Authors: Kishore Modak
‘But, mum, you
said you wanted to give me something, something that was mine,’
she looked at me.
‘Oh yes, I
completely forgot. Here you go,’ I fished out the bag of nails
and hair from my pocket and gave it to her. The nails had curled and
browned with years, only the acrylic enamel was more or less
unchanged, being plastic.
Her expression fell.
Hate and anger, that is what I wanted to return, and I had delivered
it. She took the bag, knowing well that whatever had happened to
David was not the result of the voodoo that she may have planned upon
him.
Nails and hair, aren’t
they the dead expendable parts of our body? The rest we cherish,
unlike nails and hair, which we expend on fashion.
‘Mum, I am really
sorry for any pain that I may have caused to you, but Jesus knows I
am also not guilty. I should have trusted you more and come to you
earlier, but I couldn’t, and it all just happened,’ she
kept the bag of death away in her handbag, offering me the avenue of
questioning that I had prepared for all week.
‘If you could go
back to that year in Singapore, would you still do what you did, or
would you choose another path?’ I simply asked.
‘I would do as I
have done, because it has left me with what I cherish the most in
this world, it has made my life worth living,’ she spoke
firmly, not defiantly.
I sank, right there by
at least an inch into the bench.
‘And what is
that?’ I asked, my voice falling, knowing well what women
cherish the most in their lives.
‘My son, Rafael,’
she spoke softly, opening her tacky bag, pulling out an envelope and
handing it to me.
In the envelope was
Rafael, on a four by six inch colour print, bare except for the
shorts, well illuminated, revealing his Caucasian descent. He was our
likeness, the Kettlewood likeness, no question about it.
In the background of
the photograph was the sea with some birds in the distance. The boy
had a happy smile on his face, and his body was firm with the onset
of youth.
My stomach turned as
the answers came rushing from the colour print, catching me
unprepared, like a blow on a distracted fighter.
As regards multiple
sexual partners, the Bongla boys are smarter than the Kettlewood men;
they know how to conduct themselves without getting into a jam.
‘He is a good
boy, mum; if I can, I want to send him to study at the Manila
University,’ she took the photograph back from my hand, looking
at it dotingly.
‘What about your
husband?’ I asked.
‘He left me soon
after Rafael was born,’ she answered, unremorsefully. ‘I
survived thanks to the money that you gave me,’ she added.
So our money had gone
towards looking after our child, a small-big justice.
‘We went to Cebu
and lived with my uncle, a kind man, a fisherman who accepted us and
let us be with him in the fishing villages. Rafael goes out to sea,
now that Uncle has become old, but I don’t want him to waste
his life fishing, I want him to go to the university’.
Rafael Kettlewood,
gliding in his skiff on the South China Sea, casting his net and
bringing in a living for his family; while Jay Kettlewood enjoyed a
lawyer’s life on Wall Street, it was a new mental image, with
two boys instead of one, with sea added to an urban skyscraper
landscape. They did not mix and remained separate in my mind.
On the lawn in front, a
fight broke out over a contentious stumping, two boys rolled on the
makeshift pitch, lashing out at each other.
‘I know I will
fail, but I will try till I fail,’ she whispered, wistfully.
‘Fail?’ I
simply asked.
‘Yes, fail. There
is no way of plucking Rafael from the fishing village and planting
him in the university. Even if I could make that much money, it would
be tough. No one from the village thinks anything beyond the sea.
It’s either fishing or entertaining the tourists that have
appeared in the recent years. There is no life beyond that,’
she explained.
‘A life on the
sea is not a bad life, it is clean and can be happy,’ I said.
‘You are right,
and he will take care of me when I am old, our home is enough for us,
but I want him to break out so that his children have a better chance
at making an education.’
Jay would not care for
me; I would die alone here in the flat, my body waiting for his
arrival, to hurriedly conclude my rites before the final passage. It
did not really bother me.
‘What does he
usually catch,’ I asked with a smile. I don’t know why
that thought popped up, type of fish my son harvested. Son or
grandson?
‘Spanish
Mackerel, Ski-Jack, Grouper, Snapper- fish, Blue Marlin, Mahi-Mahi,
Silver-fish and so many others,’ she replied, almost in a
litany, with a smile.
I gathered courage
before asking her ‘Who is Rafael’s father?’
I had spoken the boy’s
name, uttered it from my mouth, and imbibed him by mere utterance.
Sight acquaints, but does not internalize subjects the way speech
does, like just now, when the tip of my tongue had touched the roof
of my mouth, before carrying the sound, ‘Rafael’, through
my breath, accepting him, leaving him internalized.
‘I don’t
know, mum, I also don’t care, I will take care of him,’
she replied, shutting her handbag.
The boys on the lawn
had resumed their game, scruffier and evermore determined, a little
pace bowler charged in from the far end of the lawn, almost from near
the lily pond beyond.
‘You do not care,
but I do. Who do you think is his father?’ I asked with
authority—after all she had been my maid and that flavour of
relational dominance remained.
‘Swear on Jesus,
mum, I don’t know,’ was all that she said, and I believed
her because she would not have used the Lord’s name, unless
cornered.
‘I want to ask
you, how did it happen, I mean I saw you with sir so I know, but what
about Jay?’ the dam of inhibitions had been broken and my
questions began to flow, gushing through the sluice, relieving the
pressure created by their build-up over time.
‘Same way, mum.
Just like sir,’ she was looking down in shame.
Krishna, my inner voice
cried, had Jay also inherited his father’s perversity? If Mary
was to be believed, it certainly seemed so.
‘How many times
did you do it with Jay?’ I asked.
‘A few, but it
was a long time back and I am sorry it happened that way,’ she
grabbed her bag, crying as she rose, moving away, in grief.
On the lawn, the
winning team celebrated with hugs and back slaps while the losers
held their little heads low, the pace bowlers arms resting stiff on
folded, buckling knees, in tired submission as they left for home,
leaving the tired paceboy to follow. The light began to fade and the
afternoon grew overcast.
At home, I found myself
by the window again, rain obliterating the view of the street below.
Sam
e
wa
y
lik
e
si
r
,
which is how she had put her encounters with Jay, very clearly for me
to build the rest of the picture in my mind. They had done it a
fe
w
time
s
, and in just those few times a child’s
imagination had fired to the level of a middle-aged man’s. It
was either a case of hyper-creativity of a fecund imagination or a
case of being led by a host, a host who taught you what to do and how
to do it.
Here I go again,
putting all the blame on the prostituting maid, absolving the other
party altogether. The prostituting-victimized-maid had raised a child
without a whimper of complaint, the absolved had simply moved on, one
had died and the other practised law, seeking justice on behalf of
his clients. Not justice—much of it may be covering up crimes
that his clients commit. As a lawyer, was he scrupulous, walking away
from criminals? Obviously not, since he was quite successful.
The perversity of
David, was also mine, like a restless itchy palm needing another to
sound a clap. I missed my dead husband.
On purely legal
grounds, Jay stood steady; after all, he was only fourteen when it
had happened, clearly a minor.
But on moral grounds,
he should share the blame, not for having sex with a woman, but for
making her do it at gunpoint, whatever it is that men of his age say,
and do at gunpoint.
Men should wield guns
for a singular purpose— killing, and getting done in by a quick
death.
Mary was no angel, but
she had redeemed herself, and in some sense, had the courage to face
the consequences of her actions, raising the boy and loving him, not
caring about who the father was, standing up for her actions,
accepting them and being responsible for them. Catholic fears, too,
may have played their part in her decisions and her staged bravado.
Catholic or not, they were brave decisions, correct decisions.
David had simply wished
the consequences of his actions away, wanting to be rid of the
problem, rather than standing up and facing them. He had begged and
pleaded for me to help him through the mess, weak and genuine, like a
child’s fear of the dark.
How could you leave
anyone in the dark, scared, claustrophobic and alone?
Since his death, I was
happy, happy that I had not caused any angst to a dying man.
Jay, though young, had
been strangely strong. Through the shooting and the police visits, he
had been strong enough to carry his carnal secrets inside of him,
never unburdening, wanting to move through life harbouring a dark and
pitiful past through all the living years. What sort of a man had I
raised, someone who could carry the poison of his actions deep within
for a lifetime, ready to take it to his grave, but never once turning
around and facing their consequence?
For someone as young as
Jay, it was incredible to be able to carry such humongous mental
loads without buckling.
When I was young,
killing an ant left me pensive. Death, burials and such still wrench
my heart and fill my mind with gloom. Maybe it is best to be
cremated, committed in flames, after all, a pyre burns and melts the
body while a grave seems to embalm and preserve rather than consume,
as if waiting for someone to come searching for things that are gone,
before resurrecting one’s own hopes and fears.
Jay may not have
laughed and chuckled in the pub, with his friends, about his juvenile
adventures; he would have simply bottled them up, keeping his secrets
well within himself. That was my reading of his adult build.
I had seen his
girlfriend’s photo from America; he had shown it to me. Was she
compliant, just like me with David, or had she set him right in bed?
Sexually speaking, if
Jay was doing at fourteen what his father had been doing at forty,
what would the prodigal son evolve to by the time he reached forty?
What is good sex and
what is bad? Do we need to prescribe physical boundaries to our
youth, like no-oral, or no-anal, or no-slapping or no-binding? We
cannot, because in all those acts may lie the sexual salvation of a
couple. So then, can we conclude that all good sex is consensual and
let our youth know that as long as both the partners are in
agreement, anything goes? Then again, my consent to your excesses may
be wrong and one-sided, as it was in our case.
To answer that
question, one may have to generalize, as long as both the parties had
a good time, with no residual guilt or ill will, then that is good
sex, even if it means leaving you un-adventured and dissatisfied,
like following a prescribed religion, stifling and boring in the long
run, without any thought for experimentation.
I am all for the sexual
revolution . . . but a revolt which upholds the regime that it
creates, not one that settles into a plush life on Wall Street,
leaving the by-product of revolution to survive upon the meagre
income of domestic servitude.
The sum total of
happiness, with or without the trappings of wealth is all good and
fine, but only if the fisher-folk get the taste of urban excesses and
then reject it, retreating back to the sea and the sand.
Who is Rafael’s
father, David or Jay?
Maybe this was the
answer. Do whatever you like as long as you don’t get pregnant,
don’t carry the proof of your ill judgment for all to see. She
could have killed it but she chose to keep that seed, letting it
grow, caring for it, even giving up her own family, loving the
product of debauched acts committed on her body, by my son and my
husband.
The prostituting-bitch
was now a ferocious caring mother, ready to protect what was hers,
and I had the sudden urge to take it all away from her.
Much before I chose my
next action, I had to get a test done. I had to be sure who was
Rafael’s father, and then I would do it, irrespective of the
result of the test.
Son or grandson, does
it matter? Yes it does, because it would leave me either a wife who
had been cheated or a mother who had raised a child wrong.
It was best to let a
few days pass before I called her again; she had been agitated and
needed the time to become herself, before we could speak.
‘Hello, Mary, it
is me Rashmi,’ I used a payphone, not yet wanting to reveal my
telephone numbers.
‘Hello, mum. Yes,
mum?’ she answered, a bit cold and icy after our previous
interaction, wanting to know why I kept calling her.
‘I called to say,
you don’t have to worry about Rafael. He is my son too, I can
help you finish his education if you like.’ Another ten
thousand dollars would be a small price to pay for the truth.
‘Thank you so
much, mum, but I cannot accept it. He is the only one left with me
and I cannot give him away to anyone,’ her fears came pouring
out. She thought I wanted to have her son for myself. I did not want
Rafael; I just wanted the truth of his paternity.