The Mistress of Spices (35 page)

I stiffen. My American, are you dreaming
my
dream?

He emerges from sleep for a moment to offer me an un
focused smile, to nuzzle my shoulder, my throat. “My tropical blossom,” he says. “My mysterious Indian beauty.” Then he is gone again, unaware that I have drawn back.

American, it is good you remind me, I Tilo who was at the point of losing myself in you. You have loved me for the color of my skin, the accent of my speaking, the quaintness of my customs which promised you the magic you no longer found in the women of your own land. In your yearning you have made me into that which I am not.

I do not blame you too much. Perhaps I have done the same with you. But how can the soil of misconception nurture the seedling of love? Even without the spices standing guard between us, we would have failed. And who can tell if we would have come to hate each other.

It is better this way.

The thought gives me strength to tear my reluctant body from his warmth. To do what I must before he wakes.

In a kitchen drawer I find paper and pencil. Begin.

The note takes a long time. My fingers are numb. My disobedient eyes wish to weep. My mind brings forth lovewords only. But at last I am done. I open the bathroom cabinet, wrap the note around the tube of paste where Raven will find it tomorrow morning.

Then I wake him.

We have a disagreement, our first lover’s quarrel.
(And our last
, says the voice in my head.)

I must return to the store, I tell Raven. He is upset. Why can’t we stay together till morning, make love once more in early light? He will bring me breakfast in bed.

O Raven if you knew how much I would love—

But by dawn, when Shampati’s fire will blaze whether I wish it or not. I must be far from him.

I make my voice cold, tell him I need to be alone, think things through.

“Are you tired of me already?” Raven, Raven, I cry inside.

I tell him there’s something urgent that needs to be done which I cannot explain.

His mouth sets in a line of hard hurting. “I thought we were to have no more secrets. That we were to share our life, all of it, from now. Isn’t that what you just promised me with your body?”

“Please, Raven.”

“And what of our special place? Aren’t we going to look for it together?”

“What’s the hurry?” I am amazed at the calm deceit of my voice even as my stomach tightens and churns.

“We shouldn’t waste any more time,” Raven’s voice is urgent, “now that we’ve found each other. You of all people should know how uncertain life is, how fragile.”

In my ears the blood beats an echo,
fragile, fragile
. Outside his window the stars are hurtling dizzily toward morning.

“Okay,” I say to Raven finally, I who am too cowardly to watch the truth shatter in his eyes. “Come back in the morning and I’ll go with you.” Under my breath I add, “If I’m still there.”

I know I will not be.

We drive in silence. Raven, still displeased, fiddles with the dial of his radio. The animals in the Oakland 200 have been acting strange, crying and calling all evening, states a late-night newscaster. A singer with a voice like reeds in wind informs us that if we travel faster than the speed of sound, we must expect to get burned.

Shampati’s fire, how fast will I travel, how brightly will I burn.

I am seeing the note as Raven will see it in the morning, stumbling into the bathroom, his sleep-filled eyes still imprinted with the shape of my lips. Eyes that in surprise he will open, shaking the wool of dreams from them.

Raven forgive me
, the note will say.
I do not expect you to understand. Only to believe that I had no choice. I thank you for all you have given me. I hope I have given you a little too. Our love would never have lasted, for it was based upon fantasy, yours and mine, of what it is to be Indian. To be American. But where I am going—life or death, I do not know which—I will carry its brief aching sweetness. Forever
.

I do not unlock the door of the spice shop until after Raven has roared away. I am afraid of what retribution I will find for this last act, love snatched in a way a Mistress never should.

But everything is as I left it. I laugh. Almost I feel let down. All this time I have been a worryheart for no reason at all. It will be as the First Mother said—I will step in Shampati’s fire, wake on the island to take up her load. O, there will be punishment, I do not doubt that. Perhaps a scorching branded on my skin to make me always remember, perhaps (for I feel it changing already, the bones gnarling back) a body older and uglier, with all such a body’s pains.

I walk the emptied aisles, saying good-bye, remembering the moments. Here Haroun first offered me his palm to read, here Ahuja’s wife leaned admiring over a sari colored like the silken heart of a papaya. Here Jagjit stood behind his mother, innocent in his turban green as parrots. But already their names are slipping from me, their faces, even this sadness of forgetting muted, as though I were long gone already.

Raven will I forget you too.

Only after I am halfway across the store do I sense it, subtle, like the shift of light and shade in a night sky when a star has gone out. The old Tilo would have known it at once.

The shop is a shell only. Whatever was in it giving heat and breath has long left.

Spices what does this mean.

But I have no leisure to ponder it now. The third day is ending. I hear the planets spinning faster, the hours hurled like rocks through the sky. There is barely time to prepare Shampati’s fire.

I bring all that is left in the store—spices, dals, sacks of
atta
and rice and
bajra
—and make a pyre in the center of the room. Over it all I sprinkle my name-spice, sesame, grainy
til
to coat and protect me through my long journey. I let fall the white dress, shivering a little. I must take nothing from this life, go from America naked as I came into it.

Now I am ready. I dip my hands in turmeric, spice of rebirth with which I began this story, and pick up the stone jar that had held the chilies. I sit in lotus asana on the pyre of spices (but already my limbs are groaning a protest) and for the last time I open the jar. I draw my mind back from all that I have loved, and as it empties (is this what death is like) I feel a surprising peace.

I hold up the single chili I had left in the jar for this moment, and speak the invoking words. Come Shampati, take me now.

First Mother, are you at this very moment singing the song of welcome, the song to help my soul through the layers, bone and steel and forbidding word, that separate the two worlds. Or have you in illness or perhaps disappointment let me fall from your mind.

Fear beats against my ears like a storm-scared bird. Any moment now the flames—But nothing happens.

I wait, then say the words again. And again. Louder each time.

Nothing.

I am sobbing the words, trying other chants, even the smallest magic, please, please. Nothing still.

Spices what are you doing what teasing trick is this.

No answer.

Spices, in my mind I am gone already, plummeting through space and time, my skin grazed by meteors, my hair on fire. Don’t prolong my agony, I beg you, I Tilo humbled at last and terrified, as you wanted.

Silence more profound than ever I have heard it, even the planets ground to a halt.

And in that silence I see the spices’ punishment.

They have left me here, alone and reft of magic. For me there will be no Shampati’s fire.

Shampati’s fire, which I have feared for so long. Now suddenly I fear more my life without it.

Ah beautiful body in whose veins already the blood grows thick and sluggish, I see it now. I am doomed to live in this pitiless world as an old woman, without power, without livelihood, without a single being to whom I can turn.

O spices who know so well my deepest weakness, pride, it is the perfect sentence. For how can I go to those I helped, who feared and admired me all this while, who loved me for all I gave, as this naked eroded self. How can I stand the pity in their eyes, and under it the revulsion as I hold out my begging hand.

Raven, especially you I can never face this way.

So. My life lies twisting in front of me like the alleys I will inhabit, toothless and smelling of the body’s wastes, hiding my face from all who might know me, pushing the weight of my life in a stolen cart, sleeping in doorways and praying that one night someone—

Every fiber of my aching body cries,
Better to climb the redgold
girders of the bridge, to feel the dark water closing overhead, seaweed winding around the limbs, sinuous as snakes. Better to be done with it at once
.

No.

Spices, I Tilo accept your decree. In spite of terror and heartbreak, the loneliness of love lost and power turned to ash, I take it upon myself to live this way as long as I must. Forever, if you so decide.

This is my atonement. Willingly I undergo it. Not because I have sinned, for I acted out of love, in which is no sinning. Were I to do it over, I would do the same again. Step across the forbidden threshold of the store to take to Geeta in her glittering tower mango pickles and reassurance. Hold Lalita’s hand steadfast in mine and tell her she is deserving of joy. I would give again to Haroun lotus root for a love that is worth more than his immigrant dream. And again, yes, I would make myself as ravishing as Tilottama, dancer of the gods, for Raven’s pleasure.

But I know that rules broken must be paid for. Balance upset must be restored. For one to be happy, another must take upon herself the suffering.

A tale comes to me from my forgotten childhood: In the start of the world, searching for the nectar of immortality, the gods and demons churned up
halahal
, bitterest poison from the primal ocean. Its fumes covered the earth, and all creatures, dying, cried out their terror. Then the great Shiva took in his cupped hands the
halahal
and drank it. The dreadful poison burned in his throat, turning it a bruised blue that remains to this day. Ah, even for a god it must have been painful. But the world was saved.

I Tilo am no goddess but an ordinary woman only. Yes, I
admit it, this truth I have tried to escape all my life. And though once I thought I could save the world, I see now that I have only brought brief happiness into a few lives. And yet, is that not enough.

Spices, for their sake I will take on whatever burden you wish to lay on me. Only give me an hour of sleep. One hour of oblivion so I do not have to watch this body twist back into misshapenness. One hour of rest, sheltered from the thorn-fingered world that waits for me, for I am tired and yes, afraid.

The spices do not say no.

Thus I lie down, for the last time, in the center of the store of which I am no longer Mistress.

I wake to a faraway voice, carrying distress as the wind carries dust, carrying my name. It seems only moments since I slept. But I am no longer sure of anything.

The voice calls again. Tilo Tilo Tilo.

Is it not one I know, and love?

I start to my feet so fast it dizzies me. The floor tilts up, the flat of a huge hand that wishes to fling me off. A sound all around me like tearing, is it my heart.

No. See, it is this shop built of spice-spell, cracking apart like eggshells around me. The walls shake like paper, the ceiling snaps in two, the floor rises like a wave bringing me to my knees.

Ah spices, you need not have wrested my last refuge so rudely from me, I who was gathering the courage to leave.

Then a word comes to me.
Earthquake
.

Before I can think it fully, the ground jerks and shudders
again. Something flies through the air—is it the stone jar is it a slab of mirror—to shatter against my temple. Red stars explode in my skull. Or are they seeds of chilies.

But even as I plunge into pain I know with hopelessness that it will not kill me.