Revenge

by Taslima Nasrin

  Honestly I was getting ready to entice my husband into joyfulness. I had been moping for the past weeks, sick with my pregnancy, hardly worth talking to. Perhaps if he saw me dressed beautifully, he would take my hand again and we would go out on the town. After all, this was the husband who had taken me to the Swiss, the same man who had pulled me toward the best sari shop in Dhaka when I would have been content to visit a bookstore. How poignant it was now to think of those afternoons on the riverbank when he listened as I sang Tagore. Tonight, under the light of the full moon . . .

  “Where have you been?” Haroon barked when he stomped in from work.

  “Nowhere.”

  “Why are you dressed up?” I felt sheepish. Now that he had spoken so harshly, how could I say that I wished to dazzle him with my beauty, to remind him that he had not been cheated in his choice of a wife. I said nothing as he began to change into the pyjama he always wore at home.

  “Let’s go somewhere!” I urged. “Like old times! Those were happy days!”

  “Happy days!” Haroon said. He staggered back as if I’d struck him.

  “We ought to be happy for the baby’s sake,” I said.

  “Baby!” He turned his face away with a jerk.

  Haroon left the room in a huff. I followed and found him stretched out on Amma’s bed.

  “Are you ill?” I asked him as Amma hovered nearby.

  “Maybe,” he said. Amma was immediately anxious. She ordered Dolon to sit near her brother, dispatched Ranu to fetch him a glass of water with fresh lime, and suggested firmly that I stroke his hand. But Haroon refused all attention. He didn’t need any drink, he repeated, and he didn’t want the women of the house fussing. He wanted to be left alone.

  I left Amma’s room and climbed slowly upstairs to our room and my window. My face was still made up and I was still wearing my Kancheepuram sari. Looking up, I considered how close to me the sky was. It was this blue strip of sky that was my confidante. What might that blueness say about my husband’s mysterious condition? Had he fallen in love with someone else? Or was he thinking of Lipi, the girl he had once loved? Haroon always insisted that old romance was finished, but hadn’t I seen love rekindle, bloom again from dried up roots like a dahlia in July? It had happened to my childhood playmate Arzu. He had been in love with a girl when he was very young and barely remembered her when a chance meeting revived his passion, causing him to abandon a current girlfriend for that old love.

  Standing next to the open window, I was desolate. My husband’s house where I lived with his family had turned into a place where my most reliable companion was the blue sky and a quiet bedroom.

  But soon I heard Haroon shouting. I found him, still on his mother’s bed, screaming at Dolon who had done no more than offer to massage his temples. “Bouma,” Amma said, addressing me as daughter-in-law, “where did you disappear to? Will you please find out what’s bothering him?” Again Haroon insisted there was nothing wrong and that he didn’t want me around. In fact, he said, he’d be really relieved if I left the room and got busy doing something else. But I had already prepared dinner and all the rooms were swept clean. Even Rosuni and Sakhina had finished their chores; I could hear them through the window, chatting on Hasan’s balcony above.

  “Would you like to have tea?” I asked Haroon.

  “No,” he said.

  “Go and get some,” Amma said, and so I went to the kitchen to prepare tea for everybody. As I entered the room with the tea tray, Haroon left, insisting again that he wanted nothing.

  “What have you said to him, Bouma?” Amma said.

  “I haven’t said anything.” My head was bare, and I felt awkward at seeming to disrespect Amma, but there was no way, holding the tray, that I could get the sari over my head without the tray capsizing.

  “You must have. Otherwise why would he be so upset?”

  “Perhaps something’s wrong at the office,” I mumbled.

  “Abba has inquired and there’s no problem,” Amma said. “It’s you he’s not talking to.” Her tone was definitive, and I could tell by their expressions that she and Dolon had come to the conclusion that I was the root of Haroon’s unhappiness. I decided to try again, carrying the tea into our bedroom.

  Haroon was prostrate on our bed. I put down the tray, sat next to him, and placed my hands gently on his shoulders, but no sooner had I touched him than he arched like a bow, repelled. Usually if Haroon didn’t want tea in the afternoon, he preferred a kiss.

  “What’s the matter?” I said, but again, he turned his head away. I sipped. “The tea isn’t bad!” I said lamely, not prompting the slightest response. “Why are you doing this to me?” I asked, putting the cup down. “How can you be upset now, when we have just had this wonderful news? What are you hiding from me?”

  Haroon lay silent with his eyes shut. I had always handled his moods pretty well before we were married, but now I felt as if I were speaking a language he’d never understood. Quietly I got up, and as I walked around the room, I uncovered my head.

  “Haroon, my darling,” I thought to myself, “out of love for you, I’ve worn the sari you’ve given me. I’ve put up my hair in the way you like and I’ve placed a dot on my forehead. Am I not the bride you took so eagerly that first time? I’ve colored my lips with the red that once made you go wild for a kiss. Can you not take me in your arms, brush your lips against my eyes, let your mouth travel down to where your child sleeps, tenderly caressing my belly so that you do not disturb its slumber? Who will our child resemble, you or me?”

  I was back in the trance of love I’d felt for him when he was the bold young man on the riverbank. “If our child is a boy,” I continued to myself, “he will inherit your beautiful eyes, your forehead, your fine nose. I’m deep in an ocean of happiness, but see, I’ve kept our thrilling news from everyone else. How I want you, Haroon. How I want you on my arm, radiant, as we announce the coming birth of our first child.”

  I said none of these things, but I sat down on the bed again and gave Haroon a vigorous shake. “Tell me, which of us will our child resemble?”

  Not a word came from his lips and his eyes remained closed.

  “You know how discreet I am. I haven’t told anyone the news, not even my family.”

  Then he opened his eyes. Not being able to read meaning into his sudden presence, I whispered, smiling shyly, “Look, you must tell me who it will look like! Look,” I said, pouting like a little girl, “I know you want a boy, but a girl would be just as nice, wouldn’t it? I’ll name her Bhalibassa, in celebration of the spirit of our marriage, a name that means love. What do you think?”

  Haroon looked at me, bewildered. “Are you not in the least eager to make an announcement? Don’t give them a shock,” I pleaded. “You must at least tell your mother.” I leaned into him, bringing my lips close to his. This was what he always wanted, but he did not respond. His eyes remained cold, fixed as stone until at last he spoke.

  “So who do you think it will look like?” he asked.

  “You, of course,” I said, running my fingers through his hair, laughing, bending over his body as I outlined his features with a finger. “Your eyes, your lips, your nose.”

  Haroon pushed my hand away. “I’ll take you to the doctor tomorrow.”

  “Why tomorrow?”

  “You can ask why when we get there.”

  “Not Dr. Mazundar—she said I should come back in three months.”

  Haroon scrambled out of bed. “To abort the baby.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just what I said. We have to get rid of this child.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m telling you what needs to be done.”

  My body began to tremble. “But why?” I asked. The trembling was uncontrollable. My hands and face turned numb as the room swayed and I clutched at the mattress to steady myself. I began to weep out loud. Haroon stepped back when I began to wail, but he didn’t try to comfort me. I
grabbed him with all my might. “This is our first child!” I was shouting now, tears bursting from my eyes. “It’s our first child and you want to get rid of it? What’s come over you? Who has put these evil thoughts into your mind? Who has come into your life that you want our child out of the way?”

  “So you think it’s possible to conceive in six weeks time,” Haroon snorted, standing there, looking down at me.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just what I say.”

  “I don’t understand!”

  “Yes you do.”

  “But the doctor said I was with child. She didn’t suggest anything abnormal. Don’t you believe the doctor?”

  “Of course I believe the doctor.”

  My mind was struggling to understand what on earth Haroon was suggesting. “Why are you suspicious?” I demanded.

  “Because it’s not possible for someone to get pregnant so soon.”

  “So you believe the doctor has made a mistake.”

  “No, she has not made a mistake.”

  “Then-”

  “Then what?”

  “Then why do I have to abort? Why?”

  “You must surely know the reason.”

  “What’s the reason?”

  “Why are you pretending? You have asked me several times who I thought the baby would resemble while knowing that certainly it will not resemble me!”

  “Why wouldn’t it?”

  “Because I am not the father.”

  “Then who on earth is the father?”

  “Only you would know.”

  “You mean you do not know who fathered this child?”

  “How would I know? How would I know whose baby you had in your womb when you entered this house! You were in such a hurry to get married! You gave me no time to think.”

  Hearing his words, my body went limp, the silken sari dropping from my shoulders, from my hips, pink and gold crumpling to the floor. I stumbled toward the bed to steady myself. Haroon thought I’d pushed him into marriage because I was pregnant! In one terrible moment, everything turned upside down—my home, my existence in my husband’s family. A gale of agony swept away safety and certainly any joy I felt at the presence of the child in my womb.

  Feelings of suspicion had been brewing in Haroon since our first night together. I was a virgin, but I had not bled. I remembered now Haroon fussing over the sheets to find a stain as I took in the pain of my first lovemaking.

  Now, he was looking at me strangely. “You were lying then, weren’t you,” he said, “taking those painkillers to make a show of your virginity!” As I listened to him, I almost doubted myself. In the months of our courtship, he had come to know all my friends. Often, on the spur of the moment, my friends and I would come to his office and he’d take the afternoon off to drive us far into the Garo hills. They all adored him. “What a gentleman!” they’d exclaim, and I’d turn to him and say, “What do I need a gentleman for! I have a man to love.” My friends had already decided I’d be happy with Haroon. “Ah, you are lucky,” Nadira often gushed. “I wish I had a man like Haroon!”

  But this group of friends was a gang of both boys and girls, and Haroon had seen how freely we went around town. I now understood that he was thinking I had made love with Subhash or Arzu, and that, pregnant by one of them, I’d pushed him to marry me, a rich man and a better catch than either of them. I could see it burning like an ember in his stony eyes, feel it as his gaze pierced my body, burrowing into my womb where he was certain Subhash or Arzu had planted his seed, where he could almost see a fetus gaining human shape, a nose that resembled the nose of Subhash, a brow that mimicked Arzu’s brow. Seeing myself as Haroon saw me, I almost believed I was a degraded woman, a wily slut who had betrayed her husband, manipulating him into marriage. I felt a wave of disgust at what his jealousy had provoked in my imagination.

  Suddenly I was terrified I had actually slept with Subhash or Arzu. Locking myself in the bathroom, I saw in the mirror a face that was not my own. In the light of Haroon’s insistence, I saw a low despicable creature who had played a secret game of love with someone other than her husband, who had taken her place on the wedding piri not as a virgin but as a woman pregnant with a child not her husband’s. I began to feel sorry for Haroon and to loathe Subhash and Arzu, dear friends suddenly turned secret lovers. I persuaded myself that at any moment Subhash would scale the garden wall, that Arzu would appear and rape me in the corridor leading to the front parlor. I could feel the heat of mortification rise to my face.

  Yet, in spite of this power Haroon held over me, or perhaps because of it, I loved him and him alone. It was from Haroon that I’ d learned the lessons of love on our wedding night, not from some errant lover. But now, because he had lost faith in me, I was too frightened to declare the extent of my love and desire, to tell Haroon that I’d married him quickly not to legitimize a pregnancy but because of a pledge I’d made to my father. How much I wanted my husband to understand that even now, in spite of all the misunderstanding of our first weeks together, it was him I desired and loved, for him that I forced my reluctant body out of bed in order to cook for his family, for him and a dream of our future that I chatted with Hasan, Habib, and Dolon whether I liked it or not, for the vision of happiness born in our marriage bed that I kept my head covered for his parents and stood in silence for their guests.

  Once, before we were married, Haroon had taken me to the house of a business colleague who was away in Dhaka. As we entered the empty foyer, he took me into his arms. “There’s no one here to disturb us,” he said.

  “So?”

  “I’ll make lots of love to you!”

  “Now?”

  “I’ll love you completely.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I mean I’ll love you entirely, bring our love to culmination.”

  “But I have to go now. I have to be home.”

  I thought Haroon had immediately understood that I had no desire to be a mere peccadillo. “Do you take me for a moron?” he said. “I would never seduce you without your consent.” He lit a cigarette and gave me a mysterious smile, resting his hands on my shoulders. “We can postpone all of this until after the wedding. I was just testing you.”

  “Testing me?” He was no longer smiling enigmatically and he had a satisfied grin on his face.

  “I know now for sure that you are a good girl, a woman of virtue,” he said. His words made me uncomfortable. I saw no distinction between girls who slept with boys and girls who did not. Why was it that girls were to blame when it took two to play the game? Hadn’t Shipra and Dipu had a sexual relationship before they married? Weren’t she and Dipu both responsible? When Haroon was madly caressing me in that empty house, I felt the heat of my body rise. I had wanted him to touch me all over, and if I hadn’t been so hard pressed to get home early, I might not have rebuffed him. What could be wrong with two young bodies coming together?

  Haroon hadn’t let me leave quite as soon as I would have liked. “What’s the hurry,” he’d said.

  “I have to take Kakima to the hospital,” I replied.

  “Who is Kakima?”

  “Subhash’s mother.”

  “Why you? Can’t someone else do it?”

  “There are others, but she wants me to do it.”

  “And so you go running instead of staying with me! Why can’t you refuse her? Call and tell her you’re busy.”

  Strictly speaking, Haroon was correct. Kakima could easily have asked someone else to take her to the hospital; the appointment was just a checkup. But she was family. She and Subhash and his brother Sujit had stayed at our place for almost two months when Subhash and I were at school. She loved me like a mother would, and Subhash and I often played at being twins (he was sixteen days older than me). The arrangement had come about when Subhash’s father, Nitun, had decided to move to Calcutta and asked my father to buy his property. My father refused, but instead offered to help with money—he and N
itun were lifelong friends, and Baba was upset that Nitun was even thinking of leaving Wari, but Nitun insisted on the move and sold the property cheaply. There were farewells, but just on the verge of departure, Nitun developed chest pains. Very quickly, his heart weakened, and when he suddenly died, Baba advised Kakima against moving to Calcutta.

  And so Kakima rented a place next to us and Baba became her protector and guardian to her children. Subhash and his family were not, therefore, merely neighbors. Though she did sewing to maintain herself and her sons, Kakima was always there when we needed her. She sent the boys to a good school in the city, but when it came time for Subhash to go to college she couldn’t afford it. Baba paid the costs until Subhash got his MA and became the man of the house. I met Arzu though Subhash. They had become close friends in spite of the fact that Arzu was from a very rich family. None of this ever stood in the way of their friendship or of Subhash and me descending on Arzu’s elegant Gulshan house for an afternoon meal. Arzu was a playmate whose hair we pulled, whose back we thumped, and whom we teased to no end. Arzu and Subhash were my childhood friends, just like Nadira and Chandana, with whom I was free and easy.

  Then I found myself in love with Haroon, a business-man. I hadn’t intended to fall in love with someone who had money. Nor did I know the world from which Haroon came. I fell for his looks, his voice, and the way he spoke—the memory of it moves me even now that I understand it was not his everyday voice. He certainly no longer spoke to me that way once we were married, in that voice wet with feeling.

  As I sat there in the bathroom, taking stock of the past few days, my mind throbbed with scattered, panicked thoughts. Everything was topsy-turvy. My life was being pulled down into a tornado, a gathering storm. I had managed pretty well, I’d always thought. But what I felt coming toward me was utterly unfamiliar, and I was too young to understand that my husband’s irrational behavior had nothing to do with me, that he was in the grip of a monstrous obsession of which not even he was conscious. I had never felt such confusion and fear. What was I to do now?