The Ivory Swing (8 page)

She shimmered in silks and jewels, incandescent in her defiance. It must have been sweet revenge, he thought, to have been dressed like that under her black tent.

“My father would have permitted it,” she was saying. “He did not want to send me back to Trivandrum, but he had no choice. My mother died many years ago, my younger brother has married, and now my sister-in-law is the mistress of my father's house. It is her right. She did not want me to live there”

She smiled sadly at David with lambent helplessness and he held his breath.

Juliet, returning from the airport, entered their sudden stillness, saw the thread of connection between their eyes, galvanic as invisible blue fire. Even David? She was surprised by a fleeting stab of jealousy.

But, after all, another woman had already come between them: India, the earth mother herself, the great voluptuous slow-moving slattern, opening up her secrets and excitements to David. Ignoring Juliet.

She felt cheated. Yashoda had been
her
adventure. Even that had been stolen.

“My father is very wealthy,” Yashoda was saying, “and he entertains many foreign visitors because of his spice-exporting business. He is very progressive — he even allows wine to be served to his guests. Before my marriage I was mistress of the house, ordering the household supplies and managing the servants and entertaining the important guests. I have met ladies from London and New York. They have such exciting lives! Also my father travels to these cities and once, when I was younger, he took me with him to London.”

She sighed. “That is why it is so difficult for me to live like this. Now when I return to my father's house, I am only the widowed daughter. My brothers wife is the mistress. It would not be auspicious for me to be the hostess of these banquets, although my father permits me to sit at table with the guests.” She paused. “My sister-in-law was angry about this. Her kinsmen, who share with my father in the business, were also angry. They said I would cause misfortune and loss of money. Already they were angry with him about the wine. My father laughs at them, but it is difficult to go against the family.”

“But why did you come back here? Surely it would be better to live a restricted life in your father's house than here?”

“No. Because of my sister-in-law. There is no longer any privacy or freedom in that house. At least in my small place in the forest I am my own mistress. Except …” she sighed again, balancing debits, “in Cochin I can go walking in the market and here I cannot.”

“Why doesn't your father send you to London or New York for a while, since he has contacts there?”

“Oh, for a western woman that is so simple. For us, impossible. A woman can only live with kinfolk. There must be a husband, or a father, or an uncle, or her husband's kin to shelter her. There is no other way.”

“But Trivandrum of all places. Surely you have relatives in other more cosmopolitan cities?”

“That is the saddest part for me. In Madras and Bombay it is no longer necessary for a widow to be secluded. I wrote to my uncle, Mummy's brother, in Madras. He was very fond of me, but his wife has said no. Widows bring bad luck.”

“Perhaps,” David said thoughtfully “perhaps if I went to visit your father in Cochin — I do have to make a trip up there at some time — perhaps he would let you come back with us when we leave. For a visit. If you were to be living with a family he knows —”

“Yes, yes, it is possible. This is what I have dreamed, but it seemed only a dream. That is why — when my astrologer said I would meet a person of destiny — that is why Juliet, when I met you on that day, I thought you would find some way to rescue me. And today you did. But the greatness of my astrologer is now truly revealed. Oh Professor David!” She leaned slightly towards him, breathing enchantment. “You are having very powerful magic. You are making life very beautiful.”

12

Prabhakaran came to the house with a note. It read:

Professor David and Mrs David Juliet.

We are pleased to be wanting you to take the midday meal with us. At noon precisely. Bring also the children. Shivaraman Nair.

Which verb endings would he have used if he were writing in Malayalam? Juliet wondered. Surely he cannot already have heard of the strange disappearance of the Muslim woman at the airport?

At noon precisely they presented themselves. Shivaraman Nair and Anand were sitting under the shady vines on the front veranda. Mrs Shivaraman Nair came to the door.
Namaskaram
, everyone murmured, inclining the head.

“We are being very happy to have you in our house, Mrs David Juliet.”

“Thank you, Mrs Shivaraman Nair. I am most honoured.”

Juliet had made a futile attempt to overcome the lengthy formality of names. Originally they had all called her Mrs Professor David.

“My name is Juliet,” she had said. “Please call me that. What is
your
name?”

“I am Mrs Shivaraman Nair.”

And thereafter she had been called Mrs David Juliet.

They left their sandals on the doorstep and entered the house. It was sumptuously furnished in teak and ivory and underfoot were thick Kashmiri carpets and cool spaces of polished stone and marble. In the hallway a magnificent brass peacock lamp, about five feet high, its seven wicks charred from the morning's
puja,
was festooned with a garland of scarlet flowers. In front of the lamp was a small image of Vishnu and in front of that a bowl of rice and fruits had been placed as an offering. Sticks of sandalwood were burning slowly in brass censers and the whole house smelled heavily fragrant.

David and Jonathan were invited to join the men in the front room while Juliet and Miranda were ushered through to the women's living room at the back. A number of women, whom Juliet supposed were relatives, were already there. Was it a festival day? Or some family celebration? Or a family council to consider the problem of Yashoda? Mrs Shivaraman Nair did not perform any introductions or give any explanations, but smiled benignly and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

None of the women acknowledged the presence of the new arrivals. Perhaps I am expected to initiate conversation, Juliet thought. She said: “
Namaskaram
. I am happy to meet you. I am Juliet and this is my daughter Miranda.”

The women turned to look at her but said nothing. They did not register any surprise or interest. They went on sipping their tea. Occasionally they spoke to one another but mostly they were silent.

Fifteen minutes elapsed. The women sat silently sipping.Miranda looked imploringly at Juliet and rolled her eyes expressively. Juliet could feel a maddening itch on the soles of her feet. She wanted desperately to stand up and walk about.

Then Mrs Shivaraman Nair reappeared with Jati, who was carrying a tray. They offered their guests tea and joined the circle. Jati sat near Juliet who sipped the sickeningly sweet beverage without pleasure.

“Would you like to see my college magazine?” Jati asked.

“Yes indeed.” Juliet was profoundly grateful for the prospect of conversation.

Jati fetched a glossy booklet that bore an insignia of a lamp, a cross, and a Latin motto.
Annual Magazine of All Saints College for Women
read the title, in English.

“You
go to a Catholic college?” Juliet asked in amazement.

“It is taught by the Sisters. It is an English Medium College,” said Jati proudly. “It is forbidden to speak Malayalam.”

Juliet knew that the rubric “medium” referred not to educational level or quality, but to mode of communication.

“But I am surprised that a Hindu family would send a daughter to a Christian school. Don't the Sisters instruct you in the Catholic religion?”

“No, no!” Jati was puzzled by the idea. “There are not being many Christian students at this college. They are not affording. It is for the daughters of the Nair families. The Sisters are teaching the best English. English is required to make a good marriage.”

“Are the Sisters European?”

“No, no,” she said, surprised. “They are Malayali ladies.”

Juliet leafed through the magazine. It was so like what she remembered of her own high school yearbook in nature and quality of content that she had a strange sensation of time-travelling. There were little poems about snowflakes — from people who had never seen snow! There were the usual jokes on Shakespearean lines:
An ill-favoured thing, sir
;
but mine own
(handing your school report to your father) and
There's a divinity that shapes our ends
,
rough hew them though we may
(Lakshmi's daring short haircut obtained on her visit to Bombay is growing out again).

“Don't the students ever write poems about peacocks or the temple flower sellers or the monsoons?” Juliet asked.

Jati looked disdainful.

“At our college, we are studying
English
literature.”

“Did Yashoda go to a college like this?” Juliet risked asking.

“My cousin,” Jati said stiffly, “was educated in Cochin. Her father has paid for some western tutors. She has not been taught by Malayali ladies. She is … very …
modern
.”

Clearly a derogatory word.

It became increasingly difficult to sustain conversation. They lapsed back into the silent sipping of tea. The minutes crawled on. Miranda was a monument of passive agony. From time to time, Juliet would make brave little forays into speech, valiant breaches in the ramparts of silence. Her words would settle quietly into the carpet, a brief phrase or monosyllable the only response, the battle lost. She wondered for what conceivable reason it had been necessary to come
at noon precisely.
She would not have believed it possible that a group of people gathered for a social purpose could sit together for so long without speaking. She wanted to scream.

And then suddenly through the window into the courtyard, she saw a woman — the echo of a woman — leaning over the household well like a trail of unshaded jasmine bruised colourless by the heat.

Yashoda! Juliet thought with a leap of furtive excitement and dismay. Then they must know. About the market. She is being punished. They have made her one of the courtyard widows, reduced her to that sorority of obsolescence, left out in the sun like spoiled fruit to be blanched and dried.

“Excuse me.” Juliet stood suddenly, scattering the decorum of the Nair women every which way like skittles, and ran into the ferocious embrace of the noonday heat.

“Yashoda!” There was only dust and haze between them, then only the well. On the surface of the water their reflections touched, head to head, like
yakshis
conferring or
chakora
birds butting self-destructively.

Yashoda looked somehow … denuded. No jewellery, the peacock brilliance of her silk saris exchanged for the drab cotton of a widow. She was like a person whose light has been extinguished. Like a stripped Christmas tree thrown beside a snowy sidewalk for collection.

“How did they find out?”

“They know nothing. They suspect only. There was such talk at the market. And also at the airport.”

“I won't let them do this! It frightens me. It threatens me. It threatens
me
!” Juliet said.

Their reflections collided and merged.

“It is nothing, a warning only,” Yashoda said. “In two days, three days, this will be over. I will be back in my house.”

“Mrs David Juliet! My mother is bringing fresh tea. You are not wanting it to be cold, isn't it?” Jati stood in the doorway of the house, watchful as a cat.

Yashoda and Juliet bowed to each other in formal farewell, making
namaskaram
over the household drinking supply. Their fluid heads and hands merged again, their breath rippled the watei, circling them with furrows.

“Three days,” Yashoda whispered. “Four at the most. Will you come to my house this week? Will Professor David come?”

“I'm sure he will,” Juliet murmured, and then returned to the eternity of the silent tea ceremony.

Miranda, having been abandoned for ten minutes, looked at her mother in silent reproach. The Nair women sipped as though nothing had happened.

After what seemed an interminable passage of time — it was well over an hour — Mrs Shivaraman Nair returned to the kitchen and a few minutes later came to summon Juliet and Miranda to the dining room. Juliet saw to her surprise and pleasure that they were to sit at the table with the men. She understood the magnitude of this concession and tears of gratitude came to her eyes.

She inclined her head to Shivaraman Nair. “I am honoured.”

He laughed heartily.

She had noticed that he greeted everything she said with laughter, as though she were an amusing child or a clever toy.

“I am understanding the customs of western people,” he said. First they were all invited to wash their right hands at the enamel basin with its chrome faucets, a prominent item of dining-room furniture. Then they sat around an immense polished teak table. The female relatives remained in the other room. Perhaps now they will at least talk to one another, Juliet thought.

Mrs Shivaraman Nair and Jati did not sit at the table, but served them throughout the meal, hovering like nervous, if ponderous, butterflies. All the Shivaraman Nairs were substantial testaments to prosperity. It seemed to be a mark of caste. One flaunted one's lavish eating habits as one's wife and daughters flaunted jewellery.

A huge plaintain leaf, from the banana palm, lay on the table in front of each person. Mrs Shivaraman Nair heaped a small mountain of rice onto the broad end of each frond, then Jati ladled out various curries in little mounds along the leaf, the hottest and spiciest at the tip of the green “plate”, proceeding through a diminuendo of palate fires to the cooling curds at the other end. One ate with the fingers of the right hand, making a “mush” of rice and curry.

From time to time Mrs Shivaraman Nair would take something from the refrigerator, the most imposing item of furniture in the room, its teak-panelled recess a distinguished foil to chrome and white enamel. Each time she would ostentatiously unlock it with a key from the immense bunch that jangled at her waist. Then she would remove some item or other and relock the door. It was gratifying to draw the guests' attention to such a modern appliance.

Eating was a serious business. There was no conversation during this part of the meal, though the room was extremely noisy with the sounds of mastication and digestion, with thunderous belching and clearings of the throat. Jonathan and Miranda were red in the face from a suppressed urge to giggle. They dared not look at each other. Anand and his father bent rather low over their plantain leaves, their eyes on the food.

Eventually Shivaraman Nair became aware that his guests had ceased eating.

“But you are such poor eaters!” he boomed in astonishment.

The hosts' orgy of eating petered out with the third helping, and everyone turned to tea and talk.

“Tell me,” David said, “what do you think of Raj Narain's behaviour in London?”

The
Indian Express
had been giving lively accounts of the minister's arrival in the United Kingdom and of his tantrums at Heathrow Airport and at the Indian High Commission in London.

“That man is a peasant, a clown. He is very embarrassing,” said Anand.

“He can't be stupid,” Juliet countered, “to have defeated Mrs Gandhi for her own seat.”

“Ahh!” laughed Shivaraman Nair. “Your wife is understanding politics. Very remarkable! Very remarkable!”

Juliet was reminded of Samuel Johnson's comment about women preachers in the eighteenth century. She felt like a performing dog.

“For my son also I want this kind of wife,” Shivaraman Nair expatiated with enthusiasm. “After my son is finishing his medical degree I am sending him to university in America. He will be needing very educated wife.”

“For this my father will allow one thousand rupees less in the dowry,” said Anand dryly, grinning at Juliet.

She smiled back. I like him, she thought.

“What do you think of Narains statement,” David pressed them, “that as long as there is English spoken in India the British Raj is still here?”

“He is wanting North India Raj!” said Shivaraman Nair angrily. “He is wanting Hindi Raj! Malayalis will never accept this! When he is saying
no English
, he is meaning no Malayalam, no Tamil, no Kannada, no Telugu, no South India! Only Hindi! English is necessary for all states to remain equal. We do not want imposition of Hindi! That man is stupid, but also dangerous for Malayalis.”

“Is he as dangerous as Mrs Gandhi?” asked David.

There was an awkward pause.

“Janata Party has made much criticism of Mrs Gandhi,” said Shivaraman Nair stiffly. “But what have they done to show they are better? It is still the same people in the machinery of the governing, the same red tape, the same bribery, the same corruption. The system is just the same. Nothing has changed. It is the system prevails.”

“Then you would like to see the return of Mrs Gandhi?”

“Yes, yes. With Mrs Gandhi things were working better. Moraiji Desai says she was against the people. But now all across the country there are more attacks on Harijans than before.”

“But surely there is no chance of Mrs Gandhi's regaining power?” David asked.

“Yes, yes, she will come back.”

“Raj Narain says that the Janata has destroyed Indira as Lord Krishna annihilated the evil
Kamsa,
” Juliet said.

“Oh ho!” laughed Shivaraman Nair. “He is stupid man. You are most knowledgeable about politics, Mrs David Juliet! This is most remarkable!”