The One Who Swam with the Fishes

by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

  But one thing did happen, even though no one ever talked about my birth story after that, unless I brought it up myself. My mother no longer had any power over me. She was still cruel, prone to be quickly cross with me, hitting me on the head with whatever she had handy, but she was still just a fishwife – and my father had said I was not meant to be that. It was not my destiny.

  I tried to play my games again, when I got a moment by myself, but they were not the same. I tried to envision Adrika the apsara, tried to make my movements fluid and light, tried to splash in the water to emulate her, but I just felt foolish, like I was a galumphing great human playing at a being created out of light and moonshine.

  But the more I thought about it, the more the odour of fish began to waft off my body. Earlier, I was barely conscious of it. We were a fishing village, after all; everything smelled of fish, more or less. You could no more escape the sharp tang or low musk of fish than you could the air around you. But I knew this smell was coming straight off me – it was dank and overpowering, so strong I almost thought you could see it if you peered at my body closely enough, like a fog emanating from it. When I awoke in the morning, the smell would suddenly sharpen, like it had been sleeping with me; when I bathed, it would change to that of slightly bloody, fresh catch. When I worked, it came out of me with my sweat, so that no one could bear to be downwind of me.

  It got so bad that I was banished to sleep indoors in the hot summer months while the rest of my family slept outside, but that didn’t work, because my smell permeated the straw matting of our walls, the high thatch of our roof. My mother took to bathing me in fragrant oil-scented water, cursing me under her breath as she bade me lift my arms so she could scour me properly, dunking my hair in the water and scrubbing my scalp till it hurt. She supervised my washing between my legs, to make sure I was doing a thorough job of it. My skin was raw and sodden from all the washing, and still the smell wouldn’t come off, always lurking at the tips of my fingers so I couldn’t even raise my hand to my mouth without smelling it.

  The healer came to our village that year. He passed through maybe only once every two rains; we were a healthy lot, brought up on fresh air and fish and lulled to sleep by the lapping of the waves. I remember him telling my father, when he came to our home for a meal, how all the townspeople suffered, how they had one ache and pain after another, which came from being in a closed home, and sitting still for too long. ‘They have forgotten that the gods gave them limbs, and so they’re all pale and sickly,’ the healer said. Then out of his bag he pulled two sugary treats – a cow for me, a horse for Chiro – and he winked at us and told us if everyone was the same as us, he’d be out of a job. ‘Then what would you do?’ Chiro asked, and the healer laughed loudly, stroking his long beard. ‘Then, little brother, I would say the name of God as I wandered about and I would be a holy man, not a poor servant.’

  I always liked this man; his name was Joshi, whatever other names he had were lost to history. He was Joshi as definitively as he was ageless – he could have been anywhere between forty to eighty rains – and I liked the way he smiled at us children, eyes crinkling in his weather-beaten face. He always came in right before the first rains hit us, almost as though he knew we needed diversion from the last humid week, when we thought we would go mad if there wasn’t a little wind, when our clothes stuck to our bodies like a second skin we wanted to shed. He came in jingling his brass bell, riding on his cow whose name was Latha. He let the village children gather around Latha, who might have been as old as he was and who he called his wife. She was a sweet-natured cow, one of the few I encountered at close range, because ours was not a herding village and we had little experience with the beasts. I liked to stroke her long nose, feel its velvet tip as she nuzzled into my palms hoping for a treat. I also liked her big, long-lashed eyes, the way she stood stoically and patiently while we fawned over her, occasionally whipping her tail against flies.

  The year of the smell, I was standing outside my house one day. I could not bear to be inside for another minute. My mother’s temperature rose with the humidity outside, and she had whipped me just that morning with a broom, shouting, ‘Where is it coming from, witch? Where is that smell coming from?’ I felt as though there was a pebble in my throat, which, try as I might, I couldn’t dislodge. Have you ever been so miserable that you thought tears might be a relief, but your eyes stay dry and parched? Mine were like that; it hurt even to blink.

  I heard Joshi before I saw him – his cheerful jingle, his call of ‘Narayan, Narayan!’ invoking the greatest god of all. There are three we are taught to love as children – Brahma who made us, Shiva who will destroy us, and Vishnu or Narayan who will preserve us. It is to him we whisper prayers: keep us safe, keep my family healthy, send someone to save us. Getting Vishnu down to earth is the hardest task a worshipper can do. Shiva loves anyone who sacrifices and takes to his way of life as a wandering ascetic, but Vishnu is a mystery, his many arms as enigmatic as the god himself. But, from all his believers, I have learned over the years that Vishnu is the one who listens, even if he’s sitting very far away on a giant looped snake. Vishnu believers are cheerful, not scary like the Shiva bhakts can be, with their faces painted dark and their eyes seeming to grow ever more crimson the longer they look at you. Maybe that’s why I liked Joshi so much.

  He saw me before I could turn away and hide. ‘Why, it’s my little sister,’ he said, smiling all over his face. ‘Although you’re getting to be quite a young lady now. No longer my little sister, then.’ I blushed deeply, twisting the corner of my sari in my fingers.

  ‘Now, why do you look so unhappy, my girl?’ asked Joshi in his kind voice. ‘Surely there’s nothing for you to look so sad about, a pretty thing like you?’

  I wondered if he couldn’t smell me, whether he was upwind or whether my odour was finally wearing off. But no, it couldn’t have been – I could smell myself distinctly. I looked up at him mutely and shook my head, warning him to stay away, but he wouldn’t heed my unspoken words and came right up to me, placing his hand on my shoulder and looking me straight in the face without wincing at all. I was watching him carefully for that expression everyone got, even the most polite. Their noses crinkled upwards, their eyes widened a bit, they said their two or three words to me and then they turned their faces away and breathed through their mouths, as quickly as they could without being rude. Joshi’s face didn’t change at all, except for the corners of his eyes wrinkling into a smile.

  ‘We’ll fix it, whatever it is,’ he said. ‘When have you known old Joshi to not have a cure?’

  Later that night, after Joshi had been fed and all the village gossip laid out in front of him, he sat back, smoking his pipe, and said to my parents, ‘Your daughter is getting to be quite grown-up now.’

  ‘Quite grown-up maybe, but with that smell, no one will ever marry her,’ said my mother, shooting a vicious look at me.

  I said nothing, and neither did Chiro who was sitting beside me, except to draw himself a little closer to me and bury his face in my shoulder, looking up afterwards with an expression of defiance. I patted his springy black hair.

  ‘A woman’s worth isn’t just about her marriage,’ said Joshi, surprising us all. I had never heard a statement like that before. What else were we brought into this world for, except to marry, have sons and die before our husbands, virtuous and gentle? That’s what everyone told me anyway, and if I wished for a different future, it was a dreamy wish, nothing articulate, nothing more than is this all there is? He saw that we were all looking at him to continue so he took a deep drag of his hookah, letting the water burble at the bottom for effect and then smiled genially all around. ‘No, it is also for her to be happy in this life, however long Narayan allows that to be. And little sister is not happy. Nor,’ with a look at my mother, who was about to say something sharp and cutting, ‘are you, Mother, with the concern you have for your child. What sort of life is this where no one is happy?’ Joshi always seeme
d to assume that my mother loved me, that we lived in happy harmony, and as a result, she was always a little gentler to me when he was visiting.

  ‘Is there a cure?’ asked my father.

  ‘Tomorrow I will examine her and see,’ said Joshi. ‘In the meantime, here, child, take these herbs.’ He held out a small bundle which I took and sniffed at wonderingly. ‘Crush these and rub them on the spots where your heart beats.’ Joshi indicated his wrists and the base of his throat. ‘It’s not a permanent solution but it will help you sleep easy tonight.’

  Later, I did as he asked, rubbing the dried herbs between my palms on to a soft piece of cloth to collect the powder and then using great pinches on myself. It smelled sweet and old and dusty at first, but as I put it on myself, I noticed that it took over my own smell, that I now smelled of the powder instead of the other way round. Chiro sneezed a few times when he approached me but I was so delighted that I lured him to the mat next to me, where he hadn’t slept since the smell started, by singing his favourite lullabies. He particularly liked the songs where an animal was in trouble and got saved in the nick of time with the help of a cleverer animal friend. I sang to him softly about birds in trees and squirrels in their nests till his body grew heavy and sweet with sleep next to me, and then I wrapped myself around him, pressing my chin to the top of his head.

  Now

  I’ve spent most of my day dreaming about the past and not enough time thinking about the future. I decide that in order for anything to happen, I mean really happen to me, I need to go out and see the king again. I’m anxious about what excuse I can give this time, since he is already aware that I know his camping spot. Then Chiro brings me out of my reverie, the rice sieve in my lap, my fingers running through the grains for God knows how long, by chirping, ‘I’d like to see the king, could I?’

  ‘How would you see the king, silly boy?’ I ask, pursing up my lips to hide the corners of my smile.

  He lies down on the floor in front of me and raises his arms to the sky. Lately it seems all he is doing is growing, and fast. His limbs are long and elastic, his stomach bottomless. ‘I heard Ba saying you had met him, Mut,’ he says, turning his head to look at me with his round eyes. ‘You could go again, taking me this time. I want to be a soldier one day; I should meet some real soldiers.’

  ‘You can’t be a soldier,’ I say. ‘You have to be a fisherman.’

  ‘I guess I can be whatever I want to be,’ he says, scowling. I think to myself that if I do see the king, I’ll be going for the sake of this beloved little brother and not really myself. I could say my brother wanted to see the soldiers, and the king might be able to intervene on his behalf with our parents so that Chiro can wear the uniform he so wants to.

  So, I call out to my mother that we are taking a walk, she tells me to come home with some water, ‘a whole pot instead of those three measly sips you brought us last time’ and we set out, after I have freshly braided my hair allowing some tendrils to drift artfully across my face, and I’ve changed into a new tight vatkala that hugs me high on my chest so that the round curves of my stomach are exposed to the breeze. Chiro glances at me once before we leave, his eyebrows asking, Are you going to wear that? But he is my little brother and so I respond to his eyebrows with stern ones of my own and soon he is skipping on the path in front of me, breaking off a branch from a sapling to use as a pretend sword.

  ‘Come now, pretend your honour is at stake and I have to rescue you,’ he tells me, and I make some half-hearted oh ah sounds while he makes his branch whistle through the air, valiantly fighting off my attackers.

  ‘You’re dead, and you’re dead,’ he mutters to himself as we walk on. But the walk is long and he’s soon bored so I have to entertain him by telling him about the king, who he is not interested in, asking about the prince instead.

  ‘What if he’s here?’

  ‘He won’t be,’ I say, confidently. ‘Only the king is here now.’

  ‘I have heard his mother was a goddess,’ says Chiro.

  ‘You have, have you?’ I say, ruffling his hair. ‘And which old women were you talking to when this news came to light?’

  He shakes my hand off and runs his own palm across his head. No matter how old he gets his hair will always stick up just like that, like a baby sparrow straight from a nest. I try to imagine him with a wife, children, in a few years, and all I can see is a tall version of him right now, even as he is making an owl face at me.

  I stop walking suddenly when I hear men’s voices up ahead. We must be close to the camp. Chiro, who was about to say something, stops too, and slides behind me, sticking his hand in mine for comfort. So much for my avenging warrior.

  ‘Don’t be scared,’ I tell him. ‘How will you be a soldier if you are scared?’

  I pull him along, and ahead of us on the road are two soldiers, clearly well into their drink even if they are on sentry duty, who whistle and call out when they see me.

  ‘And where are you going, my beauty?’ says one, cackling.

  ‘We would like to see the camp and the king, please,’ I say, trying to look like I have done this every day of my life. My true father is a king, I tell myself, my true mother is an apsara, I can speak to two common soldiers.

  ‘Would she really?’ says the other soldier, also breaking into a hyena laugh. ‘Any other requests, Your Highness?’

  ‘Yes,’ harrumphs the first. ‘Perhaps we should order a palanquin for you, perhaps you would like to be greeted with a carpet for your feet.’

  The second soldier lunges over to me then, and makes to grab my arm. ‘Run!’ I shout to Chiro and take off myself, dragging him behind me. I’m not sure what I am running towards, I half-hope it is home, but the soldiers are cursing and running behind me, still cat-calling and swearing, and I realize we are bumbling in the direction of the camp. I can feel my heart beat thump-thump-thump in my ears and I can feel Chiro’s palm slip out of my hand slowly, the curl of his forefinger the last bit to go, till I realize I’m running alone. Then I stop and turn around, and he is surrounded by soldiers, only two soldiers but big men who are beating him. He screams, he’s rolled up into a little ball, he is holding his arms above his head, and I run back, screaming too. But by the time I get there, he is quiet, he is lost, and I am quite, quite alone with these men who turn to me, bloodlust in their eyes.

  The rest is all glimpses of scenes that feel like I am watching from far, far away.

  Scene one: The soldiers surround me, they push me down, only an arm’s length away from where Chiro is still curled up in a ball. One holds my thighs apart, yanks roughly at my sari, my best one that I wore to meet the king; it rips under his impatience. The other is saying something but I’m not paying attention. I’m watching Chiro from the corner of my eye, my face is pressed into grit and dirt, and I can feel a sharp object poking into my cheek, but I’m praying to everyone – to everything – that his chest will rise and he will breathe again.

  Scene two: They’re laughing but also egging each other on – neither wants to be the first. ‘Get on with it,’ says the one still standing. ‘I’ll stand guard.’ I’m focusing hard on Chiro’s face; if I can ignore the men and just watch the curve of his eyelashes, the slope of his chest, spot a twitch in the corners of his mouth, then I will be able to live through this.

  Scene three: Just as the soldier is about to fall down between my thighs, I hear a noise that doesn’t belong here in the forest, with its occasional bird call and the faraway chitter of squirrels. It is horse hooves and they vibrate through the ground and into my ear flat against the earth. I begin to scream.

  Scene four: ‘Quiet!’ shouts the soldier, slapping my face. ‘Quiet! Quiet!’ But he can’t make me obey him, and by hitting me, he has released his clamp on my thighs. I close my legs and scream again, just a hoarse, wordless cry. The horse hooves stop and suddenly it is silent again, and I close my eyes, preparing for doom, when they start up again. This time the soldier has his hand across my mouth and
he’s pressing into my nostrils – I can’t draw breath.

  Scene five: A tall man breaks into our glade. The soldier immediately lets me go and stands to attention. My eyes are still on Chiro, I blink and he’s an old man, I blink again, and there he is, lying still. I stop struggling. I dart to my feet and over to Chiro, kneeling by him and touching his face. ‘Wake up,’ I plead with him. ‘Wake up, wake up, wake up.’

  And then the scenes stop, and the tall man is shouting at the two soldiers. He then climbs off his horse and comes over to me. I shrink back but don’t move from where I am, next to Chiro. If they move him without me, I shall tear their hair from the roots, I shall scratch everyone bloody, I will be a vengeful goddess, the kind you don’t want to cross.

  Then

  When I woke up, after my night with the healer’s herbs, Chiro was gone and the hut was empty. I was usually awake before the first light of dawn, following a restless and disturbed night, but it seemed the herbs had a magic that not only made me smell beautiful but also lulled me to sleep for far longer than I usually did. I hadn’t realized how much I needed the rest till I woke up feeling more refreshed than I had in weeks. The magic of Joshi, I thought as I rose quickly and rolled up my mat, that my mother hadn’t even shaken me awake to help her with the chores. I sniffed quickly under my arms; the herbs were still working.

  My mother entered just then. ‘Awake?’ she said. ‘It’s about time. Begin by husking the rice – your father will be home for an afternoon meal today.’

  I nodded and reached for the drinking vessel, to get myself some water.