Authors: Kishore Modak
He wasn’t wearing
any, I soon found out, leaving us exposed.
That evening, he came
home early from work and hit the bottle immediately, staring through
the tele in the second bedroom, while the household wound down for
the night around him. We couldn’t discuss the turn of events,
since Mary and Jay were at home.
At night, he unlocked
the cupboard and was playing with the gun, again.
‘No, David, not
tonight. Please, there is just too much happening.’ I knew
exactly what the man wanted after he had had a few drinks.
He did not reply,
getting the message, keeping the empty weapon back into the cabinet.
Before he shut the safe, inside the cabinet, I caught site of another
bag. It was right next to the pistol.
‘What is that?
Yes, there in the bag. Let me see it,’ I reached out, grabbing
the bag, spilling its contents onto the bed.
An assortment of a few
objects, mostly metallic with leather accompaniments no bigger than
large keys spilt out. They were curious looking, not easily
attributable to any practical use, except one item, the smallest one
– that was clearly a bullet.
‘What is this?’
I asked him, not meaning any particular item, more of a general
query, in what seemed like a day of questions, questions with no
answers.
‘Stuff, that I
got from Bangkok recently, when I visited for work,’ he
replied, Dutch-courage making his voice measured, yet forceful.
I picked up what seemed
an accoutrement, unrecognizable. It looked like a cross between a
clip and a clamp, with a pea shaped pod at the end. The lower part
could be pressed like the sprung legs of a clothes clip, opening out
its pea-pod head into two neat hemispheres. The pod was sliced off at
the top, like the earth flattened at its poles. I held it up to him,
questioningly.
‘That is a
c-clip,’ he replied.
For fear of the young
straying onto these pages, I leave it for you to expand the letter
‘c’. Suffice it to say, my husband had bought
sadomasochistic sex toys into our bedroom with the intention of using
them, right away.
Some of the young will
eventually stray with or without visiting these pages, so might as
well do justice to these words—it was a clitoral-clip along
with an array of nipple clamps, plugs and mouth gags. I picked them
up, touching them, leather and steel sending a twitch of excitement
to my groin. My nipples puckered under my night dress, their mottled
surface catching the fabric as they teased and shrivelled, like
drying raisins.
He rose from the bed
and shut the bedroom door. ‘Come here,’ was all that he
said.
In the morning, with
tea, I looked back; it hadn’t been like this at all in the
beginning, things had been normal. David and I met, and dated, and
went dancing with our friends, went through all the motions of a
happy young love life. We got married, with concerned parents on my
side; after all it was a dilution of their genealogy, which is how
they viewed marriage outside of our community. At first they grew
angry and upset, arguing with histrionics, before pondering and
finally laughing through the wedding reception, merry at the imminent
arrival of a grandson, accepting before moving on.
It was years after
marriage that our sex life evolved; or shall we says
devolve
d
to what we have today. What triggered it, I cannot say. But, with
dead certainty, I can tell you that he led all of our
experimentation, teaching me to accept and enjoy the fruits of his
carnal lessons. The carnality was mostly non-violent; he just evoked
an aura of a situation that otherwise lives trapped in the mind, a
personal fantasy. He simply brought his fantasies to the party,
without really hurting me in any physically claimable way. It was the
enactment, and not the committing of the actual act that I played
along with.
But, a fantasy that
comes true dies instantly. Living them, kills them, leaving our
imagination to fill the vacuum left behind, with new unreachable
debasement. To be desirable, a fantasy has to be elusive and beyond
reach, weaving a cat and mouse between what we have and what we think
we want.
Where do dead fantasies
go? They simply pass on, preying on new receptive hosts.
He never sodomized me.
Did that make him gentle? In my eyes, yes it did.
What was at the genesis
of David’s sexual revolution? Again I can’t say, but it
was an area that I wanted to move towards. I went there, curious to
find what was hidden, because I saw no anomalies in his life. It
seemed all well laid-out, with normalcy of childhood, youth and now
the middle years.
Childhoo
d
, isn’t that the
recess in which most of the answers lie, waiting to be pried and
found, explaining most of our adult deviance.
‘David, I think
we should see a shrink. This whole thing needs untangling, it is
moving us backwards,’ I said, teacup in one hand, gently
clinking onto the saucer, in the other.
‘Hmm, why? What
is wrong?’ David looked up, edge of his newspaper curling over
as if cross with me for distracting its reader.
‘It’s just
that we seemed to have crossed a line last night, a barrier beyond
which lies trouble. Let us just see a shrink?’ I asked again.
‘Don’t be
silly, if this kind of a thing bothers you, we can simply take a
break from it, or even stop altogether. Don’t worry so much.’
He got up, gently touching my face, going in to fetch his office-bag
before leaving, for work.
See, this was the
thing; he was a kind-hearted man who simply liked to have fun,
particularly when he was a bit drunk.
Fu
n
, it
had become the cause and the solution of all our current problems.
Last night, instead of
discussing the situation, we had simply had wild kinky sex, before
sleeping through things. I have to confess—sometimes I, too,
tied him up.
By the beep of the
phone, I knew Ms Goh was calling . . . the ring-tone was set that
way.
‘Okay, I have
told her she will need to leave the island, no reasons given, just
that she will have to leave,’ she said, after exchanging
pleasantries. ‘She is distraught, it seems they have a lot of
debts to pay back home and she really needed the money. No choice,
she will have to go.’
‘That is okay,
but do we know what is wrong with her, what does she have, is she
pregnant or is she unwell?’ I could not conceal my anxiety.
‘That we cannot
say, unless you take her for a private examination. But in that case,
she will get to know and may create all sorts of trouble.’
An exam is always
taken, but in this case we would have to give it, since we may have
to give up with it.
‘Trouble, what
sorts?’
‘For one, she
will want to know who the father is, assuming she is expecting; or
which of her partners gave her the contagion; after all, she did pass
her medical exam when she landed,’ Ms Goh was bordering on
rude, becoming matter-of-fact.
Partner, an
inappropriate word, since it does not reflect the casualness of the
fling. A
casua
l
flin
g
with
n
o
hear
t
i
n
it, wasn’t that the bedrock of forgiveness and acceptance that
my mind had settled upon?
‘I will call you
if she says anything to me,’ I hung up, banging the phone
rudely.
I caught sight of Mary
in the doorway of the kitchen, her face just peeping out as I hung
the phone up.
‘Please, mum, can
you please let me be in Singapore?’ her eyes were welling.
I waved for her to come
to me; she sat on the carpet while I looked down from the divan,
senior muse at an appropriate high ground.
‘Why, Mary, you
know you can’t be here. Ms Goh insists that you leave the
island. We told her we were fine with you continuing in another home
in Singapore, but her agency insists that you leave.’ My voice
was calm. It was the first conversation of reason with her, since I
had snuck up on them.
‘But why, mum, it
is my medical examination? Is something wrong?’ My left big toe
twitched, like when one is drawn into the awkward end of a subject,
unexpectedly. She did not notice it; otherwise her expression would
have changed, since it would have answered her question without me
having to reply.
‘No, these are
just routine tests. I am sure Ms Goh has her reasons, she will tell
you soon,’ I hoped I sounded convincing. I couldn’t have,
since I was not giving any clarity of facts or reasons that could
anchor conviction.
‘Mum, I have a
lot of debts in Manila. If I go home now, my husband will not accept
me. Please, mum. At least let me finish my two-year contract with my
agency. Then I will go away. I promise you, mum, I will not say a
word of it to anyone. I cannot afford to talk about it. If the men at
home come to know, they will kill me,’ she sounded pitiable and
slutty, speaking of feminine honour.
She was pitiable and
slutty, why? Because, she committed the same acts outside her
marriage, exactly the same ones which I commit within my marriage. A
weak soggy straw of marital-morality to hang onto, I clung to it,
justifying what was not justifiable.
‘Let me see, how
much will you make in a couple of years, about ten thousand dollars.
Right?’ with concrete facts, conviction crept back into my
voice.
‘Yes, mum,’
she looked up, a glint of hope in her eyes.
‘But then your
first six months’ of salary goes to the agents, right, so you
would make about seven- thousand-five-hundred before your own
expenses.’
‘Yes, mum, but I
do have other income as well,’ she added, knowing well, what
would jump to my mind as sources of income—Bongla boys.
I gave up, ‘Okay,
I will speak to sir about a total of ten thousand, but then you need
to leave within the week and just go away forever, at least from our
lives.’
Sir, why did I bother
calling him that? Wouldn’t ‘David’ be just fine,
after all he had done enough with her to drop any pretence of false
respect or formality.
‘Okay, mum. Thank
you, mum. You have saved my life. I will never know how to repay you,
but at any time if I can, I will do what I can for you.’ She
got up and left for the kitchen, from where kitchen sounds resumed.
I informed David of the
settlement.
‘Wow, thanks
dear, you have saved our lives. I would never make it through without
you,’ he was relieved, and asked if we could head to the club
for a swim and some dinner that Friday evening.
They both sounded just
the same with their thank-yous, like two cheaters cowering in front
of the cheated, which was me.
At the club, we spent
what became one of our last happy evenings together, because what
happened at home and in our lives afterwards redefined our remainder,
at least mine, since David did not have much longer, in any case.
After the drinks and
the swims, we headed to the bar where I, too, got fortified, with
wine. We left the car at the club, a Honda Civic, a hundred thousand
in local dollars, parking being free for members if one ignored the
monthly fees, and walked home past the malls with the lights and the
people. We laughed and snuggled even though the air was humid and
sticky.
At home, it was
inevitable, with me and he under the influence, the toys surfaced. I
felt horny, wanting to vent sexually what was pent up inside me; I
should have avoided the last couple of drinks.
Later, I dressed in
leather, sitting on the chair in the bedroom, legs spread wide, like
a watery oasis in the desert of my brown thighs, looking up at him
across the room, inviting, as he toyed up the gun and pulled the
trigger.
The pistol did not go
off in a blank vacant thud; it emitted a full-bodied blast, negating
all the effects of alcohol, leaving me completely sober. Things
became confusing and entangled.
In the air, hung the
unmistakable smell like from firecrackers and a thin ribbon of smoke
rising from the gun. David looked stunned; the pistol was lying on
the ground, after recoiling out of control like a stubborn child.
Behind me, I heard a crackle of glass from the window pane; in it was
a neat hole about ten millimetres in diameter, cracks growing
radially from the hole, spreading away like a spiders web in the
glass, reaching the edge where they gave way, sending the pane
crashing twenty floors below. Time stood still while the pane
plummeted through the air, then from below came the sounds of glass
shattering; from this height, it was mere tinkles like from the wands
of fairies.
‘David, was the
gun loaded?’ I was shivering, looking at him. He, too, was
shaken by the unexpected recoil of the weapon. I touched my hair,
realizing that a few locks were singed with a slight smell of burnt
hair about them.
He was mumbling. I
rushed to the gun and picked it up, it was hot, except at the grip
frame.
Just outside the
bedroom door there were sounds of footsteps and a voice ‘Mum,
mum, please help me,’ it was Mary. I opened the door; she stood
there, holding her right shoulder, blood all over the door and the
floor.
‘David, quick,
call an ambulance, quickly,’ I screamed, waking Jay up,
inadvertently. He started crying, at the sight of the blood and Mary
passing out in the doorway.
David rushed to the
phone in the living room, stepping through the blood, leaving a trail
of red dribbling from his slippers. He was fumbling with the phone,
not knowing which number to dial. ‘999,’ I simply
shouted, sensing his dilemma.
‘Jay, stay in
your room,’ I said, cradling Mary’s head in my lap, still
in my leather straps and black satin underwear. David was repeating
our address into the phone when the intercom rang aloud in the
background. It must be the security guard from the guardroom,
checking the source of the crashing windowpane.