The adrenalin rush and the tension that braided her insides while she was on camera would be hours dissipating. But by the time she said goodnight and walked to her car, her longing for complexity would have been put away until tomorrow.
28
CYRIL SAYS, “RAM always had lots o’ journalist friends. They were useful — and not too choosy about the facts in those days, either.”
“So what change since?” Ash interjects.
Cyril ignores him. “I mean, we had some fellas — you hand them a story line, anything you want to make up, and by the next morning they have the full story written up as if they gone out and spent the whole night investigating. They quotin’ people left, right and centre. They see this, they see that. And the only time they leave their typewriter is to get a drink or go to the bathroom, you know.” He cocks an eye at Yasmin, and quickly his expression changes from mischievousness to concern. “You all right?” he says.
Yasmin puts down her knife and fork. She is uncomfortably hot. Perspiration trickles down behind her ear, between her breasts. “Yes, I think so. Just need some fresh air.”
Penny says, “Ash, put on the fan.”
Ash goes over to the large floor fan standing in a corner. Its blades whine into a blur, stir heated air at Yasmin.
Penny offers her water glass. “Have a sip,” she says. “It’ll cool you down.”
But the water too is warm, and thick on the tongue. Yasmin’s stomach grows heavy.
Ash says, “Imagine Grandpa used to cut sugar cane in this heat? The years makin’ us softer and softer.”
Cyril says, “I’d like to see you in the middle o’ winter, mister. With icicles hangin’ off every danglin’ part.”
Penny leans in close to Yasmin. “You want to take a little lie-down?”
“Yes, thank you,” Yasmin says, pushing back her chair. Already she can feel the darkness of a deep fatigue crowding her, blossoming in a silence so inert that Penny, Cyril and Ash hardly seem real.
29
YOU BAFFLE ME sometimes, my dear. Are you saying that the numerous Sunday afternoons we have spent watching from my apartment window, you have understood nothing of what you were seeing?
Baseball? Oh no, my dear, that comparison of baseball to cricket is far too simplistic. It’s a bad habit, you know. I had to break my son-in-law of it. Cricket is a highly complex game in a way that baseball is not. One might as well compare plum puddings to hot dogs.
But why in the world would you want me to explain cricket to you?
Oh, you do, do you? A better understanding of me? A curious notion. But then, come to think of it, I’ve always suspected that this country’s outlandish love of hockey reveals a sinister side hidden beneath our placidity …
Well, since you insist. To begin with, there are eleven men per team and two umpires, and when the game belonged to gentlemen everyone dressed in white. Even rolling up the sleeves was frowned upon. From what I see, international teams now dress in the most outlandish of colours, greens and yellows —
But that was not a problem. You knew who your players were, you see. One didn’t need team colours or numbers. In any case, while one team fields, the other bats two at a time, a bats-man at either end of the pitch, which is that strip of denuded ground you’ve seen from the window of my apartment. The object is to defend your wicket — three sticks called stumps, on top of which are balanced two smaller sticks called bails — and to score runs by hitting the ball in such a way that the batsmen have the time to exchange ends. Runs are also scored by hitting the ball along the grass past the fielders so that it rolls beyond the boundary of the field — that counts for four runs — or by hitting what in baseball would be a home run, for six runs. And the batsmen go on hitting the ball and making their runs, all of which are added to the total —
Are you following this, my dear? You look somewhat —
Yes, there are several ways to strike out, only we don’t use that word. A batsman gets out by failing to hit the ball and allowing it to break his stumps. By hitting it into the air and having it caught by a fielder. By using his pads to prevent a ball that would have hit the stumps from doing so — that’s an illegal move called an l.b.w, for leg-before-wicket. Or by failing to reach the opposing wicket before a fielder breaks the stumps. When a batsman is out, the umpire signals by raising a finger at him —
No, not the middle, dear. The index.
So the basic principle, you see, is quite simple. The bowler bowls the ball, the batsman hits it and, if he has the time, exchanges ends of the pitch with the other batsman by running —
No, the other batsman does not hit the ball. He just runs until it is his turn to face —
I-do-not-know-why. The game calls for two batsmen at a time, do you understand? That’s the way it is.
And this — the batting and the scoring and the getting out — goes on until ten of the eleven batsmen are out. It’s really quite simple, you see —
Unfair? What do you mean unfair? To the eleventh batsman? My dear, all I can say is, life is unfair, and so, despite all its rules, is cricket … My, my, what a curious thought —
Yes, there are equivalents, I imagine. Baseball’s fastball becomes fast bowling, curveballs and the like become slow bowling, following the same principle of making the ball move in unexpected ways. Then there are variations such as googlies and yorkers. And of course, it has its dangers. The ball is very hard, you see, and should it hit a batsman in that most tender of spots — Shall we just say, dear, that I suspect many a future family has been prematurely aborted on the playing fields of England …
Naughty of me? My dear, I have witnessed the contortions of players hit in the roots of the family tree. It is not a pretty sight, I assure you.
Yes, it is a complicated game, highly structured, with complex rules and arcane terminology. And yes, I agree, it is a game best understood by those who grew up with it. But insular?
I see what you mean. A world unto itself, in a way that baseball or hockey is not. I will not argue the point. But you think this tells you something about me?
Rules? Rules are boundaries. They shape games and life.
Yes, my dear, my husband did indeed have a powerful personality, and it would have been easy to be swallowed up. But, you know, at a reception one evening in London, I was introduced to a man as the wife of Vernon Ramessar. The fellow said, “I am not interested in the-wife-of,” and walked away. Rude, yes — and I was deeply offended. Until I realized that I myself wasn’t interested in the-wife-of. I don’t know who the man was, but I’ve always been grateful to him for that.
30
WAITERS CAME AND went in the manner of visitant shades, movements governed by a discretion that subdued their presence in the muted light. In a far corner, a middle-aged couple — she in shimmering evening gown, he in black tie — shared a bottle of champagne, their table sufficiently distant that their conversation, animated and happy, came to Yasmin as a pleasant murmur.
Jim held his wine glass up to a wall lamp, twirled it slowly, watched the light leap and shimmy from crenellated crystal to ruby wine and back again.
“Sometimes I dream of orchestrating the stars.”
The glass cool and smooth at her lips: she let a little wine flow into her mouth, felt its liveliness on her tongue.
In a voice softened by wonder, he said, “See how the light moves on the glass? How it surges around the rim, down the stem? See how it shatters and yet remains whole?”
Yasmin watched his fingers caress the glass stem: as if they were seeking to engage the fleeting intimacy of the light.
“Imagine, Yas! A building with that kind of life in it! Light so integral, so innate, that it can’t be separated from the ceiling and the walls. Light that practically inhabits its structure …”
“A pregnancy of light.”
“Exactly.”
Their salads arrived.
Jim’s voice lost its wonder. “We should have had oysters.”
> “You feeling weak?”
“Some oysters contain pearls.”
“Not in restaurants, they don’t.”
He fished suspiciously around his plate, fork poking at the shredded lettuce, diced red pepper, slivers of kiwi and artichoke heart.
“See any pearls?”
“Just looking.”
She smiled at his earnestness, at the deliberation with which he explored the salad.
He said, “There’s a tribe in Borneo or somewhere that believes you can see your future in your food. You try to spot shapes, they’re supposed to mean something.”
“What do you see?”
He poked around more, forking lettuce aside. “Only greenery. And too much dressing.” He gestured helplessly with his fork. “You?”
She shook her head. “I don’t even bother with the fortune cookies in Chinese restaurants.” She picked up her fork. “Do those Borneo tribesmen ever see lottery numbers in their pots?”
“I don’t think they have lotteries in Borneo. They’ve been spared that scam, at least.”
Yasmin turned the salad over with her fork. “I see — well, maybe that’s a car there. A big car. Or, hell, maybe it’s just a piece of artichoke. And there, that’s a —” Her fork fished through lettuce, eased aside a disc of kiwi. And then the tines rose from the bottom of the bowl, and she saw on them a ring of gold, olive oil glistening on its diamond cluster. She held it suspended between them, uncomprehending. Let it slide from the fork onto her linen napkin. Watched the oil flare into the cloth.
Then she saw Jim’s face, more serious than she had ever seen it.
“Hold it up to the light, Yas. Watch it sparkle.”
A mingling of scents in a phosphorescent darkness. Salts, musk: the essential variables.
His heart throbs at her cheek, his fingertips reading, fearful, from her pulse.
Her tongue circles his nipple, heartbeat reverberating into her, through her: a wave of echoes given substance.
Her senses — taste, smell — snake down, across his slow undulation, a crackling expansion of flesh and bone, racing blood. His navel, moist and salty, a nest of startling sensitivities. And lower still, to his erection nodding warm at her cheek.
Her lips brush silk, sighs — his, hers — echoing around her skull as her mouth closes around the rhythms of his passion made flesh.
Stillness. His fingers running through her hair.
And then, limbs in pantomime, rearranging themselves. He hovers above her like a man momentarily bewildered before a feast.
He lowers his face to her back, tongue meandering down her spine, sketching pathways of passion with a rugged reverence.
Querying, cherishing, stirring storms in every pore.
Her body seems no longer her own, captured now by him as his has been by her. Teeth nibble at her skin, warm breath billowing onto her greatest privacy, tongue reaching out and under to her own passion made flesh, liquefying.
A long night skating along a Saturnian ring of ever-flaring intensity: as if this energy could know neither limit nor diminishment.
A night as long as a harbinger of forever, exploring the codes and places of intimacy until exhaustion claims them in the febrile light of dawn.
31
A LIGHT THE yellow of old daffodils seeps through her eyelids, flickers uncertain across her sight.
She wades through senses unanchored in the larger darkness. Odours unfamiliar: dust not her own, a moistness of musty earth.
When the light grows steady, she lets her eyes open to a prickle of alarm.
“M’um send me, miss, The ele’tricity gone. She din’t want you to wakin’ up in the dark.”
“Amie.”
In her hand is a candle planted crooked in a brass candlestick.
Yasmin sits up in the bed. “How long have I been asleep?”
“A long time, miss. Is evenin’ a’ready.”
She tries to read her watch, but the light is insufficient.
“You feelin’ like drinkin’ something? Tea maybe?”
“Tea. Yes, that sounds good.”
Amie places the candle on a dresser, turns to go.
“But Amie, the hydro’s gone, how are you going to boil the water?”
“Gas stove, miss. We use to this.”
Yasmin leans back on the headboard of the bed, draws her knees up. How long, she wonders uneasily, was Amie there before she woke up — just standing there watching her sleep?
32
CHARLOTTE GLANCED AT the receipt, smiled at Yasmin, folded it into her purse. Then she slipped a large tip under the ashtray and waved at the waiters standing in a white-shirted, black bow-tied frieze at the bar.
Outside, the street slumbered through a mid-afternoon lull. Perhaps it was the sunshine thickened in the muggy air, or perhaps the third glass of wine the waiter, appreciative of Charlotte’s flirtations, had offered free of charge: to Yasmin, even the streetcars rumbled by on velvet.
Charlotte said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you — you notice how Jim walks?”
“You mean the forty-five-degree-angle feet?”
“Exactly. As if he’s trying to walk off to the left and right at the same time.”
“I know.”
“And?”
Yasmin shrugged. Jim’s feet, the manner in which they fell, were to her his engaging flaw, suggesting to Yasmin aspects of his past and his personality that would always be unknowable.
Charlotte, forehead furrowed above her sunglasses, gave her a glance of exaggerated concern. “So, Yas. You’re really going to do this, eh? Join in holy matrimony? Tie the knot?”
Yasmin eased her gaze away: to tables of knitted hats, jewellery of stone and plastic, suns and stars tie-dyed onto T-shirts: the leisurely aspirations of sidewalk commerce. She made Charlotte wait for her response — herself waiting for Charlotte’s response to her silence, for the expected quip that this time was so slow in coming.
Finally Charlotte said, “Guess we won’t be closing any more bars.”
“Guess not,” Yasmin shrugged.
“So why, Yas? Why are you marrying him?”
“I love him, Charlotte.”
“Yas, those feet …”
“Exactly. Those feet. And those hands, and those arms that seem to gather me up. And these dreams he has of playing with light, of all things. He’s like a kid who wants to make whole worlds out of playdough. I’ve never met anyone like him, Charlotte, yet I feel I’ve known him all my life.” Yasmin paused, breathless before the mystery.
Charlotte said, “Should I warn Jim?”
“About?”
“You and men. And that little fridge you’ve got somewhere around your left ventricle that switches on when they start not measuring up.”
“Aren’t you laying it on a little thick?”
“Am I?”
“I expect a lot. So what? Besides, Jim’s up to it.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I just am.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve heard that.”
“That’s why I know I’m right this time.”
Charlotte took her arm, faced her squarely. “All right, Yas, I’m with you. Just promise me — keep an eye on the little fridge, okay?”
Yasmin pressed a finger to her nose. “Click,” she said.
Charlotte, smiling thinly, gave a sad little twist of her head. A minute later, she said plaintively: “Who’s going to play with me now?”
Irritated by the question, Yasmin said, “Charlotte, that tip — it was too much.”
Charlotte paused, jabbed her sunglasses higher onto her nose. “You’ve never been very good at being single.”
Yasmin stopped, turned to face her. In a voice composed enough to ease the hurt, she said, “You’re right.”
33
HAD CHARLOTTE SERVED her this cake …
But then, Charlotte would never have dared.
Had her mother served her the cake, a reaction of theatr
ical horror would have been acceptable.
But unfamiliarity, she thinks, imposes obligation: her mother’s view now become her own.
Under Amie’s unsettling gaze, she forks a notch of the cake — yellow fringed in pink — into her mouth. Her tongue goes limp at its dissolution into oil and sugar and a desiccated mealiness. She follows quickly, too quickly, perhaps, with a sip of the tea.
Amie says, “It good, eh, miss?”
“Yes,” Yasmin replies. “It is.” She keeps to herself that she is speaking of the tea and not of the cake. She resists the temptation to ask who is responsible.
“Is Mr. Cyril who make it,” Amie volunteers. “Don’t forget to tell him, okay? He tryin’ hard.”
Yasmin smiles. “D’you think we should be encouraging him, Amie?”
Amie purses her lips, shakes her head slowly, like a mother too tickled to be disapproving of her child’s mischievousness. “Mr. Cyril that way, miss. He like doin’ things with his hands, nuh. He always out in the backyard diggin’ and hoein’, tryin’ to grow cabbage and lettuce and tomato. Now he spendin’ time in the kitchen. But you know —”
The lights flash back on, and in the sudden illumination Amie falls silent. She retreats visibly into herself, her hand reaching back, as if in blind search of the open door. She tells Yasmin that Mr. Cyril says he will drive her back to the hotel when she is ready. She leaves the room without a further word.
On the dresser, the candle continues burning a steady flame.
34
EVEN THOUGH SUNLIGHT flooded the apartment, Jim insisted on lighting candles. Then he signalled for the music, and the opening notes banished the rumble of conversation.
To marry to the sounds of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was his decision — more befitting the occasion, they had both thought, than Charlotte’s suggestion of the 1812 Overture.
The Worlds Within Her Page 10