One for Sorrow Two for Joy

1

MOONLIGHT MARY

I know that Moonlight Mary spoke with fishes. I saw her talking to them myself.

It all began when Damu said that it was impossible for a woman’s feet to turn into a fishtail and then back into feet again. He said that someone called Darwin had discovered that a fish’s tail could become into two legs, and in fact that’s what happened millions and millions of years ago. But no one had written that the opposite too had happened. Damu said that despite what villagers believed there must be some other explanation.

I’d heard my Uncle Pedro and his friends speaking among themselves several times outside the taverna, and they all had different stories to tell about Moonlight Mary. The more they drank, the more interesting the stories would become.

It was common knowledge in school and in the marketplace that Moonlight Mary took long walks on the beach alone at night, especially when the moon was full. You would suppose that if someone wanted to walk around at night, the only practical thing was to do it when the moon shone, otherwise you risked stepping on a snake or being stung by a scorpion. Even when we chose to go on night picnics or crab collecting expeditions, we did so on full moon nights.

But from Uncle Pedro’s friends I learnt that she actually took off all her clothes and walked naked on the beach in the moonlight. She’d dive into the sea and swim all night; and though the tide may wash in or pull out or dash against the rocks, Moonlight Mary would glide like a knife through the water or simply sleep cushioned on the waves as though she were in bed.

She’s a bloody mermaid, said Tony, the tavern owner. "There are women like that, you know. In my grandmother’s village there was a woman who turned into a snake every Naag Panchami, and remained that way for a month. Each family in the village had to leave her bowls of milk in turn, or she’d bite their children."

He looked around pugnaciously, waiting to be contradicted. When that didn’t happen, he filled everyone’s glass with another round of feni, and concluded with faultless logic: If a woman can become a snake, why not a mermaid?

Tony expressed this opinion on several occasions, and in varying company, and no one ever challenged it. Some fellows, feeling encouraged, would have an amazing detail to supply or a juicy tidbit to add. Tony’s clients (who were mostly Uncle Pedro and his friends) would argue about these, and whenever they noticed that I was around, they’d chase me away. But over the years I’d heard enough to know what was what about Moonlight Mary.

Moonlight Mary was not from Goa. She was from up-country. At first I thought that meant the North Pole, or at least Kashmir (Damu, who stood first in class, said that it was more or less the same thing, because of the snow). But later I realized that it meant from anywhere outside of Goa, not counting south India.

Moonlight was not part of her name, of course; it was just what she was referred to as by the villagers. Her surname was something foreign-sounding, not Indian like Fernandes or D’Souza or Pereira. This was because her father was English, and her mother a Bengali or Punjabi or something – someone from up-country. She’d died when Moonlight Mary was born. Moonlight Mary’s father was in the Great India Peninsular Railway, and had come to Goa in Portuguese times, when the British decided to connect our little enclave to their railway network. When he retired he decided to stay back, and built a bungalow for himself near our village. It was not like anything you’d see in Goa. It was large, but did not have balcaos or arches or a sloping tiled roof. It was low and flat, wrapped around with a verandah, and had a terrace, and was perched on the edge of a cliff that dropped dangerously to the sea. I often thought that I’d wake up one morning to see that the bungalow had slipped off the edge and tumbled into the sea.

Moonlight Mary was not even a Catholic. She was a protisstint. I didn’t know what that meant. When I asked Auntie Philu, she said protisstints didn’t believe in Mother Mary and didn’t go to Mass.

I couldn’t quite understand how you didn’t believe in someone you were named after, but I thought that a protisstint was a jolly nice thing to be if you didn’t have to go to church every Sunday, and I said as much. Auntie Philu’s eyes grew round with shock and fear. She slapped me in the face, and asked me to spit in the dust on the devil. Then she made me recite a whole decade of the rosary with her while she crossed herself repeatedly and threw a handful of dried red chillies into the kitchen fire. Clearly, protisstints were important people, because they merited a handful. When I have fever or a stomach ache, Auntie Philu throws in just three chillies; quite enough to neutralise the evil eye, she says, no need to waste more.

Our village was not grand or rich or famous for anything. But the villagers still thought themselves superior to Moonlight Mary. The men sniggered when they talked of her, and the women avoided her. No one spoke to her at all. They didn’t dislike her so much as they were afraid of her, I think.

She was thin, tall and bony, and she coloured her greying hair with henna, so it looked orange and funny. She wore flowered cotton dresses that reached to her ankles, different prints but all of them the same identical pattern. And she wore men’s shoes. Probably her father’s, since no one had ever seen her buy a pair.

She lived completely alone, and did all her work herself. She collected her father’s pension at the post office once a month, and bought vegetables and provisions once a week. She never spoke a word of Konkani. Only English. And very few words of that too.

You would have thought that she had some speech problem but for the fact that on Christmas Eve she’d come to the church and, standing just outside, she would sing carols at the top of her voice. Mass was in Konkani, but for some reason at Christmas our parish sang carols in English. That was the only time of year that Moonlight Mary ever came near our church. She’d climb up the little hill and stand at a distance in the shadows of the shoe-flower and jasmine shrubs. She’d walk up to the porch only after mass had started, and join in the singing from outside the church, singing loudly and in a surprisingly good voice with an accent that sounded like you hear in the English pictures. When she sang carols, she’d close her eyes as if thinking of something, and though little droplets of spit would shoot out of her lips, her face would glow. It was almost as though she was in a different place, in a different time.

No one, not even Father Eusebio, ever invited her to come into the church. I don’t know if she would have, were they to do so. No one ever wished her for Christmas either; because as soon as people began coming out and the boys lit the crackers, Moonlight Mary would turn and run down the hill to the beach or to her bungalow.

Sometimes she’d disappear for days on end. No one knew where she was. No one ever went to her home to inquire if she was ill or needed help. Witches never get sick, declared Kesu.

Witches? queried someone.

What would you call someone who dances naked in the moonlight, and performs black magic with animals?

It’s best not to interfere with that sort, said Shobha-tai, who owned the all-purpose shop in the village. Who knows what spells she could cast, or how evil her eye is? Maybe she has a black tongue.

I tell you, she’s a mermaid, said Tony.

Both Damu and I heard him, and that’s when Damu whispered to me that it was impossible, and told me about that fellow Darwin. Tony saw us phuss-phussing, and chased us away. Get away, you pesky eight-year-olds, he scolded, swinging his fist at us.

We’re nine, corrected Damu, ducking the cuff as he made off, with me at his heels.

From then on the idea of checking whether Moonlight Mary was a mermaid or not obsessed me. I didn’t dare try this alone. I was petrified about what would happen were she to discover me spying on her. I needed to get Damu involved too. I spoke about it with him whenever I got the opportunity, and slowly he too warmed to my idea. (I think what interested him more was the possibility of seeing her breasts when she danced naked, but he didn’t admit it). We decided to keep watch at the beach the next full moon.

It wasn’t difficult to get away from home, because a crab-catching expedition had been planned by some of the villagers for that night. The best crabs ventured out only on full moon nights. The crab-catchers did not go anywhere near the beach, but waded in the opposite direction, into the backwaters and the mucky khazan lands, where the finest shrimps and crabs were to be had, breeding in the mangrove tangles.

So all we had to do was to say that we were going crab-catching, and then slip off to the beach.

We hid ourselves in the thicket of casuarinas that had been planted by the government to protect the sand from erosion. The villagers didn’t like it, because it blocked their view of the sea, and also because it attracted hippies to camp there. Once a hippie was found dead among the shrubs, and the police said it was from taking too many drugs. The villagers hated hippies, since they carried lice and something awful called veedee. They also made rude gestures with their fingers and farting sounds with their lips – and not just to Uncle Pedro and his friends. Once when Father Eusebio tried to persuade a group to come to church as it was a Sunday, they not only gave him the full treatment, but one of the women lowered her baggy pants and wiggled her bottom at him. The poor fellow turned purple and scuttled away, and never ever approached a hippy again.

There were no hippies there that night, so we had a clear view of the beach, which stretched like a white sheet for almost a mile, till it ended in the heap of rocks at the foot of the cliff on which Moonlight Mary’s bungalow sat. The beach was deserted. The kirr-kirr of crickets and the cool breeze made me doze off. Suddenly Damu dug his elbow into my ribs. Look! he pointed. We could see a figure in a flowered dress skipping down the steep path on the cliff-face. The moon was bright enough for us to see that the dress was pink, and there was also a long pink scarf streaming in the wind.

Moonlight Mary walked along the expanse of sand barefoot. She hitched up her long skirt and used the scarf to tie it in place. Every now and then she’d stop and pick up things from the beach. We saw her pick up a stranded starfish. She pet it as one would a cat, then she kissed it, said something to it, and gently pushed it out to sea. When she was quite near she abruptly stopped in her tracks. My heart missed a beat, as I thought we’d been spotted. But it was because she’d noticed that her feet were in the path of a line of spindly little crabs – the sort that are useless to eat as they have hardly any flesh, but which have a vicious bite. She didn’t move, and allowed the crabs to walk over her feet. There’s no way one or two would not have bitten her, but she didn’t flinch. She moved only when they’d passed. Her left foot was bleeding slightly. She just walked into the waves and allowed the salty spray to bathe it. She went into the water up to her knees. Every couple of minutes she dipped into the foam, and actually came up with a twisting fish. Each time she’d bring it close up, whisper something to it, then hold it to her ear, as though listening to a response, then speak to it again. After a bit of this conversation she’d throw the fish back into the water.

But she showed no signs of shedding her clothes and turning into a mermaid. I think Damu was disappointed at not getting to see her breasts. As for me – her conversing with fish, her easy familiarity with crabs and suchlike, was far more fascinating than if she’d grown a tail and blown a conch. I was so mesmerised; I didn’t notice that she was walking towards us. Damu did, and before I could