Mistress: A Novel

by Anita Nair

  I bite my tongue. I didn’t mean that to slip out.

  ‘So you knew all along and were pretending that you didn’t.’ Her nostrils flare.

  ‘I heard. My employees keep me informed. How else can I run so many business establishments?’

  ‘You disgust me.’ Her voice rises. ‘These are people. Human beings like you and me. But you consider yourself a superior being, don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I snap. ‘It is not about being superior or inferior. You are breaking protocol; you are erasing lines between the employer and the employee. You are negating my position and I cannot allow that.’

  Radha slams the remote control down. ‘You should hear yourself. Allow that! You are a snob, a bloody fucking snob! Fine. I won’t go.’

  She flounces off to the bedroom.

  I continue to sit there. Her rage will settle in a little while, I know. I replace the remote on top of the TV, leave the newspapers by the door so that the maid can put them away and go to our bedroom. The door is latched from within.

  I consider knocking, but don’t. Why should I apologize? I’ve done nothing wrong.

  There is a day bed in the veranda. We have four other bedrooms, each with its own bed made up, but if I use one of them, it will set the servants talking. They might even mention it to Rani Oppol when she gets here. So I lie on the day bed and it occurs to me that once again we have failed to get it right.

  Early in the evening Radha comes to the veranda. Her face is pale but she doesn’t seem angry.

  ‘Do you want your tea served here?’ she asks.

  I get up and stretch. ‘No, I’ll come in.’

  I follow her to the dining room.

  We sip our tea and crunch our Marie biscuits. The arrowroot biscuits are floury in my mouth.

  ‘I am going to see Uncle,’ she says.

  I nod.

  ‘I hope that is not going to undermine your standing in society. Is there anything I can do that won’t? I wanted to teach in one of the primary schools and you said it was too much work for too little money. When I wanted to start a tuition class, you said the same. Then I wanted to start a crèche and you said you didn’t want the house filled with bawling babies. So I thought I would find something else to do which didn’t involve making money, but even that isn’t right. Don’t I have a right to an opinion? I am your wife. Your wife, do you hear me? But you treat me as if I am a kept woman. A bloody mistress to fulfil your sexual needs and with no rights.

  ‘Then your sister comes here and tells me that I am wasting my education and time. What is right? Visits to the beauty parlour and the tailor’s? Washing the leaves of the house plants and dusting the curios? Stopping by at the supermarket and calling on your friends’ wives? They are your friends, not mine. Don’t you see that they bore me? They are small-town people and will always be that, with small minds and even smaller lives … This is not how I expected to live my life. This is not what I want from life, don’t you see?’

  I ignore her. I have heard all this before. Besides, once she’s said it, she usually feels better. I wonder if I should have told her the whole truth. She would have been embarrassed and upset, but her ire wouldn’t have been directed at me. But then, it’s also true that even if the workers had welcomed her presence I wouldn’t have let her continue. I don’t like it, and that’s that.

  ‘I am going back to the resort,’ I say. ‘We’ll leave in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘I prefer to go by myself,’ Radha mutters.

  I plonk my mug down. I have had enough of this. ‘There is no need for two vehicles to go to the same place at the same time. Your family may have left you many things, but they didn’t leave you an oil well. Since I pay for the fuel, I will decide if we need one vehicle or two.’

  She is quiet in the car. I feel petty for what I said, but my head is beginning to throb and I have no energy to play these childish games.

  She comes into the resort with me. I wonder if she will apologize. Or perhaps that is expecting too much. Radha will pretend that all those harsh words were never spoken. I know; this isn’t the first time we have quarrelled. I decide to play along.

  ‘I have been hearing a great deal about rainwater harvesting. So I sent for information. I think we should implement it. The details are here,’ I say, pulling out a file.

  ‘For an acre-sized plot, we need to make a hundred pits, each about three metres by three metres. Which means …’

  I see that Radha isn’t listening. She is standing by the window, looking out. The Sahiv is walking by. Suddenly he turns and sees her. His face lights up. Hers, too.

  And I feel a darkness cloud my eyes.

  Uncle

  Malini barks. I know that squawk-bark of hers; it usually announces someone hovering by the gate. She is as good as a watchdog. ‘Who is there?’ I ask her.

  She barks again. I pause from tying the pumpkin vines in the vegetable patch to look at her. During the afternoon and at night, she lives within the house. I have a little perch rigged for her, on which she sits. The rest of the time, she lives in a cage. It is an enormous cage, but I have heard an occasional comment about how cruel it is to keep birds in a cage. Then I ask the person who made the comment, ‘How different is it from keeping your wife and daughters at home? Isn’t that a cage, too?’

  And he, for it is always a man, would laugh in disbelief. ‘How can you compare the two? Birds are meant to be free.’

  ‘And women are not?’

  ‘Women need to be looked after,’ he would tell me, and his eyes would demand: What do you know about it? You don’t have a wife or children to worry about.

  ‘If you say so.’ I would let it be.

  But Malini, I know, is happy in her cage. I had tried setting her free, but I found her a few days later, nearly dead. She couldn’t survive without me and besides, her family didn’t want her any more. So now she sits in her cage, chattering to the crows.

  She has a repertoire of noises, most of them rude. Barking like a dog when she sees someone by the gate, mewing at dogs instigating trouble, and screeching like a factory siren or emitting a sound like a pistol shot when she sees other parakeets spread themselves on the mango tree by the veranda. Malini, I have discovered, detest most creatures, living or otherwise. She hates even the radio, and screeches and shrieks, making a racket loud enough to drown its sound. She, despite her name, is neither sweet-tempered nor beautiful. Malini is a nasty old moulting bird, but she makes me laugh more than anyone else I know.

  I walk to the end of the vegetable patch and peer over the fence. I stare at the man by the gate. He is of medium height, with a full head of hair and a beard; his jet black hair is without a trace of grey. I feel a smile grow on my face. It is AK. What on earth is he doing here?

  ‘AK?’ I call.

  He smiles and opens the gate. ‘I wasn’t sure if this was your house, but there wasn’t any further to go. Then I heard your dog bark. Does it bite?’

  ‘That’s my dog.’ I point to Malini.

  I know what Malini is poised to do next. When someone walks in through the gate, she shrieks, ‘Kallan! Kondhan!’

  It upsets most visitors to be announced as a burglar, and a moronic one at that. I pretend to be contrite, but mostly I laugh within. ‘The bird is stupid,’ I say half-heartedly.

  Malini cocks her head, stares at them with her beady eyes and retreats into silence. Thereafter, every few minutes, she hops to the end of the perch and says softly, ‘Kallan! Kondhan!’

  My visitors never stay too long, and I have no complaints. Anyway, most of them come asking for a contribution for some worthy cause, as they call it.

  ‘Listen, AK,’ I say quickly. ‘Just ignore her, please. She knows only two words, but they are very rude.’

  AK smiles. ‘She can’t be ruder than some of the art critics I know.’

  I smile back at him with affection. I met AK many years ago at the Music Academy in Madras. I can’t remember who introduced us, but we
had realized right away that we understood each other. AK is an artist. His paintings are filled with light and somewhere I had read that ‘his touch was just as vibrant with sounds’. I do not understand phrases like that, but I know that he views his art as I do mine. That it demands he struggle with it. That he could be a trickster if he wished to be one—someone who fills canvases with a flourish and turns every stroke into a circus that will fetch him the price he demands—and yet, he chooses to ignore such ease of expression only so that he can retain his integrity.

  Malini does her mandatory screeching and then shuts up.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask, curious.

  ‘A wedding in the family. I thought I’d come by and see you.’

  He is examining the plants in my garden. He touches a leaf, bends low and sniffs a flower, caresses the bark of a tree. I smile.

  We walk towards the steps to the river.

  ‘Do you know that your house and mine are on a straight line? Oh, I do know that you can draw a straight line between any two points, but this is almost 180 degrees. Except that my house is further down the river,’ he says suddenly.

  Aashaan would have approved of AK. Like Aashaan, he is not given to premeditated responses or deliberate thoughts.

  ‘Do you want to stay here, or shall I take you to the resort next door? My niece owns it. We can get something to eat …and drink,’ I say, putting a cloth over Malini’s cage. The evening sun would heat up the cage and Malini detests the heat.

  ‘But wait, AK, there is something I want you to see,’ I say. ‘My friend Philip the Englishman sent me photocopies of a few pages of a book he was reading. I thought of you when I was reading them and actually meant to send them to you one of these days.

  ‘These are letters by the artist Pissarro to his son. Listen to this: for an artist should only have his ideal in mind. He lives poorly, yes, but in his misery one hope sustains him, the hope of finding someone who can understand him.’

  I think of the receptions I have attended. I think of a woman I first met at an annual dance event, a few years ago. Every year therafter, she mouthed the same words: ‘Oh, Mr Koman, I have heard so much about you. I have seen all the very big names dance. Birju Maharaj, Alarmel Valli, Mallika Sarukkai, the Dhananjayans, Padma Subramaniam, Kalamandalam Gopi …the entire who’s who of dance. You are the only one I haven’t seen. To see you perform, that is top of my priority list. So when and where will you be performing next?’

  The first time, I told her. The second time as well. Then I realized that it was a pleasantry and no more. Even as she spoke to me, her eyes were searching the little cliques in the reception hall, evaluating which one was worth cultivating.

  She understood nothing of art at all. And it is her I am thinking of as I read aloud a bit I like very much.

  ‘There is more,’ I say. ‘See, then, how stupid the bourgeoisie, the real bourgeoisie have become, step by step they go lower and lower, in a word they are losing all notion of beauty, they are mistaken about everything. When there is something to admire they shout it down, they disapprove! Where there are stupid sentimentalities from which you want to turn with disgust, they jump with joy or swoon.’ You might think things have changed in the last one century; that people have acquired a sensitivity, but wait till we go next door …’

  As we walk past the reception, I spot Chris.

  ‘Who is that?’ AK asks. ‘He is looking at you.’

  I wave. ‘That’s Chris Stewart. He is a travel writer and is researching a book about Kerala in which I figure!’ I raise my eyebrows to suggest what I think of that.

  AK looks amused. ‘Are you afraid he will see more than you want to reveal?’

  I shrug. Having consented to talk about myself, I am not so sure now. I had sent him away yesterday, but I can’t do that every day.

  Chris turns and walks towards us. Then I see Radha. She is standing by the window and soon she, too, is tripping down the steps. Chris stops for Radha. They look at each other. I see their faces glow, warmed by each other’s nearness.

  I saw them two nights ago, sitting on the steps, wrapped up in each other. For a moment I had wondered if I should caution Radha. Don’t, I wanted to tell her. This is happening too fast. Besides, I can see you are thinking forever, and he is thinking here and now. You can’t blame him for that. But it is you who will be hurt … Then I decided not to. Everybody is entitled to making their own mistakes. I couldn’t rob an experience from her even if it was a mistake. Besides, whatever was destined to happen would.

  I hadn’t seen her look as animated as this in a long time. Something that made her so happy surely couldn’t be bad. Even though she was married? So what, I asked myself. When did you start taking such a high moral stance? She was unhappy in her marriage and if she found happiness in adultery, so be it. I realized then that my love for her would let me condone any fault of hers.

  ‘This is AK. He is an artist. He lives in Madras, but is actually from a place nearby called Kudallur,’ I introduce AK to them. I suddenly feel a wave of contentment. I am surrounded by the people I love.

  Love? I catch myself. Do I love Chris? I barely know him. Yet, already I feel a wave of warmth when I see or think of him. I wonder again: Who is he? What is he hiding from me?

  Shyam joins us just then. ‘Hello, hello,’ he says. ‘Who is this? There seems to be a little conference going on.’

  I introduce AK to him. ‘Of course I know of him,’ Shyam says. ‘So AK sir, how is the art world these days? I was reading the other day about the prices Husain fetched at an auction. It must be so encouraging to see modern art being truly appreciated.’

  I nearly laugh out aloud. Shyam knows nothing about art.

  In fact, Shyam would have said the same to just about anybody I introduced him to, substituting art for music or literature or timber or aluminium pipes or glass bangles, depending on what the person did by way of work.

  AK smiles into his beard. He can spot a fake art lover as easily as I can a fake kathakali aficionado. They are everywhere, these vermin lured by what they think are an artist’s achievements. They measure his art by how successful he is. Success as defined by money, awards, and how often newspapers and magazines write about him. They parrot phrases culled from what they’ve read and heard, and nod knowingly about techniques and forms without knowing one from the other. AK and I have seen enough of these creatures to also know that they are usually harmless. Besides, a little lionizing hurts no one …particularly not an artist who has to suffer the public’s opinion of what is essentially a very private world.

  ‘Uncle, what is wrong?’ Shyam asks.

  I shake myself. My eyes tend to glaze over as I retreat into these inner worlds I live in most of the time.

  ‘I see what you mean. This is the person you were referring to, I suppose,’ AK says to me.

  I see the twinkle in his eyes. ‘Yes, now you know …’

  Shyam beams. ‘Would you like to go to the restaurant?’ he asks.

  ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to go to my cottage?’ Chris asks.

  ‘I think the cottage will be better,’ Radha says.

  ‘The cottage,’ I say.

  Shyam scowls, but goes with us.

  When we are seated on the veranda of the cottage, Shyam calls for room service. ‘What would you like to eat? Finger chips? Sandwiches? Or some pakoras? Tea or coffee?’ Shyam is being the genial host, and he doesn’t have to be; my guests are not his. Again I feel ashamed of my earlier speculations about him.

  ‘I was coming over to see you,’ Chris says. ‘I was hoping you would resume …’ He stops abruptly.

  I sigh. I am in two minds. It seems pointless, dredging these memories, and yet when I bring them out to examine them in retrospect and light, I feel as if I am arriving at a point I have never reached before.

  ‘Later,’ I say. ‘Later. Come by tomorrow.’

  Then I see Radha’s face. In Nalacharitam, there is a scene where Damayanti describes her mi
sfortunes to a messenger from her father’s kingdom. She begins from the time her husband decides to play a game of dice with his brother, loses his kingdom and is forced to retreat into the forest, to finally being abandoned by her husband and all the troubles she has to face thereafter. In that scene, Damayanti depicts thirty-three expressions of loss in a few moments. These emotions do not include sorrow, for sorrow is an absolute and the sense of loss fleeting. Radha’s face depicts those thirty-three emotions of loss when she realizes that she doesn’t have an excuse to be with Chris tomorrow. My heart bleeds for her. I decide to set aside my decision to not interfere, to neither aid nor deter, and say, ‘I want you to be there, Radha.’

  She gleams.

  ‘I have to go,’ Shyam says when the food has been served and the steward sent away. ‘Radha, are you coming?’

  ‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘I’ll come home a little later. Don’t worry. I’ll have one of the boys call me an autorickshaw.’

  I don’t understand the inflection on the word autorickshaw, but clearly Shyam does. He stares at her for a moment and says, ‘I’ll send the car back for you.’

  ‘Perhaps you should have gone,’ I say.

  ‘No, for what? To watch more TV? There is nothing for me to do at home,’ she says. The bitterness in her voice startles me.

  Shyam’s going away eases the air. It is as if a yoke has been lifted. Chris and Radha smile at each other. They haven’t exchanged a word yet, but their smiles seem to encompass all the unspoken words and thoughts.

  Then AK asks, ‘So what has Koman been telling you about himself?’

  ‘Would you like to listen?’ Chris asks.

  I frown.

  ‘Do you mind?’ Chris turns to me, realizing that I might not approve of this airing of my life.

  ‘No, play it for him. Then I will tell you some more. It is time you heard about Saadiya and why in the beginning was a ship …’

  Later at night, I can’t sleep. AK left a little while ago. We had returned to my house after dinner. ‘I often think of building a cottage like this on my piece of land,’ he said. ‘But when you are a bachelor, everyone says, come stay with us, why do you need a house of your own? It is not as if you have children who will want to live there. Sometimes I think they are waiting for me to die.’