Shanti
I met Stephanie, the new arts teacher, the week after I saw Caroline on the plane to England.
"I'd like someone's help to hang my paintings?" Stephanie said at morning recess after everyone had introduced themselves.
"I'll give you a hand," I said, attracted by her vivacious pixie face framed by short dark hair so different to Caroline's cool blondeness. We made a date that evening.
Stephanie's eyes lit up. "Thank you. Come for dinner."
Nigel, the manual arts teacher, a gangling one hundred and ninety centimetres, leered at us in his usual inane way.
I knew what he thought: Caroline has been gone a week and you aree already on to another.
Stephanie's front door was open when I arrived at her unit on the second floor of a three-story block of flats. Receiving no answer to my knock and call, I went in.
She sat on the mat in the living area wearing a pale blue sari, edged with silver and red trimmings, staring through me as if in some subliminal trance.
I went outside and lit a cigarette, wondering whether I should go home. I'd finished my second cigarette when she came out.
"Oh, there you are. Do you want to hang the paintings before or after dinner?"
During my few minutes in her unit, I hadn't seen a sign of a meal in preparation. I glanced at my watch: seven o'clock. I was hungry. Caroline and I always had dinner at seven. I did most of the cooking. Caroline decided the time. “Have we time before we eat?”
Stephanie nodded, confirming my fears that dinner would be much later.
She showed me the hammer, which she had borrowed from Nigel. "I can't understand why he thought we'd need one this big."
The hammer resembled more of a sledgehammer than one suitable for tacking nails into a wall. Nigel considered himself the staff joker. He would think in his slimy way that we would be doing other things than hanging paintings.
"I thought you'd bring a drill and screwdriver." Stephanie sounded vexed.
"I don't possess any tools." Caroline had employed a professional to hang our paintings. I thought it would be fairly simple, banging a few nails in a wall.
"We'd better see Maud; she's into woodwork; she's set up her spare room as a workroom; the neighbours complain about the noise she makes.”
Maud, a short grey-haired woman who lived in the unit below Stephanie, looked pleased when Stephanie asked if she could help to hang her paintings. Maud soon had the holes drilled with her power drill and the hooks screwed in.
Stephanie hung a wall hanging made from woven cloth depicting a blue dancing devil set in a circle of red, above her bed.
“It’s Shiva, the Lord of the Dance,” she said in answer to my question.
Caroline had chosen a still life print of one of Monet's waterlilies to hang above our bed: the picture of Shiva looked more alive.
"Shiva is the god of destruction and renewal," Stephanie said, cutting up this and that and throwing them in a pan on the gas stove. Handing me a wooden spoon, she told me to stir the mixture she called Beef Vindaloo. "He whirls in a cosmic dance surrounded by a circle of flame and spins between life and death in an eternal promise of release and birth."
We sat on mats at a low table: Stephanie placed a large bowl of fluffy rice and a side dish of cucumbers in yogurt beside the Beef Vindaloo.
I piled the Vindaloo on my plate with a tablespoon or two of boiled rice – I'm a meat and veg man - and ignored the cucumbers in yogurt.
I gulped the first mouthful of Beef Vindaloo, fiery hot with chillies, garlic and curries. Panting and gasping, I guzzled a glass of Riesling.
Stephanie nudged the bowl of rice towards me.
I heaped the rice on my plate, and even took a serving of cucumbers in yogurt. By the time we finished the meal, I had emptied the last of the Riesling.
"I'll make some cardamom tea," Stephanie said.
She arrived with the tea poured into tall glasses.
I sipped the tea, not knowing what to expect after the Vindaloo, but the drink tasted pleasantly refreshing.
"Would you like to hear some music?" Stephanie asked.
I nodded.
She lit some incense, then sat on her mat with a flute and began to play.
The room filled with the sweet smell incense and Stephanie's music.
My eyelids drooped. I rested my head on my arms and dreamt of water trickling over pebbles along a little creek bed.
"How did the night go?" Nigel asked when he saw me.
"Okay." I wouldn't let him and his low mind upset me.
I missed my usual coffee at morning break. I had to finish marking the science papers, which I should have done last night. I swore I wouldn't go to Stephanie's again, but loneliness made me accept another invitation.
She cooked Chicken Tandoori. I took a small portion of the chicken; and a large serving of rice and some of the bananas dipped in lemon juice.
Stephanie's company excited and stimulated me. The weekly visits became two and three a week. To make up lost time, I rose early to mark papers and prepare work for my students.
Stephanie taught me a few yoga positions. I had felt sceptical about yoga at first, then I realised the relief it brought from the tension of teaching high school students the intricacies of science.
I liked the Total Repose best. Savasana: Stephanie gave its Sanskrit name.
I whispered, Savasana, Savasana as I drifted into limbo, every muscle relaxing from the tip of my toes to the top of my head.
I wasn't on terra firma but among drifting clouds. I forgot about Caroline's emails.
Stephanie and I meditated for hours, which Nigel wouldn't have believed. His brain was as big as flea's. He might come back as one in his next life.
"I'm aiming for lightness," Stephanie said as she sat in the Lotus position, her fingers resting on her knees.
"So am I." I lay on the mat beside Stephanie, feeling as if I was going to float away.
"I'm going to India at the end of the year to find my Atman," said Stephanie.
“Who is he?” I asked, feeling jealous she had another man.
“Atman is Sanskrit for soul: the eternal essential self. I’ll live in a mud house and practice Shanti.”
“What does Shanti mean?” I mumbled, sinking into Total Repose.
“Peace.”
What would it be like living in a mud hut with Stephanie? I'd wear a dhoti, grow my own food and discover my creativity?
"You can live cheaply in India," Stephanie said.
I thought of a life without Caroline. I still had a few thousand dollars in the bank, but Caroline already had ideas for my money. She planned to renovate the Federation house we were mortgaged to. A big wedding reception in one of the flashiest hotels in the city would see the end of my bank account.
I felt niggardly with Caroline and how she ruled my life even as far away as England.
I hadn't smoked for months. "I told you that yoga would stop your addiction," Stephanie said.
Thinking about Caroline, I found the packet of cigarettes I had hid for emergencies and smoked the lot of them before going to bed.
At the end of the school year, Stephanie prepared a farewell dinner for the two of us.
I took a bottle of Cabernet Shiraz, more to drown my despair at our parting than to quench the flames of Indian cuisine.
"I'll miss you, Stephanie." I toasted her with a glass of cardamom tea. I knew how to make it now.
She glanced at me across the table. "Come to India with me."
She looked more Indian than ever. I wondered if she had a touch of India in her genes. "What about Caroline?"
"You'll have to make your own decision about her."
I opened the bottle of Shiraz and filled the glasses, giving one to Stephanie. She held my hand after the second glass.
I finished off the Shiraz and thought about going to bed with her.
Lightheaded, I stretched on the mat in the Savasana pose.
Wearing a green sari with large splashes of pink lotus edged with silver thread, Stephanie lay beside me. I guess after helping drink the bottle of wine, she only wanted Savasana too.
All my aches and tensions disappeared. I don't know how long I stayed in the delightful limbo of Savasana. I opened my eyes and saw Stephanie floating against the ceiling.
I gasped. "What are you doing up there?"
"I told you I aimed to become lighter." She swooped down like a cool refreshing breeze and touched my face with the tip of her fingers, then with a flick and a kick of a foot, she floated to the ceiling again.
I closed my eyes, willing everything to be normal and Stephanie back in the Savasana position, but when I opened them again, she was still up there.
She became quite proficient with her flying. Parting the air with her hands, she would give a kick or two and sweep down in a graceful arc.
I watched for a time, but weary and intoxicated, I drifted off into sleep again.
I awoke with the room in darkness, lit only by a faint glow of light from a corner lamp. My mouth felt dry and my head throbbed. I glanced at the ceiling: to my relief there was no Stephanie doing her antics. I must have dreamed it; I let myself out of the unit and stumbled home.
The next day, I awoke with a violent headache. I telephoned the school. "I'm ill," I told the Principal. "I think I'm coming down with the flu," I said when he asked what was wrong.
"I don't know what we're going to do with your class," he said. "You aren’t the only one who’s phoned in ill.”
I could tell by his voice that he didn't believe me.
That evening, I rang Stephanie, but she didn't answer. I felt too ill to venture around to her unit.
I discovered the next day she had left. “Where did she go?” I asked the school principal.
"I don't know. She didn't say in the note she sent with a woman who lives near her."
"Maud!”
“I think she said her name was Maud.”
I returned to the staff room. Nigel grinned when I told him. “So Stephanie’s up and left. Never mind, Caroline will be back next month.”
Nigel would return as something lower than a flea, I decided, but I’d let him discover that for himself.
On the way home from school, I went around to Stephanie's unit: no one was there. I heard Maud banging away in her workroom.
"Didn't you know?" she said when I knocked on her door and asked about Stephanie. "She's gone to India."
"She wasn’t leaving until next week.”
“She said she had a cheaper way of travel.”
For one wild moment, I visualised Stephanie floating among the fluffy clouds, doing graceful dives and swoops on her way to India. “What else did she say?”
“Nothing. I spoke to her on the phone. Her voice sounded light.”
I smiled weakly.
I went home and practiced some yoga positions. I began to feel lighter.
I imagined Stephanie taking advantage of the wind currents as a bird might; I wondered how it would feel, floating away, free of the school; free of renovating the Federation house; free of the big flash wedding; free of Caroline.
The next morning, I booked a flight to India; put my stuff in storage, emailed Caroline and said she could have the Federation house and to cancel the wedding plans.
As I caught the plane, I wondered if I would reach India before Stephanie. I grinned. It was a joke about her flying to India. Wasn't it?
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