SHORT STORY: THE HOUSE AT ASSAGÂO This extract is from Peter Nazareth's anthology recently published in Goa: "Pivoting on the Point of Return: Modern Goan Literature". Nazareth writes of this story: "The attempt to return home from the West is tackled more intensively in a story, 'The House at Assagão', by a writer who chooses the pen name Assagaonkar. Of mixed parentage, he has a protagonist whose father is Goan and mother English. The story describes in detail the return, for the first time, to Goa. The return is not one of nostalgia for the journey is long and hard. Finally, when Joanna is alone in the ancestral home in Assagão, she goes through an intense struggle to capture the past from the physical space she at last inhabits and make it part of her psychic baggage for she knows she must move on. The language makes us experience the struggle too for we too must capture the past and take it with us. Joanna is triumphant. Although it is not the end of moving on, it is the end of alienation: through art."
By Assagaonkar HITCHING THEIR RUCKSACKS higher up their shoulders, they trod purposefully down the gangplank. Goa at last. As soon as they got down to the wharf they were surrounded by touts advising them to take taxis or to go to certain hotels, but with the accustomed ease of long acquaintance the two girls brushed them aside and set out to get clear of the crowd. In appearance they were like many of the other travellers on the boat. The word hippy is these days applied indiscriminately to such people and superficially the word does suggest something about a style of life, a style of dress and a willingness to live and travel cheaply, and often in discomfort, for the advantages of interesting experiences, but the word hippy disguises the differences between the people who come from different parts of the world, with different backgrounds, of different ages, all with their own individual reasons for travelling. These two were between eighteen and twenty-one wearing blue jeans and faded shirts. One wore coloured beads around her neck, the other had silver bangles at her wrist. They'd been travelling a long time it seemed, since they both had leathery tans, not the bronze-brown instantly acquired with lotions, but the drier tan which comes only after long exposure to the sun and wind. Even the skin of the fair-haired girl, which must have been washed white at home, had a texture that seemed to have acquired a resilient defiance towards the sun. After stopping to confer together for a moment they headed towards a cafe, cool with open doors and windows and dark round wooden tables with unsteady chairs. As they were sitting at a table waiting to be served the fair girl turned to the other, smiled and hummed, "O show me the way to the next whisky bar," and the other catching the allusions and the associations laughed. They ordered samosas and beer and talked sporadically but indifferently. They'd come to find after three months travelling together that they were better left alone at times like these. Conversation was for when you were actually en route, cooped up in an overcrowded bus or standing by the side of the road waiting for a lift. The dark girl started talking to the waiter-proprietor asking him questions about places to stay. The man was middle-aged and tolerant and replied good humouredly. He suggested a place where they could stay for about fifteen rupees and they decided it would be worth trying. They got a room without difficulty and after changing their clothes and taking a wash they lay on the large double bed. The dark-haired girl took a cigarette from her mouth and, flicking the ash into the stained aluminium ash tray on the bed-table beside her, said casually, "I think I'll go straight up to Assagão." The other looked at her. "By yourself?" Her thoughts had been following their own course, pursuing the idea of going up to Assagão and seeing the house. It was an idea which she had had so clearly for such a long time now that it was difficult to realize that it was still her own idea, very personal to her and not yet communicated to anyone. Even Nancy who had shared the last three months with her hadn't shared this idea and knew nothing of its importance and the overriding significance it bore in relation to the whole journey which they had undertaken. Of course she must go there alone; of course it was important that she must discover the place by herself. The experience of it had to be fully her own and with another there it could never be that. So she said simply, "Yes. By myself. I think I'll go there on my own first, just to see what it's like and if everything's okay, maybe we can both go there tomorrow." Nancy understood that there must be a good reason why Joanna wanted to go alone, understood too that it would be wrong to probe. "Right then. I'll see you back here later this evening. Shall we meet for supper?" "No, better not. I'm not sure what time I'm going to be back. I may even spend the night there, but I'll try to get back if possible." Carrying a small shoulder bag Joanna left the hotel and made for the bus stand. Asking a passer-by, she was directed to the next bus leaving for Mapusa. It was three-quarters empty so she got in and took a seat near the back. Staring out of the window, but not perceiving the melee of streaming people, she thought about why she was there. She must have been about three when her father first talked to her about Goa. Whenever he talked about it, he never described the place. He always assumed that they knew what it was like. He talked mostly of the happy times they'd spent there before and after the war, and the happy times were always associated with the holidays and going down from Bombay on the boat. The whole family went down together, Jessica and Albert, Albert's sister Emily, and the children: Joseph, Maude, John, Mathias, Esther, Bertha, Alice and Joanna's father, Dominic. And sometimes Uncle Afonso and Uncle Manfred, Albert's brothers, would come down with them. When they arrived Uncle Justin, who stayed in Goa and looked after the house, would meet them at the jetty. There would be the long delay at the Customs while the Customs officers made it clear to you that you were passing from British India to Portuguese India. Then, when everything had been cleared and everyone was through, there would be the delicate operation of getting into the small boats which ferried across the mouth of the river. Everyone had to be carried through the shallows by the porters who made their living doing just this. The girls always disliked this business, but they disliked getting wet even more and so with much giggling and little screams and puffing and grunting all were carried into the boats. At the other side more noise and confusion as taxis were hired and Uncle Justin bargained and tried to bring down the cost. And when a sum had been agreed there would be a bustling and shoving as they tried to fit themselves into the taxis. The servants took the luggage with them, the suitcases, the pots and pans, the hat boxes and the various baskets and other odds and ends. The children would be cajoled and scolded into sitting on someone's knee and keeping quiet. And off they would go on the dusty road to Mapusa and, a little way beyond, to Assagão. Joanna remembered too her father telling her how Assagão had got its name. There was a party of people searching for a place to settle. Who those people were and what they were doing wasn't explained. Anyhow, they'd gone through Mapusa and weren't really expecting to find anything else. An advance group had gone on ahead and had climbed up the hill which separates Assagão from Mapusa. And when they came to the top of the hill they saw in the dip of the hills a small village and they called out to those following them, "Assa-gão! Assagão, There's a village. There's a village!" Years later when Joanna heard the story of Xenophon's Anabasis and the soldiers crying out, "Thalassa, Thalassa," she remembered the story of Assagão which her father had taken so much delight in telling. And so the taxis would climb slowly up to Assagão zig-zagging up the side of the hill and then five minutes later they were there. They would be met by other relatives who had come down from Bombay before them, Uncle Francis and Auntie Flavia, Jessica's sister and her husband, whom the children didn't like as they were aged and crabby, because they had no children and had grown old disappointed and not understanding; and sometimes Aunt Belinda would be there. Again after the greetings and the kisses and the smiles and bows of the servants, the children would race inside running and shouting through the rooms, exploring them to see that nothing had changed and all was as it should be. They would go into the garden at the back and look at the pigs and laugh at their grunting and snorting. Then there would be the scramble for the beds deciding where they would all sleep. And there would be tears when some found they were going to have to sleep downstairs and not in the bedrooms upstairs where the most exciting things happened. Jessica would be supervising everything, organizing the unpacking of the boxes, getting out the old linen, stirring the servants to prepare something to eat, telling the children what to do and reproving them if they began to get out of hand. Pretty soon the meal would be ready and the children would eat first, while the adults continued to talk and unpack. Some of the older children might be considered adults this year and conscious of this, they didn't know whether to follow their inclination and eat with the children or wait until the adults ate. After the children had eaten and filled themselves with fruit and cashew nuts, the ubiquitous servants would come and remove their plates and the children, a little less active and energetic now, would split into groups and wander into the other rooms. Then Jessica would call the adults who would come smiling and hungry, and the beer chilled in a bucket in the well would be produced and consumed with the chicken curry and rice. And while they were eating they would exchange information, swapping news of what had happened during the year and Uncle Justin would relate what had happened in Assagão: the births, the marriages, and deaths. Lunch over, the adults would push back their chairs, one or two of the men smoking cigars, and then all would retire for the siesta. About half-past two the household would be asleep, the only sounds being the ayah crooning a baby to sleep or the occasional bird. If you walked down the road at that hour there were no sounds, the silence and the desire to sleep was universal. An hour and a half later there would be stirrings. First the servants boiling water and preparing the tea, then Jessica would be up making sure everything was in order, telling the cook what to prepare for supper, giving the house a thorough inspection while the others still rested. Then tea was set on the table with hundreds of cups and assorted biscuits, and people, emerged in their twos and threes a little drowsily. And Uncle Francis would come and sit at the table, in his dirty white pyjama trousers and his singlet, which always seemed to have holes in it, through which tufts of black and grey hair sprouted. Jessica would frown disapprovingly at him, but he never noticed. Auntie Flavia, who had learned to bend with Jessica's wrath, was also unconcerned about her husband's dress. After tea it would be cooler, and sometimes the children walked down to the shop further down the road and the adults, read books or papers and played cards. When it grew dark they would all be back in the house together, and the servants would light the oil lamps and carry them from the kitchen into the various rooms. The card-players would play strenuously, and the readers might rub their eyes and continue reading or simply sit out in the verandah at the front watching the signs of activity along the road. The drinking for the evening would begin and the caju would come out, or, for those who didn't like caju, the scotch. The younger children at this time would begin to feel a little restless, since there was nothing for them to do and they couldn't go out. Sometimes they'd pester the servants who in their turn would get angry and cross and Jessica would have to come and settle matters, which she always did in her firm, definite manner. Sometimes the children would persuade Uncle Manfred to tell them stories. He was still a bachelor then and liked the children, and since he didn't like cards, he could usually be persuaded to keep the children amused for an hour or two, before it was time for their supper. His best stories were his ghost stories, simple stories, a bit silly in retrospect, but which at the time thrilled the children. After supper the children, tired and happy, would reluctantly go off to bed, discussing with each other the plans for the next morning. And the grown-ups would continue talking and playing cards until late into the night and then they too would straggle to bed. So the first day would end, and the other days followed, very similar, with the addition of picnics and outings to the beach. Then there would be particularly hot days when they all seemed to get on each other's nerves and there would be squabbles and rows and anger and tears. And sometimes among the adults there would be more serious arguments. These were usually about money and property and would be very bitter and the family would split into factions, each maintaining their special rights and privileges and arguing vehemently against the others. The divisions caused by these arguments went deep and ultimately it was these which split the family. At other times the differences were forgotten and the family tried to remain a family, presenting to the world the smiling front of solidarity, and indeed they themselves believed in their self-created ideal of the happy family, united by strong bonds of kinship. But in fact they were all hostile and suspicious, all jealous of their own positions, and in later years this became increasingly apparent. And so her father used to talk of Goa and Joanna used to ask questions. It was something intimate which she and her father shared, from which her mother was excluded, since she had never been to Goa, not even to Bombay. Joanna's father had met her in England in 1954 on one of his trips, and they'd fallen in love after their fashion and got married, and he had never been back since. He still kept up contacts with the family in Bombay, and occasionally a friend or relative would make his way north to South Shields, but contact like that was seldom, and the father and his family thought of themselves as English. Only the name, Lobo, was a little strange, but he'd been there for so long now that people were used to it. And Joanna and her three brothers and sisters had gone to the Catholic schools in the vicinity and had grown up as good English Catholics, knowing little about Goa and India. All except for Joanna, for because she'd been the first-born, her father had taken her to him and to her he'd confided the love of the places and people of his youth. There had been no one else to whom he could have spoken, who would have been such an indulgent listener. And as the years which he spent away from India grew in number so his desire to relate it all and its meaning for him grew stronger. So between father and daughter there developed this intimacy based on the knowledge which they shared about distant people and a place. And the small girl sitting on her father's knee understood in her precocious way the intensity of her father's passion, which she encouraged with her questions and her wide-eyed interest. Her brothers and sisters were each in their turn exposed to the same enthusiasm, but with them it didn't catch fire, and Joanna and her father were left to keep their secrets. And so she heard the stories time after time and became acquainted with the characters, and she began to look forward with her father to the letters which came from Bombay with news of family matters. She remembered well the telegrams and letters which came announcing the deaths of her grandparents, following each other in quick succession, and her father weeping and her mother comforting him but indifferent. And after that her father's talk would be about going back for a holiday to see the family. Joanna and he would plan it together, but the years went by and the possibility of it became remote and the others seemed uninterested anyway. Then Joanna and he would talk about their own trip, just the two of them together, and her father would mention the places he'd take her, his boyhood haunts, and the people he'd introduce her to: his old music master, his godfather. And the two of them would drop into the fantasy with equal enthusiasm; the difference between them was that her father knew that it was just fantasy but pretended that it wasn't, whereas Joanna as she grew older became more convinced that the reality of what they had talked about for so long was coming closer to her. And finally the time had come. She'd done well at school and her headmistress had suggested that she try for Oxford. Her mother had been enthusiastic and so she had stayed on the extra term at school and had done the exams in December and had got a place. So there were nine months to wait and she'd known that this was her time. She decided to get a job for three months and then set out with the money she'd earned and with the savings and pocket money which she'd put by from year to year. Her father, who had reconciled himself now to never going back, became quickened to life once more when he understood that Joanna really was going, and he promised to give her a little money. A girl she'd known at school and whom she got to know better when they worked together in the same firm had said that she would like to go too, and so they'd made plans together. When the time grew nearer for them to set out, the whole family seemed to catch the fire which had been consuming Joanna and her father, and, for weeks before, the conversation was about the coming trip, and they remembered all her father's stories together and listened to the father wonder whether things would be the same. Joanna knew then that the trip wasn't only for herself. It was for all of them, but most of all it was for her father, who would never see that world again, but who now lived in it more vividly than ever. The travelling had been harder and rougher than they'd anticipated and they had been glad when they'd reached Bombay and were able to relax and get treatment for the various ailments which they'd succumbed to along the way. Bombay had been looked forward to with almost as much anticipation as Goa, not so much for the sense of place but for the people. They'd known she was coming and had been expecting her. It had been agreed that they would stay with her Aunt Maude, one of her father's elder sisters. Aunt Maude had a large flat and her sons would be good company for Nancy and Joanna and would be able to take them around. It had been a good time they had all had together in Bombay. Joanna found that, although she'd thought she had known them all through their letters and the lives they led, she'd been wrong. Her impressions had missed entirely. She found that there existed a state of close family which she wasn't used to. There was a warmth and intimacy which gave one security, but yet, to one coming to it from outside, at times it was claustrophobic and oppressive. The warmth was there at a price: there were rules to be obeyed, a dimension of individual expression to be sacrificed. For her, following these implied rules was effortless because of the novelty of the experience and because she knew it was temporary, but she wondered about her cousins and she tried to discuss it with them. They were reluctant to talk about it, perhaps because they didn't understand what she meant and couldn't distinguish, as she did, between the independence to do things and the independence to think and say things and to have one's opinions taken seriously. They had, however, shared her enthusiasm about Goa, but they knew it in a different way from her. They had been there regularly for their holidays not always going to the house at Assagão, in fact more often going to their father's family house at Margão. Goa was a place of holidays for them, beaches, lazy days, expeditions to neighbouring towns to visit other Bombay friends who were down for the vacation. It was where they enjoyed going, but it held little of the same meaning for them that it had acquired for her over the years. They recognized it as the place of their origin, but there was no feeling attached to this recognition. For them it was a simple acknowledgement of historical facts. The talk in their house too was often about Goa, but, living close to it and having experienced it themselves, they felt no resonances in the conversation, whereas for Joanna the word itself rang with magic associations and the memories of blood. >From them she learned more about the geography of the place and was told what to look for and advised how to adapt herself. They warned her of changes and tried to dispel the illusions which they feared she held. Despite their warnings her excitement grew and the close details which they gave her of the look of the place and how to make out the house in Assagão made her yearning to be there even stronger. Goa and Assagão grew in mystic stature the longer she stayed in Bombay until she could bear it no more and decided she must leave and go there. And so they wrote letters to Aunt Emily at the house and told her that Joanna was coming, and Joanna was warned again that Aunt Emily wasn't wealthy and not to expect too much. Nancy, who was bemused by Bombay and enjoyed meeting the numerous cousins and aunts and uncles, was willing to follow where Joanna led and so the two of them had set out again. Now as the bus trundled off towards Mapusa Joanna felt the blood coursing wildly through her. The joy of fulfillment was upon her. There had been so much anticipation, so much planning, so much rehearsal of just this journey. The present coming into being of an ambition, a fast desire, made her vibrant with a joy exploding inside her. An intense feeling of heartfelt happiness took her and enriched the perception of each succeeding moment, as though she was experiencing an ethereal mode of purified emotion quite unrelated to any physical sensation, as though it was being experienced apart from her, separate and making her oblivious to that specific time and place. It was an interlude of perfect happiness the beauty and verity of which were fully and consciously lived through at the time, and would be remembered in the future, without the same intensity perhaps, but with a strong memory of its significance at that moment. At Mapusa she was impatient and couldn't wait for a taxi and decided to walk. She bought some food to save Aunt Emily possible embarrassment, and carrying this she set off eagerly in the direction of Assagão. There was little traffic on the road since it was just after the lunch hour and people were sleeping. The sun was hot and bright but she felt no discomfort. Once she stopped to check her way and when a man passed her coming down the hill she pointed in the direction from which she had come and asked, "Assagão?" and he had nodded, and smiling she had strode on with renewed vigour. She felt a heightened self-confidence giving her strength. As she walked her thoughts were divided. Sometimes the memories of her father's stories swirled around her, and there were suddenly vivid images of a small girl, herself, sitting on her father's knee looking intently at his unshaven chin and listening to the succession of names, trying to put faces to them. And then she recalled herself from these images and took note of the road and the scenes she was passing, gazing at them with deep seriousness, as if trying to fix forever the pictures of the occasion in her mind. She observed the rolling hills, dry and dusty with shrubs, and she saw the leafy trees in the gardens and orchards which she passed. At first she passed one or two houses set back a little from the road, but nothing stirred, and she didn't know whether they were deserted or not. She felt rather than saw the colours of the landscape: drab greens and brown dust where no rain had been for months, and the strong grey stone of the buildings. A bird cried out from nearby and feeling in herself that the cry was somehow symbolic she looked into the trees to see if she could identify it and thus make it one with her in her experience of the place, but she couldn't see it, and this too was significant. Only once did anything pass her on the road. This was a motorcycle hurtling to Mapusa driven by a Goan youth, and riding pillion was a bare-chested Anglo-Saxon-looking youth. The motorbike with its noise was gone in a minute but it reminded her that the time her father knew had gone. It was a different country and another people she was confronting; the task of reconstructing what once was would be difficult, and so would the question of deciding her own place in its history. Thus her thoughts shuttled between a recreation of a former world and the experiencing of the present and she found that the two lay in easy juxtaposition, indeed, often merging into one another so that at odd moments she felt unsure of her own identity, uncertain of what it was she was experiencing, "time present and time past" being too intimately related to be dissoluble, and both agents controlling her perception of herself. She reached the church. It was on her left a little way from the road on a small rise. She knew that the house was not much further. Six hundred yards or so after the church, they had said; you can't mistake it, a large long house and at the gate two lions of stone by the wall, steps leading up from the road to the house. And at last she was there. The house at Assagão. She looked at the gate, at the steps, and quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly, a wave of emotion more powerful than she had ever known rushed upon her. She trembled as she felt its force through her body and the tears welled in her eyes and she wept. She wept heavily, choking and sobbing, not conscious of any thought, simply this emotion overpowering her, taking possession. She made no effort to restrain her tears letting them pour forth from her as they willed. And then after some minutes the emotion passed, the tears ceased and control came back to her. She wiped her face first with her sleeve, then with a dirty handkerchief and made her way slowly up the steps. When she reached the top of the steps the door was open, but she didn't go in. She called out: "Hello. Is there anyone at home?" and waited. She heard some shuffling and then she could see an old woman coming towards her. "Yes?" said the figure questioningly but authoritatively. "I'm Joanna. Dominic's daughter. I think you knew that I was coming." At once the initial suspicion reflected on the old woman's face changed into a welcoming smile. "'Oh, yes. Of course, Joanna. I'm sorry I didn't recognize you. I thought you must be one of those hippies looking for somewhere to live. We get them coming round sometimes. Come in. Come in. I didn't hear a car. How did you get here?" "I walked." "Where from?" "From Mapusa." "You walked all the way from Mapusa? Dear child, you must be exhausted." And Aunt Emily, ushering her in, fussed over her and looked concerned, playing the same kindly role now that she'd played for so many years: worrying after other people's children and taking of them, seeing that they had enough to eat and staunching their tears when their mothers and fathers were busy playing cards or living their own lives. Joanna knew and understood, and let herself be taken over in this way, and immediately there was an intimacy between them, an intimacy which only the young and old share, because the mature are too cynical ever to accept a relationship in that same immediate way. Aunt Emily, she realized, knew nothing about her, but the fact that she was Dominic's daughter was enough, and that was the origin of the bond. Joanna, knowing of Aunt Emily from her father and the family in Bombay, felt a strong sympathy for this woman who had no children of her own and whose "foster" children, although always remembering her, lived away from her, leaving her to this house and the memories. When they had settled down at the long table in the dining room, drinking the tea which Aunt Emily had insisted on making, and after Joanna had satisfied Aunt Emily by telling her about the family in England, she began to ask question about the house and the people who had first built it, and what it had looked like before. Aunt Emily answered briefly at first thinking perhaps that the questions were asked out of politeness: a young girl trying to find a bridge across to an old woman; but when she saw that the girl was genuinely interested and knew something of the house's history already, she began to take more care with her answers. She replied gravely and precisely, giving the details she remembered, but she became enthusiastic as the memories came back to her and she had the opportunity of recalling them for this girl. Joanna encouraged her by promptings and nodding her head and smiling, until in the middle of her talk Aunt Emily said, "Would you like to see around the house?" and Joanna smiled with pleasure and nodded. So Aunt Emily took her though the rooms pointing to this object and that: the palanquin on which a crippled great aunt had been taken to church on Sundays, the photograph of grandfather's uncle, who had been sent away to become a priest, the dusty candelabra no longer used but still standing on the sideboard. Joanna looked round the almost bare house with sadness. They had told her in Bombay that its grandeur was gone, that it was not as her father remembered it, but to come and confront the reality of a big, half-empty house with little furniture and unused-rooms was nonetheless painful. Joanna saw it as her father would see it and she felt the wistfulness and wise comprehension that she knew he would feel. Wandering from room to room she continued to ask questions throughout: who used to sleep in this bedroom, was it true that grandfather and grandmother had been married in the church and spent their wedding night here, what was grandmother's maiden name and what part of Goa had she come from? And Aunt Emily laughing now at the enthusiasm and seriousness of the child tried to answer as best she could. Then they arrived back at the big dining room with the storm-lamp hung in the middle of the room above the table, and Aunt Emily told her about the meals that had been given there and the crockery and cutlery which had been used, and the servants who had waited on them all. And now that she was sitting there listening to Aunt Emily describing it as her father described it, she found it hard to imagine that in this dark dusty room with empty wall cupboards and chipped glasses there had once been such conviviality. She had found it easier in South Shields to picture the scene. But she wasn't disappointed. She had known it would be like this, and for her its present condition was as important as what it had once been. The past and the present converged on her, fusing for her a new conception of experience, teaching her that sensations are only part of life, part of the early years, and that knowledge grows not from the storing of new perceptions but from the understanding of the present through the past, a past which one has not lived through oneself but a past which is reconstructed by way of the reminiscences and traditions of others which one makes one's own. For Joanna this was important, it was a way in which she could come to terms with herself, because she became, by sitting there and listening and observing, a bearer of the traditions which now became her responsibility too. And understanding the force of this responsibility, she knew that a time would come when she too, like her father and Aunt Emily, would pass on the knowledge and experience of this life to others, and she felt at that moment a childish impatience to grow up and to marry and have children, and then to share the joy of it with them. Her apprenticeship she understood was coming to an end, and she felt an eagerness inside her to impart her knowledge to others. Aunt Emily had asked her if she wanted to lie down but she had said no, and now sat at the table alone. Aunt Emily after excusing herself had gone to rest. She sat now at a window box looking at the sun brightly illuminating the stone cobbles of the patio across which a washing line had been unceremoniously strung. Physical perceptions and sensations gave rise to musing and reflections and then redirected the perception to something new: the room was cool but outside the sun baked the stones, the stillness and quiet of the time and its suggestion of arrested moment contrasted with the rapid movements of her ideas and feelings. Stillness; her father's unshaven chin; the wedding party; the dark wood of the dining room table; transcience, Aunt Emily's self-knowledge. "... something achieved; a stage of life passed. Greene talks somewhere about the patios in Goa, but he doesn't see the patios as I see them. He sees the setting of a novel or a story, a place becoming not only landscape but sinister participant. I see a place, where my fathers talked and laughed. Where they cried and argued and where they had their triumphs and their absurdities... A scrap of newspaper by the far corner of the patio... Is this an achievement? Because I'm here? Because I've overcome the obstacles? Because I've learned something? What is it I've learned? Memories exist independent of reality. What time would it be at home? Dad'll be at his desk. Is he thinking about me? Did he ever sit here like me? Aunt Emily's story about the time he smashed the eggs when he was small. And now he's far from it all in another country. In another country. And besides, the wench is dead. Where did I hear that? I wonder what happened to all the children who played here. I know what happened. They grew up and got married and had children. And I shall too. What a shame that the house should be left to decay like this. What a shame that people should grow old. They should be frozen at the time of their greatest joy living it forever, never growing old, never tiring of their happiness. But it doesn't happen like that. I feel content. And now what else? Why do I wonder what else? This has not been drunk to the dregs, and yet I want to move on... something new... my forefathers lived in this house. So. And what are you to them? They knew me and I know them. You flatter yourself. You were not important to them, and they are only important to you because you've created them, you and your father. No, they had a sense of continuity. They knew there was more than just their lives... that children and grandchildren were coming after them... they worked knowing that... what they did was for what was to come. They weren't always conscious of it. Yes, they were selfish as we are selfish, but the men and women they made themselves were made striving to be people who wanted to contribute to the happiness of those to come. They failed. The house is a testament to the failure, perhaps, but the joy and laughter which they knew are remembered and spoken about and lived through in the following generations, and so there is a continuity, a tradition worth taking up despite the stupidity, the arrogance, the selfishness, all of which are remembered too, but not with bitterness, because there is no feeling to those memories. The continuity is in the striving for the joy of life, a joy only possible because it is shared laughing and suffering together. Limited, but nevertheless a part of the vision which included family and friends and children laughing and crying and eating and loving. Do I accept this version of the world?..." So she continued to sit there and she thought deeply of past and present and tried to make up her mind about how she felt about both. She wanted to conclude the reverie, terminate it with a decision about what she had learned. She looked from the patio again back into the room and noticed the objects one by one as she had done several times already. She looked at the ten cane-bottomed chairs round the table, all rather rickety now, but once firm and upright. She noticed what at first appeared to be some scratching at the top of one of the backs of the chairs, but then she looked at the other chairs which, facing the table, had their backs to her and noticed identical scratches. She got up from her seat and went to look more closely and then she realized that it was a monogram carved there on all the chairs. Slowly she traced out the letters with her fingers, J.M.E., José Maria Emmanuel, the name of her great-grandfather. She was suffused with a strange certain pleasure. The sense of continuity was at that moment suddenly very real. "My great-grandfather had these chairs made," she said softly to herself. * * * Pivoting on the Point of Return -- Modern Goan Literature. Edited by Peter Nazareth peter-nazar...@uiowa.edu. ISBN 978-81-905682-5-8. Goa, 2010.