“Irony is in the eye of the beholder,” Starboy said sourly. But his moment had passed. Miss Teapot began to act in a more familiar manner. She mentioned her parents, who were retired, and her worry that they would lose interest and fade away. Because of that concern, she had forsaken the opportunity to do a postgraduate course at the local university. She spoke of her job and how she had automatically followed her parents’ profession. After each statement the father said, “Veddy good,” and the mother, “Mah-vellous.”
She helped the mother clear away the dishes and apologized for leaving so early. “Dad doesn’t like me to travel in the dark,” she said.
“I will walk you to the junction,” Orbits said.
When they were about to leave, the father asked, “Can you be telling me what is the next step in this grand adventure?”
Orbits realized his father was just talking in his exaggerated way, trying to show off, but Miss Teapot said, “That is all up to your son. He hasn’t asked me as yet.”
“Boy, what wrong with you?” his mother said, slipping into the local dialect. “You better move fast before this bright pretty girl come to she senses.”
“Mango season will be in a few months. The best time for a wedding,” the father said.
“House wedding or church wedding?” the mother wondered aloud.
“All unions are a farce,” Starboy said.
And so was the marriage broached and settled.
During the twenty-minute walk to the taxi stand at the junction, Orbits was quiet. He felt the pressure of Miss Teapot’s head on his shoulder and her nails digging into his palm. A pothound followed them before it ran off barking at a car. From a house came the sound of a family squabble. The black sky was cloudless.
Orbits’ parents discussed the wedding each evening, and its size and scope grew to magnificent proportions. With Orbits sitting silently between them, they asked each other: Should Orbits enter riding on a horse? Was it possible to borrow an elephant from a zoo? Could the reception be held at a seaside village instead? But what if the wind blew over the shed and carted off the bridesmaids? Should the father post his “Bad Pay List” in tiny letters in the wedding invitations? Or maybe a tiny advertisement for his denture lab? Was it possible to ban the girl’s relatives from the wedding? That last question had been prompted by the one meeting between both sets of parents, during which occasion they had taken an immediate distaste to each other. Orbits had been disappointed when the pair of parents parted with stiff and steady smiles instead of quarrelling down the place and calling the wedding off.
“If it was me I would just elope,” Starboy said. “Wedding is just a big pappyshow.” For the first time, Orbits agreed with him.
“Dowry and all that backward nonsense.”
“That is the next thing,” his mother began. “Some people insist on it.”
Orbits felt as if he was rushed into battle. (Years later, when he described his mood at that time, his friend Wally used a cricketing analogy that felt right to Orbits. “Is like walking to the pitch without properly padding up.”)
The pair were married at a small ceremony in a temple situated between an ice cream parlour and a mortuary. Clients of both establishments wandered out to observe the commotion, the beating of drums that seemed unnecessarily loud and fancy for such a small gathering. Apart from the teachers at Miss Teapot’s school and a couple clients from the denture business, there were just a few relatives from Miss Teapot’s side. The relatives, perhaps imitating Miss Teapot’s parents, sat glumly in one corner, occasionally glancing at the ferociously smiling denture clients in the other corner. Orbits’ mood, too, ranged between these two extremes during the ceremony. Everything had happened too quickly; he had no say in the entire process and had just been swept along. Then he looked through the smoke at his bride-to-be sitting demure and satisfied, and he considered his mother’s injunction about marrying quickly before the girl came to her senses. The priest fanned away the smoke with a mango leaf and commanded Orbits and Miss Teapot to walk around the fire. Orbits was uncertain how many times they did this, holding hands, but each circle felt longer, the fire in the centre fiercer and his feet heavier. He felt as if he were walking into a blazing oven. The priest threw more incense into the fire, provoking the nipping flames with a mango leaf and seeming to guide the curling blue smoke in a solemn dance up to the ceiling. Orbits heard the priest saying in his accented English that he now had to protect, love, honour and satisfy his wife and bring glory to her family, and he imagined himself escaping up the swirling smoke to a cushy overhead cloud. He tried to recall if he had seen a drawing or a movie of a genie performing this trick. During the closing prayer, he noticed both his mother and his new bride’s mother trying to outdo each other with their frowns. The fathers just looked impatient. He could see no sign of his brother.
Following the ceremony, Mr. Rabbit, Orbits’ employer, walked up to him and said, “Now that you are a married man, we can’t have you walking around caves and thing. What if you fall and break your neck? Who will take care of your little wife?” He seemed to be waiting for an answer, but Orbits was considering the appellation. Little wife. It sounded as wittle life. He heard the other man saying, “Your father tell me that you doing big-big courses in matter-rology. So from now your job will be in the main office. As a matter-rologist you will have to plan the schedule for all the trips depending on the weather.”
Orbits did not differentiate this offer from the congratulations of the other guests, but when he mentioned it to Miss Teapot during their honeymoon in a neighbouring island, she was thrilled. “This is so great,” she enthused. “I know how much you were unsuited to the caves.” She teased him by adding, “Now that you are a meteorologist, we have to get you a parrot.” She was referring to a television weatherman who did all his forecasts with a macaw perched on his shoulder.
The unease Orbits had experienced during the ceremony faded during the honeymoon. His new wife was assured, lighthearted, chatty and more experienced than he was in every way. In the late evenings and nights, she positioned herself on top of him or laid back and guided him all the way to her final muffled moans. She sounded as if she was suffocating and Orbits tried to be gentler, but she would have none of that. He was constantly surprised whenever she casually walked past him naked into the kitchen, and one morning, she told him in a teasing manner, “I don’t know why you are constantly covering up that nice body you have. There’s no one here but us.”
All he could say was, “It really nice?”
She pushed him onto the bed.
During the following days as they explored historic sites and beaches and waterfalls, Orbits felt a confidence he had never previously experienced. And so one morning in the hotel’s pool, watching the overweight and mostly older guests jumping effortlessly into the water, he did the same. He sank quickly. During his first resurfacing, he waved his hands frantically, but the other guests felt he was playing. On the second resurfacing, he remembered he could not swim. Before he went down, he heard someone shouting, “The bloke’s drowning.” He was swallowing water and his chest and stomach felt as if they were about to burst. Someone or something was coming towards him. It looked like his wife. Then everything went black.
He awoke coughing out water. His wife was astride him in a familiar position, but her face was different and she was pounding his chest. Behind her, far above, a ragged cloud formation looked like two armies of squirrels preparing for battle. He giggled and coughed up more water. All around him were watchers. They were moving closer and seemed to be wagging their fingers. Some of the men helped him up.
“Are you okay, buddy?” one asked.
“Do you want something to drink?”
“The man nearly drink out the whole pool and you asking him if he want anything to drink.”
“I have seen this happen a hundred times. Once I had to dive into a waterfall
in Borneo to rescue an idiot. Two days later, he got knocked down by a motorcycle.”
“The girl’s a good swimmer though.”
“Yeah. She ain’t bad.”
He looked around for his wife. Where did she go? Did she leave the hotel and the island out of shame? Then he saw her walking out of the hotel past the bar to the pool. Why wasn’t she looking worried? he wondered. Did I just imagine everything? “Guess what?” she told Orbits, who was now propped on a lounge chair. “The entire stay here is free. The hotel apologized for not having a lifeguard at the pool and waived all the expenses. Are you okay?”
He could not share her enthusiasm, and he felt slightly offended that she had recovered so quickly. Just like old times, he thought. Belly filled to bursting and everyone laughing. He saw one of the men who had helped him up whispering to a friend. They glanced at Orbits and his wife suspiciously as they walked to the bar. They possibly thought it had all been a scam to get a free vacation, he thought, and some of his gloom faded. “Never felt better,” he told his wife in a loud voice. “Ready for a next swim.”
But the shame returned in their room, in the dark. After half an hour or so his wife gave up and asked, “Are you sure you are okay, Orbits? Maybe it was something in the water. The chlorine or something.”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t worry,” she said as she snuggled against him. “If it doesn’t work by the morning, I know some other tricks. Besides there is an old superstition in the island that no one should do this” — she squeezed him, pulling gently — “before going in a boat.”
“Boat?” he asked. “More water to swallow?”
“No, silly. It’s a lagoon with shallow water that looks like nylon.”
Lagoon, he thought. Rice and mud and miserable things biting the toes.
Soon she fell asleep, and Orbits felt her heart beating against his chest. She felt warm and cozy against his body, her leg draped across his groin, her head on his shoulder. Her snores sounded like a whimpering bird, yet she was so strong. So strong and resourceful. Just before he fell asleep, he wondered what tricks she had in mind. And where she had learned them.
He dreamed he was in an ocean floating on his back. The clouds were low and seemed to form an archway. He tried to paddle through the entrance, but his body felt thick and heavy. A current was pulling him under. He was unable to resist because the riptide was too strong. He awoke gasping. His wife was still asleep, making her whimpering sounds. It was close to dawn when he finally fell asleep once more.
The next day they visited a grave, the tombstone of which said enigmatically that the woman was both a wife and a mother without being aware of both situations. Miss Teapot seemed intrigued by the cryptic epitaph. She remarked that it reminded her of her father’s Russian stories, but Orbits, who preferred plain and simple explanations, reflected whether the mortician or whoever wrote these words had not been drunk.
For the remainder of the honeymoon, not wanting to unnecessarily bother his wife, he pretended he was enjoying himself; and when on the last night, she told him how happy she was, he tried to understand her patience, or pity or delusion or whatever it was. On the plane journey back to her parents’ place, where they had decided to stay until they could move out, she placed her hands on his and leaned over to follow his view. “The clouds look so real,” she said and quickly corrected herself. “I mean they look as if they contain more than just water. It’s no wonder people looked up and believed the gods lived there.” He was on the verge of revealing his childhood fixation of floating through the clouds when she added, “So silly. When we get back you will have to gaze at the clouds all day like a crazy person.” She looked at his face and said, “For your new job, silly.”
***
The site from which Mr. Rabbit conducted his operation was once owned by a local bus entrepreneur. It was a huge roundabout surrounding a triangular shed, and Orbits was disappointed to note its resemblance to a big, bustling warehouse. It was managed by Baby Rabbit, the son of Mr. Rabbit. The elder Rabbit had gotten his nickname because of his protruding front teeth, and while he was fine with the name, the son, whose mouth was covered by a bushy moustache and who looked more like an otter than a rabbit, was enraged whenever a maxi driver referred to him by his nickname. He was always busy and irritated as he walked around the place with a clipboard in his hand. Surprisingly, he had a high-pitched, girlish voice.
When Orbits asked him about his office and equipment, he said, “Equipment? What equipment you talking about? Your job is to watch up in the air and tell me if it going to rain or not. That way we will know if to send people to the swamp and the beach or to some old church or mashup building. How difficult is that? What is your name?”
“Orbits.”
“What sort of name is that? Over here we don’t use nicknames, you understand?”
Orbits was so intimidated by his brusque manner that he said, “Yes, sir. Yes, Mr. Rabbit junior.”
“You meet Lilboy already?” He called and a skinny old man with bright eyes in a bony face appeared. “Lilboy is the coordinator here, you understand?”
“You understand?” the other man rose on his toes and screamed. Lilboy, apart from being a coordinator, was a janitor, traffic operator and messenger. He was perpetually in motion, and because of his bright eyes and the ragged clothes on his tiny frame, Orbits was slightly afraid of him. Every morning, Lilboy collected the weather report from Orbits, ran to Baby Rabbit’s office next door, and when both men emerged, Lilboy would repeat each name and location his boss had called from a clipboard and walk up along the line of vehicles, gesturing with his hands and chin.
The maxi taxis that gathered around the building were dispatched to various schools, hotels and transit points in the island. Orbits had expected a quiet little office with hydrometers and thermometers and maybe a wind vane outside instead of a small cubicle built with wayward cedar planks. He felt encircled by commotion: the noise of the vehicles, the arguments of the drivers, the shouting of Baby Rabbit, the screaming of Lilboy, the diesel fumes that seeped through the window. His job was the furthest thing from his tour guide periods. Each morning, for half an hour, he had to look at the clouds and determine whether they were dark and threatening or white and harmless. He wrote his prediction on a sheet, which he passed on to Lilboy, who rolled it in a cylinder and, holding it aloft like a relay runner, sprinted to Baby Rabbit’s office, just a few yards away. “Coming through, coming through,” he bawled, though there was no one blocking him.
There were just two seasons and they never varied in duration on the island. Rainy season from June to December and dry season from January to May. Although there were frequent thunderstorms, these were brief, and the damage was always attributed to “the hand of god.” Orbits’ work was finished by eleven in the morning, by which time the last vehicle had left the lot.
There were a few initial misses in his forecast from swift moving “passing clouds,” but he soon learned to predict the weather from looking at the sky and observing the colour, height and spatial arrangement of the clouds. Baby Rabbit occasionally made a little fuss about his forecast, which always included the addendum, “The possibility of isolated showers.” Orbits had stolen the phrase from the radio meteorologist to whose forecast he listened each morning in the taxi. He typically repeated these with little variations.
After the last vehicle had left the lot, he turned to his meteorological course. He tried to make sense of vertical distribution and diurnal cycles and equilibrium levels, and he struggled with the equations and calculations and all the hardened definitions. He resented the manner in which the course had transformed something as fragile and subtle as clouds into unassailable phenomena. He recalled the Christmas Eve that his brother had caught his father pushing toys in an old pillowcase and his resentment in the days following at the end of that fantasy. His brother, six at the time, had said, “I never ever
going to believe anything anybody say again.” It was the only time Orbits felt a vague sympathy towards him.
Increasingly, he pushed aside the course material and returned to his old fantasies about floating through the air, the cool puffs brushing his cheeks. He wondered how the warehouse and the parked vehicles would look from the air, and intermittently he imagined floating above his parents’ house and listening to their bantering and observing the silence in his brother’s room. Maybe he was studying for his exams. For sure he would pass and then he would get a good job and become more pleasant to everyone.
He never mentioned any of this in the little bedroom he shared with his wife in her parents’ house. When he got home in the afternoon, his father-in-law would be at his desk in the living room, reading the newspaper or a magazine, and his mother-in-law would be either in the kitchen or on the couch with a book. They rarely spoke to him other than to ask, “So how was the day?” But that question seemed loaded. Did they suspect that the extent of his work was a one-line forecast? Or that he had spent the rest of the day in childish daydreams rather than on his online course?
“Not too bad,” he always said as he rushed into the room to await his wife’s arrival two hours later. His mood brightened as she walked through the door and later as she spoke about her day and related little incidents involving some other teacher or one of her students. She continued this during dinner, which was mostly a dialogue between mother and daughter. For this, Orbits was thankful because he was usually concentrating on eating like the rest of the family: chewing slowly, using the cutlery properly and apportioning the condiments. At his parents’ home, the entire meal was ladled into one plate, but here there were little bottles, gold-rimmed bowls, vials and decanters from which he had to choose. The plates were smaller, and everything was arranged in such a way that it was possible to know when the meal was finished and it was time to stop eating. At his parents’ home, his father sometimes poured everything into a basin which he shook, mixing the sauce and rice and meat and vegetables into a swirling mass that he brought to his mouth, lapping noisily. When he was finished, he would say, “My belly full now, Mamoose. The world could turn over and I wouldn’t care.”
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