Disobedient Girl: A Novel

by Ru Freeman

  “There’s no film in here! Where’s the roll of film that was in here?”

  “Maybe you didn’t put any film in, duwa,” Mr. Vithanage said soothingly.

  “I bloody well had film in here. I know I did. Someone took the film out. Who touched my camera?” Thara’s voice rose. Latha listened to the tremulous high notes that took flight from among the usual tones of Thara’s voice, like miniature birds scared from their nest by some hostile creature. That voice was directed only partially to the girls, Latha could tell. If Thara had truly suspected them, her voice would have grown deeper with the assurance of nothing changing. Latha turned to look at herself in the long mirror. She held the sari up to her face, admired herself fleetingly, then pressed her nose into its folds, breathing in the scent of something lovely and sweet, a blend of Thara’s fragrances, of unused things, and of her own jasmine soap and her sweat. It was the smell of irretrievable time, falling back from her even as she tried to inhale it into her very bones and keep it.

  “I took the film out, Thara,” Gehan said clearly. “I took it to be developed.”

  “Why did you take it out when it was not finished yet?”

  “I finished the rest of it. I took some shots of the garden,” he said. “Of the garden and the house. There weren’t many left anyway.”

  Latha went out onto the landing and descended reluctantly, and so slowly that her feet were soundless on the stairs. Something told her this would be the last time she went down that staircase, and she couldn’t yet tell whether that would be a good thing or whether it would be something terrible.

  “Since when have you started being interested in photography?” Thara asked and, after a moment or two, asked again. “Why aren’t you saying anything? Since when? I’m always the one taking photographs. This is my camera. Why all of a sudden have you got interested in my camera?”

  Latha entertained the thought of telling them. But what could she say? That he had given her the photographs? That she was grateful to have some pictures of herself? That he had only been doing her a favor?

  Mr. Vithanage spoke again. His voice had changed over the years, grown even more resigned, but with a small amount of gaining strength, like contentment or acquiescence to the order of things and a determination to inhabit his lot fully. “It doesn’t matter, does it? We can take a picture another time. Come now, let’s eat. I’m hungry. The children look hungry too, aren’t you, darlings? Put the camera away.”

  And it might have all subsided there, except that he chose to push his advantage, having been able to get that much out without interruption and, perhaps, feeling that he was, finally, the peacemaker he had always aspired to be. Or maybe he spoke only because Thara had not yet sat down, was still lingering by her chair, camera in hand, as if she needed a better reason to give up and rejoin them.

  “You must have picked up the photos, no, Gehan Putha?” Mr. Vithanage said. “Why don’t you give Thara the photographs and we can all get back to dinner.”

  “Yes. Did you pick up the photographs?” Thara asked. “The last pictures I took on this were of no use to anybody. They were of Latha.”

  Standing on the bottom step, Latha willed Gehan to lie. To say anything but the truth.

  “Latha?” Mrs. Vithanage joined in. “Why Latha? Since when are you taking photographs of the servants? Thara, you really must remember how to keep them in their place. God, never in my day would the servants have even been in the same room with the family—”

  “Where are the photographs?” Thara persisted, ignoring her mother. Her voice shook. She was asking the question because she had to now, not because she wanted the answer.

  He was going to tell them. Latha knew it by the fact that he hadn’t responded to Thara’s question right away. She knew that lies sprang quickly to lips; the truth was what got caught up in people’s throats, as if it wanted to give them one last chance to save themselves from what was sure to follow. She took that last step and came into the room. They all turned to look at her. She stood there before them with the sari still clutched to her chest.

  “What are you doing with my sari?” Thara said, an exasperated shriek, really. “Go and put it back!”

  Latha shook her head. “Please, Thara Madam, let me take this sari with me. I will give you money for it. I have enough to pay for it.”

  “Take it? Where? Where are you trying to go?”

  Mrs. Vithanage rose to her feet. “I might have known it. The little…” She trailed away and yelled for Podian, who came scuttling to her side, his brows knit, his fearful eyes lighting on Latha’s face and then fleeing just as swiftly to Mrs. Vithanage. “Take the children to our house with the driver and then ask him to come back. Old Soma will look after them,” she told him.

  “But, Āchchi, I don’t want to go anywhere. I want this food. I’m hungry,” Madhayanthi whined.

  “I don’t want to go either,” Madhavi murmured, but with less force.

  “Take them and go!” Mrs. Vithanage said again to Podian.

  “You can’t boss us!” Madhayanthi said.

  “Amma, what are you doing? Why are you sending them to Soma?” Thara asked, turning from Latha to the girls. “Sit down and finish your dinner,” she told them.

  “I gave the photographs to Latha,” Gehan said, softly, getting the words in before Mrs. Vithanage could respond.

  “What? First you take my camera and then you give the photographs to the damn servant woman? What is the matter with you?” Thara frowned at him, but in her accusation Latha could feel the pulse of postponement. Thara was simply trying to avoid the future that was barreling toward her like a derailed train, with all its sharp edges and bulging suitcases full of secrets, of tired families and things gone wrong, the entire unmanageable weight of it. Or perhaps she was a Vithanage after all. Maybe she would find a way to deflect all of it or, at the very least, ignore it. “What is the matter with you, Gehan?” she yelled, pushing at his shoulder when he said nothing.

  “You don’t know anything, do you?” Mrs. Vithanage said. “To think that I raised such a foolish child! Blind as a bat, that’s what you are.”

  “You keep out of it, Amma,” Gehan said. “This is between Thara and me.”

  Mrs. Vithanage snorted. “If it had been between Thara and you, we wouldn’t be facing this situation, would we?”

  “This is not the time to discuss anything,” Mr. Vithanage said, staring at his plate. “There are children here; can you not see that there are children here?”

  Mrs. Vithanage made a dismissive gesture with her hands. “You are the cause of all this, Mohan, bringing that creature into our home—”

  “She is not a creature, Wimala, she was a child,” he said.

  “A monster! She—”

  “Thara Baba…,” Latha began, but she couldn’t continue. The scream that came out of Thara’s mouth soaked up every word, every sound, even the smell from the curries laid out, and all the human beings around the table seemed to have surrendered their strength to that cry. She picked up her plate and flung it to the ground, and Latha found something uplifting in that sound, the brittle smashing sound and the small pieces flying everywhere. Mr. Vithanage, Gehan, and the girls all got to their feet and backed away from the table. Madhavi began to cry.

  “You…ruined…my…life…you…whore…you…bitch…you…” Thara lunged around the table, smashing one plate after another, gasping out the words with each plate that she flung to the ground, her voice, robbed of its power by her scream, almost a whisper now. Mr. Vithanage tried to hold on to his daughter when she reached his side of the table, but she shook herself free. Latha must have fallen into a trance because she didn’t see Mrs. Vithanage coming until she grabbed hold of her hair and wrenched her head backward.

  “It wasn’t enough for you to destroy my family’s reputation once, you had to do it again, didn’t you?” She began to drag Latha toward the front door, alternately twisting her head back and forth and beating her wherever she cou
ld. “Get out of this house! Get out! Get out!”

  “Let her go!” Gehan yelled, a voice nobody had ever heard before. He strode up to Mrs. Vithanage and, after a tussle, pulled Latha away from her. She thought he was going to hold her, but he didn’t. He merely set her aside, apart, like a piece of a puzzle he couldn’t quite fit into an otherwise still manageable picture.

  Mrs. Vithanage spat. “You common thug, putting your hands on me like that. You are unfit to be in our household, do you know that? Even today, I wasn’t going to come here except that Mohan begged me to do this. How humiliated I have been…” Tears began to fall down Mrs. Vithanage’s face, something Latha had witnessed only once before; and then, too, she had been the cause.

  Latha staggered back, and they both turned to look at her.

  “Latha,” Gehan said, “are you hurt?”

  “…talking to her like she’s one of us…,” Mrs. Vithanage said, bitterly.

  “She’s a human being!” Gehan said. “Do you think your family is the only one that has been hurt in all of this? You talk about your family as if they are something special. You are not special. You are no better than any other family!”

  “We are better than yours; that much I can tell. Some filth that came crawling into my house through the back door—”

  “Filth knows how to find other filth, I suppose,” he said.

  “Do you know she’s pregnant?” Mrs. Vithanage asked, and the question managed to cut through the din of Thara’s smashing and breaking plates and dishes and the almost musical clatter of silverware flung to the polished cement floor. Into the noise came the larger one of absolute silence.

  “Pregnant?” Gehan said, turning to Latha again. “You’re pregnant?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I was going to tell—”

  “I didn’t know—” He stopped. He took a step back from both Latha and Mrs. Vithanage and ran both his hands through his hair.

  There was a further silence as everybody waited for what would come next. Nobody was looking at Thara, but it was clear it was her turn to speak. Latha was not surprised by what she said. She was a Vithanage, after all, Thara was. That was what her sinews were made of, the Vithanage Way, something tensile and adaptable, a way of realigning, redefining, retelling that made the world livable.

  “Podian?” Thara said. “You couldn’t leave Podian alone, could you? You couldn’t have raised your skirt—”

  “Come, Duwa, there is no need to talk like this in front of—” Mr. Vithanage said.

  “…with the newspaperman or the fishmonger, you had to pick a boy young enough to be your son. Have you no shame? Not one bit of shame after all these years that we have looked after you?”

  Latha stared at Gehan, but he said nothing. He simply stood there, shaking his head. His eyes were turned away from her, his body facing his family. She was outside that circle, no matter that she could sense in the curve of his back some sympathy for her, a forlorn wish for a different outcome, tenderness even. But he was not a strong man; he had never been one. Were there strong men in the world? If there were, she had not met them. No, all she had met had been men who ruled small worlds from their perches upon the backs of strong women. Or who, like Mr. Vithanage, were beaten by one. All she knew were men who had used her or permitted her to use them. But he had loved her, Gehan had, hadn’t he?

  The words escaped from her. “Gehan Sir, he is the father of my child.”

  “Who?” Thara asked, her eyes glinting. She hesitated for only a moment before she continued. “Gehan? You have the nerve to accuse my Gehan?” She strode up to Latha and slapped her. “This man who has tolerated so much from my family, who married me when nobody else wanted to, who has stood by me through all the abuse I pile on him? You think you can point a finger at my good, decent husband now, you common tart? You think you can do this too?”

  Latha could see what was happening. There she stood, Thara, giving away for free the love she did not feel for Gehan, not because she wanted him but because she hated her, Latha. Thara was lifting Gehan up, placing him high, excusing, forgiving, elevating him in the eyes of her parents, sowing doubt, reaping loyalty in a single statement of deceit. It made Latha stumble for the first time in her life; that Thara, whose girlish precociousness had been lost when she lost Ajith and returned to her only as bitterness toward Gehan, had taken that rage and transformed it into this performance, into uttering such a preposterous lie.

  “He is the father of my child,” Latha repeated, against her better judgment, knowing that only he could redeem her now. “Tell her you are the father of my child!” she said to Gehan, her voice rising. “Tell her! Tell her!” But Gehan would not look at her. She fell to the floor and kissed his feet, more out of despair than out of hope, and still he stood. “You should have been my husband,” she pleaded. “You told me this. You said you should not have married her…You said this to me every time…every time we were together. You told me you had been wrong to marry her!”

  He did not move, and she stayed there, holding those feet she had first noticed so long ago, their shabby lower-class wear and tear, the way they had never matched hers. They had not changed, those feet, and now she took stock of them, refusing to let go even when he tried to lift her off with hands that were neither kind nor cruel, simply impassive, refusing even when Thara hurled more bile at her, even when Mrs. Vithanage joined in, even when she kicked her in the ribs. She stayed there until Thara dragged Podian, crying and pleading, into the room by his ear, screaming at him to confess that he had “fucked this bitch.” Then, in one swift movement, Latha stood up.

  “Oyay balli,” she said to Thara. “You’re the bitch who is married to him and has spent the last twelve years fucking Ajith.”

  And not Mrs. Vithanage’s flailing blows at her head or Mr. Vithanage’s pleading or Thara’s horror could stop her from telling them everything, from the first meeting she had orchestrated to the meetings at the De Sarems’ house, to their room at the hotel, and to the lie after lie after lie she had told for Thara.

  “Stop!” Gehan said at last. “Stop it! Why are you telling all these stories? In front of my children! Latha, you are not a bad woman, you don’t have to make up lies.”

  “They are not lies, and you know they are not,” she said, her voice cold.

  Gehan stared at her for a long moment. In the background there was only the sound of the girls crying, and Podian too, whimpering like a child, in sight but beyond their reach. Then, Gehan went up to Thara and put his arm around her.

  “She is lying, Thara, I know that. I don’t believe what she’s saying.” He turned her face to his with his palm and spoke so clearly it was like he was reciting something memorized by heart. “She is lying because you know it was Ajith who made Latha pregnant the first time. You would never go with a man like that. I am not the person you would have chosen, but you knew what he did. You would never have forgiven him for that.”

  And there, revealed to Latha, was Gehan’s price, repaying Thara for her deceit with some of his own. That he believed her, knew that what she had said was true, was unimportant to him right then. This was a negotiation to decide who owed what, and to whom. He was going to make Ajith pay through Thara for what he, Gehan, had lost, twice now, to the same man. That was that he was thinking of, not her, Latha, not how he felt about her or their unborn baby. And by giving Thara that reason for why he did not believe Latha, and using it to tell his wife about Ajith and how he had once betrayed her, Gehan was felling both Thara and her family, severing everything, exposing all the lies, laying waste to the whole of it. Something in him wanted that just as furiously as she had wanted her own revenge so many years ago.

  She listened and she knew, Latha did, that, when all was said and done, when spite and revenge had fizzled out, as they always did—didn’t she know it?—he would want to return to her, later, when his life with Thara had coalesced into a meaningless series of smaller wounds, inflicted ritually and relentlessly. But it would be
too late.

  Thara cried out. The pain in her voice was palpable. Latha looked from Thara to Gehan, wondering if now, hearing his wife’s hurt, watching her break, he felt adequately rewarded for what he was losing. Still standing within the safety of Gehan’s arms, Thara turned to her mother. “You told me it was the driver, Amma, that’s what you told me! You told me that our reputation had been damaged and that’s why his family didn’t want to marry into ours. You didn’t tell me it was him.”

  “I am not the one for you to blame, Thara, she is!” Mrs. Vithanage pointed to Latha.

  Thara turned to her. “You forgot everything, didn’t you? You forgot how I treated you, how you were like a sister to me. You forgot how I stood up to Gehan’s parents, to Gehan, for you. I kept you here when nobody wanted you to stay. I trusted you with my children—”

  “You kept me because I was a way for you to show how little you thought of your husband,” Latha said. “You needed my help in carrying on your affair.” She was playing Gehan’s game, but she knew that her fires weren’t the kind to be put out. What did it matter that they had once been friends? No, this room had no space for love that was not made impure by secrecy. These people did not know how to keep love, and now, neither did she. She would set it ablaze and watch. “And you didn’t just trust me with your children. You didn’t have time for them. You gave them to me! You don’t know them. You told me they weren’t yours. You wanted sons, you said, you wanted sons with Ajith.” Latha went up to the girls and took them from Mr. Vithanage, who let them pass from his arms and into hers. He looked like he might faint. “These poor girls, look at them now. Soon they will leave this house, and you gave them nothing!”

  “You get out of my house,” Thara said. All that was left in her voice was hatred.

  The girls clung to Latha. “Don’t go, Latha,” Madhavi said. “I don’t want you to go. Please stay here with us. Amma, please let Latha stay.”