‘Ah! That nice girl,’ she said, not taking her eyes off the television for a minute. ‘You’ve told me so much about her – she sounds like she’s read a ton of books. Naina would have loved that job, wouldn’t she?’
‘She would,’ Mukesh said, his legs shaking a little as he settled himself back down in his chair. He just had a few pages left of Life of Pi so he put on his noise-cancelling headphones （Nilakshi had brought them for him; they were her husband’s） to block out the deafeningly loud music and chatter from the Zee TV programme, and dived straight back in. Zee TV was now the most-watched TV channel in his house – he was strangely pleased about it. It had replaced Netflix and the refrain of David Attenborough on the National Geographic channel.
As he turned the final page of the book, leaving Pi and his unbelievable story behind, he kept his headphones on, hoping for a lasting moment of silence so he could gather his thoughts, not wanting the book to end but needing to know what Pi’s journey meant – was it real, was it imagined? This story had clutched him in the heart and mind – it had been a long, arduous journey for Pi, but an awe-inspiring, revelatory one for Mukesh.
Then, he spotted Nilakshi out of the corner of his eye, breaking his pondering. She was shuffling off the sofa and heading into the hallway.
A moment later, she was back, mouthing something at him, but he couldn’t hear a word she was saying. She was waving the phone in front of his face.
‘What is it?’ Mukesh said, pulling the headphones to rest around his neck.
‘For you! The librarian!’
‘Ah,’ Mukesh said, his heart rate picking up once more. Nilakshi had answered his phone, but what if it had been one of his daughters? He grabbed the receiver, held his hand over the mouthpiece, and moved quickly out of the room and into his bedroom next door.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Mr Patel! Mr P! Sorry, I hope I’m not disturbing you at home. It’s as rammed as Manderley here today. I like the silence but time’s dragging a bit. Who was that anyway?’
‘Who was who?’
‘The woman who answered the phone.’
Mukesh took a deep breath for a moment. ‘My … erm … I have a … it was my daughter, she sometimes answers the phone for me. I was reading, you see.’
‘Life of Pi? Have you finished yet?’
‘Just now!’ Mukesh said, pleased she didn’t pry further. He could feel the guilt creeping over him. Guilt about the lie; guilt about why he was lying too.
He imagined Aleisha sitting at her desk, watching over the library. He wondered who was there today. Was the other elderly gentleman there, the one who liked to help himself to a cup of machine-made coffee and sit by the window, with a newspaper on his lap? Or maybe Chris, delving into another crime thriller? Or perhaps it was the book club – he’d never actually seen the book-clubbers, so far, but he imagined what they might be like – big glasses, huge carrier bags full of books, neat clothes.
‘So what did you think?’
‘Hmm?’ Mukesh said, his mind still on the library.
‘Of the book!’
‘Oh, yes, silly me! It’s wonderful,’ Mukesh said. ‘It’s unbelieveable – I can’t imagine it could ever really happen. How Pi lost everything on a sunken ship yet survived on a lifeboat with tigers and monkeys and hyenas for two hundred days!’
‘Well, it is only a book,’ Aleisha said. ‘But, I mean, the way the story is written – it’s, everything that happens is mad.’
‘At the end, it says a little thing that made me wonder if it was all Pi’s imagination. Is it true?’
‘I don’t know what the author wanted us to think, but … I believe Pi. Don’t you?’
‘Yes, but it’s so sad. How does he do it? He is so alone and lonely and yet … he is so brave!’
‘I reckon it all means something else – you know, like those biblical stories, which all have different meanings. My teachers were always talking about the Bible when we were kids – I never understood it. I had to ask my dad what they all meant. He didn’t have a clue either.’
She was talking about her father again. Was it just his imagination or did Aleisha seem slightly less guarded these days?
‘But I don’t know,’ Aleisha continued. ‘I wondered if the tiger meant something; like resilience or whatever.’
‘Maybe, I didn’t think that deeply about it. I’m not as clever as you. Or my wife, Naina,’ he said, the reprimanding image of Mrs Danvers popping into his head again. ‘Have I told you how Naina’s the reason I came to your library in the first place? And the books, the books you’ve been giving me, have helped me feel like I might be making her proud. Naina and my little granddaughter, Priya; they always had such a lovely connection with each other because of books. But still, I’m not as clever as you with all the deep meanings.’