The Ivory Swing

by Janette Turner Hospital

  Juliet and Annie, suspended from seat backs, spanning the aisle, hugged each other with their legs. Juliet’s skirt ripped sharply from ankle to thigh. She was free to move. There was more reaching and straining and muscles roaring with pain. And Juliet sat finally across the door step, only the sky above her.

  Like resurrection, she thought, breathing deeply.

  It was a seven-foot drop to the ground. A man was waiting to catch her. It was David! She jumped into his arms and they clung together, kissing.

  The rhythm of rescue went on and on.

  Juliet, sitting at the roadside with Miranda in her arms, watched as Annie and a young man reached and pulled and swung over to David. The young man …? It was Prem again! The Marxist student, the specialist in market-place disasters.

  Near the front end of the bus, slowly and fitfully, a trickle of men were clambering awkwardly out of a smaller space where the window bars were broken. And she realized that was how David must have escaped.

  There were no ambulances in Trivandrum to come sirening to the rescue of the wounded. People helped one another as best they could. A couple of doctors, who must have been in the crowd when the bus went over, were moving among the worst cases, staunching heavy bleeding with bandages. Juliet went on rocking the children, crooning to them. The afternoon sun dipped towards the horizon.

  Finally Annie and Prem lowered themselves into the bus, then reappeared in the doorway and called instructions to David. After a time, with people scurrying into boarded-up stores, a pulley of cloth and rope was set up. A number of elderly people were ferried to the outside by this method.

  Then Annie called again from the doorway: “David, there are ten dead. I’m going to stay and help but there’s no point in your staying any longer.”

  David nodded and went to his family.

  26

  Mr Matthew Thomas’s daughter-in-law was bringing tea. The doctor, Jacob Mathai, was cleaning the gash on Miranda’s forehead and the cuts and grazings on the side of Juliet’s face. He had been fetched from his house, a few streets away, by Matthew Thomas.

  It had been impossible to find a taxi or an auto-rick, and they had walked all the way, David carrying Miranda. It was only now, in the security and peace of the doctor’s presence, of sipping tea, that they began to speak of the bus.

  “I couldn’t understand how you got out before me,” Juliet said. “But then I saw that one set of bars was broken. Thank god for that!”

  David stared at her, arrested by a singular thought, like a pilgrim suddenly surprised by illumination. “I did that,” he said with a slow dawning of wonder. “I broke those bars.”

  “You did?”

  “I hardly noticed I was doing it, isn’t that amazing? I was next to that window when the bus went over and I never let go of it. I was so frantic to get to you and the children, I just ripped … They were in the way.”

  He looked at his hands, holding them out in front of him, turning them over wonderingly, incredulously. They seemed to him invested with miraculous powers, quite external to himself and his own knowledge of his body. He felt an overwhelming respect for them, as for something apart, separate beings.

  “I was standing on something,” he said, puzzled. “I kept digging in, to get a better grip on the bars.”

  He closed his eyes, his forehead creased in concentration.

  “Bodies! Faces! I was standing on faces. I remember looking down and seeing mouths and eyes!”

  “I am going to give everyone tranquillizers,” the doctor said.

  It was already dark. The doctor took Matthew Thomas aside to give certain instructions, and then mercifully they were in the car retreating to the calm of their coconut grove.

  Prabhakaran came running out of the darkness as the car wound slowly through the trees.

  “Apyam,” Juliet told him. Accident. Disaster. But she could not think of any other Malayalam words to explain what had happened.

  “Mr Thomas,” she begged, her speech blurred off into sleep. “Tell him.”

  The car was still moving slowly and Prabhakaran bobbed along level with them, conversing through the window with Matthew Thomas.

  “Ai! Ai!” he kept exclaiming with alarm as he heard the story.

  Then he went running off in the direction of the rice paddy.

  “He says he is going to bring someone to help,” explained Matthew Thomas.

  Yashoda, Juliet thought drowsily.

  When Annie jumped finally from the bus doorway to the ground she was surprised by the way her legs crumpled under her like rice before a scythe. She was surprised by the trembling and the aching of her arms when she tried to push herself upright again.

  Someone, the young man with whom she had worked side by side for hours, leaned over and helped her up. He steadied her with his arm, keeping it around her waist. She laughed shakily, looking up at him.

  “This is crazy,” she said. “Do you realize that after all these hours we don’t even know each other’s names? I’m Annie.”

  “My name is Prem.” He smiled. “You are most remarkable, Annie. Very brave and strong.”

  “Thank you. Right now I feel horribly weak.”

  “We are needing sleep. I will take you to the house of my family. You will come?”

  He did not wait for an answer but propelled her from the lee of the bus’s underbelly into the human mêlée. She moved meekly along with him, though it was difficult to make any progress through the crowd. Here and there flares stabbed the darkness, illuminating the chaos. Somewhere further down the road a building was burning like a monstrous torch. A line of police, lathis flailing, was advancing down Mahatma Gandhi Road from the northern end where the police barracks were situated. Annie remembered, with a flash of amusement, having noticed the sign from the bus on the way in. Commissionerate of Police it had said in Indian English.

  Retreating from the police lathis, the crowd was becoming more dangerously and explosively compressed around the market entrance where the overturned bus and stalled cars, taxis, carts, buffaloes, jammed the street.

  Prem held Annie firmly by the arm and rammed his way through the mess. Quite suddenly they broke through its farthest reaches into the deserted market. He led her down the labyrinth of by paths between the empty stalls, out into a back road behind the bazaar. They seemed to walk for a long time on endless alleys as narrow and unpaved and rutted as the little country thoroughfares that linked the houses and estates out in Krishnapuram. Annie was surprised to find such roads so close to the centre of the city.

  The houses which lined the alleys were mere hovels, packed mud huts with low thatched roofs. Prem stopped in front of one, beckoned her to follow him. They had to stoop to enter the door which had no covering. He put his finger to Annie’s lips to indicate silence and crept into the black recess.

  As her eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness, Annie could see that there was just one room. Two shapes were curled on sleeping mats at one end, three smaller shapes at the other end. At the back of the room was a low platform with a few cooking vessels on it.

  Most people, Annie remembered, went to bed at nightfall and rose at dawn. They could not afford the coconut oil to burn lamps after dark. Blessed are the poor, she thought wonderingly, overwhelmed by the poverty and the soft sounds of slumber, for they shall sleep peacefully through the upheavals of history. But then she felt glib, seeing the starkness of the little hut, remembering the bruised and shattered bodies at the bottom of the bus, and she thought instead: for they are the wretched of the earth.

  She felt suddenly that she might vomit and hurried outside. When Prem tiptoed back with two rolled mats under his arm she was leaning against the wall of the hut, shivering and drenched with sweat, retching in dry convulsive spasms. Prem dropped the mats in alarm and took her in his arms. He set her on the grass, a rolled mat under her head, and went back into the hut for a small vessel of water.

  Gently he bathed her face. The night breeze and the water refre
shed her.

  “I’m all right now,” she said, sitting up.

  “There is not room for us to sleep inside,” he whispered. “And outside it is cooler. Always I sleep outside when I come home.”

  “Where do you sleep when you’re not at home?”

  “At the university I have a room.”

  Behind the hut there was a circular clump of banana palms. The parent tree had been removed leaving a ring of young palms like a living picket fence. Prem pushed through an opening and spread the mats on the grass inside.

  Like a secret turret, Annie thought, gazing up through the broad plantain fronds at the night sky luminous with stars.

  They lay on the mats facing each other, holding hands, and fell promptly into a chaste and exhausted sleep.

  Matthew Thomas was gently carrying Jonathan from the car. He had already settled Miranda on her bed. Both children had fallen asleep in the car. Juliet and David, heavily drugged by Jacob Mathai, had barely managed to get from the car to their bed, and were sprawled across it fully dressed, in a deep sleep.

  Matthew Thomas lowered Jonathan onto his bed, stumbling a little in the dark. He had found the switch but the power was off, and as he felt his way back to the main room his bare foot squashed something slippery and cold. Frog, he thought. They were always hopping around the cool floors of houses in the evening. Poor little fellow, he murmured, reaching down and picking it up. It seemed all right and he put it on the window-sill.

  Then he bumped against the rim of a wall niche and something fell to the floor. He felt for it with his hands and found broken pieces. Sandalwood! Its bruised fragrance bled into the room. He was appalled.

  He took the pieces to the window and held them up against the moonlight.

  It was the flute player; it was Krishna himself! Matthew Thomas felt ill with the inauspiciousness of the accident. Had he broken a household image of the Nairs? Or something belonging to Professor David and Mrs Juliet? It was impossible to tell since the Westerners, he had observed, had a strange habit of buying sacred objects of other faiths as though they were souvenirs. He hoped the statue was theirs because it would be easier to make amends. If he had desecrated a Hindu shrine, he trembled to think of the consequences. In either case, he would buy the costliest replacement he could find.

  He could hear the boy now, moving around in the dark kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” he called softly.

  “I am searching for Mrs Juliet’s oil lamps and matches,” the boy replied. “I have brought the lady of whom I spoke. She will sleep here tonight to watch over the children.”

  He emerged from the kitchen bearing two small brass lamps, the glow from their wicks casting a pale halo around him. In that soft golden light Matthew Thomas and Yashoda first saw each other. They made formal greeting.

  “Namaskaram.”

  “Namaskaram.”

  She was the age of his daughter Kumari, and as beautiful. Perhaps, a disloyal thought surfaced, even more beautiful.

  “I am Matthew Thomas,” he explained. “I am a friend of Professor David and Mrs Juliet and the children. After the accident they were walking to my house. The doctor has given them sleeping medicines.”

  “Prabhakaran has been telling me,” she said.

  Her voice was like nightwinds in jasmine bushes, filling the air with a lilting sighing fragrance. “My name is Yashoda. I also am a friend of Mrs Juliet and of Annie. Please tell me, where is Annie? Is she hurt?”

  He did not answer, caught in the spell of her almond-shaped eyes. I should not be here, he thought nervously, alone with a Nair lady. Where is her husband?

  “She is hurt,” faltered Yashoda. “It is my fault. I am inauspicious, I am bringing misfortune … oh Annie … I am so evil, so evil.” She began to weep. “Annie is not …? She is not …?”

  “No, no, what are you saying?” he asked, terrified.

  Prabhakaran ran to Yashoda, flinging his arms around her.

  “I do not know Miss Annie,” Matthew Thomas said with alarm. “Professor David has told me she is not hurt.”

  “Oh … oh …” Yashoda was half laughing with relief, half crying.

  She ruffled Prabhakaran’s hair abstractedly and he looked up at her with adoration.

  Matthew Thomas felt like new green rice bowing before the monsoon. He swayed with emotions he had forgotten he ever felt. Far too many things had happened in one night.

  “I am happy that you have come to take care of everyone,” he said awkwardly. “Now I will he returning to my house.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

  They bowed to each other. They murmured namaskaram.

  He was just slipping his feet back into his sandals at the door when Jonathan screamed. Matthew Thomas and Yashoda both ran to the bedroom. Jonathan was writhing and raving in the grip of a nightmare. He ran back and forth in jerky little lines, his steps erratic and frenzied as though he were on hot coals.

  Shaking with fear because he had never seen such a thing before, Matthew Thomas tried to lift him. He wished he had paid Jacob Mathai to come with them. He had his arms around the child but Jonathan, whose eyes were open but blindly glazed, screamed piercingly and beat him off with a terrified flurry of his arms. He was jabbering incoherently an occasional word intelligible: “Mommy, Mommy … taxi … yes, yes, holding tight …”

  Every time Yashoda or Matthew Thomas tried to calm him, to hold him, he screamed and beat them off in a paroxysm of panic. His cries pierced the heavy sleep of David and Juliet. They half woke, tried to get to his room, bumping into walls. Yashoda went to them.

  “We are here, we are here,” she said. “We will take care.”

  She led them back to bed.

  Jonathan’s night terror lasted about four minutes, though it seemed endless. Yashoda and Matthew Thomas stood as near as they dared, helpless, trying merely to guide his staccato steps away from walls and beds. The screams faded to whimpers, he collapsed suddenly into Yashoda’s arms, exhausted. She tried to lift him, Matthew Thomas helped her, and together they got him back to bed.

  “I think I should stay,” he said.

  She nodded assent.

  She sat on the edge of Jonathan’s bed, taking the sweating little hand in hers, stroking his arm. Matthew Thomas sat on Miranda’s bed. Every few minutes he felt the sleeping child’s forehead, ran his fingers lightly over her cheek and hair. Prabhakaran set the oil lamps on the window-sill and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of them. Whenever the flame dimmed he would trim the lamps with more coconut oil and fresh wick.

  Hours passed. Jonathan had two more night terrors, similar to the first one. Each time Miranda stirred and tossed and moaned but did not wake.

  In the lulls between nightmares, Matthew and Yashoda talked softly, partly to keep themselves awake. Perhaps it was the privacy of the darkness, perhaps the shared intimacy of anxiety and helplessness before the frightfulness of Jonathan’s dreams. Perhaps it was even because of their different castes, different faiths, different ages. The intimacy of travellers, strangers who never expect to meet again, whose social spheres will never intersect. And there was nobody to eavesdrop, to carry reports. There was only Prabhakaran on whom Yashoda smiled fondly whenever he moved and reminded them of his presence.

  Matthew Thomas told her of Kumari, of his newest hopes, wild thoughts only, of visiting her in America. She told him of her widowhood and her loneliness. He spoke of his wife, long dead, whom he had loved dearly. She spoke of her fears, her own dreams for a future, her longing for love.

  The night passed. Sometimes they drowsed. Just before dawn Matthew Thomas stirred, started, remembering where he was. The oil lamps had burned out. There was no sign of the boy. Yashoda was lying awkwardly across Jonathan’s bed, one arm under her face like a child, sleeping.

  Matthew Thomas bent over her, placed his hand lightly on her shoulder, and kissed her, the merest chaste whisper of a kiss, on the cheek. Because she reminds me of Kumari, he told
himself as he slipped quietly outside to his car.

  27

  Annie woke first. Dawn was slipping down through the canopy of plantain leaves discreetly as a kitchen servant kindling the day’s fires.

  She sat up and looked at Prem. His long dark lashes brushed his cheeks, his black hair was slicked around his face in damp tendrils. He is like a figure from Botticelli, she thought. Perfect as a child. Almost too beautiful for a man. There was a certain appealing androgyny about Indian men, she thought. It was apparent in their painting and sculpting traditions. The only way one could ever tell Radha’s face from Krishna’s was that his was always represented as blue.

  Dinesh’s body had been delicate and hairless as a woman’s, but possessed of an extraordinary muscular agility and strength that was indisputably masculine. Dinesh, movie playboy, connoisseur of European and American cities and women, peaceful conformer and discreet subverter of Indian family expectations, author of a thousand and one sexual delights. Annie sighed in fond and regretful memory

  She watched the frisky newborn sun playing across Prem’s face. She looked up through the turret of leaves at the light, and folded her arms across her breasts, hugging herself with pleasure because life was so unfailingly intoxicating and infinitely variable.

  I am a princess in her round tower, and I am about to waken the Sleeping Prince with a kiss. She leaned over towards Prem’s lips which were as full and sensuous and inviting as Krishna’s, but just then he woke and sat up abruptly, startled, embarrassed.

  Annie smiled at him, her lips still slightly parted, unabashed. Prem felt as though his entire blood supply had raced to all the extremities of his body at once, leaving a terrifying vacuum in the region of his heart which seemed to be careening down some newly opened abyss within him. It seemed in fact to plummet to his loins, on a collision course with the rest of his blood. He drew his knees up to his chest, wishing desperately that he had worn his loose pajama lungi as usual instead of remaining in his close-fitting daytime western pants. He had no idea what to do. He had never slept with a woman. He sat hunched tight in embarrassment, afraid to move and expose the roaring confusion of his blood and his emotions.