by Preethi Nair
My dad, impetuous as ever, agreed to marry the sister without checking out the goods – if she was anything like her sister she would be snapped up pretty soon. When he saw my mother on the wedding day he tried to hide his disappointment but then I think he really grew to love her. That’s what arranged marriages were like; you learned to fall in love. ‘I was the fooled,’ he joked in front of her. ‘See, Nina, you’re lucky, you can meet these boys and see if you likes them: me, I had no choice.’ And despite the fact that he said he had no choice, they were really compatible and I could never imagine one without the other. It was hardly fireworks between them – more like a Catherine wheel which failed to ignite in the rain but then unexpectedly fizzed about a bit – but it worked for them.
I could barely open my eyes as they felt so sore. I dragged myself up, managed to have a shower, put on my suit and made out as if I was going to work, creeping down the stairs so they wouldn’t have to see me. Just before getting to the front door, I shouted, ‘Bye, Ma. Bye, Dad.’
‘You’ll be home early this evening, nah, beta? I’ve told Raj’s mother to get him to call you at seven-thirty,’ my mum said, pouncing on me from nowhere. ‘Oh, what’s happened to the eyes?’
‘Allergy,’ I replied. ‘Anyway, I’ll try not to be too late,’ I continued, thinking of all the places I could go to kill eight hours.
She handed me an umbrella and saw me out.
My head was throbbing and my body ached. I went to a café and sat there drinking endless cups of coffee, trying to make some kind of a decision as to what to do. What was going to happen to me without Jean – he was there to cushion all the blows. What was I going to do about work? Thank God my dad had drilled it into my head about being careful with money in an attempt to prepare me for ‘the days of the flooding'. Most of what I had earned was put aside. He was right: life was all about trying to make yourself as secure as possible so nobody could come along with any surprises. After hours of sitting there and thinking, I decided to drag myself to the Tate.
For a Monday morning it was busy, with people flocking to see the wardrobe stuffed with worldly possessions. Thankfully there was a Matisse exhibition on. I always liked Matisse. He also studied law and his father was furious when he said he wanted to give it up to paint. He was a great painter and didn’t begin to paint until after recovering from an illness. They say it was providence that sent him that illness to set him on a different path, that only looking back do we know exactly why things have happened.
It had been almost ten years since I’d picked up a paintbrush. I could have continued to paint as a ‘hobby’ after I began my law degree but it was always all or nothing with me. Even when I was angry or sad and had a desperate urge to splatter the emotion across a blank canvas, I resisted and picked up my books and studied instead. Studied and did what everyone else wanted me to do, and became who others wanted me to be.
The rooms where Matisse’s pictures were displayed were not as busy as downstairs. But as soon as I walked in I could feel the warmth. His pictures gave me energy, their raw emotions expressed with an explosion of pure, intense colours. There was no option but to stare at the paintings, to feel them: violets to stir feelings placed next to sunny, optimistic yellows, vibrant oranges against laconic blues and sober greens floating among a sea of passionate cerulean red. When I stared into Matisse’s colours I could see other colours that weren’t really there; realities that were invented; somewhere I could escape.
Matisse’s paintings carried me into his world without me even realising, making me forget who or where I was. He painted windows that let you fly in and out; bold strips of colour like the green that ran along his wife’s nose and made you feel you could balance on it, look at her every feature and see what he saw; hues of reality next to splashes of imagination. I wandered around for hours, drawn into his world, lost in the depths of his colour, soaking up every ray, searching for the shadows that he had skilfully eliminated. In every painting, I found peace.
I went to have lunch in the cafeteria and found that my thoughts had become calmer, and because I didn’t want to think any more deeply I concentrated on the noise that the cutlery and crockery were making, watching the tourists, many of whom had pulled out their guidebooks to see which exhibitions they would visit next.
Before leaving the Tate I visited the shop and picked up a book on Matisse. I randomly flicked through the pages and stopped at one of his quotes:
‘In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed.’
I put the book back. It wasn’t a sign – dead people were unable to speak.
With a few more hours to kill before going back home, I decided to take a walk in Green Park. Jean Michel didn’t live too far from there and sometimes we had gone walking together. It was an effort to drag him out as he really didn’t like walking. He didn’t really enjoy staying in and watching videos, either, as I did. He liked finding new restaurants and eating out; he would drive halfway across the country to find a good restaurant. He loved going to the casino and betting all his money on one number. I was intrigued by his boldness, but looking back I should have known then that I would never have been enough – life with me was probably boring, with my constant refusal to go away with him and rushing off home to my parents instead. But he said we were good together, that I brought calmness to his life; but then he said many things, most of which probably weren’t even true.
I switched my phone back on and the message box was full. All of them were from him, frantic messages, every one saying how much he loved me. I so desperately wanted to believe him, to speak to him and have him put his arms around me and tell me that there had been some terrible mistake, that he could explain it all, but instead I made myself delete the messages one by one. Time, that was what I needed, time to sort out my head. I bought a coffee, sat on the park bench and thought more about the quote before setting off for home.
No sooner had I turned the key, my mum was waiting anxiously, rolling pin in one hand, telling me that Raj would be calling at seven-thirty.
‘You already told me that before I left,’ I said.
‘Good day?’ my dad asked, turning back to watch the television before I had replied.
What was I supposed to say? That Henri Matisse had given me some much-needed peace.
‘Yes, good day.’
I went upstairs, quickly had a shower, and bang on time the phone rang. No unpredictability there, then.
‘Hi Nina, it’s Raj.’
‘Hello.’
There was a moment’s hesitation and then he took control.
‘I hear you’re a lawyer and working in the city?’
‘Yes, and you?’ I asked in a half-hearted attempt to deflect the conversation away from myself.
‘No, I’m not a lawyer,’ he laughed. Well, it was more of a grunting sound. And why did he laugh? I mean, if the man thought that was humour we might as well put the phone down now.
‘No,’ he said, gathering himself together, ‘I work for a consultancy firm as an accountant.’
There wasn’t much to say to that.
‘So what do you like doing?’ he began again.
There was no stopping this man; he careered straight past the silences and kept on going.
Be kind to him, Nina, talk. It’s not his fault, none of it is his fault. What did I like doing? Suddenly I felt a sense of panic. It was the realisation that my life up until that moment had revolved solely around Jean and work. I had to say something, and so, like an eight-year-old, reeled off a list of hobbies. ‘Reading, cinema, watching TV, painting.’
‘Oh, painting? What do you paint with?’
‘A paintbrush,’ I replied.
He laughed again. ‘Very good, that’s very good, I see you too have got a sense of humour. I’ve dabbled in watercolours but I’m not very good,’ he added.
Then there was another silence.
‘Seen any good films?’ he asked.
I said the first thing that came into my head. ‘The Matrix.’
‘I saw that on the plane to Japan.’
For the first time he had my attention. Japan? What was he doing in Japan?
‘Japan?’ I enquired.
‘Yes, I have to travel for work and so I extend my stay wherever possible. I love to find out about other cultures. It’s important to expand the mind.’
‘Where else have you been?’
He listed practically half the countries in the atlas but not in a pretentious way. I stopped him at Chile and asked what it was like, and for the first time I sensed he was being himself.
‘I’ve always wanted to go there,’ I said, and to my surprise he did not come out with a cheesy line like, ‘I’ll take you’ or ‘Maybe you’ll go there soon.’ Instead, he said it was beautiful.
There was a pause but now it wasn’t awkward.
‘Perhaps you’d like to meet up?’ he asked.
I had images of my mother, a protagonist in an Indian film, wailing and beating her chest in despair at the thought of me saying no, so I said ‘Yes'. It would be just one meeting and then I could say it didn’t work out.
‘For dinner or a movie?’ he asked.
Movie? Before I made a comment on his use of the word ‘movie’ I thought twice. It was only the Croydon multiplex and I wouldn’t have to talk to him that much if we were seeing a film. ‘Yes, a movie sounds good.’
‘Great, I’ll pick you up on Saturday, about three?’
‘All right.’
‘See you then, Nina.’
My mother was downstairs, eagerly waiting for me. I could hear her pacing. As soon as I came down she pretended to look disinterested, resuming the rolling-pin position. She turned around for a second and her right eyebrow signalled as if to say, ‘Dish the dirt.’ The other eyebrow said, ‘He’s a good boy, got a good job, coming from a very good family, now tell me you have arranged to meet him.’
‘Three o’clock on Saturday,’ I said.
‘OK, OK,’ she muttered as if she wasn’t bothered, but when she turned back to her perfectly circular rotis I could feel her beaming.
Knowing that my parents were distracted with the whole Raj scenario, I felt less guilty the next morning about putting on a suit and pretending to go to work. Jean Michel had left three more messages. I wanted to listen to them but again deleted them one by one. Then I went back to see Matisse, the only person who I could turn to at that moment in time.
I bought the book I had seen the day before. It told me about his life and each of the paintings. It also included a commentary by critics on what he was trying to achieve, saying something about his search for chromatic equilibrium. How did they know that anyway? Maybe he wasn’t trying to achieve anything except to express his feelings? Did it matter what they thought he was trying to do? What mattered was how the paintings left you feeling, not a skewed interpretation on what he did or didn’t want to do. I searched the book for his own words and came across another quote: ‘There are always flowers for those who want to see them.’
‘Are there, Matisse?’ I wondered aloud.
The cafeteria was full again at lunchtime and I found myself having to ask if I could sit next to a girl with long, mousy-blonde hair.
‘Sure,’ she replied in an Australian accent, smiling away. When she spotted that I had bought the same book on Matisse as her and commented on it, I nodded and kept my head down. I wasn’t in the mood for chitchat.
But she continued. ‘He’s just great, isn’t he? And I love the quote on flowers.’
Ordinarily I might have taken this to be a sign, having just read the exact same quote, but in my jaded state I took it to be some lonely traveller who probably had no money and was trying to strike up a friendship so she could ask if she could sleep on my sofa. I imagined my dad finding her on his Land of Leather sofa in the morning.
‘“There are always flowers for those who want to see them,”’ she continued out loud, just in case I wasn’t familiar with it.
‘And weeds,’ I wanted to say, but remained looking down, eating in silence.
‘Nice meeting you,’ she got up to leave.
‘Yes,’ I replied as she went off.
I sat there for a while reading. Some Japanese tourists signalled to the seats next to me to ask if they could sit there. They seemed really grateful that I said yes. I nodded, relieved that they couldn’t speak any English and turned the page.
The last bit I read before heading off to Green Park was about the nature of creativity. Matisse said that creativity took courage. My dad would say creativity took a lot of lazy people who had nothing better to do all day except to waste time. The Turner Prize did nothing except confirm his perception: ‘See, they fooling people and making the money. Maybe I should get Kavitha to make some patterns with her samosas and send them in.’ I closed the book and caught the tube to Green Park.
Creativity takes courage.
Does it? I don’t think I can take a leap of faith, not on my own, anyway. I don’t trust myself. Does that make sense? I’ve never really done anything on my own. I’m used to doing things for other people, that’s what makes me feel secure. I’m used to being someone’s daughter, someone’s girlfriend, someone’s lawyer. I’m not used to being me. I don’t believe that I am big enough to make this all better. If I’m myself, I don’t think I’ll survive. Don’t worry, I’m talking to myself, not you, Ki. Wouldn’t want you to think that I’m asking you or anything. Wouldn’t want you to rise from the dead or do something complicated like that.
I sat on the bench for a little while longer, then wandered around the back of Mayfair looking in gallery windows before going home.
‘Good day, Nina?’ my dad asked.
‘We got an important client today.’
‘Very good,’ he said as he delved back into his newspaper. He didn’t really need to know the ins and outs of ‘love’, just to be occasionally reassured that I wouldn’t unexpectedly be made redundant; hence the addition of new clients every now and then.
It’s not my natural inclination to bend the truth. I wasn’t one of those types who went to school with a long skirt and rolled it up on the way there. Truth-bending is something I have learned to do out of necessity, and not necessarily to protect myself but my parents. When I was with Jean Michel I always said I was seeing Jean or staying there, but they jumped to the conclusion that he was a she and I let them believe it.
‘Bring this Jeannie round,’ my dad would say.
‘Yes, we would like to meet her. I’ll make roti and paneer,’ my mum would add. It went on like this till I couldn’t make any more excuses, so I got Susan, one of my friends, to stand in as her.
My dad liked ‘the Jeannie’ as he referred to her. After ascertaining what Susan’s parents did and estimating their combined annual income, he thought she was a good person to mix with.
Now I looked at my dad, took a deep breath and said, ‘Dad, the office is experiencing some difficulties with the phone, so if there is an emergency ring me on my mobile.’ They never rang the office, but just in case.
‘Hmmm.’
‘Did you hear me, Dad? Fire, flood, office, call me on my mobile.’
‘What fire in the office, it’s not burned down, no?’
Now I had his attention. ‘No, I’m just saying, in case of an emergency or if you need to speak to me, call me on my mobile.’
‘Nothing is wrong, no, Nina?’
That was the moment to confess and, believe me, I wanted to, but he looked at me like he wanted reassurance that everything was OK and I just didn’t have the strength to tell him.
‘Everything is fine.’
‘They need someone to come and fix it?’
‘Fix what?’
‘The phones. I can come and sort out problem.’
‘No, Dad, but thank you.’
/> My mother was in rolling-pin position and asked me the standard questions: what I’d eaten for lunch, was I ready to have dinner, if I was going to go up and have a shower. As she returned to her rotis, I stared at her. Where was that other person she had unleashed when she raged at my sister? Did she ever think of Jana? Did she worry about what she ate and what time she was going to take her shower? She must have, I know she must have. Once I caught her unpacking the jewellery box she had packed safely away, emptying its contents and crying, but she never said anything to us, me or my dad. Instead she kept it all inside and carried on with her routine. And many times when I tried to speak to her about my sister she would turn her back to me and walk away.
After I came out of the shower, the phone rang. It was Raj.
‘Hi Nina, I know we’re meeting on Saturday but I just thought I’d give you a call and see how you are.’
‘I’m fine,’ I heard myself reply politely. It was quite a relief to talk to someone who didn’t really know me, who wanted to talk about superficial things like what films I watched; someone who was unable to affect me in any way and didn’t require any depth of conversation.
‘How are you?’ I asked.
‘Good. Had a busy day. I am just going to read now.’
‘What are you reading?’
‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.’
‘Right. And is it working? Are you being effective?’
‘Hope so. What are you going to do?’
‘Going down to eat and then hopefully get to sleep early. I haven’t been sleeping well.’
‘Don’t eat too late,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard that causes insomnia because the food isn’t digested properly.’
‘It’s not the food,’ I heard myself saying. ‘It’s just there are lots of things going on at the moment … lots of … lots of …’ I searched desperately for the word I was looking for but the best I could come up with was ‘… contracts.’
‘Are you busy at work, then?’ he enquired.
‘Yes. Very busy.’
‘I’ll leave you to it, Nina. I just wanted to say hello, that was all.’