The Rice Mother

by Rani Manicka

  “Would you like to sleep with my wife?” he asked politely. There was a taunting smile in his cold eyes.

  The waiter became rigid with indignation. His eyes darted around the room quickly. It was beautiful, his act of dignified anger and disgust. “I think you have mistaken me for someone else, sir. I have no idea who your wife might be. I am paid only to serve drinks.”

  The bastard, there was pleasure in his voice.

  “She is the one with the long black hair,” the man said, his face hard as he reached out and pulled a long strand of black hair from a button on the waiter’s white jacket.

  The waiter visibly gulped. “Listen, I don’t want any trouble.”

  “Hey, relax. I’m not looking for trouble either. I just want to watch.”

  “What?” The young man’s eyes widened with astonishment.

  “I want to watch you with my wife.”

  “You’re mad,” the waiter stuttered, taking a step back. Obviously no one had suggested such a vile thing to him before.

  “I will pay you five hundred ringgit if you can get my wife into one of the bedrooms in this big house and leave the connecting bathroom door open for me.”

  “I will lose my job if I get caught.”

  “Find another,” the unsmiling man suggested carelessly, letting his eyes wander around the room as if he was losing interest in the conversation. When his cold eyes returned to the object of his wife’s attentions, the waiter was waging a losing war with greed. Yes, greed. The cause of all man’s downfall.

  “How will you pay me?”

  “Cash, now.”

  “How does it work?” the waiter asked nervously.

  In fact, the splendid man hadn’t really thought about the mechanics of it all. Now he thought fast. The blue door down the corridor from the balcony had an en-suite bathroom that connected with the other guest bedroom. He started to walk away from the crowd of beautiful people toward the garden. The air outside was balmy. The waiter followed meekly.

  “Take her to the bedroom with the blue door down the corridor upstairs and make sure you leave the connecting doors to the en-suite bathroom open and at least one light on,” he instructed in his hard precise voice as he reached into his wallet. Five hundred ringgit, still crisp from the bank and tightly wadded together, was counted and passed over to the waiter. For some reason it never crossed the man’s mind that the waiter wouldn’t succeed. It was true he had the face of a loser, but attached was an energetic body and flashing eyes. Exactly what she wanted tonight.

  “What if she says no?” the waiter asked timidly.

  “Then come into the bedroom next to the blue door and give me back my money.” The man looked at the nervous, ever so slightly aroused waiter coldly and smiled. It was a tense, terrible smile.

  The waiter nodded quickly.

  “By the way, she likes it rough,” the man tossed casually as he left to find his wife. She was coming out of the powder room downstairs.

  “Darling,” he said, so close to her hair he could smell the clean scent of her shampoo. “Something has come up. I have to leave, but I’ll send the driver back for you. Stay and enjoy yourself. I’ll see you at home later.” He kissed her lightly on the cheek.

  “Oh, what a shame,” she said very softly in his right ear.

  “Good night, darling, and do try to have some fun.” He was suddenly eager to be away. Let the game begin. He closed the front door behind him and walked along the side of the house. A kind of cold despondency settled on his stiff shoulders. The initial excitement was fading. He stood behind some bushes by the bay windows and looked into the golden party inside. He saw her cascading length of hair. She was alone and staring out of the French window.

  For a moment he stood transfixed by the sight and cursed the impulse that had possessed him to trap her, to watch her while she was unaware, to test her fidelity. Unexpectedly she looked small and lonely. Then the waiter was beside her. The man stood in the shadows and rooted for her.

  “Refuse, refuse, refuse,” he whispered softly into a large, dark green hedge. She stood staring out of the window, ignoring the creeping waiter. The man thought he would stop the experiment then. She was innocent. Then he saw her half turn and smile at the waiter. No, he must see this through. Expose her cheating heart.

  The back door was open, and he walked right through a busy kitchen. He was dressed appropriately and wore the right expression of arrogance, so nobody stopped him. Quickly he slipped up the stairs before someone who knew him could waylay him. He passed the blue door and entered the door of the next bedroom. The two rooms shared a bathroom. It was dark but cool in the room. The connecting door was open, so he went through the bathroom and entered the arena where he would trap his beautiful wife. He switched on the bedside lamp, and it threw a golden pool of light on the moss-green coverlet. Their hosts favored a simple, uncluttered style. His mind imagined her gasping with revulsion, crying out, “Stop! Get your filthy hands off me.”

  If only she would pass his test. She had become so cold and withdrawn with the birth of the child. And with every year she froze a little more. Silently he left the room to wait next door. He sat on a large bed and smoked for about twenty minutes. Then he heard the connecting door to the other room open. Something thudded against his ribs. Someone was checking that his side of the bathroom was unlocked. In the dark he smiled cynically. The fish bites. He put out the cigarette and waited to see if she would use the bathroom first. Then he pushed open the door and stepped into the dark bathroom. The waiter had left the connecting door ajar. He could see directly into the pool of light.

  “Do you—”

  “Shhh,” she said softly and began to kiss the waiter.

  The man felt the blood begin to pound in his head. It was not pain that he felt but a strange excitement. It was such an indescribable rush that it startled him. He had stepped into a new dimension with his wife and the waiter. The waiter took off her little beaded jacket, and her skin that he had admired for so long gleamed like polished ivory in the golden light. Her small breasts strained against the waiter’s jacket. The waiter pushed her on the bed roughly. Good man. The waiter had taken his advice. She likes it rough. Until now the man had ignored the waiter, but now he could see a live thing writhing to get out of his trousers. This, this was the effect his wife had on men.

  “Please don’t be rough. Love me gently,” she whispered.

  The man in the darkness was stunned. Love me gently? What did it all mean?

  Then the nightmare began. He watched in pure shock as the woman who looked remarkably like his wife and the man whom he had paid clung to each other and moved so smoothly that their entangled limbs looked as if they belonged to a well-oiled machine. Out of her gorgeous mouth didn’t come the curses, the harsh screams of passion, and the grunting animal sounds that she made when she was with him, but quiet sighs and gasps so drawn out that deep pleasure was unmistakable. And eventually when she came, she came softly, elegantly. Her body stiffened and her head arched back, offering her slender white neck like a dying swan.

  “Go now,” she instructed softly.

  The waiter put his trousers back on and left immediately. As soon as he left, she sat up and stretched, like a contented cat. From her handbag she extracted a cigarette. She lay back against the pillows inside the pool of golden light and smoked in silence, her face thoughtful. The watching man couldn’t move. He stood transfixed. All these years she had fooled him. None of it was real. The animal cries, those hoarse cries, “Harder, faster, deeper!” All of it was fake.

  In the silence it came to him that for some time now she had been slowly moving money and property into her family. Money was being transferred to her uncouth, dishonest brother, many times to her avaricious mother, and once even to her sister. She probably even had a secret account for herself. He stood trembling with fury. The bitch. The fucking bitch. She was planning to leave him.

  He forgot that it was he who had engineered the encounter
with the waiter and that it was supposed to be his new foray into depravity. So she didn’t really enjoy watching her skin redden with pain. She didn’t like it rough. He had forgotten that he had hinted, gestured, and tutored her slowly, subtly, to pant and scream, “Harder, faster, deeper!” He wanted to punish, and at that moment he knew how to.

  He would destroy her.

  She was grinding out her cigarette. His legs unlocked and he moved through the connecting door and closed it gently. Silently. Presently he heard the sound of the toilet flushing, paper rustling, and a tap being turned on.

  The door closed.

  A thought flashed into his head. He wanted to see it all again. He wanted to be sure that he had seen it correctly. He wanted to see her naked and gasping under the waiter. It was so unbelievable, her reaction, that it was like a dream. Surely it had not happened! Dear God, she was his wife of six years now. It seemed impossible that he had never seen this side of her. Yes, he wanted to do it all again. He must be sure that he had not imagined it.

  That’s what he told himself, but he knew the truth was that he just wanted to see her again with another. The really shocking truth was that he had enjoyed it. He had given his own blood and experienced an exquisite joy. He was not a learned man, but even he recognized what had happened. Man has no real defense for the pain that he suffers. The only thing that comes remotely close to defense is to transform torture into pleasure. It was the basic dough that baked into a masochist. His eyes became flints in his face. It was her fault that he had gone down this thorny path. He was not even ready to accept the sadist in himself; the masochist could go take a flying fuck. He didn’t want to continue down the terrible path. No way. No, he would not repeat the experiment; he would simply make her destitute, her and her entire family. He walked quickly across the room, closing the door behind him. He ran down the stairs and out of the front door.

  You know, the hardest part had been sitting on the bed without my jeweled box jacket, calmly smoking a cigarette. Making sure my hands didn’t shake, knowing that he was in the next room watching. And thinking, “Oh God, please let him be so disgusted that he divorces me.”

  I had seen him come back toward the house while I stared out of the window, but when the waiter slid up to me shaking with nerves, I knew. I didn’t even need to see Luke slip up the stairs like a nasty shadow. I let the waiter into my body, but everything else was the best performance of a lifetime. I always wanted to be an actress. Now I know I should have been one. I fooled him. I felt his eyes devour me, burn into me. I destroyed the purity that he so cherished. Sullied things sicken him. His best possession ruined right before his eyes. I wanted him to get rid of me.

  After that I wanted to shower, to wash away the smell of the waiter. My hands were dirty. My body soiled. But I couldn’t. His filth would always be my shame. I came down the stairs, and the waiter was gone. After a while Luke sent the driver for me.

  He was waiting for me in my room. A gasp of shock swam out from somewhere deep inside me to see him lounging on my bed like a dark fate awaiting me on my clean white sheets. I schooled the confusion inside me.

  “Hello, darling. Was it a nice party?” he asked silkily. His voice was different. He was toying with me. A new sort of game.

  “It was all right. I thought you might already be in bed,” I said weakly.

  “I am in bed.”

  I laughed nervously and walked to my dressing table. I knew I must not show my confusion. Act natural. I had taken my shoes off, and my feet were soundless on the cold marble floor. I put my beaded purse on the dressing table and switched on a small light by the mirror. He stared at my brilliantly studded jacket. Remembering. I must have looked to him in the yellow light like a jewel box of secrets. His. His jewel box. I saw a change in him. He realized with a flash that he couldn’t really let me go.

  “Come here,” he said in a voice like a whiplash. It was the stranger inside him. Luke was gone. I shivered. But he had seen me with another! Why was he behaving like this? Where was the coldly angry stranger who should have turned me out mercilessly, clutching in my destitute hands my little Nisha? He clasped my trembling hand and brought it up to his lips. The stranger’s shadowed eyes watched mine. Caught, I stared back helplessly. How could he have wanted to see me, the mother of his daughter, sordid and arching beneath another’s body? To spy on me thus, unobserved? His unblinking eyes said he must punish me as only he knew how to. And now he knew I didn’t like it rough after all.

  “Your hand smells different, dirty,” he whispered.

  I snatched my hand away from his and began to walk away.

  “Dance for me, my darling.”

  “I’m a bit tired tonight. I think I’ll just shower and go straight to bed,” I said. My voice sounded squeaky. I licked my dry lips and, panther quick, he had leaped off the bed, grabbed me by the arm, and thrown me forcefully on the bed. I bounced slightly. For a few seconds I was too shocked to respond. I simply stared up at him with huge frightened eyes.

  “Too tired to dance? How about something a little different then, my fussy pussy,” he purred nastily. From his hard lips I saw a creature, shadowy and terrible, plunge toward me. I recognized it. Pain. I felt the dark shape enter my body like a shiver. Inside me it will stay, devouring and malignant, and only when I am hollow and bitter with gall will it fly out of me and straight into the one dearest and closest to me. Nisha. Oh, God, what have I done?

  That night, there was pain like never before. When I opened my mouth to protest, to scream, he clamped his hand over it.

  “Don’t. You’ll wake the child,” he advised coldly.

  It is true that your mind can float out and hover over you when it can no longer endure what is happening to your body. It floats above, looking down quite dispassionately, and thinks of mundane things like a drop of sweat gathering on your abuser’s forehead, or if the trash cans have been put out for the garbage collectors. When he was finished, Luke left me with an expression of disgust on his face; the experience as distasteful to him as it had been to me. He knew that in his blood now ran a different fascination. Not to bed me but to watch me bedded by a paid stranger. To see me humiliated thus excited him. I had helped him discover an ugly perversion in himself. And now I was to pay for soiling myself, for soiling him.

  During the months that followed, he tried everything to turn his attention away from this new perversity. But nothing worked. Even his lover with the carefree smile and all the techniques they must teach a golden girl could do nothing to abate the new passion. So he had me followed. Perhaps I had a lover. Perhaps he could re-create the party trick. Strange men with speculative smiles and slightly contemptuous eyes started approaching me at parties and in hotel lobbies. I did not turn around to see his greedy eyes; instead I smiled so coldly at them that they understood instantly that never, never, never would I willingly let them into me.

  Then one night I came into my bedroom and saw all the paraphernalia of an opium smoker arranged neatly on the table. I let my hands slide over a fabulous antique ivory pipe carved with the most intricate elephants. I held up the cup and admired the oil lamp painted black and patterned with silver and copper flowers. It was my birthday. I was twenty-five years old, and that was Luke’s present to me. Nothing but the best for Dimple. He knew that I knew how those things worked. Uncle Sevenese had long since disrobed the world of opium for me. I knew exactly how the skeletal old Chinese men toasted opium on the lips of the oil lamp before shaking it and inhaling the fragrant fumes. I examined a small plastic bag of opium, speculating where Luke might have got the aromatic brown stuff from. I understood the gift. He wanted me to destroy myself slowly. And why not? Didn’t poppies symbolize release from all pain? Had not Emperor Shah Jehan mixed opium in his wine to enjoy its divine ecstasies? I walked away from my beautifully crafted birthday present. In the black sky outside the moon had waned into an upward-curving yellow smile.

  Opium promised magnificent dreams. I thought of Nisha, and t
he wind blew into the bamboo grove. It sighed and whispered. “No, don’t,” it said. “Never,” I agreed, but my hands were lighting the oil lamp and preparing a swab of raw opium over the glass funnel. Fragrant blue smoke rose from the pipe and flooded the room. Yes, yes, I know. Thomas De Quincey had warned me too, but it was impossible not to succumb to beautiful dreams. Tell me how could I say no to music like perfume and living a hundred years in one night—even if it all ended with the horror of thousands of years in stone coffins, crawling through sewers, and cancerous kisses from crocodiles. After all, what else was left but dreams?

  It is not a dream.

  Grandma’s dead. I still couldn’t really believe it.

  Her small house was swarming with people. They sat, leaned against walls, talked in hushed voices, and sang tuneless devotional songs in old, broken voices. I never knew that Grandma knew so many people. I suppose they must have been her temple cronies. Nobody was crying except Aunty Lalita. Even I didn’t cry. All my tears were locked away somewhere where even I couldn’t find them. I knew I had made a terrible mess of my life and wished I was going with Grandma. It was only Nisha who held me back. I felt her holding on by her little fingernails. They were like small blades in my flesh, but everyday the sky outside is a little grayer and the opium a little sweeter. No, I did not think of the blue smoke at the funeral. It would have been a terrible insult to succumb in that last time with Grandma. If she could have heard my thoughts, her spirit would mourn for my poor, wasted life.

  Papa dashed about, doing as much as he could to help, but when he met my eyes, he came to sit beside me. He folded his long limbs under him.

  “I was her favorite, you know,” he said, looking out of the door at the place where the huge rambutan tree used to stand. Grandma’s new neighbors had had it cut down when they saw the cracks in the cement drains around their homes, fearing that the roots of the tree were breaking through the foundations of their houses.

  “Yes, she told me many times.”

  “I wasn’t a good son, but I loved her. We suffered together during the Japanese time.”