Indian Love Stories Page 5

  That’s when he had said, scornfully, ‘Oh yes! Horses! During the war, you used to eat horsemeat! A truly nourishing relationship, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘That’s not true!’ The words had whipped out of her. It was only the French who ate horsemeat!! Not Americans!! Never Americans!!! But the force of his contempt had drained her confidence. He was so often right about things like that. He seemed to store up tiny scraps of information just so that he could produce them at crucial points in an argument. ‘It – it’s not typical behaviour, what we did during the war – ’ Even as she said the words, there had appeared in her head a question mark. ‘We?’

  He said, smoothly arrogant, ‘In India, there used to be terrible famines. But even at the depth of the famine, even when children were dying in their mothers’ arms, there was never any report of cows being eaten. People were willing to die rather than eat their animals!’

  ‘Well – ’ she had said, ‘well – I think that’s stupid! It’s just stupid to die rather than to eat what’s there – ’

  He had said, ‘Oh? So – in a famine you’d eat your sister’s flesh?’

  ‘That’s different!’ But she had felt so helpless. He was implacable, when he had his teeth into an argument. ‘It isn’t normal to eat one’s own species – ’

  ‘But we’ve agreed that wars and famines aren’t normal times – !’

  It had gone on and on and on. There had been no resolution. He had grown increasingly cool and confident while she had felt her cheeks radiating a black light and had heard her voice grow shrill and incoherent. Towards the end of it, she had found herself saying that she couldn’t respect a people, a culture which didn’t have the sense to avoid famines. He said that a few famines were inconsequential in the face of five thousand years of civilization. She said that the ethical system to which she belonged could not view famines as inconsequential. Whereupon he had replied that he couldn’t place much confidence in an ethical system which used, as its central icon, the tortured corpse of its religious prophet.

  It had taken her a few seconds to understand what he had meant by that remark and when she did, it upset her so profoundly that her eyes stung with sudden tears. So she had turned her face towards the window. She didn’t know what had bothered her more – that description of Christ or her reaction to hearing it. She didn’t think of herself as a believing Christian, yet it hurt her to hear that description.

  They drove the last 50 miles in silence.

  Deep’s mother lived alone in an old two-storey building surrounded by majestic elms. She had probably been standing at the window looking out for the car, because the front door opened even as the tires purred up the driveway. Deep turned to Sarah and said, ‘Will you be all right?’ She was relieved to see that the sarcastic stranger with whom she had been arguing had reverted to being the familiar friend and lover of the last five months. She had nodded and got down from the car.

  And yet … Standing at the window three days later, she knew that it hadn’t been all right. That stranger, that alien, who had been at the wheel of the car dressed in Deep’s body, hadn’t vanished entirely after all. Having once appeared, he had continued to lurk, just at the outer margin of Deep’s personality. Had he been there all along?

  She hugged herself tighter. Why had Deep’s mother wanted her to wash her bedsheet in the basement? What could possibly be the point of it? Then she thought of something. She thought of something she had heard her own mother and aunt talking about, laughing. A long time ago. She tried to focus on it, but couldn’t. It had been too long ago and she had been a child at the time. She hadn’t understood what they’d been talking about.

  But it triggered another area of thought. In primitive communities, menstruating women sat separately, sometimes in a special hut.

  Is that what she’s doing with me? thought Sarah. Avoiding contamination. Avoiding the unclean magic of a bleeding woman. Unclean. Sarah felt a current of power course through her. That reminds me, she thought. Time to change.

  She went to the bathroom and pulled down her panties. A scarlet streak told her that she was just in time. She reached for the kit-bag in which she stored her tampons, while in the same movement sitting down on the toilet. She reached with her right hand under herself to find the string of the tampon, wound it around her finger and tugged, feeling all the while curiously self-conscious of all her movements. As if she were performing for some invisible camera crew. Twentieth Century Woman Removing Vaginal Insert. The tampon came out with a silky squish, and she released it, letting it drop into the toilet. Then stopped.

  Why am I looking away at nothingness? she thought. Why don’t I ever look down when I do this? Why are all my movements so automatic? And even as these thoughts appeared in her mind, a gush of simultaneous thoughts: I shouldn’t be thinking this way! It was unseemly to look at one’s menstrual products. It was unnecessary to think about what one was doing when one removed tampons. It wasn’t proper. And yet … why not?

  She wiped herself with toilet paper. Then made herself look at the results. It’s a beautiful colour, she thought, red and warm, like – like Burgundy. She wanted to giggle. Imagine being caught sitting on the toilet and looking at my own blood! she thought, then added, with surprise. Why do I feel so guilty? Why? Even when I’m just alone with myself?

  As if to augment this thought, she heard, from the bedroom, the door open and Deep’s voice. ‘Sarah?’ he called. ‘Are you in there?’

  ‘Yes!’ she answered and quickly dropped the toilet paper out of sight.

  He opened the door and said, ‘You’re not dressed yet?’ Then he caught sight of the kit-bag with the tampons in it. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘oh. Sorry.’ And shut the door. Sarah narrowed her eyes and smiled to herself. Powerful magic, this blood! she thought. It can make a man apologize at ten paces, just at the sight of the equipment!

  By the time she was through with her bath Deep had already gone down. She found them, him and his mother, in the sunlit kitchen nook, with the remnants of breakfast on the Formica-top table. She didn’t feel like eating anything and said so, pouring herself a mug of coffee. She could feel Deep’s eyes on her but didn’t look at him. He was encouraging her to eat what his mother had made, because, as he had already told her once before, it was rude to sit at the table and refuse food. Too bad, thought Sarah. I’m not going to perform for him, for either of them. If his mother could make all her meals without consulting her guests, then she, Sarah, could refuse to eat those meals without consulting anyone.

  Mrs. Kumar started to speak to Deep, in Indian. Deep responded, muttering. He seemed to be arguing with her, but it was hard to tell. The language sounded that way. A bit like Klingon, thought Sarah. Full of explosive consonants. Deep said, in English, ‘My mother says it’s not safe to go hungry in … your condition. She says she prepared this’ – he pointed to a disgusting looking mush – ‘especially for you. To build you up.’

  Sarah turned what she hoped was a blank look in his direction. ‘What condition?’ she asked.

  The corners of his mouth were twitched inward in irritation. ‘You are bleeding heavily, she tells me. Apparently you stained the sheets.’

  Sarah said, ‘Sheet. It was one sheet. And a very small stain.’ She turned to Mrs. Kumar. ‘Mrs. Kumar, I’m sorry, but I’m not hungry just now.’ She spoke distinctly and slowly. ‘Thank you for making something special, but I really don’t need it.’ Turned back to Deep. ‘If it’s all right with you, I’m going for a walk just now.’ She smiled tightly and got up from the table, taking her mug of coffee with her and went out, walking slowly.

  The front yard was fenced in with wooden palings. Sarah walked down the driveway and on to the road. There was no sidewalk. Deep’s father had been a surgeon with a good practice in this small rural community in northern Pennsylvania. He had died four years ago, leaving the property and a fortune in investments for his widow and son to live on in comfort for the rest of their lives.

  Sarah’s breath, augmented by the heat of the coffee, steamed busily out onto the crisp air. They do well here for themselves, she thought to herself. These Indians, these aliens! She was trying to see what it felt like to view a minority group with race-hostility. She was mildly amused to see that she couldn’t do it easily, that she felt guilty thinking thoughts like that. Even though, going by the typical logic of race-hostility, she had reason to feel embittered about the soft life that Deep’s father had afforded for his family.

  Her own childhood hadn’t been easy. Her father had grown up on a farm and later managed to buy himself a garage. He had struggled to put his five children through school. Only she and her sister had gone to college. Two brothers were still in school and one brother had died at eighteen, in a car accident caused by his own drunkenness. Aliens! Aliens! she thought, But isn’t it funny that I can’t even think up a cuss-word for them? Maybe they hadn’t been around for long enough to be absorbed into the vocabulary of racial abuse.

  She hadn’t been walking for long before she heard quick footsteps behind her. It was Deep. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he said, panting slightly. He never wasted time with preliminaries. ‘You’ve been acting strange since this morning.’

  ‘It’s your mother,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s the bedsheet. I don’t understand why she made me wash it like that.’ She would have liked to add that it was more than that. It was the horsemeat, it was the prophet-corpse, it was the revelation that there were chasms between them, which would never be bridged. She didn’t think that the visit was working. She would rather leave right away and not stay for Christmas.

  ‘You’re so hung-up,’ said Deep, calmly, his face showing no sign of any emotion, his voice flat. ‘She’s just an old lady. Why is it so difficult to do something differe
nt for a change? To bend yourself just a little?’

  ‘Deep – she wanted me to wash the bedsheet in a sink, in the basement, in sub-zero water! It’s not just something different! It’s something so stupid and unreasonable I don’t know what to do with it! I mean, I thought we’d agreed that there’s enough illogic in the world without having to add crazy out-dated customs to it!’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why you stained the sheets at all,’ said Deep.

  Sarah said, ‘One sheet.’

  ‘All right, one sheet, then. But why did you have to do it? It’s not as if you don’t know how to … be careful! I don’t think it’s at all … polite to do that sort of thing.’

  ‘Polite!…’ She laughed, gusting a thunderhead of white breath. ‘What’s polite got to do with anything! It’s not polite for your mother to sneak around looking at our sheets either, you know!’

  ‘It’s your fault for not having made the bed in time.’

  Sarah turned on Deep. ‘I don’t get it! Why does she have to come into our room at all? We’re grown up, aren’t we? I was still in my nightie, I hadn’t even left the room and she was in there and making the bed!’

  ‘Sarah – ’ he sighed. ‘My mother’s just a lonely old lady. She has no-one to talk to or fuss over when I’m not here. I don’t think you can see how important it is for her to be able to do things for us – ’

  ‘For you, you mean!’ said Sarah. ‘It’s not for me she’s doing it, it’s for you! Her little son!’

  He shrugged. ‘Okay, for me, then. But she’s lonely – don’t you see that? She needs to be needed. She needs to feel useful. Why do you make such a big deal about it? Why does it matter so much?’ He was affecting to sound tired of it all. The weary male worn out by the bickering of females around him. ‘You’re a feminist when it comes to young women and to women of your culture. But when it’s my mother, who doesn’t speak much English and isn’t sophisticated, she’s suddenly the enemy, the oppressor – ’

  ‘Deep, she’s playing a power game,’ said Sarah. ‘Anyone can play it – you don’t have to be a man or – or – white, or American. You won’t see it like that, because she’s your mother and the game works in your favour. But all these little things – the making of the beds, the not letting anyone else wash dishes or cook, she doesn’t let anyone touch any of it – it’s her way of maintaining control. Don’t you see that?’ She drew in a breath, sharply, the cold air hurting her throat. It was a hopeless discussion, because she knew he would never be able to see it her way. But she tried nevertheless. ‘It’s clear enough to you, when it comes to world events, when it’s Russia controlling the flow of arms to Uzbekhistan – or the US controlling patents in the Third World. But when it’s your mother controlling the flow of my blood onto our sheet? Oh no! Then it’s tradition! It’s being polite!’

  He said nothing for a few moments. They were walking on the grassy verge along a larger street now, up a slight incline. The cars coming over the crest of the low hill seemed to respond to the sight of the two of them by swerving sideways, like skittish horses. Sarah wondered idly what the drivers thought. Do they see a couple walking along, she wondered, or do they see a racial statement?

  Deep said, in a quiet voice, ‘I thought we had something special.’

  Sarah waited a space before saying, ‘We did. We still do – I think – but – ’

  ‘But you’ve moved out of my reach. You’re seeing me as a foreigner, as an alien.’

  Sarah’s head was swaying from side to side. ‘No, Deep, no! It’s not like that! Really!’ Even though it was.

  He said, ‘I’m not stupid, you know. I mean, it’s interesting to me. I thought you’d be different, but you’re not, really.’

  Don’t react, thought Sarah to herself. Be still now. He’s going to say something. Hurtful. Brace yourself.

  He said, ‘I thought being black must mean that you’re more sensitive – but that was stupid of me, huh? Another kind of racism. When it comes to the important things, you’re just an American. Just a Westerner.’ His face was expressionless and his voice was perfectly bland. He could have been reciting the multiplication tables, for all the emotion he showed. But that was just his inscrutable-Oriental way. ‘I thought you of all people would understand what it means to be an outsider. To be excluded from the mainstream – but obviously I was wrong.’

  He continued for a short while, during which they were passed in succession by two Corvettes, a Datsun and three battered-looking station wagons filled with dogs and children. Sarah felt like a guest at a stranger’s cocktail party, listening to the conversation with comprehension but no involvement. I should feel insulted, she thought, why don’t I feel insulted?

  They had reached the crest of the hill now and had stopped. Deep said ‘What are you thinking?’

  Sarah said, ‘I want to go back. I need to change my tampon.’

  During lunch, the dull ache in Sarah’s lower abdomen became a concentrated mass of pain so fierce that she found herself gasping softly to herself, hoping that she couldn’t be heard. As soon as she could, she excused herself to the bedroom and lay down. It felt good to be on her back, but the pain didn’t let up. It was a small hard fist of pressure, a living presence. It’s just got to do its thing, thought Sarah, it’s not actually malicious. She thought of the lightless inner world of her pelvis and the mute scream making its inexorable way out of the avocado-shaped muscle in which it had been held captive. Come out, she spoke to it, in her mind. Don’t be afraid. I won’t deny your presence. Instead of running away from the pain, she would disarm it with attention. Come, she thought at it, let me look at you, let me understand your structure.

  It was dark, she decided, and glossy. A glossy pain. A deep, rich blue, royal in its own way. Forceful. Powerful. She could see it as a male entity, a strong, husky bellow. But I don’t resent you, she thought, isn’t that interesting? It was possible to look steadily into the centre of the pain and in some undefined way, celebrate it. It was a trial by strength, a specialized type of wrestling match between her body and itself. There was no victor or loser, the struggle itself was everything. You fill me, she thought. Here I lie, supine, while you, confined as you are to a passage no thicker than a pencil’s lead, no longer than an AA battery, are able to irradiate my entire being so that I feel your heat from the farthest limit of my toes to the roots of my hair. She thought of the sparking network of nerves which, moment to moment, sent in their bulletins of sensation from locations around the multiple dimensions of her existence, yet none of them could drown out the roar being broadcast from her uterus, from her cervix.

  She smiled, her eyes shut, concentrating on fashioning something positive out of her pain. She didn’t see Deep enter the room, walk silently around the queen-size bed and stop when he was by her side.

  She opened her eyes.

  ‘Why are you smiling?’ he asked in a whisper.

  She paused before she answered, not certain that it was wise to share her secret. Then she relented. ‘Because,’ she whispered back, ‘I’m in pain.’

  ‘Pain?’ His face puckered immediately in concern. He sat down, causing the edge of the mattress to buckle under his sudden weight. ‘Is it serious? Have you taken anything for it?’ His voice was suddenly loud.

  ‘No!’ She whispered, lifting her head off the pillow in her earnestness, ‘No! I’m sort of … enjoying it …’ She relaxed once more, taking his hand in hers.

  Deep stared at her, frowning. ‘I don’t understand you any more,’ he said. He had the kind of expression on his face that men get when they start to ask themselves whether the woman in front of them is experiencing a mind-altering hormonal storm. ‘How can you enjoy pain?’

  She said, ‘I’m trying it out. You know, an experiment. I can visualise it, I can sort of imagine it as a – a – kind of – ’

  He said, ‘How do you know you’re not seriously unwell?’

  ‘I’m just bleeding. It’s a normal, natural event.’

  He continued to look suspicious and unconvinced.

  She shifted to her side. ‘I don’t know why, but it’s different this time. It’s not just blood coming out, but sort of chunks of stuff. So – of course it hurts. The pain is from expelling solid matter, from pushing it through the narrow passage – ’ She saw the expression of distaste on his face and stopped. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said. ‘You look as if you’re going to be sick!’