The Intrusion and Other Stories

by Shashi Deshpande

  And at last there were just four days for him to go and my mind was in a fearful state, half guilty shame, half joyful anticipation. I was sitting with Rahul, helping him with his homework when he suddenly said, ‘Why don’t you come to Delhi with me?’

  It was too sharp, too sudden, too swift an upsetting of all my plans and I blurted out foolishly, ‘I… I can’t!’ Then I looked up fearfully. Did he understand? But his face was as calm, as bland as ever. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Weren’t you saying you were bored? Mother is prepared to look after Rahul for a few days. You don’t mind giving your mother a holiday, do you, Rahul?’

  And Rahul, ever reasonable, shook his head, while I desperately cast my thoughts about, wondering what excuse to give, clutching even more fiercely at the dream that was now receding. At last I said, after a pause, trying to sound casual, as if I didn’t care either way. ‘Next time, perhaps. I don’t feel like it this time.’

  ‘If I were you, I would make it this time.’

  The words sounded suddenly menacing, and I looked up startled. The same face, the same voice, but for a brief second I saw a dull, red light flicker in his eyes, like a warning, a challenge, then disappear. And I felt as if I was standing with my back to the wall, no room to move, no air to breathe, the two faces watching me steadily, warily. And then I knew that he knew, that he cared, and as if a dam had burst, a flood shame of guilt swept over me, drowned me. I let go of the mirage I had tried to grasp so long, and now I realized, when it was too late, the most piercing thought of all—that it had been no mere antidote to boredom, but the best part of my life. And I let it go.

  Lucid Moments

  She is moaning. ‘My glasses… I want… get them…’

  Her words are slurred, running into one another, hard to understand. It is only by leaning over her and catching the words the very moment they emerge that I can grasp them. Both of us, Baba and I, are doing this now; we are intensely aware of her every word, her every breath. It seems strange when I remember how unresponsive I have been to her being all these years.

  ‘Akka …’ I call her, ‘Akka….’

  I am fearful of touching her, it hurts her so now to be touched at all. I put all my urgency into my voice instead. I must wake her, take her away from that agonized, fruitless search.

  ‘Akka….’

  The moaning stops. Her eyes open slowly. They look into mine. At first they are blank; awareness seeps in gradually. I wait patiently.

  ‘Su… ja..’ she says in her not-enough-breath voice.

  ‘Yes, Akka?’

  ‘Did you call me?’

  ‘Yes, you were looking for your glasses, you seemed to have lost them, even in your dream you managed to do that.’

  I smile at her, but her eyes—the only part of her face that can smile—don’t respond.

  ‘Dream?’ Then, after a pause, during which she collects sufficient breath, ‘You called me Akka. Why?’

  Akka. Yes, it is strange to call your mother that. Why do we? It was I, her first-born, who started it. But I don’t know why. I have no answer to that. And why is she asking me this strange question now?

  ‘You know… my… name?’ she asks with an odd anxiety.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  There seems to be enough breath in her wasted body for a small sigh. Is it a sigh of relief?

  ‘My mother… I never… never knew….’

  ‘Your mother’s name?’

  She goes on as if I have not spoken. ‘My father…’ she pauses for breath, ‘my name… Sumati… Girija….’ She seems puzzled by this plethora of names she has. ‘But my mother?’

  These past days her mind has often been disorientated. She moves from the present to the past and back again, sometimes confusing the two, at times wandering in some no man’s land in between. She has called me Vasanti, after Baba’s sister who had lived with them years back, sometimes I have been the child Sujata, sometimes the girl Sujata who so troubled her, and, rarely, I have been Shilpa, her younger daughter. But now she seems clear-eyed, except for that shadow of suffering which has become part of her. In fact, this seems to be one of her more lucid moments. And yet she is asking me, ‘Suja… what is… my mother’s name?’ She is looking at me urgently, waiting for my reply.

  ‘I don’t know, Akka.’

  I know that my maternal grandmother died giving birth to her; but she has never spoken to us of her. And now, here she is asking me, ‘What is my mother’s name?’

  ‘They always said … your mother … no one … I never heard …. What was her name?’

  This time her urgency and earnestness enable her to speak clearly and audibly. She is sweating with the effort.

  ‘I don’t know, Akka,’ I repeat.

  I have to be honest. I cannot give her what she wants. I am being true to our relationship in this. It was always Shilpa who was—who is—a true daughter to her. I have never known her needs, never spoken to her of mine. Once, when she spoke to me of my childlessness, showing me her grief, I turned on her in anger. I would not let her intrude into that dark world of mine. I felt she wronged me by showing her sympathy for my grief. Grief? No, that is not what I feel. It is an emptiness, a feeling as if the core of me has been scooped out, leaving a black hole behind. Often, watching Shilpa with her children, I feel unreal, my life seems to be without any substance.

  ‘You’re sweating, Akka,’ I say now. ‘Shall I give you a wash?’

  Slowly she lets go of the thought she has been pursuing so desperately. I sponge her face, her neck, her arms. I do it as gently as I can, but I can feel her body go rigid with the apprehension of pain.

  My dying mother is now in her mid-fifties. She always was a small woman; now there is even less of her, as if her disease has been steadily gnawing away at her body. Since the metastasis, there seems to be almost nothing of her old self left. The shadows that began under her eyes have captured the whole of her face, the lower portion has caved in, her eyes have sunk into two deep, dark wells. Only her forehead is still clear and unmarked. The last thing I do now is to apply the red ‘sticker bindi’ in the centre of it. She smiles at this, she always does, as if this pleases her. It is not, I somehow guess, a conventional clinging to her sign of wifehood, for it was she who asked us to put away all her jewellery, even her mangalsutra. ‘It’s too heavy,’ she had said. I suppose wearing the bindi gives her a link with her old self; it is somehow reassuring.

  ‘There!’ I say. ‘You’re all ready now.’

  Suddenly I remember that this is what Shilpa says to her daughter. ‘There!’ she says to Tiny after her bath, ‘you’re all ready now.’ And like Tiny after her bath, my mother sleeps. Baba comes into her room as I am going out. He makes a reassuring gesture, as if to tell me, ‘I’m here. You can go.’ But I’m scarcely in the kitchen when he enters to ask, ‘Shall we have our lunch while she’s sleeping?’

  Baba helps me to set the table, being meticulous about having everything in its place. Poor Baba, I know how it is for him—he can’t bear being alone with his dying wife. It saddens me immensely. As a child, Baba had seemed to me the wisest, the most dignified of men. To be admitted to his companionship had been the greatest honour. I had pitied Akka and Shilpa for being left outside the magic circle. He was the rock on which my life had stood firm. Until Akka’s illness when the rock turned to shifting sand. He wrote frantic letters to Shilpa and me to come; the moment we went back home, he wrote asking us to return. He never seemed to remember I had a job, Shilpa her children. And when we are here, he stands outside Akka’s door and asks us, ‘How is she?’

  ‘One of her better days actually,’ I tell him, during our lunch when his question comes up. ‘She’s been talking today….’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Her dead mother. She was asking me for her name. Isn’t it odd?’ Baba is pushing his food about on his plate; he seems disinterested, not only in his food, but in my talk as well.

  ‘Baba, do you know it?’

  ‘What?�
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  ‘Akka’s mother’s name?’

  Irritably he says, ‘No, how could I?’ It sounds as if he is saying—why should I?

  She sleeps through the afternoon, if it can be called sleep, this drug-induced pause in her being. She is still sleeping when the woman from next door comes to invite us to her daughter’s wedding. The woman has toned down her finery and gaiety in deference to Akka’s illness; nevertheless, at the sight of Akka in bed, mouth open, breathing stertorously, her put-on gravity deserts her and she looks frankly frightened. She tiptoes out without a word. She is wiping her eyes when I join her.

  ‘She had promised my Usha she would plait her hair with flowers on her wedding day.’

  Had she? I am fascinated by this facet of my mother’s life.

  ‘We’ve been neighbours for so long. My Gopal was just born when we moved in here next to you.’

  My Gopal was just born—I am suddenly and unreasonably angry. Why do women talk this way as if their obstetric history is their only, their real history?

  ‘Usha’s mother was here,’ I tell Akka when she wakes up. Her eyes are clouded; only the shape of her mouth tells me she is repeating, ‘Usha?’

  ‘The wedding is next Thursday.’

  But she is disinterested. She goes back, with a strange persistence, to her own dead mother. ‘My mother …’ she speaks more painfully now. ‘I was … first child … she died … very young … don’t know … looks ….’

  ‘No photos of her?’

  ‘I never … my father ….’

  ‘He never spoke of her?’

  ‘No … maybe … like you ….’

  ‘She looked like me?’

  ‘I think … you are … different ….’

  I know what she means. I am not like her, or like my father, either. And so she thinks, she imagines, I look like my dead grandmother. There is a curious stirring in me to be linked to that nameless woman who died giving birth to her first child. But she had a child ….

  ‘Names …’ Akka goes on, after a while, ‘Su … ja … remember … weddings … call out names …?’

  It is because I am following her line of thought that I know what she is trying to say. She is thinking of that pre-wedding rite, in which the priests call out names of the couple’s ancestors—father, grandfather, great grandfather. The names roll off their tongues with a musical, sonorous solemnity.

  ‘Mother’s name … why don’t they …?’

  I am silent. And she isn’t expecting a reply from me; she seems to be asking the question of herself.

  ‘They should ….’ Pain and fatigue proclaim themselves in her voice now.

  ‘Don’t tire yourself, Akka. Just lie quietly.’

  She lies silent, her eyes closed. But as if she has transferred her thoughts to me, I begin to wonder myself—why don’t they? And from that I go on to wondering at the idea of Akka’s asking such a question, of Akka asking a question at all. For some reason, a memory comes back to me—Akka standing at the back door, her sari held up with one hand, wiping her feet on the rag kept at the threshold, while my grandmother raged at her.

  ‘Why was she angry?’ I had asked Akka later.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask her?’

  She had shrugged, as if saying, ‘What’s the use?’

  Why is she asking so many questions now? Do you have to come close to death to ask questions about life? Must we live unquestioningly, unthinkingly, until death comes upon us?

  I sit by her, a book in my hand. A lizard clucks somewhere. It brings back my grandmother’s superstitious response of ‘Krishna, Krishna’ to a lizard’s cluck, her absolute terror if a lizard fell with a fat thump anywhere. I doze in my chair. The book falls, wakes me up. I hear Akka’s rasping breath.

  ‘Akka … Akka ….’

  She opens her eyes, almost lazily. ‘Su… ja….’

  ‘Yes, Akka.’

  Nothing more. We are reassuring each other. She is still alive. I am still with her. She drops off again, mumbles something. I can’t make any of it out. She is lost in some world of her own. She doesn’t wake up even when Ramesh comes in for his daily visit, a tired, end-of-a-busy-doctor’s-day look on his face.

  ‘I’ll sit with her,’ Baba says after dinner. ‘You try to sleep.’ I am reluctant, but Baba persuades me and I go to bed. It’s no use, I can’t sleep. Akka’s question—what was my mother’s name?—keeps coming back to me. And I see the scene again—the black stone floor, Akka’s tiny feet on the rag, ceaselessly rubbing themselves, and my grandmother’s face…. Why was she so angry? Strange that a scene I had seen as a child should return and tantalize me so.

  Resolutely I turn my thoughts away, sit up and pick up Shyam’s letter. It seems so far away, that life of mine with Shy am. But as I re-read the letter, I am overcome by a longing to be back in my own home, my routine. I long for the reassurance of Shyam’s body beside mine.

  ‘What is your name?’

  I am on the beach, asking the question of my mother, who is sitting in a large reclining chair. ‘What is your name?’ I am asking the question now of a child who sits by us stringing beads. My mother smiles, then screams, I’m blind, I can’t see, I’m blind.’ And she dies.

  She’s dead … on that thought I wake up. I can hear Baba’s voice, shrill with panic, calling out, ‘Sujata … Sujata ….’

  This is it, it’s happened. I get out of bed and blunder about the room, banging into things, my heart beating a wild tattoo—it’s happened, it’s happened.

  No, I can hear her voice. She’s moaning—no, screaming, if so thin a sound can be called a scream. Baba is sitting by her, his head turned away from the bed, still calling out my name.

  ‘Baba, what’s happened … Akka ….’

  He looks at me, bursts into grotesque sobs.

  ‘Akka …?’

  It’s no use, she can’t see me, she can’t hear me.

  ‘Baba, please don’t—Baba, stop that, Baba please go and ring up Ramesh, please get Ramesh.’

  He goes out and I am alone with her. Her hand is cold. The screams go on and on. Oh God, let her die, let her be out of this, Baba, Shilpa, Ramesh, someone please come, Ramesh come and help her, why have they left me alone here, Oh God, let her die, let her die ….

  Baba comes in. ‘Is she…?’

  ‘No. Ramesh?’

  ‘He’s coming.’

  Ramesh is with us. His voice, gentle and reassuring, miraculously seems to reach her. She looks at him. Her eyes … Oh my God!

  ‘I’m here, it’s all right, I’m with you. Sujata,’ he turns to me, ‘you have to help me.’

  Hurting her doesn’t seem to matter any more. What is one small pain to her now? But when it’s over I can no longer control myself. I go to the bathroom and am violently sick. Ramesh comes in to wash his hands, waits till I clean the wash-basin.

  ‘Ramesh …?’

  He answers my unspoken question. ‘I’ll ring up Shilpa as soon as I get home. Ask her and Prakash to come at once. And Shyam?’

  ‘Yes, Shyam too.’

  ‘Right. She’ll sleep now. I’ll try to get a nurse in the morning. You may need her.’

  My composure surprises me. There is a moment of panic when Ramesh leaves, but I fight that down. I persuade Baba to go to bed. I sit alone with her and watch her. Once she opens her eyes.

  ‘What do you want, Akka?’ I ask her.

  Her voice comes out ragged and hoarse, as if it has been bruised in that struggle against pain. ‘You… are you….’ The lids close again. In a while the breathing is even. Baba tiptoes in once or twice.

  I wake up to find Ramesh shaking me. The nightmare of the night returns.

  ‘Is she …?’

  No, I can hear her rasping breath.

  ‘She’s sleeping. I’ve brought a nurse to help you. Go and lie down for a while.’

  A hot bath, a cup of tea. She always gave me these. No, let me not think about that. I lie in bed, fantasizi
ng about being in my own bed at home, Shyam moving about, whistling softly ….

  In the afternoon it begins again. I hear the moans even before the nurse does. I am now as finely tuned to her suffering as a mother to her child’s. My body goes cold, my insides begin twisting into coils. I can’t go through it again, I won’t, I’ll kill her myself….

  ‘Akka….’ She looks as if she is pitting all the strength of her frail body against her pain. ‘Akka, I’m here…’ I grip her hand. I can’t shield her from pain any more. ‘Akka, I’m with you.’

  The nurse slips out, murmuring something. Baba comes in. I am scarcely aware of them. There are only the two of us now, my mother and 1.1 feel I am sharing it with her, the pain of dying, as we had once, perhaps, suffered together the pangs of my birth. I cannot go with her all the way this time, but I feel I am easing her out of life. Go gently, mother, don’t struggle, go gently.

  As if she has heard me, her cries die down. Baba slips to the ground, his face close to hers. Tears collect in pools in the two wells of her eyes, brim over and run swiftly into her hair. We don’t wipe them; we have as little right to blot them as we have to stifle the cry of the new-born. We watch her body relax and realization comes to both of us almost simultaneously. Baba, with infinite gentleness, puts her hand by her side as if giving it back to her. My own body begins to relax. Baba says something. Why is he swaying? No, it’s not just him, everything is moving, no, it’s me… I’m….