Secrets: a Novel, page 16
She took that in with a good deal of self-restraint. Instead of heading in the direction of where he slept, she paced back and forth. Maybe she was considering her next move. For all I knew, she might have been asking herself whether I was hiding something from her. After all, she had the accursed habit of behaving unceremoniously. I was worried she might rub me the wrong way today, make me lose my temper with her, compel me to do something regrettable. We all knew her to be irrational when it came to her son or her husband, of whom she was protective.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” I asked.
I knew that my going into the kitchen to make tea or coffee for her would not meet with her approval. She was of the generation of women who associated these activities with a humbling of one’s status. And as such, she could not bear the thought of me, her father-in-law, dirtying my hands, serving her. She had had a few tongues lashing her, and a lot more forefingers wagging at her, all because Yaqut attended to the house chores. It was he who took care of Kalaman right from when she weaned him. Did she feel as if others might accuse her of high-handedness if I too served her tea from my kitchen, because my housekeeper hadn’t reported for work?
“Where is Zariba?” she said.
“I can cope with the making of tea or coffee,” I said.
“These can wait,” she suggested.
I had never known her to be overtly rude to me. She listened willingly to whatever I had to say, seldom interrupting me. I knew how difficult this must have been for her. She called on all her energies of self-persuasion for the two of us to get on. As part of her ploy to maintain her self-control, she wrapped herself with layers of static-charged tension. I felt the tremors of the tension, and advisedly kept a buffer distance between us.
In my anxiety to welcome her, I had forgotten to put on a more decent robe. Now I saw I had on only a flimsy nightshirt, the very one I had slept in. I stood my ground, though, thinking that I could not be expected to be woken up at an ungodly hour and to be demurely dressed, like a new bride forever prepared to be seen by her groom. In my cupped palm I strategically gathered a fistful of the material. This way I covered as much of my front as Adam’s representational fig leaf might have done.
“You don’t mind if we let Kalaman be?” I said.
I was in for a pleasanter surprise. “We’ll let him be, for I would like the two of us to have a word or two before he awakes,” she said. “There are a number of things that we need to sort out, you and I.”
“See you shortly, then.”
As well as clearing the mist in my brain, the hot shower assisted in opening the air passages of my sinuses. Morning showers, or, better still, morning dips in the river are as essential to me as ritual ones in the Ganges are to a sadhu. Mine was long and elaborate in every way. But I would rather I spared you some of the details of what I did in the shower, as they have no direct bearing on the tale unfolding.
I remembered how we first met, Damac and I. Yaqut had brought her along after the two of them had contracted a secret wedlock. It wasn’t my place to question why they opted for a secret marriage, a form of matrimonial contract usually resorted to by couples likely to face opposition from one quarter or another. I suspected there was something not right with theirs being a secret wedding, but I didn’t ask for an explanation. My son Yaqut silent, Damac held forth. She informed me they were married, but not why. Was she pregnant with the child of a man to whom she was betrothed?
A week later, she came to see me alone. She spoke and spoke. Because she was fretful, I didn’t learn much. She inundated me with a flood of words. When I surfaced for breath, my hands went up in the gesture of a bad swimmer. I felt we wouldn’t get down to the secrets agitating her mind in a single session. We had all the time in the world to know each other, I thought. And I welcomed her into the bosom of the family. I couldn’t comprehend what troubled her. Was she fearful that some harm might come her fetus’s way?
I suspected that Damac and Yaqut never presented themselves before a sheik. I suspected that the two of them never spoke the vow of the nikaax matrimony in the presence of a sheik, that they were never declared man and wife. The years have since vindicated my suspicions. I have often envied them their physical closeness, a man and a woman loving and trusting each other almost to the exclusion of all others. Don’t ask how I could tell they were not husband and wife, only lovers. Drying myself with a towel, I wondered if she were a victim of blackmail. Sholoongo’s?
Damac, my daughter-in-law, was in the bead business in those days. She dealt in amber, and its substitute, copal. She had a stall on a sidewalk in the center of Mogadiscio’s Raqay district. To attract passersby, she shouted the praises of the articles she had on sale. When this failed, she made a public show of her copal, rubbing several beads together, generating electricity. A bit of smoke issuing forth attracted crowds. She sold seed necklaces on the side, ivory bracelets and similar knickknacks too. She had a large non-Somali clientele who bought her wares, commissioning her to obtain all manner of objets d’art for them.
On the afternoon of the day I asked her to come and see me alone, we sat on the porch, talking. During a pause in our conversation, we spotted a most handsome baby snake of the nonvenomous kind. This handsome affair lay in the grass of the untrimmed lawn as if taking the sun, a snake no thicker than a flexible cable. It was maybe a quarter of a meter in length. The snake was of the type Somali camel herdsmen feed on milk, and treat with pompous affection as one does a pet. I had barely thought of something humorous to allay her phobia (I, who truly fear snakes more than she) when she jumped over the banister, went round to where this gorgeous creature was performing a snake’s idea of a somersault: and may the poor snake’s soul be saved! Quick with her kick, she stepped on both ends of the unsuspecting length of rope. Result: knots of dead tissue.
My tongue was devoid of life for a while. Then I asked her, “But why?” I gave contradictory signals. I was raging inside with anger, but had got up in the manner of a football spectator applauding an extraordinary feat accomplished.
The signals confused her. Her lips parted, like friends who have had a nasty quarrel. She said, “I am pregnant,” as if this explained everything. It didn’t. For me.
I looked from the dead snake to Damac. What she did made no sense. What manner of threat did the nonvenomous reptile present to the embryo in her? Death deforms. Death brings sadness to one’s eyes. The snake’s lifelessness affected me so. No longer alive, it was no longer good-looking, its corpse lying in the clumsy throes of a residual struggle. I thought that it would remain forever detained in a half-expressed motion, in a futile attempt to escape Damac’s kick. Or was it meaning to do something in self-defense?
“How many months pregnant are you?”
“Three.”
“Does Yaqut know?”
“Of course,” she said.
I wondered if I had offended her honor by asking if Yaqut knew. During the brief pause, I recalled the speed with which she karate-kicked the snake to death. Pregnant women, I reminded myself as if wanting to exonerate her of blame, had schizophrenic eyes via whose topsy-turvydom they saw the world. Women in her state discerned the inadequacies of their own reasoning. There was no call for worry, no need to search for other explanations.
I congratulated her on her pregnancy.
Because her eyes were cast into a bronzy stillness which I found suspect, I remained unspeaking. The expression on her face darkened. Damac spoke in non sequiturs. She said, “Isn’t there a proverb with the gist that the parent is the last person to know about the offspring’s secret lives?”
I requested that she please explain herself.
“Because you may not know,” she said, “although you are his father, that Yaqut, even if he deals in death by carving headstones, loves life.” I waited. She went on, “I will love my child, my handsome baby boy.”
My thoughts were busy with a possible interpretation. She was the one who wanted the child, who was, to her, “my child” and “my handsome baby boy.” Did the two of them enter into the secret wedding contract before or after discovering that she was with child? Be it as it may, the news delighted me. Until then none of my other children had presented me with a grandchild. I said, “I don’t want to be rude,” and then trailed off.
“You’ll have to be, sooner or later,” she said, “considering that honeymoons with one’s in-laws do not last forever. Let us clear the air. Let us get this or any other family-related business out of the way quickly. Ask. If I don’t wish to reply to your rude question, I shall say so. Nobody makes me do what I do not voluntarily want to do.”
I liked her. We were much of a muchness, she and I. Only she was gutsier, because younger, with a shorter past to fall back on. That she was a woman was a bonus. I love strong-headed women, they are more challenging. This decided me not to ask if she and Yaqut were man and wife. Nor did I put any irreverent queries to her, or inquire into her family background. I liked her. I found her simpatica. Nothing else mattered. I accepted who she became right in front of me. She was a woman constructed, as if to order, in a collage of squares, triangles, and zodiacal signs. These signs were, in turn, supported by lines crossing a ram’s horns at the base, with a clover at the summit. A few words brought forth a Damac I welcomed, more of real flesh and bone and guts than many an in-law I’ve had to meet over the years.
“Have you been pregnant before?” I asked.
Her eyes detached themselves from the rest of her body. They roamed far and wide, returning after much grazing in the distant pasture of her fertile memory. She spoke in hyperbole, making a statement which turned out to be prophetic: “One pregnancy is enough.”
Nearly thirty-four years later, and after my hot, hot shower, here she was in the living room by herself. She had woken up my housekeeper, who made her tea in the utilitarian kitchen. Young-looking as ever, for Damac one child was more than enough. But now she was worrying her lips sore. I bet she wasn’t aware of that. I doubt if she remembered everything that passed between us on the day she stepped on the head of another day: to save the embryo of her future, Kalaman. If I were the boasting type I might have said that I could hear her thoughts, the humming quality of a honeybee going about its business while producing the sweet stuff. There was a lick of fondness in the way Damac and I conversed with each other.
But my housekeeper hovered in the kitchen door. I hate people standing in my blind spot. I get nervous. Conveniently I recalled that in Kalaman’s and my paranoiac search for privacy the night before, I had locked Hanu up in one of the rooms. Now I instructed her to let him out, and suggested that she take him into the sparsely treed woods for a walk. When Damac and I were alone, I said, “Now, my dear!”
Damac once confided to someone we both know well that I could produce a squawk out of an obstinate bird just by staring at it so! Yet I was of the opinion that my demeanor to her was always faultlessly deferential. We’ve been through testing times, she and I. We have always deferred to each other’s temperament. I knew Damac could be the acme of self-control, the envy of many.
I asked, “How many months after Kalaman’s birth did that riffraff of a man, I forget his name now, accuse Yaqut of stealing a pair of shoes from the mosque?”
The silence was total. It was as if we were on the periphery of a hurricane. I worried when the hurricane might break upon us, blind as a bull to which a matador has shown a red cloth.
“Why do you ask?” she said.
“What was his name?”
“I don’t wish to remember it,” she stammered.
“If you are not telling his name,” I said, wondering if I could render the hurricane inert, or change its course so as to make its mad eyes focus elsewhere, “then kindly remind me when the shameful accusation occurred!”
“I can’t see what good will come out of this,” she said. “Why, after an eternity, are you pulling him out of his lair, the beast?”
I said, “The date, please!”
The hurricane was active now. It had the name “Damac” written all over it. I knew it wasn’t long before it would erupt with the abruptness of an earthquake, as devastating as Chernobyl’s fallout. I waited.
But she changed the subject. “Are you trying to cause as much harm to me as you can?” she said furiously. “How dare you put up Sholoongo in Kalaman’s room, here in your house, as your welcome guest?” She was most aggressive. Not flinching, I looked her straight in her storm-charged eyes. She went on, “And having humiliated me this way, how dare you ask me to remember one of the most shameful episodes in my life, of Yaqut unfairly accused of stealing a pair of shoes belonging to a riffraff, when he didn’t?”
She was on a stallion of an aristocratic pedigree, all right. But she would have to dismount, the sooner the better, because I was decided no amount of addressing me as though I were a mule would distract me from uncovering the truth.
“You are right to challenge my fairness of judgment,” I said. “You know I wouldn’t compromise the loving sentiments for you and Yaqut as a family, or take them lightly. From my conversation two nights ago with Sholoongo, my impression was that she meant no harm, to you individually or as a family. If she harbored hateful sentiments, would she want to bear Kalaman’s baby?”
“The bitch,” she cursed, “the witch.”
I wouldn’t be deflected. “As for that riffraff of a man,” I said, “I recall only the first half of his hyphenated nickname, an alias given on account of an escharous hand, with fingers seared into a singularly atrocious-looking stump having a pointed end. The man’s hand resembled a scorpion’s tail.”
“Have mercy!” Damac appealed.
“It puzzles me so,” I went on. “Why would bringing up this man’s heinous name make you implode and then explode as if you were an Etna?”
“Some volcanoes erupt periodically, every so many years,” she said. Her features were touched with tearful sadness. “I do it every thirty-odd years.”
“You came close to losing your patience with me even in those days,” I reminded her, “when I tried to get to the bottom of the ugly incident about the theft of a pair of shoes, a penny apiece. What’s the true story? Because I never got to hear it.”
She was in control again. “You’ll have to ask Yaqut.”
“Do I also have to talk to Yaqut about why you had Sholoongo’s fingerprints taken?” I asked, now genuinely miffed. “What perfidies had the young girl committed for her fingerprints to be taken? What did she dispossess you of?”
Her whole body shaking, her teacup chattered on its saucer, for a good while teetering on the verge of falling off. She sat down, her hand trembling. She shivered, as though she were suffering from a chill or a fever.
She fought back. “What dishonors have I brought to the family, or to your person? Why must you dig up a dead matter? Why pay an untimely visit to a phase of my life of which I am ashamed?”
“I haven’t accused you of anything. I want information.”
“Yes. You are accusing me of something. Your tone does.”
“What are you hiding?”
“What do you think?”
I changed tactics. “Would you rather Kalaman went insane?”
There were more brown deposits in her eyes than I had ever remarked, deposits the color of rust. Eyes of aged metal, her eyes, with an iron look. I didn’t like what I caught sight of. I outstared her. Eventually her eyes blinked. I said, “Would you like to save Kalaman’s life?”
I scented the odor of her unexpressed anger, starchily stiff, musty, the white stains mapping the boundaries of her ancient, now-dried sweat. Could it be that even though she was in an exquisite getup, my daughter-in-law had forgotten to shower before putting on her clothes? Were these indications of discord, signals of self-neglect?
I said, “We all love you. You’ve been a daughter-in-law to me. You and I have been closer to each other than I’ve been to some of my own children. But you and I disagree about Sholoongo, whom I do not believe to be a witch, or a bitch. What is it that she’s done to earn your wrath? What are you hiding?”
“I don’t like this conversation,” she said and got up.
I wouldn’t be bullied into silence. “It won’t be long before we are done with this conversation. All the same, I want you to answer my question: what are you hiding?”
She looked at me with the put-upon aspect of a helpless woman in trouble up to her wide hips.
I said, “Have you distrusted Sholoongo ever since the day she took Kalaman into her feminine trust?”
She sat down, and held her head between her hands, sobbing.
“Is it true,” I said, “that Arbaco, your good friend for many years, helped to find a midwife who got rid of an embarrassment, that is to say, a pregnancy?”
A strong smell penetrated my awareness. The odor coming in upon me pinched my lower lip, parching it. My tongue wet the lip which had fallen victim to this localized heat wave. She said, “Why are you talking about all this?”
“The truth, Damac,” I said.
She lost herself in the train of a thought, and then finally emerged, looking sadder, a passenger of a wagon-lit who hadn’t slept a wink the whole of the previous night. She said, “Did she tell it to you?”
For a moment I wasn’t sure if she was referring to Sholoongo or to Arbaco. I said, “Does it matter how I’ve learnt of it? All pedestrian assumptions aside —”
She looked mean, vengeful. She said, “I am in possession of a couple of shocking facts too, I’ll have you know. And if we are in the mood of letting the ugly secrets out, then let me remind you that I know about you and Sholoongo.”
“Tell me,” I said.
“The sun hasn’t risen,” she said. “The morning mist hangs over the river. An old man is enjoying his dip in the water when, quiet as an unrevealed secret, a young girl dives in and grabs the man in the groin. She takes him in her mouth. Right or wrong?”
