Monsoon Summer (11 page)

I kept it to myself (knowing he would instantly assure me of my own slimness, lovedness, and so forth), and also because he'd strode a little ahead of me, pleased to remember a shortcut, through a gap in the fence and down a path, that took us past the English Club.

Close to the club, I could see part of the veranda had been damaged and several windows boarded up. A skinny cat dashed from under the house with something in its mouth. When I asked Anto if the riots had been bad here, he stared at the building and said, “Nothing like as bad as the riots and massacres up north. But my family were sparing with information, so I don't really know yet.”
He picked up some empty firework shell from the veranda that must have been part of the victory celebrations. “I only really know what I read in the
London Times
.”

* * *

We threaded our way down a bustling street: rickshaws and stray goats, street merchants selling buckets and bright sweets, lurid papier-mâché gods, a whole head of lamb buzzing with flies. It felt exciting, and I wanted to explore, but he was intent on showing me the Church of Saint Francis, where, he said, Vasco da Gama had been buried before they moved his body back to Portugal. I trailed dutifully behind him into a large building with curved sides like ship sails.

He dipped his hand in the holy water near the door and made a sign of the cross—a surprise for me; he'd told me he was a lapsed Catholic.

I felt he wanted to be alone, and a few moments later, l watched him from a distance: this handsome stranger—my husband—sitting in soft candlelight, eyes tightly shut, face gleaming with sweat, surrounded by stained glass and stone effigies, and the thought came to me: I hope he's not regretting this already.

-
CHAPTER 13
-

“D
o you have an aspirin in your handbag?” he asked me on the following day. We were speeding in a battered taxi towards Mangalath, his family home, one hour's drive from Fort Cochin.

“Sorry, no,” I said. “Headache?” He looked so pale and distant.

“Not really.”

I'd heard him, in the middle of the night, groaning as though in the grips of some kind of nerve storm.

“All right, darling?” I said when he came to bed, hoping he would confide in me.

“I'm fine.” And then, after a long and expectant pause, there was a sucking sound as he turned his back on me. “Thank you,” he said politely, before he went to sleep.

He'd expected the family car to be sent for us with a driver, but a note left for us at the hotel that we were to take a taxi had clearly perplexed and hurt him. I wondered if this was a concealed snub but kept the thought to myself.

It was so hot in the taxi that my dress stuck to the seat, and I felt sick as our driver, a juicy sniffer, drove hectically, one hand on the wheel, through ramshackle villages and potholed roads. And then, on the edge of town, quite suddenly, we were in the most spectacularly beautiful country I had ever seen: a dream of water and earth and sky, where bright-green fields and gorgeously colored trees seemed to float on a series of lakes and waterways, lagoons and backwaters, connected by fragile bridges. Anto stared stonily out the window, hardly moving.

We were crossing a bridge, approaching the village of Aroor, when he turned to me as if remembering I was there.

“Are you nervous?” he asked, at last acknowledging the momentous day ahead. “You will shortly disappear under a mountain of relatives, and I'm afraid they will be very, very curious about you.”

“Not nervous,” I lied. “Excited.” And then, “Is it all very changed?”

“I've changed,” he said softly. He was looking at a small boat adrift in a dazzling stretch of water, sailing towards the horizon.

“It looks like a giant picture postcard,” I said, feeling like a hearty aunt in my startling unoriginality. “It's nice to see it with you.”

When we stopped on the road at a tea shop selling cigarettes and sweets, Anto arranged for us and our luggage to be transferred to a horse and cart. The horse stood in the fierce sunlight, its eyes obliterated by flies. Its barefoot owner cut the top off a coconut with a machete and offered Anto a glass of its milk, which he downed with an ecstatic look. He told me not to drink it until my stomach got stronger; we'd be home soon. I said nothing. I was too hot, and too anxious to talk because we were nearly there. After ten minutes or so, down a dusty road lined with palm trees, Anto gripped my hand tightly.

“We're less than a mile away,” he said when we'd reached a fork in the road. “Half a mile, one hundred yards.” Figures seemed all he could manage now.

And suddenly, there it was: a small stone gatehouse against a lush backdrop of trees, and a wooden sign with
Mangalath
written on it.

Anto exhaled slowly. “This is it.” He let go of my hand. The horse clip-clopped through an avenue of wonderful trees: as bold and showy as cancan dancers, with their waxy blossoms and strangely shaped leaves.

In a gap between the trees, there was half an acre or so of neatly planted vegetables and a chicken run, all very orderly, and then,
through another gap, sapphire-colored water, blindingly bright in the sun and with the bluest of blue skies above.

Three women weeding the vegetable patch straightened as we passed and gave us a hard, bright stare.

“Do they recognize you, Anto?”

“I doubt it,” he said, after another stunned pause. “I was hardly shaving when I left.”

“Anto,” burst from me, “how could you bear it?” Meaning Oxford, grayness, exile. “It's so, so beautiful.”

“It is,” he said woodenly, still staring.

At the end of the drive, two large gold lions glowered from gateposts, their paws resting on shields. Through the gate was an immaculate graveled courtyard, its low walls covered in geranium, hibiscus, and orchids planted in split coconut husks. Beyond the courtyard, a flight of stairs led up to a large, attractive house—far bigger and grander than I'd imagined—with a bright-red pagoda-shaped roof and deep, cool-looking verandas. The whole house was framed by exuberant tropical trees, and above it, that dazzlingly blue sky, so bright it hurt your eyes to look at it.

The horse stopped. I could hardly breathe I was so nervous. A woman in a soft white garment was standing on the veranda, looking down at us. Her hand was over her mouth as if to stop herself screaming.

“Amma,” Anto murmured. “Amma.”

She walked down the steps and broke into a stumbling run. I heard the muffled sob as she stretched out her arms, a long string of words that Anto answered in the same unknown language. I badly wanted Anto to kiss his mother to match her outpouring of emotion. But he stood there, stiff as a post, while she hugged him. And I wished, for his sake, I was invisible.

When Anto at last put his arms around her, I saw her shudder. He patted her back awkwardly. He glanced at me, his worried look conveying shock, not pleasure.

“Amma,” he said, releasing her, “I'd like you to meet my wife, Kit. She thinks this place is lovely.”

“I do.” I smiled and put my hand out. “It's good to meet you at last, and then, absurdly, I said, “Thank you for having us,” and thought, Oh no! Not
us.
This is his home.

Mrs. Thekkeden, who was tall for an Indian woman, seemed to grow then. I watched her shoulders go down, her neck lengthen. She tidied the tears away with a quick, deft gesture. Now I could see she had the same fine cinnamon-colored skin as Anto, the same aristocratic nose. She held out a gracious hand.

“Welcome to Mangalath.” Her smile was tense, automatic. “Are you very tired?”

“Oh, no, no, no.” I felt the need to reassure her. “Not at all.”

“My husband can't be here today to meet you,” she said to me. “He is involved in a big court case in Trivandrum. You don't mind?” A quick anxious look at Anto.

“Of course not,” he said. “Work is work.”

“To him, yes,” she said with a quick hostessy smile. “So, Kit, I must show you our house.” She turned to Anto. “I've decided to put you in the guest room. The others are coming later. We don't want to bury Kit under a mountain of relatives.”

The exact same words Anto had used earlier. She smiled at me again, but her eyes feasted hungrily on Anto as we followed her through the veranda and into an elegant reception room. Inside this room, with its high white ceilings and dark, heavily carved rosewood furniture, photographs of elaborately framed Thekkedens glowered down at us from the walls: serious-looking people with dark eyes and thick hair in dark suits and wing collars, and occasionally in their own costumes. We were walking through them when I heard Anto make a sucking sound and then breathe heavily as if he needed to sob or shout.

“What a beautiful house,” I said, to cover this raw moment.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Thekkeden in a disembodied voice. Her
whole body was angled towards Anto, and then she hugged him hard, and said more words in Malayalam that I didn't understand.

“Tell Kit about the house.” Anto disentangled himself. “She probably imagined us living in a mud hut.”

“Anto! No!” I protested, although I was surprised at how posh the house was.

“What does she want to know?” she asked Anto, and then continued like a polite tour guide. “So, the house and the farm have been in our family for many generations. We have our own granary, where we store rice; our own tennis court; a cricket pitch; a schoolroom where the children were educated . . . I'll tell her more later,” she finished, a faint note of impatience in her voice. “I can't think . . .”

An old man, wiry and short on teeth, burst through the door carrying our luggage. When he saw Anto, he put his palms together and bowed low and babbled.

“His name is Pathrose,” Mrs. Thekkeden explained, with tears in her eyes too. “He is saying, ‘
Kochu muthalay vannallo
,' the young master has come. He's worked for us since Anto was a little boy; now he thanks God that he has seen him again before he dies.”

A slender barefoot boy came next, staggering under the weight of my suitcase. “Kuttan is Pathrose's grandson. He will show you to your bedroom,” she added.

“Thank you,” I said demurely: the mention of the bedroom made me feel oddly shy, as if my new mother-in-law had somehow managed to see us in all our nakedness and abandon.

“May I ask what you would like me to call you?” I asked. “Is there a special name?”

“Actually, you must call me Amma too. It means
Mother
,” Mrs. Thekkeden said evenly. It sounded more like an order than an invitation to intimacy. “That's what I am to you now.”

We looked at each other. “Yes. Good,” I said, feeling my smile as a shy grimace. “Thank you.”

* * *

“When we were little, we called this the bridal suite.”

Anto stood at the door of our bedroom, still sounding in a mild state of shock. It was a large, whitewashed room, sparsely furnished except for a superb wooden bed carved with fruit and birds, placed center stage and made up with a white sheet and thin-looking pillows. There was an old-fashioned wooden fan clanking overhead, but the air felt moist and heavy. The wooden shutters were closed, which gave me a feeling of claustrophobia.

“I've never slept here before,” he added.

“Obviously,” I said, and squeezed his arm, but he was in no mood for joking. “Where was your room?”

“Over there.” He opened the shutter across the courtyard. “Next to Amma's.” He stared at it.

“She's so happy to see you,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Do you mind about your father—not being here, I mean?”

“No.” And then, “It was always like that. He was either in court or away on cases. I don't mind.”

Sunlight fell in dazzling strips through the shutter. We sat side by side on the bed. “So,” Anto said, “I'm home. Prodigal son returns.” He put his hand under my hair and turned my face towards him. “With prodigal wife,” he said, gazing at me. “And a cast of thousands coming soon,” he went on. His voice—or was I imagining this?—had become more Indian already, that buttery thread running through it.

“I'm looking forward to meeting them.” A complete lie. I was tired and overwhelmed and felt childishly close to tears. I saw the family as a test I was bound to fail. I said, “Anto, when they come, go down on your own first. I'm sure they'd prefer that.”

“Do you mind?” His whole expression brightened.

“Not a bit. Honestly.”

“Sure you don't?” He hugged me properly for the first time that day.

“No, really, just don't leave me for hours like the princess in the tower.”

“I won't,” he said. I hoped he'd kiss me.

Instead, he showed me the bathroom so I could wash while he was away. This odd-looking room had a large copper cauldron of cool water in the corner for the bath. Above the bath there was a shelf holding a bundle of twigs, and what Anto said were ayurvedic oils for hair and skin. Thin towels that didn't look like towels, just strips of cotton, hung on hooks on the wall.

“Be careful with water here—we're often short in summer—and don't drink it. I'll bring boiled water up later.” The lavatory, he said, was a short walk outside the house, next to the chicken run. He could show me now if I liked. Later, I said, paralyzed with shyness at the thought of going downstairs.

He went to the bathroom to wash his face, and when he came out, his hair still damp, I lay on the bed and watched him change. He took off his shirt, dusty brogues, dark London trousers, and folded them neatly. When he laid them in a pile on the chair, the empty garments fluttered like ghosts under the fan. Naked apart from his underwear, he went to the rosewood wardrobe and took out a white shirt and a strip of white cloth with a gold border.

“Home clothes.” He glanced at me shyly. “This is the Cochin version of the dhoti . . . Well, this feels strange,” he murmured. He wrapped the white cotton around his waist like a sarong. “Most peculiar.”

I couldn't tell if he was embarrassed or moved to be wearing again the clothes he'd grown up in. All I knew was that Anto, bare-legged, half-naked, had in one startling moment become an Indian husband.

“How do I look?” he said.

“Strange,” I said. I didn't know what to think. I ran my hand
down his spine, wrapped my arms around him. His back made a drum of my voice. “You smell different. What is it?”

“Coconut oil, from our own trees. There's some in the bathroom. You can use it too on your skin and on your hair.”

“Um.” I clung to him: my anchor in a shifting world.

“That's enough of that, woman,” he said, disentangling me. “They're waiting for me downstairs. I'll come up and get you before lunch.”

I'd expected him to say in half an hour, an hour at the most.

When he was gone, I put on my nightdress, and with nothing to do, lay down on the bed and slept, wishing in a way I could sleep forever, astounded at my own naivety at not thinking this through.

A few hours later, at the sound of a car horn, I leapt to my feet and, through a slit in the bamboo blinds, watched my new family arrive. A group of women stepped out of the car. They were dressed in dazzling clothes in every color of the rainbow: cerise, emerald, ocher, gold. They were chattering like jays, jiggling up and down on the spot as if they could barely contain themselves. They love him, I thought with a childish kink in my heart:
my Anto
. I'm not the only one.

I watched him walk his easy athletic walk towards them and stand between the two gold lions at the entrance. The sight of my husband in a mundu would take some adjusting to, but Anto at least had good legs: long and well muscled, not spindly like Gandhi's, but I decided not to tell him that. The old jokes wouldn't work here.