by Shobhaa De
“Right,” he announced, like he was the convener of a Rotary Club meeting. (I half expected him to add—“the first point on the agenda today,” but he disappointed me.) He pulled out a couple of familiar-looking envelopes from a folder and handed them to me. “Do you want to tell me about these?”
“Where did you find them?”
“That’s hardly important.”
“It is—to me, it is. You’ve been going through my things—my cupboard. The key’s with me—did you break it open? I hate people prying—what a sneaky thing to do.”
“Wait a minute, I asked you a question. I think that is far more important than how I got these letters. Besides, I didn’t break open your cupboard—my mother had the spare key.”
“What the hell was she doing with a spare key to my cupboard? I always knew she was a sneak.”
“Listen, you’d better watch your words. My mother was given the spare keys to all the cupboards in our house as a precaution—just in case we misplaced them. And the only reason she opened your cupboard was to clean it out in your absence and air the warm clothes.”
“Oh, I bet! Like I’m incapable of cleaning out my own cupboard. Tell me another. She was just snooping. She’s always snooping. I’ve heard her pick up the extension in the living room often enough when I’m talking to someone from the bedroom.”
“Thank God she did do that or else we’d never have found these. Don’t bother to explain anything—yes, she has heard you talking to your lover on the phone. But she didn’t tell me earlier hoping you’d be sensible enough to end it on your own. Now the whole thing has gone too far, even for her. She felt she just couldn’t keep it from me any longer.”
“Well, since you already know so much and have obviously read the letters, what’s the purpose of this trip? Have you come all the way just to confront me with the ‘evidence’? It could’ve waited till I got back—would’ve been cheaper too.”
“Don’t worry about the expense. I’m attending to some business here—the fare is taken care of by one of the clients. But that’s really no concern of yours. Let me hear the whole story. Don’t you have anything to say? Is this nonsense going to carry on? I’d like to hear your decision before I leave. And yes—in case you have any plans of staying on, forget them—you’re coming back with me. I’ve told Mother I’m bringing you home.”
“What for? To face a joint inquisition? Does she want to grill me separately? Haul me over the coals? Or am I expected to fall at her feet and beg for mercy?”
“We’ll come to all that later—I’d like to know who this K is. I think I know—though I’d like to hear it from you. But first, I need a drink. Where’s the liquor cabinet, or doesn’t your sister keep any booze in the house?”
“It’s in the drawing room, near the lamp—and while you’re at it, get me one too, I could do with a drink today.”
“Is that also a new development—something K has taught you? So what is it that you drink, rum?”
“You obviously know everything—why do you want me to go into details?”
“I always knew Krish was a lowdown bastard. I’m not surprised at all that he is doing this—but you? And with Krish? Have you lost your mind? That man is not your type. He is a pseudo through and through. He is weak—and he is broke—by your high standards, that is. What do you see in that creep? What about his poor wife? Didn’t you think of her at all? When did all this start—don’t tell me it was that night when he came to our house and drank up all my scotch.” (I felt like putting the record straight on that one but refrained.) “Bastard! Drinks my booze and steals my wife. Lowdown bastard. I’m going to expose him. I’ll fix him. I’ll see to it that he loses his job and is out on the street. I know his MD very well—we are on several club committees together. All it needs is one phone call from me—that’s all. And then we shall see where this Mr. Intellectual goes. He’ll be begging on the streets of Calcutta. I’ll see him in the gutter. He will pay for this. But before that I have to deal with you.”
“Deal with me, indeed.”
“I admire your nerve.The way you are playing the high and mighty role, one would imagine the whole thing was my fault. Just get off your high horse and face life—you aren’t in one of your books now, and I’m not the understanding husband they show in films. I have come here to thrash things out—and I mean business. I’ll get myself a drink. If you want one, you can bloody well fix it yourself. I’m not your goddamned bartender.”
He came back with a tumbler full of whisky. He held a can of Coke in the other hand. “Here. I think you should stick to this. Next you’ll tell me you’ve taken to smoking his brand of stinking cigarettes. God! I just can’t believe how you could have got involved with a man like Krish. He’s scum. Maybe you like scum.”
“I thought you said he was a great guy and that you liked him. If you hadn’t forced him on me this would never have happened.”
“So now you are trying to turn the whole thing around and blame me! I like your cheek. So I am responsible for your affair!!”
“I wouldn’t have met Krish otherwise.You really sold him to me, made me curious. I’d never heard of this man before.”
“All right, now that you have more than heard of him—what do you intend doing?”
“Go to Venice—with him.”
“You must be mad.You think I’m going to sit by and allow you to go to Venice with your boyfriend?”
“Let’s make a deal.”
“A deal?What are you talking about? I haven’t come here to make any bloody deal with you. Get it straight right now—you see him one more time and you’re out of my house—out! I’ve thought over the whole thing carefully. I would’ve thrown you out right now—but I’m prepared to give you one more chance. I’m not a mean man. You’ve been a good wife. I don’t really have any major complaints against you. I’m prepared to cancel this one black mark on your performance record and start with a clean slate. But you have to swear you’ll never see or keep in touch with that man again. I think I’m being more than fair. No other husband would’ve reacted like this—but I said to myself, you are human, you have sinned, but I must be generous and forgive you.”
It was incredible the turn the conversation was taking. And the slight display of anger the husband had shown earlier had disappeared completely. He continued talking. “What do you say—we forget about the whole thing—and go on as before? Tell you what—I’ll take you to Venice. I know you’ve always wanted to go there.” Saying which he lapsed into silence and waited, rolling the cubes of ice in his glass.
“You make me sick,” I said, and I thought he’d topple over with astonishment. “You really make me sick. I think our marriage was over the day our awful honeymoon started.We’ve got nothing going. I don’t love you—never have. As for you—I really don’t know to this day why you chose to marry me. I don’t think you even know who you married.You don’t have a clue what sort of a woman I am. I’m tired of your smugness, your irritating mannerisms, the way you take me for granted and expect me to fall into your overall scheme of things. I really don’t care one way or the other if I ever see you again. So just get off my back.You’ve found out about Krish and me—so fine. Don’t expect me to give you the gory details. And thanks a lot for the Venice offer—but if you don’t mind—I think I’ll pass.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, I don’t wish to discuss my relationship with Krish. And it means that I’m going to Venice on my own. And you can take a jump if it doesn’t suit you.”
“Suit me, huh? A lot of things about you don’t exactly ‘suit me.’ I think I’ve been far too much of a gentleman and kept quiet for too long. My mother used to warn me. She sensed what was going on long ago—ever since you started all your theater rubbish. She noticed all the changes. She’d phone the house in the afternoon to check with the servants and they’d tell her you were out. She asked me a few times if I knew where you were going and like a fool I told her that you had enro
lled yourself in theater classes because you wanted to do something new. She showed me the telephone bills. I don’t know how I didn’t suspect even after that. She asked me whether I was making all those STD calls. But I trusted you so much, it never occurred to me that you were a woman of such low morals. I think it was all your friends, those cheap women, who influenced you. I told my mother when she came to the airport to see me off—it was those women. All of them cheating on their husbands, telling lies, screwing around. And that was the sort of company you kept—you chose to keep. How could you have been any different? I’m cursing myself for being such a fool—but, like I told my mother, these women changed you.You were not like them when we got married, otherwise I would never have married you.”
“What did you know about me then? As much as you know now—nothing. Just nothing. I was another one of your well-calculated deals—though I really never could figure out what there was in it for you in this case. You could easily have grabbed any of the other, far more desirable girls from your own community.Your mother never tires of telling me how many proposals you turned down and how wealthy those other girls were. Maybe you wanted to feel superior.You wouldn’t have felt half as complacent with one of these richie rich girls.You know what your problem is?You never cared to understand me as a woman.”
“If it was as bad as you now make it out to be—why did you get into it. What was in it for you? Security? Luxury? Prestige? Why don’t you be honest and give me an answer to those questions? By having this affair what were you trying to do—I’m sure you weren’t going to leave all this and marry that bloke? He doesn’t have the resources to keep you in the style you’re accustomed to. Be truthful—would you have shacked up with him in some poky little flat filled with cockroaches where you’d have had to get up at six o’clock to fill water? No way.You are a spoiled woman—like your other friends. You women want it both ways—your kicks and your comforts.Well sorry lady, but you married the wrong man in that case.”
Suddenly, he looked vulnerable. I felt sorry for him and surprised at my own aggressiveness. “Let’s not fight,” I urged. “Why don’t we talk about this thing calmly and figure out a sensible solution?”
“What solution are you talking about? I haven’t come here to work out solutions with you. Let me make it very clear—you want out, you’ve got it.”
“I’m not sure I want out—I’m kind of used to you.”
“Ha, if you think I’m going to wait around till you make up your mind—forget it, just forget it. You don’t deserve me and my family. My mother had told me at the very beginning—‘Find out more about this girl and her family. Are they like us? Will they fit in? Will she?’ and I’d given her a guarantee that you would be OK. How wrong I was and how right she’d been!”
“There’s no point in postmortems, I don’t believe in them. Let’s get on with the story. I love this friend of yours, and I want to be with him—in Venice. There is a good chance that I will feel thoroughly disillusioned after that. Maybe he will have some truly foul personal habits that will disenchant me. In which case it will really be A Death in Venice. You know by now that I’m not the flighty sort. I don’t flirt at random like my other friends. I’m steady and grounded. It’s the Taurean in me that’s surfacing these days.Treat this as a short-term mania that will wear itself out—and then we can go back to business as usual.”
“You do overestimate yourself, don’t you? After all this do you imagine you can just stroll back into the house as if nothing’s happened and expect my mother to swallow it.”
“I am not concerned about your mother—she’s not the person I married—though I’m beginning to wonder. I’m talking about us—you and me. I think we are OK. We leave each other alone.You try not to get into my hair and I try not to get into yours.That’s the best possible combination.”
“Since when have you reached this conclusion? I thought you are looking for romance à la films. A white knight on a charger, soppy songs—not that I can picture that selfish bastard doing any of this. If at all, he must be sitting back, expecting you to provide the frills. Which reminds me—how much of my money have you spent on him? That two-bit gigolo—all his life he has lived off women. That’s why he married this girl—not out of love or anything. Has he ever told you that? I’m sure not. Well, I found out a few things before getting here. She’s the only child of a wealthy zamindar.Your Krish lives off her—the car, driver, the holiday home in Kalimpong—do you think he’s paying for all that? Do you even know what kind of a job he’s in? It’s a joke—he’s treated as a joke.What does he do when he gets to the office? Drinks fifty cups of coffee, smokes two hundred cigarettes, makes thirty phone calls, flirts with the secretaries, bullshits around and heads for the club. He gets away with it because he is in a phony business where the likes of him rise to the top on all the hot air they produce. It’s all big talk, nothing else—and like a fool—you fell for it too!”
“Anyway, what’s the point in dissecting him? I don’t think he’s Jean-Paul Sartre. I know he’s a phony—but what to do? I like him. I love him.”
“He’s never going to leave his wife for you. After he chucks you where will you be? You don’t have a job.You can’t support yourself. I’m not going to give you a dime and I don’t think your parents are going to welcome you with open arms. By the way, I went and met them before coming here. I must say their reactions were strange. They didn’t seem to care at all. Any other parents would have been shocked or at least pretend to be. They went on watching television as if I wasn’t there.”
“You shouldn’t have gone to them. They are old people, and you can’t hold them responsible for my life.”
“Well, you should have thought of that before jumping into bed with that bastard.” Abruptly he said, “I’m hungry. Is there anything in the house or am I expected to eat out.”
“I’ll fix you some eggs.” More and more this was beginning to feel like something out of the theater of the absurd. He followed me into the kitchen swirling his ice cubes around and looking at me with his cognac-colored eyes. Incredibly, I wanted to play mother and put my arms around him, saying, “There, there, it’s OK. Mummy will take care of everything.” We sat down at the kitchen table and I invited my sister to join us. She looked at my face anxiously and asked, “Everything OK?”
“I don’t know,” I replied.
After dinner, I asked him, “Do you want me to sleep on the couch or is it OK if we share the bedroom? I won’t bite.” Suddenly I felt very self-conscious changing in front of him or doing any of the things I used to do only a week earlier without even noticing. I felt silly having him watch as I brushed my hair and applied a nourishing night cream on my face. I didn’t like him staring at my silhouette through the flimsy nightie. He had become a stranger overnight—and he sensed it.
“Why are you behaving in such a funny way? As if I’ve never seen you before.”
I didn’t answer but got into bed, taking care to remain on “my side,” and hastily switched off the light.
“Don’t want to read? What’s wrong? Ill or something?”
“Save the sarcasm.You must be tired—why don’t you get some sleep?” And then with a sense of horror I realized the husband was feeling amorous. Perhaps the fact that his wife had taken a lover excited him. It seemed immoral that we should make love under the circumstances, but there was no point in resisting—it would have only consumed more time. And I needed time—to think. How was I going to phone Krish and tell him about the husband’s arrival ? That was the only thought spinning in my mind as the husband went through the motions, grunting whisky fumes into my face and hurting my knees. Before he rolled off and fell asleep, he added, “Your great intellectual can’t even spell. His letters are illiterate.You should present him with a dictionary on his birthday.”
Krish phoned the next morning when the husband was in the bath. I promptly interpreted it as a good omen. I spoke to him on the kitchen phone and turned the TV up to muffle my voice.
“Guess who’s here,” I croaked.
“Who?”
“Your friend.”
“Which one?”
“Black Label.” (We had nicknamed him that in memory of the first night.)
“You’re kidding! What’s he doing there?”
“He has found out about us.”
“Oh hell! What a bore. So what does he want to do? Kill me?”
“No—he wants to take me to Venice.”
“That’s jolly sweet of him! So what do you want to do? Or have you booked your gondola already?”
“Stop being a bitch. I’ve told him I have to see you in Venice.”
“And has he meekly agreed or is he going to join us for a Venetian ménage á trois?”
“I don’t know as yet—he’s in the bath. Give me a number where I can reach you. As of now our Venice plan stands. Don’t you dare chicken out. I’ve got to run now.”
I saw Black Label by the door. He was looking very rested and rather natty in his Benetton T-shirt and faded Kleins.
“Were you talking to the jerk?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell him I was here?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
“OK. I’ve thought about it. I’ve got a proposal for you. Why don’t you and I go to Venice two days before you are scheduled to be there? Then I leave, you stay on—see that creep, and come back to Bombay on your own. But there’s one condition—this has to be a farewell.You will never see him again after this.That’s the deal—and I think it’s a fair one.You get that rat out of your system once and for all—and we will close the chapter.”
“But what will you tell your mother?”
“That’s my problem.Think about it. I’m looking forward toVenice and I’d like to see it with you. Another thing—separate hotels.You stay on in the one I book for us. And that shit can stay wherever he likes. I don’t want you to move in with him or he with you.”