Bombay Time (27 page)

But now, Adi felt banished from the purity of his mother’s world. He tried to avoid Nari as much as he could, but the old man hovered around him like stale air. He hated his father for letting Nari into their home, noticed for the first time the weakness around his father’s mouth, how he laughed a little too readily and eagerly at Nari’s awful jokes. Until this time, his father had been a shadowy figure in Adi’s life, a man who seemed as remote and distant as the trees on their farm. Adi had always identified much more with his softhearted, citified mother than his rustic, patriarchal father. Still, he had been proud of the old man, enjoyed his gruff humor and his capacity for hard work. But now resentment made him watch his father more closely. He noticed how his mother had to pester her husband for household money before he would part with it and how Piliamai treated her husband like a petulant child who had to have things his own way. He dimly remembered how independent and outspoken Piliamai had been when he was younger and was struck by how she now mostly kept her opinions to herself. The only time Piliamai spoke up, it seemed, was in defense of one of the poor tribal women who worked on the farm. Adi felt embarrassed at how dictatorial his father was to the men who sweated on his farm and how servile and eager to please he was around Nari. He saw the mute hatred on the ebony faces of the bone-thin farm laborers as they lowered their eyes when the old man walked past them and Adi saw how oblivious he was to their hatred. He both hated and admired his father for this oblivion, his supreme indifference—hated him for the arrogance that indifference implied; admired him because he read into that indifference a kind of manliness that he woefully lacked. He knew for certain that his father would never be haunted by the face of a woman he had abused, that it would never occur to him that he had done anything but exercise his natural rights. Some part of Adi longed to seek his father’s confidence, to confess to him what he had done to Saraswati, but he knew that his father would laughingly slap him on the back, wink at him, and tell him not to tell his mother. That his father would misunderstand him and think he was bragging, rather than confessing. Or, worse, if he figured out that Adi was tormented by his action, he would mock him, say something unpleasant about not realizing he had raised a daughter instead of a son.

As for Nari, whom Adi began to think of as his evil, shadow father, Nari treated Adi like a co-conspirator, smirking at him, elbowing him in the ribs, smacking his lips when a young peasant woman walked by them. And he was in no position to tell him to stop, because, after all, hadn’t he proven himself to be as dissolute as the ugly old man who stood before him?

About a month after his encounter with Saraswati, she came to him. It was a bright yellow day and he was walking in his father’s fields, supervising the picking of the
chikoos,
when a movement to the right caught his eye. A woman in a rust brown sari was approaching him. He stared at her and for a moment their eyes met. He looked deeply into her face, searching for a sign that would tell him if this was the woman he had slept with, but the woman’s face was blank as a sheet as she walked by him. And then it hit him: He didn’t even remember what she looked like. He could pass her every day and not know it, for she was one of those interchangeable laborers, women who men like himself used and discarded like a piece of tissue. She was any of the women who surrounded him; she was all of them. Suddenly, he was reliving that night in the hovel. He felt dizzy, light-headed; hot vomit rose inside him like lava. The next minute, he was leaning against a tree, retching his insides out. From a distance, he heard the foreman’s worried voice. “Adi
seth,
what happened? Go inside,
seth,
too much heat today.”

The next day, he approached the foreman. “There’s a woman who works on Nari
seth’s
farm,” he said, trying to make his voice as casual as possible. “Name is Saraswati, I think. Maybe seventeen, eighteen years old? See if you can find out where she lives. Got a letter that came to the house to deliver to her.”

He thought that the foreman looked at him strangely, but Adi told himself it was his imagination. In any case, he had directions to Saraswati’s home the very same evening.

Two days later, he was standing before her hovel, screwing up his courage to enter. In all these years, he had never visited this part of the village. Finally, he bent and poked his head into the hut. When his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw an old woman cooking at a kerosene stove on the mud floor. “Saraswati live here?” he asked her. At the authority in his voice, the old woman jumped to her feet. “Yes,
sahib.
But she’s gone to the
baniya
to pick up some rice. Should be home any minute,
seth,”
the woman stammered. Although he had grown up hearing it, the servility in her voice set his teeth on edge today. “Is okay,” he said. “I’ll wait outside.” Already, a group of curious children had gathered around him. The old woman peered anxiously at him from inside the hut. He felt like a foreign dignitary visiting a strange country.

Saraswati recognized him before he knew who she was. Her hand flew up to her face, which was neither beautiful nor ugly. He was startled and ashamed to see that she was terrified of him. He wished the children would disappear, but he did not want to attract any more attention by shooing them away. He took a step toward Saraswati. “It’s okay,” he said. “I want to talk to you. This your hut?”

Once inside, he politely asked the old woman to leave them alone for a few minutes. When she hesitated, looking worriedly from him to her silent granddaughter, he deliberately stiffened his voice and again asked her to leave. This time, she obeyed. Saraswati crouched in the corner, sitting on her haunches and whimpering to herself. She was steeling herself for another attack, he realized with dismay. With the veil of lust lifted from his eyes, he saw her fully for the terrified, pathetic woman-child that she was. His heart swelled with unbearable pity and he felt like flinging himself before her feet and begging her forgiveness. He swallowed hard to rid his throat of the lump that was hardening there. “Listen,” he began. “What happened that n-night was a mistake. I’m sorry for it. I will never bother you again. You listening to me?” But although her whimpering had stopped, her eyes stared at him in the same unseeing way they had that night. He felt the chasm between them as acutely as if it were about to swallow him up. He wanted to grab her face, make her eyes focus on him, make her see how awfully sorry he was, but he knew that this would be yet another violation of her. Dumbly, miserably, he realized there was nothing else to say. He was suddenly unsure of his reasons for visiting her. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out two one-hundred-rupee bills. “This is not to insult you,” he said carefully. “Just a way of saying I’m sorry, that’s all.”

He left her then, feeling that he had not accomplished anything that he had wanted to when he had sought her out. But what did you expect? he argued with himself. That she’d forgive you? Welcome you with open arms? It went about as well as could be expected. At least she didn’t make a scene, bless her. And you can send her more money from time to time. By the time he got home, he felt lighthearted, as if someone had excavated a boulder from his heart.

Two days later, he was working in the fields, when Nari walked up to him. The old man’s eyes were blazing and his face was ugly with rage. “Get in the Jeep,” he said. “We are needing to have a talk.” Adi was about to protest, but the look on Nari’s face stopped him. Nari drove for a few minutes in silence. Then, in a voice taut with anger, he said, “Heard you were out visiting that girl’s home earlier this week. Heard you were poking your nose where it didn’t belong. What were you doing there?”

Adi froze, wondering how Nari had found out so soon. Then a wave of anger rose in him to match Nari’s. “Nobody’s business what I was doing there, Nari Uncle. I’m free to come and go where I want.”

Nari let out a cry of rage. He pulled the car off to the side of the mud road and slammed on his brakes. Turning to Adi, he grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him toward him until their faces were a few inches apart. “You fucking swine, don’t you ever talk to me in that tone. Only the fact that you’re my friend’s son keeps me from twisting and breaking your bleddy chicken’s neck. Nobody’s business what you do, you say? Well, it is my business when you cost me a laborer, that, too, during
chikoo-picking
season. A fine worker Saraswati was, too.”

“What … what are you talking about? How does my visiting Saraswati cost you anything? Oh my God, did she run away or something?”

“Run away? You could say that. Yes, you bleddy bastard, she ran away from this world all the way into the next. She killed herself, you cowardly idiot. Poured kerosene over her own body and lit a match. Can you imagine how barbaric these people are? And you know why? Because Mr. Guilty Conscience here decides to go to her hovel and give her some money so that he can sleep peacefully at night. In front of the whole village, you exposed her. May as well have put a sign around her neck saying ‘I’m a two-bit slut.’ Her father had no choice but to disown her. In fact, if she hadn’t killed herself, he’d have had to do it. Then, I would’ve lost
two
hard workers. And then I would have definitely killed you myself.”

Adi felt numb, as if he had bathed in ice. He tried to feel something for the dead girl but realized that he didn’t know her well enough to muster anything except a feeling of dread. He was only nineteen years old and he was responsible for the death of a woman. He had a sense that his life was galloping away from him, that someone had changed the script to his life while he wasn’t looking. At last, he said, “I was only trying to help. I just felt bad for her is all.”

“So our Prince Charming was going to help,” Nari spat out.
“Arre,
why didn’t you just marry her, then? See if your pious mother would have accepted that. Trying to help, my foot.
Deekra,
this system has been in place for thousands of years. It’s our tradition—landowners are allowed to sleep with the wives and daughters of their laborers. One of the few rewards for how hard we toil. This is the arrangement, and everyone accepts it. But the key is, it is done in secrecy. You don’t go around advertising the fact that you’ve slept with such and such woman. That way, her husband or father can still maintain his manhood, his family honor. Everybody knows and nobody knows. It’s perfect. But then you had to come along and spoil everything. Now I’ll probably have a bleddy union organizer coming in to exploit all this.”

Adi sat there, mutely, miserably. First a rapist, now a murderer, he told himself. Because he had killed her, sure as if he’d lighted the match himself. No use pleading good intentions. Saraswati was dead, regardless. The thought of his mother finding out about his fall made Adi find his tongue at last. “Nari Uncle, Mummy must never find out about this. You can take whatever punishment you want from me, but she must never know.”

Nari’s expression changed. “Now, what’s this talk of punishment-funishment? You are a Parsi, the son of generations of landowners. Who am I to punish you? Besides,” he said deliberately, “this news would kill your poor mother, good, pious woman that she is. Far be it from me to give her such dangerous news. Also, there’s no shortage of labor in India, thank God. Ten other Saraswatis to take her place. Just let this be a lesson to you, Adi. Never interfere with the natural order of things. Still, if you are feeling guilty about the loss you have caused me, perhaps you can help me out occasionally. I have no sons, and you are a nice strong boy. I’m getting old and could use some help.”

Adi nodded mutely, not knowing that he was shaking hands with the devil. But he soon found out. For the next three years, Nari was like a dark, sinister shadow that he could not shake off. As if to rub salt in his wounds, the old man used Adi to procure women for him, loaning him his Jeep to pick them up and deposit them at the hovel. Once, he even suggested that Adi watch, but the look in Adi’s eyes made the old man laugh nervously and pretend he had only been joking. Nari also used Adi to break up any efforts by his laborers to organize, to run the union leaders out of town. Adi hated himself for acquiescing to Nari, but the thought of Nari ever telling Pillamai about Saraswati’s suicide (in his mind, he called it a murder) was even more unbearable than the humiliations he suffered. Also, to relieve the pressure, he began to drink, toddy at first, then whiskey, sitting in the fields after dark, alone with the stars and his blurry thoughts. He found that he had a natural talent for drinking, that he took to it like mother’s milk, and pretty soon he was chased by the triple demons of Saraswati’s memory, Nari, and alcoholism. Pillamai’s father had been a heavy drinker, but she had kept that from her only son because the memory of how unpleasant her father’s drinking had made her childhood was too hard to talk about, even with Adi, her closest confidant. Anyway, Pillamai’s relationship with Adi had altered greatly, and when she allowed herself to feel her hurt, she was bewildered by the gap that had grown like a valley between them. At first, she tried talking to him. “Adi, are you sick, my darling? Is that father of yours working you too hard? Why these dark circles under your eyes? Adi, anything you are wanting to share with your mother? You know, we have always been able to talk with each other.”

He remained silent. There was no way to tell her about those horrifying dreams where a dead woman visited him, dreams made more horrifying by the fact that they came to him in broad daylight. Also, he had begun to resent his mother because, by her very presence, she made him feel unclean. The more he pimped for Nari, the further he pulled away from Pillamai. They represented the two extremes in his life, the sun and the sun’s shadow. And slowly, Adi was becoming a furtive creature of the shade, of the dark alley, of the hidden corner. He felt it had been a very, very long time ago that he had been young.

The first time he came home drunk, his father was gone on an overnight business trip. Pillamai smelled the drink on his breath as soon as she opened the door. She was too stunned to say anything. Instead, she beat him, lashed out at his impassive face, beat against his youthful body with hands made strong by terror and grief. He made no move to stop her. Her racking sobs pierced his frightened heart like a needle, but he steeled himself to her. He was distressed that his mother had found out about his drinking, but also relieved. He felt as if he were doing her a favor. He had changed. He was no longer her little Adi, innocent, pure. The sooner his mother knew that, the sooner she acknowledged the monster he had turned into, the better it would be for her.