Monsoon Summer (16 page)

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CHAPTER 19
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H
e came to our room that night, lifted my nightdress, and made love to me as if it were our last night on earth.

“I love you, Kit, I love you.” He said it over and over again. My head was jammed against the headboard. “Never forget it.”

“I won't.” I was startled by his tone. “I love you too.”

“This is hard for you,” he said. “You're being brave. Do you trust me?”

“Of course I trust you. Now pass me a glass of water and let's get the mozzie net properly tucked.” I was trying to make things sound normal because he sounded different in a way I couldn't put my finger on. When he didn't respond, I put out the oil lamp, squirted the deet, and tucked the net around us.

He said in a muffled voice and without turning over, “I'm going to sleep now.”

He went off quickly, while I lay awake feeling the heat bear down on me like a soft, soggy cloak. I was getting more and more confused by him. When he woke in the middle of the night, I was still up. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Anto, something's wrong, isn't it?”

He didn't turn over. “Nothing's wrong.” His back was a drum I could feel words through. “I just meant to tell you that Appan said you can start work whenever is right for you. He thinks it's good for women to work.” He might have been reading from a report. I was even more confused. “Anto.” I pulled on his shoulder. “Was it that easy? What did you say?”

“Nothing. It's just that I may have to travel soon. I must get a job.”

“Of course, that's what we planned, and then we can get a house of our own.”

“We'll try.”

I felt my own life being organized behind my back and I hated it.

“Anto,” I said, “something's wrong. I know it is. I can feel it.” But he was gone, as quickly as if someone had stuck a chloroform mask over his face. I got up, knelt beside him, and in the slatted, silvered moonlight studied him: the curve of his cheekbones, his lips, his fine soft skin. Was it a simple case of lust that had led me here? Before him, I'd never known the matchless intoxication of sexual attraction, how it powered you with an energy you could neither predict or control. If another man had asked me to take this journey, would I have been more clear-sighted, less idealistic, less delusional?

* * *

For the next few days, I had the sense of him drifting away. He left early, going for every job he could find, and then one day there was a note, saying he'd had to leave suddenly: he had a job interview up north. He wasn't sure he would get it, but he had to try. He was sorry not to give me the message in person, but would I stick to our agreement of staying for another two weeks at Mangalath?

Mariamma handed the note to me at the breakfast table, with the possibly kind embellishment of “And he said we were to look after you, and have lots of fun.”

“How far north?” I was trying not to look as shocked as I felt. We'd never once discussed the possibility of his working up north, plus it was so unlike him to leave without a word, a kiss, some reassurance.

She patted my hand, said, “Bombay, I think, but dinna fash yourself, the men in our family are always on the move. This morning I am going to show you how to tie a sari.” She had
Anto's quick and irresistible smile. “A surprise for Anto when he gets back.”

Threatened now by the shapeless days ahead, I was grateful for any kind of plan.

After breakfast, Mariamma's little girl Theresa, a sweetly solemn, plump child with huge brown eyes and the early beginnings of a mustache, sat on the veranda staring at me without a word until Mariamma came downstairs, her arms covered in stoles and saris.

The saris smelled delicious. Mariamma explained how depending on the time of year, she and Amma would take them out and refold them with different herbs: jasmine in spring; attar of roses, lemongrass in summer; mitti, or lavender, during the monsoon. She laid them out for me over the wicker chairs, explaining that the chatta and mundu, the simple white blouse and soft white skirt she and Amma wore every day, was “more or less the Nasrani woman's uniform.” The more elaborate jeweled and colored saris were usually for weddings or for kitty parties, when all the women got together for fun and gossip. God save me from one of those yet, I thought in a panic.

“I hear you are starting official duties with a charity soon,” she dropped in casually, giving me the feeling she had been part of a family discussion I hadn't been party to. “So this would be most suitable and cool.” She held up the Nasrani outfit: the white draping skirt with the pleats at the back, the simple cotton blouse. Her smile was friendly, her hands busily folding, stroking, unfolding saris, tucking one or two in the tissue paper she explained was acid-free and protected them from termites, from sweat.

I liked Mariamma: she was was funny and affectionate, and proud of her Scottish sayings and her bookishness. If she felt any sibling protectiveness about Anto and me, she hid it well.

And as she wrapped the sari cloth around me with neat and
practiced hands, part of me was thinking, This must be what it's like to have a sister—getting fizzy about clothes, rolling our eyes about boys, confiding things—for when she told me about Anto earlier, she'd added, “As a boy, he was always sneaking off. He was quite a solitary soul.”

“Really?” I'd said, thinking of our all-too-brief courtship at Wickam Farm and how we'd craved and plotted for more time together.

“We used to play tracking games.” She wound the cloth tighter. “I would leave a trail of clues in the trees, the flower pots, on the jetty, once behind the donkey's ears. Anto and his friends would follow them, for miles sometimes, by canoe or by bike. They had wonderful fun. They were so free.”

“I bet you loved that.”

“I stayed home with Amma,” she said serenely. “My job was to set the clues. I enjoyed that too,” she added, a little defensive. “From an early age here, we're in training to be good wives.”

It was tempting to ask how this fitted with her two years of intoxicating freedom at university. But she, focused, serious, was lifting a sari from tissue paper and putting one end of its length on my shoulder.

“So has he changed much since he was away?”

“Very much,” she said.

“In what way?”

“He's more serious. He makes a lot of jokes but he's sadder.”

I was quietly devastated to hear this, and she, glancing quickly at me, changed the subject, lifting up a sari of gossamer-fine, white silk gauze with a gold border that sparkled like sunlight on water.

“This was for my wedding,” Mariamma said. “I was covered in gold jewelry too.” Her eyes gleamed at the memory. “Such a wonderful day: feasts, fireworks, the wedding parties arriving by boat, and the jetty, the garden, all lit up with flaming torches—so beauti
ful you wanted to cry. The servants loved it too. I wish you'd been there,” she added politely. “What did you wear for your English wedding?” The question I'd dreaded.

“Nothing fancy.” Thinking of the freezing registry office, the curled sandwiches, my mother's expression, Daisy's frantic efforts to compensate. “A tweed suit, a hat.” The look of pleasure in Mariamma's eyes turned to one of disappointment, even disapproval.

“Did Anto mind?”

“No.” Thinking, Liar. I didn't know anymore. “Clothes are still in very short supply in England.”

To cover the awkward pause, Mariamma, wafting rose water, made me try on a sari. Usually I hate the feeling of being dressed—I remembered Ma smacking me, spitting on her hanky, saying brooches out, belts in—but Mariamma's expression was gentle as she patted me, moved me around, and adjusted a fold here and there.

“What sort of clothes you are wearing in England as a very little girl?” She smiled over my shoulder at Theresa, who was watching us with rapt attention. “Our Scottie governess wore tweeds even in the heat.”

“Anything Mother chose—usually in wool,” I answered. “Yes, even woolen bathing suits. Mother knitted them, and they had buttons on the front, and when we went to the seaside and they filled up with water, I looked like a larva on legs.”

“A larva!” Mariamma started laughing, and when she flapped her arms and translated this lam for Theresa, the little girl cackled and threw herself around, and we were all laughing. I was hungry and could smell spices and herbs coming from the kitchen. I was thinking I could be happy here.

“Yes,” I continued, mainly now for Theresa's sake, “woolen hats, very prickly, woolen knickers, one woolen skirt in tweed.”

“Woolen food also?” Theresa spoke in English at last. She beamed, showing her sharp little teeth.

“Definitely woolen food: woolen sausages, woolen potatoes.” A stream of words followed from Theresa.

“She wants you to come to the ladies' party next week,” Mariamma told me. “She says you're . . .” She stopped and drew in her lips. Amma had just entered the room, so quickly she may have been watching us all along.

“Of course, we must ask Amma first,” Mariamma continued smoothly. “We start with a lot of prayers, which you may find boring, so maybe for later.”

Amma didn't say a word, just took a long appraising look at me, half-draped in a pale-pink sari, another kind of larva about to shed, or add, a skin.

“Can you walk in it?” she asked at last, trying for a smile.

I tried, a sort of graceless hobble to begin with, and then remembering how Mariamma did it: smaller steps, greater awareness of posture. Theresa clapped her podgy little hands.

“How does it feel?” Amma's face was expressionless.

“Quite different,” I said, which was true: I felt taller, more womanly, and, once I'd got the walk right, almost stately. I also felt bandaged, swaddled, held in, like someone in a three-legged race but thought it best not to mention this.

“She looks pretty?” Theresa closed one eye, screwed up her funny little face like a Paris seamstress. When I looked at her I imagined the children I would have with Anto—though, please God, not yet.

“Very pretty,” said Amma faintly.

“We were thinking Kit could wear this for work.” Mariamma held up the plain white outfit.

“For work, yes.” Amma was sort of smiling and sort of frowning. “Anto says you start next week. Are you happy with that?”

“Yes.” I tried to sound humble but clear, sure of myself but not obnoxious.

“Good,” Amma said drily. “So you got your own way at last. You do know I'm not happy about it, don't you?”

“I sort of guessed,” I said. “And I'm sorry.” Her expression froze. Later, when I was walking back to my room, she stopped me in the corridor, pinched my arm, and glared at me, a hard, bright look full of intent.

“You must never discuss your work within the family,” she said. “That's one thing I must insist on. Do you understand?” I told her I did, but I didn't, not properly, not yet.

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CHAPTER 20
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T
errified that I would oversleep, or that Amma would forbid it at the last moment, I hardly slept a wink before my first official day at work. I got up at four a.m., read for a while, and arrived an hour early at Alleppey, where, at seven thirty in the morning, the wooden jetty buzzed with fish sellers, coconut juice vendors, and a sleepy child selling fried crisps and wooden snakes.

I found Dr. A. sitting in a wicker chair outside a wooden fisherman's hut looking very grand and impersonal, and not much friendlier than the first day I'd met her. The anxious-looking, bespectacled woman beside her, she introduced as Maya, “Our fully qualified midwife.”

Maya gave a wincing smile, and when she looked at me, I saw, underneath an impressive pair of men's glasses, a fading green and purple bruise.

Our boat was a battered old rice boat with
Moonstone
written on its side in faded red lettering. It was a beautiful, romantic-looking thing with its gracefully curved lines and a bamboo roof which flung patterns of sunlight on the floor. Dr. A. explained to me, in a bored monotone, that its deck was tied together with rope coated with resin from cashew nuts and fish oil, and that the boat was both an urgent necessity—the only way they could visit some villagers—and “a serious drain on finances,” since it needed “complete restoration.”

While the boat was being loaded with boxes of medical sup
plies and cardboard signs for the midwife classes, Dr. A. settled back in her chair and withdrew into the magnificent citadel of her mind (either that, or she'd fallen asleep), and Maya, who had the sweet, shy smile of a child, became more and more animated as she hopped on and off the boat to show me around.

In a tiny squalid kitchen at the end of the boat, she pointed to a stove, “where you may cook your rice and chaya.” And then, pointing to a duck innocently floating by, she mimed strangling him. “For our dinner.”

When I asked what our plan for the day was, Maya beamed at me through her horn-rimmed glasses and produced a map from under the saucepans.

“Our first port of call,” she said, “is Champakulam, where we will have a confab with some local midwives to try and persuade them to do our training. Next we'll go to see a postpartum mother who has had a big,
big
baby: twelve pounds, poor thing. The biggest ever in the village.” Query diabetes, I thought, but said nothing.

“We'll also see a mother on the point of delivery.”

I was getting used to the lackadaisical rhythms of India by now—the chai, the chat, the
hawa khana
, which Anto had told me was Hindi for chewing air—but this seemed an awful lot of work to get through in a day, and I'd promised, actually sworn, to Amma I'd definitely be home that night. I tried to disguise the panic I felt.

“How long will it take?”

When she replied, “Oh, two days definitely,” my scalp prickled with alarm, and before the boat left, I had to jump ashore, yell for the driver (glares from Dr. A., whom I woke up), and scribble a groveling note to my mother-in-law, saying I might be delayed but no one was to worry about me. When our boat's bell rang, I was hauled aboard by Maya's surprisingly strong arms. Dr. A., frowning, watched me from the prow of the boat: a huge black shadow framed by the sun. But I soon forgot her and my other worries about Anto and Amma and all the rest of it, it was so wonderful
being out on the river, and
I was here, I was working
. It ran like a song through my head all that morning. Plus, the first shy shoots of friendship had sprung up between me and Maya, whose general demeanor was sweet and friendly and whose English, like that of so many other locals, was excellent.

As the boat chugged through the narrow waterways, I felt a sense of relief: I was entering a wonderfully new and secret world, one that was separate from the Thekkedens with all their rules and expectations and disquiet about me. Around the first bend in the river I saw a whole family—parents, children, dogs, buffalos—washing in the water, and next, a row of rainbow-colored women walking in single files through rice paddies, with water pots on their heads—and there, colorful shacks and tiny, neatly planted gardens; hovels; a fierce old lady peeling her vegetables; a Hindu temple, so close its incense prickled my nose, with a temple priest waving at us from the bank. Around us were rice paddies and palm trees reflected in the water, and soft hills beyond that looked like clouds, and clouds that looked like hills, and families of ducks that virtually ignored the gentle splash of our boat. The flash of a kingfisher wing, the leap of a fish. I don't think I had ever been so spellbound or so happy.

A large canoe passed carrying a load of giggling schoolgirls, hair plaited and tied with white ribbons, long blue skirts, shirts white, smart enough to go to a posh girls' boarding school.

“I know them all.” Maya returned their waves. “I delivered two of them. One took two days and nearly killed me.”

On the opposite side of the river, a pathetic scrap of a girl—no more than six or seven—stopped washing clothes when she saw us pass. When she waved a skinny arm at us, her collarbone popped out like organ stops. Maya told me the poor people were poorer than ever around here, what with the war and the rice crop being bad last year. That girl was an orphan, but I was not to worry about her: “In India, the children belong to everyone, grandmas, aunties, friends.”

So why had my mother fallen through this particular net, I wondered, and ended up in an orphanage? I felt the jagged pain, familiar as an old injury, of wondering if she missed me. On the ship coming over, I'd written two letters to her, half hoping to hear she still loved me, that she forgave me. I'd followed up with another letter and two postcards from Mangalath, but the silence from her end was deafening, and I was starting to believe her “dead to me” ultimatum.

To stop my gloomy thoughts, I asked Maya about her training and if she would mind my taking notes. She told me that after delivering babies for many years with no formal training, she'd been persuaded by Dr. A. to do three years of general nursing in Madras, followed by one year of midwifery.

“My family allowed me to do this because my husband is ill, he has a heart problem, but now he hates what I do,” which was pretty obvious from the green and purple shiner. “Most nurses here,” she added with a shrug, “are life dust: widows, orphans, or deserted wives. Until recently there was no formal training of midwives at all. We caused a very big stir.” She added with a wide smile, “But now there is a very big government push towards it.”

I marveled at her calm, cheerful presence; it made my blood boil too. Every bloody religion in the world pretends to care about mothers, children, the sick, and the lame—but they can't mean it, not really.

We were talking when Dr. A. rose like a large whale from the prow of the boat. She pointed towards a cluster of mud shacks on the riverbank, the spire of a white church.

“Champakulam,” she said to me, adjusting her sari and picking up her large doctor bag. “Two local midwives will see us there.”

Only two! Daisy had led me to believe there'd be a classroom crammed with them, but I followed the doctor meekly off the boat and down a dirt road—filthy drains, lots of stinky rubbish, an old woman with milky eyes selling fish—to a small whitewashed con
vent on the edge of the village, where an old French nun was waiting for us.

The nun led us to a windowless room at the back of the church where two women were waiting. The first midwife, Amba Kannan, was a small, wiry, aggrieved-looking woman, about thirty-five years old, arms covered in cheap gold bangles. The other covered her face when she saw us and said in a reluctant mumble that her name was Latika.

Amba greeted Dr. A. politely with a
namaste
but then let go a torrent of words. Dr. A. listened silently, sympathetically wagging her head, and then turned to me. “Her biggest problem is this: some of the people in this village have stopped paying the local midwives for their work because they hear that you are paying them now. She says—” She listened to another blast of invective. “They are being treated like criminals.”

“Please tell them we only pay for training,” I said to Dr. A.

“This I have explained to them, but they are angry and do not trust British peoples anymore.” Dr. A. snorted noncommitally. “She would like some money now to make up for what she has lost.”

“May I ask how much they charge for each delivery?” I asked.

“It's very meager; twelve to sixteen rupees is standard.” In En­glish money, between one and two pounds.

I made a note of it in my new notebook, as if I knew what I was doing. “How many deliveries does Amba do, on average, each month?” Another torrent of words.

“Last month five. In total, three thousand.”

“Three thousand. Good God!”

“Yes, three thousand,” came the firm reply. “Maybe more.” Amba's s eyes darted towards me, a proud curve to her lip.

Now Maya translated for my benefit. “Dr. Annakutty is proud to announce that now Independence has come, Travancore will be the best country in the world to have a baby in, and that we have
only come to show them simple things.” Dr. A.'s head was waggling fit to fly off her shoulders.

“More hygienic methods.” Maya rubbed her hands like Lady Macbeth. “Example: not moving from baby to baby without washing our hands, or leaving the—” She didn't finish the sentence. Dr. A. was shaking her head forbiddingly and looking at me.

“They are talking about the afterbirth,” she mumbled at last. “I will explain this later.”

“So.” After another majestic snort, Dr. A. clapped her hands loudly. “Time to begin.”

The two midwives sat cross-legged on the floor and Dr. A. rattled on at a tremendous pitch. She produced a plastic pelvis from her bag and a stained wooden doll and demonstrated various angles of delivery.

It was beastly hot, but it felt good to feel my brain engaged again. After a half-hour talk, Maya, like some obstetric Father Christmas, unpacked brown-paper parcels full of sterilized maternal pads, babies' milk bottles, a jar of lubricant, and three pairs of rubber gloves.

While these offerings from the wonderful world of modern medicine were laid out on the stone floor, I reminded myself to tell Daisy that Dr. A. had the rest of the supplies at her house. Maya was demonstrating how much lubricant she used on a rubber glove, when the door flew open and the old French nun appeared. She said there might be a baby on the way.

Dr. A. turned to me. “You must go with Maya; she knows this girl and will know what to do.”

As we headed in searing heat down the dusty street, I was sweating with alarm. The memory of the redheaded girl was always there, lying behind some sopping black curtain in my mind, and I honestly didn't know if I could cope.

“Miz Kit,” Maya said, “no rush.” She steered me around an old man sitting on the pavement with his sewing machine and told me
the girl we were going to see was sixteen years old. Her name was Prasanna and she was having her second baby. Five weeks before delivery, she'd moved into her mother-in-law's house.

“Her relatives sell fish like these people.” She pointed to an ancient couple sitting on the other side of the lane. Beside them a bamboo mat was covered in shiny-looking fish and some bunches of chilies.

“When we get there”—Maya reached into the canvas bag she was carrying, handed me a stethoscope—“put this round your neck and I'll tell them you're an English doctor. They will think you bring good luck.” When I shook my head, she put the stethoscope back into her bag, patted me reassuringly. “For later then,” she said. “You may stay and watch.”

* * *

We found the girl inside a dirt-floor hut, lying on what looked like a pile of packed sand with a few dirty rags scattered around. The sand, Maya told me, was a good way to soak up blood. Two women were cooking over a smoky wood-fire stove—one chopping onions, the other stirring a pot of rice gruel. There was no sense of panic here.

The girl was half-asleep when we arrived, beads of sweat gleaming on her forehead. She smiled when she opened her eyes and saw Maya. The pains she told her were coming, “
Vegan
and
adupichu
.” Thick and fast, Maya translated.

“I thought you said the village midwife would do this delivery,” I said.

“Maybe.” Maya shrugged. “We'll have to see.”

The mother-in-law padded silently into the room, barefoot and holding a saucepan of unappetizing-looking lentils in her hand. Her hair was grizzled and gray; she looked tired. When I took out my recorder's notebook, I saw my hands were shaking.

When I asked her to confirm Prasanna's age, she looked blankly at me and scratched her head.

“She's not sure,” Maya said, adding that wasn't particularly unusual around here. I carried on down my list: How many other babies did Prasanna have? One. Length of labor? Ten hours.

When half an hour later the girl's tummy started to tense and strain, Maya pulled the thin sheet back and told me to stand in a spot in the corner.

“This we call thinking with our fingers.” She brushed her fingers over the pulsating dome of Prasana's belly, prodding here, listening intently, feeling the sides of her belly with questing hands. “The baby is in a good position,” she said. “No need for fuss.” A cockerel crowed through the open window; a bell tinged as a bicycle rattled through the lanes.

We both smiled when a small foot suddenly popped under the skin, as if the baby were saying, “Hear, hear!”

Maya put on her rubber gloves, lubricated her fingers, and did an internal exam. The quiet economy of her movements, her calmness, reminded me of old Jack, a horse breaker who came to Wickam Farm, and the sly, almost unconscious way he could slip a horse's head into its first bridle, almost before the animal knew it.