Into a Leopard, Say: three fictions by Ranbir Sidhu

Photo by muhammad wildan on Unsplash

Into a Leopard, Say

A man said to me, in the way that such men sometimes say such things, what time is it when it is time and what time will it be when it will be time, and I stood and watched him for a minute standing there, confident and aloof, in his fedora and dark overcoat, the wisp of a mocking smile curling under a moustache, the high gleam of his incongruously polished riding boots shining amid the railway station lights, the time as we both knew already late, the train having been lost on the tracks some miles outside town, so the station master told us, his voice gruff and angry, lost to things he did not understand, for it was not an accident, it was not a delay or an unscheduled stop, it was not a robbery, as they carried out on horses a hundred years ago, events his grandfather remembered, he said in his gruff and angry voice, nor was it supernatural in origin, the disappearance he meant, for he was sure now it was a disappearance, another disappearance, he added, like the one last week, at the same hour, on the same track, nor did the train lift into the sky and float away, nor was it swallowed whole somehow inside the earth, nor did it burst spontaneously into flames leaving but ash and smoke behind or transform, say, into a leopard or an oil tanker or possibly a river, as he had read about how gods, in ancient tales, often changed from one thing to another, for the train was not a god, he was sure of that, and therefore its disappearance, its evaporation into that which remains unknown, not mist or vapor, not even air, but something other, the as yet undiscovered element, he said, still gruff and angry, and for a moment an old memory seemed to cross his face, for he went silent, his features softened, and he almost smiled, as if remembering a lover long gone, and later I thought, as the man in the fedora stared mockingly at me, how luminous the station master’s eyes suddenly appeared, how childlike, as if transformed, like the vanished gods, from one thing into another.

I Saw a Shape Emerging

As always, of late at least, I missed the bus, the late bus I mean, having stayed too long at Marcia’s bar, and so stood in the cold asking myself if I should walk the five miles, or was it six, home, along the highway, with its at best intermittent lights, where long stretches descend into nothingness and the only hope of seeing one foot in front of the other is the headlights of a passing vehicle, an empty logging truck perhaps, and perhaps chance to hitch a ride, or wait the hour, or is it two, until the next bus, as I did last week when I found myself waiting not one, or two, but three hours in the cold, stomping my boots and slapping my palms together, watching the air curdle in white sprays spilling from my mouth, or should I simply walk into the forest and sleep on the soft earth, cushioned by leaves and pine cones, like a storybook child, I thought, lost and not lost, an orphan and not an orphan, when, out of that same forest I saw a shape emerging, an animal, perhaps a dog, I thought, walking toward me, but it wasn’t a dog, I soon realized, or if it had been a dog it was no longer one, and was instead a small bear, moving in my direction, with an almost flirtatious, yes playful, step, as if it wanted to dance, maybe even dance with me, and as I watched it approach I thought of myself curled on the forest floor, asleep, as the young bear must have been the night before, the scents of the forest, the sounds of the forest, the dark of the forest, the aliveness of the forest, and its great unknowness, lives lived beyond human eyes, anonymous worlds passing from generation to generation, and thinking this, the bear approached and briefly stopped, looked up at me, then walked on, vanishing finally into the darkness between the streetlights.

Somehow Paralyzed

If it wasn’t for his name, a name that held in it a dozen youthful dramas, all those stories I’d forgotten, wanted to forget, forced myself no doubt to push aside, to bin as the English say, I doubt I would have taken a second glance, but when he introduced himself, holding out a hand, saying what a pleasure, how he’d always wanted to meet, was such a fan, all of that, the kind of nonsense that would in any other circumstance send me flying backward, as fast away from him as I could manage, dignity be damned, I found myself frozen, stopped, and did that most unaccustomed thing, I returned the gesture and shook his hand, feeling the surprising weakness of his grip, for he looked well-built, solid, and suspected, despite his handsome features, the clarity of his eyes, that he was both older and perhaps frailer than he appeared, a fact he quickly supported, telling me that he needed suddenly to sit down, was having a spell, how embarrassing, he said while still holding onto me, but it wasn’t out of being starstruck, just that this had been happening more and more, the weather, the heat, I must have felt it myself, the way things change, are changing, not one summer like the last, the world we know each year as if erased and replaced, yes, he said, that’s the word, replaced, the kind of phrase, he said, I might use, seeming pleased with himself, and right then I wanted to get away, regretting my decision to remain rooted, somehow paralyzed, staring down at him, he was sweating now, and me thinking of the power of a name, how it throws us back in time, into younger, lost versions of ourselves, when suddenly he looked up, his eyes alert, and said that once, many years ago, when he was a young and vigorous man, he fell in love in an utterly hopeless way, with someone so out of reach they might as well have lived on another planet, but that despite the agony the unrequited love caused him, and agony it did cause, an unending year of heartbreak that left him as if smashed into the ground, today that same heartbreak nourished him, because it represented, he said, the idea of possibility, and he believed, genuinely believed, that there were other hes, in other universes, where the love was requited, versions of him that lived splendid, almost achingly beautiful lives, and as I stood there, still oddly holding his hand, noting the wetness around his eyes, I felt a charge run from his hand and up my arm and into my chest, and for a moment it was as if I could see through his eyes looking up at me.

---

Ranbir Sidhu's memoir No One Gets Out of Here Alive will appear in 2026, along with a re-issue of his first two books. He is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a NYFA Fellowship and the author of six books, including most recently Night in Delhi (2024) and Dark Star (2022). His work appears widely, including in The Baffler, Conjunctions, The Georgia Review, Fence, Zyzzyva, The Missouri Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Other Voices, The Literary Review, Salon and Vice. Two essays, an 11k word meditation on failure, sexuality and art, and another on the German visual artist Anselm Kiefer at eighty, are forthcoming in the New England Review and Los Angeles Review of Books. He lives in Athens, Greece.