Fragile Monsters Read online

  She wouldn’t normally speak like this to the children, but she’s desperately jealous. Paavai’s prettier than both children put together and at least half as clever again. And yet they sit there on a padded velvet seat telling stories, while she’s sent down to unclog rubbish.

  ‘Anil-Mister ought to be in a home,’ she goes on. ‘Nobody will marry you, Mary-Miss. Not with something like that to take care of.’

  And with that, Paavai drops herself down into the yawning, blackened well on the end of her coconut-fibre rope.

  ‘You – you dirty keling, you coolie, how dare you, how dare you!’ Mary’s furious. She shouts herself hoarse, leaning over the well and spitting all the insults she’s ever heard in Malay or English or Malayalam. Halfway through, she recollects herself and claps careful hands over Anil’s ears.

  Mary loves her young brother, she’s fiercely protective and can’t stand the thought of him being hurt. She’d never abandon him to get married, she insists. Never, she repeats, and she sounds less sure each time.

  Mary’s lonely, that’s the real problem. After failing her Junior Cambridge she hasn’t gone back to school, while Cecelia passed with flying colours and is now in the top standard. Rajan’s gone back to his Singapore college, in between tearing around Pahang agitating for Indian nationalism, Malay nationalism and home rule for any other country that cares to ask for it. Mary still plays the occasional solitary game of marbles, she still wanders up to the convent on the hill to see Sister Gerta. But there’s no getting away from it; Mary’s ripe for marriage and nobody’s come to ask.

  Later, everyone will agree that it was dangerous to send Paavai down that well. It was unsafe, with the well-stones crumbling every time a durian fruit bounced off the coping. True, Paavai went down at noon, when durian fruits hardly ever fall. But still, everyone agrees, Stephen should have known better.

  Paavai wasn’t missed till twilight, by which time she’d been in the well for six hours. When she was hauled up she was limp as cloth and her mouth slopped full with water. And then there was that large, spiky bruise on her forehead, exactly the size and shape of a durian fruit. At first she didn’t say a word and then she wouldn’t stop. She babbled about two small heads that had appeared in the circle of light high above her when she was cleaning out the well; she chattered about seeing a durian fruit tumbling down on her, thrown by two small pairs of hands. She swore that she wouldn’t stay in the house with Mary and Anil one more moment, not even if she was paid triple. Radhika – who disapproved of her being paid at all – simply shrugged. ‘Then go,’ Radhika said, ‘and take your pregnant belly with you.’ Radhika doesn’t want Mary being exposed to a bad example.

  ‘And when the sun came up, they knew that they were safe.’

  Mary will tell Anil the story of the tiger-prince and the fighting princess again and again over the next few years. As a teenager he’ll meet Paavai’s son: a coffee-coloured boy called Luke, with a resemblance to Stephen that’s unmistakable. When Luke turns out to know the tiger-prince story too (from his mother, because Paavai, just like Mary, is in the habit of telling tales) they’ll become fast friends. Both will have their crosses to bear – mad mothers, dead mothers, mothers who never wanted to be mothers anyway – and together they’ll roam the jungle, throwing stones at any nearly drowned women who cross their path.

  13. Monday, 4 p.m.

  Stories twist through the past like hair in a plait. Each strand different, weaving its own pattern and ducking out of sight just when you’re following it. Like category theory, in a way. Like families. They don’t stay put either.

  Don’t believe me? Think of your family; picture them right down to the details. Eyes, smiles, the thumbnail your brother chews. If you’re lucky then you know them off by heart. If you’re not, the heart won’t come into it at all. (Don’t cry; there’ll be time for all of that later.)

  They’re a category, your family, and the objects are simple enough. Aunties, uncles, cousins. A grandmother, if you want to court trouble. But this category changes. Just wait and cousins turn into aunties, uncles become disgraced, babies grow up and brothers grow apart. In a few years the aunties will be dead, the uncles will have forgotten their children’s names and those grandmothers will have become quite another proposition altogether. (Don’t cry; it’s too late for all of that now.)

  All the heartache of going from then to now – all that growing up and growing old, all those first grey hairs and last cold wrinkles – that’s your history, right there. Perhaps you don’t like it now you’ve got it, perhaps you’d rather it had all turned out differently. You might dream of if-only-I’d, and he-should-have-done and what-if-she’d-listened – all those little pleas and quarrels. They’re a category in themselves, your set of missed chances. They’re how things might have been.

  ‘You need to come back.’

  It’s Anwar Goneng. He’s the head of the mathematics department in KL, a haggard Malay with an emaciated face and a bulging body that doesn’t match it. When he talks he pats his mouth with a folded white handkerchief, as though he wants to clean away any residue of bad news – and it always is bad. I can hear him now, blotting up the words.

  ‘You’ve had your week’s leave. We were expecting you back today.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t … I mean, my grandmother’s been in hospital. Didn’t you get my message?’

  ‘If you need some compassionate leave, you can apply for this after your probation.’ There’s a bite to Anwar’s words that’s the furthest thing possible from compassion. ‘There’s a process, Dr Panikkar.’

  I flinch. It would be so easy for this job to disappear in a puff of bureaucracy.

  ‘I’ll come back,’ I say quickly. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize …’

  ‘Ye – es.’ Anwar concedes this magisterially. His English is excruciatingly correct. ‘Mistakes are easy to make. But we need you here, Dr Panikkar. The lectures, you see. The classwork.’

  I twist the phone cord around my finger, letting it grow purple. Through the hall window I can see everything outside flattened under that golden light that means the afternoon rains have missed us. You don’t get that light in Canada.

  ‘I’ll come tomorrow,’ I say. I slide down the wall, knees to my chest amongst a tangle of telephone wires and paper clips on the floor. ‘I’ll leave tomorrow morning and be there in time for afternoon lectures.’

  Anwar smiles. It’s a dignified sort of smile and I can hear it all the way from KL. Before he hangs up he says he knew he could rely on me. It feels strange, as though I’ve started to turn into someone different here. Like one of Ammuma’s stories, like a drowned girl becoming a ghost or a princess becoming a leper. I need to get my grip back on Dr Panikkar, while I still remember who she was.

  The afternoon reshapes itself after that, turns into lists of tasks to be ticked off and belongings to be organized. Finding my suitcase, packing dirty clothes because there’s no time to send them to Letchumani, and clean clothes because I’ll have no time to do washing at home. Ammuma takes the flurry surprisingly well.

  ‘This job of yours, Durga. Worth doing well, no point letting the goats go after they’ve bolted.’

  She’s imperious while I pack, getting me to fold and refold clothes so they don’t crumple. She scolds Karthika for slopping the dishpail, then pokes around the kitchen for dirt, enjoying herself hugely. She goes in for complicated arguments, the sort that start out one-sided and finish over the kitchen table five hours later in a welter of broken crockery.

  By evening the rooms are full of mosquitoes that hover in thick clouds under the furniture. The wind’s too strong for them outside and the air’s full of rain. When I go out to feed the chickens I see the Jelai smacking at its banks, high and so fast it’s almost solid. There must be a flood further up the valley.

  A big flood, too, because a few minutes later we’re plunged into blackness. A power cut. There are a few scurrying, shouting minutes while Karthika and I find the
hurricane lamps. They flame into frothy yellow light as I line them on the edge of the verandah. A flittering ring of insects gathers and Ammuma starts giving her bony shins vicious slaps. Under her chair a green mosquito coil crumbles to dandruff and powders my bare soles.

  I’m not used to power cuts any more; they’re not part of the rhythm of my life and I’ve forgotten how to take them in my stride. Perhaps it’s something more than a power cut, I think, perhaps it’s bad luck and bad omens whistled up by Ammuma’s drowned women in their wells. There might be witchery in that coiling wind; there might be devilment setting the kitchen cats hissing under the table. I could frighten myself like this if I had more time, but Ammuma needs a beaten egg soaked in milk, and my suitcase still needs packing. No witchery here, just an extra pair of hands.

  ‘Mary-Auntie! Hello, hello.’

  The shout comes as I’m turning up one of the hurricane lamps. The wick flares and goes out, singeing my face and plunging the verandah into gloom. Tom. Here without so much as a by-your-leave, expecting us all to jump and flutter and burn our fingers into the bargain.

  ‘I heard you were discharged yesterday, Mary-Auntie.’ He comes up the verandah steps two at a time, with a rucksack slung over his shoulder. I relight the lamp, sending a sudden glare over my face, and he gives a start.

  ‘Durga!’

  Ammuma huffs, something between a cough and a scold, and Tom immediately turns to her. He knows how to please, kicking his shoes off – one lands in a dusty corner and lies there in all its Italian-leather glory – and sitting cross-legged by her chair. He slings his rucksack into a corner with the shoes and the dust and me. You’d almost think he’s delighted to be here, sitting with his trouser-creases getting ruined and mosquitoes crawling down into his collar.

  ‘So good to see you home again, Mary-Auntie,’ he says. ‘Dr Rao said you were his best patient.’

  She snorts again. On the one hand she’d like to send him packing – out into the night you go, and no thanks for sniffing around my granddaughter – but she can’t resist the urge to boast.

  ‘Taking antibiotics,’ she tells him. ‘And also this cylinder. Heavy one, but already helping.’

  She pats it with pride. She’s brighter when she’s got someone to perform for. She likes Tom, likes the gossip he brings back from work. So much more interesting than a granddaughter and her mathematics.

  ‘One of the Varghese kids came in with measles today,’ Tom tells her absently. He’s patting her hand and making a big performance out of inspecting the oxygen cylinder. He takes her rubber mouthpiece and bends it back and forwards against his palm.

  ‘One of our best, this is,’ he says, and Ammuma beams. He doesn’t mind humouring her – of course not, he doesn’t have to live with it – and in return she softens.

  ‘Dr Rao said this was important. And the dressing-paste also. See? Here, for the bandages. He’s a good boy, this Dr Rao.’

  Not half an hour ago she was fretting, sure her burns were worse and calling Dr Rao a jumped-up quack who couldn’t tell rice from grass. I roll my eyes and stand up, brushing dust from the seat of my skirt.

  Tom smiles at me. ‘Durga can help you with the bandages, can’t she?’ he says.

  Ammuma’s head whips round. She’d nearly forgotten I was there. Huddled in the dark, getting up to who-knows-what behind her back. Going to the bad, most likely.

  ‘Durga won’t be here, lah. Going back to her job.’

  There’s a silence, stretching out between the three of us. I thought Tom would have said something. At the very least he could have been polite and sorry-to-hear-you’re-leaving, or perhaps he could have swept me off my feet and carried me into the night. But he just coughs, rubs his jaw. I’m too heavy for carrying, that much is clear. There’s too much solidity in my bones.

  ‘Why don’t I bring some tea, Ammuma?’ I ask briskly.

  She’s pleased enough at that, asks for gem biscuits too and some of the watermelon. She doesn’t want me around Tom, not even on my last night. Too risky, too easy to slip and spill my virtue everywhere.

  I walk slowly to the front room. I’m not wearing my best sari any more, only an ordinary skirt and blouse crumpled from my suitcase. But underneath, where nobody can see, I’m still wearing silk. It’s slippery stuff that shivers and slinks, a set of underwear I bought in Canada to wear for Deepak. It’s a sunrise pink, it’s the exact colour of the flush on Tom’s throat and it’s far more beautiful than me.

  I stand still, listening to the trickle of voices from the verandah. The room’s almost black, with only a weak glow filtering in from the compound at the back where Karthika’s lit a fire. There’s a smell of boiled sugar from the sweets Karthika cooked to be placed in front of my mother’s shrine. Silverfish scuttle in the corners, and a few scorpions hang black and ponderous on the ceiling. There’s nothing in here that can hurt, I tell myself – a little heartache, a little poison – if only you keep your wits about you.

  ‘Durga?’ Tom’s a bulky, formless shape, coming in from the verandah. His bare feet pad on the floor with a sound as wet as buttermilk.

  ‘Are you really going?’ he asks quietly.

  ‘I can’t stay,’ I tell him. There are lectures, I explain, research grants to apply for, Anwar doing double-duty teaching all my classes. They give me some logic to brace against.

  ‘You’re cross about yesterday,’ Tom says. ‘I know we arranged to meet, but I’m sorry, Durga, I just forgot –’

  From Tom, who thinks that forgetting is a crime. He wouldn’t have forgotten Peony, I think – and then, I’m suddenly sick of it all. Sick of the past, which Ammuma rightly says is all blood under the bridge. Sick of ghosts, who should know their place and wait their turn. I feel the heat of Tom’s body next to mine and remember lying on the prayer-room floor. I remember his fingers, slippery and seeking and finding their home. There’s a stir in my belly and a trembling in my thighs. And so what if I’m no better than all those girls who’ve gone to the bad or gone to the devil, just like Ammuma warned me about. I’m exactly like them, under the skin. Looking for happy endings, looking for proofs, looking for love in all the wrong places.

  I take Tom’s hands and he jumps in surprise as I bring them to my mouth. He smells of salt and curry, and his thumb rubs up against the angle of my jaw. He pulls back and I reach up and brush my hand over his neck. His shirt’s starched, smelling pungent and bright as a naphtha flame. His face glimmers in a flare from the hurricane lamps on the verandah and just when I think he’s going to turn away he takes my hand instead.

  I tug him through the room and out into the pitch-black corridor. The kitchen door’s swinging open and a breath of wind comes in. It stinks of the Jelai. That river-swamp smell reminds me of Peony, and I drop Tom’s hand with a jolt. I remember us all playing hide-and-seek here fifteen years ago. Me behind the door, Tom under the settee where his white skin wouldn’t show. Peony in the attic, always the last to be found. You were good at hiding, Peony. You still are.

  ‘Come on,’ I tell him.

  Karthika slams the kitchen door again as we creep past. She’s burning banana leaves in the back compound. I wait until her back’s turned, then pull Tom quickly past under the curve of the stairs. There’s a side door to the yard, and the bolts are covered with a floss of spider webs. The path outside is luminous and milky with phosphorescence. Mud squelches under my feet and something squirms just beyond my toes.

  ‘Durga, are you sure we –’

  I lead him round the side of the house, under the durian tree. Everything’s lit with a shifting, flickering light from Karthika’s bonfire. We reach the annexe that spiders along the back wall, and I stop. Tom puts his shoulder to the annexe door, shoving it open against the piled-up dirt. I’m chilled, but Tom glows like that yard fire. He shuts the door behind us and it’s like a weight of darkness coming down over my eyelids. In here, he could be any colour at all.

  I brush my fingers over his shoulders. His heart jumps, lik
e a clean and friendly animal nudging under his skin. I want to lick him, my tongue rough as sandpaper coating his skin. He’s flesh and bone and sweat, and I want more.

  He slides down the wall, pulling me onto his lap, and kisses me. I feel his legs under mine and his hands unbuttoning my blouse. He smiles at the feel of silk underneath, at the soft give of it under his fingers. I run my hands down his spine and pull at his temples, running my lips over the creaseless line. He pushes my blouse down to my waist, and then his shirt is off too, tugged over his head and dropped carelessly on the floor. I feel brand new, as though he’s touching something almost at the core of me. Everything’s pulsating, slippery, thin as icing drizzled into cold water, and Tom’s face is close and invisible in the breathing dark. He’s muttering something – a private, urgent whisper I’m not meant to hear.

  ‘Peony.’ It’s a spit of cold water. ‘Peony.’

  ‘What?’ I pull away. Tom startles, letting his arms drop from around me. I’m still tight-wound inside, but I can feel myself loosening, ratcheting down. Becoming slacker, back to something that feels dull and heavy inside. Back to my bones and my skin, which doesn’t sing any more.

  ‘Tom …’

  My eyes have adjusted, or it wasn’t as dark as I thought. Light comes filtering in through cracks in the door, and round the sides of the boarded-up window. I can feel my daytime face again, frown-lines re-emerging. There’s a sudden sound outside, and I jump.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Tom moves sharply. He pulls away from me and the air sucks at my damp stomach. Cover yourself up, Ammuma would say. I grab for my blouse, shaking dirt out onto my skirt.

  There’s another noise and a sound of footsteps outside. The far wall dims slightly as someone passes in front of the door. Stands there for a second, close-up with an ear pressed to the wall. A smell comes wafting in: pandan leaves and fish with an undercurrent of shit. Karthika.