Cereus Blooms at Night

by Shani Mootoo

  A smile of recognition crossed Ambrose’s face.

  “Now isn’t that interesting!” He said no more but slowly nodded his head and grinned. He seemed to slip into a distant reverie.

  “Tell me, Pappy, why she was doing that?” Otoh shook him. “She trying to grow snails or what?”

  “Snails, eh! She and I, she and I—we used to have this little ritual when we were students together. We were about your age.” He drifted off.

  “Pappy, I want to know—”

  “We fancied ourselves protector of snails and all things unable to defend themselves from the bullies of the world. The school grounds were littered with snails in the rainy season. Is your schoolyard still crawling with the helpless creatures, Otoh? They would be crawling up the walls of buildings, shinnying up tree trunks, dragging themselves across the concrete paths and lawns, exposed and thoroughly tempting to a group of heartless boys who liked to stomp on them and watch them shatter and splatter. Bissey. Walter Bissey—he’s now a judge—was at school with us. He was such a bully as a boy, catching and torturing and killing anything that crawled. Do you know Bissey?”

  “I don’t know any Bissey. What about Mala Ramchandin and the snails?”

  “Mala and I used to be the first ones out of the classroom at recess and lunch time. We would race through the schoolyard with a bag and collect all the snails before Bissey and his gang could get to them. Then we would take them and release them safely over the fence. Mala had this idea that snails were good luck. She wasn’t one to harm an ant. Protecting those snails was our mission. So she’s still looking after the little creatures, eh?”

  “So you used to save the snails, too, eh, Pappy?”

  “Well, the truth is that she was the one who initiated the whole thing and I went along until it became something I looked forward to. There was an urgency to the whole business, you know.”

  This was the only time his father ever mentioned details of his connection to Mala Ramchandin.

  * * *

  —

  Otoh realized he had never possessed a clear idea of who Mala Ramchandin was, except that she had collected snails with his father as a child. Yet he went against his mother’s wishes and delivered food to her for his father, who came alive only for that single purpose.

  The old bird’s snail-planting rituals must be an extension of her childhood kindness, Otoh mused. One thought led to another. He wondered about the gentleness and compliance his father exhibited during the snail-protecting activities, and tried to think how his father manifested such traits in the present—besides delivering food to a helpless bird. His sleeping seemed to be a passive smouldering, a withdrawal from Otoh and Elsie, a rebellion.

  Not for the first time Otoh found himself desperately wanting to know what caused that rebellion. It was as though his father was cowering under a veil of sleep. A torrent of frustration swept over him. He stopped at a standpipe that gushed sun-heated water into a basin. He bent close to the spout and splashed the hot water on his brow, then put his mouth to the faucet and drank. Where on earth had his father been? Otoh wondered. Not with him or his mother, and not with Mala Ramchandin. He had neglected everything. In the middle of a brilliant day Otoh’s world spun and grew dark. He sat on the rim of the basin and hung his head.

  That night Otoh could not sleep. He stared restlessly out his window into the thick, still blackness onto which he projected a full-colour image of the Hill Side property, the fence and the rubbish-strewn yard. Before he had time to assess his actions he rose and went into the backyard, yanking one of his mother’s dresses off the clothes line. Back in his room he removed his clothing and stepped into the dress. In the mirror of his armoire he watched himself pull on the blue-and-white-flowered garment, half expecting to resemble his mother, but there was no resemblance. Without knowing why, he wanted to share his secret with Mala Ramchandin, even at the risk of being caught walking the streets dressed like a woman.

  Wearing a dress made Otoh carry himself gracefully. He left the house. The hem of the skirt swung from side to side with each pointed step. Every house along the route to Hill Side was in darkness, and the only sounds were electric fans and frogs hidden in the bushes on either side of the road. He glanced from balcony to balcony.

  When he reached Mala’s backyard fence, he gathered the skirt of his dress in one hand and tied the cloth in a knot high up his thigh. The house was in total darkness as usual. Otoh began to think things that had never crossed his mind before: Perhaps after her light bulbs were spent she had never had them replaced. Surely her electricity source would have been cut. He had never taken pitch oil or gasoline or coals, and unless someone else was delivering these to her, what on earth had she been using for fuel, for cooking? How did she cook the salt fish?

  With an uncharacteristic brazenness he clasped his hand around a fence post. As he readied himself to leap over, the post trembled in his hand and came away. Otoh shrieked. A snake glided slowly past. He jumped up and, clutching the loosened knot at his thigh, bolted away from the fence. When he reached the road, he glanced back and saw what appeared to be a person waving to him. The harder he looked the more confused he became.

  Heading home, Otoh was still so shaken by the idea that he might have seen her and that she might have seen him—and in a dress—and by the post that came alive in his hand, that anything moving—leaves on trees, flying moths, a swooping bat, buzzing mosquitoes, a noisy breeze, a dog in its yard—made his heart leap. He raced home with much less grace than he had set out.

  POINT NUMBER ONE: The Paradise Alms House is not en route to anywhere. To get here one must leave the main road, cut through a cane field and carry on up a lane that ends at the top of a small hill. The home with its excellent view of the cane fields is in the shallow valley below. There is nothing beyond.

  Point number two: At their age, residents in a home such as this, in this kind of heat, tend to take naps after lunch. So when Otoh Mohanty arrived without his father one hot afternoon, mumbling that since he was in the area he thought he might just stop and say hello, I blushed even as I apologized that he wouldn’t be able to see Miss Ramchandin just then because she was sleeping.

  “Oh, that’s too bad. Well, I could come back later. That’s what I should do then, eh?” It would be foolish to deny that I read uncertainty in his response. As though he had never before strung two words together, he continued, “But, uh, well, you know—uh, hmm.” Finally he confirmed my hopes about whom he had come to visit. “I mean, look. I am already here. You know what I mean? You, you busy? You have a little time? I mean, you could show me around the grounds if you could spare the time. They are nice grounds. Since I am already here, na.”

  I had not received a visitor since taking the job. My heart fluttered and the soles of my feet tingled wildly. I gave him a tour of the grounds and Mr. Hector’s gardens. Lost in conversation we wandered outside the property and ended up on a trace in the cane field. From then on Otoh became a regular visitor. Sometimes he came twice in a week, always during my off-hours. We would meet away from curious eyes on the periphery of the grounds. Propriety restrains me from detailing just how alluring cane can be when a falsetto trill long trapped in your heart is bursting forth. Although Mala Ramchandin was by no means our sole topic of conversation, I will dwell mainly on those discussions concerning her.

  On one visit, after a long walk we came to rest in shade among the exposed roots of a wild mango tree. Otoh tended to be self-reflective and philosophical, even mildly morose at such times.

  “You ever feel like something come and tief your mind from you?” he said. “You ever feel like you have no control over yourself? You know that feeling?”

  “Often,” I teased, “ever since meeting you. You have cleverly invaded my mind, Otoh Mohanty, and occupied all the territory there.” He was kind enough to respond to my flattery with a wary half-smile. But I had the feeling tha
t what he was thinking had to do with Miss Ramchandin. After all, if it weren’t for Otoh, Miss Ramchandin might still be thriving in her own home on Hill Side, and this fact tormented him. I reminded him often that if it weren’t for his intervention, as unfortunate as it may have seemed in the moment, she and I, and he and I, would likely not have met.

  He tried then, as he had several times before, to explain why, following a compulsion stronger than a riptide, he had entered her yard. Even though I felt that I understood his need to come face to face with her, Otoh seemed never completely satisfied with how he expressed himself on the topic. Some fragments seemed to elude and frustrate him.

  “Everybody used to fraid Miss Ramchandin—”

  “They still do,” I interjected.

  “—but I was the only one who used to go up into her yard, not to torment the lady, but to take food for her, and I wanted her to know that I wasn’t frightened and I didn’t have a bad mind for her. I didn’t want her to think I was like everybody else.”

  “You really aren’t, you know,” I said.

  Encouraged, he carried on. “I felt as though she and I had things in common. She had secrets and I had secrets. Somehow I wanted to go there and take all my clothes off and say, ‘Look! See? See all this? I am different! You can trust me, and I am showing you that you are the one person I will trust. And I am one person, for sure, for sure, that you can trust. I will be your friend.’ ”

  “Otoh, that is exactly how I feel about her. I am certain—I can’t express how certain I am—that she holds no grudge against you.”

  “I never cared what anybody else thought or said about me, but somehow I cared so much about what Mala Ramchandin thought. I needed her to know that it was my father, Ambrose Mohanty, who was sending food for her. And that I was his son, Otoh Mohanty. You know what I mean, Tyler?”

  “I feel protective toward her too—”

  “Deep in my heart, Tyler,” he interrupted me, whispering as though he were saying something heretical, “is he, is Pappy, I hold responsible for all the rumours spread about her. I blame him for her barred-up house.” I raised my eyebrows. “Yes, blame. I don’t know why exactly but is he I blame.”

  I thought of Mr. Mohanty, dressed up especially to see Miss Ramchandin in his coattails and top hat, and of the gleam in his eyes when he sat next to her on the garden bench in the evening. I could not imagine him spreading rumours about her.

  “Instead of sleeping he could have done something to prevent children from harassing her and tiefing from her fruit trees. I blame him for them pelting her and her house. For all the jokes and horror stories. I still didn’t know what his real connection to her was, yet if anybody could have helped her it was he. That is why I wanted to come face to face with her. I wanted to go up there, to meet her and apologize for him and say that even though he was my father I wasn’t a coward like him and that I would take care of her.”

  I thought of Otoh walking beside his father, lovingly clutching the old man’s arm as they approached Miss Ramchandin. I was filled with a new admiration for Otoh. I thought him daring to want to search inside the cavernous areas of his soul and to speak out loud his feelings toward his father. I do not believe he feigned affection for his father: his love was deep and genuine, and perhaps that is why he was so tormented.

  Then I thought of Asha.

  “Do you know anything about her sister?” I asked.

  “She had a sister? I never knew that.” Otoh was oddly unmoved by the news.

  “Asha. Her name was Asha. She left home in her teens. Your Pappy would know her. Do something for me, Otoh, please. Could you ask him about her. About Asha Ramchandin? Whatever happened to her, please?”

  He squeezed my hand, nodded and then returned to his preoccupation.

  “It’s as if I wanted to redeem my father’s name, to rescue her and be the Romeo he never was. It’s a funny thing, yes, but I was never so protective to my own mammy.”

  It was the most he had ever spoken on the subject. The fear of discovering his anger toward his father made his body shake.

  * * *

  —

  In spite of what Otoh thought of his father, I myself was partial to him. The old man was delightfully indiscreet.

  “Mr. Tyler appears to be painting his face more diligently as time goes by,” I heard him whisper—albeit loudly—to Otoh. “My boy, I think Mr. Tyler fancies you, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Then he whispered much more softly, “He is a Mr., isn’t he?”

  Mala Ramchandin, as usual, did not talk in public. She made gurgling sounds. It was unclear to the Mohanty gentlemen whether she really knew or cared that they visited. When I assured them that on days they did not visit Miss Mala was noticeably irritable, the lovely old gentleman winked slyly at his son. “I would wager that it is not Mala who gets irritable when we don’t visit!” he declared. I blushed even as I pretended not to hear. I could sense that Otoh was delighted, even though he feigned irritation and said, “Shhh, Pappy! Shhh!”

  “Why should I shhh? I am an expert in the field of passivity,” chuckled Mr. Mohanty.

  Another time while sitting on the bench next to Miss Ramchandin, he squinted at Otoh and me and said amicably, as though talking about nothing more than fishing, “I know what I am saying: don’t let a good one get away, is what I say.”

  How can I possibly condemn him for the sluggishness of character that has so saddened his son?

  MALA SAW SOMETHING crawling on her verandah. She had never seen such a thing before. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled alongside the iridescent, winged and multi-legged creature.

  In the phase just before Mala stopped using words, lexically shaped thoughts would sprawl across her mind, fractured here and there. The cracks would be filled with images. Soon the inverse happened. A sentence would be constructed primarily of images punctuated by only one or two verbalizations: a noun tentatively uttered in recognition, a descriptive word confirming a feeling or observation. A flock of seagulls squawking overhead might elicit a single word, pretty. That verbalization, she came to understand, was not the feeling itself but a name given to the feeling: pretty, an unnecessary translation of the delight she experienced seeing the soaring birds. Eventually Mala all but rid herself of words. The wings of a gull flapping through the air titillated her soul and awakened her toes and knobby knees, the palms of her withered hands, deep inside her womb, her vagina, lungs, stomach and heart. Every muscle of her body swelled, tingled, cringed or went numb in response to her surroundings—every fibre was sensitized in a way that words were unable to match or enhance. Mala responded to those receptors, flowing with them effortlessly, like water making its way along a path.

  Many of her sounds were natural expansions and contractions of her body. She grunted when lifting something heavy. She dredged and expelled phlegm. She sighed melodiously. Cried and belched unabashedly. She coughed and sneezed and spat and wiped away mucus with no care for social graces. She laughed, sometimes as quietly as a battimamselle flapping its wing tips against water in an old drum, or as raucously as a parrot imitating her imitating it. She farted at will, for there was no one around to contradict her.

  There was a time when Mala would hum two-note and three-note melodies. The number of notes soon decreased and she settled into a monotone whose pitch varied, harmonizing with whichever insects’ shrills prevailed on a particular day. She started cooing, rasping, gargling—the sounds made by the pigeons on her roof.

  She did not ascribe activities to specific times. When doziness pawed at her, she responded regardless of the time of day or night, curling up in the yard or on the verandah. If she awakened in the height of the night’s darkness, she did not force herself back to sleep but arose as though it were daytime. She fed herself when she needed to, voided when and where the impulse knocked. She manoeuvered her half-acre world intuitively, withdrawing,
smiling, laughing, fighting, crying, sulking.

  * * *

  —

  Mala’s companions were the garden’s birds, insects, snails and reptiles. She and they and the abundant foliage gossiped among themselves. She listened intently. With an ear pressed to the ground she heard ant communities building, transporting food and breeding. She listened to worms coiling arduously from place to place. She knelt on the ground and whispered to the grass and other young plants, encouraging them to grow, and then she listened as they stretched up to her. She did not intervene in nature’s business. When it came time for one creature to succumb to another, she retreated. Flora and fauna left her to her own devices and in return she left them to theirs.

  At first Aves, Hexapoda, Gastropoda and Reptilia burrowed instinctively into nooks and crevices. They realized eventually that they had no cause to hide. Mala permitted them to roam boldly and to multiply at leisure throughout her property. She provided them one service. Every season she rummaged through the yard for carcasses of those fallen prey to natural causes and, with ritual grace, she facilitated an honourable disposal.

  She noted the position of the sun. When it reached a particular spot on the horizon she would finish her collecting for the season. Before that day, she routinely descended the back stairs with a bucket in one hand. One morning she came upon a shiny honey-brown beetle. Her heart soared and she reached into the pocket of her flower-print dress for the item she had once called tweezers. Before she made it to the foot of the stairs she had plucked carcasses of a bachac, a spinner ant, two red ants and a black-red cockroach as long as her thumb. She placed them gingerly in the bucket. By the time she had picked every visible corpse off her property, the heap included ants, beetles and cockroaches, different kinds of spiders, some bees, flies, a wasp, two fetid lizard skins and the brittle remains of their skeletons, six butterflies, a stick insect the length of her forearm, two dragonflies, a handful of crickets and other creatures that in the world of naming remain untitled. The collection measured a full hand deep. She paid no attention to the odour rising out of the bucket. The scent of decay was not offensive to her. It was the aroma of life refusing to end. It was the aroma of transformation. Such odour was proof that nothing truly ended, and she revelled in it as much as she did the fragrance of cereus blossoms along the back wall of the house.