The Ivory Swing (7 page)

The cow continued to devour the sheet with calm indifference. Jonathan and Miranda began to laugh.

“It's all right, Prabhakaran,” Juliet said. “I won't hurt it.”

She thought ruefully: Cow molester! Even my sins are becoming unrecognizable.

10

It was not just the rank smell of curried breath and sweating bodies that caused David to sway with nausea in the lurching university bus. He was too tall for Indian buses and every time the driver careened through a pothole his head would bang harshly against the metal roof. He was rammed so tightly into the men's section that he could not even free an arm to protect his head. He had tried, merely calling forth a grunt of discomfort from the student against whose ribs his arm was trapped.

But he was used to this by now and would scarcely have noticed it if he had not slept so badly, if the ghost of a fear, like an ugly black furry creature, had not scuttled into the corners of his night.

She had called out in her sleep again. Possibly someone's name. Possibly a name he had not heard for twelve years, but had never forgotten. Jeremy. But of course he could be imagining it. It was absurd to think after all this time … but then how could he be certain? Sometimes a small shadow — a fleeting thing like the grayness thrown by a wisp of cloud — passed over the long miracle of his happiness.

Yet he had only to summon up the sight of her reading to the children or feel the flamboyant orchid of her body opening to his, to know that all was well.

But yet again there were those moments when she seemed to retreat from him, when her abstracted eyes roamed through some unfocused middle distance, suggesting secrets. And what did he really know of the deceptions of which human beings were capable? What had he known, what had he ever dreamed possible, of his own capacity to deceive? Once he would never have believed that there had been lurking within himself, within the clear pool of his own life, a wild amphibian thing, predatory and libidinous. One night it had astonished him, rushing forth like a pterodactyl (something primeval, something he had believed extinct) swooping out of some uncharted swamp within him, blinded by the searchlight of a casual young explorer.

It had seemed to him, after that, that he should never presume to comprehend intention or cause and effect or the inflections of another's thought. His own motivations baffled him sufficiently. So what could he expect to know of Juliet who was simply the most intimate of strangers? And what did he know of himself? Of how he would defend himself against past ghosts or future losses?

In any case, perhaps it hadn't been a name she called out. Just gibberish. For weeks now she had been tossing and moaning at night. Lying in bed with her was like trying to sleep on a small boat whose jib has flapped loose from the bowsprit.

It's the heat, he thought. And the isolation.

“What are your nightmares about?” he had asked once.

And she had looked startled. “I don't have nightmares.”

She claimed to remember nothing. She did not seem to know he had held her, whispering comfort while she shuddered and cried out, feeling the sheets become drenched with sweat.

Isolation and lethargy. Perhaps she feared losing her place in the world, slipping from civilization without a trace. It was a fear that smoked around him like fog each evening when he re-entered the coconut grove. The toothless old women who sat under the trees would look up from the braiding of palm leaves, peering at him through the evening mists, and he would think: The same ones, surely, watched the ancient passing of Mahabali, the great king. Time is but a wink of their weathered eyelids. And he would feel relieved that in the morning he would be meeting with university colleagues who had visited London and Toronto and New York.

India had probably been a mistake. Not the adventure she yearned for. No paradisal retreat. More like a narcotic. I couldn't live without subways, she had said long ago. And he had always been amazed that she had chosen him. He had always known it was a miracle. He liked to think he had taught her a tranquility which was new to her and valuable, but it was always possible that he had taken her statements of discontent too lightly. It was hard to know. She did everything, even speaking, so extravagantly.

Last night he had held her tenderly sheltering her with his arms from the marauders of her sleep, when she called for help.

Not to him.

Is it happening then, he had wondered, turning away, staring into the past. Did she see him in Montreal, that man from the past?
(I live with a guy on and off.)
Was it the sort of thing that was never concluded? Had he, David, been holding her against her will all these years? Should he begin to prepare himself for change?

He had let Susan twirl in his mind like a lucky charm at a carnival, trying to infect himself with her circus gaiety

Like that astonishing time, the night of the pterodactyl. He had been working late in his office, reference books spread around him, the room littered with drafts of a paper he was writing. It was after midnight and even other night-owl colleagues had gone home. He was alone in the building.

Late spring rain was pattering against his window. And then some hail. Hail? He turned, and for a mad moment thought he saw a ghostly face pressing against the pane. But his was a second-floor window. He turned back to his desk and began stacking books. Definitely time to go home to sleep.

The tapping on the glass became more urgent. To jolt himself back to reality he crossed the room and opened the window. It was the old sash kind, with an aluminum storm-screen combination more recently installed in the outer frame. And there, nose pressed against the screen so that it ballooned inwards to touch the inner glass, was Susan.

“Good god!” he said, sliding the screen open.

She was clinging to the fairly substantial branches of ivy that had been smothering the building for a hundred years, and now came clambering into the room.

“I've been working late on my term paper,” she said. “I was just passing by and saw your light on so I thought I might as well hand it in now.”

“Good god” he said again, helplessly retreating to his desk and sitting down.

She was dark and dazzling as a gypsy, her wet black hair slicked around her cheeks and neck, light breaking in the raindrops on her lashes, her damp jeans steaming, her blouse soaking wet and hugging her like an advertisement for breasts.

All this for me? he thought humbly, ecstatically, fearfully. For a forty-year-old associate professor with not enough publications and hair receding at the temples and a wife who sometimes retreats into a private labyrinth for which I have no map?

Oh careful, careful, he warned himself. Students are off limits. Besides, it was scarcely credible … Was it a joke, a dare, something for discussion and laughter in the student pubs? Poor old fool, speechless with excitement, could hardly get his pants off for trembling, came in two minutes, poor deprived sod.

“Well,” he said dryly — the urbane professor, with an arch eyebrow to acknowledge the droller aspects of life — “your dedication will be taken into account, Miss — ah — Miss Fraser, but the paper will have to be graded on its own merits, of course.”

“Yes. Oh, of course. Oh you didn't think I was trying to … oh dear …”

The high-flying kite of her impetuous self-confidence pitched and floundered in uncertain winds. She looked irresistibly vulnerable.

“You don't even remember my first name, do you?” she asked plaintively.

“Oh yes, I do. Indeed I do.” Too quickly. A rush of words, almost slurred. Steady, steady. Back up.

He cleared his throat and said, without inflection: “Susan.” But there was a slight unevenness to his voice and he had to cough.

“You've practically destroyed this term for me. I've hardly managed to get anything done.” Her voice quick and breathless as birds in flight. “It's your eyes. Your huge sad brooding eyes. Every night I fantasize about making them smile.”

“I don't believe you,” he said, amazed, wanting to believe her, afraid of behaving like an idiot.

“I'm terribly wet and uncomfortable,” she said, shivering noticeably. “You don't mind if I just dry off, do you? Before you throw me back into the night, I mean?”

She peeled off her blouse and it was much too late for caution.

So what if it is just a circus act, he thought, as she swung her gypsy feet toward the ceiling. What if they do make fun of me later. He plunged into exhilaration like a stunt man from a trapeze and he did not even carc if there was no safety net.

But afterwards he had been appalled by this new knowledge of himself. I am frivolous and self-indulgent, he thought. I am morally unreliable, blown about by the merest whim of desire.

Every night for months, with Juliet in his arms, he had yearned for absolution. He had longed to say: I have something to confess. I have behaved shoddily and dishonestly. Forgive me.

And it was not the fear of losing her or the fear of her outrage that prevented him. It was the fear that she would not acknowledge the enormity of his wrongdoing. The fear that she would open her eyes wide in wry surprise and say: “David! You
are
human like the rest of us. What a relief.”

Lying beside Juliet in the South Indian night, David had decided: If she wants to fly back to turmoil and subways, if it is someone flawed and faithless she wants, maybe I should confess about Susan. Maybe I would seem more exciting.

He had watched the last translucent red chunk fall from the mosquito coil and settle into ash. He got up to light another one, but not before he had slapped his arm twice and flicked the bloody little corpses into the dark. He imagined the mosquitoes hovering in cloud-like battalions around the house, sending in scouts every two minutes: Okay men, the coil is out! We have sixty seconds to attack before they light another one!

He had fallen asleep watching the smoke spiralling up from the glowing tip, and dreamed of Juliet.

He dreamed that he had come home in the early evening to an empty house. He felt alarmed, sensing tragedy, and ran through the trees towards the rice paddy. To his immense relief, there was his wife standing among the areca palms surrounded by children, their own included. She seemed to be handing out icecream cones.

Jonathan and Miranda came towards him, blissful, licking rapturously, a tantalizing flavour he could not place.

“It's jasmine,” they told him. “Jasmine ice-cream. It's fantastic. Mommy makes it.”

“Juliet!” he called, and she turned towards him, scattering sweets and flowers, jasmine streamers trailing from her hair.

He held out his arms and she came running, in slow motion like the woman in a television commercial, eager and beautiful as first love. He braced himself to scoop her up, their hands touched.

And she jerked herself away.

“Oh!”she said. “The sun was in my eyes. I thought you were someone else.”

In a fanfare of red dust, the bus slammed to a halt at the university, crashing David's head against the ceiling. The passengers spilled out like lava, steamy and unstoppable, men first. Except for David. As always, from force of habit, he stood back for the women to alight before him. As always they responded by giggling nervously into their hands, eyes lowered. It occurred to David: Perhaps they think my intentions are lecherous. He waited for the last of them to file past him in a rustle of saris and streaming coconut-oil-soaked hair. Then he got off the bus, a courteous clown, unable to change his habits, an object of bewilderment and mirth.

It was to be another of those days, the library inexplicably closed to research. One more arcane festival. Or perhaps the librarian had mysteriously absented himself again — a family wedding or birth or death in some outlying village, no doubt — the prerogatives of his rank inviolable, on substitutes permitted at the library desk.

With weary resignation, David waited for the bus going back into the city.

Wasted hours and days.

And wasted years? No, he would never believe that. Luminous years, no matter what lay ahead. Once she had run to him, reckless, in the subway at rush hour. Once she had danced into his days. He could not expect to cast her in bronze and keep her in a glass case forever.

11

Between baskets of mangoes and trailing loops of jasmine it moved like a small conical volcano, its slopes fluid and black as scree, eruptions of astonishment leaping outwards from its mysterious core. Stares and jabberings spread like lava from its side, lapping the far edges of the evening market.

No one had ever seen a woman move so anonymously so shapelessly, through the Chalai Bazaar. Never in living memory had the enveloping Muslim garment been seen in Trivandrum. No one had believed that women were still kept in
purdah
anywhere outside the remote mountain fastnesses of Jammu and Kashmir or the most secret back streets of Old Delhi.

She must be a Pakistani. Who could guess what still went on in Pakistan, a nation of religious fanatics whose god was never a child?

Ayyo, ayyo
, murmured the voices that surrounded the walking tent as flies cluster and buzz around sweet
jallebis.
Alas! How that Muslim god must fear women! A god who had never played the flute, never danced, never sighed for Radha in the forest. A god who covered women with sacks, like walking dung hills.
Ayyo
,
ayyo!

When the veiled woman directed the tiny rectangle of muslin — window of her eyes — at the watchers, they stepped back, spitting betel juice to ward off inauspicious occurrences.

She was the wife of a Pakistani diplomat visiting the Secretariat, the rumours claimed. No, countered others; she was the daughter of a wealthy rug merchant of Srinagar. He wished for an educated daughter who had seen the world but who had been kept pure, aloof from temptation.

There was a persistent suggestion that she was, without doubt, the delectable concubine of a Himalayan chieftain, a former petty prince whose fabulous lands and palaces stretched up into the snowy spaces above the Gulmarg and overlooked the pleasure gardens of Shalimar.

And how was it that such a prince with his pomp and retinue was visiting Trivandrum undetected, save for this one clue of his swathed and mummified mistress? Doubtless, opined certain pundits, he was being courted in secret by the Russians in the House of Soviet Culture behind Tampanoor Junction, being tempted, in that building of austere grayness, with limousines and fantastic weaponry in return for a certain ease of passage down from Tashkent into Kashmir.

Such was the sophisticated discussion Juliet overheard between a young pharmacist and a young doctor who stood in their white shirts and white
dhotis
at the entrance of their booths. In the bazaar the medical professions took their commercial chances along with the flower sellers and grain merchants and peddlers of dried cow-dung cakes, vying for attention and customers. The young doctor was doing well: he was handsome, the plaque on his booth fisted many obscure and scholarly letters after his name; large capitals indicated HOMEOPATHIC MEDICINE (based, that is to say, on ancient and trustworthy
ayurvedic
principles rather than on alien western science); and a final trump line proclaimed him an EXPERT SEXOLOGIST, promising, through the ingestion of herbal potions, pleasurable cures for all erotic difficulties and disturbances (for men only, of course, though this was not stated, it being universally known that the sexuality of woman is inexhaustible and rapacious).

The prince's concubine floated on, in her fluid tented way, past the gentlemen of medical profession and political opinion towards where Juliet, with her children and Prabhakaran, was buying
brinjal
and
kumpalanna.
The children stared in silent awe, as apprehensive as the
peons
who shuffled aside from her coming. There was something eerily inhuman, demonic almost, about that faceless column of fabric.

The figure came alongside Juliet where she stood beneath the flare of coconut-oil torches at the vegetable stall. A hand the colour of
café-an-lait
emerged from the black folds and began feeling and prodding the purple
brinjal
just as Juliet was doing. Two women engaged in an ancient domestic skill, assessing the ripeness of eggplants. The fragrant smoke of the vendor's sandalwood sticks curled around them.

Juliet watched the hand moving close to hers, exploring the swelling hillocks and dimpled amethyst valleys of
brinjal,
following, it almost seemed, her own hand like a shadow.

A sudden flaring tongue of torchlight lit up a ringed finger with quick gemfire. Juliet stared at the ring, a crusted circle of emeralds and diamonds, in confusion. Surely she had seen it before?

At the same time the ringed hand closed over hers in a compelling and pleading grip. From the recesses of black cloth a muffled voice whispered urgently: “Juliet! Please do not show surprise. Please continue in your buying, only listen to me! Help me, please
¹
”

Juliet stared at the
brinjal.

Yashoda's voice had been smoky with anxiety her hand trembled. The seller of vegetables was watching the two hands clasped over his produce.

“
Shari,
” Juliet said, extricating the eggplant and her hand, offering the purple fruit. “This is good
brinjal.
You may have it. I will find another.”

Yashoda bowed towards her and whispered quickly: “Please hide me! If I am discovered there will be much trouble for me.”

Juliet murmured back: “We have a taxi waiting. If you could pretend to faint, I will get you out of here.”

With a soft moan and some poignant fluttering of hands, Yashoda crumpled gracefully.

It was effective melodrama. The crowds babbled in a paroxysm of excitement and rumour, but parted to allow movement to the waiting taxi. The young doctor pushed eagerly and importantly forward but at Juliet's insistence consented to carry the limp, blanketed bundle into the car. He did so with solicitous awe.

Juliet was grateful for the safe cavern of the ramshackle vehicle, reassured by the reliability of the known driver. He was one of the two young men whose base was Shasta Junction near the Nair estate, men who lived and slept at the Junction in their rusty taxis, who were known to all in that district.

As soon as they were inside and the doors shut, the market hush gave way to mob bravado. Boys by the score swarmed over the hood and roof, peering through the windshield with flattened noses, craning to gawk upside-down through the sides. Giggling like hysterical schoolgirls, their betel-stained teeth flashing, a mêlée of men leaned in through the windows, stroking the children's faces, running their fingers down Juliet's hair with exclamations of wonder. No one, however, attempted to touch Yashoda. There was something too potently inauspicious about her shrouded huddled blackness.

Juliet held herself rigid and impassive to the mauling. This had happened so often and yet she never became inured to it. Instead, a sense of embarrassment about her own body would engulf her. An obscure shame about her fair hair and skin. She felt like a zoo animal, or a fish in its tank blinking out at the myriad eyes of the curious.

“Start the car!” she ordered the driver. “Start moving!”

And gradually bodies fell away as moths who have flown too close fall back from a lamp.

Juliet slumped back in relief.

“Yashoda,
where
did you get that thing, and what were you trying to do?”

“Talk softly,” begged Yashoda. “Even the taxi driver must not know. If word should reach Shivaraman Nair …”

The children blinked in astonishment and Prabhakaran gasped, a hand over his mouth.

“Hush, Prabhakaran! Please, you must never speak of this.”

“Never, never!” he promised.

“Yashoda,
why
…?”

“For disguise. It is the only way I can move in public without being recognized, without disgrace. But I did not stop to think how strange … I was not expecting such tumult, such staring.”

“I could have warned you about that,” Juliet said grimly. “How do you come to have one of those things, those body sacks?”

“From Srinagar. I have been there once with my father on a business trip. Oh Juliet, I am so unhappy, even my father cannot help me. I will die of loneliness.”

“I tried to visit you twice.”

“Yes, yes. I was sent away to my husband's family in Palghat. They are very strict and conservative. Shivaraman Nair told them that I am bringing disgrace on the family. I was forbidden to leave my hut. All my jewellery was taken. Only by bribing a servant with the golden waist chain hidden under my sari was I able to send a message to my father in Cochin. He rescued me and I had some days, such happy days, in my father's house again, but he has called Shivaraman Nair and they had long discussions. My father offered money and I was permitted to return.”

“Why did you have to return? Why not stay with your father?”

“Ah,” she sighed. “If only it were possible. Cochin is so much freer than Trivandrum. It makes me sad, Juliet, that you are living in this city instead of Madras or Cochin, and you are thinking all India is like this. It is difficult to explain our South Indian ways. But now I am frightened. How can I enter the estate? If I am seen in this garment it will soon be known about the bazaar. To be seen in public is bad, to disgrace myself as a Muslim is much worse. If I remove this now, it will be known that I have left the estate. I will be sent to Palghat. Shivaraman Nair told my father one more chance only.”

“How did you leave the estate? When did you put that thing on?”

“I put it on in the forest. This afternoon I walked many kilometres through the far side of the forest beyond my house, the far side of the estate, until I came to the Kottayam Road. I gave a silver nose-ring to a bullock driver and he brought me into the city on his cart.” She paused, thinking back. “It was very exciting. You cannot realize, Juliet, when I am so lonely and bored, how exciting it was. But I did not think enough about the return, I was too eager for the adventure of leaving my prison. I did not think about how long it would take. I cannot walk back through the forest at night.”

“I can't see any problem. Who will see you in the dark? Just keep low and out of sight as we drive past the Nair house. You can take that off inside our house and walk home.”

“Ahh, you do not know how far talking is going here. The taxi driver will tell all his passengers, all the men in the toddy houses at Shasta Junction. Shivaraman Nair will hear. He will ask you: Where is the strange Muslim woman who visited you but did not leave? It will be found out.”

“Then I will introduce you as we pass the house. My Muslim friend from the far North”

“No, no, no! It will be seen that this friend does not leave your house again. Oh it is impossible. I have been so stupid. I will be sent to Palghat.”

“No. Wait. I have an idea. Say nothing at all.”

The taxi slowed at the gates of the Nair estate. Shivaraman Nair was visible in the glow of the oil flare, sitting on his porch enjoying the cool of evening, missing nothing. He moved with lordly graciousness to greet the taxi while the driver opened the iron gates. He frowned sternly at Prabhakaran. He did not approve of servants riding in taxis. They should be sent on the bus or on foot.

“
Namaskaram.
I have brought a friend who is the daughter of a Pakistani merchant,” Juliet invented glibly. “We met when she was travelling in the West with her father. They are visiting very briefly They leave tonight on the plane for Karachi.”

“Most welcome, most welcome,” said Shivaraman Nair excitedly. “So many peoples from all over the world are visiting my beautiful house. This is the first time we are having a Pakistani lady. Most welcome.”

The robed figure inclined its head courteously.

The taxi proceeded through the coconut grove. At the entrance to their house, Juliet told the driver to wait. In a short time he would be required to take the Muslim lady to the airport. Juliet would pay him now, in advance, for the waiting and the whole trip.

Some time later the veiled lady entered the car silently and was driven to the airport. She quailed a little before the rush of public interest as she alighted, but made her way to the ladies' lavatory and locked herself into one of the booths.

What a wild goose chase, Juliet thought, gingerly placing her feet on the two cement footprints above the black and fearfulsmelling hole of the latrine. How long will I have to stay in here before the room empties of the curious, before I can emerge as a Westerner, creating my own different current of excitement? And the speculation will go on forever. Where did the strange swaddled woman go? Why was she never seen again? Eventually Shivaraman Nair will hear of it. But perhaps by the time he asks me about it I can laugh it off as the chatter of airport servants and taxi drivers. Mere rumour.

In the meantime, she thought with pleasure, I feel alive again. Like a kid on an adventure.

She bent over and turned on the little tap that projected from the wall six inches above the floor. This and a small plastic pitcher beneath it were the only aids to hygiene. She filled the pitcher and let its water sluice around the slightly concave floor of the booth. It was not a very effective device, as the stench and the crusting of flies over excremental remnants testified. Juliet let the tap run noisily while she removed the voluminous tent and stuffed it into her carry bag.

She waited, listening for silence, hoping at least for a different set of people in the outside room. And then, mercifully the power failed. In the darkness and confusion she emerged and moved quickly out to the taxi stand, taking care to look for a driver who was unknown at Shasta Junction.

She should have warned me, David thought, turning from the face that glowed in the lamplight. Juliet had not, somehow, prepared him adequately for Yashoda. He had not anticipated such eyes, such blood-stirring vulnerability, such exquisite fluidity of movement. He could not entirely blame Shivaraman Nair for locking her away. The male fear of a
yakshi
, of bewitchment. Like Radha on her ivory swing, the woman would float through dreams forever.