He was oblivious to the undertones. “You will feel better soon,” he said quietly. “You see, these things are not meant for us.”
She felt the rage welling up within her again. “What do you know about it?” she asked. “Living here in the village, do you have a clue about life in the great big world outside? I mean, where do you get all your smug certainties from, for Christ’s sake?”
His eyes became troubled, and she felt instantly ashamed of her outburst. “I am knowing nothing much about your modern city life,” he admitted softly. “But I am knowing about real India, Indian society and culture. I am knowing who I am, Sandy. Are you knowing who you are?”
“Sure I know who I am,” she replied in some heat. “What makes you so cocksure, for Christ’s sake? What do you know about me? What makes you think I don’t know who I am?”
His gaze never shifted. “You are a girl,” he said levelly, “but you are dressing like a boy. You are old enough for being married, but your clothes are not . . . modest.” He uttered the last word with great care, and Sandy felt the color mount to her cheeks. “You are smoking without your parents knowing about it. And you are having boyfriends, isn’t it?”
Sandy found outrage battling embarrassment in her mind. Outrage won. The little semiliterate twerp, how dare he stand in judgment on her like that? “What the hell business is it of yours, anyway?” she blazed back.
He refused to be intimidated. “I am only answering your own question,” he said calmly. “You asked me what I am knowing about you. In the village I am knowing nothing of the kind of life you are leading in the big city. But I am hearing a lot, from friends who have visited such places as Bombay and Madras. And I am reading also. Isn’t it like this, Sandy? Cigarettes and dancing and boyfriends? And drugs, no?”
“I don’t take drugs,” Sandy replied hotly, and realized the debate had shifted to his ground. “Well, nothing more than a joint or two, anyway. Look, so what if I smoke and have a boyfriend? Life is different in the city. You don’t realize that India isn’t just the narrow little confines of your precious village. India is also a city like New Delhi. Big buildings, Shantan, not little huts where everyone knows everyone else. Millions of people, of all kinds. Lots of cars, crowds, concrete. Water out of taps and not out of a well. Telephones . . .” The nearest telephone connection here was in a town eighteen miles away. “I mean, man, it’s a different world out there. For you it’s a big thing to go to Palghat to see a two-year-old movie. In Delhi we have TV—television, that brings pictures from around the world right into our living rooms.” (Sandy never watched the boring black-and-white documentaries that constituted Delhi’s staple television fare, but that was another matter.) “I’m breathing a completely different air, don’t you see? So what if I have boyfriends—I’m not going to come back to the village for a piddly old arranged marriage, understand? Your values, your village society”—she mimicked his accent for those two words—“are fine for you, if you like them, but they don’t matter a damn as far as I’m concerned. In the city I’m free, see? So I don’t give a shit for your judgments. I don’t care what you think, Shantan. Why don’t you put that in your pipe and smoke it?” Somewhat surprised by her own anger, she pulled out the pack of cigarettes again, and found her hand was trembling.
Calm down, Sandy, she told herself. He means no harm. He just hasn’t met anyone like me, that’s all. I’m unique, his sole means of intimate access to a world he knows exists but can never hope to have real contact with. You can’t blame the guy, she thought, for his attitude: he’s only attempting to translate this contact into terms he can relate to and evaluate. He was just trying to understand her, and she should help him, not blow her top.
This time he didn’t try to stop her smoking. Her eyes were still on the cigarette she was lighting when she heard him ask, “Are you virgin?”
For a moment she thought she couldn’t have heard right, then she realized that of course she had. She fought to control herself: it would do no good to get angry, his skin was thicker than the soles of her Kohlapuri chappals. It was time to stand up for herself, to defend her sense of what she was without shame or submission. Sandy looked directly at her questioner. She did not know what exactly she expected to see in his expression: condemnation perhaps, hostility, or mere prurient curiosity. Instead she found something for which she was completely unprepared.
“No,” she found herself admitting in some confusion. Pulling herself together, she added firmly: “Of course not. I’m nineteen, for Christ’s sake.”
He flinched visibly. Sandy perversely felt it was time to turn the tables on him. “Are you?” she asked, taking a deep puff.
He did not answer. “This man,” he asked in a voice devoid of emotion, “is he going to marry you, Sandy?”
“Which man?” Sandy asked, exhaling the smoke and feeling it relax her. She was beginning to enjoy this: she was in control at last.
“You are knowing what I mean. This man who—who made you not a virgin.”
“Oh, him?” she laughed carelessly. “I stopped seeing him a year ago. I certainly wouldn’t marry him, not that he’d ask me.”
“Then why . . . why . . .” Shantan’s voice trailed off: he was really uncomfortable, the little bugger.
“Why did I sleep with him, you mean?” She asked with deliberate casualness, enjoying watching him squirm. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess to find out what it was like.”
He said nothing, but she could see the shadow that had fallen across his face.
“Shocked you, have I? Poor Shantan.” She took his hand in hers, very much the experienced elder sister. “Look, your reactions are all wrong. You’re part of my generation, for Christ’s sake. You shouldn’t be thinking, and sounding, like somebody’s parent.”
He did not react, and looked down at his hand in hers. “And what it was like?” he asked. “You . . . liked it?”
Sandy began to feel uncomfortable again. “Oh, sure,” she tossed the words aside with a shake of her head. “Doesn’t everybody?”
“And your boyfriend, the one you are having now,” Shantan asked earnestly, “is he not minding?”
“Chippie?” Sandy laughed. “Of course he doesn’t mind. He thinks a girl should be experienced. More experienced than I was, in fact.” She looked Shantan in the eyes, willing him to understand that there were other ways of thinking about these things than his. “Men do, you know. Come on, Shantan, stop looking as if I’ve just come from Sodom or something. Grow up.”
“And this . . . Chippie,” Shantan persisted. “Is he going to marry you?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sandy said. “We haven’t talked about it. I guess there’d be problems: he’s Muslim, actually, and his parents would probably have a fit. But who the hell thinks about marriage, at our age? Chippie’s not even through with college yet.”
“At your age,” Shantan said, “my sister was already having two children.”
Sandy looked at him, at his accusatory eyes, and suddenly felt her holding his hand had changed from the elder-sisterly gesture she had meant it to be. She dropped his hand, and his gaze fell; he looked down at the floor as if unable to meet her eyes. Unthinkingly, she put her fingers under his chin and lifted his face to meet her gaze. “Don’t you see,” she asked, her eyes dripping patient wisdom, “how different it all is?”
With a sudden movement he caught the raised hand and kissed her palm. Taken completely aback, Sandy stared at him in immobile astonishment. And then his mouth was upon hers.
He had no idea what he was doing: the kiss was hungry but inexpert. For a second Sandy felt the sweetness of his breath and allowed herself to register the unaccustomed flavor of being kissed by a nonsmoker. Then she twisted her mouth away from his and tried to pull herself away from him. He would not let her go, holding her upper arms in an immensely powerful grip that tightened as she struggled to free herself. “Stop it!” she breathed. “What do you think you’re —” And then his insistent mouth found
her lips again, and she could not speak. She tried to push him away, but he was too strong. She kicked him, but with the force of his body he simply pressed her legs more tightly against the wall. At last it occurred to her. The lit cigarette was still in her left hand. She jabbed upward and outward with it. He jerked back with a stifled sound; his grip slackened and she flung herself away from him.
“Have you gone mad?” she asked, panting.
He looked from her to the small round hole where her cigarette had burned its way through his shirt to singe his midriff. “Why did you do that?” he asked.
“Why—why did I—?” Sandy shook her head in wonder. “Boy, you’re really something, aren’t you, Shantan? You throw yourself on me, practically trying to rape me, and you ask me why I tried to stop you?”
“You did not want me to kiss you.” It was a statement, not a question.
Sandy looked at him. She saw the taut, well-muscled body, heard the resentment in the quiet voice, and imagined the un-spoken charge: “So I’m not good enough for you?” Of course he wasn’t, but how could one tell him that? She could imagine him thinking, she’s not even a virgin, why does she push me away? Oh, Shantan, just because I’m not married and I sleep with someone, it doesn’t mean I’m willing to sleep with anyone: how could she tell him that? How could she tell him anything? She should never have placed herself in this impossible position.
He took a step toward her. “This Muslim Chippie,” he said. “I suppose he is more handsome than me. He is making love to you in better English. Whereas I am only ignorant village boy. So what if I am same caste, same native place, as you? I am not worthy of even kissing you.” Suddenly he smiled, a humorless parting of the lips. “But I know what I must say,” he added with due deliberation. “I am sorry.”
She felt herself relax. “It’s all right,” she said. “I understand.”
“Do you?” His reaction was instantaneous. “That is truly wonderful, Sandy. Because I, I am not understanding anything.”
She looked at him, heard the bitterness in his voice, and knew she must walk away. But she also saw the pale features of Chippie, the wispy beard, the incipient paunch, the soft unexercised flesh, and wondered what it might be like to be made love to by the hard body of this son of the soil. This is crazy, Sandy, she said to herself. What do you think you’re doing here, where you don’t belong?
“Come on, Shantan,” she said quietly. “It’s time we got back to the house.”
He nodded, and stepped forward. He was closer to her now than when she had held his hand. “I was only wanting,” he said hoarsely, “to know what it was like.”
He smiled sadly at her, and she was suffused with an ineffable sorrow at the unbridgeable chasm between them. In the depths of her pity for his hopeless yearning, she realized both that he would not try to kiss her again, and that she would not resist him if he did.
Neither of them spoke a word. When they had smoothed their clothes back into place and begun to walk back to the house in silence, it was dark. Sandy could no longer see the face of the youth who had sought admission to her world, and to her body. She wished she had the language to enter his thoughts.
They reached the verandah of the main house. In a few steps they would be at the doorway of the living room, and it would be too late to say anything. She could not leave everything unsaid. She touched his arm and, in a voice that was little more than a whisper, spoke the only words that occurred to her.
“Thank you, Shantan,” she said. But of course he would never understand why she said it.
1972
The Temple Thief
The flashlight beam danced along the temple walls, casting an uncertain yellow penumbra on the irregular surface.
The light was growing fainter now; Raghav had been unable to afford a new set of batteries, and the light flickered as it traversed another empty niche and came to settle on the last movable idol, a stony, graven image of Shiva sitting impassively in a corner.
Raghav felt the sweat on his palm making his grip on the torch clammy and passed it from one hand to the other. Then he walked forward, towards the statue.
Despite himself, Raghav could not totally prevent a small shudder passing through him as he neared the idol. The fact that he was going to pick it up in a moment and deposit it with its fellows in the large gunny sack he had left on the floor behind him did not rob it of its essentially awesome quality. There was something ominous about the statue’s unblinking repose; something fearsomely self-contained, as if the idol was assured of its eventual triumph over all forces of evil, from atheists to temple thieves.
Not that Raghav was, or ever had been, an atheist; religion had been in his bloodstream ever since he could remember. But crime was an economic necessity and one could not let one’s scruples, religious or otherwise, interfere with one’s necessities. If God could not fill his belly by divine action, Raghav was surely justified in using God to fill his purse—and his belly—by actions which if nothing else had a context of divinity.
And being a temple thief was so much better, and safer, than being a pickpocket or a blind-alley rapist. It was in many ways a respectable line; stealing from the exponents of religion to sell to the connoisseurs of art.
Once more, Raghav studied the statue, trying to ignore the little clutch of fear that stabbed at his heart as he contemplated its fate.
For an irrational moment he wondered whether he needed to take it at all. The temple had been stripped bare already; his sack was almost full. Would one more statue make that much of a difference?
But as he asked himself the question he knew what his own answer would be. In his profession he could not afford to be finicky.
He laid his hands on the Shiva.
The strange, unmoving countenance stared back at him, he felt mockingly. Do you really think you are going to get away with this? It seemed to ask. Do you really believe that you, a mere mortal, and a common thief at that, can capture me?
The little knot of fear in his chest tightened suddenly and the flashlight went out. Cursing, he banged it against his palm, and the light shone straight into Shiva’s face. Startled, Raghav almost dropped the flashlight.
I’m getting weak, he snarled at himself, wiping his brow. This is no way to behave. Steeling his nerve, he stuffed the flashlight into a pocket and reached out for the Shiva in the dark with both his hands. It had settled well into its corner and he had to wrench it out of its place. Finally, it came away in his hands, and grunting, he walked back to the sack with it.
It was not as heavy as he thought it might be. He could still sling the sack over his shoulder and make his way out of the temple, across the moonlit track, away from the village and onto the road—and safety.
But he did not. Something held him back—a last forgotten vestige of all that he had held dear and precious. Having committed his crime, he could not leave his place of worship like that. There was a need for some last gesture—a plea for atonement, a kind of expiation. God would understand, God would forgive. Shiva was all-knowing, all-powerful, all-wise. He would not punish a faithful devotee for wanting to keep his bread buttered.
In the darkness, Raghav turned to the center of the temple. He switched the flashlight on and gazed for a long moment at the object behind the railings, an object he had not touched only because it had little market value.
The lingam, strong, potent, indestructible, stood there, a symbol of the immutability of the Saivite ethos.
Raghav bent, placing the flashlight on the floor, its light on so he would not lose it, and prostrated himself before his God.
He felt the presence near him before he actually heard any footstep.
Gingerly, he raised his head. The sound of light breathing convinced him his companion was no extra-terrestrial apparition, but an all-too-human intruder.
He was well and truly caught.
A mood of religious obeisance is not the most conducive feeling for resistance. Quietly, overwhelmed by his own guilt,
Raghav picked up the flashlight and turned to stare at the face above him.
It was that of a Brahmin priest, attired still in his white mundu and wearing the sacred thread, a cotton cloth swathed around his bare chest. Beneath the caste mark on his forehead his deep eyes were kindly, almost indulgent. A small smile played on his ascetic face.
“Rise, my son,” the Brahmin said, and his voice was gentle, deep, and resonant, yet inspiring an instinctively holy awe. Raghav stood, unsteadily, overcome by remorse. The message of the Shiva face had been driven home to him. Evil would always be punished. He would now receive his just retribution.
“I see you are sorry,” the priest said quietly. It was almost as if he could read Raghav’s mind. “Why did you do this, my son?” The powerful eyes searched his face and Raghav stirred, slightly, but could not speak.
“I think I know,” the Brahmin said, and there was a universe of understanding in those words. “Suffering drives men to many things, my son. But . . . this?” There was a genuine sorrow in his voice, mingling with disbelief that Raghav could have stooped so low as to defile that which was sacred to him. In the face of that look, Raghav’s eyes fell to the floor. How could he account for his unspeakable crime with facile, hypocritical justifications?
The Brahmin took his arm, gently removing the flashlight from his grasp. He shone it on the sack. “And there lies the result of your depravity,” he said, but while the words were strong, the voice spoke more in sorrow than in anger. “You were praying when I came upon you. Do you believe you deserve to be forgiven for this crime?”
Raghav stuttered a reply. His shame was writ large over his face. “No . . . I—am . . . sorry.”
“Sorrow is easily expressed, my son,” the priest rejoined. “In our religion there is much we tolerate—much the Lord tolerates. It is written that he who does not have must strive to attain success.” He looked sharply at the crestfallen Raghav. “But at the expense of others—and not just of one person, but of the entire community which maintains, in its worship, this temple and all within it—that is a cardinal sin.”
The Five Dollar Smile: And Other Stories Page 7
