Mistress: A Novel

by Anita Nair

  The doctor waited for Sethu to respond. ‘Psalms,’ he prodded.

  But Sethu wasn’t listening. All he wanted to do was move on. She was here somewhere, he knew that. ‘Do we go this way?’ he asked, moving towards the common alley.

  ‘No, no,’ the doctor said, trying to hide how vexed he was. What was wrong with Seth, he wondered. ‘We go this way,’ he said, stepping into a narrow alley.

  ‘This is the women’s way. Only women walk this way. As a doctor, I become an asexual being. For now, you are one, too,’ the doctor said, threading his way through what Sethu thought was a maze.

  Even though the doctor had said he shouldn’t, Sethu searched the face of every woman surreptitiously. Was it her? Was it the girl?

  ‘We are to dine at the Haji’s. He lives with his mother and youngest daughter. But before that we must go to Razia’s. She is his second daughter and is eight months pregnant. She has had two miscarriages before and I am not sure I like the way this one is going,’ the doctor said at about six in the evening.

  Sethu wiped his brow. The day had been long and tedious for want of anything to do. All he had done was wait. He felt more trapped than ever. A curious weariness entered him, and a deep loneliness. If she did exist, where was she? Was she someone he had conjured up out of his own need for somebody to touch and hold? For someone to lay his cheek upon and rest his head against?

  My leg felt as if it was on fire. My petticoat brushed against the blisters and every movement was agony. Was this the hell Vaapa talked about?

  There was much hustle and bustle in the kitchen. Zuleika was cooking mutton. And chicken. There was to be rice and idiappams, and rotis made of rice flour. Who was coming, I wondered.

  Zuleika and Ummama darted glances at me as they went past, but they didn’t say anything. Their silence caused me more anguish than the rawness of my wounds.

  I thrust away the plate that Zuleika brought. ‘Come Saadiya, pet, darling,’ she cajoled. ‘Eat something. You haven’t eaten since last night.’ She averted her eyes from mine. ‘Who are you angry with? Me?’

  ‘Talk to me,’ I said. ‘Then I will eat.’

  She sighed. ‘But I am talking to you.’

  ‘No, like you normally do,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean, normally? Listen to this girl, bibi,’ she said. ‘She says we are not talking … That is what she says.’

  That was Ummama’s cue to break her silence. She came towards me. ‘How can we not talk to you, darling child?’

  ‘Are you angry with me?’ I asked.

  She folded me in her arms in reply. The warmth and cooking smells of her embrace, my relief at being included in the circle of her love, made me feel weak. I went limp in her arms.

  They sprinkled water on my face. ‘She’s fainted because she’s hungry,’ Zuleika said.

  ‘Poor thing,’ Ummama murmured.

  ‘My leg,’ I whimpered. ‘It’s on fire.’

  Zuleika raised my petticoat. She sucked in her breath. ‘I don’t like this. What if it gets infected? I wish I hadn’t said anything to you.’

  Ummama peered at my leg. There was guilt in her eyes. ‘Forgive me, my child,’ she wept. ‘I do not know what came over Najib.’

  I said nothing.

  Zuleika wiped a tear and said, ‘Bibi, let the doctor take a look. He will be here soon. He’s gone to see Razia first.’

  Ummama nodded. ‘I will tell Najib that the doctor has to attend to her.’

  Ummama didn’t tell me what she told Vaapa, but just before dinner, when the doctor arrived, she ushered him in.

  ‘Show the doctor your leg,’ she said.

  Doctor Samuel looked at my blisters. ‘Please call my assistant here,’ he said.

  Zuleika and Ummama looked at each other. ‘Can’t we do what is required?’ they asked.

  ‘If you could, would I have asked for him? Please fetch him. This is important. She has second-degree burns,’ the doctor snapped.

  They ushered you in. You whose glance had stoked in me a thousand desires and sucked away all thought of propriety. They ushered you in silently and the doctor said, ‘Seth, I need you to prepare a sterile pad dressing for me.’

  You didn’t raise your eyes from the doctor’s bag. He has tutored you well in our ways, I thought. Suddenly the doctor asked, ‘How did this happen?’

  Vaapa, who had come in just then, said quickly, ‘I think she stepped too close to the wood fire and a burning twig fell on her.’

  The doctor stared at Vaapa and said, ‘If you insist. Though I must tell you that this is the first time I have seen a twig fall so uniformly in three adjacent bars.’

  Vaapa said nothing. And I swallowed my despair. The doctor knew I had been punished, but even he didn’t dare probe any further. Unbidden, I darted a glance at you. You were looking at me. Again that glance.

  Pity. Sorrow. Sympathy. Anger. I saw all that in your glance. And something else.

  I knew a sense of inevitability. The weight of your glance was such.

  The doctor took the pad from Sethu. He cleared his throat and spoke in English. Later you told me what the doctor said. ‘I wonder what the girl did. What could she have done that needed such brutal punishment?’

  Sethu felt rage cloud his eyes. He looked at the old women and the elderly man and said in a voice that bespoke a suppressed rage, ‘I think she took a walk by herself. I saw her for a brief moment by the road yesterday evening. She stood there doing no harm to anyone. Just stood there looking.’

  ‘How do you know it was her?’ the doctor murmured as he applied an ointment very gently over the blistered area.

  ‘I saw her face,’ Sethu said very quietly.

  The doctor was silent. Then he said, ‘My, she is very brave. If they knew that she had shown her face, they would have branded her face as well. As for you, next time you see one of the women in an alley or on the road, for heaven’s sake, remember to turn your face to the wall.’

  Sethu raised his eyes and let them slide towards the girl. They had spoken in English, but on her face was an expression that said she had understood it all.

  Sethu, who seldom took chances in his life, looked into her eyes and said in Tamil, ‘Are you asking me to close my eyes to the beauty of the moon? How can I?’

  The doctor snorted.

  But as all beings who take chances discover, there is a recompense even for being foolhardy. Sethu was rewarded with a faint bloom in her cheeks, a covert smile and a dropping of her eyelids. An acknowledgement of more than just their shared deceit.

  And Sethu felt his senses quicken.

  Who would have thought of Dr Samuel as Kama Deva incarnate? The god of love with his bow of sugarcane, a line of bees for a bowstring, and arrows tipped with the most fragrant of flowers.

  Except that instead of a parrot, Dr Samuel rode a bicycle and had as his attendant nymphs Hope, Faith and Charity.

  But Kama Deva, it is said, chooses the strangest of hiding places. It doesn’t matter how he does what he sets out to do, as long as it is done. And so it happened with Dr Samuel. For only Kama Deva could have made Dr Samuel say, ‘Razia’s baby will need to be born in the hospital. I would suggest that you send her to Nazareth as soon as possible. Rent a house or something. In fact, there is a house near the hospital that is vacant, I hear. I can’t be responsible for her life or her baby’s if she delivers at home.’

  Dr Samuel added as an afterthought, ‘I’ll need to look at her leg. So she might as well as come, too.’

  The Haji didn’t seem happy at the suggestion. But remorse overrode his worry about impropriety. He nodded gravely. ‘I will arrange it. Maybe their aunt or their grandmother could go with them, and I will send Suleiman, my son, as well.’

  The doctor washed his hands in readiness for the meal. He gestured to Sethu to do the same. Sethu wore a faraway look. If he had looked at Saadiya, he would have seen the same expression on her face. It was as though both Sethu and Saadiya knew that what was to happen was
preordained.

  I, Saadiya, good girl, with the purest of Arab blood in my veins, branded by my Vaapa and a glance, lay awake. I did not know what it was that nagged at my flesh so. Was it the imprint of Vaapa’s anger? Or was it your burning gaze? Or was it the thought that in a day or two I was to be allowed to glimpse the world that existed outside the gates of Arabipatnam?

  I was not yet sixteen. How could I have known that the call of the flesh has its price? How could I have known what I was doing? There were seven of us in the horse carriage. Suleiman and the driver in the front, and Zuleika, Ummama, Nadira, Razia and I at the back. Vaapa wanted his women to be together, Zuleika joked. But it was Razia who clamoured for her family to be with her. ‘I want all of you around me. What if I die? Do you want me to go all by myself, as if I were an orphan?’ she wept when Vaapa said, ‘But what is the need for all of you to go to Nazareth?’

  Even when Razia was a baby, Zuleika said, she was the one who wept the loudest. It was as if, when she was only a few seconds old, a farishta had whispered in her ears, ‘Cry hard, little one. I am your guardian angel and I’m telling you this secret that will help you in life. Cry hard and loud. Only babies who scream and rage their protest get fed, so cry, cry, cry when you want your way.’

  So Razia wept and Vaapa who fretted that all this wailing would hasten the baby’s arrival in the wrong way, quickly agreed.

  There was hardly any light or air in the confined space. I felt faint. On the driver’s side was a thick cloth screen that shielded us from him and on the farther side was another thick sheet that hid us from the world. There were peepholes, but after a few minutes of trying to peer through them, I leaned against the side of the carriage and thought that if it weren’t for the rocking of the carriage, I might as well have been at home. I could smell Nadira’s talcum powder, Razia’s attar, Ummama’s odour of mothballs, Zuleika’s sweat and the mustiness of the horse carriage. I willed my churning stomach to settle. How much longer, I wondered.

  Then we were outside the house that Vaapa had rented. Suleiman jumped off the carriage and opened the gate in the high wall. I followed him, drinking in everything I saw around me. How I stared. I couldn’t believe that houses such as this existed. A house that stood by itself. A house that was flanked by land on all sides and had a little path leading from the gate to the front door. A house with windows that could be flung open and a little terrace on the roof with a wall that stood just waist high. The sky over the house had no boundaries. I felt my heart flower. I wanted to spread my arms and gather the world to me.

  Suleiman glanced at the neighbouring house and said, ‘This is right next to the doctor’s house. So we won’t have to worry about prying eyes.’

  I sat on the stone step. Would I see you then? Destiny was dictating the path of my life and there was nothing I could do but follow.

  But soon there was no time to think of destiny or its dictates, for Razia moaned and demanded that she be allowed to lie down.

  Zuleika rushed to the kitchen to light a fire and cook a broth to revive Razia and her unborn child. Ummama lay on a hastily made bed alongside Razia, complaining of pain in her back. Nadira and I worked together quietly. Nadira spoke little. She wasn’t pleased about being dragged from her home. She hated to be away from her husband, unlike Razia who spent more time in Vaapa’s house than in her own.

  When we had unpacked, helped Razia wash, and eaten our dinner, Suleiman said he was going out for a stroll. ‘I miss the sound of the sea,’ he said.

  I bit my lip to stop myself from saying, ‘How easily you speak of missing the sea. Though we live so close to it, we don’t get to see it ever.’

  All the men in Arabipatnam went to the beach every day, like they went to the mosque. It was part of their routine. We were allowed out perhaps once a year. At other times, we knew the sea existed only when the breeze set in at early noon, bringing into our homes a whiff of salt and on hot days a brackish odour, part fish, part decay, part mystery.

  I stood at the window and saw Suleiman pull the door shut in the high wall. I heard him locking the gate. With the key in his pocket, he was assured that his womenfolk were safe. My sisters were talking in low tones. I turned to Ummama and asked, ‘May I go up to the terrace?’

  Ummama looked at me with a worried expression. ‘Saadiya, child, Vaapa …’

  ‘Oh, let her,’ Nadira said. ‘Who is to see her there? There is no one next door but the doctor. What is the harm?’

  ‘Yes, what is the harm?’ Razia said.

  The staircase ran up a side wall outside the house. I went up slowly. The night sky stretched as far as my eyes could see, my mind could imagine. A night sky speckled with a million stars. A breeze blew. Not the sea breeze I knew, robust and brimming with salt. This was a soft breeze laden with the fragrance of jasmine from the doctor’s garden. I turned to the side where the doctor’s house was.

  In the darkness, I saw a glowing tip. It swung in an arc every few seconds. I felt my heart flutter. Then I smiled. This was no imp setting out to do evil as in Vaapa’s stories. This was someone smoking.

  The red tip glowed as the smoker sucked the cigarette. Then slowly, the red tip came closer to the wall.

  ‘Is that you?’ your voice asked.

  I felt my heart singe.

  I fed myself the cast of your features, the length of your body, your loose-limbed gait and the slow radiance of your smile. By day I devoured your line and form and even the blurred outlines of your shadow in the morning sun. And at night, when all I had was your voice that slithered around and over me in coils of forbidden feeling, I let the memory of my daytime marauding feed the hunger to see you.

  Every morning we went, Razia, Nadira, Suleiman and I, to the hospital. There was no need to go every day, but the doctor said the walk was good for her. I insisted, because you were there. ‘No, Razia,’ I would nag. ‘The doctor said if you don’t walk, the baby won’t come out easily and then they might have to cut you open.’

  Razia loved the attention; her greedy little mind demanded more. However, even she wasn’t willing to endure the pain of surgery, notwithstanding all the attention it would fetch her. So she agreed and we went to the hospital, each one of us bearing the weight of our individual lives: Razia her baby; Nadira her resentment and sisterly duty; Suleiman his vexation at having to waste time; and I, only I, bore my burden easily. How could I call this great hope, this sense of expectation, this knowledge that you waited for me, a burden? This was joy; this was even more than Vaapa’s stories had led me to expect.

  Then I would think of Vaapa and this feeling, this great joy would seem like a weight that warned me: Saadiya, good girls know no such feelings. And I would begin to despair. But then I would see you. My incomparable Malik. My sahib. Your lips would part in a slow smile that was only for me, and you would come forward to greet Suleiman and take his hands. And it was I who felt the caress of your skin against mine. You would say, ‘I was wondering where you were …’

  Behind my veil, I would gleam. That first morning, when no one was looking, I dropped a handkerchief that I had spent the previous night embroidering and then held to my cheek all night as I slept. You picked it up and placed it in your pocket. Later, you said that all day you drew it out and breathed deep of my fragrance. And that you slept with it against your cheek. The next day you held it up and said, ‘One of you dropped it here. I kept it so I could give it to you.’

  I rushed forward before anyone else did and stretched out my hand. ‘It’s mine.’

  You gave it to me and even though our fingers didn’t so much as brush each other’s, I felt your fingertips trail my soul.

  That night your voice said, ‘I know your fragrance.’

  I whispered, ‘And I yours.’

  On that little square handkerchief with scalloped edges, our fragrances married and when I held it to my face, I felt a great yearning. For you were my husband and I your wife and this fragment of white cloth our nuptial bed.

&
nbsp; ‘I couldn’t sleep all night thinking of you,’ you said.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep all night thinking of you,’ I said.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ you asked.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I asked. What else could I have said anyway?

  ‘I have never felt this way about anyone,’ you said.

  ‘I have never felt this way about anyone or anything, I said.

  ‘Are you a parrot or what?’ Your voice was querulous.

  I stared at the darkness till I remembered a heroine from Vaapa’s story. It was her words I spoke. ‘I am the mirror of your soul,’ I said. ‘I see all you see. I think your thoughts. I feel as you do. I am you.’

  ‘If this isn’t love, what is?’ you said.

  ‘If this isn’t love, what is,’ I agreed.

  How could I have been certain? I knew nothing of love and life. And yet, I knew. There could be no love like this. How could anyone else know what it is to love, except you and I?

  We created love. We birthed it. We fed it and nurtured it. This was our love. And no one else’s.

  ‘I must go now, my love,’ you said. A voice from the shadows.

  When you were gone, I stood there on the terrace, all by myself, with the wonder of this magnificent love.

  For six days we fanned our love, with words and a thousand sighs. For six nights, you and I bared our souls. For six days your need for me woke a need in me. On the seventh night, when I could bear it no longer, I said, ‘Will you come here?’

  There was a long silence. When I heard no response, I felt a shame like I had never known. I had let you see my hunger and you were disgusted, I thought. I felt tears gather in my eyes and my head lowered with the weight of their salt. When the first drop fell, you caught it in your palm. ‘Why?’ you asked. ‘Why are you crying?’