Valmiki's Daughter (46 page)

Sitting here with Trevor in the car now, the hem of her wispy dress pushed
up a little, noting the dark, almost black hairs on his knuckles, seeing the lower part
of her body with his hand wrapping her thigh — it all looked like it belonged
rather to someone else. His index finger drew a lighter, longer line to the mound of the
softest flesh just before her panties. The air went out of her. Blood surged suddenly
through her and began a rhythmic pounding between her ears, and she gasped. This time,
she found herself tightening the muscles of both legs, of her bum, and then,
involuntarily, she tilted her pelvis toward his hand. She tried to remain still, not
parting her legs as her body, to her surprise, ached to. But Trevor just as lightly
lifted his hand away, brought it to his nose. He felt the bridge with the tip of his
middle finger and then raised his hand to his head. He combed his fingers through his
hair and then dropped the same hand on the brake handle, leaving it there. His eyes
remained shut all the while.

The coursing of blood in Viveka's body had accelerated, overtaken
itself. Her temples and forehead throbbed and ached.
She thought
she should say something, but, besides being shy about what her voice might betray, she
could think of nothing appropriate. She wasn't even sure if it was right to
interrupt, to try to reel him in from wherever he had gone and left her. She rearranged
herself in the seat, smoothed her dress back down, and straightened the hem, as if doing
these things would erase what she had felt. Now she felt a twinge of sadness, confusion,
and an odd emptiness, and she thought of her parents in their car, on long drives
together, her sister, Vashti, and she in the back seat, the long periods of wordlessness
between them. Often, from the back seat she would hear one of her parents puncture the
quiet with something muttered, inaudible to her and Vashti, and the other would grunt
back a monosyllable and they would both seem satisfied, stilled again. Save for the
murmur of the air-conditioning unit and the cold air shooting from it in puffs of
whiteness that smelled like table salt, quiet would overcome her parents again and the
sound in the car would be the sound of contentment.

But this, here, was not contentment or a simple quiet, it was silence, and
it was not
between
her and Trevor, it was not one shared. It was the sound of
something unfinished and awkward. How much is enough time to let such silence be?
Didn't he feel what she had felt? Hadn't he intended to make her feel this
way? How could someone send you to such a giddying place and not have gone there with
you himself?

TREVOR AND VIVEKA IDLING THERE IN THE CAR, IN
SUCH HEAT, IN SUCH
a long queue on the roadway, waiting for space in the
parking lot had begun to seem ludicrous. The beach, once they got to it, would be
crowded. They would do what? Throw out a towel on the sand and lie there? Head into the
water? Trevor would probably take
her hand as they leapt the waves,
and when the waves were too high he would grip it tight as he led her beyond the
breakers and into the calmer water where the swells grew, but did not break. And out
there, if he became distracted and distant, Viveka would panic, as she was not a
competent swimmer.

He came and went so easily. Lost in his thoughts one minute, talking about
anything and everything the next.

He loved the North Coast, insisted on coming to this coast. She would have
preferred Mayaro Beach on the east coast. There would have been no scrutinizing what
everyone else was doing and eating, no listening to what others were saying. But here
they were in the car, and he had shut her out by closing his eyes, and now by taking his
hand from her thigh and placing it on the hand brake.

Suddenly, as if even with his eyes closed he knew her thoughts and could
be both irritated by them and in agreement with them, Trevor shifted his body upright
and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “Oh, fuck this, man,” he
breathed out and swung the wheel outward. He pressed his hand flat on the horn and
heaved the car forward in such a surprising and erratic motion that pedestrians
scattered, halted cars sprang into action and swerved inward to make room for him, and
the ones at the bottleneck scattered like repelled balls of mercury. Through the
cacophony of blaring car horns and cuss words, Trevor cut his way up the road, past the
second beach, screeching ahead as if driving a rented car. Viveka pressed her body into
the back of the seat, and so as not to look as horrified as she was, she bore a tense
smile. Leaving the disordered queue of cars behind she felt entirely submerged in deep
water. She was compelled to say something, but all she could do was whisper, “That
was some move there.”

For a long while he said nothing. Finally, tilting
his head toward the edge of the road he said, “There are numerous coves and bays
down there. Let's pull off the road and climb down.”

They were now far from the two popular beaches. She had never before been
to the beach with a man — just her and a man — and now that they had left
the crowds behind she experienced relief that she would not be seen there, at a public
beach, alone with him. She hadn't even realized, until now, how stressful that had
been for her. Unlike her mother, and her father too, who worried about what others might
say about this or that, it was not the possibility of rumours that troubled her, or the
possibility of developing a “reputation.” Rather, she did not want to be
seen as someone who could be owned by someone else.

SO, IT WAS ON THE NORTH COAST OF THE ISLAND, ON A
STRIP OF SAND
too slim to label a beach, that he lay on top of her.

He had eased the car off the roadway, thumping over thick rabbit grass and
nettles until the car's nose shoved at a fat stand of rozay. Glistening shards of
emerald sea flickered between the foliage, but there was no hint of a beach or a bathing
place below, no clearing that would have suggested a path down to the water's
edge. Viveka had remained in the car for some seconds after Trevor had switched off the
ignition, and stared ahead. A ghostly residue of sound hung in the air — the
engine's hum, its groan on the ascents, the tires crunching gravel, the car
lurching over humps and into the bellies of the heat-deformed asphalt that surfaced the
road. She had felt suddenly sad, and realized that it was because she didn't know
the French word for emerald.

In the mountains cicadas sing in the daytime. She knew this, but still, in
the brilliant sunshine, it surprised her. That, and the
rustle of
leaves. The ocean, even though it vibrated in the distance, was too far away to be
heard.

To arrive at the dash of sand well below, Trevor had shoved and trampled
his way through the foliage. Viveka followed. The rozay fronds, like barbed feathers,
finely sliced the surface of her exposed skin, and the sun and sea salt on the wind made
the tiny crisscrossing beads of blood, like little hardening rubies, sting. But it was
only the surface of her skin that stung, and it was as if she stood some distance from
herself, watching — not feeling — the pricks. From that distance she
marvelled at the vulnerability of human skin making contact with grass that appeared to
be stately and benign, but that was edged with barbs so minuscule they were not visible
from even half a metre away.

They arrived at a place where the land fell abruptly to the sea. The
surf's pounding on the shore below was relentless. One loose pebble on such a
descent was all it would take and one, or both of them, Viveka imagined, could be
catapulted into that water. She asked Trevor if he was sure this climb down was a good
idea. He said it always looked this way, as if it were a straight drop, but from
experience he knew that it was not so, and that if they made their way down one step at
a time, she would manage, and they would find a little nook in which they could just
sit, or lie quietly. He was sure of it. She should stay close if she was worried, he
said, and hold his hand.

But Viveka was worried about her mother's car left on the lonely
road where it could be robbed, peeled of its tires, seats, dashboard, stolen, or hit by
another passing car that would not expect to come upon a parked vehicle there. She said
nothing.

The sound of waves hitting the cliff just below troubled her. She stumbled
more than once, her heart lurching in fear, but she did not reach out for Trevor. She
tried to say in her mind, word
by word, in French, “I am
climbing a steep cliff down to the emerald sea.”

He said something, but the wind snatched his words away and the crashing
and the suddenness and the cold and the wet beads of salty surf that jumped up from
below and snapped at her made Viveka reluctant to ask him to repeat what he had said. He
didn't seem to need a response from her, so she remained quiet and set her foot,
her hands, and her bum where he did. It was awkward in a dress, even in a short one with
an airy skirt, but more so because he was a good foot taller than she, and so his steps
wider than hers.

The words came to her:
Aujourd'hui, je suis descendue la falaise
et j'ai aperçu
. . . and then in English she thought:
I am
descending a cliff to the emerald sea, but the sea is not below, it is high above. I
am descending in order to rise.

Once below, there was, as Trevor had promised, a place, although it was
only a sliver of sand. It was a breeding ground for sand flies. They swirled in masses
so dense that together they looked like a black shimmery veil, and their numerous
beating wings sounded like the whir of motorized toy planes.

It was not what she would have called a beach. A beach to her mind needed
to be long and wide enough for more than two people to picnic there — for a large
Trinidadian family, with extended relatives and their friends and friends of those
friends — a crowd large enough to form two full teams for volleyball, enough
friends to play the bat-and-ball version of cricket.

IN SPITE OF ITS ISOLATION, VIVEKA WAS UNEASY AS
SHE AND TREVOR
lay naked there. The pelagic odour of seaweed when it begins
to decay curdled the air in the cranny of this tiny bay.

“First time? With a man, I mean?”

She nodded, embarrassed.

Against such malodorous air it was impossible to moderate her breathing
— one panacea, she thought, to the relentless push-push-pushing. When Trevor
accidentally slipped out of the small progress he had made — he assured her it
wasn't her fault — he had to start all over again. She did as she was told
— raised her buttocks off the sand — and he slid one arm under her and
brought her up yet higher.

“Breathe, just breathe,” he sputtered. Viveka closed her eyes
tightly and breathed slowly, deeply.

Her body was host to the flies. Welts had formed fast, each one already a
fiery point of sweet itching. Her body marked easily. It would be difficult to keep
private from Vashti what she had been up to.

He offered her his shirt full of sand, and she took it to wipe
herself.

“I guess that was a little different, eh?”

“I guess,” she said.

Trevor took the shirt when she was done, waded naked into the water to his
waist. He dropped down to his neck to protect his body from the unrelenting attack of
swarm after swarm of the nasty black flies. Viveka watched him. His back was to her, and
he was busy wringing the water from the shirt. He shook the shirt loose, slapped and
whipped the air and the flies hard with it. His buttocks were small, drooped, and she
had just had sex with him.

VALMIKI LED TREVOR OUT OF THE HOUSE, LEFT HIM AND
RETURNED
with two beers. The two men walked off the patio onto the lawn.
They strolled over to the heavy wrought-iron fencing, and looked out toward the
yellow-grey waters of the Gulf. Below were the roofs of the houses of neighbours they
knew well, people who would come to the wedding and who had already sent gifts.

There was little conversation between Valmiki and Trevor. Both of them
were uneasy, both waiting, Valmiki knew, for Viveka to show herself again.

The town was small. And here Valmiki was, looking out toward the sea yet
feeling imprisoned.

He had already told Trevor that he had organized the driver to take them
all to the airport the day after the wedding, but he told him again now. Trevor thanked
him, as he had done before. Each of them was bearing up under the burden of too much
knowing.

Valmiki pointed to a flock of three brilliant scarlet ibis limping through
the sky just south of the jetty. With his eyes planted again on the roofs of the homes
of neighbours, invited guests to the wedding, he knew it was too late to speak with
Viveka. Too late to stop her. Too late to ask her if she was sure that she was
doing the right thing. To ask her what on earth she thought she
was indeed doing. Times were different. In his day he had had no choice, but she had
choices, and even as he thought this he felt the relief, instantly, that she had made
the one she had. If he were to question her, he should have done so weeks ago when this
talk of marriage first arose. But then, as now, it was as if one of his feet was trapped
in a cement block, the other dangling to the side uselessly.

When exactly had his Vik so suddenly reared up and gone away from him?

If he were forced to put a thumb to time, he would say that everything had
begun to unravel the evening Nayan had brought Anick to the house for the first time.
That was the same day he had almost shot a helpless dog in the forest. The very day
Viveka had taken a taxi to school in defiance of all that he and Devika were, just
because they wouldn't let her play volleyball.

But it wasn't that easy, was it, to pin it all on a day? Perhaps it
had begun, rather, when he, Valmiki, had decided to leave the only person he had ever
really loved, Tony, and to court Devika Sankarsingh.