Mistress: A Novel

by Anita Nair

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t you like the earrings?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Why don’t you wear them? They are so valuable and you leave them lying around …’

  You frowned. Your mouth tightened. I knew I had said the wrong thing again. And you said, ‘If they are so valuable, why don’t you put them away? It isn’t as if I asked for them.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ I tried to explain.

  ‘What else did you mean? You are barely back home and you’ve begun treating me like an errant, wayward child already. I don’t need a daddy. I had one.’

  I sit here in my chair looking at you. Again and again. It isn’t only you who have read the poets. I know some poetry, too. Shall I, like Porphyria’s lover, take your braid and wrap it around your neck three times, round and round and round? I wouldn’t want to hurt you. You would feel no pain.

  I would like to kill you. I hate you for what you are doing to me. But how can I? To kill you would be to lose you. That I cannot bear. I cannot let him take you away. I cannot let you go. Nor can I let you do this to me …none of this I can bear.

  I think of the other Radha. The cowherd husband herded his cows while Radha sneaked off to her trysts with Krishna. He seduced her with music and charm. But do you know what happened? Krishna went away. He had so much to do, so many things to accomplish, so many demons to vanquish, and sixteen thousand and more wives to tend to; time had staked its claim on him. But the husband remained. The cowherd husband herding his cows and waiting for Radha to come to her senses, to go back to him.

  Am I to be that husband? Willing to close my eyes, willing to forgive and forget?

  Fear courses through me. What am I to do next?

  I sit here, Radha, looking at you. Again and again. And thus we sit together, fear and I. And all night we have not stirred.

  Radha

  I wake up with a start. I do not know what woke me. A light left burning. A gust of wind. An absence …sit up.

  There is a light in the room. Shyam’s bedside lamp. His side of the bed hasn’t been slept on. I turn my head. Where is he?

  Then I see him, sitting in an armchair. He is sitting facing me. What is he doing watching me sleep?

  I wish he would turn the light off and return to bed. ‘Shyam,’ I begin to call him. Then I pause. Something about him scares me. This is not the Shyam I know. The Shyam who squares his shoulders, sucks in his abdomen, holds his head up pert and straight, and would never be caught like this.

  The man in the chair lies back with his feet splayed out and his abdomen slack and protruding. His hands lie curled in his lap and his head lolls to a side. There is a wet patch on his t-shirt. Saliva had dribbled out of his mouth. He looks like a man whose breath has gone out of him.

  I feel a hand clutch at my heart. Is he all right?

  Then I see his chest rise and fall; a little snore escapes his mouth. And I feel that familiar ire rise. Now what?

  He shifts in the chair. I see the red velvet box in his loosened clasp. I shudder. Those ghastly earrings. They must have cost a great deal. I wish he wouldn’t buy me jewellery. His taste runs to the ornate and florid.

  Rani Oppol would love them. ‘Look at them,’ she would say, holding them up to the light. ‘Such magnificent earrings. You are so lucky to have a husband like Shyam, who thinks of you all the time. In fact, if you ask me, he spoils you. I think mine would remember me only if his food didn’t appear on the table. That’s what I am, his cook and washerwoman.’

  Shyam would be upset if I gave them to her. Or would he? She is his sister after all.

  I touch my ear lobes. My pearl earrings crouch there, almost invisible. I suppose Shyam is trying to make amends for mauling me the night before he left. But it isn’t just that. There is something else. All evening he has watched me. His eyes follow my every gesture, his ears weigh every word.

  Then I know. It hits me in the pit of my stomach. Uncle had been right to warn me. Someone has said something to Shyam. He has heard of Chris and me. A wave of panic engulfs me. What am I going to do?

  Uncle and Maya are away. They have gone on a little jaunt on their own. Uncle wouldn’t tell me where. I wanted to ask him about Maya, but his eyes warned me off: later, later.

  The night they left, Chris came over. ‘Will he mind?’ Chris asked. There was apprehension on his face.

  ‘He knows, Chris. He knows about us,’ I said softly. ‘Uncle never judges anybody. He never does that.’

  ‘That’s because he is scared that his life will be held up for scrutiny if he were to pronounce judgement on others,’ Chris said, examining the interiors of the house.

  I looked up, surprised. ‘Why, you sound like you don’t like him very much.’

  ‘No, I didn’t say that,’ Chris said. ‘How can I dislike him?’ There was a strange expression on his face.

  I didn’t probe. I began making the bed with fresh sheets. ‘He is her lover,’ Chris said.

  ‘Do you think so?’ I paused, stuffing a pillow into its case.

  ‘You can see it. There is a familiarity they share that only lovers have.’

  ‘Do we have it, Chris?’ I asked.

  ‘You should ask your uncle,’ he said. I swallowed my retort. What was wrong with him, I wondered.

  I sat on the bed. He lay beside me. For a moment there was silence. We were a man and wife going to bed. It ought to have made me feel content. Instead, all I felt was awkwardness. Had our passion, our all-consuming passion, dwindled to this? Perhaps Chris thought the same.

  He leapt up from the bed. ‘Let’s sit on the veranda,’ he said. ‘It’s too early to go to bed.’

  We sat there holding hands. He told me of some of his travels. I listened. I told him family stories. He listened. The night lay around us, lovely and dark, shutting out everyone else and gathering us together, closer …

  ‘I think I am beginning to fall in love with you,’ I said.

  He smiled. ‘You do?’

  I waited for him to respond. To tell me what he thought of me. He didn’t. I knew an inkling of disquiet then. But I suppressed my fear. Don’t hurry him, I told myself. He has been single for so long. He is scared of commitment. He feels the way you do. He just won’t say it. Give him time.

  ‘Come,’ he said, and led me into the rain. We walked to the edge of the steps. The drizzle was gentle but steady. He walked into the water and I followed him.

  We were the only two people in the world. Only the rain and the river saw us as we made love and pledged our troth to each other.

  Later, he towelled me dry, and I him. When we went to sleep, we lay in each other’s arms. Lovers, or man and wife. What did it matter? We could be one or the other.

  In the morning, I woke to find him gone. There was a note: I woke at first light and decided to go back to the cottage. I didn’t want anyone to suspect anything. xxx Chris.

  He wouldn’t even write the word love to sign off. I folded the note carefully and thrust it into my purse. It was the first letter he had ever written me.

  I wrapped my arms around my legs and huddled in the bed. Were we to be lovers and no more?

  In the evening, I did not let any of my insecurities reveal themselves. I was beginning to know Chris. I worried that to tell him about this kernel of fear in me would be to put pressure on him.

  Instead, we sat on the steps of the river. I told him what I had planned for the evening. I was going to cook dinner for him. I thrilled at the thought of playing house with him.

  ‘Uncle and Maya will be back tomorrow,’ I said. Let us savour each moment of this precious time together, I meant.

  Chris did his best to imbue our time with pleasure. And love, even if he wouldn’t speak the word.

  When, a little after midnight, the phone rang, I knew it could only be Shyam. It was. I felt uncomfortable, guilty, as I spoke to him, lying there with Chris.

  When I had put the phone down, Chris spoke. ‘Was it him?’
<
br />   ‘Yes,’ I said. For some time now, Chris had stopped mentioning Shyam by name. I turned to look at him. His eyes glittered in the dark.

  ‘This doesn’t feel right, Min-min.’

  ‘What?’ I asked. I was being deliberately obtuse.

  ‘This …’

  I chose to misinterpret him. ‘In the circumstances, this is the only way. I know Uncle’s house is rather primitive, but I can’t spend the night at your cottage and I so wanted this. To sleep in your arms, to wake up to you. Two nights. That’s all we have for now.’

  ‘I know, Min-min,’ he sighed.

  I snuggled up to him.

  Chris said again, ‘I don’t know how to say it, but this doesn’t feel right.’

  I said, ‘I know.’

  ‘I mean, I, in some way, am indebted to him. He’s let me have this cottage for almost nothing. I see that now. I wish I never had accepted his offer. I wish I had found somewhere else to stay. I don’t like feeling beholden and to add to it, I seem to have wrecked your marriage. I feel like I got you into this situation. This horrible messy situation.’

  ‘It has nothing to do with you. My marriage was fractured even before I met you,’ I tried to explain, to drive his discomfiture away.

  ‘How can you say it has nothing to do with me? It has everything to do with my being here …God, what have I done?’

  ‘Please, please,’ I pleaded. ‘Let us not spoil this night. This is all we have.’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder if you really know what we have done.‘His voice was flat. He turned to me and his face was grim. ‘Is this a game, perhaps? Something you need to do to prove a point? To yourself. To your husband.’

  I felt anguish cover me where his body had. How could he even think that?

  ‘Chris, please.’ I felt tears rise. ‘Why are you angry with me? What did I do?’

  ‘How do you think I feel when you speak to your husband while I lie here beside you? I don’t want to be involved in this deception. It makes me feel sordid and responsible.’

  ‘What can I do? You knew I was married. I didn’t spring it on you, all of a sudden. Do you think I like lying, or that I enjoy this deception? It makes me feel sordid, too. It kills me, this guilt over what I am doing to Shyam. He has a very frail sense of dignity and if someone found out about us, he wouldn’t be able to handle it. But …’

  ‘What a bloody mess!’

  I felt my body repel him; all that had been beloved to me until then filled me with dread. I had expected him to hold me and reassure me that while what we were doing was wrong, it was right for us. I had wanted him to say that despite everything, it meant the world to him.

  I felt myself curl into a ball. I realized he was asking me to choose. But it would have to be a choice of my volition, for he would offer me nothing to help me make the choice.

  For so long now, my days have had a sameness. They have stretched vapid and dull, predictable and monotonous. Nothing would ever change, I thought.

  One evening, a girl I knew at college and who now lived in Coimbatore, came visiting unannounced with her husband. They were driving to Wayanad, she said. A kind of second honeymoon, she implied. On a whim, they decided to call on me and see how I was. ‘You look the same,’ she said. ‘Where is your husband?’

  Shyam was out. He should be back any time, I said, and I prayed he wouldn’t return till they had left. I worried what they would make of him.

  I saw the ease that flowed between her and her husband. The casual intimacies of a marriage. He took her hand in his when he talked. She touched his cheek in a casual caress …I looked away. I was glad to see them leave. Any reminders of my past made me realize how drab and barren my life was.

  Then Chris arrived. He took my days and turned them into something else. He gifted me a prism that caught light and threw a spectrum of colours. I saw that even grey could be refracted. Violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red—Chris led me through the hallways of the prism. I followed, uncertain but happy. There was nothing predictable about my life any more. My nerves sang and an iridescence filled me. How could I go back to my grey world after this?

  And yet, as I sit here wondering if I dare to wake Shyam, if I can harden myself to withstand the accusation in his eyes, shrug off my guilt and his anger, I feel a sudden longing for that time when I feared nothing and no one. My grey world was a shroud that kept fear away. I have colour and light now, but at a price.

  There is only one thing to do: brazen it out. If I can persuade Shyam that nothing has changed, I can buy time.

  I need time. I need it more than anything else now. I need time to make Chris understand how much I mean to him. I need time to let Shyam know that I can no longer live with him. That Chris’s arrival has only precipitated my going; I would have gone anyway. When I smash this little world that Shyam and I live in, I will need time to clear the debris.

  I need time. And I fear that I am not going to have enough. Someone will be hurt. Shyam or Chris. How do I choose? What am I going to do?

  I tiptoe into the bathroom. I wash my face and brush my teeth. I unbraid my hair and put on the emerald earrings. Fear clasps itself around my ear lobes.

  Fear makes one do things one would never do otherwise. Fear lets you compromise. Fear will even let you seduce your husband so that he thinks he imagined your transgressions, your betrayal, and that you still are his.

  I walk to where Shyam sits. I trail my fingers through his hair and whisper, ‘Shyam, Shyam …’

  Uncle

  In the car, I take Maya’s hand in mine. ‘So, did you have a good time?’ I rub her hand between mine.

  She smiles. ‘The best!’

  I think of what Radha would say if she knew where we had been. ‘But Uncle, Guruvayur! What were you doing at the temple? I didn’t think either of you was religious. You must be getting old.’

  I chuckle.

  ‘What is so amusing?’ Maya raises her eyebrows.

  ‘I was thinking of Radha’s reaction when I tell her where we have been. She assumes that you and I sneaked off to some romantic place for a passionate reunion.’

  ‘Why would we need to go anywhere else? Your house is in the most romantic spot I have ever seen,’ Maya says, rolling down the car window.

  ‘For you; not for her. She has seen it all her life. But tell me, would you have preferred to go somewhere else?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Maya shakes her head. Then she smiles at me shyly. ‘If we had, would we be man and wife now?’

  I had decided on a whim that we would go to Guruvayur. A friend called to invite me to see the swayamvara sequence from the life of Lord Krishna. ‘My brother is rather concerned that no suitable alliance has come for his daughter and someone told him that organizing a performance of the swayamvaram sequence as an offering at Guruvayur might help. I don’t know if it will, but he has money to spend, and it will be interesting to watch. Why don’t you come if you are free tonight?’

  ‘Would you like to go?’ I asked Maya.

  ‘Will it be good?’

  ‘Krishnattam is supposed to be kathakali’s mother. It will be interesting …’

  Maya likes dance. She will never be able to discuss the finer points of a performance. That needs many years of orientation, but she is a true rasika, a worthy audience who would inspire any artist to greater heights. She is interested, she is involved, and she respects it enough to switch her mobile off, unlike many others I know. As I sat next to her, I saw pleasure animate her face. And I was glad that we had chosen to come.

  When we went back to our hotel, Maya seemed bathed in elation. She couldn’t stop talking about the performance. ‘I never expected it to be so awe-inspiring,’ she said, as we prepared to go to bed.

  I lay in bed, hands crossed beneath my head. Maya combed her hair as she talked.

  ‘The devotees believe that by watching a sequence of krishnattam you are blessed. It is an act of prayer,’ I said, enjoying the sight of her combing her hair, rubbi
ng cream into her skin.

  Maya paused. Dots of cream studded her cheeks. She smiled and said, ‘In which case, I am truly blessed. To see it, and with you by my side.’

  I felt something in me turn. Her smile was suffused with such sweetness.

  ‘We have to wake up early if you want to see the puja at dawn. I prefer to go then, rather than later in the day. The crowds aren’t so dense and it’s peaceful. It makes me feel as though I am truly in God’s home and not in a commercial complex where God is sold,’ I said.

  ‘Do you have a whetting stone to sharpen your tongue every day?’ Maya shook her head.

  The temple corridors were dark. The crowds melted into the shadows and I knew again that sense of serenity, as though I was alone. There was only Krishna, and I. Then I felt Maya touch my elbow. It seemed appropriate that she was here. She, too, belonged.

  We could hear chants of Narayana, Narayana, the devotees’ fervour rising as the doors of the sanctum sanctorum opened and the priests raised the lamp. A fleeting glimpse of the idol’s face and Narayana, Narayana, the God’s name drummed into our ears …

  Amidst such devotion, I felt humbled. Why was it I could never lay my troubles at God’s door? It occurred to me then that arrogance too is a manifestation of fear. To ask God to intervene was to accept that I was incapable of resolving my life …to accept that I was weak. Would I ever learn humility? I didn’t know.

  I turned to look at Maya. Her hands were folded and her eyes were closed. What was she praying for?

  Later, when we had worshipped and breakfasted and time hung on our hands, plentiful and easy, we walked back to the temple. ‘Do you want to buy some knick-knacks?’ I asked her. ‘You can buy Guruvayur pappadum, copper and bronze kitsch, pictures of various gods, devotional music, banana chips, just about anything you fancy … in addition to Guruvayurappan’s blessings.’

  Maya giggled. ‘You really are wicked.’

  ‘No, it’s the truth,’ I said, pointing to the shops that clung to the side of the temple like burrs to a dog’s fur.