Interlude

Alezan comes home to the whistle of the kettle. He goes into the kitchen and turns off the noise. The house is hushed. The figurine of an ancient god continues its wrathful dance. Some believe it is bad luck to have an old god in the house but Televiva insisted. She found it beautiful. He walks into the study where she usually is at this hour, reading or writing an article on childcare in the new century, and finds her slumped forward on the table, unconscious.

Revived with water on her face, she cannot remember what caused her to pass out. She is puzzled, brushing her long black hair out of her eyes, rubbing her eyes which have become smaller, less keen. What is going on? What is going on? She says again and again as if repetition holds the clue. As if the answer lies just in front of her, eluding her, winking like a firefly.

It comes to her in a dream that night. She saw something unimaginable through the window of her study. It stood there, a gloaming. A looming thing. Animal or mythological creature. She was filled with wonder and extraordinary terror, fainted because of the combination of intense feelings. She wakes Alezan in excitement and tells him. He blinks in the dark, puts on his spectacles. It sounds outlandish to him, her story of a gigantic creature standing in the fields.

“How could it not be noticed? It would have been all over the news by now. Perhaps you were reading something.” Alezan lays great store by books changing people’s brains, possibly more than is warranted.

“Don't tell me what I saw. Do you think I'm mad? I'm going to report it. Maybe they’ve had other reports.”

The next day, rays of sunlight are just beginning to dapple the stone building of the local police station when they get there. The cop is ruffled and sleepy and when Televiva impresses on him that she has seen something magnificent, he scratches his head. “Doesn't seem likely. A creature, you say. I've got no other reports.”

“But that's impossible. It was so huge, so unusual. I’ve never seen anything like it. Can I speak with your chief?” Her cheeks are gaunt with the effort of getting through to this man, this dullard, she thinks in her head.

“He’s at headquarters in Raia,” he says. “Important stuff happens there, in the city. Not here. Never here.” He yawns widely. “Perhaps, madam, you are imagining it—women of a certain age—,” he stops and yawns again, having thought better of what he was going to say.

In the car, she gives vent to her rage. “That stupid excuse for a human being. How could he think I was lying, imagining, Trying to insinuate menopausal hysteria, the nerve! Drive to the spot.”

“Which spot? Televiva, we can't just drive around the fields.”

“Yes we can. Now drive where I tell you. Call work and tell them you will be late.” Alezan does as he is told. He has not seen his wife this riled since the days when she thought Zaria was born ordinary. I refuse this fate, she used to say, spitting out her words. The world will not treat me this way. The same fury seems to lurk in her eyes now. Alezan does not know what to make of this sighting and worried that his wife is becoming unhinged. What deep longing or complex has awakened in her, what long-buried secret?

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When Alezan first saw her, she had been a newly-opened dandelion. A wildflower. A weed. She argued with people. She talked back. She created trouble. So bright that it hurt him to look at her for too long. How did he gather up the courage to ask her out? Or had she? The details are hazy now, twenty years on. Maybe it was mutual, simultaneous, understood. The relationship that followed was unlike anything he had ever experienced, richer, fuller, more. He felt excoriated by it, rejuvenated. There was no way he could have given her up and she had been as committed, giving up more than he could even understand.

When Televiva Sol first saw her malformed child, the story goes, her eyes lit up with the lambent energy of a mountain lion. The story has been told to Zaria many times, mostly by her. She cradled the delicate head against her neck, her breathing a song of triumph after all the pain that had came before. She counted the extra fingers, one on each hand, and was both proud and relieved. Proud her child was different, relieved the difference was slight.

Released from hospital later that day, Televiva took Zaria home and began to feed her. She did not let her energy flag even when her breasts ached with the pinch of infant gums, when she developed a rash all over her body, when her vagina itched from being sewn up too tight after childbirth.

The elders had always believed malformed children possessed powers. Televiva spent her days in a sweet haze, watched her daughter for signs, read tomes on the Kild and their possible powers, consulted physicians, conjured Kild-friendly diets, bought supplements and boosters to incorporate in meals.

Months passed. There was no display, no unusual incident, no accident or mishap. To her utter disappointment, Zaria did not sit up or walk faster than others, did not change water to ice or dance up a storm. Instead, she dreamed of birds, wandered fields barefoot, brought pedestrian, childish offerings—a painting, a story, a leaf—to her mother who smiled and made appropriate noises.

When Alezan met her, she believed her daughter was not Kild and was inexplicably panic-stricken by this.

Alezan is a man given to analysis and as he drives towards the fields, his mind hovers around this question. He has spent a lifetime trying to understand Televiva. Nobody could live with her and love her unless they had—and love her he did, despite her flaws. In recent years, she has seemed calmer, less upset, more accepting of the limitations of life. Now this development. He worries about how it will affect them. He cannot afford to slack off at work and he remembers Televiva's sulks during the early years. They had affected him badly. He had wanted to stay home, soothe her through it. She was like a magnet to him. He found it hard to leave her when she was in this mood.

They drive the tiny country roads, up and down, back and forth, with her desperately searching the horizon, her eyes reaching as far as they can go for a hint of the shape they have seen. Her body is tense in anticipation. Or is it excitement? Her hands grip the seat. Her left leg bounces. At one place, she insists they stop the car. Lifting the hem of her black dress, she gets out and walks into the cornfields, towards the mountains in the distance.

After that, Televiva travels to the field everyday for a few days but she does not see the creature again. “It was so large,” she says to Alezan. “How could it disappear? It must be in the neighborhood.”

The creature haunts her in dreams. She stirs and groans in sleep. Sometimes she laughs or talks to it as if it were a pet or a long-lost child. Alezan wonders if the seed of illness that had been floating in her all along has broken through to the surface.