AUNTIE EFFIE'S CHEST Tino de Sa tinod...@gmail.com
Auntie Effie had a magnificent chest. She carried it proudly aloft, and came up behind it like a battleship. She wasn't a very big person, but she had what is called 'a bearing'. Her chest wasn't too large. One could even say it was small as chests go. But it was large enough to attract everyone's attention. And to my ten-year old eyes, it was enormous. Because of her chest Auntie Effie was a much sought after person. She was a virago and a cadge. Her tongue was sharp as a knife, and she never spent a paisa on herself or on anyone else. Yet it gave a peculiar pleasure to people to gaze upon her chest, because of which they invited her, often for a meal, or sometimes to stay with them. She swathed it in brocade, and pinned it with a brooch; and that added mystery to it. No one I knew of had ever seen it uncovered. It looked smooth and hard under the fabric, and some suspected it was not natural but made of an artificial material like plastic. I longed to strip off the cloth and rub my fingers on what I imagined were its glossy curves. No one dared examine it of course, except for a quick poke and a surreptitious feel when Auntie Effie was asleep, because she kept her chest below her bed. You do realise, of course, that I'm speaking of a box: the one Auntie Effie could not be separated from, and which accompanied her wherever she went. She didn't have rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, but she had her box, and it made music. Not the tinkling sort; but the dull thuds of many small objects, loosely packed and clunking against each other. And it was music indeed, to Auntie Effie and to all who heard it. No one ever asked her what those objects were. Once Ludovina, the baker's wife did, and Auntie Effie stopped going to her house. No amount of pleading or cajoling could make her change her mind. So no one ever ventured to do so again. # Auntie Effie was not from our village. I don't know exactly how she was related to us, but she was. Her two nephews -- and her chest, of course -- were all she had in the world, she claimed: my father Domingo and his brother Miguel (she always called them that, though in my school register my father's name was entered as 'Dominic', and I know that my uncle wrote his as 'Michael', though to all of us he was Uncle Mickey). Uncle Mickey lived next door to us. Our houses were, in fact, separated only by a wall, and just a shoe-flower hedge divided the garden. This should have meant that our families were very friendly, but the opposite was true. In our village it seemed that the closer relatives had their houses, the less they loved each other. Auntie Effie turned up one Sunday afternoon in a hired bullock-cart. She had no furniture, no utensils, no boxes -- so we were naturally surprised when she said she'd disposed of her house and come to live with us. One would have expected her to be loaded with stuff. 'I sold everything I possessed,' she explained. And then enigmatically patted a bundle that looked like something wrapped in a faded printed counterpane. It was her chest, which she let no one touch, not even the bullock-cart man, whom she indicated to my father with a twist of her head, saying, 'Pay him,' as she sailed into our little front garden, the chest securely in the crook of her left arm. My mother, uncle, aunt, cousins and some neighbours had all come out by now, and were staring at Auntie Effie. None of us had ever seen her before in our lives, except my father and my uncle when they were children, and even they were not so sure. 'Domingo and Miguel,' she said to them both, 'I have come to live with you'. Whenever Auntie Effie spoke to more than one person, she sounded like a priest in church, as though she were addressing a congregation. I don't think she knew that they had separate houses. I don't think she knew which nephew was which. Neither of them moved. Each waited for the other to invite her in. Since my father was the older brother, and since Auntie Effie was already in our side of the garden, it was my father who, having paid off the bullock-cart man, finally led her in. My mother didn't look happy. Uncle Mickey and Auntie Piety hurried back into their own home, thankful at being let off the hook, and fearful lest circumstances change, making them Auntie Effie's reluctant hosts. 'Just three spoons of sugar in my tea, please,' said Auntie Effie to my mother, even before she had stepped in, adding as an afterthought: 'And what did you say your name was, child?' My mother, who had not said anything at all, was too taken aback to retort with her customary tartness. 'Carmelita,' she replied, feeling intimidated enough to go into the kitchen to prepare the tea. # Auntie Effie made herself at home in our place. We had a small house, but because I was an only child I had a cot and little room to myself. Auntie Effie decided that that would be her room. She put her chest beneath the cot, and lay on the mattress. 'A bit lumpy,' she said, 'but it'll do.' Then looking at me: 'You're welcome to sleep on a mat here,' as though she were doing me a favour, allowing me to sleep in my own room, 'or with your parents if you prefer.' Used to bossing around others, my mother couldn't take being bossed over any longer. A fortnight was as much as she could stomach. 'You have to get your Auntie Effie out of this house within two days,' she threatened my father, 'otherwise I shall go to my mother's place for three months.' Now we all knew that mother's threat was an empty one. She couldn't bear staying in granny's village for longer than a few days, since it was near a mining site, and everything there was perpetually covered with a thin film of red dust. (When visiting granny, the first couple of days I used to find it very amusing to give the plants a kick and see clouds of dust rise from the leaves, or see everyone's hair looking as though they'd coloured it with henna; but when the grit got into the fish curry and the dodol, even I couldn't wait to return home). Mother never went to granny's more than once a year, but the threat was her way of indicating that she was upset. The length of her threatened absence was directly proportional to her level of anger. It was usually a fortnight or a month. Three months meant big trouble. 'What do you expect me to do?' asked my father. 'Throw the poor woman onto the street with her bag and baggage?' 'Bag and baggage?' snorted mother sarcastically. 'All she has is that infernal chest, which no one dare go near. She's already borrowed a sari of mine, and is pressing me to buy her some clothes. Mickey is her nephew too, isn't he? Let Piety deal with her. Piety could do with some exercise; goodness knows how those four children of hers manage with a mother as lazy as Piety. A few months of Auntie Effie will do her good.' Father was a worried man. He felt he could persuade his brother, but his sister-in-law was something else altogether. He formulated a plan. Auntie Piety, mother and other village women usually went to the Mapsa market each Friday, and were away for at least four hours. He would invite Uncle Mickey to the taverna, buy a bottle of chilled urrac, and then excuse himself for a few minutes, during which he'd rush back and somehow transfer Auntie Effie to his brother's house next door. The plan was full of holes. Uncle Mickey would be suspicious of the sudden midmorning invitation; how exactly Auntie Effie would be relocated from one house to the other was not spelled out; and what would happen when Auntie Piety returned was something father preferred not to even think about. Faulty as the plan was, it seemed to be working. I was alone at home with Auntie Effie when father, having left Uncle Mickey to the joys of the urrac, came rushing in and told her that she would be shifting next door. 'Miguel has asked me to help you move,' he lied to her. 'He and Piety are eager to have you for a few days.' Auntie Effie was no fool. Uncle Mickey and Auntie Piety had not visited her once in the fortnight she'd been here, and didn't offer her more than a glass of water when she'd visited them, not even providing a stool on which to place her chest. 'Where are they?' she asked. 'Let them come and take me if they are so keen on having me. I am quite comfortable here.' She would be, considering she had usurped my room and had it all to herself. I had four squalling cousins whom even I couldn't stand when they quarrelled or cried, which at any given moment at least two of them did at least one of. Auntie Effie suspected she'd have to share a room with them if she moved. She refused to budge. Displaying a presence of mind I didn't think my father possessed, he dived under the cot, hoisted up the chest and darted out of the house. Displaying an agility I didn't think she possessed, Auntie Effie darted after him. Father slid the chest under a bed in Uncle Mickey's house, ran back to ours, and slammed the door shut. He needn't have bothered, because at that moment Auntie Piety, mother and the other women got off the mini-bus from Mapsa. Father quietly left to join Uncle Mickey at the taverna. # Mother, who was generally sparing in her admiration of anyone, especially of my father, had to grudgingly admit that on this occasion he had been brilliant. I think she enjoyed it more because of Auntie Piety's complete shock and consternation at the turn of events. The only one at hand on whom Auntie Piety could expend her wrath was Uncle Mickey, but perhaps the after effects of the urrac lasted long enough to dampen the brunt of that. Auntie Effie couldn't have been too happy, but she seemed contented enough whenever she ventured on her visits to the village folk. They were more than visits -- they were visitations. Her attitude was that they should feel privileged to receive her. They didn't -- at first. Then something happened to turn everything topsy-turvy. The truth about Auntie Effie began to surface -- not as one coherent story, but in bits and pieces, rumours, suppositions and deductions, even insinuations. But especially rumours, flying thicker and faster than the swarms of winged insects that infested our village in the rainy weather. No one could pinpoint the source of all this information. It did not appear to be Auntie Effie, because she always avoided answering direct questions about her past. She'd counter such inquisitiveness with proverbs, delivered in an infuriatingly preachy tone, accompanied by a smile that was intentionally too wide to be genuine. 'Let sleeping dogs lie,' she would intone, or more macabrely, 'Why exhume corpses?' or with just a hint of warning: 'Best not to step on a snake's tail.' My parents and Uncle Mickey and Auntie Piety were ruled out completely, because they usually were the recipients, so to speak, of the juicy morsels; though one wouldn't have thought so to see their reaction. When a neighbour or an acquaintance said something to them about Auntie Effie's past, not wanting to seem ignorant of an important facet about their relative, they pretended that they knew it all along, but had not spoken of it in deference to her privacy. This response on the part of family members, who ought to know best, only confirmed as fact what had started out as gossip. What emerged from all this was an amazing story, even if one made allowances for the embroideries of village tittle-tattle. It seemed that Auntie Effie had married -- (some said: 'had been married off forcibly', others said she'd eloped for love) -- at a very young age -- (some said thirteen, some said fifteen) -- to a man many years her senior, who had inherited from his ancestors great wealth as well as a softness in the head (no one disagreed on this). So weak-charactered (some said, with a snigger, weak-limbed) was her husband, that the marriage was doomed from the start. It was a childless one (this was the one thing that Auntie Effie herself had proclaimed about her past when she arrived, though she'd not supplied any reason for it). Her in-laws were a greedy and malicious lot (this surprised no one as, in varying degrees, this was the private opinion of most married people in the village about their own situations), and it took all of Auntie Effie's native ingenuity to keep them at bay. Since Auntie Effie was certainly in her late sixties, these events must have begun to unfold at least fifty years ago, if not longer. No wonder my father and Uncle Mickey knew very little about it, as she must have been married before they were born. In any case, she was not the sister of either of their parents, but a second or a third cousin once removed. If the story was this much only and no more, little would have changed, and we'd've gone on much as before. But there was more -- which surfaced after a gap of three weeks, just when all the earlier stuff had been digested by the village, and its novelty begun to wear off. This happened almost by accident. Auntie Effie was gliding down School Road as though she were a procession of one when she stubbed her toe on a rock, teetered precariously and then, miraculously averting disaster, righted herself, chest still balanced on her palms. But in the process a corner of the cloth that covered the box slipped and exposed it to those who happened to be in the vicinity; which in the instant case were exactly two people. These were Narayan the carpenter, in front of whose shop the accident took place, and Ravi's talkative old granny, Anjoli-bai, who happened to be haggling with the carpenter about his extortionate charges for repairing a kitchen-stool. Auntie Effie was quite shaken with her near toss, and it was several moments before she was able to gather her wits about her and re-wrap her chest -- time enough for Narayan and Anjoli-bai to get a good look at it. 'If one stares too much, one's eyes may burst,' intoned Auntie Effie to the air in front of her, as she resumed her journey. Narayan had the grace to hastily avert his gaze, but Anjolibai was not so easily put upon. 'If a squirrel wishes to hide its nuts, it shouldn't dance in the rain like a peacock,' she said to Narayan's awl and chisel. 'I could swear that what Effie-bai carries with her everywhere is a jewellery-casket,' he said so softly and slowly that Anjoli-bai had to strain her ears to hear him. 'The finely-worked sort that comes from Daman,' he elaborated, 'where the carpenters have picked up the style from Gujarati craftsmen.' 'Are you sure?' said Anjoli-bai incredulously. 'Would I make a mistake in matters such as these?' responded Narayan with indignation, as though his basic professional competence had been questioned. Anjoli-bai smacked her lips. She would teach that pompous Auntie Effie a lesson. If the entire village did not know the exact nature of the veiled box by sunset, Anjoli-bai would change her own name, she vowed. Anjoli-bai did not have to change her name. Through long experience she knew exactly which ears to feed for the swiftest dissemination of information. Those unfortunate villagers who did not know by sunset that what Auntie Effie carried so proudly and guarded so zealously was a fabulous jewellery-casket, learnt about it as they sat down to dinner, and those silly enough to have missed that opportunity, learnt of it at the taverna during an after-dinner tipple, where it was as much the chief topic of discussion as it was in Camila-bai's large courtyard where several women gathered every night for a bit of gossip after they'd washed the dinner things and put their children to bed. By the next day, it was old news. The burning question now was: What does the coffer contain? The villagers were not dullards. It did not take much imagination to conclude that what one put into jewellery-caskets, especially jewellery-caskets that one refused to ever be parted from, were jewels -- or at least small precious objects, gold ornaments, sovereigns and suchlike. It began to dawn upon mother (and almost simultaneously on Auntie Piety) that Auntie Effie was a very wealthy woman, and a wise one at that. Not wanting to be encumbered with house and property, the childless widow had converted all her worldly goods into easily transportable (and easily bequeathable) commodities, and filled them into her chest. Since no one could recall her spending even a rupee, her fortune was intact. With knowledge of her wisdom came recognition of her virtues; and with recognition of her virtues came an outpouring of the love they'd always felt for her, but for reasons of modesty had kept secret in their hearts. They could no longer control their affection for their relative, and vied with each other to win her favour. My mother was especially eager to have her back with us for the rest of her days. 'You have to get your Auntie Effie into this house within two days,' she threatened my father, 'otherwise I shall go to my mother's place for three months.' Father was flummoxed. 'Has the sun risen in the west today?' he remarked. Mother was not amused. 'Two days,' she said from between clenched teeth. # Auntie Effie became the closest thing to a socialite the village had ever known. It is not that she changed in manner or habit. She remained much the same. But it is the village folk who changed; they flit around her like dragonflies, seeking to please her, wanting her to share their table with them, giving her little presents. Everyone knew the shameful way that mother and Auntie Piety had treated Auntie Effie initially, and never ceased reminding her of the duplicity of her nieces-in-law with subtle hints and insinuations. After all, they reasoned, Auntie Effie was only a distant relative of father and Uncle Mickey, and it was not unknown for lonely old women to bestow a considerable portion of their fortunes on amiable acquaintances. The next five children to be born into Catholic families in the village were all made her godchildren. Never mind that she didn't actually give them christening gifts; it was enough that she attended the christenings, chest in tow, and patted it while kissing the bawling babies. The far-sighted parents believed in investing for the future. Old Anjoli-bai was bewildered at the turn of events -- but not for long. Realising that she'd been instrumental in bringing about the new order, she craftily sought to make a virtue out of her spiteful act, and approached Auntie Effie with an uncharacteristic humility. Sufficiently mollified, Auntie Effie became one of her best friends. Auntie Effie was now in a position to choose where she wanted to live, and for how long. If the slightest thing displeased her at our place, she'd be up and off next door, where Auntie Piety made sure to bundle my four snivelling and squealing cousins into her own room, so that Auntie Effie might enjoy the comfort she was accustomed to at ours. Inter-house transfers took place sometimes because the tea was not hot enough or sweet enough, sometimes because of real or imagined tardiness in the washing and pressing of her clothes, and sometimes for no discernible reason at all. Auntie Effie's departures certainly provided great relief to my mother -- for five minutes. It must have taken superhuman effort on her part to act the meek and mild and everserving niece-in-law, and she sometimes had a wild-eyed look, as though she were living on edge. But Auntie Effie's staying next door as Auntie Piety's guest was an even more trying experience for her. This predicament was mirrored in Uncle Mickey's household as well. It was even worse when Auntie Effie happened to take ill. The party in whose house she was, guarded her passionately, almost obsessively, from the advances and approaches of the other party. If she fell ill while she was at Uncle Mickey's, we were not allowed to visit her; we were told at the front door itself that she was asleep or in the washroom, and we had to resort to all sorts of stratagems to contact her. If perchance she fell ill at our place, our doors were closed to Aunty Piety and her brood. Only once did Auntie Effie and her chest ever leave our village. It was a couple of years after the initial excitement; general interest in the matter had begun to flag, and even my mother and aunt seemed to have slackened in attentiveness. Then something happened which galvanized everyone into wakefulness once again. Auntie Effie announced that she needed to visit a goldsmith; no, not old Lotlikar from our village, that incompetent fool who could barely tell the difference between gold and silver, and who probably hadn't seen a proper emerald or sapphire in his life. No; she needed to see an expert in Ponnji, a goldsmith of her confidence, whom she knew from many years before, and who fashioned jewellery only for the finest families in Goa. Her brow was creased with a secret worry. My father and Uncle Mickey were both directed to accompany her to the city, helping her on and off the bus, leaving her free to bear the chest herself. They were ordered to wait for her outside the large shop while she conferred with the expert within. She emerged an hour and a half later, chest in arms and a satisfied expression on her face, as though something she'd long suspected was indeed true -- and very advantageous, as well. After that incident Auntie Effie took to locking herself in her room for several hours at least once a month. We usually heard the grating sound of the chest being dragged from under the bed, and then a bit of tinkling and clunking, sometimes interspersed by the rustling of papers. We imagined her sitting cross-legged on the bed or on the mat, counting her riches, and leafing through... title deeds to vast ancestral properties? Manganese mines perhaps? All wrenched from the tight fists of perfidious in-laws... In all these years, not a nasty word about her late husband or his relatives ever crossed Auntie Effie's lips. Many people (including my mother and my aunt) sought to ingratiate themselves with her by raising the issue in a manner of complete sympathy with her and condemnation of her rascally in-laws, but she'd never get drawn into their game. She'd just shake her head and sigh, saying: 'Family. The most important thing in the world.' And then, with a telling look, add: 'Blood is thicker than water. Family.' While my mother understood the reproach for what it was, Auntie Piety, who was more thick-skinned, never did; not even when the final 'family' was accompanied by a wagging of a finger. # And so the years passed. I finished school and moved to a college in Bombay, where I lived in a hostel, and returned to Goa only for the Christmas and summer holidays. My snotty cousins grew up, though time did not seem to improve their dispositions significantly. Father and Uncle Mickey grew older and greyer and continued to treat each other to urrac at the taverna; and while the harshest margins of the rivalry between mother and Auntie Piety smoothened, the undercurrent of competition insofar as Auntie Effie's affections were concerned continued to dominate their relationship. Imposed by the necessity of jointly, if alternately, caring for Auntie Effie, an uneasy truce developed between my mother and my aunt. If not for the suggestion of greed and unsavoury anticipation to inherit the contents of the celebrated chest, this could even have developed into a semblance of affection. I wouldn't say that either my mother or my aunt actually awaited Auntie Effie's demise, but what each explicitly desired was that when that sad eventuality came to pass, it came to pass in her home, on the assumption, I suppose, that it would lend priority to a claim over the chest. Auntie Effie took ill more and more often, as is natural with someone in her seventies; but she was never so ill that she forgot to take adequate precautions about the safety of her chest. As always, it was securely double-locked. But crafty old thing that she was, she took to demanding company from the 'other party' while she was sick; which is to say that when she was laid up at our place, she specifically asked for Auntie Piety or one of my cousins to spend most of the day, and sometimes even nights, in her room; and conversely, when she was unwell at Aunty Piety's, it was mother whom she asked for, to visit her. This cunning artifice worked most successfully in keeping the sanctity of the chest inviolate. Once she thought she saw mother try to open the casket while she was asleep (though mother insisted she was only sweeping under the cot a second time that day in order to keep the room dust-free); but Auntie Effie was not to be pacified; ill as she was, she marched off to a gloating Auntie Piety, and refused to speak to mother for a month. Both, mother and Auntie Piety learned their lesson. Waited upon hand and foot by mother and Auntie Piety, Auntie Effie was the envy of the grannies of the village who were not half as well cared for by their own daughters or daughters-in-law. But however devoted the care, it cannot postpone the inevitable. One April, when I came home for the summer, Auntie Effie lay breathing heavily and belabouredly in what appeared to be her final illness. As fate would have it, Auntie Effie was in our house at the time -- the very same house that she'd first stepped into when she came to our village a decade ago, bagless and with such ceremony, on a bullock-cart; and the cot she lay on was the very same one that she'd appropriated that day, and which I had long ago ceased to think of as mine. And below the cot was her chest. My mother never left her side in all those days. Auntie Piety too joined the vigil, and though mother was not at all happy, no one wanted an unseemly quarrel. The situation became so serious that my father and I, Uncle Mickey and my cousins, all crowded into the little room. We looked such a fine and united family, but it was difficult to tell whether it was grief or greed that bound us together. When Auntie Effie's breathing turned into a wheeze and then a rattle, we knew that the end had come, and all of us wept a little. The village women helped my mother and aunt prepare the body for burial. But when the time came for it to be carried away, my mother said that she was too distraught to go to the cemetery. She felt faint she said, and so would remain at home. Auntie Piety said that there was no way she could leave her sister-in-law all alone, and declared that she would stay back too. Mother said that she would not dream of preventing Auntie Piety from saying her last farewell to Auntie Effie at the graveyard, and that she must not forgo this privilege on her account. But Auntie Piety was adamant. I would not have thought that she had such affection for mother -- so much affection, in fact, that when we returned after performing our sad duty, we found that she and my mother were seated in Auntie Effie's little room exactly as we had left them, staring at the cot. The villagers who had come back with us in the hope of a being offered some snacks and drinks praised their devotion loudly and freely. But this soon gave way to irritation when they found their hostesses showed no signs of repairing to the kitchen to serve up the customary refreshment. Since the house was ours, it finally fell to my mother's lot to rise and do the needful. She asked Auntie Piety to help her. Aunty Piety agreed, but just when mother was in the middle of frying the bojes, quick as a flash of hot oil she nipped into Auntie Effie's room, snatched up the chest, and would have made it through the door had her way not been barred by mother. 'How dare you steal from my house, you thieving wench!' my mother accused her. 'I cannot steal from you what is not yours in the first place,' retorted Auntie Piety. But mother had already dug her nails into the clasp of the purloined chest and was pulling with all her might. Auntie Piety clung on as a drowning woman would to a straw. The charade went on in full view of the startled villagers who were enjoying it so much that they were more than willing to forgo their victuals for more of this. But to their chagrin it ended abruptly when the old clasp came off suddenly in mother's hands, and Auntie Piety tottered backwards as a result, sending the chest crashing to the floor. If we had termites in the rafters you'd have heard them munch in the silence that followed. The chest lay in smithereens, and its contents lay in a little heap: several dozen little objects wrapped carefully in strips of yellowing newspaper. If they were rubies or emeralds, they'd be the size of pigeons' eggs. It would be wealth, fabulous beyond our wildest dreams. My rotten little cousins broke the spell and scooped up some of the objects, uncouthly tearing off the wrapping. Their fingers worked rapidly and in a minute or two all the pieces lay exposed: a pile of smooth pebbles. Mother and Auntie Piety, their faces contorted with pure horror, both stepped back as though from a nest of scorpions. The silence was shattered by a shriek from Auntie Piety as she fled home. My mother just crumpled to the floor, an expression of abject defeat in her eyes. # The village was afire for days; those who had neglected to attend the funeral or its aftermath regretted it sorely. Hastening to redeem her credibility, old Anjoli-bai said she'd always thought there was something fishy in the way Aunty Effie had tripped of all places in front of Narayan the carpenter's shop, and had repeatedly pointed this out -- though no one could recall her ever having done so. Several villagers privately admitted that they'd reported their stories based on subtle innuendo and sundry remarks dropped by Auntie Effie herself, though they couldn't put a finger on a single explicit lie she'd told. They were egged on, they said, by the reactions of my mother and Auntie Piety; and who would know best, but her own relatives? When the goldsmith in Ponnji was contacted about the visit of several years ago, he was at first unable to recall it; and when pressed, he remembered that Auntie Effie, whom he knew only slightly (since the village she had married into was also his wife's native village), had engaged him in a lengthy conversation about a possible marriage alliance for his daughter. Not a word was exchanged in his professional capacity, and the parcel she was carrying was not even uncovered. He thought it was some shopping she'd done. # The pebbles lie in my drawer, where I keep them in a velvet pouch. They have been there for years. I would have preferred them to have been rubies and emeralds, of course, but even as they are, they constitute a treasure of sorts. When I feel despondent or overwhelmed at work or otherwise, or when fate gives me an unfair push, as it is wont to do to all of us once in a while, I run my fingers through this inheritance of Auntie Effie's and draw something of her strength from them -- this little pile that, combined with a remarkable resourcefulness, enabled her to escape from the tyranny of her in-laws, and construct for herself a life with a modicum of luxury, turning the pettinesses and prejudices of people to her own advantage. ###