Читать книгу Something Barely Remembered - Susan Visvanathan - Страница 5

Lukose’s church

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, dry, without life almost and we were both embarrassed by my tears which fell on his thin fingers. Behnan was nowhere to be seen, though we heard his voice distantly from the coconut groves. I looked towards the river, as I departed with my maternal uncle. It was a cloudy day, the river looked black and the sugar-cane shivered against the water. The house too closed itself to me, the wooden latticework dropping from the roof like thin creepers were inward looking; the old Persian Cross reflected candlelight bleakly from the door – it was a carving of the cross through which I as a child loved to put my fingers, till one day they got stuck and Mother beat me, while Behnan laughed and stood on his head with delight. The shadows of the mango tree had fallen on the wall, the light was both golden and dull, a storm was on its way.

My mother’s brother held my hand, and accompanied me to Malpan’s house. This uncle was a tall man, and I found it difficult to walk, chained by his affection. Yet in him I saw both tenderness and authority and I loved him.

‘Eat well. Andreyos forgets sometimes when he is at his books.’

‘Will you come to see me often?’

‘Lukose, you know my work does not allow me much time. I will come after Lent.’

‘Will you bring me mangoes from your field?’

‘Is that all you want?’

‘Bring me a cat too, and mulberries.’

When we reached the Malpan’s house it was locked. I looked in through the barred window – the room was dark, musty, there was a table with a clean white cloth on it. After calling ‘Andreyos Accha!’ several times, my mother’s brother Mathappi went to the cottage near the gate. A woman came out, and looked at us for a minute before she went in again. While we waited, a man with a grizzled head and a thin bent body emerged.

‘Who is it?’

‘I have come with Lukose Achen’s grandson.’

‘So this is Andreyos Achen’s brother’s son. How he has grown! Well, Achen is not here. You know me – I look after the graves. You can sit in the church if you like, it is open. Andreyos Achen has gone to a marriage in the next village. He will be back before night.’

Mathappi Achen, as I called him, held my hand and the small bundle of clothes my mother had given me, and we went into the church. The church had been built by my grandfather in 1880; the date was written under the cross above the door. It said 1055. The light had changed again. We sat in the back, on a reed mat, having left our shoes outside. I looked at the altar where I would learn to serve, and felt a deep sense of dread. What mysteries were hidden here? I felt that I would die. The Malpan was a stranger to me – an ascetic, learned old man, saintly almost.

As Mathappi Achen and I sat there the setting sun entered through the western door. The light was everywhere. I could see nothing for the white light. I tried to rise but I was helpless. I prostrated myself forty times, till my knuckles were dark with dust. I knew at the end of it that the lamp hanging from the rafters was lit and that I would one day celebrate the sacrifice, here, in this small lime-washed church.

Mathappi Achen looked at me after my prayers were over and said, ‘I have a long journey over the water. My boatman will be impatient. Stay here – you are safe. Andreyos Achen knows you are to join him. I will go now.’

He kissed my brow, and held me by my shoulders. I said nothing.

When Andreyos Achen came back he looked tired and frail. He saw me watching the shadows thrown by the swinging, flickering lamp, touched my shoulder to guide me, saying nothing. I think he too felt that the priestly line would continue, it was necessary at least for Grandfather’s sake, but his face was stern, a sense of horror at the closeness he would have to enter into with a young boy.

He showed me to my room in silence. It was very small, having but one window and a narrow bed.

‘We will speak tomorrow.’

‘I am happy to be with you, Father.’

‘We will see. Have you brought your prayer books?’

‘I know them by heart.’

‘I will hear tomorrow.’

My bed was hard and narrow, but I fell asleep. I woke to the chiming of bells. It was barely dawn. I ran to the river and washed, listening to the birds as they called. When I went inside the small dark house of my uncle the priest, I found there was no food. I longed for the bitter black coffee, tinged with the flavour of wood smoke that my mother made for us. For a moment I thought, ‘The old priest hasn’t spoken to me, I can still go back.’ I saw the little bridge over the Pamba that separated the two hamlets, saw myself running over it, never to return to the church built in 1055 of the Malayalam era. I would marry, Father would build a house for me, I would walk in the rice fields and the slopes of tapioca and pepper that were mine.

Then I smelt the frankincense. It was bitter and fragrant and came to me from the windows of the church. I heard the priest call out ‘Kyrie Eleison’, Lord have mercy, and I went to join him. He was dressed in robes of gold, his feet shod in red velvet shoes. The church was empty as I kissed the steps and the pillars of the altar. He blessed me with his handcross, and I became like him, a servant, eager to see God, hardly ever succeeding in my desire, yet every day crying out to the people so that by standing at attention they would understand his revelation. At the moment, neither church nor priest, nor the world even, had significance and that was the truth.