by Shani Mootoo
Those three days her mother had spent in bed, with her door locked most of the time. When the door was locked Viveka would press the mouth of a drinking glass to the door and her ear to the bottom of the glass — a trick she had learned from a children’s spy thriller — and she would listen to her mother speak on the phone.
Now, although her mother was filling in details about Anand’s death, had even said something about the timing of the party and something about her father and other women, the words remained indistinct. Viveka tried in vain to hear them against the necessary and unyielding confusion in her head.
Valmiki
THAT SAME MORNING, VALMIKI HAD ALREADY SEEN ABOUT SIX patients when his receptionist buzzed to inform him that Mrs. Prakash was there, without an appointment. One of the benefits of close friendship with Valmiki was that one could jump the queue and not have to wait in the hot room, breathing in thick, germ-ridden air.
He and Devika had known Ram and Minty Prakash for almost as long as Valmiki had been practising medicine. Ram Prakash had not finished high school, but had done well enough in the chocolate-making business that was his family’s since the early 1900s. Ram and Minty had lived with his parents in the original estate house, known as “Chayu,” deep in the central forested hills of Rio Claro until their son, Nayan, was born. They had their own house built in Luminada Heights at about the same time that Valmiki and Devika had had theirs built there, too. The Prakashs needed their own independence, and also wanted their son to grow up in a big town with access to a good primary school and high school. Although Ram and Minty were twenty years older than Valmiki and Devika, the two families grew close.
Minty always had a beleaguered air about her, catering to her husband and to Nayan, who had been born when she was in her thirties, and who, in retaliation against his father’s heavy hand, insisted on the same kind of treatment from her that he saw his father demand. Minty suffered with high blood pressure and depression, and was one of the more regular visitors to Valmiki’s office.
So Valmiki was taken aback when the Mrs. Prakash who walked through his door turned out not to be Minty, but Anick. He was struck by the particular fairness and leanness of her face in the harsh light of his office. Devika’s description, “cultured-looking,” came to him. He thought now he understood what she had meant, and hoped that, in the moment, he too was cultured-looking. In a deafening instant he noticed the way Anick’s flimsy spaghetti-strap dress clung to her slight body and then hung off her hips. He weighed the advantages against the disadvantages of being a friend of her in-laws, of being many years older than she was, of being her doctor.
“What a lovely surprise,” he said. “You’re well, I hope. I would rather that this were not just a patient-doctor visit.”
Anick looked at him quizzically. She said nothing, and in the momentary silence he reminded himself that the woman before him was Nayan’s wife, Nayan who was like a son to him. She was only a handful of years older than Viveka. He corrected himself. “If I had known last night that you were coming to visit me today I could have seen you right then in my office at home and spared you the trouble of coming downtown.”
“Thank you, this is very kind, but I decide this morning that I need to come to see you.”
“What brings you here?” Anick reminded Valmiki of Pia Moretti, but not in her looks. She was nothing like Pia, really — except that she was a foreigner, white-skinned, and about the age of Pia when he had messed around with her several years ago. More than a decade ago, already! His eyes rested on the wispy baby-like hairs that strayed off Anick’s hairline at her temples and clung to the tiny beads of perspiration on her skin. Pia’s hair was dark and long, and wavy too. He wanted to take the handkerchief from his pocket and wipe Anick’s brow. The smell of Pia’s hot skin returned to him. He was thinking that these foreigners had different rules and expectations than the local women, than even the local white women. So much more was permissible and possible with them.
In answer to Valmiki’s question, Anick Prakash told him, in what he thought of as charming half-French, half-English, that she couldn’t really say what was wrong, but that she had little energy and felt like sleeping all the time.
Valmiki said, “Hmm, maybe you’re about to start a family?”
She shrugged her shoulders, smiled weakly, and said, “No, that is not the problem. I — what you say? I bleed already.”
Foreign women were more ready and open with that sort of information too.
“Are you homesick?”
“I am missing my mother and my father, is true, but homesick? No, I don’t think. This is a country very nice and a good people, no? I ask you pardon for my English. Everybody laugh at me, and nobody take the time to talk, to know me.”
“You’re not happy here.”
Anick bit her lower lip. She turned her face away as tears pooled. Valmiki came around to her side of his desk. He half-sat, half-leaned on his desk. Resisting the urge to put his hand to her head, to stroke her hair, he folded his arms.
“I ashame myself. I do not think to be ungrateful.”
“Anick, I want you to know that everything that goes on in this room is private and confidential. You can talk to me, and it will be between you and me. No one else.”
“Merci, c’est gentil.”
“Non, c’est . . . c’est . . . de rien. Je veux . . . Oh, I have forgotten the vocabulary. Je . . . Oh dear, that’s as far as I can get, I’m afraid. I studied French when I was in high school and quite liked it, but then I had to drop it and study Latin as Latin was the requirement for medical college. I must brush up on my French again. We must speak French sometime. Not now, though. You tell me what’s going on. What is making you so unhappy, Anick? Is everything okay between you and Nayan? I have to say you both looked very happy last night. Are you?”
“Is not Nayan. He is good. He treat me good. He give me everything. His parents they give us everything. I do not know why I feel so selfish. I miss everything in France. This sound bizarre, no? Or selfish. Mais — but I miss to go out, I miss to go for coffee in the nice coffee shop, to go for walk instead of car, car, car everywhere. Nayan talk so much about cacao and monkey and wild flower when we first come together and now he do not take me to the estate. Is talk of forest and chocolate how we come together, he and me. We like chocolate and nuts. He chocolate, I nuts.”
She laughed, but her laughter was sad.
“He tell me how pretty the cacao look on the tree, and how pretty is the forest with all the cacao tree, the orange tree when it have orange on it, the flower, the bird, the people from the village. Is nature, must be pretty, no? But I never go there. He say is dangerous. His father don’t agree for me to go there. He don’t want the workers see me. Why everybody in this place so afraid of workers? Everybody have workers but they afraid of them. And then, is bush, bush, bush. And snake. Is like a prison living in this country. The doors and windows in your own house — in your own house! — always lock, you cannot go outside in your own yard, you cannot even go for a drive. Is crazy, this place. No?”
“Yes,” said Valmiki in a soothing tone, “but my dear, there is so much crime in this place. I mean, just look at the headlines of the papers every day. There is at least one murder every couple of days. Walking on the streets is actually dangerous. But I understand what you’re saying, too. You’re right; it’s not like abroad where you crazy foreigners walk from one place to the next. And the estate, well, it’s just not safe out there in the quiet country areas anymore. Because there are no outward signs of violence — like when there is a war and people can be seen with guns, and bombs go off around you — it’s hard to believe that it’s not safe. But you must know of the state of things here, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes. But plenty people walk in the streets and they are safe.”
“Those people are not Ram Prakash’s daughter-in-law. Business-people and people with money have a hard time here.”
Valmiki could see that Anick u
nderstood him but did not have the vocabulary to carry on this particular conversation. Instead, she said, “But is not just there that Nayan do not take me. Is nowhere. He take me nowhere. no WHERE. Well, not nowhere, but he take me by his friend who I have nothing in common with. He do not want me to make nice friend.”
There was quiet as Valmiki pondered the veracity and the graveness of this.
Anick began again. “There is no opera, and he do not go to the exposition, or the museum. Nayan say the art gallery have nothing in it. I say, What you mean it have nothing? And he say, Well, it have art but not good art. So I say, But I want to know for myself, but he say is time of waste. Nayan do not read. Nobody I meet read book. The only book he read is the one he write, the business one — how much this yield and how much that cost.”
Valmiki thought fleetingly of Viveka. She barely closed a book and another was already begun. A chain-reader, he called her. He was quite certain now that he could draw Anick into an affair with him. If he were to seduce her into an affair that was not entirely clandestine — a hint of it discreetly leaked to one or two of his friends — he would be afforded the credibility of manliness. She was certainly desirable — not unlike, say, a car. A Jaguar. A piece of jewellery, say a Cartier watch, or a nice pen, a Waterman or a Mont Blanc. That was what Anick was to Nayan, Valmiki reflected, the perfect accessory. But he knew, too, that that was also his own interest in her. And he suddenly felt old and tired. Even if he were to pull her into a little something with him, he wasn’t sure that he would have the energy to deal with such a young woman. Being more or less alone in the country, she would cling to him too much. She was green, one could see that. She likely wouldn’t understand the nature and rules of a good affair. She would be more of a liability than a thrill. Valmiki’s mind wandered to Tony. He sobered immediately and turned his mind back to his professional task.
Well, she clearly wasn’t meeting the right people. She needed friends who saw her for who she was. Friends who weren’t wolves like himself, and so many other men he knew, when presented with such vulnerability and foreignness. Devika was perceptive when she had said that Anick was probably used to a more culturally rich lifestyle than she would find in the Prakash family. He had never known the Prakashs to go to cultural events. He himself went to plays and launches, but mostly because of Devika, who scanned the social section of the paper every Saturday to see what was showing or playing. He wondered if there was something coming up soon that they might invite Anick to. Or something that Viveka might ask Anick and Nayan to see with her. He suddenly had the fierce urge to be the one to make a connection between his daughter and Anick.
“He want I dress up,” Anick was saying, “and he want take me to meet his friend. They drink, they talk nonsense. They laugh at the way I speak, so I do not speak no more, or I speak to be funny. Why not?”
“Oh, I am sure they are not laughing at you. But your accent — can I say it? — is rather lovely. I mean you have a way of phrasing things that is charming. I am sure they don’t mean to laugh at you. I would bet that they, in fact, appreciate you trying out your English. Which, by the way, is entirely comprehensible. Your vocabulary is very good.”
“Oh, you too. I tired of charming.”
“No, no. I don’t mean it in any bad sort of way. I am just very sorry that you are having such a difficult time.”
“Dr. Krishnu . . .”
“Call me Valmiki. Nayan calls me Uncle Valmiki, but you can’t call me Uncle, now can you? You are like family.” He instantly regretted saying this last, as it meant he had just sealed his relationship with her. He took refuge against resignation in the odd sensation that she must see in him the old man, not the young one he still saw. He would definitely introduce her to his daughter and put a stop to this sad lasciviousness.
“I want to say one more thing,” Anick continued. “Nayan do not want me to go no place without him. He jealous. I want to run. I want to be free, to run free like the lion, to be curious. Like the cat, no? But he tell me over and over, so much time I sick of it, that is not safe for woman to go out alone.”
Valmiki frowned. He did not voice what ran through his mind: Frenchwoman, even a lion is not free or safe in this place! They will capture the lion and put it in a cage to gawk at it and to say how beautiful it is, and then they will skin it for its mane, which even in this hot weather they’d wear like a shawl. And you know what curiosity did to the cat, don’t you? He contented himself with saying, “Your husband, I’m afraid, is right.”
“I tell him come with me, and he only laugh. He say, Why you want run, we have car? He drive me everywhere.”
Valmiki managed a chuckle.
“Is funny, yes, but is not funny, too. I say I want to learn to drive. He say, No, is not safe, and I say, But your mother she drive. He say is not safe for foreign Frenchwoman who do not speak properly. Everything I hear is about pretty. I wish to take a knife and cut my face.”
“Just a minute. You have no intentions of doing that, do you?”
“No, no. I should not say that to a doctor because you take me too serious. Of course not I do that.”
Valmiki straightened up and looked at Anick sternly for the first time. “Do you want something to help with this low feeling? I mean, should I prescribe you an antidepressant? Or if you’d like, I can refer to you someone you can talk to more regularly.”
“Dr. Valmiki, I not crazy. I just not in my skin in this country. I come in your office because I need to say these things to someone in confidence, but I don’t need that kind of medicine. I not crazy. Or maybe I am, to marry this man, this family, to come to this country, to leave my own parents so far away. I need music, not only steel pan and calypso. I like jump-up jump-up, and whine, whine, whine, but that alone, all the time? Is too much. I need symphony, too. The Verdi, and the Puccini, and to eat cotes du porc charcoutieres, but this country don’t have that, and we can’t have no beef and no pork, not even thin ham slice, in his house. Everything is roti-this, roti-that, Hindu-this, Hindu-that. Me, I like Hinduism very much, but they too many rules in the Prakash house. They don’t do ceremony or go to temple or pray. But still, all I hear about is Hindu, Hindu, Hindu, and all these rules. I want to lie in the sun at the back of the house in my bathing suit, and Nayan ask me if I crazy, I will offend his Hindu father. I thought Hinduism was a tolerant religion but —”
Valmiki felt compelled to defend a religion that had been important to his ancestors, although it was not one that he or his family practised nowadays. “Hinduism, my dear, is a tolerant religion, but the people who practise it are not themselves tolerant.”
He was rather pleased with the sageness of his statement, but Anick brushed the air with her hand impatiently and carried on. “His mother, she want me to make breakfast, lunch, dinner. They have washing machine, and they have servant, and she want me to wash he and his father white shirts by hand in the tub downstairs. Nayan, he don’t try speaking French no more. He used to try in Canada. In Canada he doing everything with me. But now he drinking almost everyday, I don’t know what I come to this place for. I am not a good wife. I think I can be good wife, but not the way that he want, like his mother. I want to go out. I want to do things. He and me, we used to do things before we come to here.”
Valmiki nodded as she spoke, thinking to himself that, indeed, she wasn’t crazy at all, but with these interests and desires she would certainly find herself isolated and a bit of an oddity in Trinidad society. He felt sure that Anick wasn’t about to cut her face or hurt anyone. She might not last in Trinidad — her and Nayan’s marriage might not last here or anyplace else — but pills wouldn’t cure that either.
As attractive as Anick was, as vulnerable as she was, Valmiki, hearing these things, also thought her too foreign. And with that thought, he realized he had changed. He had indeed grown older, had perhaps become more settled than he had imagined before. He thought of Saul, and how there had come this time now when, although he and Saul had se
x less frequently than before — that was just the nature of the beast — Saul’s companionship, that hard body, his bitter smell were all he wanted. But wasn’t it just as likely, he asked himself, that he had arrived at this place because — and he might as well congratulate himself on this — he had so well managed his reputation as a womanizer? Clearly, the urge to fool around with women — that cultivated urge — could still be triggered, but it wasn’t what he ultimately sought, and he no longer acted on that urge. That, and not his ageing self or mere fatigue, was why, he patted himself, he could decide to leave the office yesterday when Tilda Holden showed up to see him, and why today he could leave Anick Prakash alone. Wouldn’t it be just great, he mused, if he could tell Devika how much he had changed?
As for Anick, he knew that what she needed was not medical intervention but close friendships. He decided that such a well-groomed, feminine woman would do his daughter a lot of good. They already shared a number of interests. It struck him that Viveka and Anick would meet each other at the party at his house in just a couple of weeks. So he told Anick about the event being planned. Was it possible to meet Viveka before then, Anick asked, as she had a great deal of free time on her hands? Valmiki, in front of Anick, made the flamboyant gesture of a call to his house.
But Viveka, on the other end of the phone, told her father she couldn’t afford the time just yet; she was writing an important paper. She asked her father to tell Anick that once the paper was written she would give her a call.
It pleased Valmiki to report back to Anick the reason Viveka was unable to meet at once. The way he said it made the literary paper and Viveka sound important. Anick was visibly intrigued, grateful for the possibility of a friend who would soon share ideas and interests with her.
