“Tell me who it is and we can sort it out,” I said once more, but she refused. I asked her what I lacked that made her go elsewhere.
“Lack?” she said. “But you haven’t failed me. You are everything I want.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said. “It’s my fault. If it isn’t,” I went on, “tell me what qualities this other man has. The qualities he has that make you desire him.”
She said, “What makes you think I desire him?”
“Can’t you put me out of my misery?”
“Okay,” she said. “I will. Are you ready, sweetie? Sit down and listen.”
She told me the truth.
For days after, I walked around with this knowledge in my mind, trying to come to terms with it; because after she spoke, I thought I would-genuinely, and without possibility of return-go insane.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
This is what she told me.
The summer break was approaching. We had been going out for eight months. The moment we saw the sun, we resumed our habit of lying on the blanket in her garden with our books, the radio, wine, cigarettes. I’d been rubbing and caressing her feet and ankles, and wondered if she was ready for love.
But I said, “A few weeks ago I visited the factory.”
“You did?”
I explained that I had wanted to see the picket lines, the students, the whole hurly-burly. I said I had seen her going into the factory, half-concealed in the back of the car.
“It’s no secret,” she said, touching my face tenderly. “You never asked me about it.” She started to dress, or at least to cover herself up, as though she wasn’t wearing the appropriate clothes for what she wanted to say. “For ages now you’ve been interrogating me with these questions about my lovers, as you call them.”
“Interrogating you? What about the truth cure? You have never once denied my suspicions.”
She said, “I can’t make you stop asking. You have to know everything and I like that about you. So, I will tell you, and it will shut you up, oh yes.”
“It’s Valentin, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Wolf?”
“He is more likely.”
“Why?”
“He is insistent, and less concerned about deceiving you.”
“He came on to you?”
“They’re your friends, and I wouldn’t do that. Are you offering me to him?”
“No!”
“So how can you think such a thing about me?”
I was clutching my head. “How can I know what to think unless you help me? My mind is going everywhere! Somehow the truth anchors us, I know that! Is there someone you love more than me? Am I only second best?”
“Come, rest here, in my arms. Listen carefully. I won’t be able to say this again. The words are too heavy.” She said, “Sometimes, after midnight, my father comes into my room and makes love to me.”
“He does?”
“Yes. He does, Jamal.”
I must have been nodding at her. I was empty, looking into her eyes. It occurred to me that I should know more. “How long has this been happening?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is it before we met and fell in love, or after?”
Her eyes dropped. “Before.”
“It was happening when we met?”
“It had just started.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“How could I? I was falling for you. Surely it would have put you off. Perhaps the news would have got round, and my father would have been arrested. Or his reputation would have been ruined.”
“His reputation?”
“The community means a lot to us here. We can’t go against it without falling out of the circle.”
I said, “Didn’t you think you would have to tell me?”
“I don’t know. What did I tell myself? Nothing. Perhaps I thought it would stop and somehow I would forget the whole thing. I have no experience of these matters. But do you not love me now? Am I filthy and disgusting to you?”
I kissed her on the mouth. “Of course I do love you now. More, even.”
“Yes?” She said, “Jamal, that was why I needed your protection so much, why I needed to feel loved. And I did receive that from you. My only darling, you have been good to me.”
“And you to me. You are my life. I want to marry you.”
“You do?” Her mouth twisted. “Me too. But this isn’t the right time for such talk.”
I said, “How did all this start with your dad?”
“After my mother had gone to India, Dad came into my room one night and got into my bed. He kissed me, sexually, you know, with his tongue, and he rubbed himself against my stomach until he came off. Then he went away. He was in a sort of trance, like one of those Shakespeare ghosts, staring eyes, stiff movements, like someone hypnotised or sleepwalking…
“The next night I was terrified of him doing it again, so I stayed awake, with all the lights on and music playing-”
“What happened?”
“He did return. He opened my door. The music was roaring, all the lights were blazing like mad! Oh, Jamal, you should have seen me in two pairs of pants, two pairs of trousers, a jumper, a coat. I was sweating and I must have looked strange. I even had a damn hat on, I don’t know why. He took one look at me and went off. I got into bed with some relief, though I didn’t sleep at all.
“He didn’t come back for a few days. I thought I’d scared him off. Until it happened again.” She said it was still happening. “If I wear a ton of clothes, he takes them off. That makes the whole thing go on longer. All I do is hold a tee-shirt over my face, so I don’t have to see or smell him.”
“Ajita, why don’t you lock your door?”
“There’s no lock.”
“It’s no trouble to get one fitted. Wolf and I would do it, today.”
“That’s kind, but I can’t do it,” she said. “Lock out my own father? He’d kill himself.”
“What could be better?”
She screamed, “No!”
“Do you have good reason to think he will do that?”
“He’s threatened it before. He said that, if things collapsed at the factory, he would have to end it. He couldn’t start his life again. If he failed his family, he couldn’t face the shame.”
“Ajita, that is blackmail.”
“I have to look after him.”
“Only as a daughter. You’re not his wife, for Christ’s sake. He’s a fascist and a bully.”
“You don’t know him.”
“Every day he rapes you.”
“There’s no force. Now please shut up. I can’t bear this.”
To her dismay, I gathered my things and went away. I needed to take it all in. This wasn’t something I could talk to Mum about; she’d panic. The only person who might have the experience to understand was Miriam. But her moods were unreliable, depending on what she was taking.
The next day Ajita brought up the subject herself, saying, “You see, I do listen to you.” She couldn’t lock her bedroom door, but she’d put a wedge under it. “I heard him,” she said. “I don’t sleep much now. You say I look exhausted, but going to bed is a horror. Last night I heard his slippers outside as I always do. They sort of slap, you see, and you always know where he is going in the house. Then he was banging on the door.
“The harder he pushed, the more the wedge stuck. It went on for a long time, this pushing and shoving. Then it stopped. Later I heard snoring. He was asleep in the hall. I went out and covered him up. He was shivering. He could have died out there-”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“He wants my warmth.”
“That’s why he has a wife.”
“She doesn’t want him. She is even thinking that he is a big fool.”
I asked, “Your father never mentions what happens at night?”