Authors: Anita Nair

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

Mistress (14 page)

BOOK: Mistress

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I could see he thought otherwise, but hoped I wouldn’t.

‘You have to save my reputation, my standing in society,’ he pleaded. ‘Shyam, you are my lone hope.’

So much for innocence, I thought. I stood up. ‘You have to know something. I have always been in love with Radha. My mother said I shouldn’t have foolish dreams. But I knew that she was destined to be mine. It doesn’t matter to me that she had a relationship with
another man. I shall be happy to marry her. But will she?’

‘She will do as I tell her to,’ he said.

‘I have a job offer from Dubai,’ I said. ‘I will have to leave soon, so you must conduct the wedding before that.’ I was suddenly afraid. What if someone else more suitable than me turned up?

‘Will she be able to go with you?’ he asked.

‘Not immediately. Maybe later.’

‘Oh,’ he said. He looked away, unable to meet my eyes. ‘Why not do something here? Young wives shouldn’t be left alone.’

He took my hands in his. ‘All that I own is hers, and therefore yours,’ he said.

‘Is that a bribe?’

‘Shyam, you are my son,’ he said.

‘In which case, I would like you to advance me some money. I have an idea for a business venture. But I will pay you back every rupee with interest,’ I said. Then I added, ‘But there is one thing you must promise me. That you will never ever mention to Radha what transpired here today. I don’t want her to know that I know about her past. Or that you put up the money for me to start a business.’

My mother approved of the alliance thoroughly. Only Rani Oppol wasn’t so welcoming. She was suspicious that I had been forced to agree. ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ she said when the marriage was fixed.

I smiled at her. She was so protective of me. ‘Don’t worry. I am sure.’

‘You can get any girl you want. You don’t have to be saddled with her just because we owe her father a debt of gratitude.’

‘I like her. I like her very much, Oppol,’ I said. I wouldn’t dare use a word like love with Oppol. She wouldn’t like it, I knew instinctively.

On our wedding night, Radha waited for me in our nuptial chamber with a face that seemed hewn out of stone.

‘Why do you look so serious?’ I tried to joke.

‘I am not a virgin,’ she said. ‘I want you to know that I have had sex.’

I tried not to flinch and instead, peeled a banana. The bedside table was laden with the mandatory first-night accessories. My aunt saw too many movies, I thought. A plate of fruit, incense sticks, a
glass of milk, and the bed draped with flowers.

‘All this is a farce,’ she said, sweeping a string of flowers away.

I offered the fruit to her. ‘Have a banana,’ I said.

She stared at me. ‘Do you think this is a joke?’

‘No, I don’t,’ I said. I had thought very carefully about this. I knew Radha well enough to deduce that she would want to confess to me, bare her soul before we went any further. I knew that to affect nonchalance was the only way to play down the significance of her confession. ‘It doesn’t matter. I have had sex, too. I have slept with other women, too.’

‘Did my father offer you money to marry me?’

I looked at her carefully. ‘You are insulting me,’ I said quietly. I wouldn’t allow her to provoke a quarrel. Not tonight. ‘I don’t need to be paid to marry you. Don’t you know how beautiful you are?’

She wouldn’t meet my gaze.

‘But why did you marry me? You don’t seem very pleased with this marriage,’ I said.

She stared at the floor. ‘I didn’t know what else to do,’ she said, and wept.

I did not know what to say. Perhaps I should have told her that I loved her. That I had always been in love with her. That it didn’t matter what she had done before, what counted was what we made of our life together.

I did the husbandly thing. I made love to her and she let me do so without protest. When she responded to my touch and I knew that she was trying to block a memory, I closed my mind to it. That was then. This is now. You are mine, I thought as my hips locked with hers and my mouth sought hers.

I lie in bed, on my back. It is a quarter to eleven. Where is Radha? I look across at her bedside table, where a book lies face down. It has the picture of a woman sitting inside a train compartment. I turn it over and read the blurb on the back: ‘The story of a woman’s search for strength and independence …’ I fling the book down. Is that what it’s all about, the midnight wanderings and the hours closeted with the Sahiv?

I insert a CD in the player. A.R. Rehman’s
Jana gana mana
…Radha dislikes most of the music that I listen to. She thinks
my tastes are plebeian. She thinks it is disgraceful that I enjoy Baywatch and WWF. ‘How can you even bear to watch?’ she says incredulously. ‘It is so unreal. Do you think lifeguards look like that? As for those wrestling matches, everything about them is make-believe! ’

I think it is she who is living in an unreal world with her
F.R.I.E.N.D.S
and
Whose Line Is It Anyway?
What is it that the host, the fat man Drew Carey, says about the show … Where the points don’t matter! That’s what all her preferences are about. Things that don’t matter.

But she couldn’t fault Rehman, I had thought.

‘He’s got all the best names roped in, listen to this,’ I had said, playing the song for her.

She listened for a few minutes and then rose to go.

‘Why? Don’t you like it?’

‘It’s too clever by half. How can you stand him?’ She wrinkled her nose.

‘He is brilliant. He scored the music for a London musical. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
Bombay Dreams
.’

‘So?’

‘The whole world thinks he is terrific.’

‘That doesn’t mean anything to me.’

So now I listen to the music I like either in the car, or when I am alone at home.

The clock strikes. It is half past eleven. I wonder if I should talk to the SP about Chris. Some years ago, a young Polish woman came to study with Uncle. She was his private student and he seemed to be getting rather too fond of her. I don’t think the old man felt any passion, but he seemed to have a great deal of affection for her. I wouldn’t have intervened but for the fact that the piece of land he lives on is worth a goldmine. When he dies, it will be Radha’s. I don’t want anything jeopardizing her inheritance. So I dropped into the SP’s office and had a word with him and he saw to it that the woman’s visa was not renewed.

I hear a car. She is back. I sit up. Then I lie down again, turn the light off and pretend to be asleep.

Uncle

The night scents fill the air. I walk slowly, humming
Sukhamo nee devi
…Are you well, my mistress? Hanuman’s address to Sita when he meets her by accident many years after she has been banished from the kingdom. The words of that padam have always brought tears to my eyes, but tonight I hear the words in my head and I know they are for Maya.

For the past ten years, Maya has telephoned me every second and fourth Tuesday of the month at a quarter to eight. Her husband has a bridge game then and she has the house to herself. We speak to each other as if we are together in the same room. In the last ten years we have arrived at an ease of conversation that I have never known with anyone else. She tells me it is the same for her.

When Maya called earlier today, I decided that I would tell her about Radha and Chris and what was brewing between them. ‘What do you think?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know, Koman. Who is to tell? They are both old enough to know what they are doing, and its consequences. Like us, Koman. We knew, didn’t we?’

‘I worry that Radha will let it languish in her thoughts and not do anything about it.’

‘Koman, you sound as if you want her to commit adultery. It is not an easy situation to be in.’

‘Maya, you have to see Radha. I cannot believe the change in her. For the first time in many years she looks like she has found a reason to go on.’

‘Why doesn’t she divorce him then? It isn’t as though they have children.’

‘Shyam isn’t a bad man. He can’t be faulted as a husband. But I can see that Radha isn’t happy with him. To divorce him because he bores her—what court of law would hear of it?’

‘They have a phrase for boredom. Irreconcilable differences.’

‘I don’t know, Maya, I don’t know where the three of them are heading.’

‘Koman, I know you love her very much. But it is her life. You
cannot live her life,’ Maya said, and I knew she was right.

Then Maya said what I had hoped to hear her say seven years ago. ‘Koman, I would like to see you,’ she said.

I could hear the need in her voice. I would have liked to see her, too.

But I knew a stab of fear as well. To start everything all over again: did I have the courage? Did I have the stamina?

I tried to bridle her yearning. ‘Maya,’ I said. ‘I know it’s been very long since we met. But I seldom travel these days.’

‘I will come to you. I just need to be with you,’ she said and her voice broke. ‘Just for a few days.’ I heard the plea in her voice. ‘Don’t make me beg, Koman. Allow me that much dignity.’

I was silent. What was I doing to her, I asked myself. This was Maya. This was the woman I had loved for the last ten years. I smiled into the phone. ‘Then come. You know that I would like you always by my side.’

What have I done? I wonder.

I think of what Shyam said to me a few months after he and Radha were married. ‘I have always believed that if you want something badly enough and you wait long enough, it will come to you. I always knew that Radha would be my wife. I was prepared to wait and so it happened.’

Is he a wise man or an incredible fool, I had wondered. Then curious, I asked, ‘But does it feel the same? Don’t you think the waiting ruins the dream?’

‘What do you mean?’ He shot me an aggrieved look. ‘I feel the same way about Radha as I did nine years ago.’

‘You are fortunate,’ I said, ‘to be able to preserve your dream as you dreamt it, to want it despite all the years of waiting.’

I know that my dreams have acquired a blurred edge with all the ands and buts I have been forced to make place for.

I had expected to find Radha and Chris in the lobby. But it was empty, so I decided to walk to Chris’s cottage.

Radha looked beautiful when she walked in earlier this evening. I had looked at the vision she made and said, ‘You should dress like this more often.’

Radha made a face. ‘Not you too, Uncle. What is wrong with men? Why do they so enjoy seeing a woman in silk? I really don’t understand.’

I propelled her towards a mirror that hung in my bedroom. ‘Look at yourself,’ I said. She smoothened the pleats of her sari.

I smiled. ‘I think it is because men like to think that women have made an effort to please them. It shows, when you wear silk and jewellery and flowers in your hair. I love flowers in a woman’s hair.’

‘For an old man you are very romantic,’ Radha teased.

‘I am not old,’ I said. ‘I am only sixty-four. That’s not old.’ I looked at myself in the mirror. I still had all my hair and most of my teeth. My face wasn’t lined, except for a few lines near my eyes and mouth. My flesh hadn’t sagged, nor were my muscles loose. ‘Do I look old, Radha?’ I asked.

‘There, I knew it. You are vain.’

I pinched her cheek. ‘You are very happy tonight.’

‘I am happy,’ she said, as though it had just occurred to her.

‘Good.’ I walked back to the veranda. ‘It pleases me. Now listen, I am expecting a call. So why don’t you go ahead and wait for me with Chris? Remind him to bring his video camera. And do me a favour. Tell him a little about Kalamandalam Gopalakrishnan, who he is and why it will be a treat to watch his vesham.’

The moon has gone behind a cloud. I look at the sky. Will it rain? Where are these two? Then I see them. Radha and Chris. Wrapped in each other in a tableau of intimacy.

He is sitting on a chair and she stands between his legs, facing him. The pallu of her sari lies over his knees and trails on the floor and over his instrument. He buries his face in her midriff, and his hands splay over her buttocks, gathering her closer to him. She throws her head back and I see her parted lips and the shuddering of her body. I see her hands plough his hair …

My breath catches in my throat. I stand there, unable to move away or even shut my eyes. I know I should, but I can’t. My feet are like stone. I have never seen a man and a woman so completely drawn into each other’s need.

Then I know I have.

In Uttara Swayamvaram, there is a scene that nobody attaches much importance to. It is a love scene like many others that speckle
kathakali librettos. But tonight I understand what the scene is truly about.

Duryodhana, the cruel Kaurava prince, and his wife Bhanumati are in a beautiful garden. It is night. The combination of the beauty of the moment and the loveliness of his wife arouses in Duryodhana a great desire to make love to her. He turns to her with the nakedness of his desire showing. Kalyani, he tells her, gazing at the fullness and perfection of her breasts and letting his eyes rake the curves of her body, I can’t think of a more perfect place or time to make love to you.

Bhanumati doesn’t act coy or hide the intensity of her longing, either. I feel the arrows of desire, she tells him. We are all alone here. And I am yours. Can’t you see how much I long for you? Bees, they say, will suck nectar from even half-open buds; why are you waiting, my beloved? Don’t you see how much I thirst to drink deep of your lips, to feel you against me? Hold me …make love to me.

The completeness of desire. Chris and Radha. I feel humbled by the intensity of their intimacy.

I walk away to a little bench under a tree. I sit there and try to collect my thoughts. What are you doing, Radha? I am worried. Do you realize what you are starting here?

I walk back to the cottage. I cough and shuffle my feet to announce my arrival. They fall apart, hurled separate by my presence.

I do not step in. ‘We should be going.’

They look at each other. Did he see us, their eyes ask.

I get into the front of the car so they can sit together at the back. There is enough electricity between them to light up the entire town.

I do not know what they will take in of the performance. My mind, too, is full of Maya.

I do not like open endings. There is nothing clear-cut about their relationship. It occurs to me that there is nothing definite about Maya’s and mine, either.

I feel a great fear grow in me. What will happen to this love?

Then I think, I will tell them of another time and another love. I will tell them about Seth and Saadiya, and about love’s consequences.

BOOK: Mistress

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