The One Who Swam with the Fishes

by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

  ‘I suppose it won’t really matter to us,’ I said, yawning a little. ‘I’ll still be here on this island.’

  ‘Will you?’ His eyes had a strange faraway expression. ‘Fate is a funny thing, my dear. It leads you by the hand and takes you where it wants you to go, and you have no more control over it than a blindfolded child.’

  ‘Well, I can decide to not leave this island, can’t I? Besides, I’ll likely be dead by the time this new yuga comes about. It has nothing to do with me.’

  He looked at me a little oddly and seemed about to say something, but he stopped himself and stroked my cheek instead. ‘When Fate comes to take you by the hand, all I ask is that you don’t resist.’

  Later, when I turned to go as the sun started to set, he said casually, ‘Why not sleep here?’

  ‘But all my things are in my cave!’

  ‘So, go back tomorrow and fetch them.’

  ‘Fetch them? You’re making it sound as though I should move here.’

  ‘And why not? You have spent three moons here, all with Dvipaa, who is very capable, yes, but she cannot aid your education as I can. And yes’ – seeing my face – ‘you do need an education. Everyone does, but especially you, if you want to realize your destiny.’

  ‘I can’t just leave Dvipaa-ma,’ I said, feeling guilty at how elated I was by the prospect.

  ‘She’ll probably be happy to be on her own again,’ he said. ‘That’s all she’s ever wanted – to be left in peace and quiet. Now, if that’s agreed, I can show you where to sleep.’

  He made up a nice bed for me with a reed mat and rushes on the porch, and said he wouldn’t be far away if I needed him. I snuggled deep under the sheet he tossed over me, for it was a cool night, and watched him as I drifted off to sleep. In the moonlight, he looked younger than ever; his beard was now just a small line of hair across his chin, his hair long and wavy, his skin smooth.

  ‘I can’t believe the two of you are the same age,’ I said sleepily, and he laughed with his young man face. ‘Don’t think about it,’ he said, and I took his advice and fell asleep happily, the smell of the smoke from his pipe playing a lullaby across my face.

  Now

  His Majesty hustles into the tent, and if ‘hustle’ is not a kingly term, at least it is fitting, because that’s how he huffs and puffs inside, as though it was a matter of some urgency. Some courtiers follow behind him; I recognize one from earlier in the day, a sad-faced man with a drooping moustache and a thin crimson mouth which also turns downwards. The girls flutter, Kaarika-bi is all solicitude, offering drinks and waving her plump fingers so that there are dancing girls everywhere, two to a man, pulling them down to various bolsters and rugs that seem to have appeared as magically as they have. In a matter of seconds, the place is filled with soft laughter the women have and the jingle of their anklets; one woman is in the centre of my small tent, plucking on a long, stringed instrument while two others prepare to dance. One of the dancers is my new friend, Mohini, and I crane my head past the gauzy curtain that Kaarika-bi has put up around me so I can see her moves.

  ‘Now, Your Majesty, if you’d just step in here, you can be alone with the lady,’ Kaarika-bi says in low, soothing tones, as she lifts up a side of the curtain to let him through. ‘My girls will entertain the men for as long as you need.’

  I wonder if he’ll try something, whether I’ll need to scream, whether anyone would hear me if I did. I hear my father’s soft voice in my ear telling me to do what I have to do. Anything I have to do. When I think of my father, I think of my brother, and that decides me. I pull the soft scarf over my head and my front so that I look smaller and more vulnerable, and as he sits and Kaarika-bi retreats, I kneel in front of him.

  ‘Your Majesty, my brother…?’ I ask, putting all the emotion I feel into my eyes and my face. I know my lower lip is trembling and my eyes are huge and filling with tears. It’s funny, because even though I feel all these emotions – they’re not from a false place – I also feel like I’m acting the part. The Distressed Sister. So sad and alone and lost. I’m watching myself from afar, and my mouth is twisting up into a smirk at my theatrics.

  He sits down heavily on the mattresses which served as my bed just a few short hours ago. He does not look at me; instead he takes off his shoes and stares sadly at his feet. Then he does look at my face, and he takes my chin and lifts it so he can inspect my eyes, my nose. I’m surprised he doesn’t push my hair away from my face so he can see my ears, or ask me to open my mouth to examine my teeth. I keep my eyes cast downward – hard when someone has your face in their hand – and eventually he lets me go.

  ‘Do you know how to massage feet?’ he asks, and without waiting for my reply, waves his foot in front of me. I have done this before, a lifetime ago, for an old woman and her feet full of calluses; I’d worked out the knots as I laughed or sang or listened to her stories. But now something tells me there will be no storytime, and my heart is heavy as I take his foot and move it between my palms.

  ‘Ah,’ he exhales softly, and I look up to see him closing his eyes and tilting back his head. He looks tired and I feel sorry for him, even as I hate him for taking so long to answer my question. As though he reads my mind, he says, ‘The boy is resting and Medhira feels he will make a complete recovery.’ I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding and pummel at his feet with new energy.

  ‘That’s good,’ he says, sighing, and then, ‘We had word sent to your home so they would not worry. You may rest easy on that account. We also sent some game for your village, feeling they may tire of fish.’

  ‘Oh, we could never tire of fish,’ I say but then notice he’s smiling to himself. He’s made a joke. Probably the first one he’s made in ages, so I laugh to make him happy. It comes out a little stilted – heh-heh – but he smiles wider anyway. After I have finished one foot, I begin on the other. He’s not a man of many words, my future husband. He likes quiet when his feet are being massaged. He has delicate, dark hollows under each eye, little pouches that seem like they would be grateful for soft, scented fingers to press them gently. His nose is beaked and stern, some veins across it broken, his eyebrows gather like thick tufted insects and form peaks around the hill of his frown, which is there even as he relaxes.

  I do a thorough job with his feet, mostly because I’m not thinking about them. My mind is racing years ahead, seeing myself as queen, with a crown and grand clothes, ruling over a kingdom, justly and compassionately. They’ll call me the People’s Queen and I’ll walk among them and they’ll fall to their knees, kissing the corner of my sari as I press coins on them all. The king does not figure in this fantasy at all, but he’s quite old, so maybe he will be too decrepit to interfere with me much. So busy am I in my imaginings that I toss my head a little bit and then smile kindly down at one fantasy urchin who is begging me for just a little bread. I reach out and pick him up and surely my prime minister remonstrates, saying, ‘Majesty, he is a street rat,’ and I say grandly, ‘Who among us would not be a street rat if we had nothing?’ and I cradle the child to me and…

  ‘It’s not easy being royal, you know.’

  I start and look up to find the king is looking at me, amused.

  ‘I’m sure it’s not, Your Majesty,’ I say.

  ‘I was watching you just then. You looked like you were faraway and dreaming. What dreams do you have, pretty girl?’

  I blush, a real blush this time, his voice is so low and wanting. ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t thinking of anything, Your Majesty, except sitting right here with you.’

  This time he laughs and tweaks my ear as though I was a child, not someone he wants to bed, and he says, ‘Remember your name is Satyavati, girl. That’s probably what makes you terrible at lying.’

  I simper and move my hands away from his feet. ‘Is that good, Majesty?’

  ‘That is.’

  We sit in silence for a moment and I hear the loud laughter of the men just outside.

  �
�You know what I want, don’t you?’ he says, gripping my wrist. ‘I want you, girl, all of you, your young body, your delicate feet, I want to lay kisses on the lotus of your navel and show you worlds you’ve never seen before. Will you come with me? I haven’t felt this way in a long time, and I will reward you handsomely for it.’

  ‘Your Majesty!’ I stand up, push his hands from me, back up against the corner like I’m afraid and outraged.

  ‘Surely this is not a surprise, Satyavati,’ he says, standing up too and advancing towards me.

  ‘Oh, is this what you planned for me, Your Majesty? A great and noble Kshatriya such as yourself? Maim a girl’s brother so you can defile her? Shame on you!’

  He backs away at that, just as I knew he would. Funnily, as I’m saying the words, the words my father gave me to say, I’m actually feeling them, I’m feeling the very epitome of a modest, outraged maiden, all a-quiver with virtue.

  ‘I will shower you with riches,’ he says softly. ‘Your fortune will change.’

  ‘Is that all you think a girl’s virtue is made of, O King?’ I ask, scoffing. ‘Gold pieces? Will my gold care for me in my old age, will my gold give me a child – a legitimate child? Will my gold make up for the shame of my father when he knows what his only daughter has done to his name?’

  ‘Is that what you worry about? I could have you marry one of my courtiers.’

  Now I’m really getting angry. Why is he being so dense, so slow to grasp the point?

  ‘No, Majesty,’ I say. ‘I will not bed you nor marry one of your courtiers. If you wish to have me in your chambers, you will have to marry me.’

  There, I’ve said it.

  The sky doesn’t explode into mocking laughter, as I feared it would. Instead, there’s a lull in the noise outside as well, as though everyone has been listening to us and is waiting for the king’s response.

  ‘Impossible,’ he says, making a sour face.

  ‘Why?’ I ask. ‘I know your wife is gone. I will make you a good wife. I may not be a goddess but they are cold beings in your bed or out of it, I’ve heard. My family are fishermen, that is true, but they are only my foster family. In truth, my parents are divine themselves, divine and royal, or so my foster father tells me.’

  I have the story all ready; my father made me tell it back to him several times so it sounded like fact, even all the pretty details he had woven into it. It was a true story now, something that had really happened, something of which I was proof. But the king doesn’t ask to hear it. Instead he sighs and sits down again, cradling his head in his palm.

  ‘I can’t marry you,’ he says, almost to himself. ‘But how I want you. Must you make me suffer?’

  ‘I am not trying to make you suffer, Majesty. I am only making it fair for myself.’

  ‘You do realize as my subject you are duty bound to serve me. No? Ah, I thought that would get you, girl.’ He stands up again, draws himself to full kingly height and flicks his hand at me in a get-down gesture. When I don’t move, he barks out, ‘It is customary to kneel before your king, else you could be whipped for treason.’

  I don’t like his voice now, and his mouth looks cruel, his eyes shiny and bright with some inner madness. Still, with my back against the giving wall of my tent, I kneel, not taking my eyes off his face. My legs are trembling, and it feels good to sink to the ground. In two strides, he is next to me, he is lifting my face roughly, his hand goes to the top of my tunic and he tugs at it with force. I hear the fabric tear but I don’t look down at it, keeping my eyes on him the entire time. He lets go of my face, reaches out for my bare shoulder, fondling it with slow, even strokes. I can hear the soldiers again, feel them pushing me to the ground and holding me down by force, and before I can help myself, I let out a little whimper.

  It’s as though he’s coming back from a dream. I see reason flood into his face, followed by horror at what he has done. He pushes himself away from me so violently that I drop to my palms on the floor.

  ‘Forgive me, oh, forgive me,’ he says, straightening out his dhoti and heading for the curtain that separates us from the men. ‘Can you forgive me when I cannot forgive myself?’

  I’m still shaking from the encounter but I find my voice. ‘Majesty, with your permission, if my brother is well enough to move tomorrow, I would take your leave to go back to my village. My parents might be anxious for me.’

  I want to go home, I realize suddenly. I want to be away from all this. What I really want is to go back to my island but that will never happen, no matter how hard I look for it. I’m homesick for a place I can never return to – isn’t that the saddest thing in the world? But I’ll settle for our hut in our village, my mother’s voice calling to my brother, my father’s heavy tread at the end of the day, combing my hair out as I sit on the soft sand and sing to myself.

  He’s already gone, the king, out through the curtain, without even so much as a backward glance at me. I hear my father’s voice as he talked to me last week – was it only last week?

  Do you want to be queen, Matsyagandhi? You have to really want it, deep inside your soul. Kingdoms will be changed for this, family dynasties overruled. If you don’t want it, then all the coaching I give you will be of no good. But remember this, you are a princess, daughter. A princess by birth and a princess through me, your foster father. I rule over this village much as the king rules over his kingdom, so you are no less than him, no less than his son. Take that knowledge with you, it will hold you well.

  And I hear myself answer him, whisper yes, my true answer buried inside me, where it will be buried for the rest of my life. I don’t know.

  Then

  The first time I was ever aware of a man’s gaze on my body was actually when I was much younger – only eight rains old – and had just had my first growth spurt. I was never a pretty, winsome child, and growing taller had also made me grow thinner so my face was all eyes and teeth, like a monkey’s. It was the last day of the river festival, and my favourite. We’d all get dressed up and go in several bullock carts to pay our respects at the big temple in the closest town. The carts had been hired almost a month before, and in the last two days, the women of our village made them lovely – carriages fit for the gods – draping flowers everywhere they could, adding little patterns. And when the bulls came, they were washed and their horns painted with bright colours so they looked the noble creatures they were supposed to be.

  That year, my mother didn’t make me stay to keep an eye on Chiro; instead she was almost kind, pinning flowers to my hair, making sure my sari was creaseless, telling me to hurry so I could get a good seat. I think she was happy that day, my mother, because everything seemed to make her smile, and she hummed under her breath as she dressed herself and the two of us. I had never seen her like this before so I lingered by her, watching, till she laughed and told me, ‘Run along, dear, or the carts will take off without you.’ Dear. I hugged the word to me like a gift and took off across the sands to the carts, which were just filling up.

  My father wasn’t used to keeping an eye on me, so once we reached the town I skipped along with some other children from the village, under the general supervision of some of the older matrons. I was never the sort of child who other children like; it wasn’t that they disliked me, they just didn’t understand me. They kept a polite distance, and soon I found I was no longer with my group and in the middle of a crowd of strangers who pushed me along with them. Bewildered, I had begun to look around for any familiar face when a pair of hands pulled me out of the crowd and I found myself blinking at a strange man’s face.

  ‘Lost?’ he asked me, and when I nodded, he shook his head.

  ‘It’s always the way. One or two lost children at every festival. When will people learn to hold on to their children?’

  He was an old man; of course, I was very young and to me everyone looked old, but he seemed older than my father and younger than the oldest man in our village, a man who claimed to have seen eighty rains. Bu
t his eyes crinkled at the corners as he looked down at me, even though his mouth turned down sadly. I had no reason to distrust him; people had generally been kind to me my whole life, people who were not my mother, and so I stood by him as he scratched his chin and considered our options.

  ‘Do you remember which village group you came with?’ he asked me.

  ‘Of course!’ I said indignantly. I was after all eight rains old, not a complete infant. I told him the name, and he said he had overheard some people from my village saying they would meet in the courtyard behind the temple before it was time to leave.

  ‘I’ll take you there,’ he said, and held out his hand. I had no reason to question him so I slipped my palm into his. So much time has passed since that long-ago day but I still remember the feel of his square hands, slightly rough, so hairy that the tips of my fingers were tickled.

  He took me to the courtyard as promised but it was empty. ‘They’ll be here soon,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Why don’t we have a seat and wait for them?’

  He dropped to his haunches and pulled out a rolled leaf beedi which he stuck between his teeth, inhaling with a long hiss as he lit it. And turning to me, he said casually, ‘You’re a pretty girl aren’t you’ – with no inflections at the end of his sentence. It came out as a statement: You are a pretty girl. I stood still, not knowing what to do with the tone of his voice, flat as before but also now raising its hackles a little like a dog that’s not sure what to do with you.