Mistress by Anita Nair Read Free Book Online Page A

better this way. For me to imagine my life, and for the words to capture the flow as I speak.
    I open my betel-nut box. I have had this box for god knows how long. I choose two tender, green betel leaves, smear a little paste of lime and wedge the whole into my mouth. Then I pare a few shavings of areca nut with a pocket knife. The fresh areca nut floods my mouth with a juice that settles the sting of the betel leaves. I add a small piece of tobacco.
    I push the betel-nut box towards Chris and gesture for him to help himself. He doesn’t.
    The betel leaves and areca nut wrap me in a fug of comfort.
    I am ready to talk now, I think. I rinse my mouth and drink some water.
    Chris presses a button on the tape recorder. Radha leans back in her chair. Somewhere the flapping wings of a pond heron slash the air.
    ‘In the beginning was an ocean,’ I say.
    Chris raises his eyebrows. ‘An ocean?’
    I smile. I know what he is thinking. That perhaps I am referring to Noah’s Ark, or maybe Vasco da Gama. But he is too polite to say more, or maybe he is scared that if he offends me I’ll clam up. So he swallows his trepidation.
    ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘An ocean.’

1937 The Prayer of Humble Access
    This wasn’t how he was meant to die: the water swirling above his head, cascading into his ears and nose, filling his mouth and rushing to his lungs, stilling forever his flailing arms and legs. Salt in his eyes,
salt lining the back of his throat, salt poisoning his blood. He rose to the surface one more time and knew that if he were to allow it, he would be pickled in brine.
    Then, from the recesses of his childhood years, from those countless hours spent thrashing his arms and legs in the river, from the humiliation of knowing that he alone hadn’t learnt to master the water while everyone else had, he sought one memory that would allow him to live, to escape the sea and its salt.
    It came then, swimming into his being with the frantic swish of a tadpole’s tail. That one lesson that was to be his mantra for life: Don’t fight it. Close your mouth. Hold your breath. Let your body be.
    Slowly he felt his body lighten. The waters loosened their hold and he knew as his hands tightened on a piece of wood that floated into his grasp that it wasn’t his time yet.
     
    When he opened his eyes, the face that hovered above his head beamed. ‘Praise be the lord!’
    Sethu wondered where he was, but his tongue wouldn’t form the words to ask. The nurse, a kindly creature with scraped back hair, glasses and a complexion that resembled the bottom of his mother’s cooking pots held his wrist, noting his pulse. Providing that first human contact that rushed tears to his eyes.
    ‘I’m Sister Hope. We’ve been waiting for you to wake up. The fishermen thought you were dead when they saw the gash on your head. Then one of them wasn’t so sure. So they thought of Doctor.’
    He heard the note of awe in her voice for the doctor. But mostly it was her accent that made him want to hug her. What was this place where Tamil had the ring of Malayalam? The roundness, the gathering and pouting of vowels, the heaping of consonants as if they were dried teak leaves …He couldn’t be too far from home.
    The nurse tucked the sheet around him. ‘The fishermen told Doctor that if anyone could help, it was him …and they were right. Now you lie here quietly and I’ll fetch Him.’
    Him. Doctor Aiyah. God incarnate to the villagers. Miracle worker of Nazareth. Father figure. Sethu was to discover that Dr Samuel Sagayaraj would be all this for him as well. But first, Dr Samuel was to play priest at his christening.
    ‘How are you?’ the doctor asked.

    Sethu looked at the man by his bedside. So this was his saviour. This man with a square head and even features. His skin was smooth and moustache trimmed. His eyebrows were the only unruly vagrants in the otherwise well-groomed face—furry, thick caterpillars locking horns at the bridge of his nose. The