by Shani Mootoo
Anick pouted. “What do you think I will do? Can’t I give you a hug? People hug in this country. I know this.”
“Yes, yes. I know. I’m really glad to see you — you can’t imagine.” Viveka’s tone was pleading. “It’s just odd here.” Then she brightened, “Besides, I am disgusting. I am completely drenched in sweat.”
“That doesn’t matter to me, you know that.”
“But it has to matter, Anick. Just trust me. My God, it’s way too hot for humans, don’t you think? Hey, I thought you’d never arrive. Ca va?”
“The driver came for me late. Sorry. Is better than nothing, no?”
Viveka leaned forward to glimpse Anick’s feet. Anick wore open-toe sandals with little heels on them, and her nails were painted a bright red shade. Viveka looked back up and fixed her eyes on her team directly ahead, but out of the corner of her eye she was concentrating on her own left foot and Anick’s right. Centimetre by centimetre she swung the tip of her sneaker toward Anick’s sandal-clad right foot. When the edge of her shoe met the hard leather of Anick’s sandal she exerted enough force to move Anick’s foot a fraction. Anick stiffened her leg and slid her foot closer, so that the area from her ankle down the edge of her foot pressed against Viveka’s. Viveka’s eyes were riveted now on the court. The light in the sky seemed to dim, the drumming was silenced by a louder reverberation throughout her body. She stared ahead, grinning.
There came quickly, however, the familiar moment when each other’s company was not enough. What kind of conversation does one have, Viveka mused, what kind of communication, when time is limited and the exact moment of its ending is unknown, yet forever imminent? Viveka decided to bring that moment into focus. “Nayan, sait-il ou tu est?”
“No. He thinks I went to the grocery, so I can’t stay very long.” With that, Viveka switched to English. “Christ. We’re both going to get into so much trouble.” She laughed nervously.
“Let’s go away, Vik. Let’s leave this place.”
Over the past couple of weeks, every conversation between them had deteriorated faster than the last into recognition of the difficulty of this love between them and the need, growing ever more urgent daily, to do something about it. Anick had spoken again and again of wanting to return, with Viveka, to Canada — either to Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver — where there were thriving communities of people like the two of them. There, she said, they could disappear if they wanted to, and reinvent themselves. But it never seemed to Viveka as easy to deal with as it did to Anick.
“How far is away, Anick? We’ll never get far enough away. You know Nayan will find you wherever you go, easily, and even if I leave this place my own parents will still suffer publicly and privately because of what I am. Going away won’t solve a thing for us.”
“But you’re not yourself in this place. You’re so jumpy.”
“You’ve never seen me anywhere else! Why do you think I’m not myself here?”
“I know what you’re like when you’re alone with me.”
The conversation was interrupted by someone higher up in the stands, calling out Viveka’s name. Anick and Viveka both turned, Viveka’s heart suddenly racing. Then relief flooded her. It was only Wayne’s cousin, Trevor. She wondered how long he had been up there.
“It’s that guy. Trevor. Remember I told you about him? Helen’s boyfriend’s cousin?”
Anick huffed. “The one you said is interested in you.”
Helen had told Viveka that Trevor was asking after her, and Viveka had twisted this information into a white lie for Anick’s benefit, a lie meant only to provoke the delight of a little jealousy. She had said it to Anick in a moment when she had felt a little ungainly, a moment when the boy who would usually rear up so handsomely out of her felt weak and not forthcoming.
“Oh, come on. I don’t think he is really interested. In any case, if that were so, he would be so barking up the wrong tree! I am already taken, aren’t I?” Viveka was grinning.
Anick was not. “He flatter you and you like it.”
“Shh, Anick. Don’t make a scene. This is uncomfortable.”
“Don’t make a scene? So that’s it, I guess. Our visit is over, then?”
Viveka was as disappointed as Anick by this turn of events, but her disappointment was eclipsed by the more dire realization that, unknown to them, Trevor had likely been watching them for as long as they had been together. She quickly scanned her memory of the past five minutes, which seemed now interminably long, wondering if there had been any incriminating interaction between her and Anick. Anick arched her back and pulled her bony shoulders in, as if folding herself in two lengthwise. She clutched in both hands the tube she had made out of the magazine. Her knuckles protruded hard and had lost colour.
Viveka stood up to distance herself from Anick, and waved Trevor down toward them. Anick stood, too. She faced Viveka squarely, jabbed the magazine into Viveka’s chest and blurted, “Did you know he was going to be here?”
Viveka took a small step backwards. It was in moments like these that she wished she could speak French flawlessly. And it was in these moments, too, that she wouldn’t dare try. Her body ignited with the feeling that she had been sorely misunderstood. Anick’s accusation caused her to feel a physical, piercing sensation of injustice. She managed to say calmly, honestly, that she had had no idea Trevor would be here.
Anick lost her composure. “You are going to go out with him. You will go for drinks with him soon. I just know it. Mais, pour-quoi pas? C’est facile, ca, eh?”
“Stop, Anick, stop. Don’t do this. I spent the whole time on the court waiting, looking for you.”
“You are worried about how much trouble we are going to get into. I don’t care, Vik. Don’t you understand? I don’t give a shit — I don’t give a lonely little piece of shit. I just want . . .” She stared into Viveka’s eyes as if she were boring the end of that sentence into Viveka’s brain. Then her shoulders slumped and she looked utterly dejected.
Viveka felt as if her insides were collapsing. A lonely little piece of shit. How like Anick to mix up her words when she was distraught. Yet in mixing them up, she expressed so much. Viveka pulled her lower lip into her mouth and locked it tight between her teeth. Her entire body, every place that Anick had ever touched, was aching to hold Anick down, or tight, or just hold on to her. But Viveka’s mind steeled itself. There mustn’t be a scene. Not ever, and especially not now.
Just before Trevor reached them, Anick uttered in exasperation, “My God, Viveka, you can be so fucking cold.”
Viveka had never heard Anick use this expletive before, and again she felt a searing sensation deep inside. Anick sidestepped Viveka and quickly edged her way out of the row of seats. She vaulted down the last few tiers of bleachers. Perhaps she heard Trevor’s voice rise over the competing noise of the drummers: “Well, yes. Hello, there. I was looking forward to . . . oh, who am I kidding — I was praying, I’ll admit it, that I’d see you this evening. So, did I chase away your friend?”
As she and Trevor chatted for some long minutes, Viveka tried not to show her heartache. She noted, with only a little pleasure, that Trevor remained focused on her and showed no interest in her beautiful friend.
THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY MORNING, VIVEKA WOKE LATE. SHE WAS alone at home. There was an oddly amicable note on the table from her mother.
“We went to the Mall. There is roti and pumpkin in the oven. Heat it up. We’ll be back before lunch — about two-ish. Enjoy. Mum.”
Viveka frowned. Whatever had overcome her mother? Why would she tell Viveka to heat up her food as if she were an imbecile?
She sat in front of the television with her plate of lukewarm roti and pumpkin, wondering what Nayan was doing at that moment, and if Anick would be able to telephone her. The phone rang, and having just had that thought, she knew in her heart that the universe was on her side. She plopped her plate down and raced to answer it.
But it was Trevor. He wasted no time.
“I have a proposal. I was hoping that you might give me a tour of the town this evening. How about dinner first, and a drive later?”
When Viveka hesitated, Trevor added, “I called earlier for you. Your father answered, and since you weren’t able to come to the phone, I decided to ask him if I might take you out.”
“You what! That was pretty bold of you!” The oddness of the note from her mother now made sense.
“It was, wasn’t it! Your mother said she was going out, but that if you wanted to see me, it was alright with her.”
“I thought you said you spoke with my father. You spoke with them both? I’m sorry that you did so before asking me!”
“Yes, but I know what it’s like here. My own father was an old-fashioned Indian man through and through when it came to his daughters. I imagined yours to be no different. Your father put me on hold — he said he had to check with the boss. I could hear your parents talking. I had to wait for about three minutes. No kidding. I thought he had forgotten about me. Then your mother came on the phone and asked if I knew where we were going for dinner, and she made some suggestions. So if you can’t come up with a place I have a list from her. Are you free tonight?”
Viveka was livid. In her best tone of civility she said, “Ah, so finally I have a say in this. But I am not free tonight.”
Trevor made a show of having correctly anticipated her response, one of disappointment, and ended with a promise to call again.
When they returned home, Viveka’s parents had an air of controlled excitement about them. They hovered about her, trying to make conversation with her, but didn’t bring up Trevor and neither did Viveka.
And later, as Valmiki, Devika and Vashti napped, heat sapping everyone’s energy, Viveka and Anick clung to each other’s voices and stories via the telephone, their painful words to each other at the volleyball game earlier that week forgotten.
Devika and Valmiki
IN DEVIKA’S EYES, VIVEKA HAD BEGUN TO DRESS EXACTLY LIKE THE person she kept hoping her daughter would not turn into. With no discussion, let alone permission, Viveka cut her hair short. Her parents were irked, yet curious in spite of themselves. Now Devika, too, saw the ghost of Anand in their daughter.
Anick Prakash visited Viveka at the Krishnu house often these days, but usually when Valmiki was at work and Devika out at a luncheon or appointment. Devika bristled the few times she saw them together on the patio, or down by the garden railing, leaning against it, oddly close to one another, a quiet between them that made them seem closer than was to her mind and good taste natural. She watched, horrified and at the same time mesmerized. They were an odd pair indeed, these two young women, listening to classical music, engaged by talk of novels, ideas, and theories Devika had no interest in, speaking unabashedly like ten-year-olds in their ridiculous gibberish of French and English.
Viveka also went twice, sometimes three times, a week to Rio Claro. One morning, Devika could contain her disapproval no longer. She called Valmiki at his office to complain that Viveka had yet again asked her at breakfast if it was alright to take the car and go out with Anick, this time to a lecture on the calypso as a socio-political medium. At this last, Devika shouted, “What the hell do you all think I am? A fool?”
Valmiki ignored the question and simply asked what she had said to Viveka. Devika replied: I told Viveka that she was going out too often. That Anick was a married woman. That their friendship was strange. It was unnatural. That if she wasn’t careful, didn’t put a stop to this nonsense right away, there would be a scandal. Single women should not have married women as friends. Marriages broke up because of that sort of thing. And the single woman was always blamed. Devika began to cry on the phone. “It is you who is to blame. You know damn well that you are the one who has brought this on us.”
The words “What the hell do you mean by that?” sprang instinctively to Valmiki’s mind, but he knew better than to ask: he did not want an answer. Neither of them would have had the vocabulary for the ensuing conversation.
“You and your daughter are going to ruin us,” Devika carried on. “How dare you do this to me? You should not have returned here after you finished medical school. You knew even then, didn’t you, you knew that you were . . .” But she couldn’t finish.
Valmiki wanted to retort, “You knew about me too, and you stayed with me.” But that one ill-advised comeback would have led to verbalized confessions and regretted accusations and a conversation he imagined only too well: So, what are you saying? Devika would ask. That I shouldn’t have? And he: You knew who and what I was, but it served you well to stay, you have not wanted for anything materially. And then she: I didn’t know when I let you touch me before we were married. And I didn’t know when I married you, but you did. You knew very well what you were doing. And you lied when you didn’t tell me . . . I wanted a man to love me, a real man.
That sort of conversation he needed to avoid. How would he and Devika carry on after that? He could never leave his two daughters. The scandal would ruin all four.
To avoid all of this he remained silent, a profound silence which, to Devika’s mind, was an admission of all she herself had no language for.
But admission, silent or explicit, was not what Devika wanted. The impossible — a reversal of time, a whole other life — is what she so deeply, deeply wanted. How clichéd to wish to close one’s eyes, and on opening them again find that the life before had only been a bad dream. But it was all she had, such clichéd wishing. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, she snapped, “Why the hell don’t you take responsibility and talk to your god-damned daughter?”
He didn’t know how to talk to her anymore, Valmiki muttered, and Devika was about to begin again — Valmiki detected the beginnings of another controlled explosion. He wanted to tell Devika that he couldn’t have this conversation right now; he had patients waiting to see him. But she just carried on and he was overcome by the familiar weariness that welled up in him at the onset of quarrels with Devika. She had a tone that made him want to slam the receiver down, the door shut, his fist on the table, but he never did any of those.
It had always, always, always been left to her — now she was . . . what was that tone . . . screeching — to discipline the children because he didn’t want to alienate them and he always had to be the good one, and she was left to be the nasty parent. Or so she would accuse him.
Valmiki had stopped listening.
Really, he asked himself, what the hell was Viveka doing? He hated the question, for he knew the answer. She was beginning to live the life he had made choices to avoid. It was his doing. His fault. But how dare she? How dare she think only of herself. Had she no good sense after all? No sense of loyalty — if not loyalty, then responsibility — to her family, to society? To him? And why wouldn’t she have loyalty? They, he and she, had their differences, but those differences were their thing, their special thing they shared with each other to bond. There was no small love between them. Had she no discretion?
Defeated, Valmiki whispered into the phone, I have patients waiting, I can’t do this anymore. Devika was answering back, Can’t do what anymore? Are you threatening me? as he quietly rested the phone back on the cradle.
Viveka and Valmiki
IN MID-JUNE, MINTY CALLED TO SPEAK WITH DEVIKA. IN A WEEK’S time, she and Ram were hosting an anniversary celebration luncheon for Anick and Nayan. It was late notice, she apologized, but those two couldn’t make up their minds, as usual, about anything. The party would be held at Chayu and the entire Krishnu family was invited.
It was almost midnight when Viveka was finally alone and could telephone Anick. She knew that if Nayan were at home he would be asleep by now, and he slept so soundly that the ring of the telephone would not awaken him. She quickly let Anick know that she was perplexed to hear there would be a celebration of the marriage, and that Anick dared to allow her in-laws to invite her, Viveka, to witness such an event.
Anick insisted that it ha
d been Ram’s and Minty’s idea. She had begged Nayan not to allow it, but he wanted the party. He and she had fought over it, but winning an argument with her had become more important to him than the party itself, and he won. He won because she couldn’t fight him in a language that was not her own, in a country where she herself had no one but him — and Viveka, she quickly added.
Numerous times in the past Viveka had asked Anick why, if she really didn’t like being with Nayan, she continued to stay in that marriage. And each time, Viveka had received a slightly different answer from the time before, as if Anick herself were trying to figure out the answer. She had offered once that she had always been an accessory for anyone who loved her. Everyone — men or women — fell in love not with her, but with what they called her “beauty.” They wanted to be seen with her. They were in love with themselves, Anick theorized. With Nayan it was different. His foreignness and the differences between them were a gulf she felt would never be bridged, and because of this, she might be able to maintain her independence. She did not have a profession and barely spoke English, and so she felt insecure. And because she was on her own and naive, and Nayan wanted so much to give her everything, she just, she had to admit, betrayed herself.
Anick never answered that she had married Nayan because she loved him.
Viveka muttered the same questions again tonight, but, exasperated, she meant them rhetorically, asked of the heavens rather than of Anick. “Why on earth would a person leave the town and go to live so very far away? If you were closer, at least . . . Well, maybe we could have talked about all of this face to face rather than whispering on the telephone at midnight.” Her questions met with quiet, and so Viveka continued repeating herself. “I don’t understand why, in such a hopeless marriage, you would leave the town and go to live in such a remote village? And above all, I don’t understand why you remain in this marriage. To tell the truth, I don’t understand why you married a man in the first place.”