by Shani Mootoo
“She was really watching them as if for the last time. And then those same pieces, one by one, started going missing. In a short time, the sideboard and the buffet that had been covered with all kind of stupidness—nice stupidness: silver cigarette box and lighter to match, a crystal bird with a long, long, long neck that Madam used to always tell me to careful with when I dusting, six crystal decanters, two silver fighting cocks, a pewter bud vase, a bone-china bowl with a picture of yellow roses inside it, expensive stupidness, in truth—in a short time so, the buffet top was empty-empty.
“One day I open a drawer in the buffet. The special knife-and-fork set—a kind of set that had knife for regular food, knife for meat, knife for fish, knife for butter, and knife for what else I don’t know, and three different kind of spoons, and a fork for this and for that, the set that they use for parties—well, it was gone, the drawer was empty.
“Another time I come outside and see Madam lean over the dining room table, almost lying on top of it, cleaning and shining the top with a cloth and tung oil. She tell me take another cloth and help her. But I stand up right there and I watch her. You know it is I who tell Madam that if Boss don’t miss anything else, he was bound to miss the table and the chairs. She come down from the table and say quiet-quiet, ‘You right. He might notice, in truth.’ Is like she wasn’t thinking. It was then that everything start falling apart.”
DREAMS
In a hotel room in Marion, Harry paces and waits for Cassie’s telephone call. There is no air-conditioning in the room, and the heat has not subsided. The current edition of the Guanagaspar Times is folded on the desk. He has not, until now, seen a local paper. The headline is clearly visible. A.G.’S WIFE’S BODY STILL NOT FOUND. The paper’s half fold occurs along a photograph, the major part of which is hidden under the paper. He moves the paper so that its writing faces him, but he does not pick it up or turn it over. He stares at the visible part of the photograph that, had he opened it out, would have been close to life-size. All that shows of the photograph is the familiar wavy hair, the hairline, and the forehead. He places his palm, opened flat, on the photograph. He wants to remember the feel of her hair. But the flat surface, the rigidity and coolness of newsprint, and a scent of printer’s ink send a tremor through him. His aloneness is acute. Had he ever told his good friend Anil about Rose, he would have telephoned him right away. He couldn’t have admitted to Anil, such a devoted husband, father, and grandfather, that he had become intimately involved with a married woman, the wife of the foolish man who had come and brought rum to one of their wine tastings.
Wearing his underpants only, he lies on the bed clutching the gold-plate chain and cross in his fist. From outside of his window, he listens to the idle chatter and unrestrained laughter of three of the hotel workers. He hears water running from the kitchen into an open drain, and the quips of birds fighting for dusk cover on the branches of the flamboyant trees. Cicadas chirp relentlessly. Harry thinks of Kay back in Canada. His home, his business, his meager belongings, his friends are all there, yet that world seems alien to him.
He lifts his hand and dangles the chain over his face, opens his mouth and lets it drop, link by link, onto his tongue. It is cool. He closes his mouth, and profuse quantities of saliva form. The clump of chain shifts and slips toward the back of his throat, and he bolts upright and spits it back into his hand. The momentary choking has caused his eyes to well with tears, and then, as if a dam has been opened, he begins to sob uncontrollably.
Harry replays and replays in his mind Rose’s servant’s full accounting.
“I start watching, and I watching and watching, and sudden-so I realize that the amount of knickknacks in the house getting smaller and smaller. The yard boy, too, he say every time he clean silver or brass, it was as if he had less and less to clean. A day come it was so noticeable that even Boss, who hardly pay attention to how the house looking, come in the kitchen and in front of me he say to Madam that he find the cabinet with the glass front—where her pretty coffee cups used to be displayed—was looking empty. Madam tell Boss she lend the neighbor the cups for a party.
“Then one day a lady telephoned while Madam was in the bathroom, and Boss answered. The lady tell Boss she hear that he was selling out his silver, and she wanted to come and take a look. Boss march down to the front of the house, and in truth he notice the silver candlesticks and cocks missing, and so he open the buffet drawer and see the silver knife-and-fork set not there. Boss didn’t say nothing right away, but he get quiet-quiet. Then the next day I hear Boss and Madam quarreling. A woman from a travel agency had bring a paper with all the flights from Guanagaspar to Canada to Boss office, saying Madam ask her to bring it to the house for her, but as she was passing by Boss office, she decide to drop it off there. Well, how Madam allow that mistake to happen is beyond me. She get too carefree, in truth. So, Boss realize what was going on—he is not attorney general for nothing, you know—and he and Madam had quarrel for so. She say she wanted to go and live with Cassie. He ask her if it had anything to do with you. She start a nervous kind of laughing, asking him if he was going crazy, but not answering direct. In anger, he tell her to leave. ‘Leave now, get out my damn house,’ he tell her. Well, he didn’t exactly tell her. He was shouting, shouting, shouting. Even Boss, who always so concerned about what the neighbors going to think, didn’t care at all. He take out a thick-thick bundle of dollar bills from his pocket and throw it at her, shouting that he himself would pay her passage. But when she say all right, she want to leave, he get vex, he start to cry, he beg, he shout, he threaten to take his own life, and Madam say okay, okay, she not going anywhere. But it was out in the open, and the two of them remain sour with each other from then on.
“Well, it was no surprise. Boss start opening drawers and cupboards every day after that to see what was there, and what more, if anything was missing. One day I hear them fighting in they bedroom, and I get worried. I take a dust cloth and I start wiping out the ornaments on a table in the hallway right outside their door. Boss was shouting. ‘You have no shame? He is a gardener. You gone crazy? You need to get your head checked. You want to bring shame on us?’ And Madam say calm-calm, ‘Shame? Who brought shame on this family? Not you? You are the one who is out almost every night with some woman hanging from your elbow.’ And Boss say, ‘What about your father? I am no different from him.’
“And, Mr. Harry, now I am coming to the end of my story: you remember when you telephone the house in Marion and I speak with you? I knew it was you. Who else it could be? Same day I travel back to their house by the sea. But, I had to wait until I was alone in the kitchen with Madam. I was sure I had of seen Boss swinging in the hammock in the garden. I decide to take the chance then to tell Madam you call for she. But next thing I know, it was Boss standing up in the doorway, real serious, asking what it is you had of wanted. Madam jump, like she get frighten. He standing there, and still I couldn’t believe my eyes. I look out the window again: it was the man who had come to pick coconuts who boldface so take a liberty and lie down in the hammock. Boss, calm-calm, repeat himself. I had to lie, I say you ask for both of them. I tell Boss that you ask me to wish him all the best for the New Year. He say, ‘And what message he ask you to give Madam?’ Well, is like I get stupid and I didn’t know what to say. He come right up to my face and ask me again, but this time he shout at me and like he was ready to hit me. I say, ‘Nothing. Nothing. He didn’t ask for Madam. He didn’t leave no message for she. I telling the truth, Boss.’
“Boss get vex. And by that time I couldn’t say I didn’t really know if it was you in truth who had called. He slam his hand against the counter and he shout so loud I don’t know how the neighbors both sides ent hear him, even above the wind and the waves breaking on the beach.
“‘You take me for a damn fool? What message he send for Madam? Tell me now, before I hit you!’ Madam tell him to leave me alone. He turn to her and raise his hand like he was going to hit her. She stand
up to him. Is like she push out her chest and she tell him, ‘You want to hit? Is hit you want to hit? Go ahead, I waiting. Hit!’
“He turn around and walk a few feet back to the dining room. It had a vase, a purple glass vase, on the dining room table. He pick it up and fling it, and it went flying into the wall. Like if his voice catch in a tube, Boss say, ‘What the ass is this? You have the servant taking message for you? In my own house all this going on? Look here, you playing with your life if you think you going to make a fool out of me. You want to bring shame on us? You forget who have the police and the law on his side. You wouldn’t live a day to shame me, you hear? And that yard boy—no place is far enough for him to hide from the kind of people who loyal to me. Hear me good: I will not let you or him destroy my family name. And you’—it was me he turn to speak to now—‘you,’ he say, ‘pack your bags. I don’t want you in this house, you hear? Get your ass out of here, now-now.’
“Boss storm out the house, and next thing I see him through the window, marching over to the hammock—the coconut man had take off when he hear quarreling going on. Boss sit in the hammock for one minute, and then he jump out and turn to face the house. In broad daylight and out in the open so, he bend down and he pick out a coconut, big like a football, from a pile the gardener pick that day, and he pelt that coconut at the house. And you know it shatter one whole set of glass louvres? It was then Madam break. She hold she head and how she bawl. She and me, the two of we, we duck down like we expecting more coconuts to come, this time right through the hole he make, and we run out the back door straight to the servant room outside, and we lock the door and the window, and is there we stay—in that hot-hot room—stoop down behind the door, quiet like cockroach, for a good hour. Is only when we hear Boss car start up and pull out the driveway that we come out again. Boss did not come back that night. But Madam was ’fraid too bad, and she ask me to sleep in the room with she. I lie down on the floor next to she, but neither of us sleep. Every time a car pass, we bolt upright, our eyes big and white in the dark. Next day, by the time the glass company from Gloria came and fix up everything, Boss still hadn’t returned. I suppose he had called them from wherever he was.
“Madam carry on, making like she was brave, but I know she was frightened. She eat breakfast, trembling all the while, her eyes darting left and right. But still she went for her morning dip, as usual, but we agree on a signal if Boss return, and from the water she was going to keep her eye on the house for the signal. The signal was that the moment I hear his car pulling in, I was to go in the front yard and stand up by the hammock. But all day we wait so, trying to carry on as if nothing happened. Then that evening he come back around dinnertime. I frighten, as I had not of left the house and the job like he tell me to.
“But me he ignore. I set the table for the two of them, and Madam put out their food. He come and take his plate and he went in the drawing room. He sit in front of the television with his food. I clean up the kitchen, and by the time I turn out the light, he was still sitting there. From the servant room outside, never mind winds and waves and the coconut trees brushing against the roof of the house, I was so frighten that my ears could hear like the ears on the Bionic Man. I listen to the television until he turn it out about three-so in the morning. I get up and look through the open bricks at the top of the wall of my room, to see if the light in their bedroom or bathroom upstairs went on. But it had no lights on. I don’t know if he and Madam exchange words that night, but next morning she tell me he never went upstairs. He sleep on the couch downstairs, and in the morning when she come down, he rise and went upstairs.
“Me and Madam make sure not to talk another word about you, and whatever else we talk about, we talk quiet-quiet, so as not to get in his way.
“I see Boss vex before, but even when he take in some drinks, he wasn’t a violent man. He was difficult but not violent.
“Anyway, after she eat breakfast, Madam went upstairs and come back down in her bath suit. She had a towel wrap around her waist, and she tell me to curry crab and boil rice for lunch. Is then she take the chain off from around her neck, and she put it in my hand. I say, ‘Eh-eh. What make you take off the chain, Madam?’ She tell me, ‘The sea rough. Keep it safe. Don’t lose it. Remember where you put it,’ and she went out the front door, pulling it in behind her. I was making lime juice in the kitchen, and I hear the front door slide open again. I wonder why Madam come back, so I went to see if she forget something. By the time I reach the front door, I see Boss in bath trunks, heading down to the water. Well, my heart stop. In all the years I work for them, I never know Boss to go in the sea. He would wear short pants in the house and on the beach, but not bath trunks. Yes, they have swimming pool in the backyard in the house in Marion, and when friends and family come over, he will go in with them, but he can’t swim, and he never put his head under the water. He would walk around in the shallow end of the swimming pool with his sunglasses on, smoking a cigarette, keeping his hand high so the cigarette wouldn’t get wet. And every long weekend, regardless of weather, they rush to the coast to stay in their beach house, and still he never go in the sea; the salt does sting his skin and give him a rash. But that day I telling you about was different.
So, I run back in the house frighten for so, and I want to call somebody for help, but I didn’t know who to call. If I call police, I would say what? ‘Come quick, Boss never go in the water and today he put on his trunks and gone in’? But I should of call, no matter how foolish it would of sound. In any case, I start to tremble. I decide to call Mr. Jeevan, but so many times I dial that boy number for Madam, and suddenly I couldn’t remember the number. I try to dial, and it was like my fingers couldn’t even go straight in the holes, I was shaking so much. I look out the window and see Boss in the shallow of the sea, and he was walking in deeper. When Boss reach Madam, instead of stopping, he carry on walking. Madam turn to watch him, and then she start hurrying to catch up with him. He take a dive into a wave, and when he come out the other side, he start heading out farther.
“I say to myself maybe Boss was full of remorse about how he treat Madam, not just the day before but all the years they married, and I thought he was—what is the word? Depress—that is how they call it? Well, I feel the man was depress and that he was getting ready to drown himself.
“I start to think about what that would mean. You know, if Boss drown himself, then what? I was thinking, and same time I find myself walking back to the kitchen. I put the jug of lime juice in the refrigerator, and I wipe down the counter so flies wouldn’t gather on it. I thinking all the time, wondering if he would really do a thing like that. And then I feel it was probably better to get help than to be sorry. So I run out the back door to see if the gardener was there. He wasn’t there, so I run up by the fence to see if I could see anybody. I went quick-quick up the gravel road to the main road, hoping to stop a car. But the main road was quiet. It didn’t even have a donkey tie up in sight. I look back toward the house and see the neighbor servant coming through the back door with a basket of clothes in she hand. I start shouting out to her to call police, but the breeze coming up from the sea whip my voice in the other direction. By the time I reach that neighbor yard, somebody was in Madam backyard, screaming my name. When I turn around, it was Boss. He leave the yard and was running up the gravel road, screaming, ‘Oh God, get help, Piyari, get help quickly. Oh God! A riptide. Madam got caught in a riptide. She just went under. She hasn’t come back up.’
“Well, I just stop where I was. I couldn’t move. I was so sure he was going to drown himself, and he was right in front of me telling me Madam get ketch in riptide. I start to tremble. I want to know how Madam, who always instructing everybody about how to stay calm in a riptide, gone under in it, and not Boss—who can’t even stay floating on his back in water. I lower myself until I was sitting on the gravel road. Boss come right up to me and grab me by my shoulders with his two hands. ‘Piyari. Get up. Get up, I tell you. Help me, please.
Get help!’
“The Coast Guard, the police, the fire brigade, the Boy Scouts who was camping down the road, everybody—one and all—they come. They comb that sea and the river that come out into the sea half a mile away. Night and day they walk the beach. The house was full of people. Family and friends land up here. Mr. Jeevan and his wife. People from government. The head of the Coast Guard. The head of the army. Newspaper people. The assistant attorney general. And the deputy prime minister, too. Boss stay in his bedroom for almost the whole day. He talk only to his son, Mr. Jeevan, and he talk to the chief of police. It was then he call Miss Cassie in Canada. Next day it come out in the papers that the day before Madam drown, she and Boss had domestic quarrel. The papers say how he mash up a window and break a vase. It say that he was remorseful that they had fight because now she gone and he wouldn’t ever get a chance to make up with she again. Nobody ask me a thing. It was like I was invisible. And what I would tell them, in any case? That she was planning to leave him and he had of realize that? All I could of say was that I never see Boss wearing bathing trunks by the beach before that morning. But even me—I had of thought he was going to drown himself! I realize it was the attorney general I was dealing with, and I decide that what happen had already happen and that nothing I say now would bring back Madam.
“And this is what I want to tell you, Mr. Harry. From the day she return after that holiday, she was planning, all this time, to leave him. In another month she would of gone to Canada to be with you. She didn’t want to tell you anything until she was sure it could of happen.”