Love Marriage

by V. V. Ganeshananthan

  At home in Sri Lanka, my father says, we do things differently. We do not bear our ancestors all our lives. They are only written down when we die.

  Murali: the reed-thin, dark boy stood alone in a field where ashes had lain and bombs would fall. And so he grew up unafraid of either.

  MURALI: HE WAS THE YOUNGEST, and he had no father. But he had a mother. What a mother! Even the priests at the local Ganesha temple called her “one of the best women.” They did not say “kindest,” or “most beautiful.” Best, they said: best. They anointed her forever with that word because of how deeply they meant it. By the time her husband died, her youth was long past, if measured in children, but not so distant if measured in years. Once she had been a pala-pundithai—a novice pundit. But then his father, Jegan, who was from the opposite side of the village, saw her recite at a school competition.

  Jegan, not yet my grandfather, came to one of the school functions, which were popular in the town, even with those who did not have young children. Ariyalai took a collective pride in their accomplished students. On that occasion, Tharshi made them feel this especially. Everyone in the audience thought she resembled them. And she did resemble all of them, because she knew the village and loved it and brought it with her wherever she went. She carried herself well, unlike some of the other girls, who walked with their shoulders pulled forward to hide new breasts. No one had yet convinced her to be ashamed, and this quality called out to Jegan. He saw how tall she was and how she threw her head back. He saw the long, long line of her throat and her black braid. He had not seen her in a long time, or perhaps it was just that he had not recognized her as the woman to whom he would belong.

  But there was something in between, something that Tharshi felt and never said to Jegan: she should not have been the one standing on that stage. He had seen a face he could love, but that face belonged to two women.

  EVERYONE IN ARIYALAI WALKED in pairs, except for Tharshi. No one felt too sorry for her, although her husband had died and left her with eight children. She had already been loved. Although this is a story my father now knows, he has chosen not to believe in the patterns of fate, as his mother did. But Tharshi had a twin, a sister, and when she stood on the stage at the ladies' college in Jaffna to give her recitation, she was standing in a place she did not consider her own.

  At this annual recital, the young women of the college sang and declaimed passages from various scholarly and holy texts. The students competed for a prize of some money, which was to be used for books. The twins, Thevayani and Tharshi, were twelve that year. They both looked older. They were ravishingly nearly identical, both of them with strong-boned oval faces, long braids, almond-shaped, tilted eyes, high brows, and stubborn mouths. Thevayani, called Kunju, was the elder by four minutes only, and a little bit taller, but the only person who could unfailingly tell them apart was their father, the widower Ragavan. Of the two of them, Kunju was the smarter, and Tharshi the quieter. Each one walked with the confident grace Ragavan remembered in their dead mother. Both of them wanted to be pala-pundithai; they loved to read and wanted to enter that year's competition: Kunju, as one of the school's top students, thought she might win it. Their father told them that he thought only one of them should participate in the contest; he did not like the idea of sisters competing against each other. They both looked at him hopefully. Who would he choose? He paused and sighed. Preventing them from competing meant that he had to favor one of them.

  He hesitated and looked at them, these two lovely daughters of his. Both of them so much like him. He told them that he thought it should be Kunju, because she had a real chance of winning. They needed the money.

  THARSHI DID NOT HOLD A GRUDGE—not one to which she or anyone else would admit. She listened to her sister practice until the recitation was perfect. One day, one week before the competition, the two of them decided to do a rehearsal in full dress. Tharshi lent her sister her own diamond jewelry: earrings, a necklace, and a m�ukkutti, a stud for her nose. She had woven a garland with hibiscus from the garden, and she plaited it into Kunju's long rope of hair. Their father had given Kunju one of their mother's saris to wear. It was her first real sari—an honor for someone her age, who usually wore only the school uniform, a plain dress, or a half-sari. Now, Tharshi ironed her mother's silk for her sister to wear. Kunju wound the bolt of cloth around herself. She did not have a practiced hand, or a mother, so she remade the pleats again and again until the folds lay crisp and perfect, flat against her waist. She slid the heavy gold bangles onto her wrist, twisted the m�ukkutti where it shone, a bright diamond star flaring in her strong-boned nose. Tharshi patted a stray curl into place and pulled at the sari until it hung just right on her sister's taller, more elegant frame.

  Because the recitation in question was a holy passage, they walked to the local temple to practice. From the veranda of their house, their father watched them walking, hand in hand. He had to remind himself that they were only twelve. Ravishingly nearly identical, and not.

  GANESHA, THE GOD OF scholars and luck, looked down on Kunju, blessing her studies, and she spoke well. From the corners of the temple, the priests, attending to their tasks of washing and dressing the gods, listened to her and blessed her also. Kunju was dazzling, of course, and watching her Tharshi was sure she would steal the show, win the prize, all of that. How could she not? What kind of story would this be? Tharshi's diamonds glimmered on Kunju as she gestured grandly. Her voice was clear and sweet. She would not need anything to make it clearer. In her mind, Tharshi saw it unfold: the women in the first row sobbing into their handkerchiefs, and the men coughing to hide how much she moved them. Afterward, the judges would nod sagely among themselves, trading cigarettes and muttering to one another that Ragavan machan's little girl was really something.

  NOT EVERYTHING GOES ACCORDING to plan. Certainly not Marriage. That night when Tharshi and Kunju came home, flushed with the anticipation of Kunju's success, they took the lamp inside the hall to say their prayers. As Kunju set the oil lamp down on the mat on the floor in front of the household shrine, the edge of her mother's sari caught in the flame. It ran up the silk like a long-legged and hungry spider, licked at her long braid, edged toward her face and wide dark eyes. It wound around her waist like a caressing hand and lit her body up her slender throat to her face.

  Later, in her memory, Tharshi always saw the fire in slow motion, moving at a speed at which she could have stopped it. But what really happened was that Tharshi saw her mirror image burning in front of her, consumed by light, like a small sun. The sound of the scream was a nightmare distortion, the voice in which Kunju had spoken so clearly earlier that evening twisted into a different, horrible shape. Tharshi too screamed and screamed, hearing rather than feeling the sound of her own footsteps as she ran to the well and called for her father.

  IT TOOK A LONG TIME before Kunju healed. She never really did. Such severe burns usually leave scars. Kunju, who had been prized for her beauty, was badly disfigured. And, of course, the twins were never again identical. Her color had changed, the shape of her full-lipped mouth altered. It was almost unbearable to look at them standing next to each other. The fire had burned Kunju's right arm so that it was nearly purple, almost bone. The flames had touched her face, twisting her left cheek and changing the outline of one eye. Ragavan looked at his older daughter, his most-loved-by-four-minutes daughter, and wept. What would happen to her? The only part of her face that still moved were those dark eyes. He could not bear to look into them. Kunju would need special attention for the rest of her life. Her face a burden to the men who might have married her.

  It should have been Kunju on that stage. Dearest. Darling. Beloved. That was what her name meant. The truth was that he loved her more. Tharshi and Kunju were identical twins. They were the same. But Not. We lie both to and because of the people we love the most.

  AND IT HAPPENED AS Tharshi had seen it would: her voice was clear and sweet, ringing to the corners of the big hall w
ithout anything to make it louder. The women in the first row sobbed into their handkerchiefs, and the men coughed to hide how much she moved them. She became Kunju, spoke like Kunju, threw her head back like Kunju. And afterward, the judges nodded sagely among themselves, trading cigarettes and muttering to one another that Ragavan machan's little girl was really something. Others in the audience were impressed too. One in particular. Jegan had attended the concert on impulse, but now, he thought, his eyes riveted to Tharshi's sharply cut face, he was very glad he had chosen this.

  Jegan wrote his life like a novel. Or perhaps, because the novel is not originally a Tamil form, an epic poem. He fell in love not with the girl on the stage, but with who he saw her becoming, how her voice promised that she would grow into a certain kind of woman. Just as years later, Murali saw Vani's future in the structure of her face, falling in love with her and her next self. Tharshi was only twelve. But if Jegan closed his eyes, he could see her life unfolding next to his. He loved the independence of her carriage. She would never need him, and he did not want her to need him.

  INSTEAD OF SENDING HIS own family, as was the custom, Jegan went to see her father himself the next day. The difference between the two men was striking: Jegan, with his wide-set eyes and light brown skin, was dressed nicely. A government man. Ragavan was a farmer. Jegan looked about the house with curiosity and Ragavan held his breath.

  When Jegan explained to him why he had come, Ragavan began to nod slowly. He could not say yes all at once, of course, but what Jegan was asking could eventually come to pass. It was almost too good to be true, that this man wanted to marry Tharshi and thought her so beautiful. But Ragavan could not help but remember that Kunju slept alone in a back room, her face burned too dry for tears. Looking at Jegan, Ragavan saw fortune and tasted ashes.

  THARSHI BOWED HER BLACK head to her father's decree that she would marry Jegan. Kunju smiled with the half of her face that still could. She had heard the conversation between her father and Jegan. He would pay for the rest of Tharshi's education, and she would become the wife of a government man. All of these things would become her sister's: the prize, the education, the husband, and the distant promise of a prominent house in their village.

  After the first week, Kunju began to refuse to let Tharshi, who had nursed her, rub her scars with oil. Tharshi began to sleep in another room, abandoning the one they had shared. Alone in a dark room, Kunju applied the oil herself, unscrewing the cap of the bottle with tiny, measured twists. And every day she moved another inch. One day she lifted her arms up and lowered them. Another day she reached for the curtain to let in some light. After a while, she rehearsed walking. Slowly she resumed her household duties, each of which took her twice as long with her new stiffness. Tharshi watched her and said nothing, and Kunju burned inside with something she did not want to name. Although everyone knew what had happened, and some of their relatives had even tried to visit her, she had refused them, and so no one had seen her.

  And then finally, because she knew she had to do it, and because Ragavan made her, she left the house to walk through the village.

  HER FATHER ASKED HER to do an errand in the village for him one day, and at first she just stared blankly at his request. His mouth crumpled and he called for Tharshi. Kunju reached out her burned hand and touched his arm to stop him. He flinched. She saw him flinch, and it hurt her. She put her hurt away and pretended that she had not seen him recoil.

  I'll go, she said.

  Earlier she had asked her father to remove her small mirror from her room. Now she went into her sister's room—Tharshi was not at home—and looked at her reflection in the glass. If she was to go out she could not hide her face, and she would not try to do so. She pinned her hair back. Her damaged face was unmasked, revealed. Her ears were marked with ragged holes in the places where Tharshi's diamonds earrings had been cut out. Her skin was like the color of coal after it has been burned. She went out and down into the village.

  As she walked through the main road she could almost hear those around her stopping and their heads turning. Because the change was so startling, her face drew people even more now than it had when she was beautiful. It had lost the ability to admit color or shame and so the people who stared at her did not know what she was feeling. Her mouth did not move. Her eyebrow was frozen in a scarred arch that could have been angry or questioning. She felt as though she were still on fire, but that now it was the eyes of the people around her that burned. They were coldly curious and warmly pitying. They were eyes she had known all her life and they did not recognize her.

  When she came back with what her father had asked her to bring, he was waiting for her in the doorway. She looked up at him and their eyes met. He reached out and touched her face for the first time since it had changed. Her cheek was rough now. She had forgotten what it felt like to be touched. She knew that when she crossed the threshold, it would be for the last time. She could not bear to leave again. She could not bear that people had seen her like this. Her face was irrevocably undone. She was irrevocably alone.

  Kunju made her grief something unseen. Every day she lived with it, breathed it, and tasted its sour bouquet. Every day she loved her sister. Every day she hated her sister. And three years later, Ragavan took Tharshi to marry Jegan, and Kunju was alone in the house where they had grown up together. Twins.

  JEGAN AND THARSHI WERE almost a generation apart. They did not care. Simply and easily, Tharshi loved Jegan, and he loved her. This is the way Arranged Marriages should work. She never told him who was meant to be standing on the stage that night, but he had heard her sister's story all around the village. Was she the twin fate had meant for him? Who was to say? She was the wrong twin, but the right wife. It could not be undone, because it was something no one had done. When Jegan died, Tharshi stood at his memorial at the tree on the top of the hill and threw her head back, once more unconsciously imitating the sister whose beauty and voice might have caught his unknowing Heart long ago, had things been different. By the time he died, Tharshi's braid had turned snow-white, even though her face was still a schoolgirl's, unlined and fresh. Her life had taken an unpredictable turn when he entered it; her Heart had bent unexpectedly to receive him. As he had foreseen, he married a girl, and she became a woman who did not need him. She would go on to raise his children without him. But she loved him. Two people she loved consumed by fire.

  THARSHI: ALTHOUGH SHE DID not say this to her children, they saw that she felt that their father's death was part of the order of things. She shared their sorrow, but not their anger. It was only later that Murali understood that she thought Jegan's early death was payment for her marrying him. A debt owed and settled. Ariyalai was a town full of fathers who took special pride in their sons. And now her fatherless son Murali tried to become a doctor. Not the kind of doctor who brought prayers and herbs—the kind who thought precisely, the kind who measured and watched and trusted nothing he did not see. Even then, Murali did not believe in fate or ayurvedam. He wanted something of which he was sure: science.

  He dreamed of cardiology. He was thinking of the cautious little boy he had been. He was thinking of his father dying in the night, and his mother waking up as though she had expected it. He was thinking of his family and their collection of Hearts. But he was told that this was not a fruitful profession. Live in a grittier reality than that of hearts, of blood, they said. At first he did not want to, but then he thought: oncology.

  In choosing this science, he realized only later, he chose not only one fork of a clinical path, but a permanent fealty to the landscape of his childhood. A place where anything could fail, and where any illness illuminated a failure to foresee. This was not only about blood; it was about an entire body's capacity for betrayal. It was not only about a valve or an artery granting or denying admittance. This was about survival, an assemblage of parts. It required planning. A cancer, like a cloud, could fade gradually into the distance—or blossom, its subtlest increase untracked by
the careless eye. The faintest breeze could move it a millimeter to be paid for years later. To the oncologist, everything was a potential minefield to be analyzed and dissected, the body merely another bomb anticipating explosion. He learned to approach the body in the same manner he would a bomb, knowing that the error was always tangible. He had learned to love the acquisition of knowledge, how one could assemble the skeleton of disease from the bones of symptoms. A body could fluctuate and even crumble with temper and stress, but its failure in the end was more often pure and intricate mechanics. Controllable. Fixable. This, then, he would learn to manipulate, as he had never been able to manipulate his own body. Oncology, requiring a total mastery, ending in the throb and thrum of a heartbeat he could steady.

  Murali chose this as his profession, but entering medical school in Sri Lanka was not easy. There were only two hundred and fifty students admitted every year, and one hundred times that number took the entrance exams. He was a member of Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority, and this meant that to enter he had to score even higher. There were quotas. Like everyone else, he failed the first time and was neither greatly surprised nor disappointed. He took the test again the next year and passed.

  The university he chose was far away from Ariyalai, at Peradeniya, near Kandy, in the high, cool mountains. He took the train there, alone, a slim brown boy with a slim brown suitcase that was enough to hold all the clothes he owned. He walked from the station to the campus, alone, and the day was so bright that he squinted. He registered and took the slim brown suitcase to the room they had assigned him. It was a tiny space, and he did not bother to unpack, seeing how, later, he would slam his hips, his back, his elbows into plaster walls so narrow.