Valmiki's Daughter

by Shani Mootoo

  “No, no, you’re right. It isn’t boyish.”

  As if out of nowhere, Trevor then asked how she and Helen had met. “What about the two of you?” he added.

  “What do you mean? What kind of a question is that?”

  “Well, even though you still won’t tell me just how close you are, I know you’re close to Anick. And you’re not like girls from here. It’s why I am attracted to you. You’re not the kind of woman Trinidadian men like. Women like women like you. You’ve never actually told me, you know. What about you and Anick?”

  “Oh, come on, Trevor. How would you like it if I began questioning you?”

  “I don’t mind at all. Ask me anything you like, as long as you don’t mind getting an answer.”

  Viveka blushed so much that Trevor began laughing and said, “So, how does she feel about us getting married?”

  Viveka turned her face away. Trevor persisted.

  “Does Nayan know about you two?”

  “Know what? I never said anything about us.”

  “You don’t have to . . .”

  Trevor waited for Viveka to respond, and when she didn’t, he said, “How long have you been lovers?”

  “We were. We’re not anymore.”

  He shut his eye, rested his head back, and drew lines with the tip of his baby finger, back and forth, on the soft skin of her thigh. She looked down. She had had her legs waxed the day he arrived, before meeting him at the airport. They glistened because she had rubbed them first with baby oil, and then with sunscreen lotion.

  Last evening they had been sipping rum and Cokes, reading the newspapers quietly on the patio at her parents’ house. Trevor had looked up from his paper abruptly and asked Viveka if she was going to keep her last name once they were married. She noticed that he didn’t ask if she was going to take his name, but if she was going to keep her own. She had said, simply, “Yes.” He picked up his paper again, leaving her staring into the sliver of sea visible on the horizon.

  Now the large splay of his pale pink hand with prominent green veins, like vines under his skin, rested on her leg, his fingers curled loosely. The tips of them fell against her inner thigh. The first time he had taken her hand in his, several long weeks ago now, she had felt as if she were cheating. A nervous quiver had spread through her stomach then, and she had withdrawn her hand altogether.

  Sitting here with Trevor in the car now, the hem of her wispy dress pushed up a little, noting the dark, almost black hairs on his knuckles, seeing the lower part of her body with his hand wrapping her thigh — it all looked like it belonged rather to someone else. His index finger drew a lighter, longer line to the mound of the softest flesh just before her panties. The air went out of her. Blood surged suddenly through her and began a rhythmic pounding between her ears, and she gasped. This time, she found herself tightening the muscles of both legs, of her bum, and then, involuntarily, she tilted her pelvis toward his hand. She tried to remain still, not parting her legs as her body, to her surprise, ached to. But Trevor just as lightly lifted his hand away, brought it to his nose. He felt the bridge with the tip of his middle finger and then raised his hand to his head. He combed his fingers through his hair and then dropped the same hand on the brake handle, leaving it there. His eyes remained shut all the while.

  The coursing of blood in Viveka’s body had accelerated, overtaken itself. Her temples and forehead throbbed and ached. She thought she should say something, but, besides being shy about what her voice might betray, she could think of nothing appropriate. She wasn’t even sure if it was right to interrupt, to try to reel him in from wherever he had gone and left her. She rearranged herself in the seat, smoothed her dress back down, and straightened the hem, as if doing these things would erase what she had felt. Now she felt a twinge of sadness, confusion, and an odd emptiness, and she thought of her parents in their car, on long drives together, her sister, Vashti, and she in the back seat, the long periods of wordlessness between them. Often, from the back seat she would hear one of her parents puncture the quiet with something muttered, inaudible to her and Vashti, and the other would grunt back a monosyllable and they would both seem satisfied, stilled again. Save for the murmur of the air-conditioning unit and the cold air shooting from it in puffs of whiteness that smelled like table salt, quiet would overcome her parents again and the sound in the car would be the sound of contentment.

  But this, here, was not contentment or a simple quiet, it was silence, and it was not between her and Trevor, it was not one shared. It was the sound of something unfinished and awkward. How much is enough time to let such silence be? Didn’t he feel what she had felt? Hadn’t he intended to make her feel this way? How could someone send you to such a giddying place and not have gone there with you himself?

  TREVOR AND VIVEKA IDLING THERE IN THE CAR, IN SUCH HEAT, IN SUCH a long queue on the roadway, waiting for space in the parking lot had begun to seem ludicrous. The beach, once they got to it, would be crowded. They would do what? Throw out a towel on the sand and lie there? Head into the water? Trevor would probably take her hand as they leapt the waves, and when the waves were too high he would grip it tight as he led her beyond the breakers and into the calmer water where the swells grew, but did not break. And out there, if he became distracted and distant, Viveka would panic, as she was not a competent swimmer.

  He came and went so easily. Lost in his thoughts one minute, talking about anything and everything the next.

  He loved the North Coast, insisted on coming to this coast. She would have preferred Mayaro Beach on the east coast. There would have been no scrutinizing what everyone else was doing and eating, no listening to what others were saying. But here they were in the car, and he had shut her out by closing his eyes, and now by taking his hand from her thigh and placing it on the hand brake.

  Suddenly, as if even with his eyes closed he knew her thoughts and could be both irritated by them and in agreement with them, Trevor shifted his body upright and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “Oh, fuck this, man,” he breathed out and swung the wheel outward. He pressed his hand flat on the horn and heaved the car forward in such a surprising and erratic motion that pedestrians scattered, halted cars sprang into action and swerved inward to make room for him, and the ones at the bottleneck scattered like repelled balls of mercury. Through the cacophony of blaring car horns and cuss words, Trevor cut his way up the road, past the second beach, screeching ahead as if driving a rented car. Viveka pressed her body into the back of the seat, and so as not to look as horrified as she was, she bore a tense smile. Leaving the disordered queue of cars behind she felt entirely submerged in deep water. She was compelled to say something, but all she could do was whisper, “That was some move there.”

  For a long while he said nothing. Finally, tilting his head toward the edge of the road he said, “There are numerous coves and bays down there. Let’s pull off the road and climb down.”

  They were now far from the two popular beaches. She had never before been to the beach with a man — just her and a man — and now that they had left the crowds behind she experienced relief that she would not be seen there, at a public beach, alone with him. She hadn’t even realized, until now, how stressful that had been for her. Unlike her mother, and her father too, who worried about what others might say about this or that, it was not the possibility of rumours that troubled her, or the possibility of developing a “reputation.” Rather, she did not want to be seen as someone who could be owned by someone else.

  SO, IT WAS ON THE NORTH COAST OF THE ISLAND, ON A STRIP OF SAND too slim to label a beach, that he lay on top of her.

  He had eased the car off the roadway, thumping over thick rabbit grass and nettles until the car’s nose shoved at a fat stand of rozay. Glistening shards of emerald sea flickered between the foliage, but there was no hint of a beach or a bathing place below, no clearing that would have suggested a path down to the water’s edge. Viveka had remained in the car for some seconds after
Trevor had switched off the ignition, and stared ahead. A ghostly residue of sound hung in the air — the engine’s hum, its groan on the ascents, the tires crunching gravel, the car lurching over humps and into the bellies of the heat-deformed asphalt that surfaced the road. She had felt suddenly sad, and realized that it was because she didn’t know the French word for emerald.

  In the mountains cicadas sing in the daytime. She knew this, but still, in the brilliant sunshine, it surprised her. That, and the rustle of leaves. The ocean, even though it vibrated in the distance, was too far away to be heard.

  To arrive at the dash of sand well below, Trevor had shoved and trampled his way through the foliage. Viveka followed. The rozay fronds, like barbed feathers, finely sliced the surface of her exposed skin, and the sun and sea salt on the wind made the tiny crisscrossing beads of blood, like little hardening rubies, sting. But it was only the surface of her skin that stung, and it was as if she stood some distance from herself, watching — not feeling — the pricks. From that distance she marvelled at the vulnerability of human skin making contact with grass that appeared to be stately and benign, but that was edged with barbs so minuscule they were not visible from even half a metre away.

  They arrived at a place where the land fell abruptly to the sea. The surf’s pounding on the shore below was relentless. One loose pebble on such a descent was all it would take and one, or both of them, Viveka imagined, could be catapulted into that water. She asked Trevor if he was sure this climb down was a good idea. He said it always looked this way, as if it were a straight drop, but from experience he knew that it was not so, and that if they made their way down one step at a time, she would manage, and they would find a little nook in which they could just sit, or lie quietly. He was sure of it. She should stay close if she was worried, he said, and hold his hand.

  But Viveka was worried about her mother’s car left on the lonely road where it could be robbed, peeled of its tires, seats, dashboard, stolen, or hit by another passing car that would not expect to come upon a parked vehicle there. She said nothing.

  The sound of waves hitting the cliff just below troubled her. She stumbled more than once, her heart lurching in fear, but she did not reach out for Trevor. She tried to say in her mind, word by word, in French, “I am climbing a steep cliff down to the emerald sea.”

  He said something, but the wind snatched his words away and the crashing and the suddenness and the cold and the wet beads of salty surf that jumped up from below and snapped at her made Viveka reluctant to ask him to repeat what he had said. He didn’t seem to need a response from her, so she remained quiet and set her foot, her hands, and her bum where he did. It was awkward in a dress, even in a short one with an airy skirt, but more so because he was a good foot taller than she, and so his steps wider than hers.

  The words came to her: Aujourd’hui, je suis descendue la falaise et j’ai aperçu . . . and then in English she thought: I am descending a cliff to the emerald sea, but the sea is not below, it is high above. I am descending in order to rise.

  Once below, there was, as Trevor had promised, a place, although it was only a sliver of sand. It was a breeding ground for sand flies. They swirled in masses so dense that together they looked like a black shimmery veil, and their numerous beating wings sounded like the whir of motorized toy planes.

  It was not what she would have called a beach. A beach to her mind needed to be long and wide enough for more than two people to picnic there — for a large Trinidadian family, with extended relatives and their friends and friends of those friends — a crowd large enough to form two full teams for volleyball, enough friends to play the bat-and-ball version of cricket.

  IN SPITE OF ITS ISOLATION, VIVEKA WAS UNEASY AS SHE AND TREVOR lay naked there. The pelagic odour of seaweed when it begins to decay curdled the air in the cranny of this tiny bay.

  “First time? With a man, I mean?”

  She nodded, embarrassed.

  Against such malodorous air it was impossible to moderate her breathing — one panacea, she thought, to the relentless push-push-pushing. When Trevor accidentally slipped out of the small progress he had made — he assured her it wasn’t her fault — he had to start all over again. She did as she was told — raised her buttocks off the sand — and he slid one arm under her and brought her up yet higher.

  “Breathe, just breathe,” he sputtered. Viveka closed her eyes tightly and breathed slowly, deeply.

  Her body was host to the flies. Welts had formed fast, each one already a fiery point of sweet itching. Her body marked easily. It would be difficult to keep private from Vashti what she had been up to.

  He offered her his shirt full of sand, and she took it to wipe herself.

  “I guess that was a little different, eh?”

  “I guess,” she said.

  Trevor took the shirt when she was done, waded naked into the water to his waist. He dropped down to his neck to protect his body from the unrelenting attack of swarm after swarm of the nasty black flies. Viveka watched him. His back was to her, and he was busy wringing the water from the shirt. He shook the shirt loose, slapped and whipped the air and the flies hard with it. His buttocks were small, drooped, and she had just had sex with him.

  Viveka’s Father

  VALMIKI LED TREVOR OUT OF THE HOUSE, LEFT HIM AND RETURNED with two beers. The two men walked off the patio onto the lawn. They strolled over to the heavy wrought-iron fencing, and looked out toward the yellow-grey waters of the Gulf. Below were the roofs of the houses of neighbours they knew well, people who would come to the wedding and who had already sent gifts.

  There was little conversation between Valmiki and Trevor. Both of them were uneasy, both waiting, Valmiki knew, for Viveka to show herself again.

  The town was small. And here Valmiki was, looking out toward the sea yet feeling imprisoned.

  He had already told Trevor that he had organized the driver to take them all to the airport the day after the wedding, but he told him again now. Trevor thanked him, as he had done before. Each of them was bearing up under the burden of too much knowing.

  Valmiki pointed to a flock of three brilliant scarlet ibis limping through the sky just south of the jetty. With his eyes planted again on the roofs of the homes of neighbours, invited guests to the wedding, he knew it was too late to speak with Viveka. Too late to stop her. Too late to ask her if she was sure that she was doing the right thing. To ask her what on earth she thought she was indeed doing. Times were different. In his day he had had no choice, but she had choices, and even as he thought this he felt the relief, instantly, that she had made the one she had. If he were to question her, he should have done so weeks ago when this talk of marriage first arose. But then, as now, it was as if one of his feet was trapped in a cement block, the other dangling to the side uselessly.

  When exactly had his Vik so suddenly reared up and gone away from him?

  If he were forced to put a thumb to time, he would say that everything had begun to unravel the evening Nayan had brought Anick to the house for the first time. That was the same day he had almost shot a helpless dog in the forest. The very day Viveka had taken a taxi to school in defiance of all that he and Devika were, just because they wouldn’t let her play volleyball.

  But it wasn’t that easy, was it, to pin it all on a day? Perhaps it had begun, rather, when he, Valmiki, had decided to leave the only person he had ever really loved, Tony, and to court Devika Sankarsingh.

  Perhaps questions were not what he had to give, but advice. But what would such advice be? Viveka would, in the end, like everyone else, have to cut out her own path.

  He had no advice and his glass was empty.

  Epilogue

  24 Months

  TREVOR LEANED AGAINST THE PATIO’S RAILING. HE WOULD NOT FACE her.

  After a long silence, and although they were alone, she whispered earnestly, “Do you still want to go through with this?”

  “Have I indicated otherwise?”

  Th
ey both stared out at the lights just beginning to twinkle alive on the Pointe-à-Pierre jetty.

  “How long do you think we’ll last, Trevor?”

  “Is that a serious question?”

  “Well, you know who I am.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “It’s a serious question. How long?”

  Trevor took a drink of his beer before he looked at her. “Five years, give or take, I suppose. How long do you think?”

  “I would say two.”

  “Two! Oh, come on, Vik. Show a little courage! I am exhibiting a mountain of it, wouldn’t you say?” He was terse.

  It was a while before she could respond. She looked up at him, tears welling. “You’d be surprised, Trevor,” she said. “You’d be surprised at my courage right now.”

  Acknowledgements

  A DEBT OF GRATITUDE, IN NO SMALL MEASURE, IS OWED TO MARGOT Francis, Aline Brault, Brenda Middagh, my brother-in-law, Shekhar Mahabir, and my brother Ramesh. My sister, Indrani Mootoo, braved the Naparima-Marayo Road and drove me into the trenches of Rio Claro. My memories of that complicated area — bucolic on one hand, treacherous on the other — include discovering with her, much awe between us, the forest, the cacao industry, the farmers, and, outside the scope of this book, the frightful surprise of foreign intelligence officers combing the area for drug and gun smuggling and underground militia camps. Thank you, Indrani, for our adventure. If it weren’t for Dr. Brinsley Samaroo and his enviable ease with, and knowledge of, the island, I wouldn’t have come so close to the cacao lands or met Bjashanand Hanooman. Thanks so much, Brinsley. At the time of the writing of this book, Hanooman was the agricultural officer for the Rio Claro area. I couldn’t have had a more perfect or generous guide. He and his wife, Lutchmin, spared no trouble, imagined what I didn’t know to ask, and gave me a fascinating introduction to the French-Indian world of cacao from which I drew. For this I am immensely grateful.