Vertigo

by Ashok Banker

  ‘Meera, are you mad at me?'

  She looks down. Her hair falls forward, over her face. She pushes it back, keeps her arms folded. Her jaw is tight, eyes distant.

  He catches hold of her shoulder, stops her. She shrugs out of his grasp, walks on.

  ‘Come on, Meera. I didn't mean it.' He walks around a dead cat washed up by the tide. Cockroaches feed on its pink guts. ‘Okay, damnit. I did mean it. I was mad at you for sleeping with Chris. I couldn't stand it.'

  She looks at him sideways, but still doesn't speak; just watches him as he gestures, tries to explain.

  ‘I think you're terrific. Really terrific. You're... well... you're the most wonderful person I've met in my entire life. Really, Meera. I really... like you. But I don't want to have just a. .. casual relationship...

  with you. A one-night stand.'

  She says softly, ‘What do you want, then?'

  ‘I don't know. Not yet. I'm too... mixed up. My whole life is fucked up. You know that. Right now, all I want is to get out of this damn hole I'm stuck in. Meera, I'll be honest. I'm very... attracted to you. . . You turn me on. Last night, when you were sleeping. . .'

  ‘I know.'

  ‘That's it. That's just it. You wouldn't have stopped me if I'd gone ahead, would you?'

  She shrugs: Is the question worth answering? Does it matter?

  ‘I don’t think you would have. So that’s my whole point. I can never be as casual about it as you are.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to be just another man to you, another...

  penis, another Chris. I want to mean something. I want to be somebody. I want you to care about me.’

  She smiles bitterly. ‘You want everything.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. I want everything. On my terms.’

  She nods, looks down. They have stopped walking. She turns suddenly, back towards the hotel.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ she says. ‘Let’s do lunch.’

  After the waiter pours the beer, filling both their long tall glasses, and both of them have sipped at the chilled brew, she says abruptly: ‘All my childhood I was treated like a girl.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘You don’t know fuck-all .’

  He shuts up, face reddening. The restaurant is empty at this early hour—five past noon. The air conditioning is a blessing. Jay feels fresh, alive, awake. He keeps his mouth shut and drinks beer and listens.

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be treated like a girl. Not just to be a girl, to be treated like a girl. To be told what to wear, what not to eat, when to go out, when to come home, while your brothers do what they please.’

  She drains her glass, pours more. ‘Once I found a pair of panties in my brother’s cupboard. I showed it to my mother, she never told my father about it, just threw it away. Another time I saw him open my father’s bar and take half a bottle of whisky, then fill water to make up for it. He used to stay out till after midnight. Three or four times a year he used to spend the night out.When Daddy asked him where he'd been, he’d just say, “With my friends.” He used to go around with a different girl every month. Once he got a girl pregnant. I know because she came to me crying, asked me for help.We were in the same class at school. My mother came into the room, told me to go out. They covered that up somehow, made the girl have an abortion, threatened to tell her parents. Next year, she changed schools.’

  The waiter brings bowls of peanuts, chewda, aloo chat, carrots and cucumbur, a plate of papads. Meera's glass is empty. The waiter opens another bottle. Jay finishes his glass, holds it out to be refilled. He munches on the peanuts. Meera goes on in the same monotone.

  ‘Then they forced my sister to get married. She was in love with a guy. He was one of my brother's friends. That was his greatest crime. My brother caught them out together, walking. Just walking, for Chrissake. He got into a fight with the guy, tried to kill him. He told my parents about it. They locked my sister in her room for a week, stopped her going to school. Fixed up a match with some guy from Delhi without even showing her a photo. She was gone before she was seventeen. She cried all through the ceremony. My brother got bored and went out to drink with his friends. I went out and saw him and his friends standing by their bikes, such macho bastards, drinking neat rum.‘

  Meera finishes her second glass of beer, empties the bottle, drains a third glass, motions to the waiter—leaning against the bar across the room—for more. She finishes most of the third bottle before Jay can catch up. The waiter brings a fourth bottle and keeps it on the table. The sound system blares on, someone adjusts the volume, changes the tape. Jay recognizes the song but not the singer. A girl singing Paul Anka's Feelings.

  Meera looks up, her face twisted. ‘I hate that fucking song. I hate it.’ She calls the waiter back. ‘Change the fucking tape,’ she says.

  Jay realizes she's high, or angry, or something. He explains to the waiter in Hindi. The man shrugs, goes to the desk clerk. The tape is switched off. Richard Clayderman comes on instead. Meera rolls her eyes, gives up.

  I walked out when my father and I had an argument about my going to Ahmedabad. After I got admission to IIM. He said he’d allowed me—“allowed!”—to do my BA because he knew I loved literature.

  But he had a good match ready for me, and couldn’t wait another three years. I told him to fuck off, and I walked off. I took just one little bagful of clothes and some money I’d won in an essay contest, about a thousand bucks. And I went to Ahmedabad.’

  She bends over her glass, looking down into the swirling foam.

  Her hair is tied behind her head in a single tail. It makes her look schoolgirlish. ‘I fucked my way through IIM,’ she says. Then she looks up, holding Jay’s eyes in a deadlock. ‘I became a whore. A high-class whore. You know what I mean.’

  Jay breaks the eye contact, sips some beer. He doesn’t know what to say. Sweat breaks out on his temples.

  ‘I was very discreet. Actually, nobody ever had the guts to call me a whore to my face. I was a party girl. A fun-loving coed. I didn’t charge for the night. I accepted gifts. Large gifts. Sometimes, jewellery. Sometimes, clothes, perfumes. Sometimes, I accepted a cheque. Never cash. I was smart. I was gold medallist that year. And I used the same brains to survive.’ She prods his arm with a stiff forefinger.

  ‘So, you see, you’re not the only poor sod who knows how to survive.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says meaninglessly. He drinks his beer, the glass covering his face.

  ‘Are you disgusted?’ she asks in a different tone, watching him.

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  ‘I’m...’ he shrugs.

  ‘Shocked?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That's okay. I'm shocked too. It's like talking about a different person, a person in a magazine article, someone else.’ She shakes her head, looks out the tinted window. A man is diving from the board. He makes a big splash. The pool is occupied by ten, a dozen, people. They are silent for a long time, just drinking beer and watching people swim.

  chapter seventeen

  Over a plateful of ruined lobster shell, she says, ‘So you’re going to marry her?’

  Jay’s head jerks up, then slowly regains its bowed posture, concentrating on cracking a particularly stubborn claw. He’s cut his fingers and lips twice already on the deadly jagged tips; this time, he sticks to the cracking pliers. She’s finished, lets the waiter take her plate away, but he shakes his head, as stubborn as the lobster.

  ‘Jay?

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She leans back and lights a cigarette. ‘What do you mean? Are you, or aren’t you?’

  ‘Takes two to tango.’ He tries another part of the claw, attacking it with intense determination, the problem is, damn nutcracker keeps slipping off the butter-slicked surface. Meera watches him with amusement, sipping beer.

  ‘Try the white part, that’s usually softer.’

  He tur
ns the claw around again, taking a hold on the splotched-red tip, carefully.

  ‘So what do you mean?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About marrying Tuli.’

  ‘I want to marry her.’

  ‘Then what’s the problem?’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think you’re crazy about her, crazy enough to cling to some idealistic romantic notion of perfect fidelity—before marriage! But you’re not sure whether she feels the same about you.’

  ‘She does.’

  ‘Then why are you so unsure?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Oh yes, you are. You told me all that bullshit about her “conditions” last night, when you were bawling your head off. Remember?’

  He pauses, pliers in right hand, lobster claw in the left, sweating even in the air—conditioned restaurant, hair plastered back, still a little damp from the pool. His voice is a little slurred. Four empty bottles of beer stand on the table, not counting three earlier ones. At least two and a half of those seven found their way into his system, less than half of Meera’s consumption, but more than enough for his unaccustomed constitution. ‘Look,’ gesturing with both claw and plier,

  ‘you’re right, okay? I’m nuts about that girl. But she keeps expecting me to work miracles.’

  ‘Like getting your own place?’

  ‘And earning ten grand a month, and manufacturing a new father and mother, and god knows what the fuck else.’

  ‘A new father and mother?’

  He sighs and taps the plier and claw together in time to the music: Laura Brannigan’s Self-Control. ‘She says her parents will never allow her to marry a man who doesn’t have a proper family background.

  Decent is the word. So she wants me to ask my father—that Sonofabitch—and his second wife, to take the proposal to her parents.’

  ‘Is that a big deal?’

  ‘Meera, you don’t know my father. He won’t give me the time of day. It’s like asking for the moon—plus all the space junk floating around in the orbit!’

  ‘And ten grand a month?’

  ‘That’s the other thing. She believes that her parents will insist that she marries into a house where she’ll live at the same standard of living she’s been used to all her life.Which basically boils down to an income of at least ten grand a month.’

  ‘Does her father earn that much?’

  He points both claw and pliers at her: bingo.

  ‘Jay, maybe these conditions aren’t her parents’. Maybe—’

  ‘They definitely aren’t. She hasn’t even told her parents about me yet. They don’t even know a guy called Jay Mehta exists.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  ‘Then I’m certain that these are her own conditions. Not to appease her parents, but to test you.’

  ‘Test me?’

  ‘Look, Jay. An Indian girl is bounded by men from birth to grave.

  First her father, then her brother, then her husband, and finally her son. Four walls of her life. Her only existence consists of what she can get these four men to grant her. Her only freedom—a very limited one—is through money. If she has money, a house of her own, she can sublimate everything else. She can pretend she’s free. Tuli obviously wants to escape her father and brother. You’re her escape route.

  Sure, she loves you, I don’t doubt that. But to her, it’s like running away from home. She wants to make sure she’s not going to fall into a pit. She’s buying insurance. A home of her own, a good income to live comfortably, social and family respectability. It’s not unreasonable, it’s what being an Indian woman is all about. Bargaining.’ The bitter sarcasm in her voice is unmistakable.

  Jay puts down the claw and pliers, disgusted. He picks up his beer glass shakily, tries to finish it, can’t.

  ‘Jay, I know what she must be feeling. Don’t blame her. I know it seems selfish, unreasonable. But it’s the only way out for her. You are her only way out.’

  ‘Knight in shining armour, eh?’ Jay stares at the lobster claw with hatred, anger tensing the muscles in his jaw.

  ‘And her lover too. Don’t forget that. She does love you.’

  ‘Then why isn’t love enough for her? Why does she want the whole fucking world?’

  ‘Come on, Jay. You know the answer to that. You’re mature. You’re the most mature twenty-year-old I’ve met. Look, you’ve been through a hell of a lot. I know Tuli’s demands must seem unfair to you—’

  ‘You bet your fucking ass!’

  ‘But would it really be so terrible for you to get away from your mother, to live without that twenty-four-hour tension you talked about last night? Would it hurt to earn some cash? God knows you can do it. You can do anything you like, Jay. I know you can.’

  He looks at her, jaw working, eyes red and wet. ‘I can?’

  She nods, holds his hand, ignoring the dried crusts of gravy. ‘You can.’

  They hold the look for a long minute. Jay’s anger dissipates. He sees something in her eyes, something very old, very tender, very Meera. He has never seen such a look in a woman’s eyes before, not even Tuli’s.

  Who is she looking at, really? Is this me? Who am I? Who are you?

  Moments like this, he understands what it means to be alive. Their eyes perform the coitus their bodies were denied.

  ‘Telephone.’

  And so it ends; for now, perhaps forever.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ patting his hand, rising, walking away, after the waiter, across the wooden floor of the restaurant, to the bar, taking the receiver handed to her, leaning against the polished bar-top, speaking quietly, her lips barely moving, free hand holding her hair back off her face, beautiful, oh so beautiful, Meera, unmistakably Meera.

  Not Tuli.

  He looks down at the claw, is struck by a sudden feeling of invincibility, like he can do anything, climb the highest mountain, plumb the deepest ocean, crack the uncrackable lobster; picks up the pliers, grips the claw firmly by the red end, takes a fix on the white part, squeezes slowly but strongly, and CRUNCH!, accomplishes the impossible.

  He grins.

  The white meat is cold but sweet; he swallows it with the last of the beer, leans back, satiated, sighs.

  ‘I’ve got some bad news.’

  She looks worried. She sits down, signals to the waiter. Finger bowls arrive. Jay’s is too hot. He adds cold water from his glass.

  ‘Jay, there’s a problem.’

  He swallows, feeling his testicles constrict. He knew it: this was all too good to last.

  ‘It’s about my mother, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘What happened? Did she call office?’

  ‘She went over.’

  He washes his hands carefully, stroking each finger with the lime, not allowing himself to be scared by this old nightmare. ‘To DM?’

  ‘Around 11 . She asked the receptionist for you. Wouldn’t believe you hadn’t come in, insisted on seeing Chris. She seemed to know everybody by name.’

  ‘I talk to her about office. She has a good memory.’ He almost adds, ‘for an alcoholic’. He wipes his hands with a napkin, allows the waiter to clear the table. Meera watches him with a worried look.

  ‘She parked herself in Chris’s cabin, demanded that he “release” you. Asked him why you hadn’t come home last night. Oh, Jay, I feel lousy. If l hadn’t asked you to come along last night—’

  ‘I asked you, remember? I wanted to talk about my problems.’ He is surprised at how calm, quiet, his voice sounds.

  He folds the napkin neatly, sets it down on the table, pats it. ‘Did she get abusive, create a scene?’

  ‘Jay, she—oh,god. This is so awful. I can’t bear it.’

  ‘Meera, relax. I can handle it.’ He smiles. ‘I’ve handled situations like this for years.What did she do? Attack someone?’

&nb
sp; ‘Yes, she—’ Meera fumbles with her lighter, puts a cigarette in her mouth the wrong way, snaps shakily at the lighter. Jay takes the lighter from her, turns the cigarette around, places it between her lips, flicks on the lighter, lights the cigarette, clicks the lighter shut, places it on the cigarette pack.

  Meera watches him, calms down a bit. She takes a deep drag, shakes her head miserably. ‘She was drunk when she got there. She got drunker. She... urinated all over the cabin.’ She adds, ‘Deliberately, Chris says.’

  Jay nods. ‘She does that.’

  ‘Then she attacked Chris with a broken bottle. Cut his chest. He had to have six stitches. They had to lock her in the cabin and call the police. The police had to break the door down.’

  Jay reaches for her cigarettes, takes one. ‘If you don’t mind ... Go on.

  ‘They took her to Colaba Police Station. Sent a wireless message to Bandra Police Station to collect you from your house. Found you weren’t there. Finally, Christine realized that we’d left together last evening, tried half the city to get me, remembered I’m a member here, and here we are.’

  ‘That was Christine on the line?’

  ‘Yes. Chris came back from the doctor’s clinic while she was talking to me. I told her not to give him the line. I wanted to give you a chance to—I don ’t know...’

  ‘Compose myself. Thanks.’ He manages a weak smile.

  ‘Jay, what are you going to do now?’

  ‘What I have to.’

  ‘I’ll come with you to Colaba Police Station. They’re keeping her there. It seems she struck a policeman too. It took five men to drag her away. She’d totally destroyed Chris’s cabin. The whole building came out to see what was going on. It was a big mess.’

  Jay smokes quietly. ‘I can catch a cab.’

  ‘Shut up. If it wasn’t for me, you would have been home last night and none of this would have happened. She must have been worried sick about you. Have you ever spent the night out before?’

  He shrugs. ‘I guess not.’

  ‘Jay, tell me what to do. I’ll do anything you say, to help.’

  ‘It’s okay. I can handle it.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. This is the most terrible situation I’ve ever heard about. It’s likeW.M. Thackeray and his wife. Or something out of Wuthering Heights.’