by Ram Govardhan
Nâtaline abhorred pungency of capsicum, roachy corners, soap operas, smell of new-mown hay and men in equal measure excepting Anton, her father. She hated almost all of menfolk, that is. And occasioned by Anton’s demise, her revulsion for half of humanity turned absolute: she could hate him over a Goa property that he bequeathed to one Zâbel who turned out to be his mistress of nineteen years with two of his children. “He kept it under wraps for so long…that’s typically a man thing, all…all of them are treacherous,” Nâtaline cried and tossed the papers on the lawyer who read through them. But for the inescapable carnal needs, keeping men away was a safe stairway to a peaceful course of life.
Men were miserable scoundrels, mediocre mortals, and edgy spanners in the rounded, grounded, seamless world of feminine works. “You don’t keep annoyance around all the time,” Nâtaline avowed and prided that no man managed to stay with her overnight, ever, “Keep it short, sweet and playing straight is the way.” Her mother or foremothers never entertained the surnames of men they lived with. And Nâtaline unhesitatingly fended off such patronymic compulsions with irreverent élan.
Years ago, the day Anton appeared on Zâbel’s horizon, swiftly discerning grander odds in his conspicuous highborn personage, Zâbel promptly banished her first man forever over a frivolity. Anton’s aristocracy entitled him to be a weekend partner begetting two able daughters. Zâbel was harmony of features beyond the scope of genetic laws. A glamorous embodiment of her idol Magdu, mistress of the last Governor General Vassalo e Silva, Zâbel’s brown-orange skin, caused by spray tanning, was pièce de résistance. Even as Anton began marvelling at her matchless symmetry, given his fading prime, the day the younger girl turned one, Zâbel’s attention on him waned and, within a summer, to his horror, it was no more undivided. She set her sights on his holdings past the western bank of Mandovi and the lush acres about Dona Paula as moral entitlement, if not legal. One night of long knives, ceaselessly nonplussing him with her beguile, she coerced him to hand down the best of them in recompense for raising his daughters. Soon after laying hands on the certified papers, she was unrelenting in dumping him altogether.
“Those few hours were always blissful,” Anton habitually said, “But it should not be construed as some sort of a fling…she was a delight to be with, she dazzled with her elegance and mesmerized with her grace and, above all, she had this uncanny knack of transporting you to cloud nine. But these are old, very old memories…eighteen years old.”
Unambiguous, unwritten rules of engagement reigned supreme and as long as a man was compliant and unassertive, they weighed up no one else. Once the bloke turned out to be utterly hopeless, they scouted for a sucker. Prompted by one such guy’s exit, casting about for a gullible chap, Nâtaline zeroed in on Salvador, a lanky twenty-year-old student at Dempo College. Her plump and comely looks, honeyed voice, inimitable dreadlocks, exquisite but old-fashioned clothing and suavity rendered him speechless. And, undeniably, her wide-brimmed embroidered hat played a key role in the siege and capitulation. Even if a hackneyed expression, that’s what ensued; Salvador loved Nâtaline at first sight. He had to come to terms with the sardonic truth of irreciprocity before long. Two brief stopovers in three months were enough to get the drift of the genetic allergy but, atypically, Salvador could stand the punishing spells of disgrace. He was subjecting himself to wildfire that could race through him any time, his friends warned. One still needed an appointment to meet her even if it was at her behest. Morning or evening, unpunctuality was fraught with danger for, every so often, deviations led to injuries needing weeks of tending.
But that Friday afternoon Salvador was on the dot. Nâtaline was engrossed in filing nails even as her headphone belted out chart-busters. So piercing was the volume that, drawing nearer, Salvador could perceive the track–Adele’s Rolling in the Deep. Collapsing into the sofa-sleeper, he could see that she was also crooning – a Hindi song. She went about her tasks as if he did not exist there. After couple of visits, spread over months, Salvador realised that one doesn’t have to be a Caltech allergist to grasp that her revulsion to prolonged company of menfolk was not a recently acquired hypersensitivity; it was chromosomal permeation, a genetic notation just to be complied. To entertain ideas of a lasting relationship was nothing but labouring under a delusion. Salvador never rued his indiscretion but constantly kept himself primed for a lot that awaits disposable plates.
That mid-afternoon Nâtaline made no bones about niceties; the inklings that Salvador was still a needless bother were too unmistakable. In her eternal ego-trip; she consistently shunned men with landed interests, of upper-class, men of letters, and of power. That makes it plain that Salvador’s status is not higher than hers and, to be truthful, she endures him because he was not a low-profile guy but a no-profile guy.
Doffing headphone, fingering her dreadlocks, Nâtaline looked nervous, “The wretched women are arriving anytime now…I dread confronting the demonic threesome…they are skilled at turning foul in a trice, at the drop of a hat.” Given her hard-hitting demeanour, in a rare exhibition of emotive power staging a grand coup, he could spot an air of disquiet on her face.
“Who are they?” Salvador sounded meek.
“The diabetic Xanthippe who usurped my father’s villa and other properties for bearing two devils for him,” said Nâtaline. She was referring to Zâbel, the property in blue-blooded neighbourhood of Margao, a city larger than Panaji, and the farmland in Chinchollem.
“What’s with now?”
“Insatiability is a human trait…as the French say…when all other sins are old, greed still stays young. These pests scout for teeny-weeny leeway to appropriate. You play the devil’s advocate…you have to outargue and tire them out,” ordered Nâtaline.
Zâbel wobbled in with her teenaged super-obese daughters into the porch. Climbing two pairs of stairs that creaked under the tonnage, huffing and puffing, groping their way along the wall, all three swayed and tumbled into the junked daybed in doorway. The younger girl kicked open the fridge-freezer that was at arm’s length and passed on bottles of Coke. The overfamiliarity, with which they moved about the mansion stunned Salvador. They knew every crook, cranny, and corner and they picked closets in the galley, its contents and exact chests containing bites. Even while moving around, munching and having a nibble of the cheese, the three yelled swear-words at Nâtaline who gave a haughty return by hurling torrents of expletives at them. And both sides, quite inexplicably, waited to take vituperative turns with cutting edge obscenities; a sort of controlled muckraking. Their unruffled carriage, amidst such profanity, implied that this was their manner of conversational discourse.
At last, their howling centred on disputed assets. And then, not just some prime manors in uptown Juba but also, Nâtaline maintained, inheriting chattels in upscale district west of Margoa railway line was her birth right. This claim maddened Zâbel and her daughters who cried aloud Nâtaline’s illegitimacy. Bursting out in spurts, spitefully scuttling towards them, the trio brazened it out to cow Nâtaline into ceding without much of a showdown. But Nâtaline nimbly drew them into a drift that converged not on sharing but on her outright privileges over all that was left behind by Anton. They countered calling her ‘illegitimate’ by brutally questioning Nâtaline’s paternity.
In the midst of the hullabaloo, Salvador made a timid effort to please Zâbel by offering a glass of fruit juice. “Young man…I believe you are Nâtaline’s new boyfriend. This is our family stuff…just keep off…Nâtaline is too clever and I am too worldly,” said Zâbel.
Putting the emphasis on the words new and our, Zâbel induced the intended consequence: Salvador instantly felt marginalised, unrelated.
“Girls…this is one hell of an unhappy place…let’s not waste our time here,” whined Zâbel. The younger girl cried, “Why mom? If the evil is driven out…this can turn into a paradise…it’s not brickwork, it’s decency of people who live in it.”
“It is a paradise…it is big devils like you who make it a hell,” howled Nâtaline.
“Hey you…look, we don’t want a spat with you…we know all about you…how can you be different from your goddam…,” cried Zâbel.
“My father always adored my mother, not you…that says it all,” bawled Nâtaline. “It was his cardinal sin…begetting two fat devils in the bargain.”
Both girls reached Nâtaline in one spring, punched, and kicked her repeatedly. Nâtaline’s alacrity enabled her to give it back in kind, and as many. All three of them grappled for a while and, all at once, untangling themselves, the girls retreated a bit. Reckoning that they were chickening out, as Nâtaline eased a bit, all three of them began throwing effects at her. Wielding a matching technique, in a flash, Nâtaline heaved a wooden chair injuring Zâbel; not only Zâbel’s head, even Salvador’s theory that speed and obesity were incongruent was shattered forever. Zâbel bled badly and began crying her pain in raucous decibels. The terrified girls rammed Nâtaline onto the floor and began pounding with legs with ton-force. Going by Nâtaline’s fiery cries, it was obvious that the effects of standard gravity remained unaltered even on third floor of a building perched on a hill. Suddenly it occurred to Salvador that they were indeed more masculine than many men and, in the melee, he escaped in one bolt.
Six months later, Salvador bumped into the younger girl sipping energy drink outside a pet-salon in Caculo Mall while her Pomeranian, Gili, was groomed. They chatted until the pooch emerged in shipshape and Bristol fashion. Salvador was successful in keeping the topic of their property issues at bay. They walked to parking. She offered to drop him at his place but, on the way, was effective in coaxing him to her home. He could see it in her eyes, in her speech and in her abnormal graciousness; undoubtedly, she had not toyed with a man in a long while—few months of celibacy shrank their allergy to tolerable limits.
Steering through winding alleyways, she pulled-up at the most dreaded place on earth – Nâtaline’s mansion. Salvador imagined being pummelled in their traditional manner. Right from the porch he could hear boisterous laughter and shrieks of repartee. The clatter was so intense that Salvador was terrified to enter. Letting Gili, the girl snapped him inside and, to his amazement, he saw three women rolling over each other. Even as three bodies spun as one bulk, he could spot Nâtaline, Zâbel and her daughter frolicking. Ignoring him, the younger girl leapt into the rolling body of bodies making it larger and merrier. A great mass gyrated around the hall resembling a humpback whale whirling on floor having a whale of a time. Their revelry spanned out for quite a while and they were unconcerned with Salvador’s presence. In the bargain, in the jollity, he could gather that Zâbel and Nâtaline’s deceased mother were step-sisters and, at one point of time, in concubinage with Anton. That was the moment Salvador fully grasped the sweep of their pedigreed aversion. Agony or ecstasy, their realm was perfect without men for, in a perfect manifestation of geneticism, the allergy ran in the family with such vengeance that their unstoppable gaiety, he thought, was a perfect moment for him to slip out, without a scratch, again. He did; for now.
Ram Govardhan’s first novel, Rough with the Smooth, was longlisted for the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize, The Economist-Crossword 2011 Award and published by Leadstart Publishing, Mumbai. His short stories have appeared in Cha, Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore, Muse India, Cerebration and several other Asian and African literary journals. He works, lives in Chennai, India.
