Something Barely Remembered. Susan Visvanathan
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For Esther and Mariam, remembering Paul
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My mother gave birth to me in a small room at the back of the house. The midwife was an old woman with a moustache, her hands gnarled but steady. She cut the cord with which mother and I had been linked with a flat heavy iron knife. It had no handle, and I would often look at it with dread, as it hung on the wall by two small holes inserted into nails. I had seen it cut off the heads of chickens when guests came, or at Christmas – a nonchalance of chopping which was repeated on raw mangoes, plantains, jackfruit. I had seen it, as a boy, being dipped into boiling water and taken in to my mother and her second son, so that the midwife could sever them too. Above the knife hung the fishing rods, and the long bamboo poles which mother used to knock down tamarind pods, guavas for us, and the raw mangoes she used in cooking.
I was the first son, and they named me after my paternal grandfather Lukose. My mother often told me that when I was born she was afraid, because she thought she had given birth to Grandfather – my eyes were clear and open, brown and unglazed. She said that I looked at her at the very moment of my birth and that there was a perfect understanding of her. I think it was her preoccupation with Grandfather and my resemblance to him that always created an intangible distance between us. She was always affectionate, but almost deferential, and she never held me close to her as she did my younger brother Behnan. It was not surprising then that when I took on ordainment and became a priest as my grandfather and his father, and his father before him had been, she began to call me Achen, Father – and it seemed the most natural thing that I should once more be severed, not by the spatulate kitchen knife, but by an equally blunt act of deference by mother.
I grew up by the River Pamba. It was broad and still, and its face was different from morning to evening. Kingfishers flew low across, their wings taking on the colours of sky, light and water. Across, on the other side were the green fields of paddy. And at the edge of the river were the swaying reed-like silhouettes of sugar cane which reflected themselves dark and ominous in the water. On our side of the river there were some large rocks, sand, and that beautiful wild plant which we call thotta vadi – touch-and-it-will-wilt. I spent many hot and lazy afternoons on the banks watching the kingfishers and waiting for mother to call.
I don’t know when it was that I received the calling. Perhaps it was that day when I felt the sun burn into my blood, and yet my head was filled with a cold and shattering sense of power. I shivered as I lay on the banks and felt that God was grey and cold and violent.
When I finally rose and went inside the house I saw the darkness and comfort no longer as shelter but somehow alien. I felt that the sun was forever in my blood, I was flooded with light, and yet there was the dreadful coldness, as if I would never again belong to the world of the living.
Mother said, ‘You had better eat some food. Don’t lie in the sun all afternoon. You should rest inside the house.’
We ate our meal in silence. Father never spoke, and while he was gentle with Mother, and always affectionate, he went about his duties as if language had never been made. I think it was because he managed alone the fields, the commerce, the workers. We were too young, and to Mother he never spoke about anything. He ate the food she cooked, and always seemed to delight in it, he said his prayers when all of us gathered in the evenings in a gentle monotone. I think he felt that Grandfather was still there. (I remember waking up one night and seeing Father staring at us as we slept on the mats. In the moonlight his face seemed strange, as if he were trying to possess us, understand us – what he did not dare do when we were awake. When he saw me awake, he turned his head.)
That evening, when we had eaten, Father gave me the Bible to read and what I found was a verse which said, I remember, ‘Thou hast known me from my mother’s womb.’ Perhaps that was when I knew I would serve God and His house. There was a church that was my right to serve, where Grandfather had served. I would go in apprentice to my father’s brother who now celebrated the Holy Eucharist there. He was an old man, venerated by all. I was nine years old. I told no one that day, though in some strange way my father understood that I would not after all engage in agriculture. He said it that very day, ‘I wanted to begin teaching you the accounts. I think Behnan can do that when he grows. Learn the psalms well.’
So I was left alone to dream by the side of the river, only appearing at evening to recite a psalm, as the family and servants knelt on the yellow, fraying mats.
When I went to study with Father’s brother, Malpan Andreyos, I was thirteen years old. Mother made a white cloak-like dress for me – not quite like a priest’s kuppayam or cope but similar enough. She stitched a small round cap of some bright black velvet. It felt warm and snug on my head, it was already a second skin. It was animal-like on my head and when I took it off at night I felt bare and uncomfortable. Mother did not cry, because she said that she had known of this moment from the time of my birth. Father held my hand for a moment – that unaccustomed gesture of affection shook me. His hands were cold,