Elephant

Photo by Taylor Wright on Unsplash

I sat beside Rakesh in the college canteen, trying to eat lunch after a long economics class. The professor had projected graphs of diminishing marginal utility onto the wall. Most of them had gone over my head. I hadn’t slept the night before, and all morning I’d been drifting through my classes half-awake.

We sat at a long table at the back of the canteen, beside a large window. Outside, a stretch of forest ran along the boundary wall. Members of staff said elephants sometimes came out after dark and wandered close to the campus wall.

My roommate, Suman, sat on my other side. Bibhu, Pratyush, and Saswat sat opposite us. Our trays were full of rice, dal, egg curry, and mango pickle, but nobody looked at the food. Every eye at the table was fixed on Rakesh’s face. Only our hands and mouths moved.

“Last night, coming back from the bathroom, I felt someone following me,” Rakesh said. He looked at Bibhu.

I’d known Rakesh since school, though we’d hardly spoken back then. I had sat on the front bench. He sat at the back with his friends. They used to call me and my friends the Microsoft group, always studying and always raising our hands, while his group stood on the benches as punishment.

“I walked into the room without looking back,” Rakesh continued. “Then I locked the door. Bibhu was already asleep.”

Bibhu mixed some dal into his rice without answering.

“I’ve heard noises for the past few nights,” Pratyush said. “Something walking above our ceiling. When I go up to check, there’s nobody on the second floor. Every door is shut. Only the bathroom light is on.” He lifted a spoon, scooped some dal, and poured it over his rice.

The night before, Suman had come back to our room past midnight and told me the same thing. I’d tried to sleep after that, but my mind wouldn’t shut off.

I turned toward the window. Endless green below. A white-blue sky above.

“I sat on the bed,” Rakesh said, dropping his voice lower, “a woman with long hair pushed me down by the chest. Then she sat on my chest. I screamed, but no one heard. Not even Bibhu.”

His voice remained even, as if nothing had happened. From the other side of the canteen came the clatter of steel plates and the noise of some other table’s conversation. Nobody at ours looked away from him.

“I haven’t experienced anything in the six months we’ve been here,” Saswat said. He nodded toward Bibhu. “But one night I went to the terrace to call my girlfriend and saw this asshole sitting on the water tank like a monkey. His phone lit one side of his face. For a second, I thought he was something else.”

“There was no signal in our room then,” Bibhu said. “That was during the first few weeks. I haven’t gone up at night since.”

Rakesh watched him for a moment. “Not everyone can feel these things,” he said. “Only a few people. People whose bodies carry a certain kind of smell.”

Saswat laughed. “Rakesh bhai, you’re exaggerating. I don’t believe any of it.” He picked up his tray and stood. “I’m getting more rice. And another egg.” He walked toward the counter.

As soon as he left, Rakesh spoke again. “No one believes until they experienced it.” He curved one hand around his rice and pulled some gravy from the egg curry into it, made a ball, and put it in his mouth.

“I’ve even heard footsteps on the terrace, two or three in the morning, when I close my laptop and need to go to use the toilet,” Bibhu said. “Sometimes I make Rakesh bhai stand at the door.”

Suman laughed. “Why don’t you just take him inside with you?”

The table broke into laughter, briefly louder than the rest of the canteen.

“What happened after that?” Pratyush asked, leaning forward.

I broke the egg into pieces, dipped them in the gravy, chewed. Through the window, I searched the edge of the forest. I’d wanted to see the elephants since the day I arrived. I still hadn’t.

“A while later, the energy drained out of my body,” Rakesh said. “I stayed exactly how she’d left me. Half my body on the bed, my legs hanging off the side.”

Saswat returned and dropped his tray onto the table. His face was red. “The bastard at the counter wouldn’t give me another egg. I took the bowl myself and poured it on.”

He didn’t touch his spoon, just crushed a ball of rice and gravy between his fingers and ate it that way.

“You’re the macho one here,” Pratyush said, reaching over and taking a piece of egg off Saswat’s tray.

Saswat glared at him, then turned to Rakesh. “What did I miss?”

“Nothing,” Suman said. “She left him lying like that.”

Saswat looked at Rakesh, then at me. “Why are you so quiet? Did she eat your tongue after she left Rakesh bhai? Is that why you’re searching the forest?”

Bibhu and Pratyush laughed. Suman waited for me to answer. Rakesh said nothing.

“I’m just sleepy,” I said. “I’m skipping Business Ethics. I’ll go straight to my room after this.” I stood and picked up my tray.

“If they don’t give you an egg, call me.” Saswat shouted after me. “I’ll come.”

“No need,” I said, and walked off like my legs belonged to someone else.

Before the admission, whenever I went to Rakesh’s house, I noticed his first-floor windows were always shut, never a light on. His house stood right in front of the sea, a big lawn, a two-story building in the middle. His family ran a restaurant on the beach side, facing the water.

Every time I visited, I’d sit on the lawn, looking up at the dark floor, until he came out with food from the restaurant. One evening, as he set the plate down, I was looking past him at the single bulb burning near the stairs to the first floor.

“Why is your first floor always dark?” I asked.

Rakesh didn’t answer right away. He sat, picked up a samosa, broke it in half with his thumb. He glanced up at the windows. “A woman walks there,” he said, blowing on the samosa before he ate it. “Sometimes she comes down to the ground floor at night. I hear her in the corridor. Sometimes I hear her anklets.”

I looked at the broken samosa on the plate. I didn’t pick up mine. I couldn’t look at the dark windows anymore.

“How do you stay in that house?”

“In the beginning we were scared. But she doesn’t do anything. She just walks. We got used to it.”

By the time I got back to the table, Saswat, Suman and Pratyush had already left. Rakesh was leaning close, saying something into Bibhu’s ear. Bibhu’s mouth widened into a grin and they both stood.

“I’ll sit with you until you finish,” Rakesh said, setting his tray back down.

“You go. You have class. I’ll sit here sometime, then go to the room.”

“Okay.” He picked his plate back up and left.

I sat there alone, folding the rice up and down into the gravy, watching the tree line.

It was almost four when I returned to the hostel. Most of the students were still in class. I opened the door of my room, removed my shoes but didn’t change out my uniform. I switched on the fan and lay on the bed. My eyes stayed open, tracking the blades. A faint daylight came through the curtains, turning the room dull gray. I don’t remember when I fell asleep.

The room was dark when I woke. A small green light glowed above the almirah in the corner. Suman was asleep across the room. A covered tray sat on the floor by my bed. He must have brought it up while I slept.

I needed the bathroom. I got up and opened the door without a sound and stepped into the corridor. A yellow campus light came through the glass at one end. At the other, the white bathroom light fell across the floor and first three steps on the staircase.

As I got closer, I heard it. A whisper.

I stopped outside the bathroom without going in. Above and below, the stairwell dropped into dark. At the landing, an iron grill was the only window on the night, pure black past it, nothing visible.

The whisper broke into a muffled laugh, coming from the second floor.

I climbed the first flight. Cold air came through the iron grille at the landing. Beyond it, the forest had become one dark mass.

The laugh stopped. The whisper began again.

I climbed the second flight.

The bathroom door up there stood half open, the corridor was as faintly lit as the one below. Through the gap, Rakesh was standing at the mirror, phone close to his mouth. He whispered something and laughed under his breath.

A woman’s voice came faintly through the phone.

I stayed behind the railing and watched him.

When he moved toward the door, I went down a few steps and waited in the dark. Rakesh came out with a towel across his shoulder. Still holding the phone, he climbed toward the terrace.

I waited until he disappeared into the shadow.

On my way down, I stopped at the landing and held the iron grille. I looked out at the forest, searching between the dark shapes for an elephant.

I didn’t find any.