“Namaskaram.” Juliet bowed slightly over her hands.
“Hello, hello, Mrs David Juliet!” boomed Shivaraman Nair. “Where is Professor David?”
With him were his son, Anand, and two men she did not know.
“He is not home. He was visiting some Brahmin priests in Tampanoor. And after that back to the university, I think.”
“Good, good. University is very good” beamed Shivaraman Nair. “Professor David,” he explained to his companions proudly, “is great scholar. He is studying history of the Nairs of Kerala. From his deep knowledge he is writing a book in which he will speak of my family and my estates. Students in western universities will be hearing of us. Another time you will meet my important guest.”
He turned to Juliet. Evidently she was a sorry substitute for Professor David. Not worth an introduction.
“I am wanting my kinsmen to see this beautiful house,” he said. “They are visiting from Alathur in Palghat district and I am showing them inside. We will not be disturbing you. Please to continue your normal activity of this time.”
“I am cooking in the kitchen so it is convenient for you” she said with quiet sarcasm.
“Yes, Yes. Correct, correct,” laughed Shivaraman Nair, untouched. “In the West,” he explained to his companions, “they are not having any servants. Mrs David Juliet is western woman.”
They shook their heads in disapproving wonder that such things should be. “Ayyo, ayyo,” they said. Alas!
The men removed their sandals and left them at the doorstep.
Seething inwardly, Juliet returned to the kitchen. She could hear them touring the bedrooms, Shivaraman Nair giving a running commentary in loud and rapid Malayalam. She could hear them pick up objects — the children’s books, David’s tape recorder, Miranda’s violin — and exclaim over them. She could hear the small portable typewriter being tentatively tapped.
They are so arrogant, she raged silently.
The house was Shivaraman Nair’s toy. He had designed it himself and eventually it would be part of his daughter Jati’s dowry, but in the meantime it was a profitable source of income as a rental property for Westerners. Previously a French dance troupe had lived there for a month while studying Kathakali, the classical Keralan dance form. A Russian cultural delegation had been resident for several weeks. A German botanist had stayed for a year. And now the professor’s family. As Shivaraman Nair himself had told them: “I am very cosmopolitan man. I am knowing people from all over the world.” He had also travelled as far as Bombay and Delhi.
The house (which was beautiful as a fantasy and had in fact been used as a set by an Indian movie company for a heavily romantic tale of tragic love) was his jewel. His pride of possession, his pleasure in sharing his masterpiece, was untroubled by any awareness of the sensitivities of tenants. The house is his stage, Juliet thought. The theater of his importance. And we are his prize puppets.
She heard the scrape of wicker chairs on the latticed porch. The men were settling in for siesta and discussion. Anand appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“My father says we will take tea now,” he said.
They speak to me as though I were a servant, Juliet fumed inwardly. She repressed the urge to say something cutting. She bowed her head in assent, not trusting herself to speak. Was this, she suddenly wondered, why South Indian women always went about with lowered face and averted eyes?
She took a tray with teapot, cups, cream, and sugar to the front porch. It was not the correct Indian way. Tea was always served with the scalded milk and lashings of sugar already added. A sweet and sickly syrup of tea. Penance for those, like Juliet, who preferred to take their beverages without any sweetness at all.
Shivaraman Nair frowned.
“My wife must be teaching you our ways of the tea,” he said.
“When you are visiting in our house,” Juliet said evenly “it is interesting, is it not, to learn our customs? Everyone may add as much milk and sugar as he wishes.” She would at least preserve this chimera of independence.
“But this is not your house, Mrs David Juliet,” he said, immediately perceiving the flaw in her argument. “This is my house.”
“And this is my tea.”
There was a momentary hush. Then Shivaraman Nair laughed with the good humor of an entrepreneur who has a marketable object of rare curiosity on his hands.
“This is the way of western women,” he chuckled, worldly wise.
“Ayyo, ayyo,” sighed his companions, shaking their heads forlornly.
Out of sheer irritation Juliet decided to pour a cup of tea for herself also. The cup rattled slightly against the saucer in her nervousness at the enormity of her action, but as calmly as possible she pulled up one of the vacant wicker chairs and joined the circle.
There was a stunned silence. A stillness. It was too much for the gentlemen from Palghat, who did not have the cosmopolitan advantage of those who lived in the capital, and who were in no way prepared for the outrageous ways of western women. With much muttering and shuffling, they rose and placed their cups on the table. They put on their sandals. Shivaraman Nair joined them hastily, without looking at Juliet. All three moved away from the door. They did not make namaskaram. Shivaraman Nair was talking volubly and quietly explaining. Anand stood uncertainly in the doorway shuffling his sandals, not yet moving away, clearly a little apologetic.
Juliet felt close to tears, and could not escape the sense of having committed some awful blasphemy even as she felt the wild injustice of their reaction.
“You are not understanding our customs,” Anand explained. “And my uncles are not understanding that you do not understand. It is not correct for a woman to eat with men. This is against the ancient laws. Women must only bring food to men, and serve them. I know it is different in your country, but my uncles do not know this.”
Juliet said nothing.
“My father and I are not angry with you,” he said, “because we know that you are not understanding. Please continue to come to me for help with learning our language.”
He made namaskaram.
Juliet also bowed her flushed cheeks over her trembling hands.
They were both standing in the doorway and so they both saw what happened on the path.
Yashoda was returning from her walk, stepping lightly and quickly. It was obvious that she had just come from the public road and was moving through the coconut grove towards the rice paddy. She paused for a moment like a frightened deer when she saw the little knot of men in front of the house. Then she lowered her eyes and resumed her quick walk.
Shivaraman Nair called out something sharp and harsh, a command. Yashoda began to run in a breathless tripping way. One of the Nair uncles from Palghat spat forcefully onto the ground. He had been playing agitatedly with a stone and now, in a sudden access of rage or outrage, he tossed it after the fleeing Yashoda as a landlord throws a stone at scavenger dogs to keep them away from the cows.
The stone must have struck her because she uttered a little cry. Her assailant screamed something after her, rhythmic words sounding like an incantation, a curse.
“My god, what is happening?” Juliet asked.
“This is the result when a woman does not follow the requirements of her dharma,” Anand said. “That woman was married to my fathers cousin. Three months ago her husband died. It is forbidden to a widow that she be seen in public for one year after the death of her husband. It is most especially inauspicious that she is wearing jewellery at this time.”
Shivaraman Nair and the Palghat uncles began to walk away through the coconut grove. Anand still lingered.
“It is wrong of my uncles to be cruel,” he said apologetically. “Their ways are still very orthodox. But it is also wrong,” he added sadly, “for my cousin to disobey ancient laws. She is too modern. Her father has taken great risks with western travel and western education and western tutors and this is the result. She does not have the proper respect for our laws.”
6
David placed a flower between her breasts.
“I am too angry and upset,” she said.
“Little spitfire!” he teased, covering her body with a flight of kisses, soft and tantalizing as doves. “You must have crashed down on them like coconuts at harvest time. They were battered. Overwhelmed”
“They were bloody well barbaric!”
“Poor old men, what chance did they have? Their world is crumbling. Attacked on all fronts at once by two beautiful and bewitching yakshis.” He stroked her inner thigh.
Juliet sat up, disengaging. “What is a yakshi?”
“A spirit, usually demonic, who takes the form of a woman of surpassing beauty to lure men to damnation,” he explained, pulling her back into his arms. “She lies in wait to seduce the sunyasin meditating in the forest. He can only remain pure by killing her in spite of her extraordinary beauty. That is how the holy men rise above their brute senses. The rest of us yield in simple passion and are lost.”
She smiled, and felt her body rising from the ashes of its rigid outrage like a phoenix, turning soft and moist and eager.
“Still,” she insisted, unwilling to relinquish her right to be angry, “it doesn’t seem possible that this climate gave the Kama Sutra to the world. It’s too hot and damp. Another body feels like a penance. And of course the electricity has to be off as usual.”
“I definitely prefer making love to you by the glow of an oil lamp. You look golden as Radha.”
“I was referring to the ceiling fan. Which isn’t turning.”
“Let me distract you. There … Are you still uncomfortable?”
“Well …” she murmured, turning to him.
And came like the monsoon after a long dry season. A jubilant storm.
Later she said in the darkness: “I forgot to tell you. Her name is Yashoda.”
“An interesting name.”
“Why?”
“Yashoda was the foster mother of Krishna, according to the legends. She had a lot of trouble with him when he was a child. Had to tie him up to her great stone mortar to keep him out of mischief.”
I would miss his pedantry terribly, she thought fondly deliberately tangling her legs with his so that she could feel his damp thigh against her crotch — still hot and swollen and ready to come again.
“Some people, however,” he said, moving against her, “just can’t be kept out of mischief.”
“Meaning Krishna, of course.”
“Of course. He was one of those people who can make the earth move too. He crawled off, dragging that mortar behind him and uprooted two trees.”
Why should it be impossible to convince him to leave Winston? she thought.
“Hey,” he said reproachfully. “What’s wrong? What happened to the uprooting of trees and the earth moving?”
“Ahhh,” she said, responding to his rhythmic insistence. “Ahh, ahh …”
“Oh god,” he laughed. “You’re gorgeous when you’re like this.”
“Promise me we won’t go back to Winston.”
“And have you pining for Lake Ontario ever after?”
We’ll stay forever, if necessary, he told himself. Her discontents will fade like a photograph left out in the Indian sun.
They drifted into sleep, damp with sex and monsoonal heat.
Juliet dreamed she was drowning in the rice paddy. The warm mud was sucking her down, down, down. Yashoda floated alongside, pale as a reflection. Don’t fight, Yashoda said. It’s useless to fight. She was eating lotus petals.
I can’t just drown! I won’t! Juliet gasped, struggling, the mud at her throat.
But every time she reached for the levee to pull herself out, the Palghat uncles threw stones at her.
Jeremy! she called, seeing him suddenly and inexplicably. Jeremy! Help!
He was too absorbed in watching the antics of the Palghat uncles to hear her. He thought they were playing a game, senile children skipping pebbles across paddy water.
Jeremy! she shrieked, drowning.
But he turned and walked away, seeing nothing.
David! she screamed, waking, clutching at him.
But he slept on, dreaming perhaps of a woman pure as ivory, swinging through a world of innocent delight.
7
The Indian civil service and the Indian climate, Juliet thought, were engaged in a conspiracy to induce as many people as possible to opt for a life of contemplative withdrawal. It was the only way to cope. She tried pressing her fingertips together and inwardly reciting a mantra, the most calming she could think of: subways, airports, intersections; subways, airports, intersections.
She was sitting in the Trivandrum office of Air India. The room was crowded, the fan was not turning, the ferment of body odours was more pungent than curry, and the clerk at the desk — the sole clerk assigned to this roomful of inquiries — might have been engaged in the tranquil and delicate art of calligraphy. His movements were languid and precise, he leafed lovingly through schedules and timetables, he bestowed upon them his earnest attention, dignifying a select few with a rubber stamp. In passive deference, a man stood on the other side of the desk awaiting enlightenment. Could he, he had wished to know, get a flight to Delhi via Bangalore, instead of via Madras?
The clerk had looked at him with mournful scholarly eyes. The look had implied: Many books, possibly the Vedas themselves, will have to be consulted.
Hurricanes! Juliet screamed silently, invoking motion. Dancers. Ants. One had to ward off the lassitude that lay across India like a shroud, one had to protect oneself from the sinister voraciousness of transcendental tranquillity. Hurricanes, dancers, ants. Hurricanes, dancers, ants. She beamed the incantation at the clerk’s forehead but he continued with the delicate brushstrokes of his calling, impervious.
Three hours! she thought. I have been sitting here for three hours! I will truly go mad.
She was glad she had left the children to play at the house with Prabhakaran. (If only they would remember not to fish with bare hands in that polluted paddy water!) She turned over and over like worry-beads the post office card that had been delivered the preceding day. “Package from Canada. Please collect from Air India office.”
Two hours ago, the limits of her small western patience already reached, she had gone to the desk, had butted in between the current supplicant and his approaching beatitude, and had demanded politely: “I wonder if you could just tell me if I am waiting in the correct place for a parcel pick-up?”
With the sweet slow grace of a swimmer, the clerk had raised his head and contemplated her.
Is it possible, Juliet had wondered, that we are all actually under water and I alone don’t realize it?
“When your name is being called,” the clerk had said reproachfully, “you may be coming to the desk and your questions are being answered, isn’t it?”
Should I throw a tantrum? she wondered, surveying the quietly watching roomful of eyes. Why do they stare so incessantly, so rudely? As though I were a fish in a tank.
She had succumbed to the oppressive inaction and had sat down again, pleating the post office card between angry fingers. In the chair opposite, a gentleman in late middle age was looking at her with the kind of fixity he might give to assessing the ripeness of his jackfruit. Outraged, she stared back at him, determined to shame him into lowering his eyes.
But he gazed steadfastly on, untouched and unselfconscious.
Mr Matthew Thomas, who sat opposite Juliet, owed his name and faith, as well as his lands, to those ancestors of lowly caste whose eyes had seen the salvation of the Lord as offered by Saint Thomas the Apostle. And by later waves of Portuguese Jesuits, Dutch Protestants, and British missionaries.
Now, heir of both East and West, he sat quietly in one of the chairs at the crowded Air India office, waiting for his turn. It was necessary to make inquiries on behalf of a cousin of his wife, and although his wife had died ten years ago, these family obligations continued. The cousin, w
hose son was to be sent overseas for a brief period of foreign education, lived in the village of Parassala and could not get down to Trivandrum now that the rice harvest was imminent. Mr Matthew Thomas did not mind. He had much to think about on the subject of sons and daughters and foreign travel, and he was glad of this opportunity for quiet contemplation away from the noisy happiness of his son’s house.
It is true that he had been waiting since 9:00 that morning and it was now 3:30 in the afternoon. It is also true that things would have been more pleasant if the ceiling fan were turning, for it was that steamy season when the monsoon is petering out, and the air hangs as still and hot and heavy as a mosquito net over a sickbed. But the fan had limped to a halt over an hour ago, stricken by the almost daily power failure, and one simply accepted such little inconveniences.
Besides, Mr Thomas could look from the comfortable vantage point of today back towards yesterday, which had also been spent at the Air India office, but since he had arrived too late to find a chair it had been necessary to stand all day. At the end of the day, someone had told him that he was supposed to sign his name in the book at the desk and that he would be called when his turn came. Wiser now, he had arrived early in the morning, signed his name, and found a chair. He was confident that his turn would come today, and until it did he could sit and think in comfort.
The problem which demanded attention, and which Mr Thomas turned over and over in his mind, peacefully and appraisingly as he might examine one of his coconuts, concerned both his married daughter in Burlington, Vermont, and the western woman waiting in the chair across from him.
Burlingtonvermont. Burlingtonvermont. What a strange word it was. This was how his son-in-law had pronounced it. His daughter had explained in a letter that it was like saying Trivandrum, Kerala. But who would ever say Trivandrum, Kerala? Why would they say it? He had been deeply startled yesterday morning to hear the word suddenly spoken aloud, just when he was thinking of his daughter. Burlingtonvermont. Some American businessman had said it to the clerk at the counter, and there had been shouting and gesticulation in that peculiar manner of Westerners, and then the man had left in a taxi. And today there was a woman, pale as snow, who might have floated in from Burlingtonvermont itself.
The Ivory Swing Page 4
