Valmiki's Daughter (44 page)

Vashti was rummaging through the gifts on the bed again, her brow
scrunched up now. “Hey, did Anick and Nayan send us anything?”

Devika pursed her lips and Valmiki grinned too widely for comfort.

Trevor watched Viveka as she answered, “Us?”

Vashti caught herself and, embarrassed, muttered, “You know what I
mean.” Then she bounced back with, “In any case, are you two planning to
have children? You never wanted any, Vik, so in the end I will inherit all of these
gifts. So, I ask again, what did Anick and Nayan send us?”

“They sent something, but it's buried under here. We'll
get to it eventually.”

“You're lying. You probably opened it already.”

Devika said warily, “Why do you two have to speak to each other like
that? Be nice, Vashti.”

Viveka unwrapped a large picture box and, with some effort, out slid a
low-relief picture set in a deep frame. A grainy photographic image, silk-screened onto
moulded plastic: a panoramic
scene of Niagara Falls. A light set
inside the frame at the top suggested that the image could be illuminated. Everyone
erupted into laughter. Before Viveka could read the card, one of those that went on for
pages — Sacred This and Vows That — Valmiki burst out, “Wait, wait.
Let me guess. That is from your Aunt Radica.”

“My aunt?” Viveka asked, with feigned indignation. “She
is
your
mother's sister. And you're dead-on. Who else would send
something so . . . so . . .”

Trevor filled in, “Redolent. Prosaic.”

Vashti untied the length of electric cord attached to the picture and
plugged it into a wall outlet. A fluorescent light flickered and then the scene was
bathed in a harsh light. Seconds later, to everyone's surprise, a cascade of
previously imperceptible optical fibers woven into the silk-screen image animated the
falls.

“Trevor is right,” Viveka blurted out, shoving the item toward
Vashti. “We can't possibly take all of this with us. Here, Vashti, I
bequeath this to you.”

The faint ringing of the phone outside of the room could barely be heard
beneath the laughter and the hum of the air-conditioning. Pinky knocked and opened the
door, letting in the weighty scent of masala-fried hot green mangoes. The aromatic
sourness made Viveka's mouth pucker and fill in an instant with saliva.

Pinky glanced at the colourful disarray, broke into a quick grin of
approval, and announced, “It's for Miss Viveka.”

“Oh,” Viveka said, disappointed to be disturbed. “Can
you ask them to call back?”

Looking intently at Viveka as if there were no one else in the room, Pinky
said more quietly, “It's Miss Anick.”

Vashti groaned. “You shouldn't have told her who it is. Now we
are going to have to wait. I bet you're going to take it, aren't
you?”

“Yeah. I know she has to go out this afternoon,
and if I don't take it I won't be able to get in touch with her for the rest
of the day.” Viveka got up, folded some wrapping paper, and shoved it into a bag,
studiously avoiding any show of haste.

Vashti babbled to Trevor, “Everything always gets put on hold for
Anick. When they get on the phone they talk for hours.”

In Viveka's peripheral vision, a vision sometimes more accurate than
frontal, she saw Trevor straighten, steel himself.

Devika, her eyes hardened and jaws clenched, stood up as Viveka walked out
of the room to the telephone. As if permission to start and stop opening the gifts were
hers to give, Devika said, “That's enough for today anyway. You can open
more tomorrow.”

Viveka could hear Vashti saying to Trevor, “Do you speak French? The
two of them, they speak French together all the time. Well, Vik pretends she can speak
it. As if they don't want anyone else to know what they are talking about.
She'll probably tell you, though, because now it's you she'll have
secrets with.”

Just before she picked up the receiver, Viveka saw that Valmiki had
interceded and invited Trevor to have a beer on ice with him out on the patio.

TWO MONTHS EARLIER, VIVEKA HAD BEEN IN HER BEDROOM CURLED
up in an armchair, a textbook in her lap. She had been sitting there for about forty
minutes and had read only two pages. Little interested her these days.

Devika entered without knocking. “I just want to let you
know,” she began without pause, “we're having people over for lunch on
Sunday. So don't make other plans, eh.”

“Is there an occasion?”

“Well, we haven't had anyone over for a while.” Devika
went to the window and opened it wider. Then she walked over and sat on Viveka's
bed.

“Who's coming?”

“The Rattans. The Williamses. Joan and Rodney De Cairies.”

“That's it?” Viveka said, feigning disinterest. It was
with a good measure of relief that she noted no mention had been made of any of the
Prakashs.

“We invited the Clarkes, Helen, and Wayne and his cousin Trevor
also.”

At this Viveka slowly uncurled her legs and let them down onto the floor.
Devika responded to the frown taking shape, and the questioning twist of Viveka's
mouth.

“He asked us if he could take you out once and
you never responded. We thought it was only polite to have him over. In any case he is
leaving the day after, so you don't have to worry that we're pushing you on
him, or him on you.”

Over two months had passed since that invitation. Trevor had returned to
Canada shortly after, and Viveka had not heard from him since. She had almost forgotten
about him, actually.

“But, Mom, he asked
me
out, not you all.”

“So what? You want to ask him out? You know you can't do that.
He might be living abroad, and might have adopted foreign ways, but he must know that a
good girl from a good family would never take it upon herself to reciprocate in that
way. And he had the decency to call and ask us if he could take you out. He is that kind
of man.”

“Things are changing, Mom. If I wanted him to come over, I could
have asked him myself.”

“Child, don't be crazy. How could you do that? You mean you
would call him up and invite him on your own to go out with you?”

“Well, not to go out, but maybe to come here. But that's only
if I wanted to. I mean, I would ask you and Dad, and then yes, I would do it myself.
Where he comes from, people at my age don't have their parents doing things like
this. At my age people don't even live at home with their parents, come to think
of it.”

“But eh-eh, so what, now? You want to leave home, now? As long as
you're living here, you'll do things the way your father and I are
comfortable with. Look, don't make a problem out of this. Why does everything have
to be so complicated with you? We just want to have him over, that's all, and to
have a nice pleasant day. Your father is looking forward to it. Don't spoil it for
him, Vik. Now, what are you going to wear?”

TREVOR AND VIVEKA FOUND
THEMSELVES LEFT ALONE, WHILE EVERY
-one else went inside the house into the
air-conditioned living room. She showed little interest in him, but still he told her of
his life.

He seldom spent his time off in Toronto, he told her. He was a mechanical
engineer and worked with one of the major airlines. Because of his seniority he was
afforded unlimited free trips worldwide, as long as space on a flight was available. He
worked four days in a row and then would have four off. Sometimes he worked five days in
a row so that he could take five off. A couple weeks before he had spent three days in
Tahiti.

That seemed strange to Viveka. Surely it was too long a distance between
Toronto and Tahiti to go for only three days?

But that's the point, Trevor told her. That he was able to do it.
The sheer craziness of it. Before that, he and a co-worker had been in Argentina, and
before that he had gone on his own to Lisbon. He and his colleagues chose places based
on seat availability on a flight. Sometimes they arrived at the airport with a change of
clothing, a toothbrush, that sort of thing, all in a small carry-on bag, and took
whatever was available.

Trevor paused, then suddenly asked where Viveka's beautiful friend
Anick was. Viveka was caught off guard; she hesitated. He reminded her that he had seen
them together at volleyball practice. Wayne and Helen had told him about Anick, and he
had expected to see her here. Mention of Anick made Viveka's stomach rise and fall
like a kite in an erratic wind. She wondered, and worried, what Helen and Wayne had said
about Anick. She shrugged, and Trevor carried on, “I thought she must have been a
very special friend to come and sit by herself in those stands to watch you play
volleyball. And then when she walked off the way
she did that time
I came to speak with you, without even looking at me, I thought to myself — hmm,
she's got a thing for Viveka. So, has she?”

Viveka thought this a bold conversation. She noted that Trevor had waited
until no one else was present to make mention of Anick. Since he was leaving the island
again the following day she, in equal measure, challenged him. “What makes you
think it wouldn't be the other way around?”

“Nothing at all. Is that how it is?”

Viveka didn't answer.

“Fair enough. It's hard to pin you down, isn't it? I
like that. You're pretty complicated.”

Her mother often threw it at her that she was too complicated for her own
good, but the way Trevor said it was almost a compliment. He kept his eyes on her and
this made her blush. He took advantage of the moment.

“So, I was wondering what you would say this time if I were to risk
having my ego bruised and ask you out, again, to dinner. After all, I think your parents
like me, and I have a list of places from your mother still to go through.”

“What do you mean? Aren't you leaving tomorrow?”
Viveka's blush turned into a moment of panic. This flirtation was harmless enough
precisely because Trevor was around only momentarily. She wanted to tell him that he was
wasting his time. That she was already inextricably and deeply in love. That even if she
never saw Anick again, her heart would always belong to her.

“Well,” Trevor began slowly, all the while keeping his eye on
Viveka for her reaction, “I am considering returning in a month's
time.”

“For what?” She did not mean to sound as hostile as she did.
Trevor was oblivious to her truculent tone.

“To have dinner with you,” he beamed, and
added, “because I am able to do it, and for the sheer craziness of it. What do you
say?”

THEY WENT TO THE LOUNGE AT THE VICTORY HOTEL. THE
TABLES
were arranged to give the illusion of privacy. Groupings of large
planters that contained tall plastic trees — banana, and palm, and the baliser and
haliconia shrubs, little clumps of jungle — divvied up the room, creating caves
where couples could steal a little more than time.

Trevor sat back comfortably in a deep love-sofa, the palm of his hand flat
on the seat cushion next to him, as if indicating a spot that was available. Viveka sat
in a chair opposite. She was not at ease. She thought of Anick, of how, at a party or in
some public place, she would strike a pose in the presence of a man who was paying her
attention. Viveka used to enjoy watching her, knowing that Anick was teasing the man and
her, but that it was she who held Anick's entire attention. She looked around the
lounge and noted that there was not a woman there who did not appear to be posing.

Trevor, she had to admit, was unusual. He led a more interesting life, she
supposed, than most men she knew. Since they had last talked at the party, he had been
to Delhi. It was his first time. His father's ancestors were from there. He had
sent her a post card with a picture of a building within the Red Fort. It said on the
back,
This is my new favourite destination. I bet you'd find this place
fascinating. You'd be looking for your ancestry in every corner. I am.
It's here, I can feel it. I bet you would too. In other words, I wish you were
here with me.
That he had thought of her so far away, in India, had,
admittedly, flattered her. Since it was a postcard and it had arrived in a pile of the
household's mail, it was very likely that her mother had read it.

Although he had lived abroad for many years, Trevor
returned often to visit family and to indulge in his love of Trinidadian cultural life.
He knew the island's nooks and crannies well and offered to take her to remote
parts of it on future visits. He clearly noticed that she neither accepted nor declined
his invitation, and he grinned at this.

Trevor did not eat, but he consumed three beers rather quickly — his
dinner, he told Viveka. She had a shrimp cocktail and a Bentley with gin. He wanted to
know, he said, every detail of her life. She reluctantly offered a few more sketchy
details on subjects already familiar to him — her course work and volleyball. Even
though Anick was at the front of her mind, Viveka didn't speak of her, and this
time Trevor too made no mention of her.

When she returned home, just before ten-thirty, all three members of
Viveka's family were sitting in front of the television watching a late-night
movie by way of waiting up for her. There was an unusual, excited kind of attention paid
her by her mother and Vashti. They wanted to know what she and Trevor had drunk and
eaten, exactly what kind of work Trevor did, and if he had siblings, and how long he had
lived in Canada and why. Viveka told them she thought he was on the prowl for some meek
woman to wash his clothes and cook his food. Her mother, at that point, became quite
irritated and said that relationships were a give and take. Her father interjected,
humour intended, that in most cases the same person who was giving was also the one
taking.