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“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Patience, dear boy.”
Sip by sip we emptied our glasses and I refilled them with more whisky than soda and ice, to keep Andy talking.
“You did seem prim and proper at the Irothio. Now not as much.” She gave me a coquettish look and said, “Oh?” Followed by a smile.
I told her that in a way tradition spoiled her life by the fact that her family imposed on her an unnatural match and tradition derailed mine. I met my wife before her first marriage and we spent a year and a half in an idyllic relationship. I was madly in love with her from the beginning and though one cannot be certain, I believe, at the time, she was in love with me. I wanted to marry her but I had an unmarried elder sister and tradition in Greece requires the man to marry off his sisters before he may consider marriage for himself. Although the custom is weakening, at the time the difference in viewpoints caused considerable turbulence in my family and violent quarrels went on for months and abutted to nothing. Fanny, my wife, left me in disgust and I fell into a depression so severe that my family, which was previously adamant in their opposition to this marriage, started phoning the girl, begging her to come back to marry me. But for Fanny it was all over. It never ceases to impress me how resolute a woman is when she takes the decision to sever a relationship. For her there is no turning back.
“So what happened, then?”
“You didn‟t finish your story.”
“We‟ll get back to it.”
“Well, each went his own way. I had a few flirts, a few affairs. You see, even when I was thin and handsome I was never a Don Juan.”
“No, you are not made of that stuff. You are too gentle and kind.”
“I got her news from time to time from mutual friends and in turn learnt of her marriage, the birth of a baby girl, then that her marriage was in trouble, that her husband was violent and maltreated her, that there were complications in the family because Fanny‟s father lent a large sum of money to the husband and the business went broke, that they divorced and he disappeared without repaying the debt. Apparently, he has not seen Fanny or his daughter since. About a year after her divorce she called me up and we started going out together again for I was as much in love with her as ever.
Financially she was hard up and because of the child was unable to work. I asked her to marry me and she gratefully accepted because it was no longer love or happiness that was the issue but a question of survival, of the daily bread.
“The girl comes and sees me now and then. Mostly when she needs something.
She is always very sweet and tender with me and calls me father and I want desperately to believe it. But then she again gives no signs of life until the next time she needs help or money. So you see Andy, if my stupid family had been less stubborn and tradition-bound, I would have married Fanny early on and we would have been spared the wounds of bad feelings, her marriage and our separation. Moreover, I would have had my own child whose love I would not have to second-guess. And to emphasize the futility and stupidity of the whole affair I have to tell you that my sister eventually got married quite happily and has two daughters.”
We were silent for a while sipping our drinks.
“Don‟t you think we ought to go to sleep?” she said.
“It will soon be daylight. I shall fix some breakfast and then we can go to sleep.
In any case, you have not finished your story.”
“And what are you offering for breakfast?”
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“Fried eggs, bacon, toast, butter, orange marmalade, tea or coffee or anything else you wish. I am well stocked.”
“Do you have grape fruit?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Wonderful. Half a grape fruit, a single slice of bread and a small piece of cheese each, is all we‟re having.”
I was exasperated. Hunger was gnawing at my insides. The whisky opened my appetite.
“Aren‟t you a bit too bossy after an acquaintanceship of barely six hours?”
“Take it or leave it. It is part of my friendship.”
“Okay. Get on with your story and then we can feast on half a grapefruit.”
“So where shall I start? Well, I was wily enough to start with my husband‟s major mistake, at least towards me, which was marrying a girl thirty-five years younger than him. With his millionaire‟s ego which was fed and sustained by the bowing and scraping servility of his household and entourage. With his insistence on having a child at that age as a public affirmation of his virility. With the secluded life he required me to endure. I suppose many a poor girl would have been more than happy to be in my shoes to wallow in the security of his millions but, George, I was an educated person. I spent five years in England. Two in pre-university courses and three at university earning a BA in sociology. I tasted freedom. Freedom of every sort, both social and intellectual. I read books, went to the theatre, to concerts and ballet because I enjoyed them, not just to see and be seen. I had sex with a number of young men. I believed in the feminist movement that was dawning at the time. Gloria Steinem was our guru but she was not the only one. I corresponded with Germaine Greer who wrote The Female Eunuch and did not miss a single one of her lectures. When I wrote to her she answered my letters. Imagine? She liberated me. I worshipped her.”
“So why did you get trapped into this marriage?”
“My family was terribly old fashioned and traditional. We are from the city called Trincomalee where a large concentration of Sri Lankan Tamils is found.”
“A few years back,” I told Andchana, “I met a young man, here in Greece, from Singapore who was a Tamil and a Moslem. Are most of you Moslem? Forgive my ignorance, Andy, but you are a small part of the Indian nation one rarely hears about.”
“Don‟t make me laugh, George. Tiny Greece of ten millions ought not to profess or condone ignorance of the Tamil nation. With more than 77 million speakers in the state of Tamil Nadu in India and in Sri Lanka, Tamil is one of the widely spoken languages of the world. It has a continuous literary tradition of over two thousand years.
You Europeans are just so self-centered and especially you Greeks think you invented civilization and are still its custodians.”
“I agree and beg your pardon.”
“There are Moslem Tamils as well as Christian Tamils but the vast majority, that is about 90 percent, is Hindu.”
“I thought they were Buddhists.”
“No. Sri Lanka has been the center of Buddhist religion and culture from ancient times and it is the religion of the Sinhalese majority but not all its citizens are Buddhists. Almost a third of the population, mostly Tamil, is Hindu with a small percentage comprising of Christians and Moslems. And please, don‟t ask me what the difference between Buddhists and Hindus is because I shall scream.”
“Tell me, please Andy, what‟s the difference between Buddhists and Hindus?” She smiled broadly indicating she was not fooled.
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“I‟ll tell you anyway,” she said, “but not in a sentence because it cannot be done. Hinduism is rather a form of civilization than a religion as it is understood it in the West. It is a system of castes, which nowadays is in the process of disintegration with the encouragement of the state although religion is not state-controlled. A Hindu accepts five main general ideas as the framework of his spiritual life. First, the Hindu‟s idea of the highest way of living is that of the holy ascetic and there are many kinds of hermits that lead a very frugal and solitary life. A man may lead an ordinary life but is expected that nearing his end he will turn to asceticism. Of course, largely this is rapidly being bulldozed to extinction by education, modern industry and business and lately by electronic communications.
“Secondly, a Hindu does not believe in the importance of historical events. He does not much care whether a story is true so long as it contains a spiritual meaning.
Thirdly, Hinduism allows beliefs and disbeliefs of almost any kind, there are Hindus who are atheists and others who believe in many gods such as Vishnu, Shiva, Kali, and so on who are different aspects of the Supreme Being, known as Brahma. Then, there is reincarnation, which you surely must have heard about, which is the concept that living things have a succession of lives, past and future. This chain of births and rebirths, called samsara, is governed by the principle of karma. Thus the result of virtuous deeds is to be re-born in a higher caste, while the result of vicious action is to be re-born in some unpleasant state, such as a worm or a pig. Lastly, Hinduism teaches that whatever Being lies behind and above this physical world, that Being has nothing to do and is not concerned with morality.
She smiled.
“A Hindu would not be likely to have written the Ten Commandments.”
“How strange!”
“Not so strange, George. I hear there is a sect here in Greece that believes in the twelve ancient gods of Olympus. That they perform ceremonies dressed in ancient garb and that the Church has excommunicated them and outraged ordinary people disrupt their ceremonies.”
“The witches of Salem all over again, except we should burn both the heretic worshipers on one stake and the clergy of the Greek Orthodox Church on the other.” She laughed and went on.
“In a way, although I am not a Buddhist, I find Buddhism to be the sanest religion. Buddha or Siddhartha Gautama was born in 560 BC in northern India. Initially a Hindu prince of a soldier caste he became dissatisfied with the Hindu beliefs which he considered too extreme especially the excessive asceticism and the practice of yoga. He did not entirely reject these but he thought that they were inadequate and in particular, the self-torture went too far. So he proceeded with his new teaching which could be shared by everybody, in which there should not be too much fasting and body punishment, and in which moral conduct, especially kindness to others, including animals, should play a leading part.
“The end aimed at was a completely happy state, or Nirvana, in which the individual ceased to be intensely engaged in himself and his future and aimed only at being absorbed into the life of the Great Self. Buddha‟s central message was that life was full of unhappiness and tension; that this was caused by people‟s thirst for all sorts of unsatisfying material things. That to get rid of the unhappiness you must get rid of that thirst, for only by reaching a state of desiring nothing can man attain true happiness. To do this, the best way was to follow Buddha‟s own particular system of meditation and disciplined conduct. Many of the Ten Commandments figure in his teachings of what is allowed and what is not.”
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“Thank you. That was very nicely and simply explained.”
“I have a daughter, George, and I used to talk to her about many serious things in as simple a manner as I could. Also don‟t forget I am a sociologist and even though most of the things I learnt have long been forgotten, important chronicles like Buddha‟s life still linger in my memory.”
“Where is your daughter?”
“I have not seen her since I divorced fifteen years or so ago.”
“My God! Why not?”
“Because my life went awry. It was the unfortunate result of the contradiction of my education and the traditional life I was expected to follow. My parents sent me to England to be educated and then tried to squeeze me into the straightjacket of tradition and the constraints of their conservative, bigoted and parochial society. My father was a prominent lawyer who was wealthy enough to afford to send me abroad for university education. My mother was a narrow, silly little mind whose constant concern was our public image and whose guiding principle and personal code of correct conduct was
„what will the people say‟. I loved her and despised her and pitied her at the same time, if that is at all possible. Well, perhaps God, or Brahma, or whatever Higher Being is in power, has punished me for this and created circumstance where I lost my own daughter. You see, I was a wild child……...”
“No, no, I can‟t believe that, Andy. You seem the soul of moderation.”
“Which goes to show you that appearances often mislead. Anyway, I have slowed down, inevitably, with age and after the many slaps I received in my life. But as a child I was wild and unruly. I was rude, untidy and never studied properly. Instead I spent my time reading romances, which, however, later gave me a taste for serious literature. For my secondary education I was sent to a high-class boarding school in Colombo and was expelled because I got into the habit of sneaking into my friend‟s bed after lights out. Some girl reported it and we were caught in flagrante delicto. Hell, we were only hugging and learning to French-kiss. Nothing more, I swear. My poor, gentle friend was expelled as well, a victim of my passion. After many hurdles and many changes of schools my parents were happy to pack me off to London. It was my paradise. I mellowed there, George. I became a mature, rounded off human being.
“In my final year, I met a Tamil boy from Trincomalee, my home town, who was on the periphery of my group of friends. He was about our age, reasonably presentable and was known as „rich Hiram‟ because he drove an E-type Jaguar which was the sports car of rich movie actors and playboys. He also seemed to have plenty of money and lived in a snazzy apartment in Knightsbridge whereas most of us lived in bed-sitters in Earl‟s Court. He had managed to enroll in the Economics department of some university or other but did not seem to be putting much effort in his studies. He moved from one coffee bar to the next and from one girl to another, his popularity with the chicks, I suppose, due to the E-type.
“During Christmas London becomes a ghost city because a good part of its population returns to the villages and smaller towns of their origins, for the festivities. It is the only time of the year that London is dull and depressing. I happened to see Hiram at a party a few days before Christmas and we were bemoaning the coming days of boredom when he suggested we take a trip to Scotland in his car. „But it‟s so bloody cold,‟ I told him. „I have a heater in my car, dearie, not to worry, moreover we‟ll be staying in good, well-heated hotels and, by the way, it‟s my invitation,‟ he said. I was unattached at the time and thought, what the hell, I‟ll go. All in all, it was an enjoyable, itinerant week we had moving from cities, to villages, to hamlets in the highlands and 86
lochs of Scotland right up to Inverness. Mostly gray, with rain and snow in places but, oh, the dour winter beauty of the Scottish countryside will remain with me for good.
“We slept together of course and I smile to remember the eggs and bacon, toasts and buns with champagne instead of tea that that mad boy ordered for breakfast. And our unsteady tottering exit from the hotel to go to the car. We had plenty of laughs and fun, no doubt about it, but Hiram was not for me. I was not in love with him. Never could be. Despite a mad streak in him which amused me, he was shallow and spoilt and when one disagreed with him he sulked and scowled and it took time for him to get over it. So when we returned I had no further use for him and ungratefully dropped him. I considered we had served each other‟s purpose, in a good way, might I add, and now we were quits. When I left London for good that summer after graduating, he asked me to take a small package of medicine to his father in Trincomalee. With such stealthy and furtive methods fate sometimes knocks at your door.
“Back home, with a BA in sociology in my pocket, I started wondering what to do. Seek a teaching job, apply for a post in the government bureaucracy or look around in the private business sector? I was hardly a month there and I bitterly regretted having returned. I had on one side my father‟s seeming indifference and on the other my mother‟s constant pestering that I should get married right away. Her nerve-wracking speculations about this and that young man, his prospects and whether he would make me a good husband, were driving me cuckoo. And then, the unexpected, the utterly bizarre, the answer to their prayers exploded in our midst like a thunderbolt from Shiva.
A visit from Hiram‟s father to ask for my hand in marriage.
“A few days after my return I had telephoned him and went to his house to deliver the package Hiram gave me. I said house, but in reality it was a mansion in the outskirts of Trincomalee in the midst of many acres of gardens. I had gone in a taxi and as I entered the main gate which was manned by armed guards, I walked up a paved road that led to the mansion. It was early afternoon and a few people were still working on the grounds, sweeping, tending the flower beds and moving about purposefully. The mansion was in the style of an Indian temple such as one sees in the Khajuraho complex but on a smaller scale, with elaborate carvings and statues decorating it. A butler in frock coat, white shirt and black bow tie answered the door and told me Sir Karam was expecting me and led me to the library. Karam, by the way, was knighted by the British for services rendered during the war. He had vast tea plantations up in the highlands and many factories processing the tea gathered by hand by his dirt-poor laborers. Tamils, by the way, because the Sinhalese will not work for such low wages. The Tamils were originally imported from India as cheap labor. Perhaps Karam offered free five-o‟clock tea to the British army officers in Ceylon and was knighted for it.” Andchana giggled and continued.
“He came in after a few minutes, a sprightly grey haired, pleasant looking man of sixty, of average height and impeccably attired in a light grey linen suit. A real Englishman, in accent and bearing except he was our color. They are a dying breed his type of people but you still find some in India and Sri Lanka. People who made piles of money during the English colonial days and rubbed shoulders with their overlords.
They have exquisite manners and a steely stare. They have more money than even they can imagine and covet even more. They want to be admired, loved and feared but they don‟t know that they can‟t be all three at the same time and mostly they live in an artificial world of voluble flattery and hidden spite.
“He greeted me graciously and thanked me profusely for taking the trouble to bring him the medicines he was unable to procure at home. We sat on comfortable leather armchairs and he ordered tea, assuming, he said, I would not be interested for a 87
drink this early in the afternoon. We slid into polite small talk and he asked me about Hiram. About his studies. I told him I could not vouch for his progress as I happened to be in a different college. „You know,‟ he said, „I don‟t really care if he graduates or not.
In fact I‟d rather he didn‟t, so he won‟t get any fancy ideas about staying to work in England. I want him back here to take over the business eventually. So I let him sow his wild oats for a few years in England in order that when he returns home he will be ready to settle down and take his work seriously.‟
“I felt like telling him that I had sowed my wild oats too for five years and now I was back and was suffocating. But I couldn‟t give a damn. I left an hour later and he asked me to come back next week to go riding with him. I told him I didn‟t know how to ride. He said now was as good a time as any to learn and that he had a stable of really fine horses. So the next week I went riding with Karam in the woods near his home and I rather liked the experience. He told me to feel free to drop in on my own anytime to take the same good natured gelding for a ride and I did this once more before the shock of his proposal nearly knocked me out of my senses.
“You must wonder why I accepted to marry Karam. I was forced, George, I was bludgeoned into it. You must bear in mind that we lived in provincial Trincomalee, not London or Paris. I was bullied mostly by my despicable, hysterical mother. It was a madhouse. She was either screaming at me or crying or fainting. Day in, day out, telling me that this proposal was sent to me from heaven, that there does not exist a girl that would refuse. „My prayers were answered,‟ she would tell me sobbing, „and now you want to throw your luck away, you devil girl. You will be the death of me.‟
My father was cool and tried to make me see sense. „Andchana, my dear,‟ he would say, „you shall have everything at your fingertips, you shall have security.‟ „I don‟t want to marry you, father,‟ I told him. „What are you talking about, girl? You shall marry Sir Karam, not me.‟ „It‟s the same thing, father.‟ „Don‟t talk nonsense, girl.‟
„Father, Sir Karam probably expects a virgin. I am not a virgin. I have slept with any number of boys.‟ „Shame. For shame girl, shut up. Just shut up.‟
“And yet, now and then I thought of the money and it was as if I had taken a drug, a hallucinogen. I entered a dreamland of corruption, of selfishness, of vile thoughts. That‟s what money does. I would have everything at my fingertips as my father said, clothes, travel, cars, and lovers, why not? It would be my revenge and in a few years he would die and I‟d be free and very, very rich. So to make a long story short, otherwise forty-eight more hours would not be enough for a thorough recounting, I married Karam in a grandiose ceremony where everybody was happy except me. He was a kind and thoughtful husband but, George, it was a marriage without taste, without passion. Such marriages exist, I am sure, and it is not for me to condemn them though instinctively and emotionally I do not understand them. I cannot substitute money and security for love, tenderness and a compatible sexuality. I shall not go into our sexual life except to tell you that, after the few initial months of adjustment, it was just about tolerable during the first two or three years and then it fizzled out. He wanted a child and refused to take precautions and I was pregnant by the second month after the wedding. A baby girl was born and from the very beginning not only a wet nurse was in attendance but a whole staff of nurses. I was a sort of daily visitor of my child when I was not reading or riding or going to town for shopping. Her father spent more time with her than I did and their bond grew stronger as the little girl grew up.” She looked at me, smiled, then rolled her eyes and shook her head as if in exasperation.
“I really don‟t know why I am telling you all this, George. I mean, I hardly know you.”
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“Perhaps that‟s the reason.”
“Perhaps I want your reaction. I mean, at the Irothio you met a seemingly respectable, middle-aged woman and little by little as the layers of her life unfold a new and rather sluttish persona comes into view.”
“Certainly a new, surprising persona emerges but I would hardly call her sluttish.”
“Wait and see. Karam had a country house up in the mountains close to one of his plantations. We used to go up there during weekends in the summer months with the baby and a nurse or two. It was a lovely coquettish little villa, permanently staffed, with a well kept garden in the middle of the subtropical forest. Although they say that there are no really dry areas in Sri Lanka, the north east mountain forests were comparatively dry and the climate cool and pleasant. Karam built us a stable and brought four of our horses so that we would be able to ride. It was an exercise we both enjoyed.
“Amongst the servants were a syce and a younger boy to look after the horses.
There weren‟t any dangerous animals in the vicinity and we used to take long rides of an hour or two. It was the only truly companionable time I had with my husband who was a fine horseman and tried to keep up with the sport despite his age and increasingly frequent back pains. So usually, we rode on our favorite horses and the syce and the boy rode the other two to give them their exercise.
“The boy must have been sixteen or seventeen when I first went to the mountains and I followed his growth as the years went by because he stayed on in our service. He was an orphan and felt very lucky to have found shelter and permanent employment with us. He loved the horses and kept them shining, literally shining with interminable brushing. He was a Moslem Tamil and was almost illiterate but he was shy and gentle and beautiful. He was small like me though just a mite taller, thin and well built, with beautiful, sparkling black eyes and an enchanting smile …”
“And you fell in love with him!”
“Wow, George, how did you guess? You‟re a genius.”
“And I can guess the rest. You became Lady Chatterley of Trincomalee”
“Well, okay, go on, then. Tell us the story.”
“No, no. Pardon my presumption. Please go on.”
“A few of years after I gave birth to Zahra, I started going much more frequently to the mountain even when Karam was busy or unwell. The villa was for me like Marie Antoinette‟s Le Petit Trianon. I was at peace there, to read, listen to music and ride with Amed mornings and afternoons. Of course the elder syce joined us most of the times and we were stiff and constrained but when we were alone we talked familiarly and I taught him many things about the world beyond the mountain and the neighboring villages which was all he had seen in his life.
“One day we were caught in a thunderstorm while riding some distance from the villa. We were drenched to the bone and, luckily, we found a rock outcropping which gave us some shelter. The funny thing is, the horses themselves refused to move beyond this ledge and we squeezed there to weather the storm. I was so close to Amed that our faces almost touched. We dismounted and were squashed together under the rock outcropping between the two horses. I shook my hair like a wet dog to rid it of the rainwater and with my hands tried to do the same to his hair. He smiled his lovely, luminous smile and I kissed him and we made love standing between the horses. I see your eyes widen, George. I see you want to ask, „how?‟ But I am not prepared to titillate your imagination with descriptions. It can be done.
“It was the start of an affair that lasted many years; till the end of my marriage, in fact. I often thought of my father and how wise he was. I had finally everything at my 89
fingertips, comfort, security and passionate love. Love because I really loved that beautiful, lowly, ignorant boy, his puppy adoration and considerable aptitude and capacity in lovemaking. We were scrupulously careful and were never discovered.”
“So how did it end?”
“I forgot to tell you that Hiram attended our marriage. I am sure he was shocked as hell but kept his peace. He acted as if our brief affair in Scotland never happened.
Subsequently he returned home to Trincomalee roughly once a year to visit his dad and stepsister, but did not seem too keen to return for good and take over the reins of the family business. Karam was in his seventies when he finally put his foot down and ordered him back permanently or else the funds would dry up. So Hiram returned home, disgruntled, in his middle thirties without having done an hour‟s work in his life and with an apparent intention of continuing this dolce far niente, which like smoking, is an addiction difficult to break.
“There were many, many quarrels with Karam and when Hiram happened to be in the house he was more often than not, long faced, ill-tempered and surly. He showed little affection for Zahra who was now about ten and to me he openly expressed his contempt for the marriage I had contracted. „I thought you better than that,‟ he told me.
„It‟s true, after all, that all women are mercenary bitches.‟ And would add, laughing,
„Well, I hope, at least you are having a good time in bed with him.‟
“After a while, when his relations with Karam turned truly ugly he started, to use the modern terminology, persistent sexual harassment. He tried to embrace me and kiss me on several occasions and when I repelled him he told me not to act the faithful wife. I was afraid to tell Karam in case he revealed that we had been lovers. It would have opened a new front of conflict that would not only complicate my life but endanger my encounters with Amed. By that time I no longer slept with Karam but had moved to a bedroom on my own. I never locked my door, not even now that Hiram was at home. I did not think he‟d have the audacity to enter with so many servants roaming around the house but he did, very late one night, and he attacked me. He reeked of alcohol. We scuffled silently but I was no match against him and he raped me. I could have shouted and screamed but I didn‟t. The complications of that, to my mind, would be more painful than my violation. I never talked to him again and never looked at him.
He tried on several occasions to apologize but I did not give him the opportunity. What little concern I formerly felt for him vanished. He simply no longer existed as far as I was concerned and, another thing, I locked my door at night.
“The end came soon after that. In a particularly violent quarrel with Karam, Hiram, probably drunk once again, shouted at his father that he had fucked his wife before