The Ivory Swing (12 page)

Still, still, persisted the gnawing sense of unease in her gut, it is not that one believes in the custom itself. One is however aware of the power of the society that believes.

But Annie and Yashoda were talking animatedly, trading confidences and intimacies like old friends. Dinesh, the movie playboy in Delhi, was already married apparently, with a wife and children safely tucked into some Punjabi village, but was nevertheless so very available and dashing. Yashoda was listening wide-eyed.

Juliet watched them as from a great distance.

She felt very old, freighted with the knowledge of loss and the awareness of evil and the possibility of harm.

20

Juliet observed David's startled reaction that evening.

It must have been a shock, she could concede to herself, to come home at dusk and find without warning the three women, animated, like a corona around the oil lamp. And who could blame him for staring at Yashoda, as though at Galatea taking on flesh, perhaps, and then averting his eyes nervously and guiltily and refusing to look at her again?

She could not blame him. There was that other factor too — she understood it, she empathized. On which side of the line between dream and reality were they at any given moment? In the way he hugged Annie, in the way he held his children, in the way he put his hand tentatively against a wall and pressed it until his knuckles turned white — testing the solidity of things — in the way he kept not looking at Yashoda — as if saying: Is she really here this time? or in my mind? — she recognized an abiding malaise that she shared with him.

They were in the lotus land, the land of
sunyasin
and meditation, where old men lay on beds of nails; and ropes, so people said, uncoiled themselves upwards into air, where no one could keep track of what was temporal and what was eternal; where things which existed in the mind had more substance than the blurred mirage of the external world.

We drift in a waking sleep, Juliet thought.

That night, under the sluggish fan, David took Juliet with a wildness that was disturbing, almost frightening.

“I love you,” he murmured. Convincing himself. Reciting a protective charm. Whispering a
mantra.

When they made love it was as though they were trying to hold a lost civilization between their damp slippery bodies.

Afterwards she asked him: “Will Annie really carry out that mad scheme, do you think? Taking Yashoda with her on a trip? And should we assent?”

The questions seemed to anchor him for a moment in reality.

“Ahh,” he said awkwardly. “They did discuss that, didn't they? I was only half following … I missed the gist of things.”

“Should we allow it?”

He looked at her blankly, and then rubbed his eyes, trying to summon misplaced critical faculties. He asked uncertainly: “Is it our concern?” Oh but it was, he knew. It was so much and so intensely and so primitively his concern that he was unable to say a word. Yashoda drifted through his mind like a
yakshi
on a swing, back and forth, mesmeric, a hypnotist's trick.

“We should discuss it in the morning,” Juliet offered. “When we're not so drowsy.”

But each morning put on its own fresh vagueness. Only Annie, when she moved, carried the faint echo of energy and decisiveness with her. Her denim jeans smelled faintly of cities and subways, her eyes were unclouded, not bothered as yet by monsoonal fogs. There were moments when she could even, briefly, jolt David and Juliet into debate and disagreement. And then she would skewer them on the rapier of her western certainties: Your judgment is impaired by heat and isolation. You are not being objective.

And perhaps she was right.

Annie and Yashoda went to Cape Comorin for a few days. They hiked through the back of the estate to the Kottayam Road so no one would see them leave. But it was inevitable that Yashoda's absence would be noted. It was only a matter of time.

I think this is a major mistake, David told himself. The sort of thing that makes the world accuse us of cultural arrogance. But if I had made a serious effort to prevent their going, Yashoda might have misinterpreted me, might have thought I'd changed my mind and wanted … On the other hand she might have felt persecuted, all avenues of escape blocked.

In his heart of hearts he pondered a different, more elemental question. Why did she turn so quickly to someone else? He felt bereft. Jealous. And therefore distrusted all his motives and had done nothing.

And Juliet thought: Of course, Annie is right to pitch in on the rebel side. Women of the world unite, et cetera. I'm afraid of complications myself, and yet I'm glad of someone else's brash confidence. But she could not escape the conviction: We ought not to be interfering. We are on quicksand. Besides, it is selfish of Annie to flit off so carelessly when I need some time to myself, someone to help with the work and the children.

Her mind wandered to David's impending temple visit. The long awaited permission had come through, the temple astrologers had calculated the auspicious day and hour. It was to be a momentous occasion, a rare privilege, since the State of Kerala strictly prohibited non-Hindus from entering its shrines.

“Shivaraman Nair is coming,” Jonathan called from the roof.

“I feel so improper with a belt around my
dhoti,”
David said nervously “Even if it can't be seen.”

Juliet was busy with camera and light meter, taking readings in the doorway as Shivaraman Nair reached the house.

“
Namaskaram
,” she said.

“
Namaskaram, namaskaram.
Mrs David Juliet,
you
are not going to the temple. Absolutely not possible. It is only Professor David I am taking.”

“I understand.” She fumed silently: Your views on women have already been made quite explicit. “I only want to take a photograph of you and my husband in your
dhotis
before you leave.”

“Very good, very good,” he boomed, delighted. “Yes, yes, it is auspicious day, auspicious visit. There must be photograph. You will send me a copy, isn't it?”

“Certainly. Could you stand here, please?”

“Have you taken your bath as I prescribed it, Professor David?”

“Yes, I have done everything you told me.”

“You are looking very fine, very fine, in a
dhoti,
Professor David.”

“Actually,” David faltered, “I haven't been able to wear it properly. You see …” lifting back the flap and revealing the illicit belt.

“Ahh! No, no, no! This is not the way. I will do it.”

And Shivaraman Nair swiftly ripped off the offending western item, wrapped, pleated, tucked, stood back.

Juliet readied her camera. And Shivaraman Nair, who was perpetually smiling or storming or guffawing, immediately composed his face into a blank stare. He believed it to be the only suitable expression for something as permanent and momentous and auspicious as a photograph.

Alone again, Juliet thought when they had gone. The men march off to action. Annie and Yashoda are light-years away, And the children and I … the children and I …

She sighed wearily, forgetting how to be annoyed. Soon her ankles would spread roots, she would be knotted into the ravenous earth that sucked at the underside of trees, her hair would bloom extravagantly with jasmine. Perhaps she would smell like sandalwood. Like the sandalwood Krishna who played forever on his silent flute, ceaselessly consoling them for the ivory swing in whose stead he had been purchased.

She took the small carving from its dining-room niche, from the recess where a Nair family shrine would otherwise be, and thought longingly of the air-conditioning in Mr Motilal's emporium. Radha would still be there, too costly for stray tourists, dizzy on her swing since the days of the Raj, but fanned by the soft breezes of twentieth-century technology.

Juliet scraped the fluting Krishna lightly with her fingernail and the sharp sandalwood fragrance rose thickly and suddenly, a stimulant, invigorating as a breath of city air. She pressed the statue against her cheek and inhaled its spicy essence as though it were a relic of the lost power to make decisions, as though it might impart energy.

Can't we
do
something? the children pleaded. Something different? The market or the bazaar or that ice-cream place where Mr Matthew Thomas took us? You promised, you promised.

Yes,
do
something, that was the answer.

The market, yes …

Only one death, Juliet saw with relief. That's something.

She was standing with her children and Prabhakaran at the mouth of Palayam Market, the air jagged with screaming. On Mahatma Gandhi Road a bus had plowed into a buffalo cart laden with grain. The blood of the cart driver made red tributaries in the waterfalls of rice that sluiced into the market. She hastily despatched the children to the flower seller's with some money. She did not want them to see the mashed body when the splintered cart was swept away.

They had watched the bus tipple and rock like a rowboat on the lip of a cataract. But it had stayed upright and the screaming faces pressed against the window bars were now surging out of the narrow rear door.

A young man was helping the frailer and more elderly people to disembark. He seemed to sense her scrutiny on the back of his neck. He turned and stared insolently back.

God, she thought, dismayed, wrenching her eyes away. I'm part of the climate. I stare as rudely as everyone stares at me.

“Come on!” she called to the children. “Let's visit the egg man.” But the young man's face? It kept turning up like a market-place refrain.

“I see you are having a servant. These are the ways of imperialists. And of the friends of the Nairs.”

It was their abrasive and impetuous rescuer, who had abandoned them in a taxi. Juliet was balancing a cone of eggs. She had a sense of
déjà vu.

“Ahh, the Marxist.” She eyed him coldly and directly. “Last time we talked you made me feel guilty and apologetic. Now I don't feel so accountable for all the suffering of South India. As it happens, I would think I disapprove of Nair arrogance and abuse of power as much as you do. And Prabhakaran here is like one of my children. More or less.”

He bit his lips uncertainly, sheepishly.

“Western women,” he said, “are most … most” — he searched for a word — “most …
unexpected
.”

She felt obscurely flattered. Conciliatory.

“Would you like an ice-cream?” she asked.

“An ice-cream?”

“There is an amazing little place behind the Secretariat, you know, called the Simla Coffee House. They actually serve ice-cream and it's very good.”

He hated to be patronized. He had some high-caste professors, western educated, who treated him like that. The token Untouchable, tame. She smelled of imperialism. He spat on the ground.

“Suit yourself,” she shrugged. “I'm taking the children. Do you think Prabhakaran will die of capitalist poisoning if he eats ice-cream? Shivaraman Nair certainly wouldn't approve. You and he are in agreement on that point.”

He stared at her, baffled.

She stared back.

“I will come,” he said.

They fenced warily over small dishes of mango-flavoured icecream.

“I'm Juliet. My children are Jonathan and Miranda. And Prabhakaran.”

“My name is Prem.”

She was preoccupied. What, she wanted to know without preamble, was the policy of Indian Marxists towards young widows? She told him about Yashoda.

“Does she suffer hunger?” he asked. “Does she have to work in the fields or carry rocks with bare hands to obtain food?”

“No,” Juliet sighed.

“Does she have to sell her body in order to obtain shelter from the rains?”

“No.”

“It is not a major problem then.”

“It
is
a major problem. It's a matter of basic freedom. She is kept a prisoner. She is forbidden to wear jewellery …”

“Oh! It is a question of
jewellery!
” He spat on the floor.

“Forget the jewellery,” she said angrily. “It's not a man's problem, is it? Whether he's rich or poor, Nair or Untouchable, nobody keeps him prisoner in that way. It's a question of basic rights and of freedom.”

“It is a question of the boredom of a wealthy lady of leisure. It is a question of female vanity. It is a question of jewellery.”

“If I chewed betel nut, Prem,” Juliet told him wearily, “I would spit the red juice on the floor beside you.”

And she stared moodily out of the window, noting the curling green line of trees that indicated the canal. Somewhere, just out of sight, it lapped the bank where Prem had abandoned her in a taxi. And beyond that it wound muddily south to the temple tank where David would be, with Shivaraman Nair and Anand and flocks of scholarly priests who would listen to David's opinions.

In the world of authority and exploration and freedom.

The world of men.