Skins

Part Sixteen.

My dearest Siddhanth,

I arrived in the village today. All the houses are painted in bright colours, but they look unusually sad. Maybe it's because none of the houses sem to have any windows. Or doors. But the jungle wraps its arms around everything. Boys waved to us from the tops of coconut trees. Vivid green and orange and yellow palm fronds swished and glittered. Of course, I'm not describing scenes you don't already know.

I'm sorry about what happened. The strange thing is, I don't regret it. There's no use regretting the inevitable. The one I act I do regret was not one performed, but things I could have said. I'm cowardly, I know. I acknowledge it.

I don't think I'll forget you. I'll keep these letters. And your leather drawings. I'll remember.

I love you.

She laid her pen down on the windowless windowsill, folded the letter and sealed it inside her leather box. A collision memoir. She tucked it away in her pillowcase and crept, soft-shoed, out of the hut and into the forest.

The Karnataka forest was still and dense. It was March, indelicate vividity gripped to the trees like shadows in the late afternoon. In a damp white cotton dress, she sat with her legs crossed. She had flowers braided in her aureate hair. Her translucent shoulders slanted back, elbows in the cool earth. A white woman, alone in a forest.

A white woman.

She thought white thoughts, as one expects of a white woman. She stayed firmly within her humid, drooping cotton. Even under her eyelids, a white woman's eyelids, patriarchy slicked itself into her sight. She breathed the Indian air, not taking it in. It pooled in her lungs. Stagnated. As expected, of course.

In spite of her fair skin, green eyes and light hair, she melted into India like coconut oil without ever appearing to take notice of it. Somewhere in the space between her blissfully white thoughts, a weighty realisation of the hollowness of It All would settle in her stomach.

A faraway bird trilled like running water.

It was a strange sight, if anyone had cared to look. A white woman alone in a forest. A white woman. Dressed from head to toe in white cotton, golden-haired and doe-eyed green. She struggled on unbreathable breath.

In the following days, It All began to crumble.

'Why are you crying?'

'What?'

'Why are you crying?' a red-haired missionary closed the chapel door behind him. He strode to the front pew and sat beside her, his red elbows resting on parted knees.

'Not much of a reason, really, Edward,' she said. Her eyes reflected the evening-stained windows. Painted with Gabriel. 'I think I'm just sad.'

She left him with an answer writhing in frustrated youth.

*

Edward sat in the chapel long after she'd left. He unbuttoned the top button of his starched collar and sighed. Crossing himself, he stood, looked at his feet and frowned so his sunburned forehead crinkled. He shook his head. His footsteps dragged his presence out, and the sound he'd left echoed around the empty chapel.

He returned to the missionary hut and sat on his own bed. Narrow. Rain sounded like children's fingernails flicking the tin roof. He crossed the room to close the window, and stopped short, his eyes caught on her rain-flecked pillow. Something black and shining like shoeshine peeped out of the pillowcase. He took the box and admired its details. Leather carved into Hindu mythology, stippled with henna. A strange possession for a Catholic.

He unclasped it gently and rifled through its contents. His eyes grew wide and helpless. His jaw trembled. His nostrils flared.

He dropped the box and ran out of the hut, slamming the door as he went. A crucifix nailed to the wall swung limply. God couldn't help her now.

He never noticed there was no window to close.

She sat alone in the forest, pale-skinned, mosquito-bitten, dreaming.