He realised his rudeness. “Sorry, do you mind?”
She started to wave a lazy hand over her face and wrinkle her nose, but then changed her mind. Inclining her head in a mocking request for permission, she bent down to extract a
kretek
and, with a practiced flick of her thumb, she lit it with his lighter. Jay thought her display of cleavage lasted slightly longer than was necessary, but who could be sure? Not that he objected to her charms; rather, it was the discomfiting notion that she was making it clear that she knew just how to handle men his age.
“I hope I am not being intrusive, but I grew up with your mother…”
“Oh, I don’t mind your questions, Professor Ghosh. It feels good to be able to talk about her actually. Maybe that’s why I wrote… too much… in that email. My grandmother used to tell me about the two of you, childhood best friends… your pets, some of your adventures. But that was before her stroke. Now she can’t talk at all.”
He already knew about Shapna’s condition and the details did not interest him. It was enough that the stroke had silenced the woman, and made it safe for him to return.
“I was very sorry to hear about your grandmother. But your father… as you wrote, he came back alone? How is he?”
“Father? The Sylheti man my mother married, if that’s who you mean.”
She played with a thin gold bracelet, her arm glistening with the humidity in the room. Jay saw rich Chinese tea, sharp with the taste of gold on the tongue, and just a hint of steam. He flicked a silver strand of his hair from his knee.
“When my mother died, my father broke an earthen pot.” Agni ground the cigarette stub savagely. “He let the water set her soul free, and wrung me out of his life. That was that. The last time I ever saw him.” She lit another
kretek
and blew out a puff of smoke with great deliberation as the ash flickered down, spiralling with the dust motes. “I was handed to Dida, the conjurer of dreams, and her deep pouch of fables,” Agni laughed self-consciously. “Maybe I’m getting a bit carried away, Professor, but you know how it is.
Thakumar Jhuli
must have been a part of your growing up too, eh?”
“That book, and many more.”
But Agni’s attention had shifted. She looked towards the bedroom where her grandmother lay sleeping. “Our grandmothers’ tales are cruel, Professor. No tame storks to bring babies for us; our stories are about kings who believe that their queens give birth to animals, or that children buried alive turn into flowery trees to sing for their parents… so much crap.”
Jay nodded in recognition. Agni leaned forward again. “You must know my mother was a fairy child, Professor? Her birth was like a familiar fairytale, but with an unhappy ending. No one even remembers the same story.”
She leaned back on her chair, and sent the
kretek
spiralling out of the window with a backward flick of her wrist. There it was again, the flash of a tiny waist, perfectly dimpled. “Perhaps you should tell me what
you
remember, Professor Ghosh?” Agni dipped forward, her breath a whisper near his face, “Were you there when my mother died?”
He could smell the cloves on her breath. He focused on the glitter of her fingertips splayed on her upper thigh. It wasn’t enough. In an instinctive, idiosyncratic movement that had plagued him since childhood, Jay felt his forefinger tracing agitated circles in the air with a life of its own. He had to will himself to concentrate, to click his pen with great deliberation. “No. I wasn’t there.”
Agni was looking at him quizzically, her head cocked to one side. “Tell me, Professor, what brings you back to Malaysia after thirty years?”
He frowned at her naivety, at the assumption of his truthfulness. When he had called her earlier from his hotel, explaining hurriedly that he was already there, this old friend of Shanti’s, she had immediately welcomed him into her home. She was shaped by all that mumbo-jumbo which he too had once believed: goodness, friendship, loyalty… the munificence of the human being and community ties. He wanted to tell her so much, yet he had only just met her. Some things were too brutal to blurt out; he, of all people, should have learnt that by now.
He could begin by saying, a dead woman brought me here, but the conceit was appalling. She was right about memories being remade in their retelling. It was as if Shanti had been a goddess, with twenty magnificently arrayed arms, and each person remembered her holding out only what they wanted. Did Shanti’s daughter need the saviour or the nemesis?
The silence grew uncomfortable. Then there was a slight noise of a door opening. Agni sprang to her feet with a smile. “I think I hear the nurse. My grandmother should have been up a long time ago. Please sit, I’ll check on her and come back… Then you can come in and say hello.”
Jay watched Agni disappear into a long corridor sectioned off by souvenirs from all around the world. Grinning masks from Cancun and Nigeria were placed next to a preserved yellow piranha, teeth bared in death. He couldn’t see much further into the gloom.
This was an old colonial building with high ceilings and cool mosaic floors, but the ventilation slats in the upper walls had been sealed to allow for air conditioning. He felt the soft darkness envelop him as he leaned forward into his palms, closing his eyes.
“Professor Ghosh? Are you okay?”
Agni was standing in front of him, concern creasing her brow.
He lifted his head and shook it sharply. “A bit of jet-lag. I should leave soon.”
She looked at her watch. “I have to go to work in a while. If you want, we can talk to my grandmother for a bit, and I can drop you off at your hotel? It would be easier than calling a taxi, especially with the protests.”
“Thank you, that’s very kind. You work on Sundays in Malaysia?”
She laughed easily. “Not usually! There’s a bit of a problem at the airport,” she responded to his raised eyebrows, “but it’s nothing serious. I need to go and check on the security system.”
He wanted to ask about her work, but they had stopped in front of a darkened bedroom.
“Dida?” Agni murmured into the darkness, “O Dida?”
The blinds were drawn, the glass window slats clicked shut. The shifting rays of the late afternoon sun seeped in through the doily designs near the ceiling, falling on an empty wheelchair.
“Dida?” Agni called again.
“Let her sleep.”
“She’s awake.” Agni leaned towards the huddle of cloth on the bed. “Dida,” she said in Bengali, “Someone is here to see you.”
Agni guided Jay to the chair near Shapna’s head. The spindly legs on the old kopitiam chair were spread at awkward angles and he lowered himself hesitantly. Agni sank into a faded blue peacock on the bedspread.
A smell of eucalyptus oil and stale spit wafted up as Shapna turned towards him. “
Ke
?” she slurred.
“Professor Jayanta Ghosh,” said Agni, adding in Bengali, “Ila’s son? You know him, from long ago.”
Jay had known that Shapna would recognise him, but the force of her recognition was startling. Her eyelashes fluttered like the wings of a wounded bird before she tightened them shut.
Agni let out a light laugh, while propping two pillows behind her grandmother’s back. “She can barely speak, and her memory comes and goes. She doesn’t recognise
me
on some days!”
Jay cleared his throat. “Hello,” he said, “
Kemon acchen
?”
Shapna grunted softly and stretched out a slow hand towards Agni. Jay noticed the dark blue veins gnarled under skin that was almost translucent, and remembered how breathtakingly beautiful she had been. Her high cheekbones jutted out, defining a strong silhouette, and her hair, skimping over the pale skin underneath, still had more raven than snow.
He fidgeted. Her silence made him safe; he had to hold on to that. He wasn’t going to let this slut drive him away again. This was the woman who taught him to flee from his problems, and he had been running ever since. He was going to be fifty in another year; he was tired of this.
Agni opened the blinds. “You were about to tell me why you came back, Professor?”
The challenge in her tone was clear – she would not let it rest.
“I am going to be a consultant at a research lab in Nilai… to work on biomaterials.”
She smiled at him. “Ah, Transfer of Technology? Usually the government just pays for our researchers to see your facilities in Boston, no?”
“Yes. But there are some restrictions. It’s… complicated.” He sounded staccato, even to himself.
Leave Me Alone
.
She looked at him briefly before turning to Shapna. “Dida? See him clearly now? This is Ila’s Babush?”
“You know my nickname?”
“Some of my childhood fables were about you, Professor. I know more about you than maybe even you remember, and about your father’s work in that village in Port Dickson.”
“A plantation, actually.”
Shapna made some gurgling noises. Agni rose to pour her a glass of water. Shapna wobbled her neck towards Jay and, in the depths of her rheumy eyes, he could see her fear.
Slobbering Slut, he thought, smiling at Shapna. You’re not the only one who can’t keep a secret.
Shapna’s trembling fingers raked over the bedclothes in uneven lines. Jay still remembered her, like an imperious empress, waving him away like a mosquito the last time they had met.
I am an old woman who can’t keep water in my mouth, Jayanta, and my tongue can’t spit out your truth. But I know that if you have come back, after so many years, it can’t be for any good.
You look like your father now. The same sharp nose, and his high intelligent forehead. But you have your mother’s swarthy skin because her murky blood flows through your veins. What has happened, Jayanta, to bring you back? How is that mother of yours? Rotting in shit, I hope, with the rest of your plagued family. My spleen burns when I remember.
You were my biggest disappointment. Even greater than Shanti. If you look behind you right now, you will see that old picture, yes, the only one of you which I couldn’t bear to burn with the rest, of two children grinning toothlessly, both holding hamsters in clenched palms. You and Shanti. Remember?
I should have known. Even then, you would always rear the murderous pet. Shanti and you would choose fish from the same shop, and yours would be the one with the hidden teeth, the one that would last the longest after gouging the eyes and the fins of the rest. The rabbits you chose were brothers; but yours killed Shanti’s in a night so bloody it left deep gouges in the victor. Ah, you have seen the picture now. You do remember. You asked me once, “Why do I always choose the evil ones?” while tears rolled easily from your baby eyes. I never suspected.
When you first said you wanted to be a doctor, just like your father, Shanti told you, “Be a vet, lah. Get your pets to kena some victims and booming business what!”
I didn’t know then, no one knew… saving lives, hah! I thought the real reason Shanti had died was that we had given her no reason to live; and that I, her mother, was guilty. I carried the weight of that guilt Jayanta, not knowing any better. Everyone knew Shanti had two mothers, and had been cursed by both. How could she survive that? That is what I thought, for far too long.
But your crime? It wasn’t a vengeance forgivable by the gods. May your child die in your arms.
You are putting the picture back on the mantelpiece, lightly wiping the glass with the tips of your bloody fingers. But you will find no absolution here. There is no reason for you to be here, to breathe the same air as my granddaughter, no reason at all.
I curse the day I met your mother. I should have trusted my instincts and kept away. Or at least recognised the rot in her blood that runs through your veins. But I was so gullible then! I met your parents soon after Nikhil and I had first stepped into the harbour in Singapore. I was so open, so young and alone then, new to Malaya and disgusted with the languages that tripped up my tongue and made me seem foolish. When Nikhil said there would be two new Bengali brides coming, I couldn’t believe my luck! I can still see Nikhil, sitting on the open balcony, waving the card at me. “Both Mahesh and Ranjan are getting married to girls from Calcutta!”
But the two brides couldn’t have been more different. Mridula, Ranjan’s bride, was a child, with pimply skin and an innocence to match her husband’s open heart. Two thick pigtails looped with red ribbons framed a plump face, and she plodded in flatfooted. I pushed up her shoulders as she bent to touch my feet. “No formality with me, little sister. We will be good friends, yes?” Mridula was so shy that her cheeks flamed immediately.
But your mother, Ila, oh, I could see at once that she was very different. Closer to me in age she should have been more of a friend, but we stood across from each other with eyes that critically appraised. My first thought was a triumphant, She is so dark! – until I noticed the way her skin glistened. Even modestly draped in a sari, head covered in deference to Nikhil’s age, she moved like a swan, her arching back regal on a gracefully curved behind.
Her jewellery tinkled when she spoke, so that the men, including Nikhil, turned to her. She looked at your father with an obscene hunger, while he found reasons to touch her frequently, even in public.
My husband was very poetic when Ila, in the middle of that evening, blushed and said that her family had despaired of ever finding her a husband for she was so impossibly dark, but oh, here she was! Nikhil closed his eyes and recited a poem from memory:
I am utterly enchanted
The sight of her beauty makes me
Melt like wax before the fire. What
Is the difference if she is black?
So is coal, but alight, it shines like roses.
“An ancient Greek poem, bhai,” he told your father as the men clapped with a loud theatrical Wah! Wah! Then Nikhil turned to me, finally acknowledging my simmering anger and gently mocked, “I didn’t write it!”
I should have known then, to be wary, to never let my guard down. But during that sweet twilight hour on our balcony in 1933, when we were first acquainted with the two brides, poetry was quoted, songs were sung, and we talked until the morning. No children came between us. It was almost dawn when we finally slept, but I already felt I had far more to fear from Ila than Ila did from me.