The Ivory Swing (17 page)

In the lulls between nightmares, Matthew and Yashoda talked softly, partly to keep themselves awake. Perhaps it was the privacy of the darkness, perhaps the shared intimacy of anxiety and helplessness before the frightfulness of Jonathan's dreams. Perhaps it was even because of their different castes, different faiths, different ages. The intimacy of travellers, strangers who never expect to meet again, whose social spheres will never intersect. And there was nobody to eavesdrop, to carry reports. There was only Prabhakaran on whom Yashoda smiled fondly whenever he moved and reminded them of his presence.

Matthew Thomas told her of Kumari, of his newest hopes, wild thoughts only, of visiting her in America. She told him of her widowhood and her loneliness. He spoke of his wife, long dead, whom he had loved dearly. She spoke of her fears, her own dreams for a future, her longing for love.

The night passed. Sometimes they drowsed. Just before dawn Matthew Thomas stirred, started, remembering where he was. The oil lamps had burned out. There was no sign of the boy. Yashoda was lying awkwardly across Jonathan's bed, one arm under her face like a child, sleeping.

Matthew Thomas bent over her, placed his hand lightly on her shoulder, and kissed her, the merest chaste whisper of a kiss, on the cheek. Because she reminds me of Kumari, he told himself as he slipped quietly outside to his car.

27

Annie woke first. Dawn was slipping down through the canopy of plantain leaves discreetly as a kitchen servant kindling the day's fires.

She sat up and looked at Prem. His long dark lashes brushed his cheeks, his black hair was slicked around his face in damp tendrils. He is like a figure from Botticelli, she thought. Perfect as a child. Almost too beautiful for a man. There was a certain appealing androgyny about Indian men, she thought. It was apparent in their painting and sculpting traditions. The only way one could ever tell Radha's face from Krishna's was that his was always represented as blue.

Dinesh's body had been delicate and hairless as a woman's, but possessed of an extraordinary muscular agility and strength that was indisputably masculine. Dinesh, movie playboy, connoisseur of European and American cities and women, peaceful conformer and discreet subverter of Indian family expectations, author of a thousand and one sexual delights. Annie sighed in fond and regretful memory

She watched the frisky newborn sun playing across Prem's face. She looked up through the turret of leaves at the light, and folded her arms across her breasts, hugging herself with pleasure because life was so unfailingly intoxicating and infinitely variable.

I am a princess in her round tower, and I am about to waken the Sleeping Prince with a kiss. She leaned over towards Prem's lips which were as full and sensuous and inviting as Krishna's, but just then he woke and sat up abruptly, startled, embarrassed.

Annie smiled at him, her lips still slightly parted, unabashed. Prem felt as though his entire blood supply had raced to all the extremities of his body at once, leaving a terrifying vacuum in the region of his heart which seemed to be careening down some newly opened abyss within him. It seemed in fact to plummet to his loins, on a collision course with the rest of his blood. He drew his knees up to his chest, wishing desperately that he had worn his loose pajama
lungi
as usual instead of remaining in his close-fitting daytime western pants. He had no idea what to do. He had never slept with a woman. He sat hunched tight in embarrassment, afraid to move and expose the roaring confusion of his blood and his emotions.

Women were so very unavailable in India. Even at the university, where one could meet young unchaperoned female students, the girls stayed together in nervous giggling clusters. They would not risk being hurled from the family circle in disgrace, permanently debarred from marriage. Occasionally there would be a celebrated scandal and two students would marry secretly without the consent of their parents. The repercussions were always disastrous, the couple either reduced to utter poverty by withdrawal of all family monies, or taking their chances as hopeful emigrants to England or America. Provided they could survive the long wait for visas.

There were prostitutes of course, low-caste women, Untouchables, driven to desperate measures to feed their children, or to support parents who cursed those very daughters if the source of the money was ever discovered. Many, perhaps most of the students, had slept with such women. But Prem considered them to be of his own kind, his own people, the poor, the spurned, the wretched. He would never exploit them for sexual pleasure.

He imposed on himself a rigid political ethic. And he understood the intricate international web of forces that made it possible for a young Canadian woman to take a vacation for pleasure in India, while his mother and brothers and sisters — at least, until he had been able to provide some money from his university scholarship — were sometimes kept alive only by the water in which his father's rice had been cooked. That was standard on Prem's street in the desperate weeks before the rice harvest. The men ate what meager grain was available, the women and children drank the cooking water. Meanwhile Canadian women daily threw out scraps that would feed his family for a week. And the servants of Nair landlords, given food scraps to bury under trees, came home with what prizes they could — bones, intestines, the clawed feet of chickens on which the children sucked and chewed.

And now Prem was facing the enemy who leaned towards him with parted lips and golden hair, beautiful as Radha. He was in a chaos of contempt and desire, anger and hatred and yearning. She was woman. He had gone to sleep holding her hand. Last night he had thought of her as a fellow struggler against Congress Party hooliganism. This morning she was a Westerner. He was in anguish.

“I have upset you, Prem,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

In some subtle way, though she barely moved, she withdrew physically. She extinguished the luminous sexual aura that had surrounded her.

As soon as she did that he cursed himself for not having responded. His blood flowed cowed and dejected back into its habitual channels. He felt arid and miserable and infinitely lonely. But what could he have done? What should he have done? He simply did not know.

“Come,” he said gruffly. “I will show you where we bathe.”

He led her down to a muddy canal that flowed behind the row of huts. It linked two reaches of the vast network of Kerala backwaters. Children were frolicking in it. Buffaloes were being swabbed down by their drivers. Prem walked into the water and sluiced it vigorously over his face and body, through his hair. Annie hesitated a moment, recalling all the dire warnings about polluted water, about hepatitis and malaria.

Prem noticed her reluctance.

“We do not have bathrooms,” he called back savagely.

A silly jingle occurred to Annie, and she found herself singing it silently, mindlessly, to cover her hurt.
This is the way we wash ourselves
,
wash ourselves
,
wash ourselves.
She entered the water quickly and began to swim in order to wet herself totally without having to think about it. She stood up and filled her cupped hands with water and splashed it over her face.

Prem was dazzled. The thin muslin smock clung wetly to her breasts, her hair licked her face and shoulders like tendrils of pond weed, her cupped hands were full of sunlight. He thought of the carved stone maidens who held out their oil lamps in the temple courtyard and he was ready to worship her. He felt again that involuntary rush of blood, felt himself swelling and pulsing under merciful cover of the muddy water, felt himself climax suddenly and helplessly and uncontrollably. He dived shallowly and swam violently away from her, churning the water to disguise the sobbing and spluttering of his humiliation.

Annie became conscious of the staring of the children and the buffalo cart drivers. They pointed and giggled among themselves.

She felt as though she were naked.

It was one of those moments when she sensed the knife edge of doubt and uncertainty, when she knew afresh that life was not entirely pliable to her touch. She swam sadly and slowly after Prem, joining him downstream on the far bank where a small grove of coconuts and areca palms and mango trees began.

“This is the way we clean our teeth,” Prem said, not looking at her. He snapped a green twig from a mango tree and frayed one end of it with his thumbnail. He used the bristled end on his teeth like a whisk. Annie copied him. They sat on the grass in the sun, the dampness steaming and eddying upwards from their clothes and bodies. Prem was very thorough and absorbed with his twig. Cleaning teeth in this fashion was clearly something more than simple hygiene. It had perhaps the function of morning coffee or a morning pipe or reading the morning newspapers.

Gradually, it seemed to Annie, the strain and hostility seeped away into the mist that rose from their bodies. When Prem stood to leave, her shirt was dry but she knew it would be several hours before the heavy denim of her jeans dried completely. They felt weighted and soggy and rather uncomfortable. Did one catch cold from staying in wet clothes, or was that an old wives' tale? She had the unadventurous desire to take a taxi to Krishnapuram and change into something clean and dry, but instead she followed Prem.

They sat in a little restaurant near Palayam eating
masala dosai
and drinking strong black coffee. Prem was reading the Malayalam newspapers, Annie the
Indian Express.
It was the Madras edition that Annie had, so the headlines concerned Tamil Nadu. INDIRA ARRESTED. DESAI BUNGLES. RIOTS, DEATHS IN MADRAS AND MADURAI. The Kerala news was in the lower right quadrant of the front page. Its headline was in smaller type: ARSON AND STABBING IN STATE CAPITAL. STUDENTS AND POLICE CLASH IN COCHIN. Thirteen dead in Trivandrum, nine in Cochin. She showed Prem.

“Malayalam papers are saying twenty dead here in Trivandrum,” he told her. “We can conclude in reality thirty to forty dead.”

“I personally saw eleven dead,” she said, thinking of the man bleeding on the road (the stabbing of the headline?) and the corpses in the bus. She winced, squeezing her eyes shut against the memory, her stomach queasily rebelling against breakfast.

They had both been shying away from the thought of those bodies crushed between seats and window bars. Prem reached across the table and touched her hand.

“If we had not been there, there would be many more deaths.”

She smiled wanly.

He smiled back, seeing again his partner in the rescue work. She had been so magnificent. She was so beautiful. It was so pleasant to work with her, to have breakfast with her, to talk with her as an equal and a friend. Not to think of her as a woman and a Westerner.

“Annie,” he said suddenly. “The other western woman and her children …?.”

“She is my sister. How did you come to be there when the bus tipped over?”

He smiled sourly. “I was already a victim of Congress Party hoodlums. We would not close the Marxist Book Store to please them. They smashed our windows and threw our books in the street and beat us with
lathis.
But I escaped into the market. And then I saw the bus.”

“Thank god you were there! So you are on the Janata side, celebrating the arrest?”

“I am happy with the arrest, yes. But I am not with Janata. Desai is really no better than Mrs Gandhi. He also is an elitist. He is wealthy and corrupt. He speaks much of the evils of casteism but he is doing nothing.” He tore angrily at his thin rice pancake and scooped up the fragrant curry in agitated jerky motions. “So what is different?” he asked bitterly. “For the poor, nothing is different. Our families will still go hungry and the rich imperialists will still take pleasure trips to India.”

She saw him as a prophet, burning up in the twin flames of idealism and hate. He saw her as the enemy. They stared at each other, riveted.

“Prem,” she said shakily. “I care about these things. You should not hate me because I am Canadian.”

His quick anger was punctured. He lowered his eyes.

“I'm sorry,” he said in a low voice, “but still, Annie, this is making a very great difference between us.”

“Yes,” she said humbly. “I understand that, Prem.”

But she felt glib, guilty of cheap sympathy. She would have liked to tell him that she was a law student, to have pleaded, in extenuation of her affluence, her idealistic hopes, her storefront lawyer plans. But it would have sounded shallow and self-congratulatory. Instead she said abruptly: “I have to go now and see if my sister and the children are all right. They'll be worried about me.”

“I'd like to come with you. To see the little girl. I have met your sister and the children before.”

“Really? You didn't show any sign last night. But then, I guess we were all in shock …”

The waiter came and left their check.

“Please, Prem,” begged Annie. “Let me pay.”

He was instantly furious with her again, caught between male pride and political justice.

“This is hopeless,” she told him ruefully. “You might as well go ahead and hate me. But I'm doing it for your family, for those children I saw sleeping in your house last night. It's a fair exchange for your concern about Miranda.”

She cared about his pride, however, and passed him five rupee notes under the table.

He took them, resenting her.