‘You are not to worry. Everything will be all right,’ Sethu said.
They were in a horse cart. Saadiya sat opposite him. Their knees met and parted with every movement of the cart.
‘Malik, I am not,’ she said.
Sethu straightened, startled. ‘Malik? Why do you call me that? My name isn’t Malik.’
‘But it is!’ Saadiya whispered. ‘You are my Malik. The incomparable one who came from across the seas. Strong and straight, a leader among men, one who could be trusted to brave the ocean and winds and unknown ways. You are Malik. Don’t you see?’
Sethu looked at her with a great surge of love. She made him feel ten feet tall. Nevertheless.
He caressed her cheek with a finger. ‘I am Sethu. Not Seth. Not Malik. I have had enough of play-acting,’ he said, trying to be as gentle as he could. ‘You must think of me as Sethu.’
Saadiya smiled. No matter what he said, he was her Malik. The incomparable.
Sethu saw her smile. An inward smile that seemed to shrug his words away. He felt a sudden fear. Was this the difference the doctor had predicted, no, cursed him with?
‘It is a village only in name. It’s just a few streets and the sea,’ James Raj had said. ‘Very few people live in that area. And those that do won’t bother you. They have their own secrets and lives. I built the house thinking it would be nice to live by the sea. The sea has given me all that I have. But my wife refuses to leave Nazareth. She wants people and streets and she is a great churchgoer …so the house lies vacant most of the time. Once in a while she consents to go there with me, but even then she begins to get restive. You can stay there till all this has settled down and if you like it as much as I do, you can continue to stay there rent free. Do you understand?’
Sethu tried to read the man’s face. What was he expected to do in return? Then Sethu remembered his lesson from the sea: Don’t fight it. Let it be.
So he agreed. As he did to James Raj’s offer of a job. ‘I need a man like you. Someone who can speak English, do the accounts and help me with my business.’
The word business worried Sethu. No one knew what James Raj did. Some said he had a fleet of fishing boats. Others said he traded in diamonds and precious stones. But he was accorded as much respect as the doctor. For James Raj was the richest man in Nazareth. Perhaps the doctor resented this, for he referred to James Raj as an upstart
and when he was vexed with a story of James Raj’s inordinate kindness, he would mumble, ‘The upstart smuggler can afford to give it away. After all, it is ill-gotten money, easy money.’ James Raj was also the only being in all of Nazareth who was not awed by the doctor. Which is why, when Sethu and Saadiya walked out of the doctor’s house, Sethu thought there was only one thing to do: seek out James Raj and ask for his help.
Sethu knew he was exchanging one master for another. But James Raj had asked no questions when Sethu said, ‘I need a house and a job. The doctor doesn’t need me or my services any more.’
James Raj nodded. He had already heard, but he pretended that he knew nothing. James Raj knew the power of discretion. Besides, it made him feel good to score one over that Bible-thumping quack who behaved as if he was the Lord Jesus’s apostle.
‘Go to Manappad. You can use my horse cart to get there,’ he said. ‘You will find peace and quiet. In a few days I will send for you.’
So Sethu and Saadiya went to Manappad, to home their love in a mansion that sat on the sands of a wild sea.
Saadiya was enchanted. How could anything be more perfect, she said again and again. She flung the windows open and the sound of the sea spread itself through the house. There was nothing between the house and the sea except creamy sand. The breeze blew all day.
‘We will have to leave when the summer begins. It will be hot here,’ Sethu said.
‘I don’t care how hot it gets,’ Saadiya dimpled. ‘Just to be able to see the sea …just to see the horizon day after day, what could be more perfect? This is my jannath!’
Sethu’s brow wrinkled at the unfamiliar word. ‘Jannath?’
‘Paradise. That is what it is called in the Holy Koran.’
Sethu saw the pleasure in her eyes and knew pleasure himself. God was good. Long ago, the astrologer who had cast his horoscope had said, ‘This boy is fortune’s child. No matter what, he will always fall on his feet.’
It was true. First there had been Maash. Then the doctor. And now James Raj. Each of them arriving at a point in his life when he didn’t know which way to go. He had to pay a price for their succour, but that was to be expected: nothing in life came without a tag. Not
even love. For even Saadiya wore the vestments of difference.
Sethu peeled a plantain for Saadiya. ‘This is all I could find,’ he said, pointing to a hand of plantains that he had managed to buy from a vendor. ‘Tomorrow I will find us all we need. Chairs and a table, utensils for our kitchen and provisions for you to cook with and …’ he paused slyly, ‘a bed.’
When Saadiya coloured, he gleamed.
‘For now we have to settle for this,’ he said, pointing to the palm-leaf mat on which he had spread a thick cotton sheet. ‘This mat will have to be our mattress and for a pillow you can use my arm.’ He smiled.
Her gaze widened and dropped. ‘Come,’ he said, sitting on the floor on their makeshift bed.
She stood, unsure and afraid.
‘Come,’ he said again.
When she didn’t move, he rose and stood before her. ‘What am I to do with you?’ he asked gently, raising her chin with his forefinger. Above her upper lip was a line of sweat. She is frightened, he thought. Lowering his head, he gathered with his mouth the beads of sweat as if they were rice pearls. I have tasted the salt of her skin, he thought with growing pleasure. She trembled. Was it the feel of his mouth on her skin, or the way he stood so that not even a whisper of silk could pass between their bodies?
He felt her lean into him. Then he led her to their bed and drew her down with him.
She lay on her back, stretched out and still, her eyes closed. Sethu gazed at her and swallowed his disquiet—was this the spectre of difference? Then he felt a wave of love exorcize his fear. How beautiful she is, he thought. And she’s mine. My own.
She let him caress her, but when his hand cupped her breast, she sat up. ‘No, you can’t,’ she said, in a voice striated with terror.
‘Why not? I am your …’ Sethu paused, then spoke with as much conviction as he could muster, ‘your husband.’
He saw her look at him. He saw the fear in her eyes dissipate. He took her in his arms again. Slowly, he ran a finger along the line of her neck and traced circles on the skin at the nape of her neck. He felt her body relax against his. He pressed his lips against her forehead. She snuggled even closer to him. Drawing courage from this, he ran
his tongue along the curve of her closed eyelids. She shuddered in his arms and as if she couldn’t have enough of this, enough of him, he felt her arms wrap around him. He smiled against her skin.
‘I don’t understand what is happening to me,’ she murmured.
‘Hush, hush,’ he whispered. ‘There is nothing to understand. It is just you and me and how we feel about each other.’
‘Now unbutton my shirt,’ he said.
Her hands shook as she slipped a button through the button-hole.
‘Are we to stay like this all night? Oh Saadiya, how you waste time!’ With a little laugh, he helped her take his shirt off.
He waited for her to protest when his hands fumbled with her clothes. But she lay against him and let him remove, one by one, each piece of her clothing. He unwound the long scarf she had draped around her shoulders. He snapped apart the buttons of her long-sleeved blouse and gently eased open the knot at her waist. Her skirt slithered away from her.
‘What is this?’ Sethu mumbled, when his fingers encountered fabric instead of skin.
Beneath, she wore a long chemise and when Sethu’s fingers lingered at its neckline, she covered his hand with hers.
‘Don’t,’ he whispered.
‘Let me look at you,’ he said and watched with amusement as Saadiya covered her face. She who had never shown her face to a man lay naked before him.
He gave her a sidelong glance, and felt again a tide of love. His. She was his. Her disarrayed hair and clothes showed the extent of his trespassing hands and mouth.
‘Don’t,’ he said, drawing her fingers away from her face. ‘I am your husband. You are mine. There is no need to feel ashamed or even embarrassed.’
As he swooped down to cover her mouth with his, he felt the hard nubs of her nipples graze his. He felt her lips part. The wetness. The glorious liquid wetness in his mouth, on his fingers, gathering him into her. He laughed again in triumph, knowing the extent of her desire.
What does it matter, all these differences between Saadiya and me? What does it matter, for I have this, he thought. How can anything be more perfect than the soft skin of her inner thighs? Or
anything be more comforting than to lie as I do, pressed against her back, my breath fanning the back of her neck, my hand cupping her breast, and knowing myself held in the grasp of her love?
How it enfolded him, that concave space between her inner thighs. A nest for him to lay his limpness and seek new strength. Mother. Hope. Comforter. As he felt himself grow and stiffen, that soft space became a wanton creature, urging him on with velvet paws, more, more, more …
As sleep came, he knew a quietness of spirit, an incredible calm, a peace.
So this is content, Sethu found himself thinking in the next few weeks. The thought came to him when he wasn’t expecting it, and that made it so much more precious. It came to him when he raised his eyes from his plate of food and found her devouring him with her eyes. It came to him when he hurt his finger while hammering a nail into the wall and she rushed to his side with tears in her eyes and licked the drops of blood away.
Content. It came to him when they walked on the sands and she collected shells that she later lined on the windowsill of their bedroom. He watched the breeze toss her hair and make her eyes dance.
Content. It played in the songs that filled their home. Only he could have thought of buying such a thing, Saadiya laughed when he brought home a second-hand, or was it third-hand, wind-up gramophone and a stack of records. Only Sethu could have been so easily fooled, Saadiya grumbled when he found the stylus had no needle. Only Sethu could have thought of stripping off a branch of the acacia and taking from it a thorn to place in the stylus, Saadiya said in admiration as the acacia thorn coaxed out the notes from the record.
Content. It grew like the pomegranate sapling he brought home for her because she said that jannath was incomplete without a pomegranate tree.
Content. It flashed a multitude of colours for it was a tri-coloured lantern Sethu found in a junkyard, abandoned by a railway pointsman, or perhaps it had been stolen from one. Sethu cleaned the three pieces of glass, inserted a new wick, and showed Saadiya a new alphabet for togetherness: green when Sethu wanted her, red when she wanted him, yellow when either wanted a pause from
loving. In those first weeks, the colour yellow never glowed.
But content is a demanding mistress with a rapacious orifice. As the extraordinary settled into routine, Sethu found himself getting restless. ‘Do you think James Raj will send word today?’ he asked every morning.
Saadiya shook her head. Who was James Raj, she wondered. Why did he have to send word?
One day Saadiya asked, ‘Why?’
‘Why?’ Sethu looked at her in surprise. ‘My dear girl, if I don’t start earning soon, we’ll starve. My money has almost run out.’
She looked at her feet. ‘Oh,’ she said. Money. They needed money to live. In Arabipatnam, everyone had money and no one ever used the word starve. For the first time in all the days that Saadiya had left home, she knew fear.
‘Don’t look so worried.’ Sethu laughed, pulling her into his arms. ‘I am here. I will take care of you. Don’t you trust me? I’ll look after you better than your Vaapa ever did.’
Saadiya smiled. But it was a smile to mask her uncertainty. What would life throw their way?
James Raj sent word. Sethu presented himself at his home in Nazareth. James Raj looked at Sethu as if he didn’t recognize him. Sethu smiled hesitantly. What could be wrong? Had the doctor managed to dissuade James Raj? What would he and Saadiya do then? The older man shifted in his chair and from his breast pocket he drew a piece of paper. He studied it for a moment and said, ‘Thy way is in the sea, and the path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known.’
James Raj waggled his eyebrows. ‘Do you recognize that?’
Sethu looked at the older man in surprise. James Raj, he had heard, professed little faith, least of all in the Bible. But he nodded. ‘Psalm 77.19.’
James Raj beamed. ‘So it is true what they say. The youngest of the kondai sisters said that you know every word of the Bible. She came here secretly, asking me to help you. Their mother is a distant relative of mine. The doctor doesn’t like them visiting me, but Mary Patti doesn’t care what the good doctor thinks. The little kondai is the same. It’s the older ones who are his slaves. But you are not a Christian. How is it then that you know each psalm, every word?’