The One Who Swam with the Fishes

by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

  I admit I didn’t think of Dvipaa-ma much, she’d even stopped coming to serve her husband his meals as she used to. Parashara assured me she was fine on her own and I left it at that. She was his wife but she was old and haggard, and she seemed as far removed from us on our side of the island as my parents were, sitting in their hut on the riverbank. I didn’t really miss her much, except when I’d hang up my herbs, the supply I had collected here and kept replenishing. Parashara, for all his wisdom, thought little of herbal lore, calling it a ‘thing for old women’, and he would not admire my lovely plants, carefully laid away for sickness or extra bursts of energy. Unknown to him, I had also been dosing myself with a herbal concoction drink, that all the women in my village used to know, every afternoon to bring on my womanhood. Sometimes I felt Parashara only saw me as a little sister or daughter or even a great-granddaughter, and I wanted to make myself known to him with all the feelings that had lately made me so confused within my own skin. But even as my thirteenth rain drew in, I stayed stubbornly childish – narrow hips, flat chest, with not even a hint of my waist bending and curving; it was as straight as a young sapling.

  This was when I missed Dvipaa-ma, missed another woman, anyone to confess to, anyone to admit kinship with my body and say that the same thing had happened to them, and not to worry because it would be fine.

  On the morning of my thirteenth rain, when the shower woke us up from our slumber outside and sent us running for shelter, I felt something pop inside me as I moved, a new wetness I was suddenly aware of … my limbs felt like they were moving through molasses though I tried to speed them up, the small of my back ached in a new, peculiar way. I got to the hut before Parashara and stood shivering, my arms clasped around myself. He followed behind me, a strange expression on his face.

  ‘Change your clothes and wash yourself,’ he said to me in a brisker tone than he had ever used before. I looked questioningly at him and he gestured to my sari and turned to walk out of the door again. I saw blood all over the bottom half of my sari, dyeing the white of the fabric to a thin pink where it had been washed out by the rain. There was so much of it, for a moment I thought I was dying, before I recalled that this was what I had been hoping for.

  I managed to clean myself with whatever store of water we had and wrap another sari around my body. My mother used to place old rags within each other and tie them to her waist under her sari to catch the blood. I remembered this from watching her dress and so I tore up one of my three saris to make myself the same loincloth. My body ached, my stomach was a low growl of distress, my back sending out shiny spiky darts of pain that made it hard for me to bend or move. Dvipaa-ma had a certain tincture of herbs for her back and leg aches, and I thanked her again in my mind as I moved among my herbs, pulling them down and mixing them together with a little honey so I could swallow them whole.

  When I left the hut, shy as a new bride at facing Parashara again with this knowledge that my body had changed, transformed during the night, he was nowhere to be seen. Instead the island nudged me, throwing up a path like it so often did. But this way was nowhere near as inviting as the other ones it made for me; it was edged with spiky plants, and all around it, the ground seemed arid and dead as a desert. I walked down it, feeling sharp rocks poke at my feet till I came to a windowless hut. When I tried to turn back, the thorn trees grew tall and blocked my way, so I understood that I was to stay there. Every time I moved even a little away from the hut, the thorn trees waved at me threateningly, growing in front of my eyes into such a dense and tall forest, I couldn’t see over them.

  In this prison, I spent five days. The hut had been planned well – I found fresh rags to replace mine every morning, a place to hang the washed ones, a water pot that stayed full no matter how much I used from it, and a pot with rice gruel that also never emptied, dictating my diet. I lay there under the straw roof and tried to figure out why Parashara didn’t come for me. Had he sent me away? Had I done something wrong by wishing to be a woman? Perhaps he only had room in his heart for the little girl. By the third day, my bleeding stopped, but the thorns stayed firm, and it was only on the morning of the sixth day that the path opened up again, this time lined with sweet flowers and dancing butterflies as if the island was offering an apology.

  I ran through the grass and the path and up to the hut where Parashara was cutting some firewood, and I stood before him.

  ‘Why did you send me away?’ I asked, my chin jutting out and my hands on my hips. ‘Why did you not come for me when I was in that awful place?’

  ‘You have returned then, my little bird?’ he said, dropping his axe and turning to smile at me. ‘And what did you learn?’

  ‘I learned that I hate gruel, I hate that hut, and I hate that you didn’t find me.’ I might have stamped my foot at him.

  He just watched me, the same smile on his face, his eyes amused as he took in my anger.

  ‘The road to womanhood is filled with thorns,’ he said. ‘And it is good that you got used to the real ones so early. There are other thorns that will look like velvet but will cut you even more sharply, before you even notice them.’

  I sat down on a tree stump and watched him cut wood for a while. His words didn’t make much sense to me but he often said things like that, enigmatic pronouncements that seemed to fly over my head. My understanding was that one day I would be able to examine them, as though they were tame winged insects that might land on my open palms, but that day had not yet come. But through the exhaustion I felt – for the five days had been long, hard ones – was also anger, a very slight anger, rage in its infancy, but still there, like a little spark of a flame. It was the first time I had felt anything other than joy and contentment on the island, and I wondered if my new feelings had anything to do with my new womanhood as well.

  Later, after he finished his chores and I finished mine and it was twilight and a dim blue light painted our faces mysterious shades, he sat next to me and took my hand in his.

  ‘So you’re a woman now, my little bird,’ he said, stroking my cheek with his free hand and looking at me kindly, so kindly that my throat clenched with a sob; it was such a relief to be here and be next to him and to be spoken to. I didn’t know what to say so I kept looking at him, and perhaps this was the right thing to do, for he sighed and lifted my face and kissed me full on the mouth, biting down on my lower lip as he reached for me and pulled me closer to him.

  Maybe I shall never have those feelings again, and so I want to relive them. The hot melting that started from the core of me and spread out so it was impossible to sit still, the way he lifted my sari away from my body and touched with feather lightness the tips of my nipples, the way his hand crept lower and the noises I made then. The way he made me lie, fully naked, on the grass, the wind feeling like another lover. The way his lips dipped and spread me, the way he looked when he got on top of me at last, after I bucked against his fingers, the feel and the tear and the rip of it, how it hurt, how it all hurt, even as he kissed my eyelids and told me it would be over soon, how I tried to grit my teeth and keep from crying out, but I couldn’t help it, it felt as though I was cleaved in two, and when I looked up at his face, he wasn’t looking down at me at all but away, and in the moment of his climax, I saw his face change and he was an old man again, his beard brushing my chin, his skin wrinkled, his hands on either side of me liver-spotted and I wanted to scream just looking at the way a sliver of saliva started making its way out of the corner of his thin old man lips – I wanted him off of me, but he just kept going till his hollow-cheeked face contorted, his ancient face, his skin dripping off him like molten wax. In that moment, he looked down and caught my eye, and I could tell he knew what I was seeing, because he held up a hand and I had to wait for him to finish before he rolled off me and placed his hand on my stomach, which I didn’t dare look at but I knew by the feel of it that it was limp like old parchment, the bones fragile and close to the surface.

  And then he reached up
to kiss my face again, and I saw that he was a young man once more, his eyes bright and loving as he looked down at me, but I shrunk a little from his touch. I had seen what was behind the curtain, you see, and my eyes refused to pretend they hadn’t.

  He came to me again and again for the next few weeks. I turned away from his caresses, now I wanted nothing more than to hide from him, not follow him around any more, but he was still giving me lessons as though nothing had happened. I almost dreaded our classes now, because there’d be a moment of stillness and silence, and he would edge closer and slide his fingers across my waist slyly or try to kiss my neck. I wasn’t being coy, I just didn’t want to have his body on mine, and when he realized that, he made it clear to me that I had no choice.

  ‘You did enjoy it last time,’ he told me. ‘Am I not a good teacher in these matters as in everything else?’

  I had to admit he was. It wasn’t like the pain was unbearable, it wasn’t like that for a few moments I had felt something I never had before – a climbing, a reaching, a sense that my insides were all dissolved.

  ‘I am here to teach you,’ he’d say, and reach for the one knot of my sari that could unravel the whole thing. Once he dragged me towards him, he taught me to touch him, and ignored my shudders, to hold his heat in my cupped palms, to put him in my mouth, and these felt less like violations than when he insisted on being inside me, turning me around, thankfully, so I never had to look at his face in the moment of transformation again, just the grass in front of me, a wandering beetle, an ant, all occupied with their own worlds and without a thought for mine.

  When the moon began to wax again, I decided to tell him quite firmly that I had had enough of these lessons. I felt quite sure he would listen, and if he didn’t, I planned to run away back to Dvipaa-ma’s side of the island. She would keep me safe and away from Parashara and his appetites. So when he reached for me, I said, ‘No,’ and he looked down at me, one of his eyebrows quirked. I noticed that of late, his youthful looks seemed to be wearing off. He had grown a short beard, and now as I faced him, I saw that it was stippled with grey. Normally, he was very particular about appearing young for me but it was as though it was no longer as important for him to create that impression.

  ‘Tell me something, bird of mine,’ he said, sitting down to face me and taking my hands in his. ‘Did you not come to this island to seek a cure for your smell?’

  I nodded reluctantly, not sure which path he was leading me down with this.

  ‘And since our lessons in love begun, have you noticed if you smell more or less?’

  I lifted my arms up to my nose, sniffing, and then had to admit I hadn’t noticed the smell at all lately.

  ‘Nor will you,’ he said. ‘That is my gift to you, the lesson you had to learn to become a woman. Not only do you not smell repugnant, you smell wonderful now, even though you don’t realize it. Your breath is roses, your hair gives off the aroma of jasmine, even your feet smell of the most precious flowers. That will be something you can take with you when you leave.’

  ‘When I leave?’ I asked, startled. ‘I’m not going to leave.’

  ‘You can’t live on this island forever,’ he said, and then reached for me. ‘Come, let us make the most of it while we can.’ That was the last time he would take me, and the first time my anger grew, from its baby stage to a full-blown grudge. I was staring at his face this time, the face that grew old in its moment of release, and I forced myself to keep looking, so he’d have to make eye contact with me and notice the hate in my eyes. For the first time, he looked away before I did.

  Later, sleeping next to him, hearing him snore, I decided to leave his side of the island. I would go back to Dvipaa-ma, back to quiet days and quieter nights, punctuated by her sharp words or her belches or her snoring. I thought of her affectionately. Dear Dvipaa-ma. I wondered if she’d be very cross with me for leaving. I wondered if she’d comfort me now.

  It took me longer than I’d anticipated to walk back, perhaps because the island kept trying to make me turn around and return to its creator. I passed some landmarks twice or thrice before I corrected my mistake, and in the end, dawn was breaking over the river by the time I spotted my old cave dwelling, a little overgrown in the months I had been away.

  I ran towards it, dropping my bundle, and kissed the ground in front of it. Home, I was home, and no one would make me leave. I’d stay long enough that Parashara wouldn’t be able to send me back even if he wanted to, because I’d be as much a part of the island as Dvipaa-ma was. The three of us would stay here forever, till I was as old as they were, and I wouldn’t have much to do with Parashara. I did not want to touch him or be touched, Dvipaa was his wife, she’d do for that, I would take the mantle of a hermit, free from life’s sins and joys. He wouldn’t – couldn’t – force me once I’d decided that.

  ‘Who’s there?’ called a croaking old voice, and I ran out of the cave to see Dvipaa-ma staring at the entrance with milky eyes. She looked even older than I remembered her, bent over double, her voice trembling, her thin legs shaking like dry branches.

  ‘Dvipaa-ma, it’s me!’ I said, and went to take her arm. She let me guide her to a seat and sat down and examined me as I knelt by her feet.

  ‘I should have known it was you, smelling like a whorehouse,’ she said.

  I self-consciously sniffed myself again. ‘Parashara said it was like the perfume of the finest flowers,’ I said slowly.

  ‘Humph. Give me the smell of a honest day’s work than flowers,’ she said, and put her hand on my head, pushing it so I was looking right at her.

  ‘And what did you have to do for those flowers?’ she asked, and I blushed.

  She continued to hold my gaze.

  Finally: ‘I see.’

  ‘I’ve come back to stay with you now, if I may,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I have no objection,’ she sighed, and stood up again. ‘It’s not up to me, however. You should have gritted your teeth and borne it, girl, for if he has no use for you, you will not have a home here.’

  ‘He hasn’t sent you away,’ I said pertly.

  ‘Who do you think makes sure he’s fed and well, and who do you think took care of him all these years? I am his wife, you are just a child washed up on these shores. He needs me more than he has ever needed anyone else, and you would do well to remember that and use your words around me with respect.’ She walked off then, leaving me blinking after her in the sun.

  Although I was afraid he might, Parashara did not come after me. I missed him, more intensely than I cared to think of – the sudden moments of laughter of the time when we were friends, the joy of listening to him explaining the way the world worked, the way he sometimes told me we had done enough work for the day and took me exploring across the island. I didn’t know how an island so small could hold so many hidden pockets, and later I realized he must have been creating them for me – a place where sweets grew from trees, one where the grass seemed to yield under our feet so that when we jumped, we were sent high in the sky, to be set back with a bounce again, another where the rabbits were as big as horses and he taught me how to ride, digging my fingers into the soft fur behind the rabbit’s ears, making it turn by pushes of my feet.

  With Dvipaa-ma, my days were as I had left them – long and silent. She didn’t even make that many remarks any more, and often when I went for my meals, she would be lying down and refusing to eat. I grew used to it. After waiting on her, I’d sit by the river and gaze across at my village, my old life, wondering where they thought I’d gone, what stories my mother would tell to explain my absence. One day, maybe if Parashara forced me to leave, I’d go see my real father, I’d whisper to myself, but it felt false to me, like I was telling myself a story. My rage was back inside me, contained and tame, like a pet. Far away from Parashara, I was almost able to take joy in the island once more.

  ‘Have you become a woman yet, girl?’ Dvipaa-ma asked me that question when the moon went from being round and full
in the sky to a mere sliver again. I was holding her tea, handing it to her whenever she reached for it so she could take delicate little sips.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘There was a hut Parashara made me go to, it was like a prison.’

  ‘Did he take you after or before?’

  ‘After, almost as soon as I returned.’

  ‘At least he does not violate a child.’ This said very much to herself, and then, ‘What did the moon look like when you last bled?’

  ‘Rounder,’ I said, glancing up. ‘Rounder, and flatter on one end.’

  She shook her head. ‘I suppose it was inevitable.’

  ‘What was inevitable?’

  She reached for her tea and waved me away, and I walked off to dip my toes in the river and then went to bed, not very concerned about her.

  The next day, I was woken up by Dvipaa-ma when the sky was just beginning to lighten and the moon still hung, unwilling to give up control of the night.

  ‘Wake up, girlie,’ she said, and her voice was almost tender. It scared me so I quickly brushed the sleep from my eyes and sat up.

  ‘It is time for you to leave the island,’ she said, her eyes sad.

  ‘No!’ I said. ‘Why? Why are you making me leave?’ I began to drag myself backwards, as though I could escape her and hide so that no one found me.

  ‘Stop that now,’ said another voice, and Parashara appeared.

  ‘Don’t make me leave,’ I pleaded. ‘Don’t make me.’ I swallowed and reached deep inside myself for the anger, pulling it out of me and throwing it on the floor so I could say what I said next: ‘I’ll do whatever it is you want. I’ll be a good wife to you, just as she is.’