The Other Language (33 page)

Something softened inside and he realized he had tears in his eyes. What a relief and what a revelation, to be feeling something so deeply that it should bring tears. So there
was
something left in him that had been frozen and now was thawing. Might this be a case of Stendhal syndrome? he wondered as he dabbed away at his tears. It must be either that or the feeling of oneness with the universe that Ushma had described. Where else would this spellbinding emotion come from? This was exactly what he needed to reconnect with: the simple truth contained within a perfect act. If only he could tap into that source again, then he would be safe, as an artist and as a man.

When the performance ended Ushma came forward, followed by the three younger dancers. With their long hennaed fingers they touched first their heads, then their eyes, then their hearts, and bowed. Not to the audience, he realized—they didn’t engage with them, or smile or come out of their composure—they were bowing to Shiva and to his cosmic dance. Then the three slender younger dancers, in one swift, deft move, knelt down in front of Ushma, placed their hands around her ankles and kissed her feet, touching their foreheads lightly to the floor. To each one Ushma gave a blessing, by touching their heads with her open palms. This exchange, performed with such delicacy, a daily ritual that didn’t seem to surprise his Indian companions, astounded him. To kiss your teacher’s feet. To be blessed by your guru. For a fleeting moment he thought that if he could only penetrate more deeply into this magnificent tradition and be part of it—no longer as a visitor or as part of an audience, but physically delve into it—then he might have hope to find a way back into his work. There was no longer any respect for serious writers in the West, only marketing. Appearances. Money. It was no wonder he was so disillusioned, no wonder his inspiration had waned. Now Ushma smiled, as the small audience kept clapping, and he was sure that she was looking directly at him. Yes, she had danced for him, and for him only. That he knew. How could he let go of such a miracle?

It took a surprisingly short time for sixteen years of marriage to come undone. Later, neither one of them was able to recollect how the sequence had unfolded—which phrase had prompted the next, nor how it had been possible that a mild irritation, an unpleasant remark, had unveiled truths that had seemed impossible to reveal until that moment.

The feeling they both had was of a tidal wave that kept gaining speed and had crashed upon them before they could take shelter. Just like any natural calamity, it happened without foresight, while they were having tea on the small terrace of their room, looking at the peaceful river bathed in the morning light. It is possible that during the night they both had been prey to the kinds of dreams they’d had since coming to India—dreams of unusual intensity—and were still under their spell. In any case, seconds before it started, neither of them had the perception that they were about to hack to death their marriage, nor could they foresee how quick and (apparently) painless this hacking would turn out to be. Everything had seemed possible, in that moment. Possible that they could put an end to their marriage, that they could go different ways (he would stay on, she would go back). The decision had sounded final and conclusive, as though both of them had been toying secretly with it until it had become so familiar that it no longer frightened them. Oh no, now they were both looking forward to what would happen next, when they would be without the other. It didn’t deter them to think they would have to move out of their comfortable apartment, close their joint bank account, file for divorce, find a new place to live, maybe even move to a different country. Suddenly they were ready for change. In fact they’d never felt more euphoric.

They had to say things to each other that would make turning back impossible, and they obliged.
I don’t love you anymore. I haven’t been in love with you for years. I am still young, I want passion. I need to feel inspired again. I want my life back, I have lived only in your shadow
. How odiously clichéd it all sounded, and yet—at that very moment—so utterly real, so satisfying. It was as though with each phrase they were shedding years of dissimulation. They grew lighter, younger, more desirable, now that they thought they were about to take their lives back.

Before leaving the Fort, Ushma had given him her number and the name of a simple hotel he could stay in outside Bubaneshwar, not far from where she lived. He told the prince he would stay a couple of more days at the Fort, then he might go back to Orissa to look at the temples again. Plans were still uncertain, but he didn’t mind, he said.

She booked her flight online and in two hours was packed.

He didn’t bother to ask his wife why she was flying to Paris instead of Rome.

When, a few weeks later, they met again to discuss the details of their separation, their enthusiasm had already subsided (both their romantic fantasies had turned out to be unrealistic or disappointing) and they were faced only with the practicalities of dismantling what was left of their life as a couple. They were disoriented and afraid but also unable to repair the damage done.

Later, when they tried to explain to their friends why their marriage had fallen apart, within “
l’espace d’un matin
,” she’d said, they admitted they weren’t quite sure how it happened.

They both, separately, used the same expression.

It was like being in a dream, they said. A strange dream, which seemed so vivid until it lasted.

The Club

Soon after her husband’s death in 1995, Mrs. D’Costa moved from the big Mombasa house overlooking the Mtwapa Creek to a small cottage by the ocean, farther down the coast. She had lived happily in that house for more than forty years with her husband, a well-respected Goan doctor, and their three children. They had met in the fifties in Edinburgh, where they both went to college, and at the time young freckled Anne Munro could never have imagined that one day she’d call herself a white Kenyan and that she’d never set foot in Scotland again.

She had given most of her furniture away to the Salvation Army—her long teak dining table with its eight chairs, beds, lamps, paintings, the two old armchairs she and her husband used to sit on after dinner to do the crossword, various knickknacks of no value—and took with her only the strictly necessary to fill the two-bedroom cottage—whatever she couldn’t live without. That included her cook, Hamisi, now gray at the temples, who had been with her for twenty-five years, and her aging Jack Russells, Pickle and Chutney, fond of biting strangers.

Among the things that had appealed to her about moving away from the city was the fact that two old friends of hers, Prudence and Lionel Wilton (she a former actress with the Little Theatre Club company in Mombasa, he a brilliant architect originally from England), had retired twenty years before to this remote stretch of coastline, on the edge of a thick forest that ran all the way down south. The forest was a sacred place to the local Digo
tribe and it had been designated a national monument. Rare species of plants and wild animals still thrived in its thick shade, and the Wiltons claimed they’d had leopards cross their land up until fifteen years back. They lived on a leafy ten-acre property overlooking the ocean, in an airy white house Lionel had designed in a simple Frank Lloyd Wright style. Not far from their manicured garden that gently sloped toward the beach, one could see the remnants of other crumbling houses probably built in the forties and fifties, barely standing under the shade of gigantic flame trees, half hidden beneath the tangle of creepers and ancient bougainvilleas. Wild fig trees had sprouted in the cracks of the floors, their roots blasting the walls with their violent push. Their original owners had all left for mysterious reasons and had never returned, so for years now Prudence and Lionel had been the only residents—that is to say white residents—in that area other than the fishermen and their families who lived in thatched huts scattered in the bush at the back of the property.

The Wiltons were eager for their friend to become their neighbor. Now that they were reaching their seventies, they were beginning to feel lonelier and were longing for a bit of company. When he heard that her husband had passed away, Lionel immediately called Mrs. D’Costa and told her about the empty cottage next door to them.

Without thinking about it twice, she’d enthusiastically agreed to move there. Actually she was relieved to let go of the big house and its happy memories now that her children had married and gone off to England, Australia and Durban. She had always tried to see change as a good thing and not to be afraid of it.

Her new landlord, a Mr. Khan who owned the hardware store twenty miles down the road, had agreed to have some work done to the cottage, since nobody had lived in it for a very long time and it was in a state of disrepair. He was quite relieved when Mrs.
Anne D’Costa showed up at the store, inquiring if he’d agree to rent it to her. Though what she could afford to pay was minimal, he was happy for the income, and that someone would occupy the place. She asked him to replace the thatch roof with tin, to whitewash the walls and have one of his workers cut the mangle of weeds and bushes that strangled the trees. He was pleased to find out that Mrs. D’Costa was an easy tenant with few demands. She didn’t expect him to replace the old pipes or the haphazard wires that were snaking from the walls, nor did she seem to mind the yellowing Bakelite switches and fuse boxes dating back to the fifties. She had done enough maintenance while running a household of six, and now that she was alone she didn’t feel like being fussy about housekeeping anymore.

The Wiltons had welcomed Anne on her first night in the cottage with a strong vodka tonic. They sat on squeaking plastic chairs out on their veranda just as the full moon was about to bob up from the horizon.

“Welcome to our private paradise, my dear!” said Lionel, raising his glass. “You must come over for sundowners every evening!”

He still wore faded khaki shorts, knee socks and desert shoes, just as he did when she’d met him right before Kenya Independence, and he still combed what was left of his sandy hair on the side. But his body had shrunk and shriveled since then and his liver-spotted hand trembled slightly when he held up a glass.