The Lilac House: A Novel

by Anita Nair

  He looks at his watch again. Twenty past eleven. Meera should be here any moment now. He searches the entrance of Dewar’s, the faded doors flung wide open, men in office clothes sitting alongside autorickshaw drivers. As he watches, a girl parks her scooter and walks in. And he knows again the thrill of discovery. Could such a place exist? And for Meera to know about it and suggest it…

  Jak sees a bike come towards Dewar’s. A man and a woman. The woman holds the man’s waist in an almost intimate clasp. When the bike screeches to a halt, he feels the impact of the woman’s breasts against his back. He grins. He has done it too, like all his friends have. That abrupt braking. The squashing of her breasts, the tightening of her grip, the smile that splashes across the face on knowing he has made it happen. The leer of knowledge – the girl wanted it as much as he did.

  Jak feels a queer sense of regret. He has had those days too. A bike, a chick and endless carefree hours of youthful animation. It isn’t that he longs for them any more; he doesn’t. Is this what growing old means? A certain reconciliation with one’s subdued spirits and not-so-youthful self?

  The woman is laughing as she dismounts from the bike. She slaps the man’s shoulder playfully. Jak snaps out of his reverie when he sees the woman is Meera. A Meera he doesn’t recognize. He sees the casual case with which she wears the unfamiliar clothes, and her manner. Jak’s mouth tightens. So this is Rishi Soman, Smriti’s friend who is Meera’s friend too. More than a friend.

  Jak looks at the dashboard clock. Ten minutes, Meera had said. Wait for ten minutes and then call me. I’m going to ask you to join us. You wait another five minutes before you come in. I don’t want him to think I set it up. And it’s going to be about this key that you have tracked me into Dewar’s for.

  What key? Jak’s eyes questioned.

  ‘Does it matter?’ Meera sighed. ‘Filing cupboard key, if you need a name for it.’

  ‘All this subterfuge…’ Jak mused.

  ‘Indeed! How do you think it makes me feel? But it is Smriti I am thinking of,’ Meera said gently.

  She picks up on the sixth ring. He imagines her making a moue of her lips. ‘My boss. I have to answer this!’ she would say, perhaps smiling apologetically. Rishi Soman would lean back in his chair and smile back at her lazily, languorously. I would if it were me, Jak thinks unhappily as he speaks the words he is expected to and hears her planned response. ‘Yes, the key is with me in my bag. I am at Dewar’s. Do you know the place? You do. Can you pick it up from me?’

  She sits in one of the faded cane chairs facing the door. Rishi Soman is seated with his back to the entrance. Jak sees him reach over to pop a peanut into her mouth and Meera part her lips willingly enough. Jak’s jaws clench. Then he sees her catch sight of him and the flash of relief on her face. Jak smiles. Rishi Soman turns his head to look at the recipient of Meera’s beaming smile.

  And soon Meera is saying, ‘Did you have trouble finding the place?’ She fumbles in her bag for the key and holding it out to Jak, she feigns confusion. ‘Oh, how I forget my manners. Rishi, this is Jak. And Jak, this is Rishi Soman.’

  Jak looks at the young man and with the consummate voice of the thespian queries, ‘The actor?’

  Rishi Soman’s features relax into the wide gratuitous smile of one who aches to be recognized in public and seldom is. The little shit, Jak thinks. He really thinks that I would know him from one of those mannequins who populate the afternoon soaps on TV. What an idiot, with his wet-hair look and one size too small T-shirt and the compulsive need to show off the profile that someone must have told him is his best angle.

  ‘Oh, do join us,’ Meera says.

  ‘Yes, do,’ Rishi Soman says after a moment, not entirely pleased, but not willing to relinquish a moment with someone who actually recognized him.

  Jak pulls up a chair and settles down. What now?

  Meera is a practised hostess. She knows how to expand the conversation to include both Jak and Rishi Soman. So in the manner of the experienced corporate wife who knows timing is all, Meera says, ‘Jak’s daughter was a student at Mounts.’

  ‘Was she?’ Rishi Soman queries politely. Jak can sense his restlessness.

  ‘I think you knew her,’ he says suddenly. ‘She mentioned you…’ Rishi Soman wears an abashed look but his smile is smug. He shrugs. ‘College girls. Without them the actor is nothing. They are the ones who bolster our egos even if the critics pan us… For instance, would this gorgeous lady here ever ask me for a photograph and then hide it between the pages of her diary?’ He throws Meera a boyish grin.

  Jak thinks he would like to slap that silly, smug look away. But he can also see what it is that lured Smriti and seems to enchant even someone as sensible as Meera. She is wearing a strange expression, he sees to his consternation. The foolish smile of the besotted.

  ‘No, she wasn’t one of your anonymous fans.’ Jak’s voice cracks. ‘I think you knew each other very well. Smriti. Smriti Krishnamurthy.’

  A silence creeps into the room then. A mangy silence on the four legs of a hyena who waits for someone else to make the kill.

  ‘You set this up,’ Rishi Soman hisses. ‘You planned this between the two of you. And I thought you wanted to see me, Meera,’ he continues, oblivious to Jak’s presence. ‘I thought we had a connection. You were just using me.’

  Meera flushes. Jak leans back in his chair. ‘Meera did as I asked her to.’

  He holds Soman’s gaze steadily. ‘You forced my hand when you refused to take my calls.’

  ‘What is it you want to know? I told you I had nothing to do with it.’ Rishi Soman’s face contorts into a mask of misery. ‘How can you hold me responsible?’

  Meera reaches across and takes his hand in hers. ‘Rishi, no one is holding you responsible. But don’t you think the Professor has a right to know what happened? You were the only person there… Look at him. Put yourself in his place. Wouldn’t you want to know?’

  Jak feels Rishi’s eyes settle on him.

  ‘Tell me,’ Jak says in his quietest voice.

  At first, Smriti was a game. The queen of the chessboard pursued by the bishop, the rook and himself, the knight. At first, Smriti was a piece he wanted to prise away from the rest, whistling under his breath. Then one day he paused, sized her up and murmured: Checkmate?

  The other two watched helplessly as he made his move. The rook toppled over and removed himself, the bishop fumed, but it was the knight who with the powers vested in him could move two paces to the front, one to the side, and stake his claim.

  He had an unfair advantage, he knew. He was the older man. Older than the other two. She would see them always as boys. Playmates. But he was the one who knew how to lower his voice to a seductive timbre and toy with her already errant emotions; the one who could lean back, fold his arms, shake his head at her youthful impetuosities and say, ‘You are such a child! What am I to do with you?’

  The child she was flowered.

  Jak’s eyes narrow. This bastard, it seems, always has the unfair advantage. The older man to Smriti and the younger man to Meera. He is a professional charmer of women. Jak rubs the bridge of his nose absently, furiously.

  They played house, Smriti and Rishi Soman. At first everything was a game. Days speckled with playacting and role playing. You Tarzan, me Jane. You husband, me wife. You daddy, me mummy. They cooked. They cleaned. They shopped. They made love. They made plans. They slept wrapped in each other’s arms and dreams.

  Everything was perfect when it was make-believe. Then Smriti didn’t want it to be a game any more. In the apartment he shared with his cousin, she allowed the swelter of emotions to swirl and bank. This feeling he aroused in her, she wished him to know, it consumed her. She dressed the way he liked girls to. She ate what he ate. She switched to the music he listened to and gave up everything he professed a dislike for. She bathed using his bar of soap; she borrowed his toothbrush; she wore his shirts… She followed his every move and if he slammed a door bet
ween them, she would wait outside till he emerged.

  At first, he was touched. Flattered, too, that he could raise such an excess of feeling in another person. But soon her devotion felt like clinging, her love a trap, her presence a weight on his shoulder. He didn’t know if he could stand it any more. Ease up, he wanted to tell her. What is this strange intensity? We are young. We don’t have to think forever. Not yet. Let’s just enjoy each other.

  It unnerved him to be the object of her passion.

  No, it wasn’t that. Passion was something else. Less consuming, less fearsome, and more to do with the call of the flesh. This was an obsessive love. And it scared him. He felt as he was being devoured alive.

  At first Smriti was a coveted prize. Then she became a bloody nuisance he wished to shrug away.

  The monotone pauses. Hesitant eyes. Rishi Soman clasps his fingers and asks softly, ‘Do you wish me to continue the story?’

  Across the room, two old men with rheumy eyes sit with half empty glasses in front of them, and a plate of crumbs. They stare at the tableaux the trio are frozen in. Meera sunk deep into her chair, fearful of what would come next. Jak bracing himself to hear the worst. And Rishi trying to school his features, his thoughts, his words.

  ‘I thought she had unreal expectations of the life we would lead,’ Rishi said. ‘She was used to flinging around money. I mean, she was this typical NRI type! She drank mineral water and kept moist wipes and hand sanitizers in her bag. And I was just a middle-class boy. The truth was, I couldn’t afford her.

  ‘She wasn’t really rich in that sense. Not like girls whose parents were in the Middle East. I knew her parents were academics. She had money but not enough to subsidize the two of us. And I wasn’t sure when I would start making decent money.

  ‘I hate having to say this, but I didn’t think Smriti could afford us.

  ‘I decided to go with her to Madurai. I knew she was reluctant to be parted from me for even a moment, but this was the best thing to do, I thought.

  ‘I didn’t know what I was going to do when we got there. But I knew that by the end of the trip, I would tell Smriti that it was over. I couldn’t go on like this. I wasn’t ready to be tied down yet. At least, not in the way Smriti wanted me to be.’

  Jak’s mouth tightens. Meera puts her hand on his. In that furtive gesture is a wealth of meaning: Let him speak. If he clams up, we’ll never get to the truth.

  His eyes seek hers in one last plea. Would you sit here and stomach silently this dismissive negation of Nayantara?

  Meera shakes her head. Jak says nothing.

  IV

  ‘Nothing. It really doesn’t matter.’ Vinnie tries to steer the conversation in another direction.

  ‘No, you have to explain. Why uh-oh?’ Meera, already bewildered, is further confused by Vinnie’s exclamation. ‘You don’t approve?’

  ‘How do I explain this? I approve because you finally seem to be moving on. At one time, I thought you’d build a temple to your life with Giri and worship there for the rest of your life. Then there was the actor…’

  Meera shudders. She doesn’t know how to slot Rishi in her life any more.

  ‘He was bad news, at least for you,’ Vinnie continues. ‘But I don’t like the idea of the Professor either.’

  ‘Why?’ Meera swallows. She knows what Vinnie is going to say but she needs to hear it anyway.

  ‘He is too needy. Look at his situation. You need someone who will be there for you. Not the other way round. You don’t want him using you as a crutch and then walking away.’

  ‘I told you. He doesn’t need a crutch.’ Meera’s voice is flat and toneless.

  ‘You sound hurt,’ Vinnie says.

  ‘Yes… no, I don’t know.’ Meera rubs the bridge of her nose. A mannerism she has picked up from Jak. She can see Nikhil shooting baskets. The thump thump of his basketball reverberates on the cement floor. ‘All I can think of is, why has he suddenly become so aloof? What did I do wrong? Should I bring it up? Ask him why he is giving me the cold shoulder?’

  ‘Meera, don’t say or ask anything. You heard what the actor had to say. The Professor has to deal with it. Think of it from his point of view. He’s a man with too many shadows on his soul. That’s why I think he’s wrong for you.’ Vinnie is clear in her denouncement of Jak.

  Meera doesn’t speak.

  All she can think of is how they parted that noon, at Dewar’s.

  Meera and Jak waited for Rishi Soman to leave. For a few minutes they didn’t speak. Then Jak asked, ‘Where are you going now?’

  ‘Home. Where else? Why?’ Meera was puzzled by his query.

  At the door she waited for him to ask if he could drop her home. He seemed bereft, desolate. There are so many things that a father, a parent, ought to never know about his child. But he had listened, allowing hardly a flicker of emotion to show except when their eyes met a few times. It was this that strengthened her resolve to not shy away from him.

  But he didn’t make the offer. Instead, he nodded and walked to his car, leaving her to find her own way back.

  Meera watched him leave with a sinking heart. This was the second time that he had moved away when she tried to bridge the distance.

  He appears in her doorway the next morning, contrite and hopeful. Meera looks up from the dining table where Nikhil sits reluctantly spooning porridge into his mouth.

  ‘Kitcha! Jak!’ she exclaims, unable to decide how to address him. ‘Is something wrong?’ She is already pushing her chair back.

  ‘No, no,’ he stutters. ‘I was just passing by…’

  It is Lily who pauses her breakfast to invite him to join in. ‘It’s so nice to see you, Professor. We haven’t seen you in a while. How are you? Have you eaten? Take your pick. There is porridge, toast and fruit. Or you can have pongal and chutney. Or would you prefer an egg?’

  He lowers himself into the chair next to Meera’s. ‘No, just coffee will do.’

  But his fingers won’t still, Meera notices. He plays with a piece of toast. She ladles a small portion of pongal into a bowl. ‘Try some of this,’ she urges, ‘Raniamma makes it well.’

  ‘Which makes it the only thing she can cook,’ Nikhil murmurs sotto voce.

  Lily frowns, but doesn’t speak. She is no longer the ebullient Lily she used to be.

  Meera shakes her head disapprovingly. Finally Jak’s face relaxes into a smile.

  ‘It is good,’ he offers.

  ‘Don’t be polite, Professor,’ Nikhil continues.

  ‘No, it really is. It’s exactly what I needed,’ he says, but his eyes seek Meera’s again.

  She is unable to hold his gaze.

  ‘Some more coffee?’ She hides behind the haus frau Meera act she can conjure up in an instant.

  She hears him inhaling. Is he counting till ten? she wonders, a hysterical giggle coming on.

  ‘Yes,’ he states. ‘Thank you!’ Is that sarcasm in his voice? Meera gives him a sidelong glance.

  Then she feels his fingers weave through hers under the table and squeeze them ever so gently. Sorry, sorry, sorry, the gentle pressure exerts. I didn’t mean to pull away. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I felt I couldn’t drag you into the mess I am in now.

  Meera’s eyes widen.

  She drops her head. A curve of hair hides her face. She feels him reach out and lift the strand, and tuck it behind her ear.

  Meera stops breathing.

  It occurs to her from the stillness that has crept into the room, so have Lily and Nikhil. And Jak too.

  V

  Lily wants to talk, she tells Meera. She emanates a stillness.

  ‘You have to make the time, sneak the moment, whatever. But we need to talk. You mustn’t disregard what I say until you have heard me out.’

  A wind blows outside. Meera hates the wind. The constant humming fans all her fears. It tells her exactly what is wrong with the house: the roof tiles that could dislodge, the windows that creak, the door stoppers that don’t pull the
ir weight any more. And now here is Lily, her fingers plucking at a hanky, her mouth shorn of its dentures, and her face wiped clean of all artifice or expression.

  ‘Why, Lily?’ Meera says. ‘What is all this ceremony in aid of? You don’t need to make an appointment to talk to me… Tell me!’

  But Lily will not sit. Nor will she unburden herself of the words that wait in her mouth. ‘No, no, not like this. I need your full undivided attention. I need you to concentrate on what I have to say.’

  Meera’s brow wrinkles. Traces of the old imperial Lily. Standing straight at seventy-six without the slightest hint of a slouch in her body or tremor in her voice. That Lily had disappeared when Saro died. Almost as if her very soul drizzled away with the blood that had trickled out of Saro’s mouth as they carried her into the ambulance.

  ‘We do not know what grief is until a child dies,’ Lily had said that night. ‘The inconsolable sorrow of knowing nothing will ever be the same again.’

  Meera huddled beside Lily, unable to grieve or console. All she knew was a numbing within.

  She thinks of Kitcha, the sadness that clings to him. She has seen it come to sheath Lily, too, in the past few months. She shivers now. ‘I hate this wind,’ she says abruptly. ‘I hate the rubbing of the branches against the roof. It makes my flesh crawl.’

  Lily’s mouth caves in further. ‘This is what I mean,’ she says, her displeasure evident. Lily will no longer make an effort. She never really had. But in the months after Giri left and in the days after Saro’s death, she has become guarded. ‘I need you to make the time. What I have to say is important. I don’t want to talk about the wind or the trees. If they bother you so much, chop them down!’

  Meera smiles suddenly. Tall trees were sacred to Zeus. And these even more so. ‘How can you even think of it?’ Giri had bristled when she suggested they trim their length. He liked the picture of the house framed by silver oaks, their wispy branches and lacelike leaves. Picture postcard trees that loomed and threatened to kill them in their beds, she had worried all these years. Lily is right. If they bother her so, she ought to do something about it. She will chop them down to six feet, she decides. Men and trees are the same – give them an inch and they turn unmanageable after a while. Meera Hera no longer worries about pleasing her Zeus.