Mistress: A Novel

by Anita Nair

  ‘It does,’ I say. ‘You deceived me. I thought we had no secrets. I thought I knew everything about you. What else have you kept from me? Is there a wife, perhaps? A child?’

  I mouth clichés. This is the grand denunciation act.

  He is appalled. ‘You can’t be serious,’ he says.

  ‘Believe me, I am,’ I say. ‘I never want to see you again.’ One more cliché.

  It works. I think of what Shyam once told me: Clichés are clichés because they are true. They are guaranteed to work, no matter how often they have been used before.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ he says.

  I leave the room. I dare not look back.

  One time when were together, Chris took out a metronome. ‘It’s old. I need to wind it like a clock,’ he said and showed me how it worked.

  Then he set it again and said, ‘This is the slowest this metronome can go. Forty oscillations to a minute. We have about eight minutes before it will wind itself down and so that is all we have …three hundred and twenty oscillations. Ready?’ His eyes had glinted and his mouth swooped.

  When the metronome stopped, our rhythm had too, and there was an odd silence. An absence of all movement and time. Everything stopped—the heaving and panting, the moans and sounds that emerged from his throat and mine, the beads of sweat, bodily fluids, skin against skin. It is this silence that resounds in my head. Our need for each other had wound itself out.

  An act of defiance for me; an interesting encounter for him. Loneliness and a funnelling need that had exploded into unbridled passion. That was all it was. And as is the nature of such things, it died as it was born. Abruptly.

  I walk into the reception area. Shyam is in the office. We left home together. When I said I was going with him, he didn’t comment. I was prepared for his anger. His silence terrifies me.

  I go into his office. He looks up from his files. ‘You were with Chris,’ he says. It is a statement, not a question.

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  He continues to look at me. His face doesn’t reveal what he is thinking.

  ‘Shyam,’ I say. ‘I am leaving.’

  ‘Shashi is outside. Send him back,’ he says, turning back to his files.

  ‘Shyam, you don’t understand.’ I shake my head. ‘I am leaving you, Shyam.’

  The pen in his hand falls on the page with a soft plop. ‘I suppose I must be thankful that you had the decency to tell me instead of running away with Chris.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I am not going with Chris.’

  He fiddles with a paperweight. ‘But you are pregnant.’

  I stare at him. How does he know? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Shyam feels compelled to monitor my entire life, including my menstrual periods.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But it makes no difference.’

  ‘A child needs both its father and its mother.’ His voice is quiet.

  ‘I will never deny you your parental rights. You can see the child, spend as much time as you want, but I cannot live with you any more, not even for the child’s sake.’

  ‘The child isn’t mine,’ he says. ‘I can’t father a child. Not unless it is assisted. I am not your child’s father.’

  His words boom inside my head.

  I sit down on the chair. I feel a churning within. What have I done, I think. Why hadn’t it ever occured to me that Shyam could be sterile?

  ‘What can I say?’ I hear myself tell him. ‘I am sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t mean to put you through any of this.’

  ‘Listen,’ I add, ‘I don’t need anything. The house, the business, my property, you can keep all of it.’

  His face is grim. ‘Don’t insult me, Radha.’

  ‘Shyam,’ I say. I reach across to touch his hand.

  He shakes me off. ‘I don’t need anything. I can’t be bought. Your father was the same. He thought he could buy me and now you are doing the same. I am not to be bought. Do you hear me? All I ever wanted was for you to love me.’

  ‘But the house,’ I try again. I know how much he loves the house. I think of what it must have cost him to confess his sterility. I think of the hurt I have caused. I think of him waiting for me to start loving him. I wish to absolve myself of the guilt I feel.

  ‘Yes, the house,’ he cuts in. ‘I’ll send someone to your house to fetch my things.’

  He looks at me. There is sorrow in his eyes. ‘Will this make you happy? To free yourself from my clutches? It suits you to think of me as the uncouth, tyrant husband. Perhaps it is best then that we separate. All I wanted was a chance. I loved you. I loved you more than anything in this world. That was all I hoped for from you. Your love. If I showed you how much I loved you, I thought you would …it doesn’t matter,’ he says, stopping mid-sentence.

  Love me as I need to be loved. He doesn’t say it. But I read it in his voice. In the resignation that is beginning to dawn in his eyes.

  ‘I have left Shyam,’ I say.

  Uncle’s expression is hard to read. ‘So you have decided to go with Chris,’ he says.

  I shake my head. ‘No, Chris and I …’ I am unable to speak the words. Have nothing in common? Have drifted apart? Have severed ties?

  ‘It is over,’ I say.

  Uncle shakes his head. ‘What have you done, Radha? What have you done?’

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘Have you told Chris about the child?’ he asks suddenly. ‘You must.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t want him to know.’

  ‘Why not? He might want to take responsibility for the child if it is his. There are tests to prove paternity, I read somewhere,’ Uncle murmurs.

  ‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘I know who the father of the child is. Chris. Shyam just told me he is sterile.’

  ‘You are being irresponsible. You have left your husband. You don’t want Chris. What do you want?’ Uncle is angry. I have never seen him angry before.

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t. All my life I have stumbled from one thing to another, persuading myself that this is how it should be. I have never behaved as if I have a mind of my own. I have never made a decision. I have let myself be swept along. Isn’t it time I assumed some responsibility for my life?’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I will, one of these days.’

  Shyam

  I let her go because that is what she wants.

  I let her go, knowing that if I didn’t she would leave me anyway.

  I let her go because at that moment I hated her with a savageness that scared me.

  Uncle looks at me. She has been to see him, I realize. He greets me as one would a bereaved man. His silence is weighed with pity.

  ‘What do I do now?’ I ask him.

  ‘Give her time,’ he says.

  I stare at him. Is that the best he can come up with?

  ‘No, Shyam,’ he says. ‘I am not offering you a platitude because I don’t know what else to say. She has to sort herself out. She will. Trust me. She is an intelligent woman and a sensitive one. When she has, she will listen to what you have to say.’

  ‘I thought she would go with him,’ I say. ‘It is his child.’

  Uncle looks at his hands. ‘She hasn’t told him,’ he says. ‘She doesn’t want to.’

  ‘I loved her. I loved her more than I did anything or anyone,’ I tell him.

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘And now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I am not sure any more how I feel. All I can think of is the hurt that courses through me. And the anger. The humiliation, the betrayal, the despair.

  ‘The Sahiv will be leaving tomorrow,’ Unni tells me. ‘His tickets have been confirmed.’

  I nod.

  The night sky is clear. The stars hang low and bright.

  I think of what Rani Oppol would say: ‘You are well rid of her. At least now you can find a girl who is more suited to you, to us …someone who will be a good wife and bear your children.’


  I think of what my employees would say among themselves. “He is well rid of her. She never valued him enough.’

  And I think that I know it is true, but I can’t bear to be parted from Radha.

  I will give Radha the time she wants. I will not force her or ask her for more than she is prepared to give.

  I walk towards the wall that banks the river. A breeze rustles through the leaves. The night is bathed in a bluish haze. I look around and feel a swell of pride again. All this is mine, I think.

  Peace washes over me. All that is lost, I will regain.

  I dial a number on my phone. Padmanabhan’s owner comes on the line. ‘Will you sell Padmanabhan to me?’ I ask.

  I hear him suck in his breath. He doesn’t speak. Then he says, ‘I have a younger elephant. Vasudevan. He is just as handsome.’

  ‘No, I want Padmanabhan,’ I say.

  ‘He is expensive.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I want him.’

  We agree to meet next week to discuss the sale. It is an omen, I tell myself. When I have Padmanabhan, my life will be mine again.

  Uncle

  My fingers tremble as I dial the number. I get a busy signal. I try again. Who are you talking to, Maya?

  I feel an overwhelming urge to talk to her. I want her here beside me. I want her to wrap her arms around me and still my thoughts.

  ‘Radha and Shyam. And Chris,’ I will say. Only Maya will understand how I feel.

  But I get a busy signal again.

  I think of my father in the days after Mani’s death. I had never seen him so distraught. It seemed to me that my father’s will to live had left him. He began to spend more and more time in my house. He would come after I left for the institute and stay there all day. Some days Babu came looking for him. ‘Why don’t you tell us where you are going, Achan?’ he would say angrily. ‘We were worried about you.’

  My father would hang his head like an errant child, guilty and remorseful. ‘I meant to, but I forgot,’ he would say.

  We noticed the change in him. He couldn’t remember what he had eaten for his last meal but he recited whole chunks of the Bible at us as explanation for what he had done or how he felt.

  ‘What is my trespass? What is my sin, that thou hast so hotly pursued after me?’ he asked Babu, reverting for a moment to the thundering old patriarch he had always been.

  Babu shook his head in dismay. ‘What is wrong with Achan?’ he asked.

  A few days later he would be at my doorstep again. The little house by the river exerted a strange fascination for him. ‘It is so peaceful here,’ he would say.

  ‘It is,’ I would agree. The Nila was in full spate and everything was green and soothing.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘This house has no memories for me.

  ‘“When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there and the last state of that man is worse than the first.” It’s from the gospel according to Luke. That is how I feel in that house. Tormented by seven evil spirits.’

  ‘What have I done, Koman?’ He turned to me. ‘What did I do wrong to see my son die? What could be worse than to know that one son of mine slew the other? Who do I grieve for? The dead son, or the living one who must be racked with guilt? It is better for me to die than to live.’

  ‘You surely don’t believe that,’ I said. ‘Babu might have come to hate Mani, but he wouldn’t kill him.’

  ‘I don’t know what to believe any more, Koman. All I know is that my sins must be visiting upon my children. Look at you, look at Babu. None of you seem to have coped with the business of life well. I gave you all that you wanted. I stood by everything you did and let you go your way. And yet, none of you have known what it is to be happy.’

  ‘Why do you say that, Achan?’ I asked. I wasn’t angry at his words but I was perturbed to know he felt such a failure. ‘What we do with our lives is no reflection on you. You can’t live through us. I do not know about Mani or Babu, but I am happy, Achan. I am truly happy. I am not saying that I haven’t known despair or anguish. But I am where I want to be. My art keeps me happy.’

  ‘There is darkness in that house. Too many secrets. I am glad they sent Radha away to boarding school. If she lived here, she too would be tainted by it. I miss my Devayani more than ever now. She alone knew how to calm the restlessness in me. If I were younger, I would go away somewhere. But I am too old to do anything by myself.’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ I asked him.

  ‘I would like to go to Mannapad again,’ he said.

  So we went to Nazareth. I did not know what it was my father sought there, but we hired a taxi and we traced his life there. The new superintendent had heard about my father but didn’t know any of the scandal attached to his name. I began to feel a new respect for my father then. To go back to where he had known both happiness and unhappiness must take a great deal of courage. Where did one source this fortitude to confront one’s past?

  My father was seeking familiar things, traces of the life he had once lived here. He gazed at the cork tree and said, ‘It is still here. Look at it, a foreigner like I was when I first came here.’

  James Raj was dead but his family still owned the house by the sea at Mannapad. One of the sons came with us to the house. ‘We were so happy here at first, Saadiya and I. It was my fault, of course. She was so young and I left her alone far too long. She was lonely. “She is empty, and void and waste: and the heart melteth, and the knees smite together, and much pain in all loins, and the faces of them all gather blackness. Nahum 2.10.”’

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t understand what he was saying. Later that night he told me about my mother. The next day we drove past Arabipatnam. ‘There lives your mother’s family,’ he said. I looked at the gates with interest, but I felt nothing more than curiosity. My mother was Devayani. I had no desire to go looking for a phantom mother.

  A few days after we returned home, my father died. He had said his goodbyes.

  I hear Malini’s squawk, then a low voice.

  I step out. It is Chris. His face is drawn and his eyes are listless. ‘My tickets are confirmed,’ he says.

  ‘When do you go?’ I ask.

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  I wait for him to ask me the question I know he wants to. He doesn’t.

  I sigh. ‘Do you still think that I may be your father?’ I ask him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. He raises his gaze to mine and demands, ‘Are you?’

  ‘No,’ I tell him. ‘Would you have liked that? For me to be your father?’

  He smiles. It is a wry smile.

  I reach across and take his hand in mine. ‘I loved your mother once. I loved Angela as a young man loves a woman. With passion. With an intensity I have never been able to match again. I believe it was the same for her. But that love died. In those last few weeks with her, we barely even touched each other.’

  I see the doubt in his eyes. I think of what I told Radha earlier. ‘If you still don’t believe me, I can do one of those tests they do to establish paternity.’

  He doesn’t say anything.

  He stands up. ‘So this is goodbye then,’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. I feel a sense of loss. I wonder if I should ask him about the book he is supposed to be writing. ‘Tell me,’ I would ask, ‘is there really such a book or was it an excuse to make me talk?’

  I decide against it. I do not want to embarrass him. In these few weeks I have come to feel great affection for him.

  ‘You must send me a copy of the book when it is published. I would like to know how you have portrayed me.’

  He smiles. It is that sweet lopsided smile of his.

  And I think that is how I would like t
o remember him. Chris from across the seas. Chris with the cello. Chris with the smile that caressed my soul. Chris who might have been my son.

  ‘Do you have your tape recorder?’ I ask.

  He pulls it out.

  ‘Leave it here. There is little left to say, but I don’t like leaving stories unfinished. I will have it sent across.’

  I realize then that I will be relieved to see him gone. The sooner he does, the sooner all our lives will fall into place.

  1971 to Now The Manner of the Resurrection

  In the play Kalyanasougandhikam, when Bheema realizes that the old monkey lying across his path is none other Hanuman, his brother, he implores Hanuman to reveal to him the form he took when he flew across the ocean, holding a mountain aloft on his palm. Hanuman tells him, ‘I am not so sure I should. It isn’t a form that is pleasing to the eye or acceptable to the mind. It will not be what you think it will be. You may even be terrified!’

  Chris, that is how I felt as I revealed my past to you. Is this what you expected? Is this what you wanted to hear? I cannot tell you untruths and couch my life with half lies and shadows to make it more agreeable to you. Like Hanuman, I am honour bound to reveal who I was and who I am, so listen:

  I borrowed money from Damu. I would arrange to pay back his father, I said. I left Angela a note. I didn’t know what else to do. There was nothing left to say. We had made a mistake and I was doing what I thought was the only decent thing: severing ties so she could go on with her life. She was handcuffed to my side because she thought she had a moral obligation to be with me.

  As long as I was here, I would be Bahukan. Never her equal, and smouldering with bitterness. Unlike Bahukan, I didn’t have a magic cloth that would retrieve my old self and give me back my pride.

  In the airport, on a whim, I tried Ram Gopal’s number once again. The great man finally came on the phone. ‘Why didn’t you call earlier?’ he said when I said I was on my way home. ‘I am always looking for new talent for my company.’