by Shani Mootoo
Valmiki would lean into her and position his hardened penis at her crotch. He would close his eyes, and with hers open she would see the red thickness of his stiffened tongue come toward her mouth. She would open her mouth for it, while in her mind a pleasing image flashed of the tables in the garden covered in white cloths, aglow with silverware, water glasses, silverplate bud vases that each held one red carnation and a sprig of baby’s breath, and candles that were waiting to be lit.
With one hand pulling the band of her panties down, and the other unzipping his pants, Valmiki would reach into his under-pants and retrieve his penis. His tongue would seem even fuller and harder in her mouth now, and he would already be panting into her mouth. She would push his tongue back out, pull her face away, and bend sideways to pull her panties down the rest of the way. She would unhook one foot, but leave the panties caught around the other. That act in itself, being free of the garment yet having a part of it touching one ankle, would be enough to cause her to forget about her party, to wish that it was not scheduled for that evening. Valmiki would brace himself with one hand, palm firm against the door, the other cupping the glistening head of his dark penis, while his knuckles, rubbing against her thick hard hair would open a slippery path into which he would guide it. She would move her pelvis in the circular motion he likes, and grip the band of his trousers, shove them down enough to allow her hands in so that she could caress his ass, and hold him against her. She would arch herself, try to brace herself against the door, and he would attempt to pull her legs up by her thighs. She would make small hopping-up motions as she tried to help him, but they would both realize they can no longer do this as easily as in their younger days.
She would think again of time, hoping the bartenders would show the precision she hired this lot for, and not have drinks ready so soon that they were served watery from long-melted ice cubes or so late that people would mill about with empty hands. She would push Valmiki back and, grabbing hold of his once hard and thick legs — how flabby he has grown, she would think with heightened affection — would slide herself down to her knees. Valmiki would arch his back and hold his penis, pulling and pushing at the skin of it until she had fixed herself on her knees and was ready for him. She would look at its weeping eye, wrap both hands around its length. She would look up at him to find him looking down at her, biting his lower lip, and she would open her mouth. He would throw his head back and mutter something, but she would hear only the word head and just then he would come in one small but forceful shudder. She would think of the white napkins again, folded in triangles, pinned to the table by an upturned shiny fork.
It will all go well, Devika felt — more confident now than even in her most confident moments before. It would be a party like none before. The best she ever gave.
Valmiki would slump back and lean against the adjacent wall and Devika would slowly get up, her mouth filling with the constant release of her saliva. Her face would be tense. She would turn on the tap at full strength and spit, again and again, rapidly into the sink, saying between her spits, “Oh my God! Look at the time. We have to hurry now.” She would rush over to the shower and turn it on full, then rush back to the sink and put toothpaste on her toothbrush and take it into the shower as she said, “I’ve got to shower right now. I can’t let my hair get wet. I am going to shower right away, what are you going to do?”
All of this Devika thought while watching the newspaper that hid Valmiki’s face. They had been married twenty — or was it one? — twenty-something years now and had held, say, six parties per year. That would be about one hundred and twenty-six parties. Perhaps more. The incident she had just now remembered so well had happened when Anand was a baby. Just that once. But she remembered it, and she still held the feeling in her body. What were the chances that he would ever do that with her, to her, again? In the past fourteen years she and Valmiki had had sex once, and that once was seven years ago. Perhaps every seven they would have sex and a round, or a bout, of it was pending. Perhaps it would happen just before the new party she wanted to host.
What did Saul and his wife do? she wondered. His wife, what did she do? Women from those classes had more resources. They could fight in public, they could let it all out, they could leave or throw their husbands out on the street for several days or for good, but women like Devika had to behave themselves, take it all and smile in public and defend their husbands even if they were tyrants or bastards or useless in the privacy of their homes. Well, it wasn’t exactly so anymore. Times had changed. Younger women from her class weren’t putting up with what their mothers did. But she was too old now, and even if it was imaginable that she could leave the man hiding behind his newspaper she wouldn’t know how to begin life afresh. She didn’t have those kinds of skills. Leaving one’s husband was done when the children were small; that is when she should or might have done it. But time was not on her side then. Or now. She wouldn’t have left the children, and she wouldn’t have been able to take them with her. Do what with them? She had done the right thing. And look at her now: sitting on a reclining chair on a patio surrounded by a garden that looked like it came right out of a home and garden magazine. And soon she will go into her house and sit down to a dinner prepared by her cook (whom she did have to teach everything, but the cook learned well and fast) and eat off china that was bought on holiday in Italy, and she wouldn’t have to wash a dish herself afterwards. The pendant around her neck was the least of her gifts.
Perhaps Saul was different, and was able to do it with his wife as well as with her husband. She didn’t even know for certain what her husband and Saul did, and she didn’t want to be sure of any of it. The harassment of not knowing was better than certainty. There had always been talk of some wife or the other fooling around with her husband, but she felt disdain for that sort of rumour. She was the plug in the hole of their marriage and family life. If she were to pull out, everything would come tumbling down. And her reputation (she couldn’t bear the thought that anyone would know that she had married a man who, although he was known for his affairs with women, actually preferred the company of other men) would fall with it. No one knew how strong she was, and that aloneness was her burden to bear. Valmiki, sitting just some feet away from her, had no idea that such thoughts filled her head.
Devika had once met Saul’s wife in the Mucurapo Street Market when, in an unusual move to tour the local farmer’s market, she had accompanied the cook there. The cook had gone off to make a purchase of ground provisions and seasonings and had left Devika in a clean wide thoroughfare, watching the commotion of the market, which was very different from the quiet supermarket shopping she knew. The chauffeur stood like a sentry, a decent distance from her. Saul’s wife came up behind her and said, “Mrs. Krishnu?”
Devika hadn’t known who this person was.
“I am Saul Joseph’s wife,” the woman explained. “Saul is Doctor’s good friend.”
Devika’s instinct was to be gruff, to ask this woman what she wanted and tell her to keep her husband away. But the softness of Saul’s wife’s voice, her manner and warm smile, stopped her. She said only, “Yes. I know of him.” Surely this woman didn’t encourage or approve of the kind of man her husband was, and so, naturally, Devika would try to be civil. After all, the two of them were in a quandary together.
But Saul’s wife blurted, as if they were in the middle of a longer conversation, “Well, what to do? Just look at our crosses, na. You and me, we in this thing together. You know what I am talking about, eh?”
Devika did not mean to answer, but, in an attempt to discourage any lengthy explanation she nodded, albeit tersely.
Mrs. Joseph leapt at the opening. “The consolation is that the good Lord gives us no more than what we are capable of handling, not so? Take a look at me, Mrs. Krishnu. I am managing, you know. I know women living right on my street — my short street have two of them — who don’t come out they house for days because they don’t want nobody to see h
ow they eye black or they lip bust. Me? I don’t have a mark on my body. I am not starving and I have a roof over my head. I have plenty to be ashamed of and to hide but I also have much to be grateful for. Life is a blessing itself. How you managing?”
Devika’s skin burned with embarrassment but there were no words to hurl. This woman had a point. She was, however, incensed by the woman preaching and commiserating in such a familiar way, as if the two of them — she had used the words you and me and us — had to stand arm in arm, as comrades, and bear the whole nonsense. Perhaps — but it wasn’t for this woman to make a side out of them. Condone it, is what Saul’s wife seemed to suggest. How dare she ask how I am managing? Devika had thought. She was livid. Imagine talking like that about women being beaten. Of course, she herself knew of one woman in Luminada Heights whose husband, one of the more well-known businessman in San Fernando, beat her so much and so regularly that she, too, hardly left her house. That woman wasn’t the only one from their social world rumoured to suffer such abuses. But this sort of thing was not something people chatted about so unabashedly, and especially in a public place such as the Mucurapo Street Market. What people did behind their closed doors was their own business. Not hers. Devika was nervous about how much the chauffeur had heard, and what he would have made of it. She said, “Look, Mrs. Joseph, I have no trouble bearing my own burdens, thank you. In fact, I welcome them. I can’t stop to talk now, I have to see what my cook is buying.” And she marched off in the direction of the cook.
But the words came back to her now: I don’t have a mark on my body. I am not starving and I have a roof over my head . . . I have much to be grateful for. And to those words she added, Even Valmiki. And my troublesome daughter. Yes, she would show her gratitude with a party, by doing what she did best.
Organizing the details was the easiest part of all. She would have to hire extra help — servers, bartenders, one person dedicated entirely to washing up. But managing people, getting them to do exactly what you wanted them to do, required stamina. No matter how many times she might tell and show them how a particular task was to be done, she knew that unless she stood there watching their every move, they would do it how they liked.
And there was, of course, Viveka’s attitude to be dealt with. While Vashti liked to dress and to preen, to come out and mix with guests — sometimes a little too long into the evening for Devika’s liking — it was difficult to get Viveka to wear a dress, to put a little makeup on her face, even just some lipstick, much less make a polite token appearance. Viveka would bury herself in some novel or other book in the study and remain there for most of the evening, going to bed early without saying goodnight to anyone. She didn’t seem to be shy, and in general she wasn’t unsociable. She was simply, to Devika’s mind, difficult. There were moments, Devika admitted — to herself only — when she was relieved that Viveka didn’t show herself. She made hardly any effort to make herself attractive, and after what had happened with that Bedi girl, living like a street person on the promenade, Devika worried about her own daughter. She would not form a sentence even in the recesses of her mind to say what it was, exactly, that worried her or why. The only words that come to her mind were, Wives know what their husbands won’t tell them, and there isn’t a thing that a mother does not already know about her child.
THE SUN WAS JUST GOING DOWN AND THE PATIO WAS AGLOW IN AN orange light. The electric patio light was switched on in anticipation of the usual speedy nightfall. Valmiki reclined in the wicker chaise-longe, his feet aimed directly at Devika. If he hadn’t turned the pages of the paper once in a while she would have thought he had fallen asleep. He raised his lower body, the left side, a couple of inches or so off the chaise, and there it hovered for a good few seconds. He would have looked up at her with a lame and apologetic smile if there had been an accompanying sound or a foul scent. But since neither emanated, he lowered his body and continued his reading. Animals had better scent perception than humans, Devika reckoned, for the birds in the four cages that hung from the patio roof, one sporting a Mohawk-like arrangement of feathers on its head and bearing a name she couldn’t pronounce suddenly became ruffled and hopped about in agitation. The newest addition scuttled defiantly on the cage’s metal tray, nervous and distressed. Valmiki shifted his body again, this time into a more comfortable position, raising one leg at the knee, and tucking the foot of that leg under the thigh of the other, as if to warm it there.
Devika watched him, wanting to remind him of her achievements as a hostess, as his wife. Wanting him to put down the paper and come to her, take her hand, and lead her to their bedroom, or better yet, to their bathroom. She loved it when he or the children remembered one of her parties and went on and on about what a terrific hostess she was. But that rarely happened. It’s different for him, she thought. If he needs a little boosting he will talk about an occasion when he rewired a lamp or did something else that was particularly remarkable, such as repairing a spindle that had come undone from the back of a dining-room chair. These were not skills he had honed by making a practice of doing repairs around the house, but one-off things he would impetuously jump to when the mood caught him. They were able to afford the cost of handymen and trades-persons to do repairs and make additions or alterations, but saving money was not in Valmiki’s mind at these moments. If Devika were asked, she would say that God alone knew what his motivation was. But she had her suspicion: he wanted to be the man about the house for his daughters. She wished that he would stick to prescribing medicine for them when they had the flu or a gastrointestinal problem. Then he was not man alone, but a god to his daughters. On the other hand, more than once his repairs had to be redone by a professional tradesperson called by Devika — without Valmiki’s knowledge. Still, when he wanted a boost, he would make a casual reference to one of these tasks, and Devika and Vashti — seldom Viveka — never failed to rise to his bait, and in no time at all he would be the centre of their conversation, both of them affectionately extolling his cleverness and teasing him about his “unusually innovative” techniques.
This had happened just the day before, here on the patio as they sat exactly as they did right now. Valmiki had begun with, “Phil Bishop has been on my mind lately. I don’t know why. I wonder how he is doing. The last time I saw him was at the Medical Association convention three months ago. He was there with his wife.” And he had no cause to say anything more, for Devika recognized the pattern and was hooked by habit. “Yes, he was there,” she piped up. His shoulders relaxed in gratitude. Devika continued, “I didn’t speak with them, but his wife waved at me. I haven’t seen them since. That was the night you gave that speech about the necessity for a health insurance plan for the elderly. People are still talking about how well you spoke. I met Millie Morgan in the grocery yesterday and she said her husband Phillip says all the time that you’re one of the few doctors in the country who is a true visionary, and that it was too bad that you were such a good doctor, otherwise he would tell you to form your own party and enter politics.”
Devika said all this with a certain quiet pride in how well she knew Valmliki, how well she knew how to handle him. But in an instant, as if a coin had been flipped and its other face revealed, her delight soured when he retorted, “So, do you think I might make a good politician? Can you imagine being the wife of the Minister of Health? Or Her Excellency Lady Devika Krishnu, wife of the President?”
The words that pooled in her head were: “Wife of the homosexual Minister of Health, you mean.” The words she let fly were: “What? You’re not serious? Don’t let Phillip put any nonsense into your head, please! I am not interested in any sort of public life where people would know my business even before I knew it. I don’t want myself and my children subjected to any sort of scrutiny, thank you. People here are too damn fast, and gossip much too much. Not a family doesn’t have a skeleton in a closet, but in this place people like to clean out other people’s closets before their own. Your affairs are one thing, you might
not mind people talking about those, but there are other things I will not be able to tolerate in public. I don’t give a damn what people say but I do not want my children embarrassed, thank you. I have no aspirations to be the wife of a politician. Not one bit, but thank you for asking.”
Valmiki had sighed. His eyes had hardened, and he clenched his jaws. Seeing this, and with her tirade ringing in her own ears, she had added a more positive spin, “Politicians don’t even make the kind of money you do, Valmiki, unless they’re doing something they shouldn’t be doing. You make enough money and do enough good from where you are. You don’t need anything else, and I and the girls don’t want more than we already have.”
He had swallowed, and she took that as reconciliation. But she could not leave well enough alone. In a voice low and weary, she had asked, “I don’t know why you have to be so ambitious. What is wrong with where you are now? What more do you want? We have it good here, Val. You have provided us with more than most men can give their families. Everything is not ideal, but no one is complaining. No one has a perfect life. Some people have it damn hard. I know you would have liked a different life, but you would have had to stay abroad, given up this place. Given up your past, your history.” She knew she was talking to herself as much as to him, but she couldn’t stop. She needed to hear the words even if they came from her own mouth. “Look, just leave well enough alone and let us try to be as happy as possible in spite of everything. It’s from you that Viveka gets all her ideas about being more than she needs to be. Let’s just be happy as we are. Can’t we do that?”
