by M G Vassanji
One Sunday night, as we emerged from the dining hall and paused and wondered which direction to turn to for our stroll, she informed me her roommate had stayed home, would return tomorrow. Just that, and the look. We headed, in an ostensibly casual manner, for her room. Once the door closed behind us we fell on each other with a passion. How much I had longed for this moment, there was for the first time a bed with us! And how we strained to preserve what we had, our innocence, not to cross the line. And how much we wanted to do just that, break through those bounds into a new state which we were sure would leave us intact. Past those first stages of squeezing and holding, the weighty awkwardness of inexperienced bodies, the touching of intimacies and putting-just-the-tip-there, I could hardly contain myself, I was in and we were one. Can there be any greater pleasure than that first time in frightened, frantic, and ecstatic love? We lost our virginities and did “it” just that one time but I walked around a proud stud, with my woman beside me.
I see her sitting across from me now and I want to go and touch her; but if I do I am afraid I will lose my train of thought. This worries her, my notepad on my lap; and it worries me, too. Can I control what thoughts, what revelations and stories, what part of myself I put down here? Can we bear the pain of this scrutiny, this veiled and treacherous truth?
What an anxious month we passed when she missed her period that time, following our misdemeanour. Initially, though, when she told me the news and what it implied—a child—I find it hard to believe how laughably naive I was—I felt like an even bigger man, confirmed: I had planted one, as the vulgar saying went. Only later, as we continued our stroll that evening, did it dawn on me what she was fretting about by my side. If she was truly pregnant, we would become the laughingstock among our friends; we would be branded among some sections of the community as shameless sinners. Couldn’t we have waited?—what was the hurry?—the whole world waited (our elders’ pained admonishments). We would be known and talked about forever. Our wedding would be a hurried, pushed-through, tainted affair, instead of a full-scale glorious celebration. But first, she said, allowing a glimmer of hope into our predicament, her condition had to be confirmed by a doctor—there was a tiny chance that this was a false alarm and we were safe after all. But what doctor to trust? An Indian was out of the question, the story would be out and spreading within a day. An African doctor could botch the test, or worse. A European—white—seemed the best choice, for competence and discretion. But a white doctor was inconveniently far and probably very expensive. We laugh when we recall that quandary now, what silliness that panicky circumstance led us into. What colonial and racist attitudes we had. I made up a story for my friends who were studying science that our servant at home wanted a pregnancy test done for his sister, and wouldn’t it be a good idea to do it ourselves. With chemicals stolen from one of the labs and test tubes and kitchen supplies, a messy and smelly test was performed by me and others on a gas stove at a friend’s house; the solution that would reveal my fate, and that of my beloved, had to be kept standing steady for five days, and I left it in a tea cup on my friend’s kitchen window with strong reminders to his mother not to empty it into the sink. Which is precisely what a servant ended up doing a couple of days later. Time was running out and I was beginning to appear both guilty and silly with my vague and inconsistent talk of my servant’s sister’s crisis and the urgency of a test. Finally I took assistance from an African intern, who had the test done at the public hospital, confirmed a negative result, and told Farida to relax and await her next period. My next “deed”—as we called it—with my girl was on our wedding night, with all the huzzahs preceding it, after the wedding reception. Ashiq was born not long after.
That name, Ashiq, has a certain old-worldness to it; it comes from poetry, and it means “lover”—both in the mystical and the worldly sense. A moth that burns itself in the flame of a candle is an ashiq who dies for its love. A few years after we arrived in Canada, his name was predictably corrupted to Ash, which he altered in spelling to Ashe, after the famous black tennis star, who eventually died of AIDS.
One day we received a call from one of Ashe’s teachers, a Mr. Turner; a rather nice fellow, soft-spoken. I would like to discuss your son with you, how he’s doing and so on. Perhaps he’s started slipping up in class, what with the teenage years upon him, we worried, though we were also confident the matter couldn’t be serious; we knew our son, our first-born who’d shared that first winter with us in this country, and that dingy apartment on Dufferin where we spent a couple of months before we knew better and moved out. When we sat down before Mr. Turner, he began by saying very positive things about Ashe, which put us at ease. Then he went on to explain to us about the importance of freedoms and human rights, and we listened and wholeheartedly agreed, though not without a trace of irritation; we were educated, perhaps as much as he, we too had been teachers, though briefly, in the country we came from. Observing our impatience, he began to speak of sexual preferences and slowly the point of the interview began to dawn on me; it required the full brunt of the revelation before Farida realized what was being said: Your son is gay. She looked at me as if to say, Something’s wrong with my hearing today, or, Is this man crazy?
We’ve taken it well. We’ve read books and had discussions with doctors and teachers. It is nothing wrong, it’s not perversion. We are convinced. But I must confess to the initial shock, the disappointment. A lifetime’s expectations, is what it comes down to; a man sees himself in his son. And a man has hopes for grandchildren, a continuation of the genes. To come upon a deviation from the norm in one’s own line, that’s the rub. My son will not be a father, a husband; will not have a woman beside him and all that involves: man and woman. Instead, man and man, and whatever they are up to. I cannot erase from my mind all those scenes from long ago when as boys we would make jokes about homosexuality, about those “uncles,” the strange, silent and pathetic elderly men with a certain reputation. After the initial shock, Farida took to the idea much more readily. He was always sensitive, she said, and gays are sensitive, they are artists, aren’t they? W. H. Auden, and Benjamin Britten, and…. And our own Mr. Gregory, the English teacher, he was also a poet, I added. Thus we are comforted. Ashiq was our jewel, is still our jewel. He did not become an artist, some sort of unemployed poet, and that’s perhaps as well. He is a geologist in Alberta.
Ashe was extremely moved when he found out we knew, that we had accepted what he was. But you are our son, we told him, and will always be that. Our disappointment, our expectations, we have swallowed, he knows that; and every time he comes to see us, I can tell he still is moved. And every time we meet, we embrace. I am proud of my son, that we had a son. Only, it seems that one day he just rode away into the sunset, into another mode of existence. That’s life. One day a friend of Ashe called to invite us to a birthday party in his honour and we went, not knowing what to expect, even what to wear. We went after mosque and so I was in my suit, which was out of place, but Farida in a bright blue sari stood out like a peacock and people simply gaped at her. They were a nice bunch, who met us, all young and mostly men, but it was like being among a group of aliens. And, as I said to my son, “But you guys dress alike and look alike,” to which he answered, “Maybe among the younger guys, but there are others … I could introduce you to some older guys if you’re interested!” It was too soon for that kind of humour. At the party we met Ashe’s “partner,” Shelly, the guy who had called to invite us.
Now she’s got up with a smile and a glance at me, which is a signal that perhaps I should follow, in a while, and I’m left with this, my preoccupation that’s beginning to stand between us, though slightly, and the thought of that other preoccupation, the peccadillo I’ve got myself into, a yearning for someone else that I can’t control though I have no desire even to consider letting this one go, this partner of so many years and experiences. And as that other looms at the back of my mind, I wonder about this one: does she guess, does she know?
Am I living on borrowed time, is this dual existence so far a gift from her?
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Lara Hinchberger for her patience; and to Nurjehan, Pankaj, and Charu for reading the manuscript during its various stages.
About the Author
M.G. Vassanji won a regional Commonwealth Prize for The Gunny Sack (1989). He is the author of four other novels: No New Land (1991); The Book of Secrets (1994), which won the inaugural Giller Prize and the Bressani Prize; Amriika (1999); and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (2003), which made Vassanji the first writer to win the Giller Prize a second time. He is also the author of a collection of short stories, Uhuru Street. He was awarded the Harbourfront Festival Prize in 1994 in recognition of his achievement in and contribution to the world of letters, and in the same year was chosen as one of twelve Canadians on Maclean’s Honour Roll. Born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania, M.G. Vassanji attended university in the United States and lives in Toronto.
Copyright © 2005 M.G. Vassanji
Anchor Canada edition 2006
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Vassanji, M.G.
When she was queen / M.G. Vassanji.
Short stories.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37516-2
I. Title.
PS8593.A87W44 2006 C813′.54 C2006-902689-0
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