicate all men. She pauses, eyes darting over the table in rage as if looking for something else to attack him with. He shoves his chair back and flees. She takes the glass of water in front of her and flings it at him. It misses and shatters against the wall.

She’s surprisingly calm after he’s gone. She picks up the books and her bag. For a few moments she sits with her eyes closed, breathing heavily. One of the boys sweeps up the broken glass. Coffee House had fallen silent as the few people present watched the scene unfold. Now the usual murmur resumes. On cue, as if this is all a play, Vincent goes to her table, and she raises her head to order something. It appears Vincent already knows her order and has it ready in the wings. A gin and tonic appears on the table suspiciously quickly.

I wave him over as he returns from her table. “What happened?”

Someone else in his place might say the couple is breaking up, or speculate that the man has been unfaithful. He might even observe that this is the first time the young woman has ordered a drink here. Not our Vincent. He bends down and says, “Sir—one story, many sides.”

Had Vincent taken on a grand name and grown a long shimmering beard, he’d have thousands of people falling at his feet. How different are the words of those exalted beings from his? Words, after all, are nothing by themselves. They burst into meaning only in the minds they’ve entered. If you think about it, even those held to be gods incarnate seldom speak of profound things. It’s their day-to-day utterances that are imbued with sublime meanings. And who’s to say the gods cannot take the form of a waiter when they choose to visit us?

The truth is I have no real reason to come to Coffee House. But who can admit to doing something for no reason in times like these, in a city as busy as this one? So I’ll say: I come here for respite from domestic skirmishes. If all is peaceful at home I can think up other reasons. In any case, visiting Coffee House has become a daily ritual. My wife, Anita, to whom I once laid out the case for Vincent’s divinity, sometimes wryly says, “Did you visit your temple today?”

Somehow, my unvoiced appeals seem to be heard when I’m in Coffee House. There are times when the thought of being there enters my mind just before going to bed, and I pass the night in a dazed half-sleep, eager for morning to arrive. I come here, pick a table from which I can see the goings-on on the road outside, and sit down. There are usually only a couple of people here at that time of the morning. Vincent brings me a strong coffee without my having to ask. I sit there and watch people pass by: in the cold of December they hurry past in sweaters and jackets; in summer they wear light, thin clothes, offering some skin to the sun. After gazing out of the window for half an hour or so, I call Vincent over, engage him in small talk, and root for pearls of wisdom in whatever he says. If the weather in my head is particularly bad, I might order a snack and prolong my conversation with Vincent. At times, I’m tempted to unburden myself to him. But then, what’s the point when he seems to know without being told? These interludes at Coffee House, away from the strains of home and family, are the most comforting part of my day.

That girl who just chased her friend away reminds me of Chitra. I wonder how often Chitra must have thrashed me like that in her thoughts—I’d slipped away from her without saying a word. Her pride would never allow her to come after me, of course. Not once in all this time has she tried to make contact. I used to join her on most afternoons, usually at that very table. She worked for a women’s welfare organization, and would gradually grow incensed as she told me about her day. The things she said about men I took as applying to myself. I could only sit there mute, feeling vaguely guilty. She might say, “How could you break her arm simply because the tea was not to your taste?” Or: “Do you kill your wife because she forgot to leave the key with the neighbor?” I knew that tea shouldn’t lead to a broken arm, or a forgotten key to a murder. It wasn’t about the tea or the key: the last strands of a relationship can snap from a single glance or a moment of silence. But how was I to explain this to her? There was no room for anything other than her anger. How, then, could there be tenderness between us? There was really nothing there, I suppose, certainly nothing physical. I never once held her hand, though I probably could have. When we had just gotten to know each other, I believed we might draw closer. But we never did. Then, one day, whatever there was between us vanished. I stopped going to Coffee House at our usual time and instead began going in the evenings. That was it—we never saw each other again.

I remember clearly what we spoke about the last time we met. She told me about a woman who had been turned out of her house in the middle of the night by her mother-in-law. While the woman shivered outside, her husband and his parents and sister all slept warm in their blankets. She’d sat there, hearing her husband’s snores through the window. At dawn she hid her shame from the milkman by pretending she was waiting for the milk. Chitra’s voice grew in shrillness as she described the woman’s plight. “I’ll make sure that husband and mother-in-law see the inside of a jail,” she swore. “I must discuss the case with our lawyer before he leaves for home,” she said and got up. She touched me lightly on the shoulder, said, “Bye dear” as she always did, and left. It’s all hazy now when I try to remember if I knew then that it was over. I do recall that I sat there quietly for a while after she left. I didn’t show up at our usual time the next day. Or ever after. Chitra may have asked Vincent about me; I don’t know. She probably realized I was avoiding her and never tried to get in touch.

As I sit here in Coffee House today, my mind is more disturbed than usual. If I can recognize it, so can Vincent. He knows I’m eager to talk to him, and he comes to my table of his own accord. I tell him: “Another lemon soda, please.” He goes away after giving me a look that seems to say, “Is that really all?” In front of me, the girl finishes her gin and tonic with a couple of gulps and stuffs her books into her bag.

My mobile phone rings, startling me. Must be from home. It’s been thirty hours since I left, and I’m worried about what news the call might bring. I look at the phone—an unknown number. I answer with some dread. It’s someone asking if I want insurance. “No,” I say curtly, and put the phone back in my pocket.

Vincent brings over a tray with a glass containing a mixture of lemon juice and salt, a bottle of soda, a tiny bowl with slices of lemon, and a long spoon. He places the tray’s contents on the table with great deliberation. He produces an opener from somewhere in his cummerbund and pries open the bottle cap. As he pours, the foam comes gushing up in the glass. Vincent waits longer than necessary between pours of the soda, as if buying me time. I can pretend all I want, but how can I possibly hide from this all-knowing man the fact that I’m desperate to unburden myself?