The Worlds Within Her (47 page)

CYRIL, STEERING WITH
his left hand, says, “Do you still believe in Santa Claus?” His right elbow is propped on the sill of his open window, hand gripping his soft drink — a clear yellow liquid, crystalline and pretty in the sunshine.

“Santa Claus?” Her soft drink, which is sweet, red, and as reminiscent of strawberry as grape juice is of wine, has left her mouth sticky, her thirst unslaked. She holds the bottle, half-filled and warm, on her lap.

“Ram and Shakti's first big fight, believe it or not. You must've been two or three. She wanted to teach you about Santa Claus.
Magic. The mystery in life. He was dead set against it. He thought that Santa was bad for the morale. Taught things like getting something for nothing and encouraged chil'ren to believe in fairy tales. Besides, Hindus don' believe in Christmas —”

“She won, eh?”

“Natch. After all, even we had Santa Claus — Father Christmas, nuh — when we were growing up. One orange, one apple and a box o' soda biscuits. Ram couldn' say much when I remind him o' that.”

Yasmin thinks:
She won. Natch.

Cyril says, “You must still believe.”

“How so?”

“You wouldn' be here otherwise, would you?”

THAT THE RESTAURANT
had not changed through the years was, as Jim remarked, a singular achievement in a city where permanence was finite.

It was here, in this large room rendered intimate by a phrasing of shadow and light, that she had agreed to marry Jim; here, in this room where elegant waiters moved with spectral judiciousness, that they had celebrated her pregnancy; here, where discretion marshalled sound, that they had marked her accession to the anchor desk.

The champagne that Jim had ordered was uncorked and approved with nonchalant formality. As they clinked their glasses, Yasmin thought of the middle-aged couple who, on the evening that Jim asked her to marry him, had sat at the corner
table conversing amiably. Her mind distanced itself, turning back to observe them. She saw that they had become that couple, but without amiability, and what at the time would have been a comforting thought now proved an unconsoling one. It awoke the dread — for that was not too strong a word — that she had been feeling for some months.

There was no identifiable reason for it. Her forty years they were here to celebrate had taken no unusual physical toll: a few wrinkles, the silver strands that had come to her following Ariana's death dissimulated among the dark mass of her hair. Her one unusual Pap test had turned out, upon further examination, to be innocuous. Her breasts had remained lump-free.

And yet a certain uneasiness had come to her somewhere between her thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth birthdays. Before then, age had not mattered except as a way of marking the milestones of her life. But thirty-seven, following on years informed by a knot of ineradicable heartache, came quickly, and it tugged in its wake the looking certainty of forty.

Forty: A large number — an age she could associate with herself only in gentle disbelief. Her mind was sharp, her limbs strong, her enjoyment of life — as she thought of it — undiminished, within reason: How could she be forty? Middle-aged. Life half lived, if she was lucky. It cast a shadow.

Jim had wanted to have a party for her: invite everybody. But his idea had struck her as inappropriate. She wanted something smaller, more intimate. Secret. A restaurant, then — and not one of those places where tone-deaf waiters belted out “Happy Birthday” around a cupcake. New restaurants, each offering new concepts in food and decor, opened every day in the city, but Jim opted for the known and dependable. She was not surprised.

The waiter came for their order. She chose the rack of lamb. She usually had salmon. Jim raised an eyebrow in surprise, then
ordered his usual filet mignon, “as red as a sailor's sunset.” He conferred in a knowledgeable murmur with the waiter over the choice of wine.

When the waiter had gone, Yasmin said, “Do you still think about the light?”

Jim cocked his head, his eyes narrowing. “The what?”

“Never mind. Nothing.”

He reached into his pocket, placed a small box in black velvet on her plate.

As she opened the box and lifted with a show of delight the strand of imperfect pearls, she couldn't help wondering what had happened to the arrogance and originality of his years gone by.

She has thought about it, of course.

The possibility of dismantling the life that has outlived its beauty.

This is how she has imagined it: the wrapping of the silverware and the vases and the lamps; the boxing of the books; the bundling of linen; the removal of furniture; and the suitcases maniacally stuffed: a methodical undoing of the life, the house, stripped of personality, returned to a shell of brick and echo.

This division of the spoils appears to her to be a mere formality. She covets nothing beyond the photographs of her daughter. Take it all, her mind says to Jim. What is important is to begin again — and the avoidance of rubble.

And yet this is what stops her: this thorough dismantling which would be like ripping out sections of gut; the inevitability of rubble; and the vagueness of what would come next.

For, despite everything, she cannot imagine herself happy.

There is fear, there is suspension of breath, but there is no rapture.

Later, as they got ready for bed, Jim said, “It really isn't so bad, you know.”

“What?”

“Age. You get used to it.”

But it was not a matter of adjustment. It was not a matter of age itself. The problem, she suspected, was the possibility never broached, and now beyond reach: the possibility of another child.

Yet, after a moment, she said, “That's the problem, isn't it.”

But he didn't hear her over the rush of water from the tap, and when he climbed into bed, the moment had passed.

Lying beside her, forearm thrown over his eyes, Jim said, “There's a coldness at your centre, Yas. A ball of ice that survives beneath all those layers of warmth.” He turned, pressed himself to her side, his head on her shoulder, his thigh crossing hers.

He had aroused her despite herself, and in the enlivened darkness she had rediscovered a youthful energy, an energy without age. Now, with just a few words, he had returned to her the anxiety he had caused her to forget.

His palm, lying moist on her belly, crept up her side, touch lightening as he found her breast, skimming slowly across the nipple — she winced: it was sensitive still — and settling on it, grasping lightly at her flesh and at the pearls she had not removed. It was an artless gesture and, following on his words, grotesque.

She reached for his hand, removed it.

He hesitated. Then he turned onto his back and mumbled goodnight.

She rolled onto her side, away from him, and stared wakeful into the darkness. For beyond everything — beyond the pleasure she had received and given; beyond the anxiety in her belly and
the mindlessness of his touch — was the certainty that, in identifying that deeper coldness within her, Jim was right.

CYRIL SAYS, “THEY
stopped here that day. He needed to pee.”

Yasmin leans on the car and looks around. Sand. Palm trees widely dispersed. A beach that is broad and flat in low tide, the waves unfurling themselves with whispering grace.

“They say that if he —”

“Who says?”

“Actually — there were two people with him that day. A driver and a political advisor. Whatever we know we got from the driver before he died. And — I warning you now — is not much.”

“Did you talk to him yourself?”

“No, no chance o' that. The fella manage to talk to the ambulance attendant on the way to the hospital, and he's the one who told the police.

“Who told you.”

“Right. So you see, all this is fourth-hand information.”

“Was there an investigation?”

“The police looked into it, yes. But you know, nobody was ever —”

“I know. An immaculate killing. But Cyril, this is a small place. Surely there were rumours.”

“Sure. And there was a rumour for everybody. Maybe it have an answer somewhere on a piece o' paper, but I don' believe it. The only thing we know for sure is that Ram and his two
people were killed, shot, a little bit up the road, after they stopped here so he could relieve his bladder.”

Yasmin walks from the car, out from beneath the trees to the beach. The sunlight is bright, reflective, an oblique afternoon light, and the breeze coming off the sea is steady and cool, tangy with brine and fresh fish. She says, “What is this place?”

“Just a beach. A pretty popular one. Crowded on weekends, nuh.” He gestures at a line of garbage — discarded cans and paper cups, empty containers of every kind — pushed neatly far up the beach by the high tide.

“Was it crowded when he —”

“No, no, it was during the week. Afternoon. It was probably pretty much like this.”

They stand together in the silence, listening to the waves and the breeze, to their echoes among the lengthening shadows.

And finally Yasmin says, with a frustration that surprises even her, “What was he about, Cyril? I don't —”

Cyril takes her elbow and says quietly, “If you ask me, Ram was a man who spend his life looking for vengeance — and I mean big vengeance, vengeance on history, nuh — and in the end is what kill him. We don' know who pull the trigger, and at this point it hardly matter. You see, I come to believe that what really kill him was the beast within.”

Her gaze reaches out over the water and she wonders whether her father, too, in what he did not know to be the final moments of his life, had looked out and shivered at its endlessness.

THE ROAD SWINGS
gently inland, rising once more. The friendly vegetation of the seashore gives way to a denser growth that occasionally suggests impenetrability.

After a sudden steep rise the road levels off and Cyril slows down. He says, “It was around here … Yes, just about there.” He pulls to the side and turns off the car. “They were waiting just up the road. Waiting for his car. They pulled in front of them, forcing them to stop. Apparently Ram got out. Then he saw the guns and started running, there, into that field.”

She sees no field, just a stretch of tall grass distinguishable from the surrounding growth only by its lack of trees.

“It was a vegetable garden back then, some local farmer, nuh. Ram probably thought he could disappear into the forest but they followed him. The two other fellas were shot in the car. As for Ram, they count twenty bullets in the autopsy, he din't have a chance.”

He turns off the car engine, and in the silence Yasmin's mind begins to struggle with the story. The cars. The roadblock. The flurry of panic and movement. The explosion of gunshots and the sounds of crashing glass.

Had there been moments of clarity — when fate came clear and inevitability invaded the soul? Had there been a time for final thoughts — or just a blind and wrenching panic?