Married Woman (6 page)

‘Are you missing your mother?’

She started to laugh, the idea was so absurd. ‘No, silly‚’ she said.

‘Then what? Tell me, I’m your husband‚’ urged Hemant. ‘Tell me, wife.’

Astha didn’t know why she had been crying. Nothing in her present life seemed to justify tears. Finally she mumbled, a little sheepish, ‘It hurts.’

‘Where?’

Astha’s hand vaguely danced over her middle. Hemant put his hand firmly between her legs. ‘There?’ he asked. She nodded.

‘Why didn’t you tell me? You must tell me these things, I will never know otherwise. We are one, you know. Now promise.’ He bent to kiss her.

Astha responded more warmly than she had in her entire marriage. ‘I didn’t know what to say‚’ she went on whispering in the ears of her lawful wedded husband, her husband who would take care of all her hurts like he was taking care of this one.

‘Poor baby‚’ murmured Hemant, ‘we won’t make love till it stops hurting, all right?’

‘Hemant?’ asked Astha, a week after they were married.

‘Hum?’ replied Hemant sleepily. Astha’s head was on his shoulder, his arm was around her, and he had spread her hair across his chest.

‘Why didn’t you marry an American?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Well, you were there a long time, you must have gone out with girls. Fallen in love, thought of marriage.’

‘Never.’

‘Never had women?’

Hemant side-stepped this. ‘I was always sure I wanted to marry a girl from here.’

‘Me, you mean.’

Hemant’s grip tightened around his wife, while Astha felt thrilled and wanted. ‘Besides‚’ he said, playing dreamily with her hair, ‘I had responsibilities to my parents. I am the only son, and I wanted someone who would fit in with our family life. American women are too demanding. Their men have to cater to all their whims and fancies.’

‘Is that true?’ demanded Astha, visions of American women waited on hand and foot, basking in love, flashing through her mind.

‘You bet‚’ said Hemant with great certainty. ‘Besides you can’t be sure they won’t be up to something.’

‘Like?’

‘Other men. It’s not so unthinkable for them as it is for an Indian girl.’

Astha fell silent. She was wondering if she liked this conversation. She turned to kiss him, but Hemant was not to be distracted. This was a topic he had considered deeply. ‘I wanted an innocent, unspoilt, simple girl‚’ he went on.

There was a pause.

‘A virgin‚’ he elaborated.

‘Suppose I had not been one?’ asked the wife carefully.

‘And the blood on the sheet, what was that? A mirage?’

‘Some women don’t bleed, even though they have had no sex, you know‚’ said Astha. She had read this in a magazine.

‘Since that didn’t happen in our case, why talk about it‚’ said Hemant.

Rohan’s face bending over hers arose before Astha’s eyes. Had she been a virgin? Unlike Hemant, she was not sure. She decided to forget the whole business, after all now she was definitely not one, and what was the point of thinking about the past?

‘I see you are a writer’, said Hemant, looking through her notebook, ‘as well as an artist.’

‘Not really‚’ said Astha modestly, and waited for him to draw her out.

‘What are you doing now?’ he asked.

Astha showed him the paper on which she was writing a poem.

‘They say a picture’s worth a thousand words‚’ he read, then looked up and frowned. ‘But this is not a picture‚’ he objected.

‘I know‚’ said Astha, quickly. ‘I was just looking for a way to start. Whenever I sketch the scene, it ends up looking like a post card, so I thought I’d try words instead.’ She reached out to take the page, ‘I’ll work on it more and show you.’

‘No, no, let me read. Maybe I can help you. I used to read a lot when I was in college.’

‘Really?’ asked Astha interestedly. ‘What?’

‘Harold Robbins. Erie Stanley Gardner, Somerset Maugham, Agatha Christie, P. G. Wodehouse, all kinds of authors. I was quite a reader, you know.’

Astha was silent, while Hemant’s eyes quickly scanned the page. ‘You certainly have a nice imagination‚’ he said, ‘You put things well.’

Astha looked pleased.

‘And for being so clever …’

He leaned towards her, and reached under her blouse. Astha pressed him close, and breathed my husband into his waiting ear.

‘My baby‚’ responded Hemant.

Astha heard him with satisfaction. Her husband was going to encourage her writing. Maybe she could become a poetess as well as a painter. Her life was opening up before her in golden vistas.

‘Do you think there will be golden vistas in our life, darling?’ she asked, taken with the sound of the words.

‘Of course, baby‚’ he replied. ‘Golden like your body in the sunlight when it comes through the window touched by the water of this lake.’

‘Oh, Hemant‚’ laughed Astha, ‘I didn’t know you were a poet!’

Hemant looked modest. After they had kissed, fondled and not made love, Hemant told the bearer to take the drink tray upstairs to the roof.

They reclined on deck chairs facing the lake. The ice tinkled in Hemant’s glass, bird sounds tinkled in their ears, water lapped around the boat. They were too high to see the sludge that had gathered around the houseboat, too high to notice the slight smell that came from the stagnant edge. Upon the roof, hand in hand, Astha’s heart was as full of love as the lake was full of water.

Back in Delhi, Astha submerged herself in the role of daughter-in-law and wife. The time spent in the kitchen experimenting with new dishes was time spent in the service of love and marriage. Hemant’s clothes she treated with reverence, sliding each shirt in his drawers a quarter centimetre out from the one above so they were easily visible, darning all the tiny holes in his socks, arranging his pants on cloth-wrapped hangers so there would be no crease. With her mother-in-law she visited and shopped in the mornings, the memory of the night past, and the expectation of the night to come insulating her from any tedium she might otherwise have felt.

Every evening her father-in-law remarked, ‘How nice it is to have a daughter in the house.’

Hemant looked as though it were all his doing, while Astha’s mother-in-law sighed and talked of her absent daughters; Seema, so far away in America, and Sangeeta, well, now that Hemant was married, he and his wife were responsible for Sangeeta, whose troubles with her husband and in-laws were always hinted at rather than spelt out.

Astha, proud that she was considered responsible enough to share the family problems invariably replied, ‘Don’t worry Mummy, she has us‚’ though she was seven years younger than Sangeeta, and had only seen her at the wedding.

After they had had tea Hemant and Astha dropped in on her parents. ‘I do not want them to feel they have lost a daughter‚’ Hemant insisted, as they walked through the colony to Astha’s old house, while Astha thought how nice he was, and how lucky she.

‘Why do we have to drink tea twice every day?’ she complained occasionally, for the pleasure of hearing Hemant say, ‘And disappoint Mama and Papa, who are waiting? And when Mama makes snacks especially for us, no fears.’

‘Especially for you, you mean‚’ said Astha.

‘It is the same thing‚’ said Hemant drawing Astha’s hand through his arm even more tightly.

In the kitchen, Astha’s mother would hiss ‘Happy?’ and Astha would give the slightest non-committal nod, wanting to keep her happiness to herself. To share it or voice it might encourage its departure.

Meanwhile Hemant immersed himself in sex manuals. He hid them in his cupboard under rows of shirts.

‘Mummy might see‚’ Astha objected nervously. Her mother-in-law frequently visited their room, examined all the items, and straightened the covers on the bed.

‘So what?’ laughed Hemant. ‘We are married, what can anybody say?’

The number of sex manuals increased. All the books had graphic illustrations.

‘Why do you have to read these things?’ Astha demanded for form’s sake.

‘They are interesting. Look.’ Hemant tried to show her, but Astha turned away her head, and Hemant did not persist. ‘I will show you in other ways‚’ he murmured in her hair.

Astha blushed and said nothing, too diffident to tell him that she had already noticed a change in his lovemaking, he was less in a hurry, and his focus had widened from the single point of her vagina.

New positions, timing the length of intercourse, variations on a theme. There seemed no end to what one could do with two bodies. At the suggestion of sexy clothes she balked.

‘What do you think I am? A whore?’

‘There is nothing to be ashamed of darling‚’ said Hemant caressing her. ‘It is to increase married pleasure.’

Astha looked at the lacy black thing he was offering her. ‘What is it?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘A teddy.’

‘So I am to be your teddy bear?’

Hemant was not interested in double meanings. ‘I went to a lot of trouble to get it for you‚’ he said.

‘For me?’

‘Who else is the woman in my life?’ asked Hemant, pushing her towards the bathroom. Thank God their room was slightly separated from her parents-in-law’s bedroom, thought Astha, and they had a bathroom to themselves. Otherwise there was no way she could do these things. She locked the door and looked at herself in the mirror, clad from throat to ankle, neck to wrist. Diaphanous, lacy, and a soft pink she had all along thought this nightie made her look quite attractive. Slowly she took it off and looked at her body. She was in her hairless condition, the way Hemant liked her, with legs, arms, and underarms freshly waxed, shining smooth, with not an unsightly black stump in sight, only a series of pink bumps where the wax had pulled too hard and left its protest. She raised her arms and anxiously sniffed the wet place underneath. Hemant didn’t like the smell of sweat, or vaginal fluids, he was a little squeamish in that respect, and she now washed and dusted herself with powder before turning her attention back to the thing. Single piece, lace and satin, slinky, with holes and slits, she could crumple it in one fist, its only stiffness the wires in the cups.

She put it on, and there from below her chin, a deep cleavage appeared with black laced mounds on either side, the dark nipples straining through black net hearts. She almost didn’t recognise herself, with the sexual parts so emphasised. She raised her arms to take out the pins from her hair, watching as her breasts rose and thrust forwards, feeling an excitement that embarrassed her.

Astha wrapped a dressing gown around herself, and slowly went into the bedroom locking the door quietly. Hemant was lying on the bed with the small bedside lamp on, his arms and chest shone brown and shapely. He kept his eyes on her, as she took off the dressing gown and walked self-consciously across to him, desire rising still higher, trying
not to think of what she was wearing, what it was doing to him, to her. She sat next to him, and he grabbed her tightly encased body.

‘Sit on me‚’ he said hoarsely, pulling her on to him, twisting the little bit of lace aside.

Astha sat on him, her breasts tight and forward, falling over him, over my husband, she thought, as they rocked together, while sensation took over, drowning thoughts even of husbands.

The days passed. Astha had not imagined that sex could be such a master. Slightly ashamed, she kept hidden that she longed to dissolve herself in him, longed to be the sips of water he drank, longed to be the morsels of food he swallowed. The times he was away she was focused on one thing, the moment of their union. When he came through the door, she wanted to jump on him, tear his clothes off, thrust her nipples into his mouth, and have him charge his way through her. One with him, one with all that mattered.

I haven’t really lived, thought Astha, till now I did not know what life was all about.

She felt a woman of the world, the world that was covered with the film of her desire, and the fluids of their sex.

A few months and dullness began to taint Astha’s new life. What was she to do while waiting for Hemant to come home? Her in-laws were not demanding, for the housework they had help, and supervision, no matter how painstaking, still left her with enough free time to be restless in.