So, angry? No. I will however admit to an ache in my chest and some thoughts, my dear, properly characterized as bitter. I had known for a while that, for my husband, political promises were like cotton candy — sweet on the tongue, but fleeting, weightless, hardly worth a memory. Now I felt that his personal promises were the same.
No, he got in late, you see, after midnight. I wasn’t about to wait around moping. I watched some television, had a bite to eat. Eventually, as evening came, I got into bed. I was still awake when he came in. He didn’t apologize or anything. He took off his shoes and socks and sat on the bed squeezing his toes and massaging his soles —
It was a way of relaxing, it comforted him somehow.
And he said that he’d got into an interesting discussion with some people from the delegation — he didn’t tell me what it was about, he assumed such things would not be of interest to me — and before he knew it hours had gone by, everyone was hungry and so they headed out to a restaurant, where the discussion continued. I remember him yawning and saying, by way of apology I think, You know how I like a good ol’ talk, Shakti. And that was it. He put on his pyjamas, got into bed and was snoring within seconds —
Me? I was awake for most of the night —
Selfless? Hardly. The way I see it — and it was that night, lying there in the darkness, that I began to see — his political life fed him in a way that he could never allow his personal life to do. It was all-enveloping because he wished it to be. I understood that night that he thought only of himself because that was what his damned sense of mission demanded. The torch, my dear, burned hard and hot within him. It demanded submission.
So I resigned myself to it, and took to spending my time reading and taking taxis to museums — especially to the British Museum, which is a thieve’s palace, but a palace all the same.
16
ON SUMMER WEEKENDS, their suburb brought to mind a community in the aftermath of nuclear alert. The desertion was total save for the occasional cat wandering around in search of adventure, its people off at cottages or on sailboats or enjoying a weekend catching up on the New York shows.
Yasmin had come to view the neighbourhood as a place where people came mainly to sleep — alone, with their spouses, with other people’s spouses — and was helplessly alert to its bedroom noises: snoring, snuffling, the stirrings of insomnia, the guttural whimpering of discreet orgasm.
They were downtown, out at dinner, their daughter at home with a sitter, when Jim first offered the observation that she was somewhat paranoid.
He had had a late meeting with a client and had met her at the studio after the broadcast. She saw from his skittishness that the meeting had gone well. Failure made him quiet; it absorbed his energies in introspection. But there was a celebratory air to him that evening. He had performed well, and wished to extend the mood. He took her to a restaurant where the brightest lights were directed at the paintings on the walls, the rest of the lighting sufficiently subdued that the food, elegantly displayed, acquired the surreptitious look of the avant-garde.
They began with a drink. Jim asked about the show. She said it had gone well, but his agitation would let him probe no further. He related his meeting as if reading from the minutes. She listened, nodding from time to time, murmuring sober encouragement. She knew him. As he spoke, his movements became less abrupt, his words more considered, the retelling relieving him of his tensions; he was like a cat scratching at its post.
Their food arrived. Jim cast a cursory glance at his plate. He would not eat until he had talked himself out, and then he would eat with appetite.
Yasmin weighed her fork in her hand, waiting for a pause that would allow the tines to explore her salad without giving the impression of abandonment. When it came, she let her eyes fall to the plate — and saw what she thought to be a stirring among the lettuce leaves. She bent low over the plate.
What bothered her was not that some insect might have found refuge in her food — the movement, after all, was probably only a trick of too many shadows in too little light — but that Jim would not take her concern seriously. Seeing her attention diverted from his words, he went silent, watching her probe among the vegetables. At her explanation, he hesitated only slightly before saying, “Call the station. Get a crew over here fast.”
Her fork stabbed at the salad, rapping bluntly on the surface of the plate.
“It was a joke, Yas.”
“I know,” she said, without a smile. She ate — but with caution, wincing ever so slightly whenever her teeth crunched through the spine of a lettuce leaf.
Jim, forking linguine into his mouth between gulps of red wine, quickly concluded his story. The mood was lost, and an edge returned to him. It was at this moment, as he pinched the middle from a chunk of bread, that he made his observation.
Yasmin, watching him plaster butter on his bread, mulled over the word. Paranoid. She thought it a curious word for him to use, a word so distant from herself that she could not even take offence. Careful, cautious, prudent, perhaps even suspicious: but she had always thought this one of her better traits.
He said, “You always seem to be looking for the worst in things. But that’s journalism for you, I guess.” His fork gestured at her plate. “A delicious meal — it is delicious, isn’t it? — and you spend ten minutes looking for an insect.”
She reminded him that at university she had spent two winters working part-time in a restaurant. “I’ve seen the kitchens, I’ve seen the way they handle food.” She had never quite lost her distrust of what went on behind the scenes.
“Call it what you want,” he said. “You worry too much.”
“Can we just say I’m skeptical?”
“It’ll do.”
She returned to her salad. Although she was no longer hungry, she cleared her plate of the last morsel, a sliver of carrot she swallowed whole.
17
CYRIL, TOO, HAS showered. He has regained his neatness, smells of fresh talcum powder. A light perspiration glints on his forehead, but his eyes still sparkle. He asks how her shower was and when she assures him that it was fine, says, “Good. Is exhausting sometimes, you know. Having to run from drop to drop.”
He slides his hands into his pockets and with a certain solemnity asks her to bring Ram’s box — as if it had been his possession and not merely his reliquary — to the dining room.
And it is with a suggestion of ceremony — that sense of relish with which people perform ritual they know to be gilded by immemorial repetition — that he places it on the table, invites her to take a seat and seats himself.
Then he takes a breath that he appears to hold and reaches, blind, into the box.
He places the object on her palm. It is of silver, in the shape of a horseshoe, with a flattened middle tapered to rounded ends. A bracelet of some kind, she thinks — but the wrist required to secure it would have to be massive. A charm or a fetish, then.
Cyril, amused, says, “You don’t know what that is, eh?” When she shakes her head, he says, “You probably going to find this kind o’ disgusting. It called a tongue-scraper. An’ is for doing just that.”
“Ah.” With hardly a pause she flips her palm and lets the object fall back into the box.
Cyril laughs. “Back then, brushin’ your teeth wasn’t enough. We had very Indian ideas of cleanliness. But I won’t go into the details.”
Yasmin’s palm stirs above the open box. Her face — and then her open palm held upwards — registers interrogation.
After Ram died, Cyril explains, Penny simply threw in whatever came to hand. “It wasn’t a time for siftin’.” Then he pauses, leans forward, elbows on thighs, palms flush together. “Then I pass by and toss in the tongue-scraper.”
She sees his fingers interlace, sees a tension wrap them tight.
“You know, Yasmin, that tongue-scraper might be the mos’ important thing in there, for me. Tell you why. Is because is the last picture I have of him in my head. Nothing
heroic, nuh. Nothing … ”
He goes still. And then in a voice not of the present, he says, “It was that morning. His last. He was at the sink, the one in the back, nuh. Bending over. I still see him as if it was this morning. Hair wet. Slick back. Head bent low over the sink. Mouth open, tongue hanging out. The scraper. Somehow it seemed more important than all the speeches he ever give. Probably because he always use to say that the one thing politicians must guard against is the unguarded. And I remember him sayin’ he never felt clean until he’d scraped his tongue, that it never seemed to work right until … ” He pauses, passes a finger across his lips. “So that seemed more real to me than anything else. More important.” He gestures towards the box. “So there you have it. The tongue scraper. Scrapin’ away all those old words, all the old promises and the threats, makin’ room for more.”
18
SHE SCREAMED INTO the night with all the clarity of her young voice — a scream, at eighteen months, mindful of terror.
Yasmin felt the scream lift her from the bed, felt it impel her with irresistible force to her daughter’s room. The child screamed again as she gathered her up in her arms: the body trembling, the tiny hands grasping with blind desperation at the folds of her nightgown.
Yasmin held her close, caressing her back, softly calling her name. Ariana. Ariana.
She cried out: Ernie! Bert! Her favourite stuffed toys, but — was she seeking their security, or were they haunting her dreams?
Her eyes opened and Yasmin saw the confusion of an incomplete transition from one world to the other, the world of dreams as real as the world of her mother’s arms.
Then, quickly, the eyes shaped a plaintive and puzzled accusation: Why are you punishing me? they asked.
Unexpectedly the child pressed her tear-stained face to Yasmin’s, then, with deliberation, her lips to her cheek.
Yasmin was startled — and moved.
The kiss was not affection; it was a plea from the depths of nightmare, a gesture that said, You are punishing me but I love you still.
Yasmin felt herself crack.
She said her daughter’s name again, wiped perspiration from the hot forehead, and her touch proved soothing. The trembling stopped. Recognition softened the child’s eyes. Mommy, she said, curling herself more tightly into Yasmin’s tightening embrace.
19
REALLY, MY DEAR, just what kind of a place is this?
They may have no standards beyond the professional — but must they take exception to those of us who understand there is more to life than plastic and Styrofoam?
They insist that I remove the china. I have explained that it is among the finest china in the world, but this has made no impression on them. The barbarian, you see, my dear, is never far from the gates.
You must understand that I tried. I even put up a bit of a fuss. They didn’t like that. They prefer their old people obedient and docile. So they threatened to have me evicted. Well, I marched right up to the office of the Head Hun and as luck would have it ran right into him.
I saw him see me, saw his body express the wish I hadn’t seen him, saw him reach for self-control. He drew himself up, smiled. And I saw him assess me. He saw all that I had seen — only, he went a step further. He assumed — from my race, my age, from my manner of dressing — that I was of limited education and, so, of limited intelligence. I saw he believed he was dealing with a simple granny — much, I imagine, like the one he himself has.
And so I seized the initiative. You, sir, I said rather loudly but with great control, are a bounder! He was taken aback, he didn’t know what to make of that, he may not even have known what a bounder was. But one thing was certain: My speech did not fit the image he had made of me — an image that led him to expect meekness or shrill anger. I saw him falter, saw him realize he would have to deal with me. He wasn’t as canny as he thought. Besides, as you well know, my dear, age brings a kind of liberation — the right to speak one’s mind without fear. It’s a freedom we share with crazy people …
In any case, this young chap invited me into his office. I lost no time in explaining the problem. He was understanding, I’ll say that for him. His breeding showed. But still he would not allow the china. He explained that should an emergency arise, many people would rush into the room with a great deal of equipment. The danger of breakage would be great. Not only would I lose my china, but his staff would run the risk of being cut. This made sense to me, and I agreed to his request to remove my china.
Then he attempted to engage me in conversation. I soon saw that word of my presence here had reached him. He complimented me on what he called my fidelity to you. His staff, he said, were impressed by my coming every day, by my sitting here and talking to you — with you, I corrected him — for hour after hour. And then he said, “But you realize she —”
I cut him off, my dear. His next words were of no interest to me. I thanked him, but refused to discuss you further. He is responsible for ensuring your physical care. He has neither the expertise nor the right to hold opinions beyond that. I stood up and excused myself.
So you see, my dear, when you wake up I shall still serve you tea, just as you like it. Only I fear I have been reduced to Styrofoam.
20
IT IS THE clutch of photographs in his hand, she believes, that prompts Cyril’s question. Shakti, he says, her last days. Was she happy? How did she spend them?
With a friend, Yasmin says, in a private nursing home. Sitting beside her bed talking to her. “Once I went with her to visit Mrs. Livingston. I say visit, but it was more like paying final respects, you know? She was in a deep coma and as I stood there beside her bed, I was almost overwhelmed by a sense of visiting a funeral home. You know what I mean — the silence, the body on display. There was no sense of life in the room. Or it was more that life had been reduced to an idea. I couldn’t stay long, and excused myself.
“Out in the corridor a man approached me. He introduced himself as the director and asked if he could have a word with me. Well, turned out Mom had developed quite the reputation. Seems the nurses had overheard her talking to Mrs. Livingston —”
Cyril says, “I read somewhere that in some places they does play music or TV for people in comas. Just in case, nuh.”
“Yes, but apparently the way Mom spoke, it was as if she was having a conversation with Mrs. Livingston. Not a monologue, if you see what I mean, but a dialogue. It was as if Mrs. Livingston were commenting and asking questions. They were kind of worried. The director wanted to know if Mom was all right, if she usually talked to herself.
“I asked whether she was disrupting the routine. He said no. Was she getting in the way? No. Was she disturbing anyone? No. So what was the problem? There was no problem. Just that, seeing I was there, he thought he’d let me know.
“I thanked him. Then he asked for a phone number where I could be reached, in case there was ever a problem. I gave him my home number.
“As it turned out, they called the number only once. You know. That night — When she — When the conversation stopped.”
“Ahh yes,” Cyril says. “Ahh, yes …” Then: “Shakti wouldn’ have gone quiet-quiet in bed, you know. That wasn’ her way. She was the leas’ predictable person I ever knew.”
21
DEFYING EXPECTATION, BEING an original, was her mother’s way of defeating stereotype, her personal theatre a response to challenge: She would force others to see her image of herself and not their image of her.
Which was why she would sometimes, and for no apparent reason, go to some length to dress a banal thought in linguistic finery. Procrastination, she once said, was the lazy man’s way of getting nowhere — or at least of ensuring that it would take twice the time to get there. And Yasmin thought: A stitch in time, Mom.
Which was why Yasmin remembered the one cliché her mother never sought to adorn: “There are no guarantees in life.” The phrase was, to her mother, a truth so primary it had to be expressed plainly, and s
o innate — its tones as familiar to Yasmin as the sound of her own name — that Yasmin never thought to ask why it should be so.
It was one quiet evening, the lights low, her daughter asleep on her, chest rising and falling in seamless regularity, that she realized the extent to which she had absorbed the phrase. The thought came to her that this closeness was no harbinger of tomorrow. This bond that now seemed so unbreakable could with time become a distance unbridgeable.
No guarantees: Yasmin remained seated there for hours in what felt like a mild paralysis, determined to possess for now this yearning, this ache, this warmth and trust, this utter unconditionality which the future might yet expropriate.
22
FOR MY BIRTHDAY —
April, my dear, you know that — Why, yes, the same day —
Surely I must have. Or I may not have, come to think of it, after all, it’s of no great importance, but it did make things easy when she was growing up. Yasmin and I shared a birthday cake, her candles on one side and mine — a symbolic number, of course — on the other. Now, if you don’t mind …
For my birthday my husband took me to one of London’s fancy restaurants, the name of which escapes me now — not that it matters, you are unlikely to know of it and, besides, it probably no longer exists. In any case, it was one of those places where reservations had to be made weeks in advance, the tablecloth alone probably cost more than my dress, and the waiters seemed to have been spun from silk.
I couldn’t tell you precisely what I ate, but I do remember we all agreed the food was delicious. My husband had invited some people from the delegation — it really couldn’t be helped — so the conversation was lively, if not terribly intimate.
The Worlds Within Her Page 16