Valmiki's Daughter (35 page)

Viveka got up, said that she was going to explore, and ambled along the gallery. At the side of the house, still on the gallery, she peered through the mosquito netting into the darkness, hoping to catch the movement of a howler monkey in the branches of the trees. They were so elusive that if she were to see one, or even hear one, it would have been and gone in a flash, like a falling star. There was no furniture on the gallery and Viveka wondered what, in time, would be bought for it. There were some elaborate brass hooks in the ceiling for hanging baskets, she imagined, or perhaps a hammock. A dog on the grass down below shook itself hard. She spotted it and whistled. The dog turned to her and growled, and then began a frenzied barking, and she pulled back, embarrassed. Nayan ran around, and seeing that she was still on the gallery and all right, he shouted to the dog, “Shut up! Shut up!” It growled once and whimpered before becoming quiet.

Soon Viveka came to a wall that marked the end of the gallery, but she did not want to return just yet. She waited, then turned and walked back slowly, almost tiptoeing. She couldn't bear to return to the three Prakashs and their solemn, uninteresting talk of business. But she knew, too, that if they allowed her to engage them in conversation about Naipaul or cacao Indians
or books, she would still have no time for them. It was not them she had come for.

The lights in the house came on, and then those on the veranda. With light in the house, the garden just on the other side of the veranda and everything beyond it was obliterated. The chirping of cicadas suddenly rose loud all around. From inside the house, there was a clatter. Through a set of louvres along the side of the house Viveka caught sight of Anick and the maid in the kitchen. Anick wore a dress in shades of deep reds, garish yellows, and verdant greens. It was made of of sheer fabric, layers sewn upon layers, and was held up by two string-like straps. About her breasts the dress fitted close. Below, it hugged her narrow waist and her bony hips, and from her hips the layers fell in uneven angles about her knees. They flounced about her thighs as she walked. With each step that took her one way, the skirt of her dress swooshed the other. Viveka watched for a moment then made her way back to the front of the house, wishing she had not come.

Anick brought out a tray of lime juice. She told her guests that it was made with limes from one of their trees, sweetened with honey collected from a nest in a tree in the forest by one of the village boys. Ram asked if the tree that the honey came from was on the estate, who was the boy, and if he had asked permission. Anick looked at Nayan and said, uncertainly, “I think so.” It was Gopaul's son, replied Nayan, the retarded one, and this seemed to satisfy Ram.

Conversation continued between father and son about bank accounts and workers, so Anick offered to show Viveka the house. They entered the living room through the louvred doorway. The open interior and the polished mahogany wood floor, the wide planks a deep reddish brown, seemed like an ocean to
be crossed. Lime green walls — green the light shade of the lime's pips — rose high to a ceiling of the same material as the floor.

Anick pointed to several closed doorways on either side of the living room. On one side were the
TV
room, her own private room, and an office space for Nayan, and on the other side were bedrooms, her and Nayan's included. She recited the logic of this architecture — the central area that was left open for air and cooling breezes to pass from the front doors and windows right through to the kitchen and out the back door. The house was indeed cool, but there was a strong complex scent, like fresh earth and decaying wood, not unpleasant, inside of it. Cacao beans drying in the attic, Anick explained. Her vocabulary, Viveka noted, had improved, although she still preferred to speak in the present tense.

“The whole area smell of cacao. In the daytime, when is hot, the air is sweet. Everything, everything is cacao. Is like you want to bath in it.”

“Don't you get tired of it?”

“No, of course not. Is not like chocolate. Chocolate you only have a small piece of and is enough. But, of course, that has to be very good chocolate. I am not talking of candy, too milky, too sweet. A small piece of good quality chocolate goes a long way.”

To Viveka it sounded strange, the way Anick said this, flawlessly, like a phrase she had heard more than once and was practicing now.

“But cacao is different. You don't get tired of it. Never. Is not sweet at all-at all. On the contrary, is very dark, mysterious. You must come in the daytime. I will show you the whole process, how they collect the pod, how they cut them to get the bean, how they dry the bean and then the fermentation. Is a long process.
It have all kind of smell and taste, very very interesting, before they make it into chocolate.”

They went through the well-lit kitchen, in the centre of which was a mahogany table covered with an ordinary white-and-red cotton tablecloth, and cutting boards, piles of trays, canisters and a mess of cutlery, as if everything was in the middle of being sorted for storing elsewhere.

A toilet off to the side flushed and the maid appeared. “Good evening,” she said to Viveka in a barely audible voice, and then to Anick, “Madam, I finish everything. I going home now. Is okay? We will finish putting everything away in the morning.”

Did she want to wait for a drive home? asked Anick. Nayan would drive her once his parents had left.

The maid answered, “He don't like to go down my street, Madam. It have too much hole in the road. He does get vex and buff me, like I make the hole.” She smiled apologetically.

Anick turned to Viveka as the maid went down the back step. “Lystra is so good, but Nayan treats her badly. He can be so harsh.”

There were appliances of all kinds on the kitchen counters: a blender, a coffee machine, an electric grinder, a juicer, and several mortars and pestles made from different materials and in different sizes. Cupboards lined two walls and open shelves displayed colourful dishes — more, Viveka thought, than a couple really needed. Everything was in disarray and Anick explained that she was indeed sorting through things that had been sent to her by her parents, given to them by Nayan's, and that she herself had bought.

A heavy wood door on the outer wall opened to the backyard. There was a screen in it, and a metal burglar-proofing grate. Anick led Viveka back toward the interior of the house and down a hallway — Viveka could see that there was one on either side of the
kitchen, running parallel to the dining room. They went past the
TV
room, in which there was only one couch facing a small television. Viveka imagined Anick and Nayan on the couch, Anick curled into Nayan's body, a bowl of chocolate-covered peanuts on her lap, the two of them eating from it. They passed an office, Nayan's, and came to a room Anick called her own. Anick switched on the light. The walls were painted yellow, with white trim on the base and ceiling boards. There were piles of boxes in this room, most sealed, a few opened, and Anick explained that she was temporarily using the room for the storage of household things, and Nayan was also storing some business-related things there too.

Viveka entered this room, and walked to the window. She looked out onto a sloping darkness. Stars were just beginning to twinkle in the darkening sky, which seemed to stretch into the distance forever. Anick came up behind her, and said, “Is too dark, but in the daytime when you can see the rows of cacao, is
the most beautiful
sight.” She had separated out the three words and stressed each one as she looked directly at Viveka. “You hear birds, and the monkeys, and other animals, and see colours like in a carnival. The leaves of the cacao plant are like jade. You know jade? And then in between you see little flecks of bright, bright, bright yellow, and this red —” She held a hand out to Viveka and rubbed her forefinger and thumb together as if the red was a substance, “like fire or glass. Come in the daytime, I show you.”

She touched Viveka's shoulder lightly to usher her out of the room.

They retraced their steps to the kitchen and Anick pointed to the hallway on the opposite side. “Those are the bedrooms. There are three. If you come to stay overnight, you will stay there. In the one next to mine. Well, is not mine alone. Ours.”

Was this an invitation? Viveka wondered.

“You want I show you my little garden? Is pitch-black but I think you can still see something. In any case, is nice outside. Sometimes I like it out there better than to be inside all the time. Nayan, he don't like to go in the forest. Is his, yet he only go to see how the cacao growing and he come right back. It have places to walk in there but he don't go. He think I am crazy. Your father, he like the forest, no?”

They went down the back stairs into the yard. Viveka remembered her walks as a child, just on the edges of the forests, with her father. She remembered him seeming most at peace then. She had always been terrified of snakes, and so close to the wild she felt that it was inevitable her fear would bring her in contact with one. She could not bear to show this timidity now, though, for fear that she would seem like Nayan. She followed close behind Anick.

“What about the dog?” Viveka asked.

“He is chained. I don't know why people here chain their dogs like this, but is how it is, I have to accept it. He is on the other side of the house. He bark a lot, but he don't bite. The villagers don't know that, though. Well, that is what Nayan think. But they not stupid.”

Viveka gasped and held back when Anick suddenly snapped, “Look!” But in the twilight she saw that Anick was only pointing to a barely visible fist-size frog breathing rapidly in the dirt of a lettuce bed.

Anick saw Viveka's nervousness and took one of her hands. Anick's hand felt quite strong, and it was warm as she pulled Viveka farther down the path. Then, suddenly, Anick stopped and pulled Viveka closer, gripping her hand tighter yet. Blood pounded in Viveka's head, and her ears and cheeks turned hot. She could hardly breathe. Anick said something, but the pounding in
Viveka's head and ears had become so loud she could not hear. She tried to ask Anick to repeat what she had said, but it was as if her throat had become clogged. She wrapped her fingers around Anick's hand, made a half-stroking, half-gripping movement with her thumb, and was sure she felt a quick squeeze from Anick, and then Anick let go. She rested that same hand on Viveka's shoulder now, and pressed gently down. Together, the two women stooped. Anick put her head close to Viveka's, pointed to something, and whispered, “Look.” But Viveka could see nothing. Anick manoeuvred herself slightly behind Viveka. She brought her arms around Viveka and covered Viveka's eyes with her hands. She held her hands there, lightly, but they trembled a little, and from them came a heat that burned Viveka's face. She held her own hands up and placed them over Anick's to still the trembling. Anick pulled Viveka's head toward her, and before Viveka had time to be really sure that Anick had actually kissed the back of her head, Anick released her hands from over Viveka's eyes. A pair of pinpoint lights flashed on and off in a patch of anthurium lilies. Viveka soon made out the eyes of a rabbit.

“Nayan would kill me if he know I feed the rabbits,” said Anick. “But they so adorable. The land is big enough for everybody, not so?”

They turned back along the path toward the house again. Anick hooked one of her fingers around one of Viveka's. Then Anick said, “Mr. Lal, is that you? Did you have dinner yet?”

Viveka pulled away from Anick. She heard a voice off to the side answer, “Yes, Madam. Lystra give it to me before she gone home. Thank you, Madam.” Anick whispered to Viveka that this man was the watchman. Viveka looked for him but could not see him. She wondered if he had been watching them the whole time.

Inside, the light of the kitchen seemed harsh and Viveka was sure that her face was etched with evidence of fear, excitement, and restraint. She could not look directly at Anick, but neither did she want to return to the gallery and sit among the others.

Anick reached into the oven and took out a stainless-steel platter holding small mushroom caps that had been stuffed with a mixture of creamed crab and shrimp. She placed the tray on the counter and asked Viveka if she would mind helping her by taking the food out to the gallery. She said, “You do not have to serve them; I will bring out a table and these plates. We put everything on the table. Why we have to serve them? They know how to help themselves. They grown-ups, after all.”

Viveka liked Anick's little tirades. She picked up the platter and was about to walk away with it, but Anick caught her by the elbow. Anick glanced over her shoulder toward the veranda as she picked one of the caps off the platter. She brought the cap up to Viveka's mouth and looked directly at Viveka's lips, parting her own. Viveka felt the mushroom cap brush her lips and she opened her mouth. She offered the tip of her tongue to take the morsel. Anick rested her forefinger and thumb on Viveka's lower lip. The two women looked directly at each other now. Anick bit her bottom lip. Viveka's mouth was full. She chewed slowly as Anick stood in front of her, watching, waiting. Anick said, in a voice that quavered, “Is good?” Viveka could only nod. Her body felt unanchored.

Anick was smiling mischievously now. “You know us French girls,” she said, seemingly out of nowhere, her voice soft and trembling, “we like both.” She lightly flicked Viveka under the chin with the back of her forefinger, and was ready to spring away, but Viveka surprised even herself when she caught Anick's hand and brought it to her lips. If she had stopped for one second
to think about what she was doing, she would never have done it. She slightly parted her lips, and lightly held Anick's finger there between her teeth, nicking the tip of that finger with the tip of her tongue.

Anick gasped. She was no longer smiling. She came closer, again biting her lower lip. Her breathing was quick and shallow. Viveka released Anick's hand, yet Anick kept her finger at Viveka's lips. She ran her finger there before stepping back.