The Ivory Swing (10 page)

16

Over the mosquito coils and oil lamps and the fug of curry and coconut oil, Juliet caught David's eye.

“I met two fascinating men today. Actually I had met each of them once before.”

“Did we have to have fish
again?”
Jonathan whined.

“No. We could have had chicken but after today's little adventure I couldn't face playing daisy-chains with intestines.”

“It's marvellous the way you attract men,” David said. “No matter where in the world you are. They materialize like churchgoers at Easter and Christmas.”

“Couldn't we have some really profane imagery once in a while? How about: Like mongrels around a bitch in heat'? Or at least some local colouration: Tike temple urchins around a tourist'?”

He smiled at her, delighted.

(It's that look again, she sighed inwardly treasuring it and chafing at it. The
abbé
with his statue of the Magdalene anointing Christ's feet: A genuine fallen woman reclaimed! he thinks with racy reverence.)

“I want hamburger,” Jonathan said.

“Hamburger.” Miranda picked it up, a tearful plaint, old cravings and disorientations overwhelming her.

“Why can't we?” Jonathan persisted.

“I've already told you why a thousand times. Because you can be sure that any beef the Muslim merchants sell in the market has been found dead on a roadside somewhere. Of tough old age or disease. You think any of them wants to get mobbed for killing a cow? Put some more yoghurt on your fish.”

“I'm sick of yoghurt, I'm sick of fish. I want some —”

“Remember the mango ice-cream?”

“Ice-cream!” Their eyes lit up. “Can we go again tomorrow?”

“Okay that's a promise. Now eat —”

David raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Mango ice-cream?”

“I've been trying to tell you, if everyone would let me finish.”

“Ah. The men you picked up.”

“My! Your slang is getting quite risque! Actually one of them picked
me
up, more or less literally. And I suppose, in a manner of speaking, I made a pass at the other one. I did solicit his company And there was an exciting moment when hundreds of men mobbed me.”

“Could you transpose this into a quieter and more intelligible key?”

“Doesn't it bother you, men massing around me like mosquitoes over the paddy?”

“It's never bothered me. It flatters me. Gives me a sense of having outbid the rest of the world for a rare treasure at an art auction.”

“How come nothing ever rattles you? Why can't you have the decency to be nasty once in a while? Or suspicious? Or jealous?”

You know nothing, he thought, of the anxiety you have stirred up since you called out to someone in your sleep. Of how a voice I heard once on the telephone twelve years ago has begun to haunt me. Yet it was base of him to doubt her.

He said quietly: “Because you remind me of a cherub in Chartres Cathedral. Or is it Notre Dame? Anyway there's one with a wicked glint in its eye and a faintly lecherous smile, but there it soars over the choir screen, pure as a hymn.”

No, she thought. You've got it the wrong way around. I have a misleadingly innocent face but a gypsy heart and wayward feet. Yet how could she convince him? And even Jeremy claimed:
the illusion of risk
,
that's all you want.
Was she tamer or purer than she liked to think?

“Funny you should mention hymns. I thought of the Psalms today. Our lives were in danger, you know. We could have been killed.”

His eyes flicked towards her, wide with alarm, but wary, knowing her capacity for extravagance.

And immediately she regretted her instinct for melodrama, seeing an unnecessary fear somersault through the children's thoughts.

“I'm just joking. We had an adventure. Hundreds of men stopped our taxi to wave at us and we felt like royalty in a carriage, didn't we?”

“I didn't like them,” Miranda said. “I was frightened.”

“Well, even the Queen probably doesn't like it too much, you know. It's part of the job. And then fortunately one of the men said, ‘Okay, gentlemen, thank you very much. They would like to leave now.' And he drove us to the canal. And then the other man, who was the Matthew Thomas I told you about, that man I met at the beach, he came and picked us up in his car and took us to the Simla Coffee House and bought us mango icecream. And we had a wonderful day, right?”

Oh yes, the children agreed. The mango ice-cream was wonderful. And could they really go again tomorrow?

“Would you mind,” David said sombrely when the children were in bed, “telling me what really happened?”

“Just what I said. It was a Marxist demonstration, thats all. But not in the least dangerous. I have Matthew Thomas's word for it. The three splinter groups are constantly demonstrating against each other. They go on all the time. Quite harmless.”

“That's probably true,” he said slowly pondering it. “The really interesting thing is the way the caste structure has penetrated even the Maoist group. I've been analyzing some of their leaflets for Hindu symbolism and whats amazing —”

“Oh David, David!” She wound herself around his body, teasing him. “I'm sure you're going to tell me every tedious detail.”

He grinned sheepishly.

“And are you going to tell me you weren't scared? With a mob surrounding you?”

“Of course I wasn't scared.”

“The Psalms just came to you naturally, as part of the general exuberance of the occasion.”

“Well. I may have been nervous for a few minutes, before I grasped the situation. But only on account of the children.”

“You're such a magnificent liar,” he said, kissing her.

17

In the scant shade of a banana palm which hung over the granary wall, Juliet sat cross-legged, watching the children, watching the threshing, fanning herself with Annie's postcard.

Slender Harijan women, delicately balancing vast bundles of fresh-cut rice on their heads, filed in from the paddy and dumped their loads onto the shiny earth of the granary — really a large courtyard with walls of sun-dried mud.

The women formed two lines facing one another across the spreading mountain of hay as though they were taking up positions for a minuet. The members of one line lifted their six-foot paddles high above and behind their heads in unison and crashed them down on the cut stalks. As they raised them again, the flails of the other line descended. Thwack-thwack-pause. Thwack-thwack-pause. Juliet found herself silently composing chants to the rhythm. Mon-soon time, mon-soon time. Tri-van-drum, Tri-van-drum, My
mantra
, she thought. I will drift helplessly into a transcendental stupor.

Contemplating the strong young bodies of the threshers, she thought: Blessed are those who are poor in Kerala. For their bodies are aesthetically superior to those of the overfed rich and they give great pleasure to the beholder.

She wandered out into the paddy where elderly women moved through the sucking mud with little hand sickles, painstakingly cutting stalk by stalk. Poverty and age had shrivelled them; they were gaunt, their faces weathered as the rocks at Cape Comorin.

The threshers wore close-fitting midriff blouses with their brightly batiked
lungis
, but the reapers were bare-breasted, old enough to have been raised in the days when it was improper for low-caste women to wear an upper garment. Their trailing earlobes, once punctured by heavy dowry jewellery long since sold for food, swung to and fro like slack ropes.

Shivaraman Nair appeared suddenly from the granary gates, businesslike in his white shirt and
dhoti
, stark and aloof as a god among his gaudy underlings.

“Good morning, Mrs David Juliet!” he thundered in boisterous good spirits. “Are you enjoying watching my rice harvest?”

“Very much,” she replied, saluting him with hands together and inclined head. “The paddy is so beautiful with its ring of tall trees — like a green jewel that someone has dropped down between the coconut palms.”

It was simplest to be slightly excessive in conversation with Shivaraman Nair.

“Yes, yes! Correct, correct!” he said, delighted. “That is exactly what my paddy is being. You are putting it very correctly, Mrs David Juliet. You are appreciating Indian beauty. Oh, I am so wishing that you could see the movie which was made on my estate. All this paddy and my house — my house that you are living in — are looking so beautiful in the film. It is in colour. Very excellently made. All over India they are showing this film, in Hindi cinemas and Tamil cinemas, with translation. Everyone is seeing my estates and loving. In this paddy the lovers are meeting and they are going over there into the little forest. But their love is forbidden and the family is punishing the girl. Then the young man kills himself from sorrow. Very beautiful. So sad and tragic.”

“Is the movie based on a true story? Was there a tragic love affair here on your estates?”

He was taken off guard.

“No, no! You are not understanding, Mrs David Juliet. Sadness is in poetry. Art is being tragic, only art. Life itself is not sad. These things are not happening in real life because the parents are choosing wisely. That is why our marriages in India are always very good. We are not having divorce in India. In the West your marriages are very bad because young people are choosing for themselves, isn't it? This is very foolish proceeding, very foolish. Young people cannot make such deep decisions wisely. It is very terrible, these thousands of divorces in the West. I am reading in the newspapers. Our way is much better. It can be seen in the marriages.”

“Perhaps you are right,” she said politely.

If she were to ask him: But are Indian marriages happier? they would not be any closer to understanding one another. They would disagree so totally on the interpretation of happiness and on whether it was in any way germane to marriage. He might well ask her: Do marriages in the West allow husband and wife to fulfill their
dharma
correctly?

“I hope that when your children are marrying, Mrs David Juliet, you will be remembering the better ways you have learned in India, and you and Professor David will choose for your children.”

“I hope that when my children are grown and considering marriage, Mr Shivaraman Nair, they will remember what they know of families in India and in our own country. I hope this will help them to choose wisely for themselves.”

“
Ayyo, ayyo!” he
said wonderingly, shaking his head and gesturing with his hands to indicate despair and amusement. “How would a father buy a husband for such a woman? How is Professor David living with this arguing? Such lack of respect for authority would have to be sweetened with a very large dowry, Mrs David Juliet”

“But surely,” she said demurely, “with your beautiful house as the bridal gift there would be no problem. Your son-in-law would be happy to marry a
yakshi
if he could live with her in that house.”

“Yes, yes,” he said delighted. “Very true, very true, Mrs David Juliet! Again you are putting things very correctly!”

He clapped his hands with pleasure like a child who has watched the balloon man at the fair release all his strings at once.

“Now I must speak to these Harijan peoples,” he said abruptly, having suddenly remembered that he was a prince of the land who had come to the paddy on business.

“I have heard that all the rain is affecting the harvest. Is this true?”

“Yes, yes. It is very bad, very bad. It is not natural between monsoons, all this rain. But when
dharma
is not followed, everyone is suffering. Truth is broken. Nothing is keeping in correct bounds, people or monsoons.”

She was taken aback by the sudden darkness of his mood. And bewildered.

“How has
dharma
been broken?”

He did not answer but looked with hostility across at the forest beyond the paddy.

He means Yashoda, she realized uneasily. He must know about the market escapade. Did he see her with David the other morning? How long had they talked?

Shivaraman Nair clapped his hands sharply and called an order to one of his superintendents. The man in turn clapped his hands and relayed the order to the workers in the field, who began to assemble before the neatly stacked piles of cut rice on the levee.

The sun was high in the sky now, too savage for working under. Daily wages were to be meted out. Each worker received a small bundle of rice to carry home to her mud hut where she would thresh it and winnow it and cook it for her family. Obviously, Juliet thought, there is scant insurance against tomorrow's hunger.

Although the workers and Shivaraman Nair were within hearing distance of each other, all queries were addressed to the superintendent who relayed the messages back to Shivaraman Nair. There was something comical about it, and it was silly and inefficient, a throwback, perhaps unconscious, to the days when Untouchables could be cut down with a naked sword for coming within ninety-six paces of a Brahmin or forty paces of a Nair.

Shivaraman Nair was unaware of Juliet now, intent on dispensing wages and decisions which he doubtless felt to be just and equitable.

She made her way carefully along the serpentine levees towards the forest beyond the paddy.

18

The forest was different. Juliet stepped outside of time altogether, even out of Indian time which drowsed along slipshod and haphazard from dawn to sunset. The forest was dank and dark and secret. The sun itself, that blatant strutting tyrant of the paddy, could only peep through its chinks like a voyeur.

Of course this was where the lovers of Shivaraman Nair's movie would come, thought Juliet. Of course it was where all lovers would come. It was where Radha would wait for Krishna, perfumed and ornamented, pining on her bed of springy pond reeds, her kohl-lined eyes darting along the path, the little bells on the slender golden chain about her waist tinkling impatiently.

Juliet breathed in the damp pungent smell of vines and fungi, the fragrance of bushes which still flowered in bright splashes where the sun fingered them through gaps in the treetops. In front of her feet the decaying ground cover suddenly heaved and rustled. She froze and watched the undulation glide away under the trees. Snake!

She rallied herself: Yashoda walks here every day. She licked her dry lips and walked on again. At first she thought it must be her imagination but then she was sure she could hear laughter and splashing and now and then a few notes of a flute. She reached the edge of the clearing and stood hidden behind a screen of ferns, feeling like an intruder.

The house was small with large thatched eaves that kept it in shadow. It was of hand-made sun-dried brick, thickly whitewashed, humble and traditional, not like the newer more splendid houses on the estate. It was in fact one of the original houses of the old Nair
tarawad
, that social and political unit of the extended family which, like the estate itself, had been broken up considerably over the last fifty years.

Beside the house was the obligatory well and beside that a small pond, or lake, actually the original family tank used for ritual bathing before
puja.
Yashoda was swimming in it, or playing, only her head and shoulders visible, and Prabhakaran was standing at the edge doing little frolicking dance steps, intermittently playing a few bars on his flute, but interrupting himself with peals of laughter. He seemed to be teasing her, chanting something, advancing to the water's edge, fluting, laughing, retreating. Every time he advanced, Yashoda would slap the surface of the water hard with both hands and splash him. She was laughing and scolding.

Juliet watched with amazement. She was certain that it was highly irregular for a Nair lady to flirt and play with a servant boy in this way. She could not translate what they were calling out to each other because they were speaking so rapidly in the shrieking high-pitched rhythms of excitement and merriment.

Then Yashoda lifted both arms high in order to splash Prabhakaran and Juliet's eyes widened as she saw Yashoda's breasts rise out of the water.

It was only for a moment.

Now the water lapped her shoulders again and her black hair floated around her like a dark lily pad.

Juliet looked about, puzzled, and finally saw the sari fluttering like a streamer from high in a mango tree.

He has stolen her clothes, she realized. Prabhakaran has climbed the tree and put her sari out of reach. That is what the teasing and scolding is about.

Juliet had often seen women bathing in India, at public wells, in village streams, in temple tanks, in the ocean. They always did so fully clothed, their wet saris wrapping their bodies like an extra skin. Yashoda must surely have come to take for granted the isolation of her daily existence. Yet she did not seem to be offended by Prabhakaran's presence. In fact she was clearly enjoying herself, flirtatious and excited as a schoolgirl.

Of course, Juliet reminded herself, Prabhakaran has seen
me
naked, and I was the only one disconcerted. Perhaps it meant nothing to Yashoda because he was just a servant. Or just a child. Perhaps for someone young and beautiful and sensual and condemned to widowhood, it was a safe sexual outlet.

She remembered their meeting on the path outside her house, one early morning when Prabhakaran had offered milk. There was certainly some bond of affection between them, that of an abandoned child and a young woman yearning for motherhood perhaps, or simply the kinship of two lost and lonely children. If society had already tossed Yashoda carelessly outside its barriers, perhaps the codes of class and caste no longer had any hold over her. A friend was a friend.

It seemed to Juliet, watching them, that they were two children, pure and undefiled, playing harmless games in a paradisal garden. She turned silently, like a guilty voyeur from a sacred scene, and made her way back through the forest, watching for snakes.

And with the dark swiftness of a snake the air ahead of her moved. Took shape, erect and swaying like a cobra. She felt the dizzying reverse jerk of her blood against the body's momentum.

But it was Shivaraman Nair, equally startled, entering from the paddy. Looming with threat. She slid into a different fear, an anxiety to protect.

“You frightened me! I thought you were a snake,” she said, laughing a little, breathless.

He seemed more disoriented than she was. His eyes had not adjusted, she was still part of the shadows. And with the sun behind him like an excessively bright halo, he seemed to her simply a black portent, unreadable.

He recovered himself at last. “You have been visiting my kinswoman.”

“Yes.” She had to stall him. Lure him into conversation. “It is difficult for us … for me … for a western woman … to understand why … It seems to us very unfair, this isolation.”

He did not answer but nor did he make any attempt to continue on his way. He seemed as reluctant to move as she was. The long pause made her nervous.

“Your customs are so … puzzling to us. For example, this practice of confining young widows …” If he could just be tempted into lengthy explanation and defense.

But he was abrupt, irritated. “You are married, Mrs David Juliet. You are also a mother, yes, you are being a good mother. Even though you are having wrong habits of lacking in respect for men, you are a virtuous woman. Yes, yes, that is my opinion. Therefore you are not understanding the ways of such a woman as my kinswoman.”

“What do you mean?”

“A woman like that, so soon after the death of her husband, to show no respect. There is no goodness in her. Who can tell what such a one will do? You are not understanding that sort of woman, Mrs David Juliet. Their thoughts wander after men, straying in all directions like the roots of the banyan tree. This rottenness will spread, everything will suffer.”

How unjust, she raged, shaking with suppressed anger. How primitively male! And yet, and yet, scandal will inevitably cling to Yashoda. She is too beautiful for her own safety. David is mesmerized. Even I am under her spell. Even Shivaraman Nair?

And he would stride on towards the pond, his crass suspicions glibly confirmed. “Have you come to take her away again?” she asked, playing for time.

“No, no! No, no!” His vehemence bewildered her. “You are quite wrong, Mrs David Juliet. I was not visiting my kinswoman. Not at all. I am inspecting the timber of my forest.”

“Oh.”

Why such energy of denial?

A disturbing thought presented itself, but she brushed it aside as improbable. Surely it was only her febrile imagination.

He scared her then by a sudden roar of anger. She could not think what she had done, but she was not the object of his wrath. Her delaying tactic had been overly successful. Prabhakaran was behind her on the path, snap-frozen, suspended in flight like a statue of winged Mercury.

Shivaraman Nair spoke volubly raging as white water, spitting and foaming and unintelligible in Malayalam. Prabhakaran trembled visibly, a dark blush spread across his face and seemed to cover his bare torso like a rash. Shivaraman Nair reached the climax of his crescendo of fury, clapped his hands sharply, and Prabhakaran came to life again, fleeing.

“Who can tell what that woman will do!” stormed Shivaraman Nair. “Everything is breaking its bounds! With a
peon
! A
peon
! That boy is no good, Mrs David Juliet. He is lazy. There must be more work for him. There must be no more taxis. He is a
peon.
Please be remembering!”

He turned and strode back towards the paddy smashing ferns with his feet.

Barbarian! she fumed silently.

When Prabhakaran came with the evening milk she took him aside.

“Has there been trouble for you? What did Shivaraman Nair say to you?”

The blush spread over his body again and he trembled. He would not speak.

“Did he say you were lazy?”

He nodded.

“That is not true, Prabhakaran. You are a hard worker, a good worker. To us it seems that you work much too hard. Is that all he said?”

He shook his head.

“What else?”

Silence.

“I cannot tell you,” he said at last, miserably tearful.

He is a child, a child, she thought with anguish. And he has been accused of adult misbehaviour. He may not even understand. He has no one to talk to, no parent to offer refuge. She put her arm around his shoulders.

“Would you like to stay here tonight?”

“
Venda, venda
” he replied nervously backing away, Adult. Distanced. With responsibilities of his own. “I must stay near the cows.”

Jonathan and Miranda were calling from the bedroom: Story time! Story time!

“Stay and hear a story before you go then.”

And he smiled and became a child again, joining the huddled circle on Jonathan's bed, waiting for Jonathan's translations and subtitles, eyes widening at the adventures of those children who found a magic door in the back of a closet and slipped through it into a secret and fabulous world.