The Rice Mother (53 page)

“Oh, you’re home early,” I observed casually.

For a moment he stood frozen in the middle of the room as if confused. He looked at me strangely.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. A small worry nagged in my head. I didn’t desire him so lost. He was simply supposed to return home to his wife and love her like before. I stared at him, and he stared back.

“I thought you might be ill,” he said, his voice odd. “I thought something might be wrong at home. I felt anxious and restless. Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” I said feebly, standing up and walking over to hold him. It broke my heart to see him look so beaten. I didn’t hate him after all. He was my life. “Oh, Luke, everything is fine. There is nothing wrong. Let’s go to bed.”

“I thought I felt something crawl up my back inside my shirt,” he muttered to himself.

I led him up the stairs, limp and uncomprehending. In bed, he didn’t want to make love. He held me close, as if he were a child that had been frightened by a nightmare. He frightened me. The power of the salt under the bed scared me. Over and over again I saw Luke’s confused face say, “I thought I felt something crawl up my back inside my shirt.” Luke without his glittering eyes was a frightened little boy. The responsibility of turning his brilliant brain into mush must not be mine. For hours that night I lay awake, listening to the sound of his breathing. Once he shouted, breathing hard. I shook him awake, and for a horrible flash he stared at me, hunted and without recognition.

“Everything is all right,” I comforted in the soft darkness, stroking his head until his breathing became deep and even once more, and he fell asleep on my chest. Why does my silly heart desire his tainted caress?

The next morning I swept away the salt. I gathered all the salt crystals together and flushed them down the toilet. Luke as he was the night before was too frightening a vista for me. The red cloth I put into the bin, and Ramesh’s warning eyes into the farthest corner of my mind. Never again would I try anything like that. I would love Luke until I loved him no longer, and then I would be free. That was the only option left for me.

To console myself, I made a large flower arrangement. It drooped over a third of the dining table. Filled only with white rosebuds, yew, and purple hyacinths, it looked like a funeral arrangement, mourning for color, but when he walked in, he said, “Why, Dimple, that is beautiful! You really have a talent with flowers.” He did not realize that white rosebuds mean a heart ignorant of love, yew, sadness, and purple hyacinths, my sorrow. Ah well, how to expect a lion such as him to know the emotions that gently reside in flowers? It must have been his secretary who found out the meaning of the daffodils he sent and the red tulips he brought to my doorstep after all. As I had suspected.

He was still seeing her. I felt it on my skin. Rubbing, rubbing like coarse material. She materializes in my dreams, waving at me from afar. Sometimes she laughs at me and shakes her head in disbelief. “He is not your man,” she tells me. “He is mine.” I wake up and stare at my husband, almost in fascination. He has no idea I know, so he loves me gently, like silk on my sore skin. He buys me flowers, velvet-textured and expensive. I look at him and smile, for he must never know that I know the face of his whore.

There is Nisha to consider now.

Amu really loves Nisha. In the afternoons they lie drowsily together inside the hammock. Sometimes I tiptoe outside to gaze at the two people that I love most in the world asleep under a tree. The sweat on their upper lips, the even breathing, and the minute veins that web their closed eyelids, like half-open windows, console me. It is funny the feelings that Amu arouses in me. When I see her in the temple in the company of other old people, she looks frail and pitiful. Her life seems wasted, over, but when I see her with Nisha cradled in her arms, I think her life rich and full.

Bella wanted to buy a house, and I promised to supply the down payment. Surely Luke would not mind. Too bad if he does. For my birthday he bought me the largest diamond I have ever seen. I suppose he is doing very well, with the economy on the up and up. It is freakish how completely blind he is to my pain and sorrow. Is it possible that someone could be so blind?

Mother came to see me, wanting money. Papa was not feeling very well and he had not been working. She needed twenty thousand ringgit. “Of course, Mother.” Inside her mouth, her tongue is very pink and very sharp. It moves around her mouth like an energetic alien with an agenda of its own. I was quite fascinated by it. It reminded me of that time Uncle Sevenese got so drunk, he likened Mother to the small-brained howler monkeys he saw in Africa—black with a very pink tongue. “If you saw their mating ritual, Dimple, you’d be shocked by how much they resemble your dear mother when she is talking.” Of course, he was swaying drunk when he said that. But still.

A few days later Mother was back. This time Nash was in a spot of trouble with loan sharks. She needed five thousand. I gave her ten. I know Luke hates Mother, and he does sometimes question big cash withdrawals, but . . . who cares.

Two weeks passed, and Mother found her way to my living room again. Nash was in serious trouble again. He had “borrowed” forty thousand ringgit from the safe in his office on Friday night, hoping to double it at the Russian roulette tables in Genting Highlands at the weekend. Needless to say, he lost all of it. His employer lodged a police report, and he was taken away. When Mother went to see him, his bronze arms were covered with cigarette burns, and his arrogant eyes cowed with wild fear.

“It is the policemen who did this,” he whispered desperately through a split lip. He clutched Mother’s hand frantically and begged her to pay his employers off so they would drop the charges. Say no more, Mother dear. I went to the bank with her and withdrew the money in cash. I am developing a taste for giving Mother Luke’s money. Papa phoned to say thank you, but he sounded broken. I knew how he felt.

Let me tell you a story—a strange one, but I assure you it is all true. You decide whether or not the heroine did the right thing, for I, myself, fear she has made a grave mistake, and there is no going back.

It happens in a gorgeous house. Unsmiling, a splendid man watched her among the throng of party guests, bejeweled, gilded, and so very beautiful. Of course he couldn’t hear what they were saying, a sleek waiter and she, but he could see even the tiniest of nuances in their furiously young bodies. They were flirting with each other. He watched her eyes carefully. He could always tell all her thoughts from her eyes. They were upturned and moist with some strange emotion. Had he seen that look before? Mmmm, perhaps. He would look deeper into the shadows of his memory banks. The past seemed so far away now. Above all he desired objectivity.

There. There—a red fingernail tracing a crease in the waiter’s shirt. In front of all these people! The shame. He thought about the delicacy of her neck. It fitted so prettily inside the circle of his entwined fingers. He knew, because he had tried it for size. And it was perfect. His mind filled with a picture of the hussy, her legs, smooth and silky, wrapped around the waiter’s naked torso. The liquid picture made him gasp for breath.

Suddenly he wanted to know what the reality looked like. Those small animal sounds she made in his bed, he wanted to watch from afar. Perhaps he was surprised by the perversion of his thoughts, but he consoled himself that it was only an experiment. He might not like it, which of course would exonerate him of all perversion. He saw her offer the waiter a quick sidelong glance with her beautiful eyes and that half smile that looked more like a pout. That look he definitely recognized. It had once fired his blood and made the need to possess her sear his loins at night. He shifted uncomfortably in his trousers.

She tossed her long blue-black hair and swayed away. The waiter stared at her back.

The splendid man stood up and began to walk toward the waiter. She had chosen the cast; now he must hire them. Close enough, he clicked his fingers. It was rude, but the waiter turned around, his expression polite and professional although his eyes were deeply offended. He was really quite good-looking in a dumb sort of way. The man smiled at the waiter and crooked a finger. He could see the resentment that stiffened the waiter’s shoulders as he walked over. He had the walk of a pansy. The well-dressed man relaxed.

“Would you like to sleep with my wife?” he asked politely. There was a taunting smile in his cold eyes.

The waiter became rigid with indignation. His eyes darted around the room quickly. It was beautiful, his act of dignified anger and disgust. “I think you have mistaken me for someone else, sir. I have no idea who your wife might be. I am paid only to serve
drinks.”

The bastard, there was pleasure in his voice.

“She is the one with the long black hair,” the man said, his face hard as he reached out and pulled a long strand of black hair from a button on the waiter’s white jacket.

The waiter visibly gulped. “Listen, I don’t want any trouble.”

“Hey, relax. I’m not looking for trouble either. I just want to watch.”

“What?” The young man’s eyes widened with astonishment.

“I want to watch you with my wife.”

“You’re mad,” the waiter stuttered, taking a step back. Obviously no one had suggested such a vile thing to him before.

“I will pay you five hundred ringgit if you can get my wife into one of the bedrooms in this big house and leave the connecting bathroom door open for me.”

“I will lose my job if I get caught.”

“Find another,” the unsmiling man suggested carelessly, letting his eyes wander around the room as if he was losing interest in the conversation. When his cold eyes returned to the object of his wife’s attentions, the waiter was waging a losing war with greed. Yes, greed. The cause of all man’s downfall.

“How will you pay me?”

“Cash, now.”

“How does it work?” the waiter asked nervously.

In fact, the splendid man hadn’t really thought about the mechanics of it all. Now he thought fast. The blue door down the corridor from the balcony had an en-suite bathroom that connected with the other guest bedroom. He started to walk away from the crowd of beautiful people toward the garden. The air outside was balmy. The waiter followed meekly.

“Take her to the bedroom with the blue door down the corridor upstairs and make sure you leave the connecting doors to the en-suite bathroom open and at least one light on,” he instructed in his hard precise voice as he reached into his wallet. Five hundred ringgit, still crisp from the bank and tightly wadded together, was counted and passed over to the waiter. For some reason it never crossed the man’s mind that the waiter wouldn’t succeed. It was true he had the face of a loser, but attached was an energetic body and flashing eyes. Exactly what she wanted tonight.

“What if she says no?” the waiter asked timidly.

“Then come into the bedroom next to the blue door and give me back my money.” The man looked at the nervous, ever so slightly aroused waiter coldly and smiled. It was a tense, terrible smile.

The waiter nodded quickly.

“By the way, she likes it rough,” the man tossed casually as he left to find his wife. She was coming out of the powder room downstairs.

“Darling,” he said, so close to her hair he could smell the clean scent of her shampoo. “Something has come up. I have to leave, but I’ll send the driver back for you. Stay and enjoy yourself. I’ll see you at home later.” He kissed her lightly on the cheek.

“Oh, what a shame,” she said very softly in his right ear.

“Good night, darling, and do try to
have some fun
.” He was suddenly eager to be away. Let the game begin. He closed the front door behind him and walked along the side of the house. A kind of cold despondency settled on his stiff shoulders. The initial excitement was fading. He stood behind some bushes by the bay windows and looked into the golden party inside. He saw her cascading length of hair. She was alone and staring out of the French window.

For a moment he stood transfixed by the sight and cursed the impulse that had possessed him to trap her, to watch her while she was unaware, to test her fidelity. Unexpectedly she looked small and lonely. Then the waiter was beside her. The man stood in the shadows and rooted for her.

“Refuse, refuse, refuse,” he whispered softly into a large, dark green hedge. She stood staring out of the window, ignoring the creeping waiter. The man thought he would stop the experiment then. She was innocent. Then he saw her half turn and smile at the waiter. No, he must see this through. Expose her cheating heart.

The back door was open, and he walked right through a busy kitchen. He was dressed appropriately and wore the right expression of arrogance, so nobody stopped him. Quickly he slipped up the stairs before someone who knew him could waylay him. He passed the blue door and entered the door of the next bedroom. The two rooms shared a bathroom. It was dark but cool in the room. The connecting door was open, so he went through the bathroom and entered the arena where he would trap his beautiful wife. He switched on the bedside lamp, and it threw a golden pool of light on the moss-green coverlet. Their hosts favored a simple, uncluttered style. His mind imagined her gasping with revulsion, crying out, “Stop! Get your filthy hands off me.”

If only she would pass his test. She had become so cold and withdrawn with the birth of the child. And with every year she froze a little more. Silently he left the room to wait next door. He sat on a large bed and smoked for about twenty minutes. Then he heard the connecting door to the other room open. Something thudded against his ribs. Someone was checking that his side of the bathroom was unlocked. In the dark he smiled cynically. The fish bites. He put out the cigarette and waited to see if she would use the bathroom first. Then he pushed open the door and stepped into the dark bathroom. The waiter had left the connecting door ajar. He could see directly into the pool of light.