‘I’ve got so much homework, multiplication, division, geography, history, English. I’ll have to sit up late tonight.’ Coming as it did from Eddie, this was such a novel sentiment, it was almost revolutionary. Violet was impressed. Was he turning over a new leaf? Or was he being his usual mendacious self? He hated studying and homework.
Whether the liberties Eddie often took with the truth indicated a creative flair or were just plain hogwash depended on your point of view. Violet thought the future boded ill. This was the stuff of which hardcore criminals like that unmentionable devil with the unmentionable name on the fourth floor were made. Every lie would plunge him deeper into the fiery pits of hell. But to turn a blind eye to sin was also a sin, especially when the sinner was your own son. Besides, timely punishment was a lesson and a deterrent. She was not very hopeful, but there was a chance that it could change his ways and save him from damnation.
Victor, Victor, the bell in her mind had chimed every single day and sometimes every minute, how could you have died on me? The thought of betrayal had shrivelled her brain. It had become small and hard and craggy like the seed of a peach and it rattled all day and sometimes through the night. Black was her colour. She wore black every day of her life. Her eyes were black and there was black around her eyes. Her hair was black. (Even when it turned grey in her late fifties, she dyed it black so that there was no break in her mourning.) To her dying day she would not stop mourning for a man she could never forgive. But more wearying than the gong in her head was the bitter, sour taste in her mouth. It had changed her features and coloured everything she did.
Neither Eddie nor his older sister Pieta would ever get used to that bitter, sour odour. It assailed them, and even today took them by surprise when they got back from school or play or from the grocer’s or wherever they had gone. It was not bad breath. Mr D’Cruz from the corner room on their floor had that. You held your breath and you put as much distance between him and yourself as your lungs and your legs would let you if he happened to pass by or, worse still, open his mouth.
No, the smell that emanated from Violet had nothing to do with halitosis. It was the smell of pain, of unshed tears, of dour rectitude, of implicit faith in Jesus and not knowing why he should deal her such a cruel blow. Anyone who came in contact with her, passing contact, was touched and trapped by it. Even dear, ineffectual Father D’Souza, who tried to please everyone and was wracked occasionally by doubts that God was not overly pleased with his performance, dreaded Violet’s visits. She never complained. She bore it all stoically but God help you if you forgot her everlasting grief.
Her mouth was a slightly askew bloodless blue line and her eyes warned you not to put too much faith in your good fortune for that too would pass. Like a kidney stone growing inside her, she nursed her grievance. It was the rock on which she built her life. She was aware that CWD Chawl No. 17 was not the most congenial of places in which to bring up her children. But that only reinforced her inexhaustible sense of being wronged. Where was he, the father of her children? She was the mother, God’s chosen vessel for softness and for gentling Pieta and Eddie. It was her husband Victor’s task to be stern and chastise the children. He should have been the rock instead of her. It was he who should have disciplined Eddie when he said he couldn’t go to school because he had a clot in his left tentacle. She clipped him on the jaw and sent him off. When he failed in three subjects out of eight, he said he had haemorrhoids in his brains which was why his eyes were bloodshot and he couldn’t see clearly during his arithmetic, history and geography exams. She thrashed the daylights out of him that day and every whack of the cane drew a welt on her soul.
When these terminal illnesses failed to move his mother, Eddie shifted ground. ‘No school tomorrow,’ he told his mother one day with tears in his eyes. ‘An Ambassador car ran over my schoolteacher and broke his kidney waters. He’s in hospital dying.’ Kidney was a word Violet understood. She let him stay at home but went to school to check, just in case. She didn’t like Mr Lobo. He looked like a bulldog. The children were frightened of him. So was she. ‘I don’t quite understand your question,’ he said, his voice neutral. ‘As a woman you should be familiar with the phrase “breaking water”. Men do not. At best or worst, depending on your point of view, men will break wind, though that is not their exclusive privilege. These children, I will not call them fiends because you are a mother and may take offence, may have broken my spirit and my heart but my kidneys, I assure you, are as yet unbroken. You may also have noted that despite your son’s fervent prayers and wishful thinking, I am not dying, school is not closed, no damage has been done to any car and class was in progress till you came with your solicitous enquiries about my well-being. As for your son, Madam, I can only recommend, mind you, there’s no obligation, as there is none with the directive principles of the constitution of our nation either, that you break a leg of that perpetually prevaricating son of yours who would see me in hospital or, if he had his way, in a morgue.’
Violet went home and followed Mr Lobo’s advice, to the letter, well almost. Eddie, she knew, was her cross. She bore him as she had borne him on the day of his birth with equal amounts of dignity, resignation and resentment. She suspected that Mr Lobo had been trying to humiliate her with his superior attitude and his highfalutin language. If she had had any say in the matter, she would have had a chat with the principal, Father Giacomello, and had Mr Lobo dismissed.
But in truth, Violet’s anger was against herself. She knew her son and his shams and his ploys and yet she’d been taken in. He was making a fool of her and nobody did that with impunity. He had his father’s charm and the ability to spin a story which she knew was not really different from easy virtue. If she didn’t look out, he would go his father’s way. As always, her own mother who adored Eddie and cracked up every time he pulled a fast one, and Pieta who couldn’t stand the sight of her younger brother, begged and pleaded with her and ultimately wept silently while Violet caned his calves till the flesh broke in an attempt to flagellate herself.
Eddie sit up and study the whole night? Pieta did that when her exams were approaching. Any pretext was good enough to keep her up all night to study. But Eddie? Violet made the sign of the cross and went down on her knees. Why were Violet’s prayers always delivered aloud? Weren’t prayers a matter between you and your Lord? Maybe elsewhere. The essence of life in a chawl is that everything is public property. When you are constantly in each other’s hair, it’s almost impossible to get the lice out of your own hair without picking a few out of somebody else’s. You get used to a larger audience. You can’t always see them but you know they are listening, so you make sure that your stage whisper projects into the last row. Besides, with Violet, prayer was a report to God. He was omniscient but it was best to play safe and keep him informed. Prayer was also a way of letting the children, especially Eddie, know that she knew what was going on and what the score was. ‘Lord, is he pulling my leg? If he’s not, if he’s serious about studying let it not be for a day but forever. You know he has a sharp mind. All those medical terms he uses, he should make a fine doctor. You remember the day he came home with slight fever and said he had got typhoon and, of course, I disregarded his words and that nearly cost his life for he had diagnosed his condition correctly and it was typhoid or at least para-typhoid. If only he applies his mind. Let’s have a fair exchange. Let him become studious and it’s OK with me if Pieta manages to scrape through. She’s the one who’s had her heart set on becoming a doctor since childhood. Where’s the money going to come from? And you know what happens to these overeducated girls. Men don’t want to marry them. You took away Victor. Now give Eddie an early start. I’ll slave away for another fifteen years as I have done these past seven or eight. Then let Eddie take over. Make him a heart surgeon like Dr Oliviera Cabral of Panjim. Make him the most famous Catholic heart surgeon in India. He’ll make us wealthy and happy.
‘I’ll go to Mahim Church this Wednesday and the next eight Wednesdays and lay a wax brain at Mother Mary’s feet. No, he has enough brains. It’s application he lacks. I’ll make a table of wax with a book on it. Do not disappoint me, Lord.’
His mother’s prayers gave Eddie pause. Did his mother know that this was another of his tricks? His sister certainly did. Liar, she had hissed at him when he made his announcement. Was Violet telling him to pull himself up by his bootstraps? And what was this thing about becoming a heart surgeon? He hated doctors. Do you know what they did when they were drilling your teeth? No more, they said and went ahead and drilled some more. Won’t hurt, their family physician Dr Carvalho told him before giving him an injection for his inflamed tonsils. Brother, did it hurt. Even his mother, his very mother who never had a word of sympathy for him, said that Dr Carvalho had not replaced the set of needles he had inherited from his father’s practice. Short of taking a hammer and hitting the plunger in the syringe on its head, the doctor did everything possible to ram the blunt needle into his buttock. It wouldn’t go in at the bulging centre of his left rump, so he tried again at another spot. Despite his hoarse throat, Eddie screamed blue murder and kicked and recoiled. The syringe fell like an arrow to the ground. Its path was perpendicular. The needle had taken a ‘U’ turn. You could go fishing as soon as you stuck a live fly into it. The syringe itself was shattered to twenty seven thousand glinting, refracting, radiant pieces of kaleidoscopic quartz.
Dr Carvalho was six feet four inches tall. In his perfectly hairless head were a long nose, sad, docile eyes and the ruins of his teeth. When he opened his mouth you felt awed. What terrible battles and wars had been fought here. The hordes of Genghis Khan about whom Eddie read in his history book had gone on a rampage for eleven nights and eleven days and razed the temple to the ground. Not a single tooth was left intact. Instead there were delicate broken pillars and shards in nicotine yellow and brown, and frail grey where the destruction was still in progress. Dr Carvalho had to lean forward to bypass his paunch and look down on Eddie. Before he could say anything, Violet interrupted him. ‘I’ll pay for it.’ ‘Indeed, you will,’ Dr Carvalho said, ‘but it was one of my father’s syringes. Now I have only two of them left.’
The compounder came in and held Eddie’s feet in a vice while a shamefaced but determined Violet held his head down as if she wanted to bury it in the hard wooden divan whose once-green rexine cover had become almost black. It was murder. Might as well have plunged a spear into his heart. But that was nothing compared to whatever it was that Dr Carvalho was trying to inject. It felt as though he was trying to introduce solid concrete into his flesh. For weeks Eddie’s bum was hard as stone. You could have built the Qutab Minar on it. No, thank you. His sister Pieta, forever pious, over-zealous and prim and the darling of her teachers, that living fraud and the bane of his life, was welcome to become a heart surgeon. She was made for it. Won’t hurt at all, she would say as she sat next to her patients and yanked their bloody hearts out.
He could see the corner of the story-book in its purple wrapping paper with the red ribbon in his school bag. It had taken a superhuman effort not to unwrap it when it was presented to him but he didn’t want to share it with anyone. He had rushed home and in a flurry of exaggerated activity had hidden it in his school bag.
He had it all worked out. Prepare the ground by making a lot of noise about how much homework had to be done. That would please his mother and shut up his dearly detested sister. Granna was hardly ever a problem. After dinner, while Pieta was doing her three-minute brushing routine and his mother was cleaning up and putting things away, he would quickly remove the shining gift wrapping, place the Stories from the Mahabharata and Shri Krishna’s Life in his history book, it was the only one large enough to accommodate it, pull out the flap and supports of the folding table which served as his writing desk and sit down to a long and happy read. Just the thought of stories of strong warriors and duels, heroes and blackguards made him feel giddy. There was homework of course and it was wanted for the first class he had at nine in the morning, but really, you couldn’t do everything at the same time. He would think about it tomorrow. Get up early in the morning or cajole Roger into letting him copy his answers.
Trust his mother to throw a spanner in the works by bringing God into it. He resolved the problem quickly. He would do one half of his homework, make it one-third, that would make God and his mother happy, and then he would look after his own happiness.
He was not the fastest reader in the world, and things were slower than normal today because of all those strange names like Vichitravirya and Bhishma and Amba and Dhritarashtra and Pandu. It took him time to get into stride. As a matter of fact, he was on the verge of giving up when he turned a few pages and saw the picture of a boy hardly older than himself practising archery in front of the statue of a bearded, old but powerful man. The legend underneath it read: ‘Dronacharya refused to teach Eklavya. So he made a statue of the guru and became the greatest archer till …’
Why did Dronacharya refuse to teach Eklavya? How come Eklavya didn’t tell the fellow to go jump instead of making a statue of him. And how does a statue teach you anyway? Eddie was curious by nature but it was the ‘till’ with the three dots that hooked him for good.
It was Granna who gave him his love for stories. His mother had told him and Pieta bedtime stories when they were little, but they were the most boring tales you could imagine. Eddie always felt that she had wrung out all the juice from them.
Granna was different. She often told the same stories as his mother, but she drew them out forever till Eddie and Pieta went out of their minds wanting to know what happened in the end. ‘Oh, you want to know the end, why didn’t you say so, I would have told it to you at the very beginning.’ She was capable of it, both the children knew that. Granna was a great mimic apart from being a superlative actress. When she wanted to kill a story, she told it exactly as their mother would, voice, pitch, words, tone, the pauses, the forgetting of crucial parts, punch lines. The children would be in splits. Even Violet who hated anyone poking fun at her would smile.
One evening, as had happened numerous times before, their mother brought a story halfway and then looked blank. ‘I don’t remember the rest of it. Why don’t you tell them since you fancy yourself such a spinner of useless tales?’ she asked Granna. ‘I know you’re dying to. Always filling their heads with nonsense.’
‘Me? I don’t know that story. Which is why I was listening to it with such interest.’
‘Don’t lie. I heard that story from you when I was a child. And you’ve told it to the children fifty times if you’ve told it to them once. No wonder Eddie can’t tell the difference between lies and truth.’
‘You were such a lovely child, Violet, with such a sweet temper. When you grew up you were the belle of our town. Two months before the carnival, the parents of at least thirty boys would come around to ask whether you would dance with their sons. Some said you were Greta Garbo, others thought Olivia de Havilland looked like you, still others insisted you were the twin of Myrna Loy. Your father was flattered. I was not. I thought you were more beautiful than all those three Hollywood queens put together.’
What was Granna talking about, who were these beauties his mother was supposed to resemble, and anyway why had she changed the subject and brought up all this rubbish? He looked at his mother. Her face had softened, her mouth had relaxed and there was a faraway look in her eyes. When she leaned forward, her hair came loose and hung like a fine black veil around her head. It was amazing, this power his Granna’s stories had to transform, not just people but inanimate objects like chairs, doors, houses, even the quality of the light and the air.
‘Do you remember when the Governor came to Vasco to inaugurate a manganese plant nearby? Your Aunt Lilly and Uncle Osmond, who were invited to the Governor’s ball because he was the deputy municipal commissioner, insisted on taking you along. You wore an emerald green sleeveless dress that came to your ankles and almost transparent green gloves which rose above your elbows?’
Eddie saw light flowing from his mother’s face. It hung around her like a halo. The tension in her face had gone. All the lines, including the line of her nose that made her seem hard, unhappy and grim, had shifted a little. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but it was as if her face had turned to clay and some artist was reworking it with swift but minimal strokes to bring out the fragile beauty of her person.
‘It began to pour and soon there was a traffic jam in that small place. Your uncle was already at the municipal hall but your carriage and the Governor’s car almost collided, and in that lightning and thunder and crush of people and rain, your carriage driver lost control and the horse reared. The Governor asked his ADC to bring the horse under control. Do you remember the ADC?’
‘Go on,’ Violet said, ‘don’t stop.’ Eddie and Pieta looked at each other. It was their pet line. Violet had never used it before.
‘His name was Mario de Lima Leitao. When you got back you said he was the handsomest man you had ever seen. He was dressed in navy whites trimmed with gold braid. Many medals hung on his jacket front. He was drenched to the bone by the time he quietened the horse. He went back to the Governor’s car and the driver gave him an umbrella to escort the Governor and his wife, Dona Lucinda, into the hall. The Governor asked his wife and his ADC to proceed and he himself came to your carriage. You and Aunt Lilly had your own umbrellas, but you hesitated to get out of the carriage because the ground was squelchy and there were rivulets of rushing water everywhere and you didn’t want to ruin your clothes. The Governor gave you his umbrella and said, “Open this, it’s much bigger and will keep the rain out.” As you opened the umbrella, he held you by the waist and carried you in his arms to the hall. He turned back for Lilly but she had already gone.’ Granna paused.
‘And then?’
‘You know the story better than I do. I wasn’t even there. It’s all hearsay for me.’
‘And then?’ Violet’s voice was imperious.
‘Well, nobody could believe their eyes. They were appreciative of the Governor’s gallantry but they were, I think, taken aback if not a little unhappy that you were the object of so much attention. Your father was, after all, nothing but a clerk in the railways. You were lovely and people had never ignored you but that day you were Cinderella.
‘Mario de Lima Leitao sent for another uniform from the D’Sa residence where he was staying with the Governor. All night he danced with you except when the Governor tapped him on the shoulder and asked, “May I?” They said even the Governor’s wife was upset with her husband for ignoring her.’
‘And then?’ This time it was Pieta who chipped in.
‘Nothing. Fairy-tales too come to an end. Your mother came home and the Governor, his wife and the ADC went back to Panjim the next day.’
‘That’s not the end.’ Violet was hot and flushed and her eyes challenged her mother.
‘Are you sure you want me to go on?’
‘Yes.’ The children were as firm as Violet.
‘Lieutenant Lima Leitao wrote to your father saying that, with his permission, he wished to visit us for just one day. Your father was perturbed and delighted and puzzled. But he wrote back to the Lieutenant to say that he was welcome and hoped that he would stay with us.
‘To cut a long story short,’ it was a phrase that Granna had never used before, ‘he came and asked for your mother’s hand.’
Pieta and Eddie gasped. They looked at their mother in awe. Was this woman whom they called Mamma, really the same woman who had swept both the Governor and his ADC off their feet? Eddie gingerly held Violet’s hand. She did not let go of it.
‘Is all this true?’ Pieta could not contain herself.
‘Of course not,’ Granna kept a straight face but her eyes gave her away, ‘just a pack of lies. There was just one problem. He was leaving within a week for Portugal with the Governor whose term in the colony was over.’
‘Where did he stay?’ Pieta, who had her mother’s liquid eyes, asked in wonder.
‘I don’t remember,’ Granna said.
‘You don’t remember?’ Pieta asked in disbelief.
‘What do you expect at my age? It’s not important.’
‘Where did he stay?’ Pieta turned to her mother. Violet was lost in thought and didn’t seem to be in the mood to answer.
‘Oh, shut up.’ ‘Shut up’ was a forbidden phrase in their house, but Eddie was sure that no one was going to pull him up for using it today, even if Pieta protested violently. ‘Then what happened? Mamma married him?’
‘Silly,’ Pieta’s scorn would have demolished lesser thick-skulled souls, ‘then how would Papa be our father?’
‘Your mother’s father said, “This is all very sudden and we really don’t know how to react.”
‘ “I understand your dilemma, Mr D’Silva, but what choice do I have? I do not know how many years it will be before I return. Perhaps I never will. Except to visit you and my parents.”
‘ “My daughter will be seventeen, the Thursday of next week. It is unfair to put the weight of perhaps the most important decision of her life on her shoulders at such a young age, and that too at such short notice. But however difficult it may be, she is the only one who must choose her future.” He turned to me and asked, “What is your feeling, Inez?” and I, who always talked nineteen to the dozen, was speechless. All I could say was: “What can I say?”
‘Then your grandfather looked at your mother and said, “I’m not shirking my duty, Violet, but it would be unfair both to you and the Lieutenant, about whom we hardly know anything at all, if I tried to sway you either way.”
‘Your mother was young but she carried herself like a queen. At her age she had more poise than I have today. “These are unusual circumstances, Lieutenant Lima Leitao, and I have no choice but to give a quick answer. May I have till the morning?” Lieutenant Lima Leitao was courtesy and graciousness itself. He looked at your mother and said, “Of course. I leave at 9.30 sharp tomorrow morning. I trust you will have word for me by then.”
‘He smiled then for the first time. Oh, what a smile it was. I was willing to sell my soul to the devil to be young again and be courted by the Lieutenant. He was boyish and disarming but underneath it was the bedrock of confidence that no one could have the audacity to refuse him.
‘Later that evening, Lieutenant Lima Leitao asked your grandfather’s permission to go out for a walk on the beach with your mother. I doubt that Mr D’Silva had faced a more difficult situation in his life. Like everybody else in our town, he was an orthodox, conventional man. He had never been exposed to conflict. What will people say was not a question that occurred to him until he heard of the excessive chivalry of the Governor and his ADC to Violet. It was out of the question. What was it that made him shake his head in refusal but say yes? He had already abdicated the responsibility of choosing a husband for his daughter. Did he not owe it to her to let her have the chance of understanding this man a little better before she refused or accepted him? Perhaps we were all a little overwhelmed. It was impossible to say no to the Lieutenant who was used to getting his way. “You may go for a walk in the mango orchard after dinner. Mrs D’Silva will chaperone Violet.”
‘It was a moonlit night. There was a restless wind blowing. The mango tree is a strange one. It hoards darkness. We walked together for a few minutes, then I fell back. Violet turned round and called out to me, “Mamma.” The two of them hardly spoke to each other. They became invisible when they entered the pools of bottle green. Then suddenly the light caught the starched white of his uniform and I could see them for a few minutes before they disappeared again. I walked to the beach in front of the house and sat on the sand. How far was it to Lisbon from here if I drew a straight line? I thought it would be rather nice to cross the seas and visit a new country to see my daughter.
‘The next morning, breakfast was on the table by seven thirty. There was oatmeal, eggs and bacon and sausages, milk, tea, and coffee, pineapples and bananas. There was all manner of talk except what was on everybody’s mind. Every once in a while one of us stole a look at Violet. She had worn a severe white dress. The only touch of colour was the ruby pendant around her neck which my grandmother had given me. I believe for once the Lieutenant’s self-assurance was a trifle forced. Violet on the other hand was the very picture of poise. You would never know whether she had slept soundly or stayed up all night. She was the perfect hostess. “A little marmalade? I made it myself this summer. Is this coffee strong enough for you?”
‘Finally, that interminable breakfast ended. Violet placed her napkin on the table and looked the Governor’s ADC in the eye. “Lieutenant Lima Leitao, you have done my family and me the honour of asking for my hand. We appreciate this, especially in the light of the fact that you have to make arrangements to leave for Portugal within the next six days. It is difficult and futile to speculate how things may have turned out had we had a normal courtship. Suffice it to say that my answer under the circumstances is no. This decision is mine and mine alone as are the reasons behind it. We wish you all the very best in your career and life. Godspeed.” ’
‘Oh Mamma, why, oh why?’ Pieta was close to tears.
Eddie was struck by the sudden chill in the air. It emanated from Violet. Yet the change had been wrought by his Granna. What strange powers did a story have that it could make you happy and elated one minute and depressed and dissatisfied the next? What kind of weapon was it that it could blow hot and cold not just alternately, but simultaneously? He could feel the lines around his mother’s mouth and eyes harden once again.
He hated her for going back to her old self. And he blamed his grandmother for it. Why did she have to continue? Why could she not have stopped halfway even though Pieta and he, and tacitly even his mother, had begged and pleaded and forced her to go on.
He looked at Granna. She was sitting still. She looked tired. In his incoherent and inarticulate way, Eddie realized that his Granna had gone on because she wanted Violet to live through it again. Where did his father figure in all this?
Violet looked defiantly at her mother. ‘The reasons are mine and mine alone,’ she said.
Around ten when his mother stopped sewing, Eddie quickly closed the story-book and placed it under his history text. He could have read on, but what if his mother came over to tell him to go to bed and spotted it? Even that he could handle with a quick shuffle. What worried him was that, despite his growing interest in the book, he might doze off and be caught red-handed. No, he wasn’t taking any chances. He raised the two books to his face casually, breathed deeply. There was no question about it, the scent of the new pages gave him a high. He slipped his hand in randomly. The page felt smooth and glossy, must have opened on a page with an illustration. He wondered if, with practice and time, his fingers could tell who or what they were touching, a kind of tactile vision.
I thought you said you were planning to sit up late at night.’ His sister Pieta was going to have a field day needling him the next few weeks. He was glad to see that his ploy had worked. The next second Eddie was regretting his cockiness.
‘What have you got in your hand? Behind the history book?’ That witch had X-ray eyes and a hound’s nose. If only he could rub chilli powder in her eyes and nose, twice a day, no, make it thrice. Too late now. She was advancing on him.
‘Leave him alone, Pieta. Stop poking your long nose into everything.’ Thank God for Granna.
Eddie hurriedly shoved the books into his school bag, turned his back to his mother, screwed up his eyes and waved his tongue at Pieta.
‘Did you see what he did? He’s making faces at me, Mamma.’
‘Enough. I don’t want another word out of either of you.’
