Valmiki's Daughter

by Shani Mootoo

  No matter how much he and Tony suited and cared for each other, Valmiki had been determined to return home and to fall into whatever role was expected of him, or at least to adopt some form of numbing complacency. People talked, and he had heard of others, men he knew, who lived a double life. He didn’t want to be talked of in such a manner.

  In his office now, feeling a flash of fear, he thought of calling Zoraida back and asking which of his women friends was out there, telling her to send the woman in. But he had no heart, or mind, and certainly no body, for that kind of thing right now.

  The times over the past twenty years when he had spoken from Trinidad with Tony on the telephone, Tony had been aloof. He spoke as if with just any old acquaintance, filling in a few well-chosen blanks, no real details. He spoke little of his practice or anything related to medicine that might create camaraderie between him and Valmiki. What he dwelt on was his children, how well they were doing at school, how they were like members of his family or like his wife and her family. Valmiki and Tony’s past together had been erased by Tony. There was no overture, not even nuanced acknowledgement of how close they had been, and Valmiki sensed better than to insert himself. No one would have guessed that Tony was once willing to risk a rather hefty inheritance, his family’s highly respected name in Goa, and his life to be with Valmiki. Valmiki had had much less to lose, his family being well enough off, but with not nearly so much nor such a public presence as Tony’s. But in a place as small as Trinidad, Valmiki was much less ready to risk any of it, and most of all he was not willing to raise the ire of his father or (as he thought he might do with such revelations about himself) kill his mother.

  Once, when student examinations had ended and a two-week break was to start, Valmiki’s father had asked him to return home. Tony asked him, rather, not to go to Trinidad, but to go with him to Tony’s family’s house in Goa. Tony was going to tell his older sister there about their relationship, and get her support. He was going to tell his sister that he had met the person he wanted to spend his life with, break it to her that it was a man, this man from Trinidad, whom he had fallen in love with. It was the true kind of love, Tony wanted to tell her, the kind they had seen in the movies and were brought up to believe was possible. He and she used to come home from a movie and act out the dancing, and they would wish for each other love that was full of passion, integrity, and the will to endure regardless of all obstacles. Tony would tell her, as he always told Valmiki, that he had found it.

  With Tony’s request, Valmiki was faced with the reality of breaking such news to his parents, the seriousness of this thing he was doing with another man, and he began to withdraw from Tony. He told Tony he would think about the request to go to India, but as the holiday drew nearer he began to treat Tony’s persistence like pestering. A fracture, inexplicable and devastating to Tony, began to form between them. Valmiki not only went directly back to Trinidad for those two weeks, he got in touch with Devika Sankarsingh, the pretty daughter of a good family known to his parents. Mr. Sankarsingh was a businessman who gave liberally to charities and wasn’t afraid to spend his money on himself and his family. Valmiki, the doctor-in-the-making, made overtures to Devika and her family, got pleasantly teased by his own extended family, and was treated with the admiration and respect of a boy who was about to embark on the natural journey of a man.

  Left alone one evening with Devika, he did what he had done with no one else but Tony. He had sex with her, cementing, in case of a dip in his courage, his determination to marry her. He meant only to have sex with her. That would have been enough to bind them. He hadn’t expected that one round of it, the first time he had had sex with a woman, would be sufficient for a pregnancy to ensue. It was not until he learned of Devika’s pregnancy that he understood what he had done to himself. All of a sudden, he was to be a married man, a regular man with the usual ordinary expectations imposed on him. He was to be a father. To have a clockwork life. There would be no hard body to butt against. No shared knowledge of a particular touch or wanting. He thought of middle-aged men back home, and saw himself destined to develop a paunch, even shrinking in height as if from a burden on his shoulders, and certainly from one in his heart. He would turn into a man who was dead in spirit but whose physical body was trapped in everyday Trinidadian limbo.

  But in the end, Valmiki felt quite pleased with himself for what he hoped the fact of pregnancy publicly confirmed about him. He ended his relationship with Tony, left the apartment one day when Tony was not there, and even when he heard that Tony had tried to kill himself, he felt there was nothing he could have done differently. In the deepest recesses of his heart and mind he congratulated himself again and again on his astuteness in making sure that he had had sex with that girl back home.

  Six and a half months into married life, the child was born. He had delivered mothers of their babies, and held the minutes-old wriggling things in his arms, but suddenly, in the delivery room as a father rather than a doctor, he was paralyzed. He stood back, transfixed and terrified, staring dumbly at the wrinkled baby covered in a film of grey waxy vernix, eyes scrunched tight as if to refuse final entry into such a situation. Devika’s mother tersely ordered him to touch his child. He awkwardly worked his pinkie into one of her minute fists and she immediately clenched that fist so tight, as if to lock his finger to her — by will or natural reflex it didn’t matter — that she hooked him. He stood there contemplating the strangeness of touching something that was independent of him, yet carried in it, in her, his history, his essence.

  Stubborn and wilful she was from the very first day, his wife complained. But this in itself was enough to further endear this girl to Valmiki. Devika’s mother, in a show of wilfulness of her own, and without consulting the family’s pundit, had named the child Viveka, the union of his and Devika’s names.

  Valmiki never fell in love with Devika, but from the start he was entranced by this daughter.

  Time was the ointment he, Devika, and even Tony far away in Goa, needed. Over time, Valmiki grew to feel something akin to possessiveness — a form of responsibility — for his wife. He thought of this as an aspect of love, the kind that develops in arranged marriages and that enduring marital unions and family life could be made of. Would he say that he loved Devika? He loved his children. Therefore, how could he not love their mother and want the best for her?

  Devika seemed content with the respectability and comfort of being Dr. Valmiki Krishnu’s wife. She and he slept in the same bed, shared children, a bedroom, a house, a life. She was not an unfeeling woman, and she was not unaware. But Valmiki felt her resentment slowly set in. For years, words had remained necessarily unspoken. Finally, with the arrogance of Valmiki’s friendship with this man Saul from “the back of nowhere,” words came to her. At least — she said to him once in the midst of one of their frequent fights — he had the decency to make a public ass of himself fooling around with women. He did not ask her to explain what she meant. And thank God, she continued, he had the good sense to run around with women who were not from their world, their backgrounds, their culture. The potential damage was, to an extent, contained.

  Valmiki felt only the smallest amount of remorse or pity for Devika, as he had realized long ago that he and she used each other to advantage. Wasn’t it the way of the world? People stayed in seemingly unsavoury situations, not because they were trapped there but because they in fact were getting something they needed. It was an exchange.

  And whenever Devika felt the threat that Valmiki’s oddities would become fodder for public ridicule, she threw a party at their house. Let the world come in and see for themselves that she was not suffering, that she had more than most people had. Valmiki didn’t blame her for taking whatever she needed.

  There wasn’t a woman Valmiki had been with who could have satisfied him. He had well-drawn parameters. A married woman was, of course, safest of all, as there were built-in hindrances to continuation for them both. And the married fo
reigner, the white foreigner who had no ties to Trinidad, to whom their Trinidadian and Indian communities had no loyalties, was best of all. Such women served Devika well, they served him well; and he, no ordinary local — a doctor to boot — served them just as well.

  Still, Valmiki did dream. He imagined a time when the two girls would be married off — hopefully not to a man like him. He would not leave Devika. But he imagined coming and going as he wished. Falling in love even. Maintaining his obligation to Devika — there was no question about that, he would do that for her — but loving someone, a man, a man from his own world with whom he would share another life. In Valmiki’s mind, this man had something of a face and a shape — much like Tony’s — but he was always in shadow. There was enough of him, though — the thickness of a man’s body, the muscular hardness, the resistance to Valmiki’s push, something to shove against, a force that could bear a weight. Valmiki just wanted the chance one day to feel something more than obligation. He dreamt of that day, a day he knew would never come.

  As it was, in the present he settled for meaningless flings, his Friday nights here and there with Saul, the occasional Saturday hunting, wrestling a shot animal to the dusty or damp forest ground, he and his Saturday friends blood-stained and sweaty, their hearts thundering in the forests, showing off their manliness to one another — and a night here and there with Saul who was, in the end, not from his world.

  What he wished he could do right now was leave his office and go out with Saul and those fellows and hunt down an animal. Something as big and as small as himself.

  VALMIKI SLUMPED BACK IN HIS WOODEN CHAIR. THE CHAIR CAM-bered back and swung a little. He steadied it. He laced his hands behind his head and tilted to face the ceiling. He closed his eyes.

  Suddenly, Valmiki jumped up from his chair. He rushed to the louvred windows and opened them. It was still raining. That didn’t matter. A soaking wasn’t going to hurt him. It might even help. A cleansing of sorts. He’d never gone into the forest by himself before. He’d make a detour into Fellowship Lands where Saul lived and look for him, but if Saul were at work — a colossal courage washed over him — he knew the paths well enough. With the haste of a doctor in an emergency, he snatched up his car keys, yanked open the door to his office, and, before Zoraida had time to turn her head in his direction, made his way hastily down his private corridor, out the back door of the building, and down the flight of stairs to the underground parking.

  Breathless, Valmiki opened the trunk of the car. The .22 rifle, a pair of binoculars, and the safety-locked metal box that contained, among other paraphernalia, a knife, a coiled length of rope, flashlight, gloves, batteries, and a box of ammunition were there. Neatly folded in a canvas bag was a change of clothing so he could return home not covered in dirt and wildness after a day in the forest. There, too, was a jacket — a plaid long-sleeved flannel one — that was entirely unwearable in Trinidadian weather, but that Vashti had seen in a magazine, and because it looked to her like real hunting gear, mail-ordered from a clearing house in Houston, Texas, for a birthday present. His black rubber boots were also there, and a bird cage, and, just in case, there was a tarp to keep the trunk clean. He got in the driver’s seat and headed directly to Marabella, to Fellowship Lands. He intended this time to shoot and kill something.

  When he reached Saul’s house, Valmiki remained in the car with the window rolled down only a few inches so that he could call out through it. He saw a window closed against the rain at the front of the concrete two-storey house. The curtain parted slightly, but he could not see who was behind it. It fell closed again. He expected Saul, but it was Saul’s wife who came through the front door. Valmiki knew that she was aware of the nature of his relationship with her husband. He wanted to drive off but she had by this time looked over from the veranda at him and tilted up her chin in acknowledgement. She held a thick wad of newspaper over her head and made for the stairway at the side of the house. It was too late to escape.

  He put the window down an inch farther. The rain came in so he leaned away, but in vain.

  “Saul not here. He leave for work six o’clock,” Saul’s wife said. A pause followed. Valmiki shrank from it. She continued, “He working by Mr. Kowlessar new house. They putting in the electrical now. You know where Mr. Kowlessar new house situated?”

  Valmiki wondered if indeed she knew of his and Saul’s relationship. She showed no animosity toward him. And he knew that he couldn’t go to Malcolm Kowlessar’s house. He dared not be seen going there to meet a tradesman, pulling this worker out to go and fritter away a day with him. People would talk. They would wonder if he had lost his mind.

  Valmiki remained silent, and the woman’s manner softened as she continued. “Well, he leave real early to beat the traffic, so he might come home any time now.”

  Having unintentionally involved Saul’s wife in his impudence, Valmiki now lost the feeling of needing to see Saul. Saul might have offered the reassurance and sort of stillness that usually calmed Valmiki. But ultimately, Saul could not really help Valmiki, and Valmiki knew this too well.

  If going into the forest is what he wanted to do, Valmiki could accomplish this by himself. He would drive off immediately.

  But Saul’s wife was saying, “I know about him and you, you know, Doc. I know he real take to you.”

  Valmiki’s face flushed. He stared forward, put his fingers on the key in the ignition. Mrs. Joseph spoke quickly now, undeterred by the rain. “Even though he and me married since we young, and living that long together, we used to be like neighbours to each other. But that was before he and you.”

  A sweat broke over Valmiki’s entire body. Before he and I what? He wanted and didn’t want, at the same time, to know what she was saying. He bit the side of his gum like a child who had no explanation.

  “It used to be that he minding he own business, me minding mine. But he come like a brother to me since.”

  Since. Since what? But Valmiki was glad that she had not said more on this.

  “We don’t have relations, but I have to say what we have is better than that.”

  The rain wetting her dress seemed immaterial to Saul’s wife. Valmiki reached for the ignition, and she put her hands on the glass of the window, hooked the fingers of both hands on its edge. “No, Doc. I did want a chance to tell you I don’t have no bad feelings. Nobody can expect me to feel good as a woman, but I don’t have bad feelings either.” She pointed to the house and quickly returned her hand to grip the window. “You see this? He work hard and with his hard-earned money he buy the house.”

  Valmiki turned and looked at her directly, but when she spoke on he looked away again. “Saul does sleep in one room. I in the next. Why I wouldn’t be a little sorry for myself? But he treat me all right. Doc, we are not rich people. I can’t get up and leave just so. Leave and go where? I have to stay and make do. Saul happy, and I happy for him. It might be a strange thing, but I will say it, I happy for him because he happy and he is my husband. Is only strange if you not in the situation yourself and you watching-judging from outside.”

  There might be some queer openness between Saul and his wife, Valmiki noted, yet not so great a one that Saul would reveal that it was Valmiki who had bought that house. Rather awkwardly he mumbled that it was a slow day in the office, and he had just taken a chance that he might see Saul to talk about some electrical work he had for him. But, he apologized between gritted teeth, he had better get back; he was expecting a full office later in the afternoon.

  He wondered if he should put a stop to this thing with Saul immediately.

  VALMIKI HAD LEFT THE HIGHWAY AND PASSED SEVERAL SMALL SETTLE-ments along the way to the western edges of the Central Range. He arrived in an area of forest he had visited in the past with Saul. Here, the road conditions changed. He pondered all that Mrs. Joseph had just said to him, and wondered too, in his embarrassment, who was the wiser in the degree of their discretion, his wife or this woman? He went along a narrow two-
way road that was thinly paved with a mix heavy in gravel and light in asphalt. If a car were to come from the opposite direction, he or the other driver would have to pull off the pavement, exercising caution not to slip too far down the gully that ran along either side. Arriving alongside a cutlassed path into the forest, Valmiki brought the car to rest on a well-padded section of knot-grass that was usually kept low by hunters for this very purpose. He shut the engine off. A path of dirty grey skylight mirrored the roadway. In an instant, the windows fogged up. He switched back on the ignition and lowered the windows a fraction all around. The glass cleared, but he saw nothing save for a blur of shivering greens and the darkness of the forest magnified.

  The rain tapped relentlessly off the car’s metal and glass, on the asphalt and gravel, off the leaves. The ground was coursed by muddied vein-like rivulets. Even while it rained, birds could be heard chirping in the trees. Caws and squawks in call-and-answer patterns came from all directions. Through the incessant and loud ringing of innumerable cicadas he heard the occasional grunts of howler monkeys. No human sounds could be heard. He mumbled nonsensical sounds just to hear himself.

  This forest was dense and dark enough that at any time of day it offered good hunting opportunities. In the rain the animals would have hunkered down beside the wide trunks of trees, on the inside of one of the wall-like roots of a balata tree, or under the umbrellas of wide-leafed trees. They would be easy prey like that.

  Valmiki hesitated at the rain and mud. Then, with a jolt of determination, he opened the car door, got out, and stood in the rain until he was thoroughly soaked. He went to the trunk and opened it. He unfurled the rifle from its pouch. He licked the trickles on his lips. His own salt had already begun to break through, in spite of the rain washing over him. A grin set on his face.