A Matter of Geography

by Jasmine D'Costa

  Chapter Thirteen

  Anna’s parents consulted with Isabel the day Mrs. Cabral visited them to insist that they stop their children from mixing with the Marchon kids. Certainly, the House of Sin and its inhabitants were a source of worry to the Fernandeses. Susan, Ivan, Anna and Francis were young and susceptible and could easily be led astray by unholy influences.

  Isabel, how can we expose the children to such an environment? Should we ban them from playing with the Marchon family? How do we explain why? Children ask questions, you know. These questions flowed alternately from Nattie and Mr. Fernandes, as though they had already discussed the issue and not agreed on the answers that had presented themselves.

  We were in the living room, Mother and I, and though I was eighteen, they looked in my direction when they spoke of children. It did not seem odd to Mother that they included me in this general dilemma they faced with Susan, Ivan, Anna and Francis. Isabel, whose opinion Mr. Fernandes respected, decoded the issue:

  “We have several factors to consider. On the one hand, we could ban the children. Now, if we ban the children, do we tell them why? Or do we just risk sounding unreasonable? If we do not want to sound unreasonable, do we have to consider whether we are being unreasonable? If we give our children the information we have on the Marchons, our children will perhaps give us counter arguments, such as, ‘We can play with them and not do the bad things,’ or they’ll accuse us of not trusting their judgement. In my experience, we’ll lose such a battle and find ourselves inserting a very unreasonable adult argument, ‘It is right because I say so.’” Isabel paused to breathe and take in a pinch of snuff. She tucked the snuff box back inside her bra and continued.

  “On the other hand, our children are quite innocent and lead protected, regulated lives. How can they understand what is happening in that House of Sin? I feel innocence is the domain of their childhood, and no argument will convince me to deprive them of that. There will be time enough for that. They will discover the world and become jaded, undoubtedly,” at which point she glanced at me, almost speculating on whether I had arrived. “But for now, we must allow them that joy of being children, the joy of innocence, the hallmark of being a child. Otherwise we would be stealing their childhood, so to speak.” She sighed. “Our choices now may have far-reaching effects, and yet, on the other hand, we cannot have the Marchons introduce them to life! Then yet again, we must consider the Marchon children. Must we penalize them and deprive them of the good our children can bring into their lives?”

  Brevity not being one of Mother’s strengths, she went on, but not before another pinch of snuff appeared between the thumb and index finger of her left hand. The air swirled around a few particles, and Mrs. Fernandes gave a controlled sneeze. Isabel, ignoring the interruption, continued,

  “So I would suggest, let the children play with each other, but we can lay down some ground rules. They should never enter the Marchon household.” She finally stopped to catch her breath and once again took in a pinch of snuff, almost like a tic.

  And so the verdict got writ in stone: You may play with the Marchon children, but you will not repeat any bad language you learn from them; entry into their home is strictly forbidden, nor should they come to our home when elders are not around.

  Thus, Ivan, Francis, Anna and Susan were forbidden to enter the House of Sin. Anna naively thought that the ban stemmed from the girls’ bad language and flirtation with the male gender. Every time I argued that there were more important reasons, she annoyed me by saying, “Peter, you are so negative. You see more evil than there really is.”

  “Perhaps you should talk to the Surves personally too,” Mum said.

  “Why?”Dad asked.

  “Their children do not play with ours, and they do not speak English. So perhaps it is best you speak to them.”

  “OK, my dear. My Marathi is not great either, but I will be able to convey my message, I suppose. Of course I think it is quite unlikely they will attend.”

  “Why not? They are equally affected.”

  “I don’t know, my dear. Not everyone likes to bell the cat.”

  “I don’t suppose that Catholic couple on the first floor will come?”

  “Quite unlikely, you know, especially after the gate episode, dear.”

  The first floor belonged to another world. Dad talked occasionally to Mr. Surve, who worked in the same office—often they walked to the railway station together. However, one could not really call that ‘together.’ Dad took long strides and Mr. Surve took little running dance steps to keep up with him. That made it difficult to have any bonding or conversation with each other.

  On Diwali each year, the Surve family sent us sweets. We returned the gesture every Christmas. Perhaps that could adequately sum up our relationship with them. That is, if one ignored the occasional Christmas when Mr. Surve joined the men, specially invited by Dad, as they went from home to home, drinking—“Just one peg, my dear”—till they came home, ate the large dinner and fell on the bed in a drunken slumber, snoring for the rest of the day. I think Mrs. Surve was happy that her husband socialized with the men only one day of the year. They were the only non-Catholics in the building, other than Ali’s family and Miss Ezekiel, and of course the Madrassi bachelors. Mr. Surve had one son and one daughter. I must shamefully admit we did not speak or play with them. How could we? We only went down to the first floor when Peter and Ivan, in the middle of a bored afternoon, would creep up to Miss Ezekiel’s door and bang the knocker while the rest of us looked out from the other side of the L to see her reaction. Of course, she never opened the door, but we could hear the angry sounds of Kek, kek, ke. Most often, after such forays I slipped a guilty little “sorry” note through the slit under her door.

  Mr. Surve did not talk to any of us kids, nor did his children, though his daughter was my age. Sometimes I think it was because we spoke English and she went to the municipal school and spoke only Marathi.

  Actually, I would have loved to be friends with her. She was very pretty and she knew how to make Diwali sweets, our favourite treats. I sometimes stood near the stairs when I knew she would pass and smiled at her, words not part of our repertoire ‘cause we were so different.’Mr. Surve’s son would stand at the bottom of the stairs, and very often I got the impression that he wanted to talk to me. I would have rather it was his sister, but he would stare at me and sometimes I felt embarrassed. I did not tell the others, because you know how one tells a friend and they get all angry, then confront the person and the person then denies it all, leaving you feeling stupid. Telling mum and dad would only cause a similar problem. Dad would go to Mr. Surve and he would ask his son and his son would deny it, and of course, really, looking at me is not a crime; no, not really. So I did not tell anyone.

  The Mitchells, old and crumpling, lived next to the Surves. Their apartment was directly below ours, but they did not mix with us either. After the gate episode, even their occasional hellos stopped completely.

  When Francis was little, he crawled all over and pulled down the utensils in the kitchen and anything else in sight. Dad decided the only way to deal with this was to make a gate between the living room and the kitchen. Dad was a closeted handyman and spent endless hours on holidays stitching the tears in our shoes, or mending broken chairs. So one Sunday morning he sat down with wood, nails, and a hammer. Barely had he started on the gate when Mrs. Mitchell came knocking.

  “Mr. Fernandes,” she angrily quivered, “you are making too much noise with that hammer.”

  “Mrs. Mitchell,”Dad responded, a bit sarcastically I thought, “I invite you to hammer nails into this gate without making a noise.”

  She stalked off, muttering about men who had no right to be in society. I think “uncouth,” “brash,” “mannerless,” were some of the adjectives we heard quiver in the distance. Never again did the Mitchells speak to Dad, nor to us. Not even to little Francis, who dutifully said, “Good morning, Mrs. Mitchell,” or “Merry Christ
mas, Mrs. Mitchell,” or “Happy Easter, Mrs. Mitchell.” Our own affectionate Francis, who as a child got so attached to everyone who came visiting that when they stood up to leave, he latched onto their ankles, bawling and pleading, “Don’t leave, don’t leeeeeeave…”Not unlike the leaches that clung to our legs when we walked through our grandfather’s overgrown land on the far end of the estate in Mangalore, it took all of Susan’s and my strength to extract him.

  No, not even to Francis, whose sensitive soul always hurt to encounter such a lack of warmth, did Mrs. Mitchell soften.

  Dad finally decided to make a list of residents that Ivan could take the notice to and, on Mum’s suggestion, the residents where Isabel, limping, might persuade them to go to the meeting Dad had called for, and a separate list of those that he could do himself.

  Ivan’s list excluded Glenda’s mother who lived in room No. 1, who was put on Isabel’s list along with Mr. Mitchell and Jacob Olivera, who had at some time or other fallen out with us. Ivan’s list also excluded Mr. Surve from the first floor, the Marchon household, and the Madrassis on the first floor. None of the tenants in the offices on the other side of the building were included, and the others, with the exception of the Madrassis, fell into Dad’s list.

  “Will you have time for this, dear?” Mum asked.

  “A man has to do what a man has to do,” Dad said, looking stern and focused.

  The Madrassi men were a sort of club or chummery. All the girls were forbidden to go near their apartment. They were very dark, naked to the waist, oily-skinned and oily-haired, with white cloth lungis—Dad called them mundus—folded up from their ankles, knotted, and tucked at the waist to make for easy leg movement.

  There was no need to caution us. The men showed no interest in us, nor did they mix with anyone in the building. Our doors could all be latched from the inside, or from the outside by a lock attached to a latch. But the Madrassis always kept their doors wide open, and when I went down to slip apologetic notes under Miss Ezekiel’s door for Ivan’s and Peter’s trespasses, I had to walk past their rooms.

  Their darkness always startled me. The men seemed always to be squatting on the floor in front of two primus stoves with a heavy black tawa, a pan of cast iron, making chappatis. They shared the work between them; some of them cut vegetables, others rolled out the chappatis, frying them, and all sorts of very domestic work. “Madrassi bachelors,”Peter said. Their floors were not the smooth black-and-white tiles of the second floor, but rough Shahabad stone.

  One day, perhaps in an overwhelming urge for privacy or almost as if in error, they closed their door. Peter and Ivan, always on the lookout for a prank, slunk down to the first-floor verandah and silently locked them in. At about four o’clock, perhaps after waking from an afternoon nap, they tried to open their door and found themselves trapped.

  We all made for the window of the common passage near the stairs. Doubling over the window ledge that looked out on the outer perimeter of the building, we elbowed each other for a prime place to watch the drama ensuing below. As we had expected, after much shaking of the door on the other side leading to the verandah, they gave up on it, and not much later one black leg came over the window sill, followed by a white lungi and a naked black body, and as we watched in bated anticipation a second leg swung over. He walked along the ledge on the outside curve of the building, which had windows, and climbed into the passage near the stairs on the first floor level. He then went through to the verandah and unlatched the door. Never again did they shut their doors, which were instead kept wide open for all to peep in as they passed, only to quickly look away, embarrassed by the unseemly vision of twelve near-naked black bodies.

  They were not invited to the meeting.

  Jacob and Gina Olivera were ‘progressive parents,’ Mum said, echoing their own opinion of themselves. Irrelevant and quite silly, I thought, especially because Aaron Olivera, who was Ivan’s age, beat us up every time he saw us, and our complaints to his parents met with an almost vulgar disinterest. Every other evening we ran to Mother, the three of us, Ivan, Susan and I, complaining, and perhaps what Aaron would have described as whining. Finally, Mum paid a visit to the Oliveras.

  Gina Olivera, her salt and pepper hair tied up in a bun above eyes that were soft and attractive, spoke sweetly. Her husband, Jacob, a wiry, weak-looking individual, was gruff, belying his appearance. Both of them, of one mind, said, ‘Children should settle their grudges amongst themselves without adult intervention.’

  Mum came home dissatisfied. Mother herself, considered to be a beauty, with a long thick braid below her hips, did not look very pretty right then; more like a wild cat protecting her cubs. She looked at us and weighed her words.

  “Try to be friends,” she told us. “Try not to fight.”

  “But Mum, we do not fight. He hits us for no reason.”

  Mum was silent.

  The next day Aaron, irritated with us for complaining, and encouraged by his parents’ reaction, walked up and said, “How about this?” He pushed Ivan’s head. Before he could get to Susan, she had run home. “How about this?” he said, shoving me. Off-balance, I reeled and banged my head against an empty drum left in the passage by the Olivera family in case they needed to store water in times of shortages. I cried all the way home.

  As with all aches and pains of both body and mind, we waited to dump it on Mum. That evening I sobbed, “Mum, we can’t be friends with Aaron. He hurt my head today.”

  “Yes, Mum,” Ivan said, “He hit me too. And Anna cried all day because she hurt her head.” Mum looked at us speculatively and finally said,

  “I don’t understand you children. There are three of you. Does Alice join Aaron?”

  “No.”Alice was Aaron’s older sister, who did not play with us.

  “Well, all I can say is that you are three and he is only one.” Mum left to make dinner.

  We looked at each other. Ivan said, “Let us make a plan.”

  “What plan?”I asked.

  “Mum is right, Anna. He is alone and there are three of us. Tomorrow when he walks by us we will rush at him. Anna, you hold down his legs, and Susan, hold down his hands, and I will hit him for all of us.”

  “Good plan,” said Susan. I was not so sure. What about turning the other cheek? Was that not our belief? But right then, with an aching head, I thought that turning the other cheek would be even more painful.

  And thus it was that one Saturday afternoon while our parents had their customary weekend siesta—“I don’t want noise in here, so go out with your games,”from Dad—we went out into the passage. Aaron had become so arrogant and confident that he strolled up and down outside our apartment whistling as the three of us waited for the opportune moment. Shirlen, Miriam and Carlton Marchon watched, feeling certain that something would happen. On his third march towards us Aaron was indeed startled when I ducked for his legs and he fell down. Susan sat on his chest and Ivan took a deep breath and pummelled him with his fists. Aaron cursed and threatened as he tried to set himself free from under Susan, swearing dire consequences to the three of us till Susan, in an attempt to stop his bluster, let free one of her hands and stretched her chewing gum across his mouth.

  “Shut up,”she said.

  The Marchon children booed him all through the fight. “Sissy, bully, beaten by girls,” they sang tunelessly. That afternoon Aaron went home bruised and crying. Gina Olivera, ominous and threatening, a giant version of Aaron, marched down the verandah towards us, her intertwined eyebrows foreshadowing a cloudburst. I ran in and dragged Mum outside.

  The two women stared at each other. Aaron was still sobbing.

  “Nathie, your children attacked my son, three of them against one. Completely unacceptable, and so unsportsmanlike!”

  “Oh no!” Mum said, shaking her head from side to side. “I am so sorry to hear that, Gina. But what can I say? Children will be children. We cannot interfere in their affairs.”

  So Gina and Jacob Olivera wen
t on Isabel’s list, not Ivan’s.

  Isabel persuaded Glenda’s mother, Mrs. Alphonso, to come to the meeting. Glenda was much older than the rest of us, though I think she was younger than Peter. When they first came to live in our building, mother and daughter arrived with only two small suitcases. On occasion, when Glenda’s mother stood out on the balcony, we noted her clothes. She generally wore a navy blue dress, under which another dress, flower-patterned, peeped out. Not a very clean one, either. Peter said, “She does not change. She just puts one dress over the other.”

  Nobody ever turned down Isabel. Nor did Glenda’s mother. She even showed up before anyone else at the meeting in the passage. Dad rushed out after we informed him Glenda’s mother had already arrived.

  Glenda attended the convent school over the bridge. Her mother washed the nuns’ habits and did other odd jobs for the convent, not only for a salary but to ensure that Glenda got admitted and studied at that school. Peter said that it would do her good to wash her own clothes at least once in a while. Sometimes she brought the habits home to wash and hung them in our corridor, where she had tied clotheslines between the pillars. Anything hanging unattended was Sammy’s next drink. But even Sammy did not steal the nuns’ habits, for who could he sell them to?

  That day Mrs. Alphonso walked into the meeting, her floral dress peeping out of the navy blue one that hung below the red one. Dad greeted her. I think she must have run away from her husband, rather than been a widow, because she particularly disliked men. Her face, at once swollen and a maze of wrinkles, resembled the surface of the moon, craters and all. Right now a fly walked drunkenly over the surface like a lunar rover, till she swatted it, skilfully maiming it so it fell on the floor. She turned her face away from Dad disdainfully. Dad, of course, never noticed such things. He was unstoppable, and waiting for the rest to arrive, continued to be energetic and bubbly.