The Worlds Within Her

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The Worlds Within Her Page 5

by Neil Bissoondath


  “He’s fine. He wanted to come, but …”

  “Is not really his place, eh?”

  On the left, Yasmin sees the city docks: large rusted sheds, the funnels of cargo ships. At the main gates, there are sandbags, and soldiers in helmets. She says, “He and Mom were close.”

  “I know.”

  “Maybe he should have come.”

  “Don’t think I’m pryin’, but everything all right with you and Mr. Summerhayes?”

  “His name is Jim.”

  Penny laughs. “Shakti trained me.”

  Yasmin wonders how often her mother and Penny spoke. She wonders how much her mother said, and how much Penny may have embroidered from what she said. She realizes that she does not, that she cannot, trust Penny. After a moment she says, “Everything’s fine.”

  10

  HE OWNED A cat, a bony, manic creature that would not let itself be stroked. It seemed an odd animal for him to have. When he’d mentioned he had a pet, she’d imagined a dog, a golden retriever, a Labrador, something large and gentle. But Anubis slunk around the apartment, scurrying across open spaces, hugging the walls with the stealth of a shoplifter. Small and lean in the way of the chronically agitated, she inserted herself into impossible nests from which she would emerge defensive and aggrieved.

  The first time Yasmin sat on the sofa, Anubis announced her presence among the cushions with a yowling exit. The slash of protesting shadow left Yasmin unnerved for several minutes, as the cat, heaving with fright, glared at her from Jim’s shoulder.

  When he saw Yasmin and Anubis would not be easily reconciled — he had held the cat out to her, its body limp, its eyes malicious; it had growled and spat at her — he said he would exile it to the bedroom. He spoke with dispassion, but Yasmin did not miss the regret — or was it a suppressed dismay? — that wove its way through his words. His consideration for the animal left her perturbed, yet there was something indefinably reassuring about it. She was glad to have Anubis gone.

  His apartment was large, conventional in design, with picture windows opening the living room to a spacious balcony, sky and wooded hills. A discreet glimpse of the expressway that wound downtown reminded her of the night she and Charlotte had ridden it through a raging midnight storm, the speed dangerous, the music deafening. It had been an exhilarating ride, but Yasmin had found herself breathless with fright at the end. His furniture too was conventional, classic, of an unmemorable timelessness. The walls were hung with framed photographs, his successes. He had spoken of his photography, his interest in playing with light, seizing its elements: the moment, he had said, when everything was contrasted, highlighted, clarified. His camera accompanied him on trips to aid not memory but rather exploration — not of people, he had said, but of landscape: to help him see the obvious. And as she scanned the walls, few faces looked back at her. Those that did were snapshots clustered in frames beside the front door, as if they had been ushered in without quite being welcomed. Age and resemblance told her they were of relatives, parents and grandparents, smiles fixed, attitudes posed. Well-to-do people, she decided, respected in their communities, satisfied with their lives. But that was the lie of snapshots, as Jim had said: regrets and dissatisfactions momentarily displaced for the camera.

  She moved on. To a wooden frame within which a drainpipe the shade of pewter emerged from a flower box swollen with colour, ran down a lemon wall to the sidewalk, and finally disgorged onto wet cobblestones what looked like gushing water flash-frozen to ice. Beside it, in a brass frame, two walls of unfinished concrete met in the middle, each centred by a clear-glass window, one reflecting rugged, snow-topped mountains, the other a field of thick vegetation. Clever photographs, she thought, well composed, and suggestive of more than the simple pleasure offered the eye.

  The next photograph, though, immediately unsettled her. It was, in its details, not an extraordinary composition, merely a rectangle divided into two triangles. The first, forming the base, was of a hill sloping from the upper right corner precipitously down to the lower left; its short grass was bathed in a thick golden wash, as if from the furnace of a setting sun. Filling the space above it, looming impenetrable above its brilliance, the other triangle suggested the darkest of nights, a sky of storm cloud. There seemed a permanence to the darkness, as if the stars would never return, and a desperation to the light, as if it knew itself to be on the edge of extinction. Yasmin hugged herself. It was, in the quiet intensity of its contrasts, a terrifying photograph.

  Jim emerged from the bedroom rubbing his eyes. He had changed into jeans and an untucked shirt. “She’s calmed down.”

  “Oh, she has, has she?” Her tone was flattened by sarcasm. She swallowed, and drew his attention to the photograph.

  “Switzerland, about three years ago. Three days of business and two days of hiking. I took exactly five photos. The other four didn’t work.”

  The pride in his voice prevented her from confessing her discomfort — that would probably have pained him — and it yet insisted that she show further interest. She asked about the technical challenge. Surely he had used a filter to achieve the richness of colour?

  “No, never.”

  She bit her lower lip, hard. He had told her this before — natural light was a point of honour with him — and somehow she had forgotten. He disdained lamps and flashes and filters of any kind. They effected frauds, he’d insisted, were a manipulation of the light rather than an engagement with it.

  “Remarkable,” she said into the ensuing silence, and the emptiness of the remark was apparent to her. She possessed the vocabulary — she could hold her own with the art crowd, with academics, saying much and meaning little — but the anxiety of the moment would not let the words come.

  “Know what I like best about this photo?” Jim said. “It can’t ever be duplicated. The right time of year, the right time of day, to the second. The right weather conditions. You can’t plan something like this. You simply have to find yourself there. The right place at the right time.” He let his gaze linger on it. Then he added, “The story of my life.”

  The words hung long between them.

  Finally Jim laughed, embarrassed, and the sound of his laughter prompted a mewl of protest from Anubis.

  Yet he did not hesitate as he leaned forward to kiss her, a brief brush of lips that quickly gave way, for them both, to a welcoming of passion.

  11

  HAVE YOU EVER greeted someone at the docks, Mrs. Livingston? You haven’t? It’s terribly exciting, you know. There’s a sense of occasion, of — strangely enough — accomplishment. Something to do with the distance travelled and the time required. Nothing like airports, with their air of imprisonment.

  But the atmosphere was dampened somewhat that morning, for it was as we stood there on the docks, watching cranes heave nets of luggage and cargo from the ship, that Cyril told us what had happened in London. About the quiet dinner in the neighbourhood restaurant, the walk back to their flat through the dark, wet streets; the men — three, four, he wasn’t sure — materializing out of an alley; the growls of Black bastard! and the blows that followed: fists, boots. Celia managed to run for help but by the time she got back with a constable, two minutes, no more than three, the damage had been done. They had broken no bones, but they had smashed the right lens of his glasses. They had damaged the eye, though not irretrievably. Sight would return, but impaired. It could have been worse, Cyril kept repeating, it could have been worse: as if trying to convince himself. But we saw in days to come that the attack had shattered more than his lens; it had shattered his illusions of London, of England and of all that these meant; it had enervated him, and turned him bitter. He still spoke of resuming his studies one day, but it sounded more like a hope than a plan.

  Back at the house, my husband and Cyril supervised the hauling of their travel chest up the stairs. It was large, blue metal with leather straps and locks of polished brass, and heavy with clothes, books and knick-knacks — so Celia explai
ned to my mother-in-law, Penny and me, but mostly to me, it seemed, as we sat in the porch waiting for Amina to serve refreshments. They had brought only light clothes, Cyril’s law books so he could keep up, and a few things to remind them of England: photographs, prints of the countryside and such.

  Presently Amina arrived with a platter of glasses filled with soft drinks and ice. Conversation, of course, had not been easy. Question and answer, everybody terribly polite. And that is probably why I remember the tinkle of the ice in the glasses. It seemed awfully loud in the awkward silence. My mother-in-law motioned Amina towards Celia. Celia sat up, hesitated. And then, with that painful, apologetic, ornately wheedling manner of the British, which they have passed on to you Canadians, she asked if she could possibly, if it wasn’t too much trouble, have some tea.

  My mother-in-law turned to me and said, “Shakti?” She was not offering me tea, she was ordering me to make it. I was glad to have something to do, but as I stood to go to the kitchen, Celia said, “May I give you a hand?” She didn’t wait for an answer.

  In the kitchen, I put a pot of water to boil on the gas range, then measured the tea leaves. Celia looked on without saying anything, but as I was about to pour the leaves into the water, she stopped me and asked if we had a teapot. She explained that she preferred her tea steeped rather than boiled. I fetched the teapot from the cupboard and watched as she prepared her tea. I offered sugar and milk, but she took neither. Not good for the figure, she explained. The figure, Mrs. Livingston! Imagine! This was not something we worried about. I was, I admit, dazzled. And when she said, “Would you join me in a cuppa?” I heard myself saying, “Yes, please. A cuppa.” The word feeling wonderfully strange on my lips. And to hear my own voice … It sounded wonderfully strange to my ears too. I put sugar and milk into mine after the first sip, though.

  Celia and I regularly took tea together after that, sitting in the porch and watching the sea, watching the ships come and go. It was not that I developed a passion for tea. No, rather, I had a passion for the style of the thing: the preparation of the teapot and the cups, the settling into the chairs in the porch at mid-morning. It was new, it was alien, and Celia had made me part of it. We didn’t speak much, but we didn’t need to. The fellowship we found in each other didn’t require words. It was as if each of us was reassured by the mere presence of the other alien in the house.

  Penny joined us occasionally but she wasn’t much of a tea drinker. She and I still spent our afternoons together while Celia read or napped. As for my mother-in-law, she stayed away for the most part. She never knew what to say to her new daughter-in-law beyond offering sweets and asking after her health.

  So you see, my dear Mrs. Livingston, I began drinking tea the way some people begin smoking cigarettes: for the style. To be able to say to Celia, Feel like a cuppa? Or to myself: I feel like a cuppa. It was like offering myself a little luxury. And I’ve been offering myself that little luxury ever since.

  12

  THEY LEAVE THE city behind, climbing into gentle foothills, the land falling away from the edge of the road now to the sea, bluer and more placid from here. In the distance, almost more cleanly etched at the horizon, she sees a cruise ship gleaming white and, far behind it, an oil tanker as low and fat and dark as a slug.

  Penny says, “You seem … upset?”

  “Why?”

  “You’re not saying much.”

  “I haven’t got anything to say.” Yasmin feels herself bridling, as she often does at the suggestion — always vaguely insulting, intimating inadequacy — that she should have something to say.

  “He was like that too, you know,” Penny says. “Always keeping his own counsel.”

  “Funny, isn’t it?” Yasmin blurts, with effort, the edge in her voice. “There was a time when we thought discretion was a good quality. Today it’s a sign of emotional repression. I’m not sure that’s progress. There’s a lot to be said for the unsaid.”

  Penny considers this for a moment, then says, “You look like him too, you know.”

  “People always say I look like my mom.” She is, once more, vaguely offended.

  Penny does not notice, or pays no attention. “I knew them both. You look like him.”

  Yasmin has never heard this before, and she sits back in the seat wondering what it means, if anything. Wondering why it should disconcert her so.

  Penny says, “I not doing too well, am I?”

  “Let’s just drop it.”

  “You do like the unsaid, eh? Strange for a journalist.”

  “I’m not a journalist.”

  Small houses of greyed wood hug the roadside. An occasional sign advertises Coca-Cola or Pepsi.

  “Shakti said —”

  “Proud mothers don’t always get things right. Journalist is Mom’s word for what I do.”

  In certain lights — harsh light subtly diffused, like the dusk that reigns beneath the anchor desk — her skin assumes hues of grey. She has had moments, waiting for the seconds to tick by, waiting for technicalities to be sorted out, that were not good: hand resting on hand in that false dusk, flesh as if unnourished by blood, tremors known only to herself.

  They are not morbid moments, but they are sad ones. Sad for all the necessary things left unsaid, all the necessary things left undone.

  Every life, she has often thought, is incomplete.

  Yasmin has a certain reputation as a media personality. She is the regular replacement for the anchor on the local newscasts, but has never been asked to fill in for the national anchor. She has at times been allowed to interview municipal politicians and minor celebrities, but she will never be asked to conduct the year-end interview with the prime minister.

  She is instead frequently invited to host public appearances by soap-opera actors at shopping malls. She is not familiar with these people or with their shows, but she will sometimes accept. The money is good, her role small enough that it will do no damage to her serious work; and as an organizer once made clear, she brings to such occasions the maturity of her forty-odd years, a glamour that does not detract from that of the stars, and sufficient legitimacy to impart a certain newsworthiness. Hers is a familiar face; she is recognized in the streets and in stores. At the supermarket she has become known, to her amusement, as the TV lady who tips the bag boys well. Receptionists and cashiers tend to be friendly.

  The job is not difficult. It entails timing, some simple acting, basic literacy. She is good at it, is at the age where experience has honed her abilities, but she’s not yet deemed to be due for “face work.” She holds that day off by anticipating the betrayal of the harsh studio lights, by conniving with June the cosmetician to camouflage the blemishes that cause anxiety in executive offices.

  But Yasmin is lucky. She has been told that her face is trustworthy, that she projects sincerity. She is good at the theatre, at the trickery of adapting tone and features from news story to news story. Good at projecting compassion one moment, gravity the next, then amusement, disapproval, regret, all muted by an illusory impartiality. Her rule is simple: I am moved because I am human, but only briefly, because I am professional. She disarms viewers, Jim says, offering them the comforts of a benign seduction.

  Penny says, “Shakti was proud, you know.”

  “I know. She had this thing about her dignity.”

  “No,” Penny says, changing gears. “Of you, I mean. She tell me once, Yasmin is not the kind to sit back and do nothing. She going to make her way in this world. She was very proud o’ that. I think she was seein’ your father in you, and it was a relief to her.”

  13

  YOU ARE PERSPIRING, my dear. Are you hot? It is rather stuffy in here, isn’t it. I’ll open a window. Or perhaps it’s the tea? Just lie back, my dear. Lie back and do nothing.”

  What? Like you lazy Caribbean people! You are teasing me, aren’t you? Of course you are, I knew that. Still, my dear, let me set you right on that score. Like everybody else in this world, we had times of ly
ing back and doing nothing —

  No, my dear, not under a palm tree, or a coconut tree as we called it. I never was one for lying about watching the waves roll in or building sandcastles. Like cooking — I’ve never seen the pleasure. The beach, all that fine sand — it got into uncomfortable places, if you see what I mean.

  Mine was the minority view, though. The others were more enthusiastic. The men often enjoyed a game of cricket on the beach, or cards and whisky in the porch of the house. As for Celia, she spent hours lying on the sand willing her skin to brownness — a most bizarre ritual that, Mrs. Livingston! Often she would pose for Cyril’s camera. She wore a bikini, you see, modest by today’s standards but back then, especially on our island, most daring. I have this mental picture, and the actual pictures must exist somewhere, of her on the stump of a coconut tree, sitting back on her folded legs, hands on her hips, thrusting her smile and her breasts towards the camera lens — a kind of Rita Hayworth glamour. She also had a habit of swimming out beyond the breakers. She was proud of her swimming, you see, she had powerful arms.

  I will admit that I did rather enjoy the salt water. I enjoyed taking a dip. But I was never one to romanticize. After all, even the sea — that beautiful Caribbean the tourist people would have us revere — even that sea holds its hazards. Sharks, barracuda. Jellyfish floating about with their tentacles doing nasty things to people’s skin. And once — once, Mrs. Livingston — I saw what that sea could do to the unwary, or the unlucky. A drowning victim had drifted onto the shore. The body was not — How shall I put this? Not complete. Fish had feasted on him, you see …

  My dear, are you in need of something? A cold compress perhaps? You are so wet. Is it the story? I do apologize. I shall spare you the details. It is rather gruesome, I admit.

  We were all affected except my husband. He did not hide his fascination. He even crouched down for a closer look. This was the kind of man he was, you see. He could dissimulate when he needed to, but he didn’t believe in blinking.

 

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