The Inheritance

by Sheena Kalayil

  He held his phone to his ear for a few more seconds, his heart aching at the pride in his mother’s voice. His parents deserved to commemorate their son. He would not allow Clare’s sister and her entitled tone rile him. And what did she know of Ben? He was one-dimensional to Jane: a sentence in a journal. Whereas for him, Ben was a myriad memories, arguments, resentments, laughter and sadness.

  But, despite his anger, he could empathise with her doggedness: she was trying to make sense of something from her dead sibling’s life, just as he had tried, those months after finding the photograph. He could picture her with a tiny axe, chipping away at Clare’s gravestone, brushing away the fragments of stone until she found the message her sister had left for her. And then?

  He closed his eyes, covered them with one hand. He needed to admit that as much as apprehension at the recriminations that could be directed at Ben, his reaction to Jane was about his unwillingness to burst the bubble of the last few days, to have the girl, Rita, taken from him. He put the phone down on the surface next to him, stared at the familiar objects in his kitchen, trying to see beyond them, trying to dampen down the feeling that was tightening his chest. He could hear her moving next door, unaware of the chaos of his thoughts. This girl: his brother’s inamorata.

  20

  THEY left the flat and walked to the square, then down to the metro station. She looked fresh and bright now, with her hair brushed back and tied in a ponytail, as graceful in jeans and T-shirt as she had been in the dress the night before. When he had suggested that they spend the day together, explore the Gulbenkian’s art collection, her face had lit up: she was the type who appreciated small gestures. Now, she met his eyes and smiled, and he felt that tug again. She was so trusting; he could be leading her anywhere. Why should she believe he was taking her to a museum; not a cave, a cellar, a prison? An image from the previous evening arrived: Gildo had offered her a cone, and she had licked the ball of chocolate ice cream with rapid flashes of her tongue, without any inhibition. A reminder that she had not long left childhood behind her and it could still be lapping around her ankles.

  Leaving the metro, they walked through the garden and towards the museum, nestled among the greenery. There were few visitors: some families, a handful of tourists. He went into one of the back offices where he picked them both passes for the day, and led her to the main rooms. He had no real wish to be a guide, and he was pleased she did not seem to expect it of him. She wound her way through the paintings and installations, reading the information cards. Once, she stood in front of the painting of the boy by Manet, turning to catch his eye, smile, before turning back to it. He left her, to talk to the curator, with whom he would be examining the final-year installations at the degree show later in the week. When he caught up with her, she was in one of the rooms at the back, gazing at a large canvas nearly five metres in length. He watched as she read the information card, then laughed as she looked up, astonished.

  He moved closer so he was standing next to her. He had called this painting O poder delas. Two mestiças, reclining against a tree. The clothes covering their upper bodies undone and in folds around their waists, tools in their hands clasped on their laps, a mound of sweet potatoes beside them. The colours he had used for the women’s skin – ochre with tints of light yellow – were not dissimilar to the palette he had chosen for his painting of Rita. But these women’s bodies were stockier, and their breasts were rounder, heavier. He turned away.

  ‘It’s one of the reasons I came to Lisbon,’ he said. ‘So I could have the chance to do something like this. You know, have both creative freedom and the luxury of being paid a commission.’

  He waited and then asked, ‘What do you think?’, surprised to feel his heart beat faster in anticipation of her response.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’ She exhaled the words. ‘They’re so beautiful and calm and wise.’

  Her pronouncement pleased him – more than he had expected. And then he felt an annoyance at himself, for behaving no differently from Gildo’s nephew: a kid trying to impress a girl.

  He waited a few more moments and then said, ‘For me it’s a love poem to the women of the island. To their beauty and resilience.’

  ‘It’s an island?’ she asked. ‘In Mozambique?’

  He shook his head. ‘Cape Verde. Some years ago, I stayed there a few months.’

  ‘How long did this take you?’ Her eyes were still travelling over the canvas.

  ‘How long do you think?’ he smiled.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head. ‘A year?’

  He laughed. ‘Ten days.’

  She laughed back, her eyes wide with disbelief.

  He nodded. ‘Ten days. Not including all the preparation. I made the frame here in this room, and prepared the canvas. When that was all done, I got permission to stay overnight in the building and worked like a madman . . .’

  ‘That’s amazing . . .’

  ‘Well, it’s preparing a raw canvas that takes time. And the oils. But what I was going to do, I had it all planned out already. In my head and on paper.’

  She was still shaking her head in wonder. He could forget who she was, he saw. She could become his. The thought settled into his mind, as light as a feather, and he shook it off, took her elbow. ‘There’s more. Let’s leave me well alone now . . .’

  She allowed him to lead her away, and they continued through the other rooms together. But as they stepped out into the courtyard, she stopped, put her hand on his arm. ‘Thanks for showing me your painting. I feel, I don’t know, privileged for seeing it.’

  He was touched by her words, and the response came easily: ‘The privilege is mine.’

  It was warmer outside now. The gardens enveloped them; the foliage was lush even though it had not rained for the last fortnight. She walked along the path through the garden that led towards the fountain in the centre, and perched on the edge. He followed and sat down next to her. They both watched the people walking through the trees ahead on the paths that traversed the bushes, the tall grasses and flower beds.

  ‘It’s such a nice city,’ she said.

  ‘I couldn’t leave Maputo for just any old place.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Oh, well,’ he smiled. ‘Dirty and crumbling. Throbbing.’

  She leaned back slightly, dipped her fingers in the water, swirled them around.

  ‘How do you know Gildo?’

  ‘I met him soon after I moved to Maputo, and we became friends,’ he said. ‘The country was still in a civil war, and for a few years I just did my own stuff. Then after the war ended I started running art-therapy groups, you know, to help with post-traumatic stress disorder. I think I kind of capitalised on the zeitgeist. We got a lot of funding from foreign governments, a lot of attention from Western media,’ he shrugged and smiled. ‘It became a bit of a success, and I became a bit of a name. Well, Gildo was also the architect for the cultural centre we built.’

  She was quiet, then said. ‘That sounds wonderful—’

  ‘I’m no saint,’ he interjected. ‘It raised my profile no end, and I could do all sorts of things for myself because of it.’

  ‘It still sounds like a great project.’

  ‘It was. It’s still going strong. One of the men who came to us early on is now running it. It’s broader now, not just PTSD but other mental issues.’

  ‘Do you go back?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. This is home now.’ He paused. ‘I wouldn’t want to go back and have people think I’m checking up on them.’

  She was quiet. ‘I’ve not done anything nearly as interesting or as important as that.’

  She was looking away. He chose to say, ‘When I was your age, neither had I.’

  She was moving her fingers forwards and backwards, as if stirring the water would encourage a genie to arise, to do her bidding. What would she wish for? That his brother would come back to life?

  ‘Did you always want to be an artist?’<
br />
  He shook his head. ‘Actually, for ages I wanted to be a photographer. All through my teens and even when I first went to art college.’

  ‘Do you have any photos back at the flat?’ she asked him. ‘That you could show me?’

  She was hoping he would have some of Ben, he realised. Perhaps she had no memento of him.

  ‘I’ll dig some out when we get back,’ he said.

  She smiled her thanks, then returned to the water.

  ‘You and Ben. With your books and your paintings . . .’ she was still smiling, but now looking at him askance. ‘Ben writes about women and you paint mostly women. What does that say about you both?’

  He laughed. ‘I’d not seen it that way actually, but you’re right.’ He spread his arms out. ‘Well, I like women. I like looking at them. There are so many I admire, not anyone famous, just ordinary women. They are for me the more interesting sex by far.’

  She was making circles in the water, and then she lifted her fingers and splashed some water onto his chest.

  He laughed again: ‘Was that the wrong answer?’

  She shook her head. Then she ducked her head away and said softly, ‘Your parents must be very proud of you.’

  He shrugged. ‘They’re the kind who never pushed us. They’re just very supportive.’ There was a silence, and then he asked quietly, ‘What are your parents like, Rita?’

  She took her time. And then she answered a question he had only thought, not asked.

  ‘They’re not like you think,’ she said, turning away from the water so she was looking ahead. ‘If I tell them what happened, they wouldn’t hurt me or disown me or anything. They wouldn’t lock me up and throw away the key. They’ve always been gentle, both of them. They’re older than most of my friends’ parents, maybe that’s why.’ Then she whispered, ‘But they would feel very let down that I’ve left university. And they’d be shocked at what I’ve done and who I am.’

  He was silent, watching her. Now she was playing with a bangle on one wrist. He had to resist the urge to reach forward, lift up her ponytail, place his fingers on the nape of her neck. He looked at his hands, pushed them into his pockets.

  ‘They’re quite religious, you know?’ She was speaking quietly. ‘I mean, everyone in India is; they’re not unusual in that way. Sleeping with a man before marriage would be enough of a . . .’ she stopped, then said, ‘would be enough to disappoint them. But that he was married? And now he’s dead?’

  She looked up at him suddenly. Her eyes were large, dark pools: ‘Did they die, did they have the accident because of me?’

  He had made the same conjecture, hadn’t he? He remembered Gildo’s words: don’t make a nightmare. He touched her cheek for an instant, her eyes did not leave his, and then he said, ‘We won’t know, Rita. But what we do know is that people die in car accidents all the time.’

  She shook her head, as if in disagreement, then turned again away from him so he could not see her face. He could not tell whether she had felt his touch, or decide whether he should have made the gesture. His mind was cluttered, and he tried to breathe deeply, regularly. The sound of the water falling behind them was soothing; he listened to it until she spoke again: ‘Do you miss him?’

  ‘It’s not sunk in, I don’t think,’ he said. ‘But I guess it will sink in later, when I want to phone him about something and then I’ll remember I can’t. And when my parents get older and frailer, and I won’t have Ben around to talk to about them.’

  She nodded, but he knew she was showing her understanding of something else: that grief was not momentary but everlasting. From this day on, he would forever feel Ben’s loss; he would not be presented with a replacement brother. He glanced at her: she was staring at her hands. Would it be easy for her? To replace Ben?

  He suggested that they walk around the garden, and then they took a different route back to the metro stop so she could see more of the area. By the time they returned to his flat, it was getting dark. He had picked up some ingredients for a soup, and a stick of bread, all she said she could manage to eat; she was still suffering from the effects of the previous night. When the soup was simmering, he rummaged through the cupboard in the hall and pulled out his files of photographs, which he deposited on the dining table. She sat down opposite him and watched as he flicked through them.

  ‘I’ll have some of our old house, I’m sure,’ he mumbled, just as he found the first, taken outside their home, by his mother most probably. He and Ben stood with their dog, aged eight and ten, he guessed. Two toothy boys, dark hair in pageboy cuts, very short shorts and T-shirts. Then several taken by himself, with the camera he had saved up for, bought in London on one of their visits to see his mother’s family. Angled shots of the house, a rugby game, and several from the Eastern Highlands where his father had grown up on the farm. There were arty shots of his parents, mostly taken when they were obscured in some way. One of Ben, taken from behind: his brother was sitting on a rock, facing the hills before him. Several photos of Matilda, hanging up clothes, digging in the garden. One when she was polishing a row of shoes, another when she was staring into the camera’s lens with impatience. Then amongst another selection taken at the racecourse in Borrowdale – he remembered going with a friend whose parents owned one of the horses – a picture which he had not taken: an old photo of his wedding day.

  He stood next to Paula, whose long dark hair was arranged in a chignon, wispy strands framing her face. Their parents and siblings were aligned on each side. He slid it over to Rita and was surprised to feel a sharp stab of jealousy when she halted, breathed, God, that’s Ben, her fingers briefly touching his brother’s image. Much younger, but unlike the previous photos of boyhood, recognisably the Ben whom she would have known. She did not speak for some minutes, and then she asked, ‘How old was he here?’

  ‘Well, I was twenty-three, so twenty-one or thereabouts.’

  He watched as she gazed at the photograph; his brother would be close to the age she was now. It was as if time had spun her back, so she could meet him as a peer. She said nothing for some minutes, and then seemed to make an effort. ‘Your wife is very pretty. I mean your ex-wife was very pretty. I mean I’m sure she still is . . .’

  He smiled, and she gave up.

  ‘How long were you married?’

  ‘Five years.’

  ‘Clare isn’t in the photo.’

  ‘No, she didn’t come. The wedding was in Joburg. Johannesburg. I think they might have just started going out or something.’

  He skipped through some more photos. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her put the photo down, reluctantly. Then, as if to lance a boil, he slid another over towards her: Ben in Lisbon, not more than four years ago. He couldn’t remember if he had come alone or with Clare, but Ben looked well. He was leaning against the wall in front of the castle. The wind was in his hair, the sun in his eyes; he was squinting into the lens, and he seemed to be in mid-sentence. He radiated a vitality that set his face aflame.

  He felt tears spring into his eyes, at this reminder of his brother, at how when he took this photo neither knew what the future held in store for them, but the girl was too engrossed to notice, and he could blink them away. She touched her fingers to the image, her lips parted, and his heart suddenly ached, then burned. Whatever he and Rita had shared a short while earlier, those moments by the fountain, they were not what she had shared with his brother. Ben had made love to her: he would have held her naked body against his, coiled her hair around his hands, he would have heard the sound she made when she arrived at her climax. He stood up, went into the kitchen, repelled by the prurience he seemed to have acquired, knowing at the same time that that was not what hurt most. His brother had not only made love to the girl. He had touched her: under her clothes, under her skin, touched her heart, because it was clear that she had loved him.

  He turned the soup off, collected two bowls from the shelf above and sliced the bread, washed up the things that remain
ed in the sink. Then he spent a few moments gripping the edges of the kitchen surface and breathing deeply. When his pulse had slowed down, he glanced through the hatch: she was tidying the photos away, dry-eyed, slipping them back into the file.

  He walked back into the living area.

  ‘You can keep it, Rita,’ he said. ‘That photo of Ben, keep it.’

  She didn’t stop returning the photos to the file. Then she slowed down, shook her head and looked up. Her face had that same bruised expression he had seen that day he found her, when they had stood opposite each other on the street near her parents’ house.

  ‘No, I shouldn’t,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t be right.’

  He didn’t press her, and she smiled wearily. He picked up the folder and placed it on the bookshelf. If she wanted to find it again, she knew where it would be.

  Up and down, up and down: his feelings, her feelings. From the lightness he felt from being with her in the gallery, laughing in front of his painting, sitting by the fountain in the sunshine, to a heaviness when he looked at her, at her youth, her loveliness, reminders of his brother and what he had delivered into his midst. They ate their soup quietly. He put on some music, Debussy this time, to accompany them.

  After they had eaten, she insisted on washing up, and then sat on the sofa with her laptop while he tidied things away in his atelier. Later, she told him she was nearly dropping off: she would turn in. He opened his own laptop and dealt with his emails, mostly concerning the degree show later in the week, another reminder about the exhibition in the spring, then climbed into his camp bed, turned on the small lamp and opened his brother’s book.

  The country won its independence in 1980, after twenty years of unilateral independence under Ian Smith. During that period, whites and blacks lived segregated lives, if not as well documented or draconian as the infamous apartheid rule in neighbouring South Africa, persistent enough so that by the time Grace was born, in 1975 in Salisbury, the city was a patchwork of colours: the white population occupying the desirable Northern suburbs, such as Mount Pleasant and Borrowdale, the Indians congregating in the Belvedere area, the Coloureds (the mixed race peoples) in areas such as Hillside and Braeside, with blacks mostly found in commuter satellites such as Chitungwiza.