by Shani Mootoo
Chandin crouched behind the cart until he felt sure Ambrose had entered the house, then he made his way back. He climbed the fence to avoid being given away by the creaky front gate. The cleaver was where he had concealed it: at the base of the oleander. Chandin wedged himself into the bush. Neither Ambrose nor Mala was in sight and the house appeared quiet. Chandin was about to come out, cleaver in hand, when he was startled by footsteps heading toward the front yard. He ducked back into the shrubbery.
Ambrose hurried around the house and to the front steps, bounding up two at a time. Chandin peered out and saw him staring through the front windows.
Ambrose’s heart thundered. He became wide eyed when he saw the disarray inside, believing at first that the house had been burgled. Mala was nowhere to be seen. Fearing the worst, he urged himself to take control of his wits. He began a quiet, insistent knocking. He loudly whispered Mala’s name, then called out more urgently. He knocked so many times that even Chandin wondered where his daughter had gone. Ambrose tried the door. It clicked and released, startling him.
Apprehensive, he pushed the front door open and stepped inside. A single glance took in the demolished drawing room and kitchen. His beloved was in neither. Ambrose broke out in a sweat. He tiptoed farther into the house. At Chandin’s bedroom he took a slow breath and pushed the partly open door. He feared finding his sweetheart tied up and gagged or worse—but he would not allow himself to imagine what might be worse. He was both relieved and terrified to find no one there. He stood still and listened, wondering if the robber or murderer were still in the house. He tiptoed back to the drawing room. Hesitantly, he tried the door to the downstairs room. It was always locked and was still so.
Chandin, sneaking up the front stairs and crossing silently to the windows, saw the young man press his ear to the door. He watched him carry on toward Mala’s room.
Ambrose felt nauseous. He placed his ear against her door and heard nothing. His eyes began to fill with tears of fright. He clenched his teeth, made a fist around the doorknob and very slowly turned it. The door gave way a hair and then shut again. He was so terrified he shoved the door with sudden and surprising force.
Mala had been hiding behind the door. She tumbled over. Keeping her face buried between her knees she sobbed so hard that her body shook violently. Ambrose saw everything except her face: the over-turned bed, the torn clothing, the broken gramophone and, worst of all, blue and violet bruises up and down Mala’s arms and legs. He shrieked in alarm and threw himself over Mala like a protective blanket.
“Who did this? Who did this, Mala, tell me, tell me.”
She sobbed louder, refusing to let him see her. “Please don’t stay here. Go! Get away. Leave me, leave me.”
Ambrose clutched her face by her chin. He forced her to face him. Damp hair clung to her face. Blood from her wounded eye had softened and smeared down her cheek. Mucus had run down and smeared her lips and chin.
Ambrose stared in disbelief. Mala stopped crying. She held her breath and looked defiantly straight ahead. Like a summer evening’s first flash of lightning, Ambrose’s face flared.
“Your father?” he whispered.
Mala closed her eyes. Suddenly Ambrose understood everything.
“So what you going to do about it?” Chandin said.
* * *
—
Mala’s father stood in the doorway. Ambrose could not tell if the expression on Chandin Ramchandin’s face was a grin or a snarl. Chandin grasped the handle of a cleaver firmly with his hands and lifted it high above his head, arching his body back for leverage. Ambrose scuttled backwards in disbelief. Mala, looking up and seeing her father about to swing the weapon, gave an icy shriek.
She lunged forward, grabbed Chandin by the knees and with a might that frightened even Ambrose, jerked his feet out from under him. Chandin fell on his back, still holding the cleaver. Mala dived across the floor, seized the handle and struggled to wrench it from her father’s hand. He clenched her hair at the top of her head, tightened his fist and pulled and pulled.
Ambrose inched forward. He wanted to help but how? His mind felt fragile and timid. Chandin raised his foot and kicked in Ambrose’s direction. Ambrose recoiled and the foot fell heavily on the gramophone.
Mala’s fury was so uncontrollable she didn’t notice her hair being ripped out. She forced her face toward the hand holding the cleaver and sunk her teeth deep into Chandin’s wrist. Chandin released his grip on her hair and curled his body in sudden agony. Mala had drawn blood.
Ambrose saw the opportunity to go for help or perhaps find a tool with which to fight. He gathered the smashed-up gramophone, yanked open the door and dashed out of the room. The heavy door hit Chandin’s head with enough force to stupefy him, and he slumped down, his eyes open. Mala tore the cleaver out of his suddenly limp hand. With the back of her other hand she wiped her father’s blood from her face and spat at him. She charged out of the room.
When Ambrose entered the kitchen, he stood still, trying to make sense of what had been revealed to him. He assured himself that it was he whom Chandin wanted to kill and not his own daughter. He looked feebly around for a knife to protect himself, all the while feeling shame for her and for himself—as though he had been betrayed by Mala, and at the same time wrestling with the notion that she could not possibly, not conceivably have been agreeable to intimacies with her father. In that instant of hesitation he so distanced himself from Mala that, like an outside observer, he saw the world as he had known and dreamed it suddenly come undone. He rested the gramophone on the kitchen table and stumbled onto the verandah. At the bottom of the back stairs he hesitated again, wondering if and how to get help, and again shrank with the thought that a call for help would expose the shameful goings-on in the house, to which he had become connected.
Suddenly he heard a dreadful crashing. Mala was calling out his name. He ran back up the stairs as though jolted by a cord. In the kitchen he saw, instead of the woman he had made love to the day before, an unrecognizable wild creature with a blood-stained face, frothing at the mouth and hacking uncontrollably at the furniture in the drawing room. He watched her smash a side table with a single powerful blow. When she saw him she dropped the cleaver and moved heavily toward him, moaning lifelessly.
“Ambrose, don’t go. Don’t leave me, Ambrose. Please don’t go.” Ambrose couldn’t make out her words. Thinking she had gone crazy and fearing once more for his life, he turned and bolted from the house.
Mala gasped in disbelief. She rushed to the verandah, screaming his name. He had already disappeared. She clutched the banister, choking as though there were no oxygen in the air. She fell to the ground. There was a bizarre familiarity in the moment. She remembered her father clutching at that same banister, and felt herself lying on the verandah in that same position. Long ago. Today.
Mala stopped crying and sat up slowly. She looked into the yard.
“Asha? Aunt Lavinia? You there? Mama? Boyie?” she whispered.
She looked and listened. Nothing. The house was quiet. She commanded herself to think. Shivering, she tiptoed back into the house, picking up the cleaver with a firm grip. Every few paces she stopped and listened for sounds of a buggy, her sister’s voice, Ambrose returning, her father stirring. At the door of her room she listened. Unable to stand the tension, she nudged the door open and peeped in. Her father lay still on the floor, his eyes open and glazed, his legs limp, spread apart, his hands curled. The rage inside her ebbed. She stepped back, straightened her posture and pulled the door shut. She put down the cleaver. She walked to the door and lay both hands flat against it. She took a deep breath and pushed with all her power. The door hit Chandin’s head and swung back shut. She took a deep breath and repeated the act until she was exhausted.
She opened the door that led to the sewing room downstairs and stared at the flight of steps. She walked back toward her own room
and opened the door. Her father had not moved. She took up the cleaver and tiptoed around his body. She stooped down and waited. Still no movement. She lifted the gleaming cleaver to his face and rested the flat side under his nose. Did she only imagine the vapour of hot air that passed over the blade? She jumped up and, extremely vigilant, edged her way toward his feet. She grasped them and pulled. His body seemed oddly tensed. She hauled him with one sharp tug into the doorway. On the wood floor of the kitchen the body slid more easily. She dragged him to the open door. Positioning him on the top stair, she gave him a push and the body slid down two stairs and stopped. She kicked and pushed until she managed to get it all the way down to the bottom stair. Drenched in sweat, she stopped to catch her breath, not taking her eyes off the man. Then she dragged his unyielding weight into the sewing room. She ran out slamming the door shut behind her. Her mother used to keep a key on the ledge. She reached up and found it. She locked the door. She leaned against it with relief and then mounted the stairs. At the top she shut and locked the door.
She looked, not for Ambrose but for Boyie, for Asha, for her mother and for Aunt Lavinia. She picked up the broken gramophone and went down into the garden searching for them. She peered under the house. She left the gramophone there and went to the fence. She walked the length of the fence looking up and down the road. There was no one to be seen.
She tore up the boards that had lain on the soil so that the yard would still be passable in the rainy season. She dragged the boards to the sewing room and hammered them over the window. She ran back upstairs. The door to the sewing room was still shut. She tried it and was relieved to find it was indeed locked. She sat down in the kitchen facing the door to the sewing room, waiting and wondering.
As evening approached Mala sat there still. She thought about the night and how she dared not sleep in her room. She dreaded the idea of sleep and refused to do so inside the house. She jumped up and ran into her room and dragged a dresser, an arm chair and a stool into the centre of the drawing room. She went into her father’s room and did the same with his furniture. She spent the evening intricately arranging these and every piece from the drawing room and kitchen, including pieces she smashed apart, into a tight barricade from floor to ceiling. She worked until she had created an admirable wall that was almost impenetrable. It would be dangerous to anyone who attempted to dismantle it. Realizing she would need to know her father’s condition and how much care would be needed to be safe from him, she made a small, well-camouflaged doorway.
When she finished she went out on the verandah. In the frothy wind that wildly stirred the trees in the yard she sat and waited.
She never lit a lantern in that house again. Nor did she, since that day, pass a night inside its walls.
IV
THERE WAS NO dawn on the morning after the fire on Hill Side. The town, exhausted by the previous day’s excitement, lay under a low umbrella of soot that had the fragrance of mudra-scented charcoal. Across Paradise could be heard a constant, scratchy coughing and sneezing as the town awakened. Most townspeople did not realize that morning had already come. They arose from their beds in darkness.
Ambrose E. Mohanty had stayed on his verandah all night. Otoh was utterly worn out and could have slept had he chosen to. He opted to stay with his father. In recent hours time seemed to have caught up with Ambrose. Otoh watched his father, amazed at how shrunken his posture had become since the afternoon, how stooped his shoulders, how pale and drooped his skin and eyes, as though they could no longer fight gravity. It occurred to Otoh that being awake really did not agree with his father. His father tapped delicately on the banister during the silences between them, as though with a jeweller’s hammer. He often paused, sometimes for so long that Otoh resumed his own thoughts and quite forgot what had been said before.
“I appreciate your company, son.” Otoh had heard this once already.
“You’re so quiet though,” Ambrose ventured. Silence.
“It’s disconcerting, your quiet I mean,” he tried again. Otoh nodded sadly.
“Each time I glance over at you, I feel obliged to respond to the questions that you have every right to ask but are polite enough not to voice.” His father tapped.
“Is it my imagination or are there a thousand unspoken whys streaming out, swimming from your temples? I look at your silent face, and in my throat the feeble word because forms itself only to become stuck. Because, because, because, a menacing little word whose mere utterance tastes like an admission of culpability.” Ambrose drummed a little on the wood railing.
“Save me my shame, son, and ask me, I beg you, those things that line your face and discolour your eyes. What say you, my son? What a terrible thing to be disgusted, or even disappointed with one’s father.”
And so the night passed. Otoh had questions but they were not foremost in his mind. Even as his father’s verbosity irritated him he wanted to embrace him protectively.
“Have you ever wondered why I slept so much?” his father continued. “Have you? You know there was a time when I thought there was so much to do and life was so wonderful that I would sleep only when I was dead and buried.
“I slept not because I was avoiding you or your mother, as you both had every right to assume. I slept because I couldn’t face myself. Whenever I caught sight of my own reflection what I saw was my own face watching me, mocking me, and shaking its head in disgust with my performance in the entire Ramchandin affair. I slept to avoid the nausea that seemed to sour my insides and the weight of defeat crushing my heart whenever I thought of my inaction…of my indecisiveness that day Mr. Ramchandin brandished his cleaver at me. In a way I didn’t merely lose Mala Ramchandin. I lost myself also. Did I lose you too, son? Hmmm? At the end of each month of sleeping, I awoke to find that the beast caged in my sternum had grown, making me even more fatigued and ill. So I hurried to smother the monster with sleep. Goodness. Sleep is an inactivity too, is it not? An act of indecision? Hmmm.”
During this nonsensical ramble Otoh began to feel like his mother, to at last understand her fury at Ambrose’s dance with words.
“Phew! Dear, dear, dear,” said Ambrose, reading the look on his son’s face.
“Otoh, I want you to know that I did go back the following day. In fact I returned three times. The first time I reached only as far as the bottom of the back stairs and she came flying at me with a stick, brandishing it and growling like an animal. My love charged at me with a long guava stick. She chased me out of the yard. She had no idea who I was. She had no idea who I was, Otoh.
“She just screamed sounds that had no meaning, and she beat the air in front of her with that stick, and it occurred to me then, and the thought broke my heart, that my sweet one’s mind had flown out of her head.
“I managed on the second occasion to retrieve the gramophone, with the ambition to have it repaired and to present it to her again, god willing. God willing. That gramophone brought us such enjoyment.
“I went again and again, three times I tell you, I returned only to be met with the same fate. Mala, my sweet Mala, had aged overnight and was keeping her hair as wild as a worn-down, coconut-fibre broom. I decided it was unsafe for me to go back. On all three occasions her father was nowhere to be seen. So I thought she was safe from him, at least. I assumed he had gotten the hell out of there.
“But it was clear. I couldn’t go back up there. All I could do to make up for my confusion and, call it neglect if you will, was to make sure that she had provisions and the essentials. Leaving those food supplies for her, you know the salted cod, butter, sugar and such, was all I could really do to try and loosen the knot that was growing in my heart.”
The sounds of the townspeople finally rousing found them still on the verandah. (Elsie Mohanty, however, continued to sleep well into the day.) Otoh was weary. He resigned himself to the way things had turned out and the futility of dredging it all out and laying bla
me.
“Pappy, I would very much like to go and see her as soon as it is possible. Do you want to go with me?”
Ambrose clasped his hands at his chest as though in prayer and nodded, half grinning, half crying.
“Well, I will find out where she will be and when she can be visited. We will both go. I’ve got something up my sleeve.”
“I’m sure you have. I’m sure you have!” An embarrassed chuckle came from Ambrose. Otoh remained serious.
“Also, I want to take a clipping of this plant for her. I wonder what it’s called. Pappy, do you know?”
BEFORE ELSIE MOHANTY left Paradise she searched for an appropriate moment to have a talk with her son. She found such an opportunity in his restlessness one morning.
“Otoh, you walking in circles around me,” Elsie said. “You making me dizzy. You couldn’t be hungry—unless you have worms—you just eat lunch, child. If you have something on your mind why you don’t just settle down and tell me?”
Otoh continued circling his mother, unsure how to ask her what she knew about Miss Ramchandin’s life. Unskillfully broached, such a topic was bound to explode in every direction but the one he wanted. His mother could not have guessed that it was The Bird that he wanted to discuss, so she assumed that what made him uneasy was exactly what was on her own mind.
“All right. What about if I guess what it is that is on your mind? Hmmm?”
“No, Ma, you can’t guess…” he mumbled. He turned on his heels and circled her in the opposite direction.
“Yes, I am a mother. I must know my child. You are behaving like somebody who is ready to settle down. You have marriage on your mind, not so?” Otoh’s circling came to an abrupt halt but he didn’t answer. He did not, that is, have time to answer. Pleased that she had caught his attention, Elsie rushed ahead.
