The Wild Wind

by Sheena Kalayil

  Stop staring at my sister, he groaned under his breath at one point, as I stifled my giggles at the, in turns, sheer brazenness or casual cruelty of the attention I was gathering.

  God, look at that guy checking you out, he muttered.

  I know, I said, I mean how dare he when I’m middle-aged and hideous to boot. But he did not laugh, only looked upset by my attempt at humour. Hey. I squeezed his arm, and he tried to smile. He was, I could see, more vulnerable to this return than I had imagined.

  The following morning we presented ourselves at the house, the address of which Sanjay Tharoor had procured for us, to be greeted by several cousins and second cousins, uncles and aunts, all of whom had gathered together to welcome the two prodigal Americans, who greeted us with warmth and genuine pleasure in seeing us and hearing of our lives. And lying on a cot, wizened and aged, but recognisably the great-uncle whose hand I used to hold, was Monuchayan, who had, he related in Malayalam, not seen my father since he had reappeared briefly to inform everyone of the fire which I had survived and my mother’s decision to divorce him. That no one had heard from him, as all around us people nodded to confirm this piece of news and lament the situation and sigh in sympathy.

  My brother was silent on the way back to our hotel, late that evening. We had not been allowed to leave until we had been plied with food and had promised to attend several gatherings organised in our honour over the next few days. But when I was sitting on my bed in our twin room, having made a quick call to my husband, with Danny in the shower, I suddenly heard a bang, then a thump, from the bathroom, that repeated itself three or four times. I stood uncertainly outside the door, fearful of what would happen next.

  Dan? You okay in there?

  He said something indistinct, but at least I heard his voice. When he emerged, his fist was swollen and his eyes were red.

  We had those few more days in Ernakulam, and then we extricated ourselves from my father’s family to take a bus up into the hills, for I had planned one last salvo, a swim in the river. I had not attempted to make contact with my mother’s family; that was her preserve. But the bird sanctuary remained, and the river and the lake too; none of these had been affected by my father’s disappearance and my mother’s exile. We took an autorickshaw from Kothamangalam to the gates of the bird sanctuary, and then wandered down a path to the river, where we laid down our bags. My brother was down to his shorts in seconds, but we soon realised I would be a spectacle. I accepted the T-shirt, Danny’s, that he silently handed to me to pull over my swimming two-piece, so that the small crowd of children who had gathered on the riverbank and the small group of hot-eyed young men further up would have less to see. We ducked and dived like children, the water calming and cleansing us, and only here did I allow my heart to open, to be soothed by the river. Only here did I feel my father’s presence, and my mother’s, her golden, slender form arcing over us as she was thrown into the water, my parents’ laughter echoing around us like ghosts. And then my brother and I sat on the riverbank, let the warm air dry our skin and curl our hair, sat so still and so quietly that the onlookers lost interest and left us alone. So that by the time we made our way back to the bus station in Kothamangalam, we had left a whisper in the river, to be carried in the current to where our father was: we wish you well, Papa.

  That evening, on arriving at the resort on the coast that we had booked for our final two days, we ordered a beer each to accompany our meals, watched the families and couples around us, soaking in the scent of the air and its warmth.

  I look across the table at my baby brother, his eyes are full of something. Here’s to us, Danny, I say, unable to stop the tears in my eyes from sliding down my cheeks, into my lips, and he taps his bottle against mine, then reaches across and takes my hand. Here’s to us.

  Clearing out a cupboard in my mother’s house with my daughter, I come across a small shoebox. Inside it is a photograph of my mother with her college roommates, which I have not seen for over thirty years: four young women in matching saris, bought for their photo shoot, their eyes rimmed with kohl, bangles at their wrists and large gold hoops in their earlobes.

  Wow, is that Grandma?

  She was effortlessly graceful. Her large eyes, and the delicacy of her face, the slender body in the dark silk sari. Among her roommates she stood out, a glowing beauty. I want to cry seeing that photograph, she has changed so much. Not just the usual marks of age – at seventy, she has in fact aged well – only now there is a gluey, wet look in her eyes. She does not focus, and those long eyelashes that cast feathery shadows on her cheeks seem to weigh her eyelids down. I hand it to my daughter, to stare at, and start pulling out the other boxes stacked on top of each other in the cupboard.

  Each holds a pile of magazines, an eclectic collection – Reader’s Digest, Femina, Good Housekeeping – some from as far back as the seventies. She hid her hoarding instincts well, I think, just as I see, tucked at the back, not a box but a manila envelope, no address or label, sealed with a rubber band. I open the envelope and they spill out, a stack of blue aerogrammes, the kind that you needed to open along one edge, to unfold the words folded into themselves. There are, in total, perhaps twenty-five such aerogrammes, all addressed to my mother at the house we are standing in, in Philadelphia. And the sender of all of them is the same: my long-lost father, George Olikara.

  What is it, Mama? my daughter asks, then comes over, and placing a hand on my shoulder, leans against me. What are these?

  Letters, I whisper.

  She opens one, and frowns. It’s a different language.

  Malayalam, I whisper again.

  Are they to Grandma? Who are they from?

  They’re from my father.

  She must have said something, under her breath, but I hear nothing for many minutes, only the sound of my heart, holding papers that my father would have held himself.

  Did you know, Mama?

  I shake my head. No, mol, she never told me.

  My daughter is gathering them, laying them out, sorting them, in rows of four across, ever the pragmatist – her bedroom is as organised as a monk’s.

  There’s no return address, and he hasn’t dated them himself, she is muttering, but I can just about read the postmarks.

  I watch as my daughter arranges them, chronologically.

  One a year, pretty much, she is saying, and then she leans back on her haunches: last one here was seven years ago.

  Seven years ago. My stepfather was still alive, my mother had not slipped into the universe she now occupies, with a memory that has become a fleeting gossamer-thin fabric floating just out of her reach. It was the following year that my brother and I had gone to India on our failed quest.

  Do you want to have a look, Mama?

  I recognise the first one. It was the aerogramme I had found myself, that afternoon in Roma, when I was slightly younger than the age my daughter is now. It fills three-quarters of the space, beginning with My dearest Laila, ending Yours, George. I see the words Sissy and Danny in the same place. The other letters all begin with Dear Laila, and end simply George. In all of them, we can discern the words Sissy and Danny close to the top. In none can we see any mention of Sam Cooper.

  Can you understand what he’s written?

  No, I can’t.

  I never learned to read Malayalam. I have translated countless texts, novels, poems, manuals, instructions, medical pamphlets, fashion articles, government manifestos, translated them all into Italian, but with Malayalam I cannot make a start. I stare at the curls and swirls which say nothing to me. Send these to someone to decipher? I know I will not. I am holding, in my hands, a tale which my mother has not wished to be told.

  Do you think Grandma wrote back?

  I don’t know, mol.

  She is scrutinising the letters, then places her finger on one in the middle. Look, Mama!

  In English, nestled among the Malayalam, we can make out The Wild Wind. I raise my eyes, hold my daughter’s; her mouth
is open, her cheeks flushed.

  What does that mean? she whispers.

  My book, my useless endeavour, a folly, but still a source of pride, and which has its pride of place in my study at home. I had not understood when I was writing it what I understand now – that while I did not make a systematic, sustained effort to find my father, that all the while I was delving into words and sentiments and inflections I was searching for him and his thoughts and feelings and fears, wishing I could have given him something that he could clutch in his hand and from which to gain an inner strength. I stare at the words, my words, but written in his hand: The Wild Wind. For him to know of this, he will have needed to do more than wait somewhere for news of us to drift his way. He may have never lost his love for reading, even if he might have lost his love for the life he had. He may never have lived far away from a bookshop or a library. He might have bought it, or borrowed it, opened it to the first page. He might have read there what I had decided to include only after much painful deliberation. Perhaps, then, I had not been so unconscious of my motives; I might have wished to leave something on this earth that could be excavated as proof that my father had existed.

  I cannot claim James Joyce as a countryman or a life-long inspiration. I was in my twenties when I first read any of his works, novels or poems. But I discovered ‘Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba’ when I needed to understand something about something – which must be why we write and read literature. The poem spoke directly to me, striking chord after chord, just as if the poet could see into my heart. My father used to take me to watch the boat races when I was a child. Not in Trieste, the location for Joyce’s poem, but in the state of Kerala, in South India. ‘Watching the Snakeboats in Alleppey’ is the poem I have never written, and do not have the talent to write. But if I did, I would dedicate it to my father and those happy memories.

  My daughter is watching me and repeats: what does that mean?

  But I only shake my head, I don’t know.

  She returns now, energised, peering eagerly at each letter and picking out the English words, not many, but each a clue of what my father discovered of us. There is only one phrase connected with Danny – radio station – and I ache for my baby brother who never knew his father. Each letter becomes shorter and the last, written in a spidery, trembling hand, is a single paragraph. Her eyes are darting over and over the light blue rectangles. Then she picks up an aerogramme, perhaps the third along from the top.

  What does this say, Mama?

  She points with her finger, and I squint, then my breath is gone: Jonah.

  It is years since I have said the name, heard it spoken, and it transports me, to the scrape of the bark of a tree branch under my bare legs, to a sari being pulled over my head in a wind, to the feel of a tiny hand nestling on my chest. To a strength that did not leave me but stayed with me. Nothing can change how special you are inside. I turn the aerogramme over to check the postmark: 1981. My mother was remarried, we had relocated. Why then and not before would my father mention his name?

  And I remember how we stood together, him and me, that afternoon, watching Jonah and my mother, Danny between them, as Jonah reached his arms high, looped the ropes over the branch, the wooden swing hanging down below, just as later he would loop a leather cord around my neck, a tiny wooden hand at its end. Perhaps that was the day, that was the moment, when my father realised that both my mother and I would look beyond our immediate reach, stretch ourselves and tap against the fragile cocoon of his love and protection, make a small cranny, peel it open and climb out of it. Perhaps even then, my father had discerned something – a spark in my mother in my stepfather’s presence, even in Jonah’s. Perhaps I am holding in my hand an explanation, a request for, if not forgiveness, for some kind of understanding: I watched you with Jonah, that day he brought the swing, and realised I was holding in my hands a beautiful bird, like those you grew up among, that would fly away one day. And so I decided to fly away first, Laila.

  I let the aerogramme flutter forward, watch it slip out of my fingers, swimming away in a tease in a lake. But there are reasons to be happy. Many reasons. My daughter is waiting patiently for the right moment, then she asks: who was Jonah, Mama?

  She has her father’s smile, but her eyes are mine. I stroke her face, so smooth, so untouched. I know I will share everything with her later. Because there lies the difference between myself and my mother. One of us is a storyteller, and the other not.

  Author’s note

  The shooting down of the civilian aircraft and the retaliatory raid on the camp in Lusaka are both real events. Roma Girls’ Secondary School is also real, although it was not closed for an extended period after the raid. The Olikaras share many similarities with my family, the Kalayils, but the differences are plentiful: not least that my father did not leave us. The dynamics and demographics of the people who lived and worked in Lusaka are true for that period of time. The layout of the school and the staff bungalows are all true to my memory and any errors are mine alone.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to my agent Stan for pushing me on, and to my editor Alison Rae for her calm wisdom and excellent eye. Thank you to Jan Rutherford, Kristian Kerr, Lucy Merketis, Edward Crossan, Jamie Harris and all the team in finance, production, publicity and design at Birlinn for all your faith, work and efforts.

  My gratitude to my parents, who gave me my siblings and my education, and to my ever-supportive sisters-in-law, my wonderfully loving friends and readers.

  Thank you to my playmates in Roma and at St Mary’s in Lusaka, now scattered all over the world, to the Devasias family for lending their name, and the Lowthers for their unforgettable patience and generosity.

  I am grateful to Sara Sullam for her discussions on Joyce’s poetry in translation, and to Yulisa Dube, Thabo Kunene and Ian Pringle for their reports and accounts of the cross-border raids into Zambia and Mozambique.

  Thank you immensely, James, for keeping my spirits up as I delved into my past. And finally, to my precious daughters: thank you from my heart for reminding me of my wonderful present.