Sisters of the Revolution

by Ann VanderMeer

  But when he went into the drawing room, it was dark—somebody had closed the curtains, shutting out the morning light. Disturbed by the unnatural silence—the cook had stopped singing—he groped blindly towards the light-switch, which was closer to him than any of the windows. “Kamala!” he called, irritated to find his voice trembling.

  Abruptly a curtain at the other end of the room was drawn violently back, letting in a burst of sunshine that hurt his eyes. There stood his wife, naked, facing the sun with her arms spread wide. She began to turn slowly. There was a beatific expression on her face. The sunlight washed her ample body, the generous terraces and folds of flesh that cascaded down to her sagging belly and buttocks. Ramnath was transfixed with horror. He ran up to the curtain, drew it closed, put his hands on his wife’s plump shoulders and shook her hard.

  “You have gone mad! What will the neighbors think? What did I do to deserve this!”

  He dragged her to the bedroom and looked around for her sari. The blouse, petticoat and sari lay in crumpled folds on the bed. This in itself was disturbing because she was usually obsessive about tidiness. He realized that he had no idea how to put the sari on her. He saw the nightgown hanging neatly folded on the mosquito-netting bar, and grabbed it. His wife was struggling in his arms.

  “Are you completely shameless? Put this on!”

  After a while he managed to get the nightgown on her, but it was back-to-front. That didn’t matter. He sat her down on the bed.

  “Stay here and don’t move. I am going to call the doctor. Has the cook gone out?”

  Her nod reassured him, but she would not look at him. As Ramnath went into the drawing room, he hesitated, then turned on the light instead of drawing open the curtains. He was irritated to find that a part of his body had responded to her nakedness and his struggle with her. Resolutely he put all distracting thoughts aside and went to the phone.

  Dr. Kumar was out attending to a hospital emergency. Ramnath thought unkind thoughts about his friend. “Tell him he must phone the moment he returns—it is a matter of great urgency,” he told the servant. He slammed down the phone. He went back to the bedroom. His wife was lying down, apparently asleep.

  All that day Ramnath kept guard over his wife. By lunch she had changed back into her sari and combed her hair. The cook served them a stew of chickpeas simmered in a sauce of onions, cumin, ginger and chilies. There was basmati rice which they kept only for special occasions, and tiny fried eggplants stuffed with tomatoes and spices. Ramnath, having no idea what his wife’s favorite dishes were, had asked the cook to make whatever she liked, hoping that food would distract her from this insanity. But she picked at her food absently, a dreamy look on her face. It was obvious that her thoughts were miles away. Ramnath felt a surge of anger and self-pity. What had he done to deserve this? He had worked hard for forty years or more, risen up to the ranks of a senior bureaucrat in the state government. He had fathered two sons. Now it occurred to him that it would have been nice to have a daughter, somebody whom he could call on at times like this. His mind did a quick survey of elderly female relatives—but they were either all dead, or lived in other towns and villages. Why didn’t that damned doctor phone?

  Ramnath’s day was completely ruined. In the evenings he liked to go to the senior club and play chess with other retirees, but today he dared not leave his wife. She, for her part, spoke only when spoken to. She seemed outwardly calm, instructing the cook and herself dusting the pictures and bric-a-brac in the drawing room, but occasionally he would catch her gazing dreamily into a private world, a smile on her lips. He phoned the doctor again but the damn fool had come home only briefly, dressed for a party and left without receiving the urgent message.

  That night was one of the worst that Ramnath had ever experienced. His wife tossed in her sleep, straining against some invisible restraining force like a moored ship trying to break free. Ramnath himself was beset by nightmares of planets and matronly naked women. He woke several times, looking warily at his wife as she slept fitfully, her graying hair all over the pillow, half-covering her open mouth. A wisp of hair blew out of her mouth with her breath, and it seemed to him as though it took on the aspect of some awful living thing. He brushed the hair off her face, trying not to tremble. In the moonlight from the window, her face was like the surface of the moon: pitted and cratered, fissured with age. She looked like a stranger.

  The next morning his wife was rather subdued. She did not go out in the middle of the day to visit Mrs. Chakravarti or Mrs. Jain, as she used to do. She let the phone ring until Ramnath, maddened by her indifference, picked up the receiver and shouted into it, only to be embarrassed by the cool voice of Mrs. Jain. “My wife is not well,” he said, immediately regretting it. Mrs. Jain, all concern, showed up ten minutes later with Mrs. Chakravarti, bearing fruits and a special herbal concoction that Mrs. Chakravarti’s mother-in-law had made. For a minute Ramnath felt like telling them to go away and leave him in peace, but their matronly figures resplendent in crisp, starched cotton saris, their perfumed, hennaed hair tied so neatly into buns, their air of righteous sisterly concern quite defeated him. Kamala came out of the bedroom, where she had been lying down, greeted them with surprised pleasure and led them all back into the room. Ramnath, thus displaced, sat and fretted on the hot verandah, first refusing and then accepting the cook’s offer of home-made lemon water. Inside the bedroom the women were all sprawled on the bed like beached whales, sipping lemon water and talking and giggling. He could not tell what they were gossiping about. But slowly he became comforted by the notion that his wife was at least acting normally. Perhaps having her friends over was a good thing. Perhaps he could manage a visit to the club this evening.

  As soon as the women left, Kamala reverted to her old air of quiet indifference. Meanwhile Dr. Kumar called. The idiot insisted on asking exactly what the matter was with Mrs. Mishra. Ramnath, feeling his wife’s eyes on him, did not know what to say. “It’s a lady matter,” he said finally, embarrassed. “I can’t explain over the phone. Can you come?”

  Dr. Kumar came that evening and stayed to dinner. He checked Kamala’s blood pressure, listened to her heart. His assistant, a taciturn young man, withdrew blood for further testing. During all this Kamala was serene, hospitable, asking after the doctor’s family with sweet concern. It occurred to Ramnath that she had already acquired the infamous cunning of the insane, which enables them to conceal their madness at will.

  “You must be mistaken, Mishra-ji,” the doctor said on the phone two days later. “Everything is normal—she is, in fact, much healthier than before. If she has been behaving strangely, it is probably mental. Not always the sign of disease. Women are odd—they act strangely when they are hankering after something. She should go out, maybe go visit one of your sons. Grandchildren would do her good.”

  But Kamala refused to leave town. At last Ramnath, acting on the doctor’s advice, persuaded her to walk with him in the evenings, hoping that the open air would do her good. He kept a steely eye on her—if she as much as touched the free end of her sari hanging over her shoulder, he would grunt warningly and slap her hand. The narrow lanes of their neighborhood were lined with amaltash trees heavy with cascades of golden flowers. In the playground the older boys finished the last round of cricket in the failing light, while smaller children squatted in the dust, playing with marbles, ignoring wandering cows and sedate, elderly citizens taking the air. Neighbors sitting on the verandahs of their bungalows called out greetings. Torn between hope and dread, Ramnath frequently and surreptitiously examined his wife’s face for signs of incipient madness. She remained calm and sociable, although as they walked on it seemed as though she were falling into a trance, interrupted only by sighs of deep rapture as she gazed at the sunset.

  In the week that followed, Kamala attempted twice to take off her clothes. Both times Ramnath managed to restrain her, although the second time she almost managed to escape from him. He caught her just as she was ab
out to run out into the driveway in nothing but a petticoat and blouse, in full view of street vendors, cricket-playing children and respectable elderly gentlemen. He wrestled her into the bedroom and tried to slap some sense into her, but she continued to struggle and weep. At last, frustrated, he pulled half a dozen saris out from the big steel cupboard and flung them on the bed.

  “Kamala,” he said desperately, “even planets have atmospheres. See here, this gray sari, it looks like a swirl of clouds. How about it?”

  She calmed down at once. She began to put on the gray sari although the fabric, georgette, was unsuitable for summer.

  “At last you believe me, Ramnath,” she said. Her voice seemed to have changed. It was deeper, more powerful. He looked at her, aghast. She had addressed him by his name! That was all very well for the new generation of young adults, but respectable, traditional women never addressed their husbands by their names. He decided not to do anything about it for now. At least she was clothed.

  At night Ramnath lay wrestling with doubts and fears. A breeze blew in through the open window, stirring the mosquito-netting. In the starlight his wife, the room, everything looked alien. He propped himself on one elbow and looked at the stranger beside him. A thought came to him that if he could get her confined to the asylum in Ranchi without a scandal, he would do it. But she had that idiot Kumar charmed. The way she had asked so nicely about his ailing mother, congratulated him on his recent membership of a prestigious medical organization. Kumar had known the family for years—and, it occurred to Ramnath, had always had a soft spot for his wife. Who would have thought she’d had so much cunning in her? Now, as he watched her sleep, her hair in disarray and her mouth open like some hideous cavern, it occurred to him how easy his life would be if she would simply die. He was ashamed of the thought as soon as it formed but he could not take it back. It called to him and seduced him and resounded in his head until he was convinced that if he could not have her committed, he would have to kill her himself. He could not live like this.

  Every night it became a ritual for him to look at her and imagine the different ways he could commit murder. He had been shocked at himself at first—him, a fine, upstanding ex-bureaucrat contemplating something as hideous as the murder of the mother of his sons—but there was no denying that the thought—the fantasy, he told himself—gave him pleasure. A secret, shameful sort of pleasure, like sex before marriage, but pleasure nonetheless.

  He began to count the ways. Suffocation with a pillow while she slept would be the easiest, but he had no idea if the forensics people could infer from that what had happened. Strangulation had the same problem. Poison—but where to procure it? And now that she had stopped taking her liver pills he could no longer perform some artful substitution. Damn the woman!

  One night, as he watched her sleeping, he put his hand very gently on her neck. She stirred a little, frightening him, but he made himself keep his hand there, feeling the pulse in her throat. He began to stroke her neck with his thumb. Abruptly she coughed and he jerked his hand away in terror. But she did not wake. She was coughing up something dark from her mouth. For a moment he thought it was blood, that he should call the doctor; his next thought was that perhaps she was dying of her own accord. Maybe it had been enough to wish it so strongly. She coughed again and again but she did not wake. Now the dark stuff had gathered about her mouth, on her chin, like a jelly. To his horror he saw that the darkness was not blood but composed of small, moving things. One stood up on its hind legs for a moment, surveying him, and he drew back in horror. It was insectoid, alien, about as tall as his index finger. There was an army of those things coming out of her mouth.

  The mosquito netting was tucked under the bed on all sides—he pushed at it, trying to tear it with his hands, but they were upon him before he could get out of the bed. He tried to cry out but all he could manage was a whimper. They covered his body, crawling inside his clothes, beating and biting at him with short, sharp appendages. He tried to brush them off but there were too many of them. They made a sound like crickets singing, but softer. He howled in despair, calling to Kamala to save him, but she lay peacefully beside him as the things came out of her. After a while he fainted.

  Much later he opened his eyes, with some difficulty—they were sticky with dried tears. A pale morning light came in through the window. There was no sign of the creatures. There was a large tear in the mosquito netting and a mosquito was humming in his ear. His wife lay sleeping beside him. Perhaps what he had experienced had been a nightmare, he told himself, that it was his conscience punishing him for his impious thoughts. But he knew that the soreness all over his body, the marks of bites and the bruises, were real. He turned fearfully towards his wife. Abruptly her eyes snapped open.

  “Hai bhagwaan!” She was looking at the tear on his white sleepshirt, the pinpricks of blood. He flinched as she reached out a hand to touch the tiny wounds. They had spared his face. More cunning, he thought. “Why didn’t you wake me? I would have told them—they would have understood, not hurt you.”

  “What are those things?” he whispered.

  “Inhabitants,” she said. “I’m a planet, remember?”

  She smiled at the look on his face.

  “Don’t be afraid, Ramnath.” Again, the free use of his name! Was she possessed? Should he consult an astrologer? An exorcist? He, a rational man, reduced to this!

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said again. “The younger ones probably want to find a place to colonize. If you ever want to be a satellite, Ramnath, let me know. The little animals are good for a planet. They have restored my health.”

  “Do you want to go visit your mother?” he whispered. “You haven’t been home for a while. I will make all the arrangements …”

  He had not let her go home to her ancestral village for the past five years—there was always something going on that needed her attention. The marriage of their sons, his retirement and the fact that somebody had to run the house and supervise the servants.

  “Oh Ramnath,” she said, her eyes softening. “You were never this generous before. I think you have quite changed. No, I don’t want to leave you, not yet.”

  She bathed his wounds with Dettol and warm water. She watched over him solicitously as he ate his breakfast. Later, her distracted look returned as she moved about the house, dusting and rearranging things mechanically. Ramnath felt the need to escape.

  “Do you mind if I go to the club this evening?”

  “No, of course not,” she said amiably. “Go enjoy yourself.”

  When he went to his club he made a private and very expensive phone call to his older son.

  “But Papa, I just heard from Ma. She sounded quite normal. Are you sure you are feeling well? … No I can’t come now, there is a very important case at court. My senior partner has put me in charge …”

  The younger son was in Germany on an engineering assignment. Defeated, Ramnath immersed himself in a game of chess with an acquaintance who beat him easily.

  “Losing your touch, sir?” said the younger man annoyingly.

  When Ramnath got home, he felt he was returning to prison. The house was quite silent except for the cook singing in the kitchen. It occurred to him to tell the fellow to shut up. But where was his wife?

  “She went to the park, Sahib,” the cook said.

  He wondered whether to go after her. But five minutes later she was coming up the driveway clutching a balloon. She waved and smiled at him quite shamelessly. He saw with relief that she was clothed. She was eating an ice cream bar.

  “I had such fun, Ramnath,” she told him. “I played with the little ones. I bought them all balloons. I haven’t had a balloon in such a long time.”

  Later, after the cook had retired, he spoke to her.

  “Kamala, those … things, those creatures inside you … I think we should get you checked up. It is not right to keep all this from Dr. Kumar. You have a terrible disease …”

  “But, Ramnath
, I have no sickness. I am well, very well. After years.”

  “But …”

  “And the things, as you call them are not things but my own creation. They came from me, Ramnath.”

  She slapped his face playfully.

  “You look pulled down and grumpy,” she said, pinching his thin cheek. “My little animals would do you so much good, Ramnath, if only you would rid yourself of your prejudice.”

  He backed away from her, outraged and horrified.

  “Never! Kamala, I am going to sleep on the sofa. I cannot …”

  “As you wish,” she said indifferently.

  That night he lay awake for a long time. He could hear the crickets singing outside the window, but was too nervous to get up and shut out the sound. All the small night-time sounds—the whisper of the curtain in the breeze, the asthmatic squeak of the ceiling fan, the rustle of the leaves of the bougainvillea outside—all this made him think of the insect-like creatures. Once he woke up and fancied that some of them were standing on the top of the narrow sofa, looking down at him and gesturing in a very human way, as he lay there, helpless. He began to edge off the sofa, his heart hammering wildly, but a sudden gust of wind filled the curtains so they billowed out like ghostly sails, letting in the moonlight—and he saw that there was nothing on the top of the sofa after all. At last he fell asleep, exhausted.

  Over the next few days Ramnath kept hold of his sanity with great difficulty. He wondered whether he should renounce the world and retire to the Himalayas. Perhaps the gods he had so casually dismissed the past few years were getting their revenge now. He still toyed with the idea of murder, although it seemed impossible now, at least at close range. Looking at his wife over dinner, he began to wonder for the first time about her. What was she really like? What did she want that he had not given her? How had he come to this?