‘Next week,’ I said finally.
‘Sure?’
‘Yes, she was…’I stretched my arm along the table, staring down the length of it at my fingers, ‘she was very regular.’ Two years now. I had worried. How will the child manage? A whole day in school—games—those white clothes? This—pregnancy—was the one contingency that had never occurred to me.
‘A week of waiting,’ he said.
We sat in silence after that, waiting for some sound from the girl who lay sleeping in her bed. A knock at the door splintered the silence. I clutched at the table, stared at him, my heart thudding in unreasonable panic.
‘Who?’
‘The servant?’
‘No, it’s too early for her.’
The knock was repeated. He went out, I heard the door being opened, the murmur of voices. Whoever it was, I wouldn’t, I couldn’t….
‘Some neighbours,’ he came in and said. ‘Women.’
‘I don’t want to see them.’
‘Just for a few minutes.’
‘No.’
‘Get it over with. You can’t hide yourself forever. After all, everybody knows now….’
A few lines in the newspaper. I had read the thing so many times myself. But this time it was my daughter. I sat still, silent.
‘Go out and meet them,’ he said with suppressed savagery.
‘No,’ I said again.
He stared at me for a moment, then walked out. I was filled with triumph. The voices outside were hushed and low. It was like one of those condolence visits we had after my father’s death. Low-voiced conversation, then my mother’s loud, hysterical sobs. I had hated those visits, the visitors. They were the enemy, not my father’s death.
I picked up the cups and took them into the kitchen. I was running water into them when he came back.
‘They were…’ he began and stiffened. I heard them too, the footsteps, the closing of the bathroom door. He looked at me expectantly, apprehensively, but he did not move. He hadn’t spoken to her after his one attempt at the police station yesterday.
I ran into her room and was sitting there, trying to seem calm, when she came in. ‘Oh!’ I said, simulating surprise. ‘Are you awake?’
She looked at me impassively.
‘Are you all right?’
What did I mean by that? She did not reply.
‘Will you have some tea?’ She nodded.
I brought the tea. She drank it eagerly, almost greedily. This greed was a strange, new thing I had noticed in her since yesterday. She had been a small, fastidious eater. Now, she ate and drank ravenously; but only when she was given something to eat or drink. She had not asked for anything herself.
‘Have you brushed your teeth?’
‘No.’
‘Will you brush them now?’
She went out and I looked eagerly at the back of her pyjamas. Too childish, I thought mechanically, noting the gaily coloured figures sprinkled all over. But my eyes were looking for something else. Not finding it, I went to the bed, and drawing back the blanket, looked quickly, furtively at the sheet. Nothing.
I had just finished making the bed when she came back. She moved to it. ‘Don’t…’I said, holding out a restraining hand. But she was already lying down, on her back, her eyes fixed on the ceiling.
She had been found lying on a bed in a dingy house. The police had gone there in response to an anonymous call and had found her. I had gone to the police station carrying with me a picture of a tearful, frightened girl, dressed in her school clothes. A white blouse, blue pinafore, white socks, black shoes. Two plaits tied with black ribbons. Instead, there had been a stranger, dressed in a cheap blue nylon sari, a frilled petticoat showing under it, her hair smelling of a heavily perfumed oil. I had felt outraged, as though I had been cheated. She had been silent, she had not cried, shown no awareness of our presence. There had only been a constant swivelling of her eyes, like a person searching for something. When she came home, the search seemed to have ended. Her eyes were now, most of the time, fixed on that one spot on the ceiling.
At night, after I had switched off the light and gone to my bed on the floor, I had heard small, whimpering sounds.
‘What is it?’ I had asked her, a kind of terror gripping me. I had put my hand on her face, but she had jerked it away and said, ‘It was dark’. The words had been said matter-of-factly, I could almost hear a shrug in them. It was like someone speaking of faraway fears, an experience outdistanced and left so far behind that it had ceased to matter. After that, there had been only silence.
‘Shall I get you some breakfast?’ I asked her now. She nodded. I went out and found him talking to a police officer.
‘We’ve got him,’ the man said.
‘Him?’
‘The man who… who kidnapped your daughter.’
I could not connect the man who had been arrested by the police with my daughter who lay still and silent on her bed.
The picture that dogged me was that of a frightened child lying alone in the dark. There was no enemy but the dark, no fear but the fear of being alone. What had the man to do with it?
‘It seems he asked her whether she wanted a lift and she agreed.’
He looked at us, not reproachfully, nor in surprise—nothing could surprise him—but in pity.
‘Why didn’t you warn her?’ my husband had asked me angrily.
‘Against what?’
He had not replied. And I had asked myself—why hadn’t I warned her? I had been warned enough as a girl. ‘Don’t—don’t—don’t—you’re female.’ They had taught me to build a wall around myself with negatives from childhood. And then suddenly, when I got married, they had told me to break the wall down. To behave as if it had never been. And my husband too—how complete his disregard of that wall had been; I had felt totally vulnerable, wholly defenceless. I won’t let my daughter live behind walls, I had thought.
I had tried to tell her a few things when she grew up. ‘Oh that!’ she had said, as if pitying me, ‘we learnt about that in our Biology.’
‘This man isn’t a known offender—this seems to be his first offence….’
I went in hastily. I didn’t want to hear any more. I heard the police officer leave. My husband came in. ‘How is she?’
‘The same.’
‘I have to go to the police station.’
‘All right.’
‘She’ll have to come too,’ he said, a trace of irritation in his voice.
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ All the suppressed anger in him came out with the word. ‘To identify him—he’s got to be….’
He clenched his fists like an angry hero in a movie. I could sense the violent anger in him and I wondered—why is he angry? As for me, there was no anger. Do you rage against the inevitable? Since the day I, a girl of eleven, had met a man exhibiting himself, I had feared this. I had been going to school and he, on a bike, had been approaching me. His face had been blank and expressionless; but there had been something in his eyes which had forced mine lower down. And I had seen what he had willed me to see. After that, it was always there, the fear of such violence.
‘She’s got to come,’ he said. ‘Not today, maybe, but soon. You had better prepare her for it.’
I stared at the door through which he walked out, noting that he now walked with the stiff gait of a much older person. And, for some reason, I remembered my own wedding night.
‘Why are you crying?’ he had asked me in exasperation. ‘You’ve got to help me. Hasn’t your mother told you anything?’
‘You must submit,’ my mother had whispered, her face turned away in embarrassment.
I had submitted and miraculously it had made things easier. Submission, I had thought then—it’s the answer.
In a sudden panic I went in to my child. She lay motionless, staring at the ceiling. I called out her name. She didn’t respond. There wasn’t even a flicker of movement. I dropped down by the bed.
‘Why don’t you talk?’
The eyes moved to my face. They were blank and unseeing. If you see a solar eclipse with the naked eye, they had told us as children, you will soon have spots before your eyes, like clouds. Then more spots, more clouds, and finally darkness.
‘Say something,’ I said fiercely.
The eyes moved away, back to their place. I clutched her hand tightly in both mine. ‘Talk to me. Tell me what happened. That man….’
All at once he was real. The enemy was not the dark, it was not being alone, it was the man.
‘Tell me about him. What did he do?’ My voice was shrill. She moved her head violently, as if warding off something. Her two thick plaits quivered into wavering curves.
‘Tell me. Please. Say something.’
I was begging now. Her eyes deserted me, went back to the ceiling. Her body relaxed. The plaits lay still, heavy, inert.
‘What are you staring at? What are you thinking of? Tell me. Say something. Talk,’
As if my frenzy could not but evoke a response, now she spoke.
‘It was dark,’ she said.
‘And then…?’
’It was dark,’ she said again.
I stared at her for a moment. Then suddenly, I walked to the window. With a savage movement I pulled back the curtains. The rings danced and jerked over the rod in metallic tings. Sunlight poured into the room, mote upon mote, invading it, filling it with brightness. It showed up the neglected slovenliness of the room, the dust piled on the furniture. But I was looking at her. And now, at last, her eyes moved from her spot to a glimmering, moving circle of light on another part of the ceiling. They rested on that shining circle for a moment, then moved to me. She saw me.
The Intrusion
We looked blatantly out of place there. Tiny houses, almost miniature ones, but spick and span. A little path, so narrow, that if we stretched our arms we could touch the houses on both sides. Why had we come here? I walked stiffly, self-consciously, trying hard to seem unaware of the stares, the curious eyes that followed us. I wished I could turn around and stare back with the same frank curiosity, but all I could do was to peep covertly through the corners of my eyes. Men in checked lungis sitting at fishing nets, drying fish laid out in rows on poles, women with bold faces and gold ornaments… all the signs of a fishing village. But, I thought, if this is a fishing village, where is the sea? And then we reached the end of the lane, turned right, and there, suddenly, enchantingly, was the sea in front of us, immense and fascinating. And again rows and rows of fish hung up to dry, looking at us and at the blue of the sky with sightless, accusing eyes.
I stopped and stared. He stopped too, and looked at me with a slight, a very slight impatience which aroused the faintest wisp of annoyance in me. Then he beckoned to me with a friendly smile and I hurried on. Now we were walking on the sand, squelchy, oozing, almost black. The sea must have been here not long back, during the high tide. I found it difficult walking in my high heels, with my heavy sari squashing damply round my ankles. I was conscious of an unreasonable pang of irritation against him. As though sensing my discomfort, he held my arm to help me, but awkwardly, too tight, and I wanted to protest, to release my arm from his constricting grip. The sea had left innumerable shells on the shore which crunched under our feet and I bent down to pick up one—any excuse to loosen his hold on my arm. But—horrors!—there was something alive, something crawling in the shell and I threw it away in disgust and hurried on after him.
Now, thankfully, we were out of the sand and back in the village, but a village that looked so different it was difficult to believe it was the same. The paths were broader and went steeply uphill. There were scarcely any signs of the sea—no fishing nets, no dried fish. Instead, there was the familiar lacy foliage of the drumstick tree outlined sharply against the sky, the drumsticks hanging limply and peacefully from the branches. I had no time to look around. The man, loaded with our new, expensive suitcases, was already at the top of the hill and I had to hurry, to stumble on uphill, panting, wishing now for the support I had earlier spurned.
‘We’re almost there,’ he said encouragingly and yes, we had left all the huts behind us. We went up a steep rocky path, lined by big boulders, and suddenly we were at the top. A square, squat building stared at us blankly. My hair blew anyhow and my sari began billowing into odd, ugly shapes. Someone came forward to receive us and opened one of the rooms for us. I sank gratefully into a chair, easing my tired feet out of my slippers, too exhausted even to look around.
‘Isn’t this nice?’ he asked me beaming, pleased with himself, all signs of nervousness and irritation gone now that we had arrived. ‘Yes,’ I said.
It had the usual dullness and impersonality of any room where people stay for a short time and go away, leaving no impress of themselves behind. Just a jumble of stale smells. Even, I sniffed surreptitiously, a smell of bedbugs. The man flung open the windows and the breeze rushed in at us, destroying, at one stroke, all the smells.
‘Do you want anything?’ he asked.
‘Yes, some tea. Is that all right?’
I nodded and the man went out. Though when he was in the room I had looked away from him, painfully aware of a secret smile, a smirk on his face that showed an awareness of what we had come here for, suddenly I wished he had not gone. He left behind him a painful silence, an embarrassment that occurs between two people who scarcely know each other and I wondered wildly, desperately, what we could talk about. As if the silence made him uneasy too, he began to move about the room whistling tunelessly. Then he suddenly burst into speech, telling me how fortunate he was to get this place for our honeymoon. What luck, he said, that one of the top executives, who was to have come here, had cancelled his visit at the last minute, so that we were here all by ourselves. ‘Complete privacy,’ he smiled, emphasizing the words and I felt suddenly, completely sickened. He went on, unaware of my feelings, telling me it was only the lucky few who could get this place to stay.
And then I began to wonder about these few, and did they come here with their families? Somehow it didn’t seem like a place where children had ever played and shouted, with mothers hovering round, anxious and nagging. There was something furtive about the place, something deadpan about the servant’s face, which made me feel that the men who came here did so with ‘other women’—girls, perhaps, bold-faced and experienced, who would laugh and chat with the men, not go through what I was enduring now. Fears. Tremors. The way I averted my face from the beds. The sheets looked grubby and the pillow covers disgustingly greasy. ‘Tell the man to change the covers and sheets,’ I wanted to say, but couldn’t. I imagined the man giving me meaningful looks when I said it, and later, perhaps, he would discuss us with the other servants. And all of them would make bawdy jokes and laugh aloud.
He went inside—I could hear sounds of him vigorously washing his face. I lay back in the chair, full of lassitude, too tired even to examine all my emotions, only one thought penetrating through the haze—I wish I was back home. The tea arrived. It smelt of kerosene, so did the bread and butter. I was suddenly very hungry and had a sharp pang of longing for the sweets my mother had packed for me. ‘I’ve put some sweets in your bag,’ she had said, turning her tired face to mine. ‘Ridiculous!’ I would have snapped, even a day earlier. ‘You can’t go on a honeymoon with sweets in your suitcase.’ But something forlorn in her face and eyes had restrained me and I had silently acquiesced. Now I knew that my hunger for her sweets had something to do with the look on her face as well. Yet I felt shy, unwilling to open my suitcase and devour the sweets before him like a greedy schoolgirl.
‘We are looking for a girl, simple but sophisticated,’ his mother had said. ‘My son is working in a foreign company. His wife must be able to entertain and mix with foreigners.’ She had made the word foreigners sound like ‘martians’. Simple and sophisticated—was I that, I wondered? It had seemed I was, for my mother had joyfully told me that they had agreed to our propo
sal. No one had asked me if I had agreed; it had been taken for granted. I had taken it for granted myself, when suddenly, a few days before the wedding, I had gone to my father, stricken by doubts. ‘Why?’ he had asked me, again and again. And, ‘What will you do then?’ In a panic I had asked myself ‘What will I do?’ And I had thought of a thousand answers, but none to the question ‘What’s wrong with him?’ I had nothing to say, either, when my father said quietly, ‘I have two more daughters to be married.’
‘Why are you so silent?’ he asked, breaking into my thoughts.
‘I’m tired. Just a little.’ I smiled as I said it, a painful, awkward smile, the smile one gives a distant acquaintance. What if I had said, ‘Now that I’ve had my tea, can I go home?’
He came closer, looking concerned, and put his arm round me, but awkwardly, stiffly, so that we looked like two marionettes sitting side by side. I tried to move but his hold was firm. He smelt of sweat. Through his glasses, his eyes had a sardonic gleam that frightened me.
‘It’s a bit stuffy here, isn’t it?’ I got up, trying to sound casual. ‘Let’s go out to the veranda. I want to see the sea.’
Unwillingly he let me go and followed me out. The sea was far away. There was only the breeze and a strong smell of dried fish. The cliff on which the building stood jutted out into the sea, giving the beach below us a private, secluded and inviting look. The sand gleamed orange in the light of the setting sun and even as we stood there in silence, the sun went down, swiftly and suddenly, taking us by surprise. I was conscious of a slight headache, a faint nausea. I had a great longing to go down, to scuff my bare toes in the sand, to pick up shells and sit on the rocks, letting the friendly waves climb up my bare legs. He would swim, I thought, and call out to me in a lazy and friendly way and I would respond with a wave and a smile. But all this was in the future, possibly, if at all. And at present we were not friends, not acquaintances even, but only a husband and wife. And the slightly glazed look in his eyes as he hummed a popular tune told me how unaware he was of everything but of what was to happen between us, making us truly husband and wife. When we were, I thought again, not even acquainted with each other. A month back we had not even heard of each other.
The Intrusion and Other Stories Page 4