She wanted no part in that. It was impossible to explain to her parents that she had been utterly willing: she had wanted to be desired, touched, even owned by Ben. Her family had asked her whether she wished to make a complaint; after all, it was clear this older man had taken advantage of a young girl. But their queries were half-hearted. Better for everyone if they moved on, avoided any attention. A towel smeared with blood thrown into a washing machine, a photo ripped up. Of Francois she had said nothing. She had discarded her phone without replying to his messages so that no one would know of him. She had only, after all, stayed with him for seven days. The lucidity and fullness of those seven days: these would remain her secret. They did not belong to any account of her wrongdoings, why she was where she was now. For a tale was never a truth; but only what the narrator wanted to tell.
The sun was rising and the sky was turning a fragile grey-blue, more traffic was gathering, and the familiar colours were emerging: the endless green, the red dust, the blue sky. Before long, they were on the bridge crossing over from the mainland onto the peninsula. The car swerved suddenly: a man on a bicycle had swung in front, a pile of sacks balanced on the back, teetering dangerously, and her uncle hooted angrily.
‘Karutha’, then he turned to her. ‘Sorry, mol.’
They drove up the dusty, bustling road in Mattancherry. To one side, under the shade of a banyan tree, there was a cluster of vendors selling fruits and biscuits. Along the rest of the road, before the turning to the quiet street leading to the synagogue, the stalls displayed garments and trinkets. Onachen’s next exploit, he was telling her, was to make good on their dream: to renovate the house and open some rooms to guests. The old house was crumbling, but they were in a prime location – the halfway point between Jewtown and Fort Cochin – and tourists loved old houses. This house had been in Seline’s mother’s family for at least a century. ‘When you are feeling better,’ he said, as if she were suffering from an ailment, ‘you can give me some ideas.’
On her arrival at the house, she had had a shower, washing away the journey but also, she felt, preparing herself for a new life. Her environs had changed; time was slow. She could learn to forget. Seline had moved downstairs, and Rita could have her own room. That first morning, she knocked on her cousin’s door, heard a mumbled response. It was stuffy inside; Seline lay in a crumpled kurta, sweat stains at her armpits. She gave a small smile when she saw Rita: ‘Reetiekutty.’
She sat down next to her cousin, trying to hide the shock she was feeling. Seline’s face was blurred, her lips were cracked, her hair needed washing.
‘Will you come for some breakfast?’
Her cousin shook her head but offered no excuse. Then closed her eyes as Rita sat for many minutes until she stood up and left the room. Onachen had laid out some coffee and bread on the table on the veranda.
‘There could be a small fountain; the sound of water is relaxing,’ he was saying. ‘We could make the two downstairs rooms en suite, more privacy. Then the big living area . . .’ He seemed intent on looking to the future, when he and Seline would resume their partnership.
‘How long has Selinechechi been like this?’ she interrupted, and her uncle stopped mid-flow.
‘About one month,’ he said after a pause. ‘Maybe a bit longer.’
‘Have you seen a doctor, Onachen?’
He nodded, his features sagging momentarily. ‘It’s not serious,’ he said. ‘Her mother was like this sometimes. After some rest, she will feel better.’
Then he moved on: the antique shop needed to be manned, it was still the high season. If Rita could help, then, when Seline was recovered, things could go to plan.
She was unconvinced by her uncle’s optimism and disturbed by the change in her cousin. It was a macabre thought, but it was as if the illness that had plagued Ben’s wife had left her body like a malevolent spirit and settled into someone else, someone who would suffer for Rita’s misdeeds. She had never known Clare Armstrong or seen how she had suffered, physically or mentally. Now she could witness the effects in Seline, a fraction of the person she had been just a few months ago; her uncle, deprived of his beloved child, his companion. Rita was now in the midst of such pain. Not an observer or an intruder but an actor in a family’s drama.
Her parents called her every day for the first weeks; she made the same responses: yes, I’m all right. Yes, eating well. In fact, she had little appetite: the heat, the boredom, the repetitive, limited curries that Marykutty, who tended to the house and Ammachi, produced. It had been less than a year since she had last been, but there were many changes: no visits to the other guesthouse, no giggling with Seline. Her daily trajectory was a few metres across the road and down the lane to the antique shop, and then back to the house. There was a steady stream of visitors to the shop – it was on the lane leading to the synagogue – a steady stream of interest in her. But Onachen and his scowling assistant, Noble, loomed large; perhaps Onachen was more alarmed by her fall from grace than she imagined. She missed her cousin; the days were long and the nights were hot, uncomfortable.
One afternoon, she opened the door to the front bedroom, which was now unoccupied. Previously, it had been the main bedroom, for Ammachi and her husband; now it was used mainly for storage. It was the coolest room in the house, never having the sun fall in it, and sheltered from the heat of the roof by two storeys. She pushed the bags of rice and boxes of dried produce to one side; she had space to move and, with the fan on its highest speed, a type of breeze. In here, she could practise Kathak when the rest of the household and the street were having their siesta.
It had been several months since she had danced – the last time had been at Onachen’s friend’s guesthouse the previous summer – the longest hiatus in her life until then. When she slipped on the heavy ankle bells and made her first steps, her elbows bent and level with her shoulders, singing the taal’s rhythm herself – thaa thaa thay ha thaa thaa thay – her love of the movements and what they brought to her flooded back and filled her heart. The rhythms took over her body. She spun, found her centre, leapt and then crouched, one knee bent, the other leg straightened to her side – thay ha thay ha – then she slid back into standing position, her arms raised, and spun and spun. By the end of the afternoon, she was drenched with sweat, exhilarated; her muscles were aching. If she could do this a few times a week, she need not fear her body atrophying like she felt her soul was. But, as well, the tears were rolling down her cheeks; her heart was in her throat. For along with the joy of retrieving something she loved came an understanding of the dance that had eluded her until then: as if she had had to live, err and survive to acquire a oneness with the elements it celebrated. The fire between her and Ben, how she had felt that to be with him was to breathe air, be watered; his death and this exile had turned her to wood. Now she would need metal, resilience, to continue living when he was gone and she was alone.
If her family ever wondered at her dedication, practising diligently, writing out new sequences which she performed for herself alone, in the front room, and in the drier months, outside in the yard, they never spoke of it. For, she could see, they feared that her gracefulness and litheness shone too brightly. It was never mentioned that she should share her talents, perform to an audience; she never asked. She had asked too much of her family already. She did not tell them that each dance she wrote told the tale of what had happened, that each stanza had its own tempo, and that as she did not have a tangible memento of the events that were etched in her memory, she was making her own.
26
THE street in front of the antique shop – with its craft stalls and Internet cafés, the tea shops and spice galleries – was her window to the outside world. Aside from the hours she spent there, her time was spent in the house in Mattancherry, where she found herself waiting for the others to retreat to their rooms for the afternoon siesta so she could return to the front bedroom, now her dance studio. Other than the burst of vitality which her dancing aw
oke in her, she felt listless. She found she was reluctant to begin the courses that Latha had recommended. Her cousin’s ailment infected the household, which seemed to wait for Seline’s recovery in a stupor, one in which she, Rita, could not contemplate laying down stepping stones that could lead her to a future.
More than a month had passed when one morning she opened her cousin’s door: ‘Selinechechi, let me wash your hair.’
‘I washed it the day before,’ came the muttered reply.
‘Not properly. Come with me.’
Rather than closing her eyes and turning over as she had done previously, her cousin gave a small smile: Rita had, without thinking, spoken in Malayalam.
She helped her cousin up. Seline gave off a stale, sad smell. She led Seline outside, to the courtyard in front of the veranda, the kitchen building to one side, and settled her cousin on a chair in the shade. Then she went back, stripped the bed of its sheet, threw open the windows, tied back the light curtains. Marykutty was outside the kitchen door, Ammachi beside her on her cot, pounding rice for appam, but had stopped to stare. Then, as if she understood what needed to be done, Rita saw her put down the mortar and enter the house: she was going to sweep out Seline’s room.
Her cousin’s hair was plentiful but greasy. Her stomach turned as she soaked it using mugs of hot water from a bucket beside her, then lathered it with shampoo.
‘Smells nice,’ Seline mumbled.
‘Because you’re worth it,’ she replied smiling, but the joke was lost on her cousin, who nodded absent-mindedly. She left Seline with her hair in suds while she drew some more hot water into the bucket, carried it back to the chair in the courtyard, avoiding looking at the dirty water that flowed in muddy streams into the vegetable patch behind. Seline sat passively, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes half-closed. Then she spoke: ‘I hear you in the afternoons. You are dancing?’
Rita nodded. ‘Otherwise, I’ll be out of practice, and I wouldn’t get any exercise.’ She paused. ‘Do you want to join me?’
‘No, no.’ Then, ‘But I like hearing you.’
Her cousin’s hair looked so full, glittering in the sun, that Seline herself now looked even more unkempt.
‘Will you take a bath now Selinechechi?’ she asked tentatively.
‘Venda,’ Seline replied, then stood up, tossed her hair over one shoulder and walked back into the house.
It was a step. Marykutty related the incident to Onachen when he returned. He looked joyous: ‘Her mother was the same, orkkunnunille?’ Rita was pleased to give her uncle happiness, but she was also frustrated: did Seline not need medication or therapy? It was derisory, this fatalism – like mother, like daughter – which came from the same place that had branded her cousin not marriage-worthy, had branded her mother as faulty. And she knew she herself would enter the family’s mythology: your great-grandmother, Rita. She fell to temptation, she brought shame to the family, she was a step away from being a veshya.
And then she was startled by her own convictions: that she would in the future marry, have children, who would have children and on and on. Had she learned nothing? Had she not learned that nothing could be predicted, presumed, that life was governed by the throw of a dice, a turn of phrase? Two hands steadying her as she walked blindly down a corridor. How could she know that she would be privileged enough to have such a life: of love and children of her own to cherish? But she could not shake, along with her fears, a sense of belief in herself. She had made a mistake, a grievous mistake; she needed to confront herself and what she did. The sense of belief arose from this understanding: that she had the strength to do so.
Seline began to appear at breakfast. Eventually, she started coming to the shop for increasingly longer periods. The accounts were in dire need of her perusal; Rita was starved of company. Now that her cousin was there, Rita appreciated the activities around the shop. In the mornings the grill was lifted, and they sat, open-fronted to the shady street. Her desk was positioned near the front, she had a stool, but she found she could not sit still all day and often spent hours dusting the shelves: a repetitive task, but at least it allowed her to finger the wares, which were exquisite. There were the usual cluster of brass ohm signs, bells and Buddhist bowls. But there were also real temple doors, carved gods in teak, tiny jewelled instruments and tools, and, her uncle’s pride, the chundan vallum which hung along one side. This was what caught most visitors’ attention, even though it was not for sale. And this was what spurred most visitors to engage Rita in conversation: what exactly is this? From a description of the boat races they would move on: you speak excellent English. Eyes would surreptitiously move over her face, her frame, an invitation would ensue. At this point she could feel her inner doors closing, like the doors of the temples in the hills. Now, rather than Onachen and Noble appearing in the shop, having heard a male voice intersecting with Rita’s, she only had to glance to one side, into the office. Seline did not even bother to look up, but there would be a smile playing on her lips.
Some months later, when Seline’s previous energy and vim were nearly restored, Onachen insisted that the girls have a day out together. He would arrange a driver to take them where they wanted: the shopping mall on the mainland, the beach further up the coast? In the end, they decided to do everything: start the day watching the temple elephants being bathed in Kodanad, before returning to the city, its shops and its beach.
They stood on the banks of the river as the mahouts led the elephants to be washed in its water. There was a smattering of others – tourists, two families with young children – the banks so high that they had a near-aerial view of the splashing below. The river was wide at this part, the hills framed in the distance by the blue sky and a line of coconut trees. The mahouts were sinewy, with dark bodies, red mundus tied around their waists. They called to each other, barking orders that were lost on the tourists: Eda cherrakan, nee naannayi cheyyukkannum! They slapped the elephants’ legs, scrubbed their backs, while the elephants, large and grey, like oversized boulders, luxuriated in the attention and the warm waters of the river.
Afterwards, she sat side by side with her cousin on a rock, and perhaps because after all these months – she counted, more than four since she had arrived – she had forced herself to empty her mind of thoughts, it was especially unexpected when, as she faced the river, the words rushed into her head, like a ghostly bell – Ben and Clare, Ben and Clare – as if a child were calling out for assistance from down a well. She felt that familiar ache that she had suppressed for the last months, and her cousin beside her seemed to sense a change.
‘What happened, Reetiekutty?’
She had not spoken of it for months, even though memories of what had happened had become part of the tissues and cells of her body, implanted themselves in her tendons and muscles.
‘He was married,’ she said quietly. ‘And then he died, in a car accident. With his wife,’ adding in a whisper, ‘I loved him.’
But without any embellishments, without allusions to the sensuality, the struggles of childlessness, without describing these dark betrayals, the announcement fell flat: an anticlimax. A few sentences had sufficed to relay the events.
Seline said nothing, only remained looking out at the river, until Rita asked, ‘Is it worse than you thought?’
She was surprised to see her cousin chuckle in response.
‘No one could have wanted them both to die. That is a tragedy, yes,’ Seline said finally. Then she looked at Rita: ‘But it’s no worse than many stories I’ve heard.’
Below them the mahouts were leading the elephants away, down a path back to the temple. The tourists were gathering near their coach; a child was smacking her mother’s legs in excitement as the older sibling cavorted on the rocks.
‘Which is harder?’ Seline asked, in English now, turning to look at her. ‘That he was married or that he died?’
She waited: they had time, and she needed to give herself a chance to find the response. It arrive
d, eventually, but it was an understanding that she would not share. That he died with his wife, because now she’s with him and I’m left behind. This realisation shamed her, and she shook her head.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
She glanced at Seline, who was watching her.
‘This is what makes us strong, Reetiekutty,’ her cousin said. Her tone was soft but decisive. ‘That we make mistakes, but we learn from them and carry on living.’
‘But,’ now she had found her voice, ‘that’s what is so hard. That I love living. Isn’t that unfair? That I should be alive and they aren’t?’
‘If everyone stopped living because someone they loved died . . .’ Her cousin sighed, turned back to gaze at the water.
She realised she was speaking to her maiden-cousin, who, it was very likely, had never had a relationship. Seline was looking out onto the river, which she would have known all her life. Before moving into the old house in Mattancherry, her cousin had grown up in a village not far from where they were sitting now, where she would have swum in this same river. As children, she and Joy had kept each other company: both, at that time, sibling-less. And if her own parents had not decided to leave Kerala, she, Rita, would have grown up like her cousin, surrounded by the coconut trees and rivers, with the mountains to one side and then to the other the sea. All a reminder that they were clinging to the end of the great peninsula, and that beyond lay the vast waves of the ocean. It makes us different people, that dislocation: his words.
Her cousin was sitting still, outwardly serene. Seline was better, but she was not the same as she had been the previous year, when she had exuded vigour and confidence. Rita had never thought in those days that her cousin might want her life to be different. But sitting next to her now, she saw tiny lines near Seline’s eyes: from too much laughter, or from a disappointment somewhere, at some time?
She spoke softly: ‘Are you thinking of your mother?’
The Inheritance Page 25
