by Shani Mootoo
Separating the kitchen from the rest of the house was a partition she had built of furniture piled several feet thick. The network of armchairs, rockers, side tables, dining table and high-back chairs was locked together by the ramming and jamming of protruding limbs into each other and age-old cobweb threads. The whole thing smelled of time and dirt. The individual shapes of the furniture were all but obliterated by the density of dust. The wall was so precariously balanced that no one but Mala could have detected the precisely obscured entrance.
She lifted away an old web and tugged at the legs of a straight-back chair. She slid that out first and then a hat rack. Next came a tall, ebony pedestal that she jiggled and pulled to unlink its long legs from the filigreed brass panel on a side table. Finally, she shoved a caned footstool forward, excavating a narrow passageway to the other side. She tucked her bucket against her body. Only one as nimble as Mala could have shimmied through such an opening without bringing the whole arrangement down.
On the other side of the furniture blockade was a spacious room that had once served as drawing room and dining room. The space was now empty. All that remained was a cut-glass chandelier. Disturbing not a speck of dust more than necessary, Mala stepped into old footprints that she had previously left in the carpet and headed to a bolted doorway.
Holding the bucket in one hand, she used the other to unpin an iron key from the hem of her petticoat. She struggled briefly with the old lock and then the lopsided door scraped open. Mala reached into the darkness behind the door for a hurricane lantern. With the unlit lantern she descended the darkened stairway.
At the foot of the stairs was another door. She hung the lantern on the doorknob, reached up and extracted a key from a dusty wooden ledge. She unlocked and opened the door. Mala greeted the stink of decomposition in the room with aristocratic grace, her head and the unlit lantern held high. She set the lantern down on a table.
She was delighted with her timing. Termites had gnawed at a board barring the window and sunlight beamed through, throwing a brilliant gash on the opposite wall and illuminating the insects that were pinned there. Mala walked along the wall, negotiating webs and nests, pinning her new cache to the remaining spaces. The insects that had fallen crunched beneath her bare feet. They were fodder for a vibrating carpet of moths, centipedes, millipedes, cockroaches and unnamed insects that found refuge in Mala’s surroundings. Death feeding life.
The tenor of the vibration shifted as she passed. Those with wings fluttered. Those with legs crawled. Those on their bellies slithered a pace or two away. Mala finished her task just as the light was sucked back out through the chink in the board. She picked up the lantern and bucket and retraced her steps, taking special care to lock both doors behind her.
In the former drawing room she planted her feet carefully in the dusty footsteps and walked, backwards, to the hole in the furniture wall.
* * *
—
She enjoyed the smell of rotting, water-logged wood. It had been at least a decade since the eaves trough came away from the roof over the back stairs. Rain now cascaded onto the stairs and the top steps were coated in a dangerous green and black slime, especially thick in each depression at the centre. Holding the slippery banister with one hand, Mala pulled her skirt up and spread her feet to avoid the slimiest areas. At the bottom of the stairs, standing on a concrete slab that had risen out of the washed-away dirt, she scooped rainwater out of a barrel and splashed her feet clean. Before her was the wall of climbing cereus, foliage scaly with age and striped with the mucous trails of buff-periwinkles. The succulents, half a dozen plants in all, had raged over the side of the house, further concealing the boarded-up window of the room downstairs. Scattered over the network of spiny, three-sided stems and fleshy leaves were countless buds, each larger than her fist. The sight of the buds made her giddy. She so looked forward to the night of their opening that she decided not to sit idly and wait but to enjoy every moment until then.
Upstairs on the back porch, sitting low on a peerah, she completed her preparation. On a slab of stone she ground a handful of peppers. The large, concave rock turned brilliant red. The lining of her nostrils became raw and singed and she squinted her eyes against tears. Mala scraped the slab clean with a flat stick and pushed the pepper sludge into a glass jar. She continued grinding handfuls of peppers, throwing her head back as the burning increased, her eyes mostly closed now. The jar was soon two-thirds full. Sweat ran down her face. She cleaned the stick on the banister, leaving a coating of seeds and red flesh behind for the pigeons.
On the stone slab she chopped limes into eighths. She topped the jar with the fruit and juice, and then held it up, tightly covered, to the blue light of the sky. Mala exulted in the medley of colours she had composed. She placed the jar at one end of the porch in a bleached area that received sun most of the day. There the jar would sit, for weeks, until it was well fermented.
* * *
—
It stopped raining long before the sun came up that morning. The dripping continued off the leaves, off the stairs, off the roof. Runoff in the back drain, frightening at times, sounded as though it would rise and spill into the yard. And rising from the soggy earth was a brown, ammoniac smell.
During the dry season, the hour of ten o’clock in the morning came and went without her taking notice. But in the rainy season that same hour was unbearable. The elements seemed to pull together in perfect imitation of another moment, long ago, just after a heavy rainfall.
It was the light. It was the blueness of the sky. It was the colour in the trees and shrubs in the yard. The dankness of the house. Everything so opaquely saturated with moisture that the sun couldn’t shine strongly enough to soak it up. The time of day would come upon her and deafen her with the noise of insects screaming, Pohpoh, Pohpoh, I want Pohpoh. Insects spawning in pools of water, their drones shouting, Sarah! The suffocating pervasiveness of stagnant water.
At ten o’clock in the morning Mala knew the sun would catch on a jagged edge of the back porch roof where the iron was torn. The spot would dazzle white like a blinding star. A beam of silver light would pierce the hole in the roof, targeting the porch floor.
Time would collapse. Every inhaled breath was a panicked tremble sustained and each exhale a heavy sob. In anguish Mala would clutch her blouse, petticoat, handkerchief into a ball in front of her breast, her harried breathing punctuated with fits and spasms. Her skin and bones, especially her upper arms and the back of her neck, would become chilled, unable to dry out or warm up.
One such morning, a good hour before ten o’clock, she began strategizing against it. She armed herself with a bottle of bird-pepper sauce and a spoon, and lay down on the bare floor of the porch. The sun had begun its ascent to its highest point. All around her the quality of light signalled the approaching collision of sun and roof. Lying on the floor, looking up at the crack in the roof, she breathed slowly. For a while, staring up at the slit, all she saw was sky in various shades of hypnotic blue. Gradually the slit darkened. The edges turned harsh silver. Mala sat up. Her heart began to gallop, the beat crescendoing in her temples.
She opened the bottle. She raised it toward her nostrils and tentatively sniffed the flaming red sauce. The pungency, cultivated by the sunshine on the porch, startled her. She tried to stay calm but her pounding heart made her breathless. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply from the bottle, feeling the flames leap out at her upper lip and lap into her nose. She opened her eyes just in time to see the jagged piece of galvanized iron ignite like a brilliant sparkler. The cacophony in her head resounded. Insects shrieked. Mammy. Asha. Pohpoh. Lavinia. The rumbling of a buggy.
A shaft of harsh light poured through the gash in the roof. Crickets began to screech, the running water grew torrentially loud. Mala shook her head. A wave of nausea washed over her. She raised the bottle to her face, shoved the open rim against her face, her nose deep
inside, a wet, red ring imprinting across her nose, cheeks and lips. Her tear-filled eyes fluttered but she fought the exhaustion. Her sinuses released a flood against the fire trying to break through.
The shaft of light had grown so strong it blinded her. Her body suddenly, fitfully fastened itself to the ground. Her arms and back became cold. With effort she lifted herself off the ground, pulled in her chest and thrust her shoulders forward. She cried out the only words she had spoken in ages. “Oh God. I beg you. Please. Doh leave me, I beg you, oh God, oh God, doh leave me, I beggin you. Take me with you.” The pigeons on the roof hopped around frantically.
Mala looked down at the cerise blossoms of the pomerac tree and braced herself. She thrust her finger into the bottle, scooped out a heavy clump of raw pepper and shoved the finger into her mouth. She scooped up more and then more, wiping her finger on the sensitive tip of her tongue, and then again, scooping more, shovelling it into her mouth. The skin underneath her fingernail tingled. She didn’t swallow, keeping the fire on her tongue, by then so blistered that parts of the top layer had already disintegrated and other areas had curled back like rose petals dipped in acid. She pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth, dispersing the slush to the tender pink flesh on the sides and under her tongue. The roof of her mouth bubbled. Pepper mush oozed out past her clenched gums and spilled into the sides of her cheeks. She gasped for air. A torrent of sweat washed her continuously, her body trying desperately to cool itself.
An eruption of pain spread into her ears. A thousand bells clanged. Then all sound stopped. She squeezed her eyes tight and stomped her feet. She couldn’t feel her legs or the ground beneath her feet yet she pounded the floor and beat the wall. She heaved, trying to find cooling air but the air entering her mouth sent her lacerated flesh into further agony. A tide of peppery saliva cascaded over her lips. She ran to the balcony and spat, salivating and expelling sauce and pepper flesh and seeds. She waved her grotesquely enlarged tongue in the air but this brought little relief. Exhausted and dizzy from breathing so rapidly she collapsed on the balcony floor. Glancing up, she noticed the light had changed. There was no trace of the silver beam.
The cerise blossoms of pomerac swayed in the breeze. She shut her eyes and listened. The pigeons had calmed down, their feet scratching faintly against the galvanized iron. Mala’s mouth remained open, her lower jaw dropped partly in exhaustion, partly to release heat and let air in. Her flesh had come undone. But every tingling blister and eruption in her mouth and lips was a welcome sign that she had survived.
She was alive.
IT WAS ONE of the brightest moonlit nights Mala had ever witnessed. Every evening for the past week she had descended to the cereus patch and checked the state of the buds. Their time had arrived, and the long-awaited event coincided, as she interpreted it, with another blooming, that of the moon. As night fell she dragged her rocking chair down the back stairs and into the yard under the fringes of the giant mudra tree. She sat upright like a concert director in front of the wall. As the night unwound she witnessed the slow dance of huge, white cereus buds—she counted sixty-two—trembling as they unfolded against the wall, a choreography of petal and sepal opening together, sending dizzying scent high and wide into the air. The moonlight reflected off the blossoms’ pure whiteness and cast a glow over the yard. Mala basked.
* * *
—
In Lantanacamara when the moon blossoms, so, traditionally, does love. The monthly occasion is anticipated and prepared for even now, and no one, including the older people who tend to stay indoors, wants to be caught without a companion for the evening.
In the week prior to this event Otoh had been visited in his downstairs room in Government Alley by at least one young woman a day inviting him to the moonlight stroll in the lovers’ garden. He turned all offers down because he had a mission of his own. As the days passed, however, he worried his suitors would see him outside that evening and take offence that they were not good enough. After tortuous deliberations he decided to accept the first suitor’s invitation.
He was so preoccupied by Mala that he had forgotten his suitor’s name and had to check his diary. It had always been this way for Otoh. Unlike the other men in the village, and much to their envy, he had long been the object of desire of almost every Lantanacamaran woman, regardless of her age. (It is also noteworthy that a number of men were shocked and annoyed by their own naggingly lascivious thoughts of him.)
* * *
—
Mala heard the footsteps of people ambling down the road. She knew that when the footsteps slowed it was because someone was sniffing the heady perfume. It was a change from the odour of age, filth and rot that normally permeated her yard.
On this cool bright night Otoh strolled arm in arm with the elegant Mavis. At the front of Mala’s house, mesmerized by the smell, his companion, thankfully, was curious. The pair stopped to see what it was that so perfumed the entire neighbourhood. The air was full of bats swooping and swishing, diving and darting. Otoh and Mavis ducked to avoid the ugly creatures. He was still shaken from the scare on the night when he tried to enter Mala’s yard but in the company of another he found the courage to approach the fence.
He tiptoed close to the wire, bent down and looked for a crack in the foliage. Peering intently into the bushes he momentarily forgot his companion. He was convinced that Mala would show herself to him again. Mavis disturbed his concentration with a polite tug on his arm.
“Come, Otoh, boy. Look how many people going up to the park. If we don’t hurry we won’t find a nice place to sit and enjoy the evening, you know. Come, na?”
“Right,” said Otoh limply.
A scented breeze came gushing through the bushes and whipped itself around Otoh, nabbing him like a lasso. Taken aback, he closed his eyes and breathed in slowly and deeply. He took Mavis’ arm and pulled her to a stop.
“Mavis, the park will be full by now. Look, I know another place, a better place. Come with me.”
“What you mean another place? Is moonlight night. El Dorado Park is the place to go.”
“Smell the air, Mavis. That park never smells so good. You don’t want to see what flower could make such a scent? This could be our moonlight adventure…”
“But Germaine and Pauline and Radha and everybody else going to the love garden in El Dorado Park…”
“If we go to the back of this yard we would get a good view of the blossoms and be able to smell them better. Come tomorrow, you could tell them about our unusual adventure. I know how to get up into the yard. Come with me, na.”
“Otoh Mohanty, you are adventure enough, yes boy!” said Mavis, shoving her arm under his. “It smelling good, is true, but I don’t too much consider that yard to be romantic. Is moonlight night, boy! You really adventurous, yes, but come let me teach you about romantic.”
She whispered the word, drawing it out reverently. She gripped him close to her and ushered him onward. Mavis, given to babbling and convinced that Otoh knew Mala’s yard through involvements similar to her own, began to babble.
“Otoh boy, you know what we used to do when we was children? You remember Jason and Jacob? They married now, you know. Well, the three of we and some other children used to climb this fence and go and tief whatever was in season and come back out, suck the meat of the seed dry-dry and then the fellas them used to pelt the house with the seed to try to get the old lady—”
“Mala. You mean Mala.”
“Yes, she self, to try and get she to show she self. I remember them even using stone to pelt at the house, yes. Ey. But when I think about it now, them boys was bad, yes. But they grow up good and the two of them married as I say just now. Mammy hoping I would marry soon too, you know.”
Otoh did not respond. “You know, now I remember,” she continued. “Sometimes when the fellas and Jason and Jacob used stones, windows did break, yes.”
Otoh was amazed at how stealthily, like an insidious, long drizzle, his sadness had turned to drenching anger. Forever a gentleman, he checked his reaction and managed, with only a margin of hesitation, to pull her closer, a gesture intended to comfort him more than her. Why had he never engaged in such callousness when he was a child? he wondered. Out loud he assured her that such actions were the natural stuff of childhood. Assuming that his voice had deepened in anticipation of their arrival at the lovers’ garden, Mavis pressed her cheek against his chest and smelled his gentle body odour, highly unusual and so very welcoming from a man. Otoh released her and leaned toward the misshapen fence. He wanted so dearly to see Mala that he believed that any second now he would catch a glimpse.
His companion, now impatient, tried again to coax him up the hill with a little teasing. Otoh reluctantly followed. On the way to the garden he was untalkative. And Mavis, sensing the evening might come to an abrupt end, held her tongue. Otoh let go of her hand and clasped his behind his back.
Behind them pairs of lovers strolled by on their way to the garden. Inspired by the dizzying scent of cereus they were compelled to stop in front of Mala’s house to caress and steal probing kisses.