When the Infant Smiles at You

WHEN THE INFANT SMILES AT YOU
(Short story)

Mary began to pace the courtyard again. Just now the ward sister had admonished her for not walking. “How can we know whether you are ready or not? Walk, madam, and then we will know whether the pains have come or not.” So Mary started walking once more, but she was weary, utterly weary. The mind had exhausted itself thinking over every moment of the recent past. Why should this have happened? She had always been a good girl, hardworking and honest. She had strained her inmost to give her younger brother an education. He was a well-behaved boy, of course. Would not give any trouble to her or the old aunt at home. He was doing well at school. Another five years, and he would have taken a degree. Then she would not have to worry at all.

Only five years. Just now he would have come for his mid­day meal. Aunty would feed him well enough, and could manage the coming month with the comfortable amount Mary had given her. George would be well fed and would eagerly go to school. No, he was not the worry.

It was herself, she in this strange world, pacing the cement courtyard with its tiny lawn in the middle. The sisters had planted cannas to skirt the lawn. Mary had often counted them on her usual pacing exercise, but each side reported a different count. On one side there were eight big plants with a few tiny ones coming from beneath. Ten on another side and so on. The cannas were determined to bloom wonderfully and allowed a generous growth of young tubers. They swayed gently, as though conscious of their contentment. For two days Mary had watched them and tried to forget her misery in their green-yellow­-red ensemble. Yet it was impossible to forget – really forget when reality was closing upon her in this maternity ward. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Mary could not stand it any more. She entered the ward on the left side of the verandah. There were quite a few mothers there with tiny cradles beside their beds. Mary’s neighbour was a young mother. Quite thin and famished, but with a pleasant face and smile. There was an infant in the cradle beside her, blissfully asleep. Mary looked at the mother who was also asleep. She felt almost envious of this mother who would soon be ready to receive her family, a middle-aged gentle­man and four children. The children would excitedly crowd around the cradle, and Mary would watch the couple discussing something in low voices. One’s own family! That would be bliss indeed.

But Mary had been condemned frombirth to a lonely existence. As a child she saw little of her mother who had a -breaking job in a factory. The father had died soon after George’s birth. Then the mother too had gone and the mother’s aunt, now almost seventy, had come to keep house for Mary. Mary had nothing to complain about. She had a good job as a Secretary and her one ambition was to educate George. She had no personal fads and foibles and was a regular church-goer. And then this had come and the future seemed tohave crashed about her in one moment of unguarded helplessness.

Yet whom could she blame except herself? Girls like her should never be burdened with trusting innocence such as hers. A boss was a boss and should always be kept at a distance. Was this possible for a personal secretary? Perhaps. Though not for her.

Besides Mr. Pinto was in the habit of mingling his personal life with her secretarial job. Often she had to take down his dictation for a letter to his father-in-law or wife’s brother. There was some tension and the letters would reveal the interior of Mr. Pinto’s heart. He was remote in his day-to-day dealings, and his sentences were always curt and short, sometimes to the point of rudeness. Mary did not mind and actually welcomed this iciness on the part of the boss. Was this iciness but a facade for the craters within?

Mr. Pinto would often give her lifts home and they would hardly exchange a word except the last – “Good-bye.” Then the news of the estrangement between Mr. Pinto and his wife had filtered to Mary. She pitied her hardworking boss and thought no more about it. The domestic uncertainty no doubt drove Mr. Pinto to think of Mary often. There was a new softness in his tone and a new look in his hooded eyes. All this escaped Mary, though perhaps the rest of the office noted it. Mr. Pinto gave Mary lifts more frequently and began to take an interest in Mary’s personal life. It culminated in a frontal assault on Mary’s person during a stormy day when Mr. Pinto simply drove her to his house. It was no use trying to escape him. His dormant passion had awakened into a single outburst and she was trapped in the arms of this drunken dynamo. He came to his senses too late. The harm had been done.

Apart from being a Christian and Catholic, Mary had some unspecified feeling in her heart that tugged at her conscience and prevented her from taking any precipitate action. She was not a beauty, though far from ill-looking. For what had happened she did not blame Mr Pinto or the circumstances. She blamed herself, and spent the growing months of anxiety with her Bible. Mr. Pinto behaved handsomely. It was he who had arranged for her long leave and this nursing-home. He could not unite himself with her. The wife was with the children after tears and forgiveness. Besides, there were the religious in­hibitions about divorce and remarriage. No, that was out of question. Nor could Mary destroy the child. Now it was her  own, and she dare net become a murderess. The arrangement was to give away the child as soon as it was born and go out of the nursing-home and resume the old life. Mr. Pinto would see to the adoption also. It was all well-planned, but Mary had not re­conciled herself to the situation. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Forsook me then, and now forsaking me again, to be crucified in my conscience. Reading the Psalms made her only more wretched by highlighting her fallen state and the gaping future.

Mary woke up from her reverie to find a sister bending over her. “Are you tired? I shall keep you company, come, walk again.” Wearily Mary got up but feeling dizzy she sat on the stool between her bed and the neighbour’s. The young lady smiled and spoke in Tamil. “Are the pains coming? I think you will get a boy.” Mary nodded vaguely. The sister had gone on some other errand and she settled for a chat. “Isn’t your family coming?”

“They won’t come today. My husband has to go to an evening job twice a week. It is difficult for him and he is not in very good health either. But what to do – seven mouths have to be fed. Why, now it is eight!”

She smiled a half-sad, half-amused smile and looked at the cradle tenderly. “You know we have four children already and there is his old mother. But I suppose I ought not to complain for there is nothing as wonderful as having a child. Don’t you think so?”

Mary got out of her lazy world and looked at the lady. “Is it so wonderful 7” she asked slowly. “Well, may be it is. But I really do not know.”

“It must be your first. That explains your fear. Actually you watch your son and then you will know what I mean.”

Son! Mary smiled. Somebody like George? Yes, it would be wonderful. But her child would be a bastard! Bastard! And the street urchins and school boys would always have a whip hand. Bastard? No other identity? He would be her son!

Suddenly Mary closed her eyes and swayed. The lady cried out: “Sister! Sister!” Two nuns in the nursing habit came running in. Mary had started moaning, for the first real pain had come. They led her to the theatre just as she came out of the first blast. Somehow everything seemed normal and she watched the sisters preparing the table. At a corner of the room was another table that shone with gleaming instruments. What was this, an oxygen mask? But there goes! Mary was sucked into the whirlpool of pain once again.

She thought of those italicised letters in her constant com­panion, the Bible, the Hebrew “eli, eli, lama sabachthani” followed immediately by the English” My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” O Jesus my Lord, in reality have I been forsaken and delivered naked and defenceless to these people here. George came to her mind again and soon she was in pitch darkness. When she came to, she could see that the doctor was talking quite loudly and the assistant was holding an aluminium tray with a pink mass.

“A boy, Mrs. Mathew and congratulations.” ‘The doctor bent over her with her anti-septic smile.

Congratulations! Mary had returned to the earth, and the world had brought her all the doubts, anxieties, and self­-lacerations. She remembered Mr. Pinto’s instructions. So she asked the doctor’s assistant to phone to her office the next morning and convey to her Manager that a boy had been born and that she would be applying for another two months’ leave.

When she was brought to her bed, her anxious neighbour was awake still. It was nearing midnight. The lady welcomed her with a big smile. And as soon as the sisters had gone she said: “The sister told me it is a boy. Didn’t I tell you? He will be a lucky chap. You are a Christian but perhaps will not mind it if I say that he will be god-like and famous as Krishna who was also born at midnight. When is his father coming to see him 1 Is he away from town? “

The lady was talkative but Mary needed this warmth in this moment of loneliness. She could not answer immediately. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she said in a voice that was dead with           fatigue.

“Didn’t you suspect? I have no husband.”

Mary closed her eyes after this effort. The lady did not comprehend Mary’s meaning at once. She started again: “I mean....” And then it struck her that Mary had given her no answer. She understood in a flash the truth, even as she connected Mary’s words with her past behaviour. The preoccupied air, the furtive weeping and all those evenings with not a single visitor. Poverty had ground the lady to a precarious existence, but humanity flowed through her like a living stream. She had been brought up in a big family, and was herself a tender mother. She looked at Mary with this tenderness and pity and spoke.

“Never mind, your son will grow into a fine person and all will be well with you.”

Mary did not respond. Worn out with her physical and mental struggle she was fast asleep.

The next day the lady went near Mary’s bed to see the baby. Once again she was the good old chatterbox. “Look at him lady, he is so pretty! He can already recognise people!”

This well-meant exaggeration drew Mary out of her reverie. The lady asked her not to brood.

“What is the use of brooding? What is past is past. I am sure you were not to blame. You look so young and good. Anyhow it doesn’t matter. Looking after this child will give you all the joy. Sometime in future you will know the truth and then will probably remember this foolish lady, isn’t that so, darling boy?” She swung the cradle gently.

Mary’s heart was bitter.

“Bring up this child. How can I? Already arrangements have been made for his, his being given away!”
“What?” The lady almost shouted. Turning to Mary she asked plaintively, “Are you really giving away the child?”

Mary nodded.

“But I do not understand. Are you so greatly afraid of this world? To give away this lovely, little child? Look at his slender and long fingers. He will be tall and fair. Like a king. You may regret giving him away then.”

“But what to do?” Mary wailed. “Imagine him in our crowded street with no name. They will take the life out of him.”

“Who are they?” the lady asked, and her face grew hard. “Who are they? Do you know how many in my street have smirked and laughed at my swelling figure? The neighbours laugh because we cannot afford to clothe our children adequately. Even our shopman has the temerity to say openly at our ‘bravery’ in bringing forth one more child. They have no business with us. Do you think we are deliberately conspiring to increase our poverty-stricken household? All those population-wallahs. God blast them! They brought us loops and this and that. Like sheep we obeyed them. What was the use? The result has been my crying the whole night. God, God, no more children. God, do not make me big with child”. We do not want anymore. But sometimes the gods are rather pitiless or just humorous. I do not know. Hero is this fifth child.” She gestured towards the cradle at her side. Through the steel bars of the cradle, Mary could see a pink face with black hair. The baby was sleeping.

“A lovely boy, isn’t he?” Mary said in a small voice, at last showing some interest in something beyond her immediate personal problem.

“And yet I hoped it would die, away from my eyes, before it came into the world. It would have been a doctor’s job or a barber’s. But now? And it is not even a boy, it’s just like my fate, this is another girl for me. But how can I withhold my love, my breast? The past is past, and now we will share what we have, that is all. Forget what ‘they’ say outside the four walls of your house. Do not throw away this gift. Yours or mine, God gives. I can only think that way.”

She suddenly halted as though half-ashamed of her outburst. Mary looked at her with grateful eyes. In her halting manner she said: “Akka, give my child here.” The lady took the infant tenderly and placed it beside Mary on the bed. Impulsively she took Mary’s hands into hers and pressed them gently gazing at Mary and the child. Then she went to her bed.

When Mr. Pinto came to the Nursing-home in the evening he found Mary serenely looking at pictures in a magazine. The new-born babe was asleep in the cradle. He spoke self-consciously “Hello, Mary,” he said. She looked up and replied: “Hello, how are you?” He had not expected to find such an impersonal, self-possessed girl. “How is the little nipper,” he attempted again and bent towards the cradle. “Strange, how all kids look alike! Andy was the same, red with that brown hair, and those long fingers.”

Andy was his third son. Mary kept silent. Disconcerted at her behaviour, yet with his managerial aplomb he said:

“Mary, I have got the blessed transfer at last. To Delhi. Shan’t trouble you anymore. Hey, that promotion of yours has been assured. No trouble at all. Efficient is the word, I dare say.”

Still no reaction from Mary, except her gaze at him. Actually she was counting the stripes on the pocket of his shirt. She was jerked to reality when Mr. Pinto went on in his tooth-paste fresh voice.

“By the way, the nipper has been fixed. An agent will come here tomorrow, and you can arrange the date of delivery. I suppose he’ll get into a high-class family. The agent hinted that much. Lucky kid.”

Sharp though tear-stained came Mary’s voice. “The agent need not come.” Mr. Pinto turned behind sharply.

“What do you mean, be need not come?”

“Simply what I say” replied Mary glancing at the empty bed near her. The lady’s husband had come at noon and they had left. The husband had carried the child in a comfortable bundle. The lady had spoken many good words to Mary. Then she had distributed bakshish to the maids in the ward and taken leave of them. Mary still felt the lady was beside her giving encouragement. Why should I fear the world, if the fault were not mine? She looked at Mr. Pinto with contempt and anger.

“Good-bye to you and never disturb me again,” she hissed.

“What has come over you? How can you manage to bring him up all alone? George is enough of a burden and to add to him this bastard.”

Before he could go further, Mary bad thrown the illustrated magazine in his face, and shrilled: “Go, go away. If you do not, I will hit you with this.”

She picked up a tumbler from the bedside table.

Mr. Pinto stood rooted to the spot, ruminated for a while, watching the quick breaths of Mary shaking her body. He was also uneasily aware of a couple of ladles in other beds staring at him curiously.

“I see that you are mad. Well, never mind and good-bye,” he barked the words in a hayenish manner and vanished into the thickening gloom outside.

Mary bent over the cradle near her and her eyes filled with tears.

“He calls you that? O God! Couldn’t you think of a milder punishment for me than that word? But my darling, that is the last word of reproach you shall hear. You have a mother, you have a mother!”

She settled herself on the cot and felt tired with relief. No, God had not forsaken her. God had come to her at last as love, In the form of this infant and this love would help her hold her face up in all this wide, wide world.