Acid

  When he lifted his face from under the table, his eyes bore his father’s life and depressions. All the sorrows were fragile, like buds, like the bubbles over clean water.

  49

  I remember walking with you a long time ago, through the aisle, with ten thousand paintings that carried no signature on either wall. Maybe it was in a dream. But I know I have walked with you. I remember the aisle ended in a garden. You looked vivacious, like the effervescent soft drink we had had while walking, giving off your bubbles; I wondered whether you were the spirit of some of the flowers in the garden. The garden, you said, had no rules, it crossed out the narrow boundaries of rights and wrongs, dos and don’ts, where any nymph could easily turn herself into a tree, I felt happy. I had heard Bob Dylan speak on YouTube the other day. He said he didn’t understand what John Donne meant by ‘the Sestos and Abydos of her breasts. Not of two lovers, but two loves, the nests.’ But he said it sounded good. And you want your songs to sound good. The garden you showed me looked attractive, attractive enough not to seek out meaning. You said, we would make a nest on the topmost branch on the tree in the centre. You said, for the four of us. And the four of us, you said, would live happily. I loved all of you, the two born in my body and the one in my mind. I cannot abandon you now, but how could I ever think of taking you back? When I find myself deeply in love with love, what difference between man, woman, bird and hippopotamus? I know this much.

  You know this much too. I should’ve thanked you for the hope you gave his paralysed mind. Yet, you are busy packing your things in the room upstairs, you are getting ready to leave. I can see you folding and rolling up your clothes, putting them in your bag, the stuff that will obey only you. I am not crying, but I can see you crying, like a rain that is not likely to end. We haven’t eaten anything, the three of us. You didn’t say we would have to starve in your garden. You said the word ‘plenty’ and I remember, I loved the word as soon as you said it. But my child is starving now.

  I know one more thing: If you turn your back on this place, the memory of your perfume will kill me. So don’t ever think of abandoning us. I have never been a good wife in my life, nor a good mother. Madhavan would say it was my fault. I should have kept my mouth sealed with the happiness of my son. No, I won’t let him be happy, and I won’t be happy either. I am a suckerfish at the bottom of the bottom, foraging for misfortune among the aquatic invertebrates. I won’t let you live, but I don’t want to stop living.

  Shaly was crying in her room. She looked at the clothes she had gathered on the bed; she forgot how to fold them into her travelling bag. She tried not think of Kamala or Aadi. She thought only of the kiss, the kiss that had burnt her lips a few hours ago. She had never had a first love in her life. She had had her first sex in Aizawl, but that was sex for the sake of it, the way people do it because they are supposed to do it. She had felt ridiculous when she found herself in the midst of an orgy, on a night of joints; she had yearned to get out of there, for that was not her idea of making love. Now, she realized what suffering was, the suffering of the most innocent soul on earth.

  Kamala was silent. She didn’t say anything, instead she lay prostrate on the ground, crying. Janu helped Shaly carry Kamala to her bed. Janu wanted to know what had happened; the dishes she had prepared remained untouched on the table. Shaly wanted to get away before dawn, before Janu returned. Kamala might be sleeping. She wanted to look at Shiva one last time, but she didn’t dare.

  Her hands slipped over the pineapple carving when she saw Kamala standing on the landing like a rotten log, looking at her. She dropped her bag on the floor.

  Touch wood, touch wood. A perfect journey begins like this, he said in his mind. The Toyota Qualis PY 1 waited for them near the white wall of the theatre. It must have been a very old car. The presence of the actors and the steaming cups of coffee in their hands enlivened the morning mist. It was Vinita who brought them coffee in a large picnic thermos. There were some other friends from Bangalore who came to say goodbye to the team. They all hugged and kissed each other. It was a happy sight to see human beings hugging each other, there was warmth and pleasure.

  Vinita was holding a bowl of sugar in her hands; all of them ate a pinch of sugar when she said it was considered auspicious to do so before starting a journey. Her eyes welled up when they waved to her. They had been living the carnival of Molière for the past few days, she couldn’t resist sobbing.

  Aadi wiped her tears with his handkerchief. Rane sang from the back seat of the Qualis, ‘No woman, no cry . . .’

  The rest of them sang in unison. ‘No woman, no cry . . .’

  Now there was a bashful smile on her face.

  ‘Vini, you should come to Adishakti, we’ll have a nice time there,’ Nimmy said.

  When the engine started, Molière played a song in praise of Lord Ayyappa:

  Saranam saranam ninpadha kamalam . . . Pulivahananaam . . . Ayyappa . . .

  Panthala Rajakumara . . . Njangade sankadamellam theerthidane . . .

  Each trip was an invitation to the mountains. She wished she could hide somewhere inside the folds or heights of the forests of Aizawl. The pastures of human beings were more terrifying than the forests where rats bloomed. Uncle Raphael had left Aizawl when the rats had finished eating Andrews Papa. Shaly did not wish to go back to a place where Andrews Papa was no more.

  How far am I supposed to walk, she asked herself. How long?

  She looked at the path leading to the burial ground and sighed. The ground she felt under her feet was paper-thin. Tread softly on me, the ground said. Her night slippers tried not to touch it. She ran. She ran till there was light, till there was not a single silhouette left of horrifying yesterday. Then she sat on a big stone along the way and cried for a while. She noticed the passers-by looking at her; she looked back at the milk bottles dangling in their hands and sobbed. A radio snapped on in a nearby tea stall. It was morning, she realized. Then she got up from there and wandered for a while, dragging her bags behind her. She had forgotten where the bus stop was, she remembered she had nowhere to go.

  When they travelled, after the unfortunate rat attack, back to their motherland—the Judakkunnu, the hill of the Jews, which the Jews had colonized once upon a time in history—no one recognized the good old maskiamma, the wife of the priest Andrews. Rita Mama had left when she was young and beautiful; she came back fat and saggy. She was sad to see that the place had changed a lot, that many of the people who lived there now were new. But the people, new or old, looked at beautiful Shaly in surprise, talked behind her back in hushed voices. ‘They behave as if they haven’t ever seen young women,’ Rita Mama said.

  It was a street loaded with histories and beliefs, laid out in the shape of a cross, packed with houses; and the houses in turn were crammed with people. Most of them were business people, doing small-scale home-based stuff. Whether they were gossipmongers or not, gossip was happiness, as it was in other parts of the world. They still believed that the spring of fresh water they were blessed with on the top of the hill resulted from the whiplash of St Thomas. They loved miracles; they loved miracles on a daily basis. They loved watching the young woman, new to their town, her gestures and way of dressing, extremely modern to their sensibilities—but her face and the shape of her body they would swear they all knew, or they all wished to know. She looked exactly like the beautiful girl in their parish, the girl they all loved alike who was the daughter of the one-time altar server Joseph, the rich merchant of their town. Her name was Miriam and she was irresistible. Joseph too had been fucking handsome when he was young, everyone knew. Now with the arrival of this new young woman in the neighbourhood who looked almost like Miriam’s twin, they had a lot to bitch about. There were lots of doors open into other people’s lives.

  Andrews had always wanted to tell Shaly and Rita; in fact he had tried many times, but he couldn’t confess, the foolish days of his youth, for he was the one who used to sit inside the wooden confessional listenin
g to penitents. He sat, freezing at the thought of opening up. Damn it, he said to himself.

  He remembered the insides of the holy confessional, faith unfaithful, strange moments of deathly darkness. He liked it especially when the women came to confess, their woes and sins softer than their dreams. He became excessively sentimental when the women from his own parish knelt in front of the latticed opening. He answered them with broken words. In his mind he was a young Lothario, a gentle priest in the flesh, the kindest soul on earth, who at times returned from the confessional with grief in his heart. He was sad for the saddest woman, the abandoned, the hopeless and the ugliest of them, who scratched their groins and farted while Mass was in session. He knew what they needed was an angel in their lives, an angel to guide them.

  Some women spoke of bitter things with the unbearable pain of opening up; he listened to them with the pleasure of deceiving little children. Sometimes, very rarely, he invited some of them to an occasional dalliance within the sickeningly yellowish walls of his bedroom. The women who accepted his invitations were mostly hysterical, they said they were thankful there were no latticed openings between them; they opened themselves with an air of triumph. Like stinking air they covered him, made him confess that both the priest and the woman were starving in the parish, and smiled at him, showing the yellowness of their white teeth, the age spots on their lower chin and the newly formed wrinkles on their neck. Sin was a faraway concept, abstract in itself, but flesh—flesh on the other hand was tangible: the supple, moist cunts, the religion of carnal pleasure. He was thankful people lived in ant holes, he was thankful for their limitations.

  But on the day Emily came to confess, he understood how pathetic his life had been. He remembered for no reason his beautiful wife Rita and the ugly or the not-so-beautiful women with whom he had been to bed. Emily had the voice of real angels, and she resembled one of those wild white rose briars on the altar. She was no easy piece of cake he could nibble on, but nonetheless, he saw her in his dreams as a bride wearing nothing but a very thin veil and holding an exquisite bouquet of white flowers. He knew he wanted to fuck her.

  She was a woman of the past, of old tastes and fashions, who called herself an artist and who was the rich wife of Joseph, the most handsome man in the parish. One day she came to see Andrews after Mass (of course she was in her finery) and asked his permission to supply candles to the church. He gave her his consent immediately, he didn’t even wait to see whether her candles were good or bad. But soon, he realized that she was an expert in chandlery—the term she used to describe herself was true to the core, she was Emily the Artist. On every market day, Emily brought home blocks of wax and chopped them into smaller chunks using her sharp kitchen knife. She could have very well controlled a man with that knife. Under her artistry, scented wax melted to form roses, lilies and grape bunches at the feet of the tall candles. The entwined vines of the forest, the birthday roses, the white lilies that reminded one of the little breasts of the maidens of Jerusalem, everything was ready. What she needed was a connoisseur. And this is where Andrews came in.

  One day, after Mass, Andrews went to her house. She said her husband was not home, he had gone to deliver some candles to his aunt. But she was extremely happy with his visit; she wanted to show him her workshop, which was her private bedroom, the one she kept for her art and craft. He marvelled at the paper flowers and candles, at the wonderful crochet work on the tabletops, the adorable bedspreads. He praised her elegant fingers, such as could belong only to an artist, and pitied those who didn’t know the art of spinning yarn. He couldn’t help admiring the painted flowers on her bedspread, the fragrance of her room.

  Aunt Cèlina had asked for some of the candles for All Souls Day. It was on his way there that Joseph remembered he had forgotten to take the parcel Emily had kept on the mantelpiece. So he went back. At an odd time of the day, totally unexpectedly, he was met with the perfume of agar wood chips burning in coal from his house girdled by ancient trees. His steps faltered. With his heart thudding against his throat, he sneaked into the house. He peeped into her private bedroom through the crack in the window. He saw Andrews melting down on the bedspread delicately painted with roses. He didn’t want to wake them. Stealthily he went out of the house and walked away. He bought a packet of ordinary candles from the grocery shop. He thought he was spreading on the road like molten wax.

  ‘Aunt Cèlina, where is your house?’

  50

  ‘Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them.’ As he walked he continued, ‘Therefore a lion from the forest will slay them, a wolf of the deserts will destroy them, a leopard is watching their cities, and everyone who goes out of them will be torn in pieces.’

  People were saddened by the sight of the good old altar server, the handsome and rich Joseph walking about like a mad, sad man. Those who tried to calm him down came back with their heads bowed and their minds shaken. Blasphemous! They shook their heads in disbelief, for Joseph was the finest of the finest altar servers, had been right from his days of childhood. Wounded by the rain of gospel he had called down, he walked crazily, all over the town with a packet of candles in his hand.

  ‘She lusted after their genitals as large as those of donkeys, and their seminal emission was as strong as that of stallions.’

  When he was a child, his mother used to tell him stories at bedtime. There was a picture of St George slaying the dragon with his long spear. The spear, a symbol of peace, troubled him all the same; he was afraid of the weapon, he was afraid of violence. She told him the stories of Satan, the power of his verses. Satan was there in the same room, listening to the same stories with a frown. When Joseph was a child, his Satan was also a child, who was incapable of doing anything to the picture of the saint on the wall. Thus he lay supine on the floor next to Joseph listening to his mother’s stories, playing with the sharp end of his tail, poking Joseph occasionally, especially when he or his mother fell asleep without completing the story of the saint. Thus he grew up hearing the stories of his defeat, waiting for the perfect chance to take revenge. Joseph grew up too, fearing the temptations of Satan. He sat down on the pavement in the rain.

  ‘You are the game of Satan now,’ his mother whispered. ‘Don’t forget: Hell is for sinners. You should grow up to overcome this phase, for what you experience now is not real. The sorrow you think is weighing down on your heart is no real sorrow, but the pranks of Satan.’

  His mother was dead, and a dead person had no cause to lie, but still he thought she was lying on purpose. He didn’t want to listen to her. He wanted revenge, revenge for the good, like St George on the wall had exacted. The concept of Heaven was a trap, the trap that would deny justice while alive, for one knows what would happen after death.

  His faith was stronger than a mountain and hence he sat on the pavement expecting a flood through the night. On the next day, shortly after evening Mass, Joseph went to talk to Andrews in the church. Andrews’s face was defiled by another memory, but all the same, he couldn’t hide the glow of adulterated pleasure. When Joseph saw him, he declared, ‘No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord.’ And so saying, he showed him the knife in his hands. Andrews shuddered at the new sheen of the metal. He turned pale like the flowers of henna. There was no one to be seen on the premises. The hands of the altar server rose across the altar, his weapon tight in his hands. Who would get through, who would break free, O Lord, if you remember our sins?

  But Joseph didn’t wish to kill him. He had three commandments, which he said Andrews should obey.

  ‘I will let you go. If you really want you could kill yourself tonight, but I am not particular about that. You need not be afraid. I will not come to your house to disturb your woman. Let me tell you in the presence of the God of this altar, I want you to do three things. First, leave this place. Bu
t I want you to help me keep track of you, because at the end of the day, at the end of temptation, if I feel like killing you, I don’t want to have to wander about crazily in search of you. Second, never continue as a priest in your life. Our Lord does not deserve to get blemished. Third, donate your wealth to the orphans of this parish before you leave.’

  Joseph left the church without waiting for a reply.

  Paradise was a piece of cake religion gambled with, for they wanted people to gather around like rats around a block of cheese. Joseph said he was not afraid; he would rather lose his reward than live the life of a coward. He knew the moment you touch the truth, the idea of Heaven would dissolve. Last week, he remembered he was in Heaven. If you stopped being lecherous, and found satisfaction in what you had, there would be Heaven on earth. Who knew who would be who after death?

  But what did Joseph win in the end, after his innumerable revelations and justifications? Why did he send a wireless message to Mizoram asking Andrews to come back with immediate effect? The moment Joseph thought he had triumphed, the moment he stepped out of the church after threatening Andrews, Satan jumped on to his shoulder and settled there—Joseph’s shoulders began to hurt under the weight. Back home he didn’t say anything to Emily; he didn’t even look at her. He heard her cry in the night, but he pretended not to hear. Satan was happy to be in control; he didn’t let Joseph sleep a wink.