Authors: Anita Nair

Tags: #Kerala (India), #Dancers, #India, #General, #Literary, #Triangles (Interpersonal Relations), #Travel Writers, #Fiction, #Love Stories

Mistress (13 page)

BOOK: Mistress

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I know nothing about western classical music, but I know when I respond to a piece of music. I feel that stirring now. As if all that lies buried in me is aching to be drawn out.

I close my eyes and let the music wash over me. I think of what Chris said on his first night here. ‘Baggage! None of us is free of it.’

I have my baggage too.

How old was I? Twenty-two. So young, so full of adult possibilities, and so determined to live my way. I was ripe and ready to fall in love; he was a much older man, married and a senior manager in the company where I worked. Normally, we would never have met. I was a trainee in the HR department and he a senior technical expert. But there was a seminar organized by the HR department and then, in the evening, a cocktail party. He was there and I had lots to drink and as banter moved to innuendoes, I saw that he was an attractive man. I was flattered by his attention and charmed by his conversation. I let myself yield.

Is that what falling in love is? To concede, to relinquish, to be pliant, to comply, to give way. I did all that, knowing that he was a married man and that ‘my wife and I have a marriage only in name’ was the oldest and most banal cliché ever used.

I was too young and too yielding to realize that I made a perfect playmate and would never be more. For two years, he and I were lovers. ‘As soon as my son leaves home, I’ll get a divorce,’ he said,
and I believed him. My whole life stretched ahead of me. What was a year or two, I asked myself.

I believed him because he seemed to be as much in love with me as I was with him. So much so that he wanted to flaunt it. There was nothing hole-in-the-corner or clandestine about our relationship. We did everything that other couples did.

We went to pubs and restaurants. It didn’t matter that we might meet people we knew. He would fork morsels from his plate into my mouth and sip from my glass and he did it as if he had every right to do so. I revelled in it. He took me to meet his friends and in their homes he would slip his hand into mine and sometimes absently twirl a lock of my hair around his finger. When we went to open-air concerts, he would lean against the car and hold me cradled to his chest. He kissed me in the lift and pushed the car seat back and made love to me in his car.

And always I knew that rush, the exhilaration that came of defiance. I was doing in adult terms what I had done as an adolescent: sneaking out of the all-girls’ boarding school for a wind-in-the-hair bike ride with a boy I had met. Smoking grass and necking in movie theatres. But this is the man I love, I told myself and yielded even more.

We held nothing back. He told me his fantasies and I complied. Perhaps the compliance was what made it so exciting. He had my body fine-tuned to a fever of sexual energy and he evoked an appetite that seemed insatiable. He knew how to make love in so many different ways, masterful and tender at the same time. And since he knew that it wouldn’t be for ever, he crammed a lifetime’s loving into as many stolen moments as possible.

Then his wife came to see me. Perhaps she had done this before. At first she was very brisk and matter-of-fact about it, as if she were dealing with a broken sewer pipe: there would be some stench and mess involved, but it could be fixed. ‘You don’t think this is the first time, do you?’

I couldn’t meet her eyes. She was so elegant, and I felt like a gauche teenager. ‘He loves me. And I him.’ I dared her to defy me.

She bit her lip. I glanced at her. She wasn’t angry, not even unhappy, only utterly, desperately hopeless. ‘He seems to choose younger and younger girls. What do you see in him? Don’t ruin your
life for him. What did he say—as soon as my son leaves home, I’ll get a divorce?’

I flushed.

‘I thought as much. Ask him, which son? The fifteen-year-old, the eleven-year-old, or the five-year-old?’

I felt a sob grow in me. I hadn’t known about the younger children.

‘I know he hasn’t mentioned the younger boys to you. That, too, is part of the pattern. I pity him. It is as if he needs to redeem himself after each child is born. Steal back his youth, perhaps. I don’t know. He is not a bad man, only weak, and he will never leave me. He needs me …and I him. He is the father of my children, you see.’

I did not hear what she was saying. All I knew was that I wanted to go home. I wanted to hide myself in a place where there was none of this deceit or compromise. I felt betrayed. I felt used. I felt foolish. More than anything else, I knew that if I stayed I would find a way to excuse his lies and continue to be his playmate. That was the measure of how much I had yielded to him.

For days, I lay in bed. Even getting up seemed an effort. I sank into lethargy—or was it hopelessness? What was there for me to wake up to? Even thinking was an effort. Then I discovered that I was pregnant. I didn’t really have an option. I would have to have an abortion. There was nothing else to be done. I slipped a gold band around my ring finger and a black-bead-and-gold chain around my neck and smeared the parting in my hair with the redness of sindoor. I met the eyes of the doctor as fearlessly as I could, and said, ‘I cannot have this baby; my husband and I are separated.’

‘Are you sure?’ she asked. ‘It is a first pregnancy, and I would advise against termination. Have you asked yourself if this baby might help you reconcile with your husband?’

‘No, that will not happen,’ I said. ‘He is with another woman now.’

‘In that case …’

So I wiped out all traces of a love that was not meant to be, and went home.

When Shyam was brought forth as husband material, I hesitated. Then my father said, ‘I have heard some rather disconcerting things about you. Are you determined to ruin my good name?’

I wondered what he had heard. I didn’t care. It wasn’t as if my
father was of unimpeachable character. But I knew that if I didn’t tie myself to Shyam, I would in a weak moment go back to my lover. I agreed.

I had saved my pride and kept my integrity. I could sleep again without seeing the image of his wife, with her hopeless eyes and the resignation in her voice. Three months later, I knew I had made a mistake, but I buried the thought in my mind. There it lay and turned into a kernel of dissatisfaction, corroding and sucking the marrow out of my life. Why had I said yes to this marriage? To living with a man merely because I longed to flee from my own conscience?

Again I sank into apathy. Days dragged into years and I was ensconced in my lethargy. What was there to look forward to?

‘Isn’t it time you had a child?’ Rani Oppol asked in our second year of marriage.

I shrugged. ‘We will have one when we are ready,’ I said.

‘There is no saying with these things. You don’t know if you can get pregnant unless you get pregnant.’

I wondered if I should tell her. But I bit back my retort.

‘Isn’t it time we had a child?’ Shyam said a couple of years later.

I thought a child might bridge the distance between us. It would fill our lives. I would welcome a child, I thought.

But I wouldn’t get pregnant.

So we went to doctors. For some months it was another routine. ‘Don’t think about it and it will happen,’ the doctors said.

So I didn’t think about it. But I didn’t get pregnant.

Then, one day, we went to visit Rani Oppol. Their neighbours, a brahmin family from Palakkad, were conducting a seemantham for their daughter. I would be expected to go along, I thought, so I wore a silk sari and put some jewellery on. It was a festive occasion, after all: the celebration of a pregnancy coming close to full term.

Then Rani Oppol said, ‘I don’t think you should come with us. You know how people are; they think a married woman who hasn’t had children for so long is a macchi. They won’t like it. It is inauspicious to have a barren woman at such functions …the evil eye, etc.’

I didn’t say anything. All I knew was a freezing within.

Now, as I hear Chris’s music, I feel a thawing. I cannot bear to bury
the thought again. I wish to be free of it. I do not wish to wake up one morning twenty years from now and ask myself: how could you have thrown your chance of happiness away?

The notes fill my ears as I walk through the carefully preserved fence of propriety. If there is a thought that goes with me, it is only sorrow for what could have been.

I stand at the door. Chris sees me but does not stop. I watch him as he coaxes the instrument to be his.

He is sitting on a chair. The instrument is wedged ever so gently between his knees; its neck rests against his shoulder. His hands move, his left hand searching, the right hand gleaning. They have become one, the instrument yielding to his body, his touch.

I see myself in his arms. I am the cello. It is me he is caressing. It is I who am responding.

The intensity of my desire shocks me. I close my eyes to shut out the image.

The music stops abruptly. I open my eyes. He keeps the cello aside. He continues to sit on the chair with his legs still slightly splayed, his eyes intense. The music hangs in the air.

He looks at me.

I walk towards him.

Shyam

I have a Rotary Club meeting to go to. We intend to conduct a project discussion. There are three projects under consideration and tonight we will decide which one it is to be. I wish Radha would go with me. All the other office bearers will bring their wives. I like looking at Radha when she is with a group of women. My Radha shines.

When we are out together in company, I watch her. I see the way she tilts her chin forward when she is listening, and the way she throws her head back as she laughs. I see her cover her mouth with her hand and toss her hair from her face. And I know again that
sense of pride. She is mine. I see a burst of admiration in the eyes of the other men and a wave of envy on the women’s faces. My Radha shines.

‘Are you sure you are not coming?’ I ask.

‘No, I told you that I am going out with Uncle,’ she says. I read the irritation in her voice.

‘Is the Sahiv going too?’

‘I think so. Uncle thinks it will help Chris to write his piece better if he were to see a few performances.’

‘I see.’ But I don’t. I understand why Chris has to see kathakali being performed. What I don’t is why Radha has to go along. I think of my mother’s stock of sayings: sesame seeds need to soak in the sun so that they yield more oil, but why is the silly beetle doing the same?

‘What are you muttering?’ Radha asks.

‘I was just wondering, won’t you be tired if you stay up late? You know that we have to attend the SP’s daughter’s wedding tomorrow, don’t you?’ I try again to dissuade her.

She frowns. ‘It isn’t the first time I have stayed up late. For heaven’s sake, what’s wrong now? No one’s going to gossip, if that’s what is worrying you.’

It hadn’t occurred to me, but now that she’s put the thought in my head, I do worry.

‘If you need me to pick you up, just call and I’ll come,’ I say.

She looks at me for a moment. I don’t understand the import of that look; is it sorrow? But why?

‘No, I’ll be fine.’ She touches my elbow. ‘Uncle has booked a taxi. He will drop me back.’

I smile. Perhaps everything will be fine, after all.

I watch her as she fastens her earrings. She is even more beautiful tonight. She is my Syamantaka gem, I think. But I dare not tell her. She will laugh at me and ask, ‘Syamantaka gem? What do you know of that?’

Both Radha and Uncle prefer to believe that I know little or nothing of mythology, or anything that makes an attempt to appeal to the unconscious. That is their realm and they guard it fiercely. In their minds they have divided the world into two: those who belong and those who don’t. As far as they are concerned, I am a businessman
and the only music I hear is the ringing of cash registers, the only literature I read is the writing on currency notes; my favourite paintings are stacks of industrial chimneys and my sense of rhythm is derived from the grinding of cogs and wheels. I don’t belong in their world and they prefer that I don’t try and trespass.

When we were first married, I tried to join a discussion that Uncle and Radha were having about a character in the Ramayana. They stared at me as if I had said something really stupid. Then Uncle sniggered and Radha said, ‘Don’t be foolish. It isn’t like that.’

What isn’t like that, I wanted to demand. Mythology is like poetry. It is fashioned by its telling. Uncle and you talk about the importance of interpretation, but you are such snobs. I may not be an artist or an art connoisseur, but that doesn’t make my opinions invalid. Are you saying that you think only those steeped in art ought to be allowed to express their views? And that your readings are acceptable and mine foolish? But I was intimidated by the newness of our relationship and held my anger back.

So, how then can I tell Radha that she is my Syamantaka gem, ‘yielding daily eight loads of gold and dispelling all fear of portents, wild beasts, fire, robbers and famine’? When you are with me, I want to tell her, I am the sun wearing a garland of light.

Instead I say, ‘Why don’t you ever dress like this when we go for dinner at the Club? Then all you wear are your stiff khadi kurtas. I hate them; they remind me of those activist women burning with vitriol and a cause. Women should wear silk, jewellery and flowers in their hair.’

She is silent.

I see the surprise in Shashi’s eyes when he opens the door for her. And admiration, too.

‘Madam is going for a kathakali performance. Which is why she is all dressed up,’ I say. He grins.

‘I’ll drive. You can go home,’ I add.

Radha snarls at me as soon as I start the car. ‘What do you mean, all dressed up? You make it sound as if I am doing something extraordinary. Can’t I wear a silk sari without your having to discuss it with the driver?’

I wonder why she is so upset. What did I say?

I stop at Uncle’s gate. ‘Are you sure the taxi has been booked?
Do you want me to check?’ I ask.

‘Don’t fuss,’ she says, getting out.

‘Radha,’ I begin.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Have a good time.’ I wait for Uncle to open his door and for Radha to step inside. Then I reverse and drive away.

Her perfume lingers in the car. I know that sense of loss again. Why is it that my hold over Radha remains so ephemeral, even after eight years of marriage? Why can’t I reach into the substance of her being? Is it because she doesn’t let me?

My father and Radha’s mother, Gowri, were cousins. They grew up in the same house. When my father turned eighteen, he joined the army. He survived two wars and then, when I was nine years old, he was killed in a freak road accident. A lorry carrying a load of iron pipes took a curve too fast. One of the pipes bulleted out and knocked my father off his scooter into the path of a bus. I lost a father and acquired an unshakeable belief in destiny.

My mother didn’t have a family to turn to, so we went to my father’s house, where my grandmother still lived. That the house would go to Gowri ammayi when my grandmother died was understood, but she didn’t need the house. She had married well. So we continued to live there even after my grandmother died. Gowri ammayi persuaded her husband to help us out. We wanted for nothing but self-respect.

My elder sister, Rani, was sixteen. A relative’s son who worked in the railways married her. All the money we had received on my father’s death was spent on her wedding.

My father had had great hopes for me. My son will be a doctor or an engineer, he used to say. Neither my mother nor I dared ask Gowri ammayi’s husband for money to fund an education in a professional college. So I acquired a BA in economics and found myself a job in sales. We no longer needed his handouts.

When I was paid my first salary, I bought him a shirt. I took it to his house.

I heard him tell my aunt, ‘Your cousin’s chekkan is here.’

I flinched. Chekkan. Boy. I am a grown-up now, I wanted to tell him.

‘What is this?’ he asked, peering at the package I offered him.

‘A shirt. I was paid early this week and I wanted to buy you something with the money.’

‘You must learn to spend wisely; then you won’t have to depend on others,’ he said. ‘Gowri, see what this chekkan has brought me.’

Why couldn’t he use my name?

I never saw him wear that shirt.

I was good at my job, and ambitious. I took a management degree from the open university and switched jobs.

My mother saw that my prospects were bright and brought forth the subject of marriage. ‘What are you waiting for?’

‘How old is Radha?’ I asked.

‘Radha? What has she got to do with your marriage? I hope you are not nurturing any desire of marrying her.’ My mother sounded querulous.

‘Why not? What is wrong with me?’

‘Don’t be foolish. Only a child cries for the moon.’

‘I am sure Gowri ammayi will agree,’ I said.

‘She will, but he won’t. He expects his daughter to make a brilliant marriage into a family that will match them in status and wealth. We are nobodies. We don’t even have a house of our own.’

I kept quiet. It was true. We had nothing to call our own, not even this roof over our head.

The next time she talked about marriage, I said, ‘Amma, I will get married only when we have a house of our own.’

Then I received a letter from my mother. It said: Take two days off and come home immediately.

I was working in Trivandrum in those days. I wondered what it was about, but I went. Besides, I had news of my own. I had a letter of contract from a trading firm in Dubai. I was finally going to be making serious money. I was finally going to be somebody.

‘Your uncle will be here by about ten to see you,’ my mother said, even as I walked in. She looked fraught with anxiety. What could be wrong? Was he planning to sell the house?

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Wrong?’ Her face broke into a smile. ‘It is good news. He came with a proposal of marriage last week.’

‘Didn’t you tell him that I don’t plan to get married yet?’

‘Wait till you hear who the girl is …It is Radha.’

My mother hustled and bustled. She wrung her hands and wiped her face with the end of her sari. She clucked and nodded, smiled and frowned, and was in a state of nervous excitement.

‘Fetch me a cup of tea,’ my uncle said, not bothering to hide his annoyance.

I was leaning against the wall. I straightened and I don’t know how, but I found the courage to say, ‘I don’t want you to use that tone of voice to my mother, ever.’

He looked at me as if he was seeing me for the first time. I wasn’t any more the chekkan he could dismiss with a tilt of his chin. I was thirty-one years of age, with two degrees and soon, a job in Dubai.

‘Oh, I didn’t mean it that way. She is like my younger sister,’ he said slowly.

‘You wouldn’t ever talk in that tone to your sister if you had one. My mother is not your maid …I know that you took us in when we had no one else. You didn’t have to. We are your relatives only by marriage. You have my gratitude, and hers, for that. But it doesn’t give you the right to talk down to her or me.’

‘Shyam,’ he said. How easily he spoke my name now. ‘Shyam, if I thought you were not my social equals, would I come here to offer you my daughter in marriage?’ He came to stand near me. But his gaze was shifty.

I had known as soon as my mother gave me the news that something was wrong. Suddenly Radha was not the moon but the mango ripe for plucking.

I sat down then. I had never done this before—sit with him. I was expected to stand or perch on a step. Only equals sat down with each other. He stared for a moment and I saw him try and mask his displeasure.

‘Is there a problem with her horoscope?’ I asked.

‘No, no, her horoscope is very good and it matched very well with yours.’

‘Does she have a disease then? Leucoderma, or maybe something is wrong with her uterus?’

‘What a thing to say! She is perfectly healthy.’

‘Then she must be pregnant,’ I said. My voice sounded cold to my own ears.

‘Shyam, what is wrong with you? How dare you be insolent? To
insult your own uncle who has been so kind to us …’ my mother’s horrified voice burst from the doorway. The cups on the tray shook with the force of her emotions.

‘Amma,’ I said. ‘I have to know why I, a nobody with not even a house of my own, am being asked to marry Radha who you said would make a brilliant marriage. We are not in their league, you said. So why is it different now? I am sure it is not because they have realized that I may not be their equal in status or wealth, but am still the best man for Radha.’

‘Let me talk to him,’ Radha’s father said.

My mother left us alone. He took the cup of tea and sipped it. He drew out a pack of cigarettes and after a moment’s hesitation offered it to me. ‘Would you care to smoke one?’

‘No,’ I said. I looked away. I felt deeply ashamed. He was willing to let me wipe my feet on him. He had no pride left, and I was still trampling him into the ground.

‘What is wrong?’ I asked as gently as I could.

‘She’s been involved with a man.’

‘So why don’t you get them married?’

He wiped his face with a handkerchief. ‘I wish it was that simple. He is a married man with three children. His wife wrote to me saying, take your daughter away before he ruins her life and she my family. Knowing this, how can I delay her marriage?’

‘So you are afraid to thrust soiled goods on to somebody else and decided to come to me. Shyam will do what we ask, because he is bound to us by a debt of gratitude—is that what you thought?’

My mouth tasted bitter. Radha would be mine because no one else would have her.

‘Don’t say that. It was an innocent relationship. A young girl’s fascination for an older man.’

BOOK: Mistress

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