ராணி மஹால்

Translated from the original Tamil short story rāṇi mahāl (ராணி மஹால்) by Shobasakthi. The original story is available at his website. If you have any questions or feedback, please contact ez.iniyavan@gmail.com.

It was five in the morning. Although spring had already arrived, the damp air from the Seine was cold. Aṉṉarāṇi was walking along the footpath that hugged the riverbank. For the last thirty-eight years, she had walked this path every morning without exception. Aṉṉarāṇi took the small, paved road at the end of the footpath, opened the tall front gate, and walked past the small meadow. Decorative lights on the meadow shone brightly. Rāṇi Mahāl stood majestically in front of her.

This little commune called Mantes-la-Jolie has a storied history. The French King Philip II died here. Aṉṉarāṇi’s husband Mariyanāyagam had bought this two-level six-roomed house a long time ago. He had removed the stone plaque at the entrance bearing the name ‘Bella Villa’ and replaced it with a new one bearing the name of his wife, ‘Rāṇi Mahāl.’ Aṉṉarāṇi was thirty-three then, now seventy one. Mariyanāyagam was four years older than her.

The entrance to Rāṇi Mahāl had four tall decorative steps. Only after she climbed the steps and approached the front door did Aṉṉarāṇi remember that she did not have the house key with her. She never had the house key. Her husband always carried it, which was now inside the pocket of his overcoat. Exhausted, Aṉṉarāṇi squatted down on the front step. After a minute of respite, she got up and left in search of the key.

Now she walked a little faster along the riverside footpath. The festive lights strung along the riverbank blended with the light of dawn setting up a dazzling light show on the waters of the Seine. The woods start where the footpath ends. Walking trails snaked through the protected woods. People usually came here after six for their morning walks. But Mariyanāyagam came here every day at half past four in the morning for his pre-dawn walk.

Aṉṉarāṇi entered the woods and walked forward along the trail. The first rays of the sun peeped through the dense foliage. She walked towards the wooden bench where Mariyanāyagam always paused for a rest break half-way through his walk. His lifeless body lay on the trail before the bench.

Blood had congealed on Mariyanāyagam’s face, head, and hands. His eyeglasses lay on the ground, broken right through the middle into two pieces. The middle of his forehead had been cracked open, and something that looked like yellow egg yolk had been oozing out disgustingly. Aṉṉarāṇi shut her eyes as soon as she saw this. Then she turned her head upwards towards the sun’s rays and knelt down beside her husband. She felt around gently in the red overcoat he was wearing. As soon as her fingers felt the bunch of keys stuffed into one of its pockets, she picked up the key bunch and started walk back towards Rāṇi Mahāl.

Now she found it difficult to climb the four steps. She climbed the stairs slowly, pausing on each step. The bunch of keys in her hand had ten or fifteen keys. She was confused as to which was the key to the front door. She tried them one by one, slowly. Eventually the sixth or seventh key opened the door.

She entered the house and turned the lights on. She then went into the bathroom, stripped, and washed her hands and feet. She then went into the bedroom, opened the closet, took out a blue sāri and put it on. Mariyanāyagam did not like her wearing sāris. He insisted that she wore European clothes. She knotted her hair into a bun and applied moisturizing cream on her face and arms. She wore her black winter jacket on top of her saree, locked the front door and secured the bunch of keys inside her handbag. She climbed down the stairs onto the street and started walking.

Bus traffic on this street started only after seven in the morning. It was now deserted and quiet. Only the corner bakery was open. As she passed the bakery, she was momentarily confused whether to turn left or right. She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts and concluded that her son’s house is towards the right. She turned right and continued walking.

Aṉṉarāṇi’s son Philip’s house was about a kilometer away, at the center of the village. The path towards his house kept lengthening as she walked. She started to doubt if she could in fact reach her son’s house. The only thing she remembered clearly was that her son’s house was in the green building between the fire station and the McDonald’s.

From time to time, she paused to lean against a wall to catch her breath. Her feet were freezing. She tutted at herself for the folly of venturing out without wearing socks. By the time she identified her son’s house and pressed the buzzer, it was already seven o’clock.

Philip opened the door, still half asleep, and gaped at her. “Mummy, why at this time… you could have called me…”

Aṉṉarāṇi hugged her son, kissed him on both cheeks, and sat down on the large armchair in the living room.

“Mummy… did Papa come with you? He would never let you go out alone …”

Aṉṉarāṇi nodded and looked around, asking, “Where is Rosa, son?”

Philip rubbed his eyes and dawned. “She has night duty,” he said and looked at the wall clock, “she will be here in half an hour.”

“OK, you go back to sleep. I will sit here.”

Philip scratched his head and went back into the bedroom. Although Philip acted sluggishly, he was very sharp. He received accolades at school and university as a top student. Aṉṉarāṇi’s elder son Kennedy was just the opposite. He would not stay put in one place. He did not excel in studies either. Unlike her second son Philip, Kennedy was not born in France. He was born in Sri Lanka and came to France, along with Aṉṉarāṇi, when he was six.

Aṉṉarāṇi leaned back further. She felt very sleepy. But she was determined not to fall asleep. She kept one ear open for the ringtone of Philip’s home phone or mobile phone, and the other ear towards the front door. She closed her eyes gently. Kennedy called out to her, ‘ammā;’ He cried out in grief, “Papa.” Aṉṉarāṇi sank deeper into the armchair.

2

Aṉṉarāṇi was twenty-six when she got married, which was somewhat later than was typical. It was unusual in 1975 for a young woman to remain unmarried until twenty-six. The entire village would join in the effort of finding a match for such a woman.

The deacon at the St. Anthony’s church, Iṉṉāsimuttu and his wife Aruḷammā had two children. Thiyōgu, the older boy, died by drowning in the sea as he was traveling by boat for the Pālaitīvu church festival. Aṉṉarāṇi was three years younger than him.

Aṉṉarāṇi was tall like a coconut palm. She had a full physique to match her height. She was blessed with a sort of lemony complexion. It took forever to comb her thick, curly hair. People said that this village had never before seen such beauty or modesty. For the girls growing up in every household in the village, Aṉṉarāṇi was held up as the exemplar.

Aṉṉarāṇi studied till grade eight in the village school. To study beyond that, one needed to go elsewhere. At that time, the village custom was not to send young girls outside the village alone. Aṉṉarāṇi did not ask to continue her education either. She was not particularly interested in studying. Reading a book gave her a headache. Her interest was in cooking and eating different types of delicious food. She would scour their yard in search of fruit trees like amla, guava, jambu, and mango. She was always chewing on something. If she sat down to eat boiled palmyra sprouts, she would not get up until she had eaten twenty. When the palmyra fruit season began, she would roast and eat a palmyra fruit every day.

Aṉṉarāṇi left the house only on Tuesdays to go to church services on Tuesdays to St. Anthony’s church and Sundays to St. John’s church. She always wore a long skirt that came down to her ankles, and long-sleeved tops. A white veil with a black lace border covered her head, as she tagged behind her parents to church with her head always down.

The days when she used to gossip for hours by the fence with girls her age from neighboring houses had come to an end. All the neighborhood girls were married. They no longer had time to gossip. Even on those rare occasions when she happened to chat with a neighborhood girl across a fence, Aṉṉarāṇi immediately ran away into the house if she spied the girl’s husband come that way.

Iṉṉāsimuttu family were landowners. Their holdings spanned gardens, wells, and fields. They had no shortage of wealth. Nevertheless, a groom for Aṉṉarāṇi was not found until she was twenty-six. Even those rowdy Romeos who habitually run around chasing the young women of the village did not dare hang around in the vicinity of Aṉṉarāṇi’s house. The talk among the village boys was that Aṉṉarāṇi was unapproachable for them Her mother Aruḷammā worried that it was Aṉṉarāṇi’s height that kept her from finding a match. “Aṉṉam was born with the likeness of the Dutch, which is unheard of in our entire lineage,” she said.

Aṉṉarāṇi liked skipping. That was the time when shops didn’t carry special skipping ropes. Village girls would cut ordinary fence rope to size and twist two rope stands together to construct a skipping rope. Back then it was a girls-only pastime. One day, when Aṉṉarāṇi was skipping in the front yard, kicking up a cloud of dust, Iḷavālai māmi opened the front gate and walked in.

Iḷavālai māmi is Iṉṉāsimuttu’s first cousin. Whenever she showed up at Iṉṉāsimuttu’s house, there was always an underlying reason: pawning some jewelry, barter, church business, and so on. This time she brought along a marriage proposal for Aṉṉarāṇi.

“Kōdhāri Thuraiyappā’s eldest, they are in fact related to you through Uncle Joachim. A graduate of the University of Peradeniya. Works at a foreign firm in Colombo. He is unlike his father. No drinking, chewing betel leaves, or smoking cigarettes. Everything you own is for your little girl, right? Why don’t you give her this house and land as dowry. The boy has two sisters. You have to give ten thousand each as donation and twenty-five thousand as cash in Kōdhāriyār’s hands. I know you will give at least thirty sovereigns of gold jewelry to your daughter.”

Mariyanāyagam and his relatives hired a cab from Iḷavālai to come to see the potential bride. Aṉṉarāṇi was seated on a chair in the middle of the living room. She sat there majestically like royalty. Her mother thought that Mariyanāyagam stood an inch shorter than Aṉṉarāṇi. When Iṉṉāsimuttu popped into the kitchen, she whispered to him, “Short or tall, let us get her married off, without nitpicking. We cannot go on keeping her as a spinster at home.”

The village had never seen such a grandiose wedding before. The celebration lasted three whole days. On the first day, the entire village got ready for the wedding when at six in the morning, two loudspeakers facing east and west were installed on the palmyra tree in the front yard, and they started to blare “Ask, and it shall be given you” as the first song. The bishop was related to Mariyanāyagam. Therefore, the bishop himself came directly to the church to officiate at Mariyanāyagam’s and Aṉṉarāṇi’s wedding.

After the wedding, Mariyanāyagam moved into Aṉṉarāṇi’s house which was now in his name. Aṉṉarāṇi’s parents showered Mariyanāyagam with respect. The respect only grew with each passing day because Mariyanāyagam was related to the bishop.

After work on Friday evenings, Mariyanāyagam boarded the train at Colombo to arrive at Aṉṉarāṇi’s house early in the morning on Saturdays. On Sunday evenings, he boarded the train back to Colombo.

As a Colombo resident, Mariyanāyagam stood out in the village. He is the one who introduced toothpaste and toothbrushes to Aṉṉarāṇi’s household. Iṉṉāsimuttu was in fact proud to watch his son-in-law brushing his teeth in the mornings, toothpaste foaming in his mouth. On the other side, Aruḷammā would be intently focused on brewing egg coffee for her son-in-law.

Mariyanāyagam went for walks along the village beach every morning and evening. People in the village usually went to the beach only to defecate. Therefore, it is understandable that the village folk looked on with suspicion as Mariyanāyagam wandered under the cover of screw pine bushes along the beach. “The deacon’s son-in-law is weird,” they whispered among themselves. Even Aṉṉarāṇi’s family could not understand Mariyanāyagam’s ways. What was the point of wandering about the beach every morning and evening for no apparent reason?

There was another problem. Mariyanāyagam insisted that Aṉṉarāṇi accompany him on those walks. Aṉṉarāṇi did not like it one bit. The act of stepping out of the house disgusted her. She preferred her freedom within the house compared to being forced to walk outside with her head bowed down. Once when she was walking along the beach with Mariyanāyagam, she thought she heard someone heckle them from behind the screw pine bushes. Mariyanāyagam kept on walking nonchalantly. Aṉṉarāṇi could not help turning to look behind her a thousand times.

Mariyanāyagam liked to go into Jaffna town to watch movies. He only watched English movies. He compelled Aṉṉarāṇi to go with him. There were no women in movie theaters showing English movies. Aṉṉarāṇi would be the sole woman in the entire theater. When scantily clad figures appear on the screen, sometimes even completely naked ones, Aṉṉarāṇi’s entire body will start to shiver. She felt that all the eyes in the theater were on her. But Mariyanāyagam would be totally engrossed in the movie. As they returned home Mariyanāyagam would talk to her about the movie. On those occasions, Aṉṉarāṇi, too, felt ‘he is weird.’

Within three months of marriage Aṉṉarāṇi conceived Kennedy. After six months, Mariyanāyagam announced that he would be going abroad. His employer was sending him to Finland for further studies. He left for Finland saying that it was a two-year program and that he would come home on vacation once every six months. He never returned.

For the first six months, Aṉṉarāṇi received letters from him regularly. Thereafter, that, too, ceased. With an infant at hand, Aṉṉarāṇi was distressed. Mariyanāyagam’s parents did not receive any letters either. A year later, a letter arrived from France.

It seemed that Finland did not agree with Mariyanāyagam. He said he could not stand the solitary living in the cold northern latitudes, and therefore had moved on to France where he had friends.

He said he was going to start a business in France with friends and would arrange for Aṉṉarāṇi to join him in France. He also wrote a few words inquiring about the health of baby Kennedy.

Aṉṉarāṇi’s nervousness on being invited to join him in France surpassed her happiness of hearing from her husband after such a long gap. Iṉṉāsimuttu asked her to keep the news secret. He said that if the villagers learned that his daughter and grandchild were going abroad, their evil eye might disrupt their travel plans.

But Mariyanāyagam did not send for Aṉṉarāṇi right away. Although he sent letters and money regularly, it did not look as if he was taking any efforts to get her to France. Aṉṉarāṇi did not ask for it either. By now, she had started skipping with Kennedy. They arrived in France only when Kennedy was six.

3

At that time, they lived in an apartment block in Paris. Mariyanāyagam was running a cleaning business. Twenty-five Tamils worked for him. Business was brisk. He had got contracts from exhibition halls and marketplaces. In his leisure, he socialized, taking Aṉṉarāṇi and his son to visit friends or having friends over.

Now Mariyanāyagam was drinking heavily. There was not a day when he did not drink. Aṉṉarāṇi was not concerned about his drinking. In fact, she actually liked when she smelled alcohol on him in their bed. Iṉṉāsimuttu, too, drank toddy every morning and evening. When Aṉṉarāṇi was little, sometimes he gave her a little toddy in a coconut shell. “Palmyra toddy is good for the health, child,” he said. Aṉṉarāṇi liked the sour sweetness of palmyra toddy. Until she grew up, she occasionally drank a coconut shell worth of toddy.

But Aṉṉarāṇi could not accept Mariyanāyagam’s insistence on taking her and her child when he visited friends. She detested having to dress up for visits or being forced to welcome visitors with a forced smile. Similarly, she did not want to visit the homes of Mariyanāyagam’s friends. At the time, Mariyanāyagam was the only married man in his circle of friends. In those gatherings, Aṉṉarāṇi struggled, being the lone female with a six-year-old in tow.

Mariyanāyagam kept nagging Aṉṉarāṇi to always freshen up, put on makeup, and wear nice clothes. If Aṉṉarāṇi was slow to do this, he scolded her, calling her “islander,” which is a mild derogatory term for people from the Jaffna archipelago. But he did not show any interest in his son, Kennedy. The child showed no attachment to him either. Mariyanāyagam fumed at the child far more often than he did at Aṉṉarāṇi. Kennedy was an active child. He was scolded often by his father. Mariyanāyagam refused to have another child. Squeezing her breasts, he would tell Aṉṉarāṇi, “Another child will hurt your body, Aṉṉam.”

Mariyanāyagam was immensely proud of his successful cleaning business and his luxury car. Aṉṉarāṇi thought he was also keen to show off his wife to the world with pride. Two years after she arrived in France, Mariyanāyagam bought Rāṇi Mahāl.

Now that they were in the suburbs at some distance from the center of Paris, Aṉṉarāṇi was looking forward to some peace and quiet, and solitude. But from time to time, Mariyanāyagam would suddenly decide to take Aṉṉarāṇi and their son to visit friends, or friends would visit Rāṇi Mahāl. A drunken revelry with music and singing would ensue. Aṉṉarāṇi could not bear these raucous parties. Even when Aṉṉarāṇi’s parents died one after the other, Mariyanāyagam did not agree to let her visit their village. “Now the fighting in Sri Lanka is severe,” he declared.

Mariyanāyagam never hit his wife. But he did not know how to talk to her without insulting her. As her youth and beauty waned with the years, these insults and sarcastic remarks were on the increase. Mariyanāyagam even ridiculed the child, Kennedy. But whenever he went to a party or event, he always took Aṉṉarāṇi with him. He did not even agree to let her go shopping by herself. He hired an African nanny to take the child to school and back. Without Mariyanāyagam, Aṉṉarāṇi could not even go to church for Sunday service, or for Easter or Christmas. If Mariyanāyagam happened to be busy with work, then there would be no mass for Aṉṉarāṇi that Sunday.

Rāṇi Mahāl gradually transmogrified into a full-time interrogation chamber. Her ears were scorched by the scathing words of his incessant scolding. Once he gets drunk late at night, he would invent a reason to scold his wife and child non-stop: that her demeanor was not right, or that she did not respect him enough, or that the child was not doing well at school. He would sit on a chair in the middle of Rāṇi Mahāl’s expansive living room and demand, “Seek forgiveness, Aṉṉam.”

When she was a little girl, Aṉṉarāṇi had seen once or twice her mother Aruḷammā seeking forgiveness from her father Iṉṉāsimuttu. But Mariyanāyagam demanded that she seek forgiveness every day.

Aṉṉarāṇi was supposed to stand on the side of the chair that Mariyanāyagam was sitting in, confess to her sins, and seek forgiveness. During those times, Aṉṉarāṇi struggled to find sins or faults that she could confess to. Mariyanāyagam expected her to confess to new sins every day. When Aṉṉarāṇi could not come up with suitable sins to confess to, Mariyanāyagam would push the mother and son out of Rāṇi Mahāl and shut all doors.

Countless were the nights when the mother and child sat shivering on the decorative front steps. Mariyanāyagam would open the door again only at half past four in the morning, when he was ready to go for his daily morning walk. Aṉṉarāṇi would take the child inside, put him on his bed, and join Mariyanāyagam on his walk. Mariyanāyagam never went for a walk without Aṉṉarāṇi.

As soon as the sun went down, Aṉṉarāṇi would hide two woolen blankets and two water bottles under the decorative front steps. When they were thrown out of the house, she would cover herself and her child with those blankets and try to rock the child to sleep on her lap.

When the father was not home, the child Kennedy would go stand next to the high-backed chair in the middle of the living room. Then he would go outside and sit on the front steps. Sometimes he would go missing. Aṉṉarāṇi would search in room after room to finally find him.

Kennedy died just three days shy of his fourteenth birthday. That night, when Mariyanāyagam was scolding Aṉṉarāṇi softly and asked her to seek forgiveness, Kennedy ran away to hide somewhere. Mariyanāyagam searched the entire house but failed to find Kennedy. Blind with anger, Mariyanāyagam pushed Aṉṉarāṇi out of Rāṇi Mahāl and shut the door. Aṉṉarāṇi sat on the front step with her ears open. Mariyanāyagam opened the door at three in the morning. When Aṉṉarāṇi rushed inside, she found Kennedy’s lifeless body on a skipping rope hanging from the roof tie beam in the kitchen.

“What sin did he commit to hang himself?” asked Mariyanāyagam as he hit his forehead with his palm.

After Kennedy’s death Mariyanāyagam mellowed down a little. The police interrogated Mariyanāyagam and Aṉṉarāṇi thoroughly. Kennedy did leave enough tell-tale signs in the kitchen that he died by suicide.

The very next year, Mariyanāyagam got Aṉṉarāṇi pregnant again. He completely stopped the practice of demanding forgiveness or throwing her out of the house at night. Mariyanāyagam was fond of the second child, Philip. When the twenty-year old Philip brought a French girl Rosa to Rāṇi Mahāl and introduced her as his girlfriend, Mariyanāyagam was all smiles. He welcomed her and kissed her on her cheeks. He took Aṉṉarāṇi with him to visit Rosa’s parents at their home.

Occasionally Rosa would stop by at Rāṇi Mahāl to pick up Philip. At those times, Mariyanāyagam was visibly happy and chatted incessantly with her in French. Aṉṉarāṇi would stop at serving Rosa something to eat or drink. Aṉṉarāṇi did not know enough French to chat with Rosa. Rosa was not the gregarious type either. She did not talk much but would stay put like a doll wearing a slight smile.

Two years ago, Philip moved into Rosa’s apartment. Thereafter, she came by Rāṇi Mahāl just two or three times. After Philip moved out of Rāṇi Mahāl, the huge house was still with silence. Mariyanāyagam had retired. He would go out to visit friends occasionally. Even then Aṉṉarāṇi would have to correctly make herself up to accompany him.

Once Aṉṉarāṇi gently asked Mariyanāyagam if they could now sleep in separate rooms. Aṉṉarāṇi was hoping that at seventy years of age, the solitude she was longing for was within reach. But Mariyanāyagam did not agree. Even at seventy-five, he never went to bed without Aṉṉarāṇi next to him. He never went out without her either. If Aṉṉarāṇi hesitated, he berated and insulted her. Aṉṉarāṇi was certain that even when Mariyanāyagam died, he would take her with him.

4

Minutes after Philip went back to his room to resume his sleep, Aṉṉarāṇi heard his upset and confused voice from where she was sitting. Holding his cellphone with his left hand, with consternation on his face, Philip walked softly to her, and hugged her right shoulder. His voice faltering, he said:

“Mummy, you should not be upset. I got a message… I am not sure if it is true. The police just called me… they found Papa dead…” Unable to continue, he covered his mouth and started to weep. His tears fell on Aṉṉarāṇi’s face. Aṉṉarāṇi stroked his hand and said:

“Philip.. You calm down a little. Let Rosa come.”

“No Mummy. The Police have asked me to come right away.. I told them I would bring you along.. Get up slowly so that we can go..”

Aṉṉarāṇi said, “We can go Philip… sit on that chair for a few moments. Let Rosa come,” and leaned back further into her chair and closed her eyes.

This morning at half past four, Mariyanāyagam left for his morning walk, taking Aṉṉarāṇi as usual. Nowadays they rarely talked. Even if they did, Mariyanāyagam did the talking. His every word only served to tar Aṉṉarāṇi with insults.

After doing a round in the woods, they sat down on their usual bench. Mariyanāyagam had planted his walking stick on the ground, holding it with both his hands. He curved his back to lean on the walking stick, putting half his weight on it. He had bought that walking stick just last week in an antique market. It was carved from strong wood and adorned with a silver rim on its handle and a bronze ferrule. Mariyanāyagam murmured softly so that Aṉṉarāṇi could hear him, “We have to visit Rāsēndram this evening.. It is his seventieth birthday.. He would be offended if we didn’t visit.”

Aṉṉarāṇi murmured in response:
 
 “I don’t feel well.. I am not coming.”

“Why what is wrong with you? Do you have an itch in your private parts?”

Aṉṉarāṇi did not respond. She stared at a distance, with folded hands. These kinds of barbs did not anger her. But the shame was eating into her for years. Once tall like a coconut tree, this ‘islander’ now had wrinkled skin, a bent back, and sagging flesh. She looked as frayed and damaged as a goatskin painting from a puppet show.

Mariyanāyagam was quiet and motionless for a while. Then shouting something in French, she lifted his walking stick and threw it away. Spittle splattered from his mouth. He stood up slowly and pointed to the walking stick with his index finger. He removed his glasses, wiped them on his chest, put them back on again, and glared at Aṉṉarāṇi. She walked up to the walking stick, picked it up, and was returning to hand it back to her husband. Mariyanāyagam muttered:

“Why don’t you, too, hang like your elder son?”

Walking stick in her hand, Aṉṉarāṇi froze when she heard this. She felt the blood circulation within her forty-five-kilogram body come to a standstill. Her hands became rigid. Her legs moved forward. Eyes wide, looking at Mariyanāyagam’s face, she swung the walking stick and hit him on his face. The eyeglasses cracked with a pop. “What sin did I commit? Why are you hitting me?” asked Mariyanāyagam calmly.

Holding his forehead with his left hand, he extended his right hand to try to wrest the walking stick away from Aṉṉarāṇi. She swung the walking stick again and hit his hand. When Mariyanāyagam tried to say something, she hit him again on his head.

Stroking her shoulder, Philip said “Mummy.. I will go see what this is about.. Papa’s body is in the woods, it seems.”

“Philip, you can’t go now… when Rosa returns, you have to translate what I say into French for her!”

“What do you want to say Mummy… tell me, won’t you..”

She stroked Philip’s hand that was on her shoulder. She leaned back on the chair and said:

“No son… you would not understand!”

The sound of footsteps came from outside the front entrance. The mother and the son looked at the clock on the wall.