The Archer

by Shruti Swamy

  She washed her face before bed. The dull mirror held only her head and the top of her shoulders if she stood as tall as possible on her toes. She knew how to check for signs of incipient prettiness from the girls at school (big eyes, soft lips, small nose, round face), of which she found none. The mirror didn’t give her accurate color, but this she could glean easily enough from an arm outstretched in sun: the arm replied sin-dark as coffee though her secret belly and her thighs revealed themselves more muted in the bath: there was no sun in the bath in the city so the color was damp and unconfirmed, not gold, but still, beauty might later visit these parts. If only she’d plump. So skinny, like the Mother, her feet big already like the Mother’s.

  The Mother’s shoes had sat empty with the other shoes of the family by the doorway for several weeks after the tomorrow-afternoon, though the rest of her things had vanished along with her, and Vidya had slid her foot in one—the left—several times when no one was looking, always withdrawing her foot as though burned. They were smooth, they didn’t feel like shoes, like rubber sandals that slapped against the soles as she walked them. They felt base and dirty and elegant, soft with wear and sweat. There was more room than foot in the shoe, but even the Mother’s feet had not been large enough to fill them. Vidya would squat down to study them: they smelled beautifully sour, their toes were scuffed bare of polish, the laces gray from sun and dust, and inside the shoe the clear imprint of a sole in black: if you pulled away the tongue and exposed the inside to light it was the foot entire three inches short of its rounded end. One day the shoes were gone. Someone must have sent them to the Mother. What happened to my ammi, the Brother asked and asked, and Vidya, with the supreme confidence of a liar said:

  You were misbehaving. So she left.

  I was?

  He began to cry and she picked him up. She didn’t feel like crying any more than the dog licking an itchy wound would feel like crying, nor did she feel particularly sorry for hurting him. He was easy to hurt. He put his hot face against her neck and bit it—hard enough to cause pain without breaking the skin—but she didn’t put him down: she liked his hot weight in her arms, and her ability to be cruel. She could feel the grooves his gapped teeth had left. She was a little sorry. No, I was misbehaving, she said. She left me. The boy rubbed her neck with his small hand. That was years ago. Now, some girls in her class had breasts. She had won a scholarship to an English-medium school, where the girls were rich and sophisticated. They snuck around with imported lipstick, the rich girls who always knew how to show you they were rich. They came to school with their hair in bob-cuts and their skulls bound with ribbons of any color they desired, not just the uniform blue: jade green, gulabi, or the pale yellow of the star flowers that littered the schoolyard. They were dropped off by chauffeurs in cream or black Ambassadors, and those same cars idled along the road as school ended, each vying for a place closest to the school gates as the girls began to stream from them.

  She was nothing more than a mouse to them. She didn’t mind. She didn’t want anything from them, not even someone to loop their arm around her small shoulders, as all the girls did with their friends, putting their lips close to the ear of the friend to speak wild secrets. They told each other, they must, how to be a girl. And since she had no friends she didn’t know how. Each day she arrived focused, tensed, sitting straight up in her chair, neat, combed, bathed, her clothes pressed, her schoolwork so tidy she won a prize for handwriting, a small volume of English verse she loved only as a won object, and slept with the book beside her head like a doll. But it was not her studiousness that repelled them, for there were other girls even more serious. Part of being a girl was feeling utterly sweet, having the charm to smile and laugh and make jokes with other girls. Part of a girl was being lovely, with high, clear, shining eyes. She could not be lovely. Perhaps the Mother’s absence had left a smell on her. No one spoke of it. What did they speak about to each other? A breath hot in a whispered ear. Or a hand holding a hand. Or two bodies, sisters, curled together in sleep.

  She walked home. If she was alone she wanted to be alone, she wanted to stand in the city alone and feel it around her. There were paths she always walked: home to school, school to the Bhavan: Bhavan to home, stopping at the stall of the vegetable vendor. What of the cove where the fishermen pushed their curved wood boats into the water? The boats were painted with eyes at the prow, and their dock stank of the fish and shrimp that lay in shining piles, squatted over by the women who must smell of it always, even after the day’s work. There were the hills and bungalows of the rich, of politicians and movie stars whose lives were as mysterious as they were glamorous, unfolding wholly in the luxury of their privacy, their walled gardens rimmed with crushed glass and fallen flowers from the trees that stretched their branches over the gate. And the reaches of the city’s south, the foreign stone buildings warring with tropical heat, carved with a foreign queen’s name. And so many places she had not yet seen out of the bus window or walked around on her own two feet, so many secrets the city held, tightly. She lived in the city as the Mother had lived in the village, with no firsthand knowledge of the greater world. The Mother had wanted to visit London-England and also New-York-New-York to speak properly her English. Perhaps she was there now, in London-England, sitting in the back of a darkened auditorium as Shakespeare brightened the stage. No: she had gone back to her room, of course, her head sopping with headaches. She couldn’t speak for the moaning, she was too weak to lift her head up, she would take years to get better. Maybe there were medicines now so that she didn’t suffer so, she needed only rest, good rest. Vidya thought. A look from Father Sir stilled the questions on her lips; the look said: you know, don’t ask me. Still. She would have liked a letter from the Mother, just a word, even if she was not allowed to visit the Mother’s room. Her mother, well then yes, hers. A thought can cause pain, worse pain than a headache. So, she could think of the Mother her mother in little sips only. Mother coming up the stairs. Mother cooking dinner. Mother slapping each of Vidya’s hands. Mother sleeping calmly. Mother descending the stairs. Mother hailing a rickshaw. Mother going far away—

  The Irani baker also sold eggs. He came by the chaali three times a week bearing an aluminum trunk that wore the sun brilliantly all over, and the cart alone was enough to excite the wild hunger of the chaali children, who came clamoring down from the flats and running across the courtyard to meet him. He sold from it Irani sweets and, most deliciously, khari biscuits, so coveted by Vidya that in the years she took the bus to school she would often walk the hot kilometers instead, her hunger sharpened by the walk and the clink of saved paisa in her pocket. They never quite knew when he was coming, and when he arrived he would call them all to him in a voice that had an element of the honey-soaked sweets he sold them. She did not run down—she had more dignity, and bought her khari biscuit with the grace and indifference of an adult—but would run up the stairs to halve the biscuit with the Brother, who had sacrificed nothing for it, but looked at her so pathetically as she ate she could not help it. From her he learned to eat slowly, to measure each morsel with delight, and they could sit together very quietly for a long time eating a khari biscuit layer by flakey layer in the time it took the other children to eat three or four. Khari biscuits were not difficult to buy from unspent bus fare, but eggs were expensive, and it took a while to save for them. For this purchase she had to go to the Irani baker’s shop. He recognized her, standing furtively with the money clutched in her palm. Her voice was so abashed she had to repeat herself twice, and when he finally understood her he could not help but tease her, rubbing his bearded chin as he laughed. The eggs he gave her were small, blueish, and weighted coolly in the palm, but she didn’t know how to open them when she brought them back to her kitchen. She crushed one with her hand as though wringing it, blood from a stone, over the pan and it shattered and hissed, whitened as it touched the hot metal. There was a spot of blood in the bleeding yellow that made her want to retch. When it
was cooked nearly to black, she took the pan off the stove.

  “What are you cooking?”

  “Nothing,” she said, covering her sin with her body, but her voice betrayed her. The Brother leaned in the doorway, confident as a cricket star.

  “It smells awful in here.”

  “Oh, go play. What are you even doing in here?”

  “I was thirsty.”

  “Well have some water and leave me alone.”

  He walked to the clay pot and dipped a steel cup into the water. He was sweating, so skinny, with his growing-boy gait. His hair was long, falling into his eyes, she’d have to cut it, along with his long filthy fingernails: no matter how many times she showed him with the knife he would not do it himself. But she liked cutting her own nails right down to the quick, and actually, his too, like slicing fruit. Now he could see the blackened pan. “What are you cooking?

  “Get out of here, you pest.”

  “I’ll tell Father Sir.”

  “Go ahead, tell him.”

  But from her voice she knew he knew she was bluffing; he came closer and said, “Are you going to eat that?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Well, I want some too.”

  “No you don’t. It’s not delicious.”

  All evidence pointed to the truth of her statement, yet he persisted, perhaps thinking of the bitter fried karela that he so loved even though he had received a similar warning. “If you’re going to eat it I want some too, otherwise I’m going to tell Father Sir.”

  “Tell him what.”

  “You’re cooking lamb.”

  “It’s not lamb, it’s—oh, fine. Have some.”

  They had to pry the egg loose from the pan with a knife. It flaked and crunched between their teeth, tasting of singed rubber. They squatted beside the pan and pulled up the loose shards with their fingers.

  “You like this?”

  “Yes,” he said, unable to fully erase the grimace.

  “It’s eggs.”

  “I thought eggs were round.”

  “They’re round before you cook them. You have to open them.”

  “Are we still Brahmins?” He was having his thread ceremony in three weeks, and studied the shlokas seriously. Only boys got the sacred thread: she studied with him when Father Sir was gone, wanting to know the ancient secrets: she didn’t care about the thread. She didn’t want to be fussed and smeared and tested and strung like a bow, not her. What did girls get? Marriage, but boys got that too. What did girls get? Babies. She would never be a mother.

  “Yes, if you don’t tell Father Sir.”

  “I’d never tell on you.”

  He looked small again as he said it, her boy. She loved him in a rush, taking his chin in her hands. “You used to be so chubby.”

  “Stop it.” But there was pleasure in his voice.

  “Pappu has a girlfriend.”

  “No he doesn’t. He’s eleven years old.”

  “He says he does.”

  “He doesn’t even know what a girlfriend is. Anyway, Pappu is a thug.” Pappu’s father was a drunk, his elder brother was a drunk. How it worked, exactly, stinking liquid in illicit bottles—alcohol too was banned from the chaali—she didn’t know.

  “Pappu has a mustache already.”

  “You’ll have one too.”

  “When?”

  “Do you play marbles with them?”

  “No.” He said it reflexively.

  “I’ve seen you.”

  “So what, it’s just marbles.”

  “You shouldn’t play with them.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s trouble. It’s gambling.”

  “It’s not gambling. It’s just playing.”

  “Later it will be gambling.”

  “They’re my friends.”

  “They shouldn’t be.”

  “What would you know anyway,” he spat suddenly, “you’re just a girl, an ugly girl, you’re darker than anyone in the whole chaali.”

  He was sorry: it passed across his face, then was gone, slipping from her, back into his boy world, the dusty afternoon. It wasn’t the worst he had ever said to her, but the desire to wound unnerved her. She’d keep her khari biscuits to herself. The eggs had left a foreign taste in the mouth, a brownish-blacking taste, and the shards pricked as they went down. She scrubbed the pan for a long time, not leaving it to the bai. Was she stronger now? She felt the same, only a little dirtier. Maybe it took more eggs.

  Vidya started to come to the Bhavan early, not dawdling from school to the complex but going there directly many times a week. When she arrived, the star-girl, Puja, was finishing her private lesson: she occupied the room alone, but for the teacher and the tabla player who was the teacher’s son, and who was, it turned out, handsome. It was like watching three horses racing forward, each keeping pace with the others, each turning to the others to say keep up, keep up, though the teacher’s hand against her thigh almost lazy, and her mouth shaping the syllables softly, like it was easy. Her eyes stayed fixed on the star-girl’s every mistake, and she yelled them out with great disdain: Mooh-bandh! ungli band! bhago mat! Puja’s body registered the harsh voice but didn’t falter. The girl watched the star-girl as the others in the class hung around and gossiped. She watched avidly. Puja was good, yes, but kathak was not just a matter of precision and control. Some beauty was lacking. When you watched her, you wanted your heart to fly up into your throat, so dazzled. But it didn’t. Why? Maybe it had to do with that feeling Vidya had sometimes when she danced: Puja didn’t feel it, so nothing came into her eyes as she danced, they remained flat and blank. Now and then the feeling returned to Vidya as she danced, more gentle, and so less frightening, slower, briefer, warmer.

  Even still, Vidya’s body tried to follow the movements of the star-girl’s, and couldn’t, even the swift uprightness of Puja’s spine shamed her. She counted along with the beats. There were so many ways to break time into smaller parts, and from this regularity you could build a lavish pattern. At times the steps were demonstrated by the teacher, having no one more senior to call upon, her body passing from stillness into motion as she unfolded herself from her seated pose, and then the beauty came suddenly into the room: she took it all: it shone out of her. Even bell-less, her legs and feet made the movements dense, perfect. See? she would say. And then Puja would try it. Perhaps it wasn’t fair to see them against each other, the star-girl sweating, the teacher cool as silver.

  The group lesson never began at a set time. Puja finished, and the girls started to take the space she had left, but not purposefully, not waiting for instruction, but idly, still chatting. Puja brought a metal tumbler of fridge water to Teacherji, kneeling as she presented it so Teacherji could bless the top of her head. But she was already blessed: she was to be married to the tabla player, Teacherji’s son, next year when she was seventeen.

  Mothers wound the bells around their daughter’s ankles. The girls tied their dupattas across their chests like soldier’s sashes. Sometimes an hour would pass like this, and even the eager Vidya appreciated the slow transition from one thing to the next, which allowed her to pass, slowly, from human to dancer, though she did not gossip with the other girls and wound her own bells around her ankles, not yet the full strand, just beginner’s brass, separated from her skin by old cotton. Not just bells, for “bell” could denote many things—temple bell, school bell, a bell rung to summon a servant. These, small brass, stranded with clean cotton thread, were ghungroos, their mouths split open lengthways and crossways so that the tiny brass tongue could be seen wagging. Singly, the sound was highish and dull, unimpressive, but threaded around the dancer’s legs—beginners were allowed only a single strand for each ankle, but experienced dancers bore the weight from the ankle bone midway up the calf—the sound was multiplied into a kind of shimmering, the bells rung by their own tongues and by the bodies of the other bells, marking, with their own heavy inertia, the lightness and quickness of the dancer’
s step, her victory.

  Then the tabla player, having rested his arms, tapped a few high notes into the drum, and these three notes caught the attention of the chatting girls and they began to take their places in the room, embracing the room with their arms, taking dust from the feet of their teacher, and then touching the ground with their fingers to ask its forgiveness for the day’s pounding.

  “You, girl,” said Teacherji, pointing at her. “Vidya. You come up.”

  Up to the front? She flushed, with neither pride nor pleasure, but with the strangeness of being seen, first by Teacherji, then by the surprised students, then by even the handsome tabla player who offered a wink with his smile. She took an edge, not center. She stood up straight. Her movements took on a new meaning at the front of the class. If they were incorrect they were a horror: if they were correct they could be more so. In her years of practice she had learned to halve her body, to put the rhythm in the legs and feet without moving or using the rest; passing the beat steadily between the two feet could not take conscious effort, because so much else required it, the arms and fingers, the expression of the face. If the beat sped up, the feet heard the tabla without the mind interceding: should. And stand up straighter. Could she be a star-girl—the star-girl? No, better.

  Where was the I? Today it had not come. She was focused, sweating, ordinary, even in her new position.

  “Child, you said you didn’t love god,” Teacherji said to Vidya after class. The other dancers had turned back into girls, gathering their things, chatting again, but not her. From the time she left class to the time she returned home dance fell from her slowly, like a dress dripping rain.