In the Convent of Little Flowers

by Indu Sundaresan

  I visited Kamal every day. We would sit on the floor at one end of the cell, leaning against the wall, iron bars separating us. But our shoulders touched, and if I leaned hard enough, I could put my head to his. For the next three years, Kamal made brief appearances at home, only to be yanked back to jail at the smallest pretext, sometimes leaving his dinner to cool as he left.

  So when that child, our first daughter, was born in 1942, Kamal was still in jail. And when she died a month after her birth, Kamal still hadn’t seen her, hadn’t touched her. We have twelve other children. Now when all I do is wait, I wonder about the daughter who died, who we never named because I was waiting for Kamal to do so. I wonder if she would have been different.

  My eyes cast over the chalky whitewashed walls within my range of vision and then to the beds lined in a military row along the sides of the room. Twelve to each side. This has been our home for the last twenty-three years, from the day Kamal retired from the Indian Railways as chief engineer.

  I remember the day he was promoted from foreman to engine driver. He had come home, his face flushed and handsome, tripped over three of the children, patted them absently, and then hugged me and my growing belly in his warm arms. As the children watched round-eyed, we danced around the room, the one room we could afford to rent then, where we ate, and slept, and made love. But all that changed that day. We rented another room.

  Kamal’s job took him away from me more often now than before, but never for more than three days. Each time he left, I touched his face with cold lips and would not stop trembling until he returned. Such an attitude toward a husband was not healthy, they said, distance made a marriage work. Love was not a word to be used in public, rather to be implied—if I was asked whether I loved my husband, I must nod, or bow my head in agreement. But I must never love him too much—not enough to allow my whole self to be overcome by him. Before we were married, they came to me with advice. Listen to your husband, or pretend to do so, at least at first. He will do strange things to you under cover of darkness, but that is a woman’s lot in life. And make sure you provide him with many sons, they said, daughters are a burden. The dowries, the uncontrollable and demanding in-laws, the constant fear of one of them being spoiled (through her effort or not)—daughters, they said, were like milk left out on the kitchen countertop overnight.

  I had met Kamal only once before we were married—as was the custom—when he came to see me with his parents and the marriage broker. I was sixteen; it seems young these days when girls do not marry until they are finished with their college at least. But then, I was considered the right age for marriage—college was not possible (I had not even completed my schooling)—I was four years beyond puberty. Left alone too long without the tether of marriage, like the milk, I too might spoil. My mother made me dress up in a purple-and-gold silk sari she had kept for the occasion. I wore that sari three times, twice before Kamal came visiting. The other two times one prospective groom said I was too dark, the other thought me too tall. Kamal, no indecisive Goldilocks, found me just right. He later told me I glowed like a butterfly. I showed off my meager skills, twanging the veena strings until even my mother flinched, singing classical songs with a hoarse defiance until Kamal put a hand up to his mouth to hide a smile. My mother served them gold-tinted, saffron-scented halwa and lied as usual when she said I had made it. Kamal taught me to cook when we were married. But long before that, after he had said yes to me, there were tales of how I should be not just a good wife, but, eventually, a powerful one.

  From our first time together I knew the advice to be useless. The hot, still nights under the clanking ceiling fan were welcomed, and during the days we would look at each other with a secret, precious laughter. It was as though I had lived my life in a vacuum for sixteen years—and then there was Kamal. Everything—every breath, every thought, every deed, every feeling—centered around him. The sons came, the daughters came, but my connection with Kamal flourished stronger every day. The children grew sturdy and strong and brilliant. I think we taught them to laugh, but they don’t do so very often anymore. They say life was easier in our time. I wonder. I know we taught them to laugh, for we never stopped as time went by. Kamal’s promotions came with an increasing regularity. The rooms of our houses grew. And all the boys eventually went to engineering college, except one who is a doctor. And the girls all married well. We have a lot of grandchildren, how many, I could not say at this moment because we have not seen them in almost ten years.

  The day after Kamal retired, we had to move out of our palatial white-pillared mansion courtesy of the Indian Railways. For months we had waited to hear from our sons, expecting each of them to insist that we stay with them. For months there was silence and I saw Kamal droop visibly. His hair suddenly became white, the lines on his face grew more pronounced, and his shoulders stooped as though he were carrying a large burden.

  They say women are stronger than men. But each time I looked at Kamal, my heart broke. I kept my tears inside with a fierce pride. When neighbors, well-meaning or not, came to ask of our future, I laughed and made a joke about not being an encumbrance on our children, and they left, some with sympathy written over their faces, some with barely veiled contempt. I could almost hear them think. Twelve children, so many sons, and nowhere to go? What a pity. Finally, I searched for the courage to call my oldest son home one evening when Kamal was out, and asked him where we were going to live.

  My heart burns even today when I think of that meeting. This boy I had cherished. He had come to us in 1947, the year India became independent. I know that after so much time few people remember those days of danger and heady joy. When freedom comes too easily it is not valued, but for us that year was important, because we were a free people, and because this son lived, whereas she had not.

  Now our son sat in front of me, hemming and hawing about the inconvenience of having his parents stay with him. No place, he said at first, and they live in a six-bedroom house with quarters for a maid and a gardener. Too expensive, said our General Manager son, when Kamal would receive a large pension from the Railways for all his years of service. We were too liberal, said our son who beat his eighteen-year-old daughter with a broom for bringing her male classmate home for tea and biscuits. Tea and biscuits. This I still do not understand. Many years before this son was born, I stood by fiery youths and listened to Congress propaganda. I marched with them; I spent a night in jail with them. My reputation stayed intact. But in today’s world, if I am to believe my son, no decent man will marry his daughter if she as much as spoke to a person of the male sex. And so he went on and on, one justification after another, while I listened in dulled silence.

  His mouth moved in meaningless garble, and my mind floated back many years to when he was newly come to us. It had been five years since her death, that ink-haired child I had sung to sleep every night. Kamal had not let me bring her to see him. Not like this, he had said, not in jail. Let her see her father as she ought to, a free man, a victorious man. She never saw her father after all, only heard of him from me, in songs, in my prayers, in my voice. So when this boy was born, I reached trembling, yearning hands for him, thinking, let him live. They put him on my chest and I saw the tiny mouth move in protest, eyes shut against a new world, hands clutching at my skin for protection. I hugged him, wanting to guard him all my life.

  But he was no longer that child. He sat in front of me, his stomach hanging over his too-tight belt, his face more wrinkled than mine, and I thought I did not know this stranger I turned to for help.

  Then, for the first time, I wondered if Kamal and I had erred somewhere. Maybe the neighbors were right. Twelve children, so many sons, and we had nowhere to go, it seemed. Had we done wrong? But no, we had loved them, we had doted on them, we had taught them right from wrong, we had taught them what we knew … yet we went wrong. Twelve children.

  I let my son escape to his wife and children and didn’t mention the visit to Kamal. But I think he knew, fo
r that night as we lay in bed, my back cupped in his chest, he said softly, “Don’t mind so much.” When I didn’t reply he kissed me and drifted off to sleep.

  I waited a few days and then talked with our other sons, daughters I could not and would not demean myself by asking for help—the moment they married, they belonged to someone else; they were ours no longer. The boys all came up with some excuse or the other and the final one, when all else failed, was always that it was the eldest son’s duty, not theirs. Finally, they came up with a solution. A retirement home.

  What was that? I asked in apprehension. And I was right to be frightened of this Western concept that had invaded our existence. Kamal and I moved into this dormitory twenty-three years ago and haven’t left it since. The retirement home is too far from the city, so our grandchildren and our children rarely come to visit. All of Kamal’s pension goes toward paying the rent here, for two beds in twenty-four. Our children took everything else we possessed. We did not need it here, they said. And so my daughters-in-law and daughters took away my jewels and silver vessels, my sons bullied us until they were allowed to raid our bank account and empty our savings. We had fought, at one time, so long ago, for our country’s freedom, but it simply hurt too much to fight for ours. That had been easier.

  I watched Kamal age faster than he should have. And God help me, I hated my children. He lost weight, became frail, the veins on his hands stood out green and ugly, his eyes sank into his skull. Physically, he was not the Kamal I knew and loved for so long, but mentally he was as sharp as ever.

  And that made our stay here more difficult. After years of building our fortunes and futures and enjoying them both, we were herded around like cattle. Perhaps worse than that. There was no privacy. We could not talk to each other or walk in the grounds without some orderly lurking in the bushes. The food from the kitchen is not worthy of that name. But more than the physical discomfort, it is the indignity of the whole situation.

  It broke Kamal completely. A month ago, he had a heart attack and has been in a coma ever since. He doesn’t open his eyes to look at me or say anything. The only sign of life in him is the shallow rise and fall of his rib cage.

  Parvati has come back into the room. I look at her kind face and gentle eyes and my heart warms. She has helped me with Kamal, and we owe a lot to this young girl who works here, this child not of our flesh. I wonder sometimes if our daughter—the one who died—would have been like her. The ones who lived are not.

  She leans over me. “Shall I turn your head?”

  I blink rapidly. Or at least I think I blink; in any case she understands and leaves my head the way it is, on its side, so that I can see Kamal. For four months I stayed in this bed, unable to move after the stroke. One moment everything seemed all right but the next I awoke to a view of the flaky whitewashed ceiling. Kamal was at my side and strangely his eyes were unafraid, full of a smiling courage. There was no way of communicating with him; my throat was frozen up. But he understood me, read to me, talked to me, held my hand (or so he said; I could not feel it).

  Our children have not come to visit. Even the news of Kamal’s heart attack did not bring them to us. I wonder, briefly, stupidly, if she would have come. And I think, to satisfy an old woman’s fantasies, that she would have. But none of that matters anymore. Kamal will go soon, I know, and I will follow him. We have not been parted for more than three days at a stretch in all the years we were married.

  And there is no reason to do so now.

  The Chosen One

  This is the only year to which I do not want to return. But I have no choice. As Keeper of the Ten Sins I wander the skies in search of beings with misplaced virtue. The Select Seven, our elders, have established what the sins are—lust, greed, envy, sloth, idiocy, ambition, pride, dishonesty, adulation, and arrogance. I purge our galaxy of these sins. With each obliteration, I grow stronger—and more evil—for the sins come to live in me.

  I am a Chosen One.

  It is, after all, a coveted job, given to a very few. As a Chosen One, I am knowledgeable—I am, in fact, more intelligent than most, even the Select Seven who chose me. My life as a Chosen One began when I had reached thirty Earth years. There are, in my past, a mate, offspring, even progenitors. All insignificant now. There was also another job; the memory of it is fading, but I see myself as the Gatekeeper, collecting tickets, watching with an inward resentment as crisply dressed travelers are transported to unusual destinations. Destinations I could not afford. Until the Choosing came.

  In keeping with the Covenant, I know none of the other Chosen Ones in my circle in their true forms. We do not meet—oh, sometimes in our disguises we do, both in search of the same sin, and when we find it the stronger one wins. I have always won. It is my destiny to do so. Not only am I powerful from absorbing ordinary people, I have in me two other Chosen Ones and their collection of strengths. Sometimes, I think, I seek out the Chosen Ones. Evil is so much easier to garner that way.

  It seems simple the way I tell it, but it is not so. When two Chosen Ones collide in the same century, it is because the Select Seven sent us there. And one Chosen One will always end his or her life before the assignment is over. We know that but not knowing who is to die makes it better, more exciting. Despite what we do for a living, to live, it must be made clear that we do so for the good of the galaxy and its peoples. In current time—my lifetime—many thousands of years have been spent on planet Earth already and mankind has evolved into a degenerate mass, a screaming, pitiful animal. The word civilization, indicating civility of any kind, is laughable. The deterioration came slowly, imperceptibly. The only way to correct it is to travel backward and forward in time and annihilate evil using the Chosen Ones.

  So, here I stand, in one corner of Asia in a land once known as India, but now—in travel time—there is no such cohesion in this land. It is a kingdom ruled by a minor king. My voyage watch reads February 1, 1652. That flashes briefly, and then I slip back into my relaxed transition phase and let my thoughts return.

  In my heart there has always been a deep, residing hatred, a twisted malice. This is directed toward no special person or thing, it just exists, and it makes me exist. It is something I am especially proud of. I am—I have always been—exceptionally suited for this vocation. The Chosen Ones are special, especially to the Select Seven. They watch us carefully, from birth to adulthood, to deem our worthiness before they approach us. And they are the only ones who matter. Well, mattered, anyway.

  As I annihilate and my intelligence grows wider than theirs, I find their gentle ways, their soft wisdom, insufferable. They rule with peace and good in mind. Which is why I do what I do; the whole point of my present existence is to destroy evil. Why?

  Too often now I find myself torn between wanting that evil in me and admiring it from afar as a thing of extreme and natural beauty. Sometimes, it is almost physically painful to complete an assignment; so much remorse fills me at the loss of a purely evil person to history or to the future. But they, the Select Seven, do not see it as such. With each extinction, history or the future travels a slightly different path—a better route, they say. More and more, I do not agree.

  My knowledge grows with each termination, as the evil are often the shrewdest. I take on their characters, their personalities; they die, but live on in me. Then I return to my Chamber of Rest until the urge comes to step out again and let my body travel. I have no control over the time and place I reach. I do not even know, as I arrive, who I am to annihilate. It will all come to me in one sudden moment as I move among these people. In this, the Select Seven have power over me, yes, but it is an inconsequential power. I struggle with the thought that I should control even this aspect. Travel where I want, terminate who I want, or better yet, not terminate as I please and allow that evil to blossom. Imagine where we would be now if Dosha had been allowed to possess the minds of all those who inhabited the Earth. When I went in search of her, she could control part of their thoughts already
—implant a short dream into their hours of darkness, leave behind confusion when they awoke. She was very close to capturing their waking hours when I absorbed her. It makes me want to cry, if I could cry—Dosha’s loss.

  Yet for all my bravado, I have always known where I do not want to go. Where a sense of unease plagues me, and this kingdom in 1652 is that one place. In my veins rushes fear, alive and molten. It is such an unusual feeling; it sends a prickly shiver down my spine. But in my head is a flash of excitement. The hunt was getting boring, but no more. No more. There will be danger here, such as I have not tasted since my beginning kills. And if I can overcome this fear, perhaps I will be free to do what I like.

  The transition from my world to this one is finally complete, and I look around. During the transition I am aware of where I am going, watching, but not yet fully alert. As it completes, my senses—all those provided by my borrowed body—come to life. It is an alertness that will sustain me through the hazards of the task.

  I am standing in the main street of this tiny kingdom in a bazaar of some sort. There is not much activity, a few carts rolling in the dust, their owners muffled in white against the heat and dirt. The shops have long rattan blinds drawn over their fronts. Dogs bark slowly in my direction, their panting tongues dragging in the mud. Ribs show under their blistered skins. The hot, still air is rancid from the stench of a thickly oozing gutter. I lift my head. In the distance, the sun haze wavers over the cool marble dome of a monument, its four minarets punching through the faded blued sky. The minarets have crumpled in present time, my time, the river has engulfed the dome, but on a windless day, when the waters of the river lie tranquil, the submerged dome of the Taj Mahal glows like a pearl. I am not distracted, though; ancient wonders of the world that man has touted as a testament to his meager skill do not interest me.