On the Far Side, There's a Boy

by Coston, Paula

  After dark she opened the windows onto her roof terrace and stepped out, and the moon had emerged as if to meet her, full. For the first time with total consciousness she recognised its romance. She smiled to think that it might be pointing at her. It wasn’t that time in her cycle, but for the first time she wanted to sense the lunar tug at her abdomen, an ovum budding inside her.

  First touch?

  Mohan’s next letter touched her with hope.

  ‘Dear Miss Martine

  I have seen the two-wheel tractor. It is a Jiangxi Kaier PP-151L. Tatta and the fathers use it in the paddy. They share it with four friends. It is very fantastic. I am not allowed. It has a 4-stroke diesel engine. It is 15 horsepower. It [boy’s writing incomplete]

  ‘I went to watch again. Here is a drawing.

  Mohan’

  It was a flicker of the eyeball from him, a possible sign of life up close.

  14 Martine

  First touch? continued

  1986—1987

  Martine and Charlie broke their location rules in stages. She hired a BMW and parked it away from work. He hired a campervan, parking it closer. He got a key to the post room and, arriving early in the morning, they laid bubble-wrap on the lino. When they got up printed with dimples, he guffawed so loud she had to gag him with her balled-up knickers. In the service lift, in the working day, she squatted over his mouth and, with a fitting hand, hit the door-shut button for a full twenty minutes. Every time, the perverse attraction of his abbatoir stench.

  ‘I mustn’t be late home, now,’ he’d say, but they ended up many evenings at her flat.

  He was so arrhythmic that they tried moving to music. I Heard it through the Grapevine, Every Beat of my Heart. And afterwards, she thought, We make a kind of poetry, how corny, I love his lap cupping me like the birth sac cupping the embryo, me grazing his testicles like netting over fruit.

  One night, just as she was drawing him into her, Charlie noticed the bite-marks on her bicep where the armlet should have been.

  ‘You took it off.’

  ‘It’s about a time I don’t need to look back on.’

  She didn’t say, Now you’re here. The oval inset into the armlet had displayed an Orthocarpus imbricatus, mountain owl’s clover, from her father, sent to her, pressed, in a letter long ago. The beaklike lips, pink and peeping from the bracts, the yellow pouch underneath each, like a surprise. As a child she’d liked the name, hoping that her father had meant some message for her, something about wisdom and its rarity maybe. A visual she’d relied on for a long time.

  Freddy, who worked mostly with Kew’s tropical plants, had told her that the flower wasn’t that rare, certainly not on the west coast of America, and she’d quashed her disappointment. He’d had it set behind glass and made into a pendant, but she never wore pendants. She’d got it remade as an armlet, and after they broke up, in memory more of Freddy than Dad, still rarely took it off.

  That night after Charlie had gone, she left it in its padded box.

  Out of guilt about Charlie, Martine cooked for Jonas and Astrid. She was into Middle Eastern then: leg of lamb in yogurt with garlic, cardamom, cinnamon, cumin and saffron; rosewater-scented rice pudding. They sat on the roof terrace on a few balmy evenings with the grey estate below them under the haze of a London summer, and she grinned at Astrid as she seemed to her to bloom. Despite the impending birth, she’d been neglecting them for Charlie. She felt she couldn’t tell Jonas about him, but these days wished she could.

  In bed, she taught Charlie. He was surprisingly docile. Before and after they talked shop, argued about it; he challenged her thinking. She wondered, Does this compulsion we have stem from him teaching me, me teaching him? The titillating cliché of canes and blackboards? Strange. In the bedroom, but not elsewhere, I don’t mind teaching as power, learning as submission. With no other teacher had she ever made love.

  Although she didn’t tell him, it felt to her like love. As she saw it, direct current began to pass between them. Sometimes at night, when he was flexing her over the kitchen counter or she was being coy with him out on her overlooked terrace, she glanced up and gave a tacit nod to whatever moon there was.

  They both seemed to go for an unsafe closeness: his hand around her neck, thumb resting, never pushing, on the lethal vagal nerve; her jaws around a testicle, tacitly threatening the fig of flesh. She thought these and other lyrical things about him, laughing at herself. Lyricism isn’t necessarily safe, though, she cautioned herself. It’s a symptom of romanticism, which can be an extreme condition.

  ‘This is going to sound like crap,’ she announced one night. For a long time now he’d let her free his ponytail, and his hair, male and thick, long and female, spread around her, in her mind like sand. She went on, ‘It sometimes feels as if writing, imagery, talk, food, music, all our messages, even the things we think but never say, everyone’s versions of reality, just flow in different frequencies in some invisible ether.’

  Charlie curled a lip. ‘Parallel worlds theory. Not an unusual notion.’

  He fisted her hair –Like a bunch of flowers, she thought.

  ‘I’m not sure I mean that,’ Martine said. ‘I’m talking about every message aimed at us, every version of every message aimed at us, whether at some level we take them all in.’

  Charlie lay back and yawned ironically, flapping a hand at his mouth. ‘Don’t forget sex. Sex pheromones,’ he said. ‘There’s another kind of transmission, now. Winnifred Cutler. Between males and females. We pass them in the smell of sweat, so she says. You know your female ones mean readiness for breeding.’

  He rolled in her scarlet bed, and with his meaty tongue circled her armpit.

  In the next few days, Martine read the research. Pheromones affected the menstrual cycle, even synchronised it in women living together. Embarrassing, she thought, that I haven’t kept up with my own biology.

  Charlie taught her many things, casually, in bed. Through a story of his uncle’s cat, or someone’s eureka moment in a lab, or an eccentric ex-colleague’s mistake, or his one-time accident opening a bottle. She learnt that castles were ancient hubs of power, sucking people and resources out of their surroundings. About the various types of bet, something she’d never grasped. That photonic crystals would be the big thing after fibre optics. About the prevalence of diglossia, of separate forms of language in one place. That G. Gregory Gallico III was working on synthetic human skin. About the UN Charter, whose declaration for the self-determination of peoples he seemed to know by heart. About Shulman’s new concept, pedagogical content knowledge: that teaching, more than imparting content, was about knowing how to impart it. Inwardly she smiled about this: Charlie seems adept at both.

  Travelling on the Underground, its warning to mind the gap rang false to Martine because gaps meant limits, whereas she felt close to everything. She was on a constant high, as in her time with Freddy.

  Hormones overran her, too many for just Charlie. She treated Mohan as if she were wooing him and believed she could easily win him.

  ‘Do women work in Sri Lanka?’ she wrote. ‘I mean, alongside men?’

  She was scratching a flirting itch, and it was all about Charlie.

  Mohan replied.

  ‘Yes of course ladies work here. Upeksha makes clothes. Jayamal says it is Victoria’s secret. I say tatta have you met the lady Victoria. Tatta says Victoria is no lady so there is no lady to meet.

  ‘Ladies have some work and men have other work. The best is a pilot or an air steward.

  ‘We were playing cricket. I shouted corre corre run run. I shouted que captura espantoso what a catch that was amazing. I think I learnt from Cruz at school. I did not notice the foreign words. Mr Mendes was there with your letter. He said where did you learn Portuguese you must have the ears of a parrot. A parrot does not have ears.

  ‘Last month I had to go to Esala Perahera. Amma stayed. One elephant did not want its chain. It stamped. It stabbed a sack on its tusks. The sack was a
lady. It was a dream. I do not like to sleep [boy’s writing incomplete]

  ‘I lost my soldier. It does not matter.’

  A message that coughed from indignant to newsy, maybe another splutter of real contact. At the bad dream part, Martine’s pulse quickened: was it the cry for help she’d craved?

  She told Mohan the man and butterfly paradox, explaining, ‘Your fears and dreams are real life too. If you can think what they mean, that might help you.’

  What she got back was,

  ‘You say the man was dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a man. Jayamal says you are trying to help me. My question [boy’s writing incomplete]

  ‘Your amma cannot fly an aeroplane. It must be a story. Why did your brother stop flying. Is it because of the baby coming.

  ‘My question is is your brother suffering is the lady Astrid suffering.

  ‘A baby from senior mother died. Jayamal told me.

  ‘I got a branch. I fastened it to my cart. It is our yoke. Jayamal laughs. I pull with Anupama. It carries more firewood. We are the bullocks.

  ‘A mother I do not know brought Tharindu from another village. He is a cousin. He tickled me. They talked to Anupama. She went behind the latrine. She broke some jars. I do not like him. I tried to cuddle her.

  ‘Come here. You can leave teachers not like leaving rice plants. When you have a husband you can go back.’

  Martine was encouraged by Mohan’s encouragement.

  She asked him, ‘How’s your mother? I’ve been wondering about her…How many cousins live near you, and how many friends? …Tell me about your hunts for butterflies and dragonflies. The ones you talked about sound very exotic.’

  But her Charlie hormones made her tantalise Mohan, deliberately not answering his plea for her to visit.

  Pippi’s birth, early in 1987, wasn’t as she expected. She’d dreaded the hospital run, having to smile as if from a stable doorway at the holy family of her half-brother, Astrid and the child in a halo of happiness. She hadn’t anticipated the baby handed to her, to herself painted into the picture. The density of the wool-wrapped construction, breathy, smelling of fresh skin and sour vomit, warm and downy, in her arms. The assumption that there’d be no problem with her accepting it or photo-posing with it.

  Most of her relaxed then, and enjoyed. Just one tiny fragment wondered how Charlie would behave if he was handed this same gift. Whether he would be delighted or clumsy, at ease or unwilling. This wasn’t a fantasy of them together as parents. Presenting him with a baby would have been a test of character: mellow and accepting, good; nonplussed or grudging, bad.

  Every time Martine paid a visit to their now pristine, organised flat, Jonas and Astrid gave Pippi to her, expecting her to hold her, to part-own her. When the baby wasn’t asleep, the pimpled face screwed up and she squirmed in Martine’s arms and two slits of eyes glinted at her. Martine absorbed the small, bulky life and had to remind herself that her niece was, well, her niece. She’d never thought she’d handle a baby with grace. She had an inkling that Pippi was a question, one that as yet she couldn’t answer.

  Through the gate?

  (Through the gate: Successful ball from the bowler that travels between the batsman’s pad and bat, putting down the wicket)

  On Martine’s news of Pippi, Mohan seemed to sit up, very suddenly, in the letters, any clot somehow massaged out of his communications.

  ‘Dear Miss Martine

  The photo of the baby is very very nice. She is tiny and crinkled up and fine for holding gently. The lady Astrid is smiling sweating. Her hair is messy nearly white.

  ‘That name Pippi. It is funny. Anupama says you could write most people find babies adorable in Sri Lanka even cruel boys. I am hiding my writing. My question is about Pippi. Is she all right.

  ‘The stamp is very fantastic. The plane has a target. It is a Hawker Typhoon 1B. Lord Tedder looks nice and smiling. My favourite is a P-40 Warhawk with teeth painted a Flying Tiger.

  ‘Amma. Sometimes she gets up. Anupama or tatta or the mothers take her to her mat. I do not get sad.

  ‘Harvest. Tatta let me lead a buffalo for threshing. I went round. Jayamal hit me with his stick. He said you are a buffalo leading buffaloes. Because I pull the firewood with Anupama.

  ‘7 cousins and 17 friends. We could make 2 cricket teams a score-keeper and two umpires except some cousins are girls. Their names are [boy’s writing incomplete]

  ‘The raining is not hard. I am going to play cricket.

  ‘P.S. I was bowled out.

  ‘P.P.S. About pulling wood. I do not look for dragonflies and butterflies. My question is what is exotic.’

  ‘1st March 1987

  I am happy your brother is happy. I have looked in your letter but I cannot find when you can come.

  ‘A message came from Harshini’s amma from Anupama’s school. The others sent me away. I went not far. Harshini’s amma said the message was why is Anupama not at school every day if her amma cannot do the work Anupama must ask her mothers and neighbours. My question is will Anupama go to prison.

  ‘I am going to find new jars. I will get her some more things. I will put the jars back on the shelves.’

  So it was that, like a chameleon’s front foot making its journey, his letters tapped the air, paused, withdrew like a film rewind, paused then pushed on, fully extended, again.

  ‘18th April 1987

  I did not get your letter for a long time. Jayamal said at your age go to the shrine by yourself.

  ‘Now I am 9. I am nearly taller than Jayamal.

  ‘We are learning English where is the pencil it is on the desk there is a textbook it is under the chair. It is not interesting. But I can say also I want to be a batsman when I grow up who is your favourite player shall we have a match. I know the words because Cruz’s uncle works in a tourist shop so Cruz says the words and I have parrot’s ears.

  ‘You are going to say do you want to be a batsman or a pilot and my answer is a batsman. Jayamal told me something bad about a Tristar jet. I have changed my [boy’s writing incomplete]

  ‘There was a noise in the kitchen. I saw tatta and amma. The pot fell off the stove bricks. The coriander fell on the floor. Tatta said I was taking the pot to help her. Upeksha will do it amma is tired she must lie down.

  ‘Because Upeksha is here. She says only visiting. Anupama and Jayamal are happy. Tatta is cross and happy. Senior mother and junior mother can stay more in their houses. Upeksha is making eggplant curry and pol sambol and all my favourite dishes. She says her face is Fair’N’Beautiful. She has a ring with a golden stone.’

  Mohan’s reference to English was another trigger to Martine, and whenever she couldn’t see Charlie she began staying late in libraries, searching out glossaries that might hook the boy some more.

  ‘7th June 1987

  I have made a bow and arrows. Here is a drawing.

  ‘I shoot when it is not raining. I use a photo from a magazine. I put it on the coconut tree. It is of jet trails. They cross like a star. Yesterday I hit Anupama in the face. I said sorry sorry. Today an arrow fell on Jayamal’s head. He said what star tatta will make you see stars. It was not on purpose. I was trying to [boy’s writing incomplete]

  ‘Jayamal has taken the bow and arrows.

  ‘The cricket words you sent are funny out for a duck, silly mid-on, daisy cutter, dibbly dobbly, chin music. My question is how can you know about cricket.

  ‘I am using commas in lists. This point is significant. Please notice.

  ‘The juice is from a jak fruit.

  ‘Upeksha has gone. Anupama is too busy. Jayamal is doing his homework. Tatta is working. The rains are raining.

  Mohan’

  Love made everything, in Martine’s eyes, seem right. She saw the signals crisscrossing between her and Mohan as if at last, between them, they’d hit the target on that tree. And her holiday in Egypt went ahead without, it seemed, deflating Mohan much.

  ‘Dear Miss Mar
tine

  No I did not see stars. Tatta smacked me but not as hard as he smacked Jayamal when he was 9.

  ‘I am sorry you are having a holiday in Egypt. You are saying Sri Lanka is double the way. You are saying Egypt is different and strange and beautiful. My question is is it by the sea is that what you mean exotic.

  ‘You have not said about Pippi. My question is is she big enough for cuddling yet is she all right.

  ‘Anupama says it is Miss Martine’s birthday on 27th August please wish her a happy birthday from me. I am wishing you a happy birthday from myself. I have cut 27th August on the breadfruit tree. Next year I will remember without her telling me.

  ‘The English words. I am learning them but they are not about cricket. You say you do not know about cricket, you found the cricket words in a book, cricket is not interesting. You say when I say cricket is not interesting I am copying what you sometimes say in your letters. My question is but everyone likes cricket is that a joke.

  Mohan’

  One October night, Martine lay in bed without Charlie and heard the wind roaring and glass smashing and the creak and crash of a tree below and sirens wailing and the clipped box bordering her terrace toppling and rolling and fences hurling themselves to the ground, so many boundaries gone. The storm somehow confirmed that things had permanently changed. When she resumed life after that weekend, she felt again the lack of boundaries between people: at work; in her time with Charlie; in Jonas’s new family; and now, between Mohan and her.

  The next weekend, with his wife away, she persuaded Charlie to a garden-centre trip, looking for replacement plants. The expedition made her uncomfortable: it was too couplish and domestic. She headed for the Buxus.

  ‘Sure and isn’t that what you had before?’ said Charlie, casting around as if he wanted to do mischief, big hands straining at his pockets.

  ‘If it ain’t broke,’ Martine shrugged, but of course the roof terrace was.

  She’d imagined her box obelisks replicated and her roof terrace restored, but actually, abruptly, she didn’t want that. She wanted to tell the world, I’m moving on, making my kind of progress.