Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon (100 books to read in a lifetime txt) 📕

lost in her betel nuts and gin. Each night Radhika traipses barefoot through the scrub jungle, coming back to the house at dawn with her feet swollen and bleeding. She’s trying to find her way back home, or back to something better. Poor Radhika, she’s always been slow to give up hope.

Stephen’s miserable too. Since Paavai left four years ago Stephen’s been in a state of rage. He takes it out on the house, spending every night renovating and remodelling by the light of a smoky carbide lamp. When Radhika finally returns in the grey and ashy dawns, she could be forgiven for not recognizing the place at all. Stephen blames this house for everything, and traces his personal disasters to its corners and nooks. The puddles under the verandah are Radhika’s smile; murky and unknowable. The sloping windowsills and overhanging vines are Anil’s mind; blurred and shadowed beyond all hope. The dark corridors, the precarious ceilings, the rooms without windows and others without doors, well, they’re the easiest of all. They’re Stephen’s own mistakes, in a very literal sense.

With a family like that, it’s no surprise that Mary prefers to spend her time at the convent. These days, she only goes back home to talk to Anil. He’s grown handsome and tall, with an eye for pretty girls. He’s only thirteen years old, but if he knew what hearts were then he’d break them. Mary loves him more with every passing year.

‘Mary, dear.’ Gerta puts her embroidery down and looks across at Mary through the humid, breathless evening. ‘I’m just going to prepare Agnes her supper. She’ll be in here whining about how she’s hungry soon.’

It’s a joke Mary and Gerta share, this gentle pretence that Agnes could talk – could nag and whine and complain – if only she wanted to. Agnes is eight now and she’s sweet and sturdy, but she’s never said a word. Nevertheless, Gerta lives in a permanent and excoriating atmosphere of hope. If Our Lord can get off his cross and walk, she says, then Agnes will one day speak without a tongue.

Sister Gerta lumbers out of the room, heading for the convent kitchen. As soon as her skirts have twitched out of the door a tangled black head pops up outside the window and a hand waves frantically to Mary. It’s Cecelia, looking exactly as she did last time Mary saw her. She’s bent in at a window, she’s baring her sharp little teeth in a friendly smile and she’s about to cause trouble.

‘Cecelia!’ It’s so dark that Mary can barely see Cecelia’s face through the open window, just the lace of her dress glimmering in the firefly dusk. Cecelia and Mary have lost touch almost completely in the last few years. While Mary’s been busying herself with needlework, Cecelia’s been expanding her worldly education. She’s been kissing boys in the back row of the Empire cinema, she’s been sucking on cigarettes and stealing nips of alcohol from hipflasks. She’s shallow, she’s tacky, she’s soiled and tawdry, and Mary’s missed her more than she can say.

‘Cecelia! I haven’t seen you since –’ Mary hesitates. Since the examinations, she was going to say. Every time she thinks of her failed Junior Cambridge exam she grows bitter. She isn’t used to failure yet.

‘Oh, I know, everything’s so rushed these days, there simply isn’t time.’

Cecelia sounds brittle and sophisticated. Mary’s nearly in awe of her, this girl who used to be her best friend. She’s heard the rumours about Cecelia, of course. Over the last few months the girl’s become far too eager to grow up, to get herself a lover and ask questions later. Anybody who comes to Cecelia’s house is fair game, and more than once a happily married postman or delivery boy has found himself standing by the gate with Cecelia’s busy little hands sneaking around his waist under the pretence of helping him carry a parcel. Cecelia’s out for a husband, or the nearest she can get.

‘Come up to the hilltop,’ she tells Mary. ‘I want to talk. I want to tell you everything.’

Mary’s surprised by this. They’ve barely spoken in the last few years, but now Cecelia’s acting as though they’re still best friends. She always did have an everything to tell, Mary thinks. Mary herself, sitting on a convent chair with her hair uncombed and her legs gawky under an outgrown dress, can’t compete.

‘How’s dear little Anil?’ Cecelia asks after the girls start walking up the hill. Mary isn’t sure how to answer. Anil isn’t all that little, for a start, and she doesn’t want to risk him getting in Cecelia’s lip-smacking way. Perhaps that’s why Cecelia wants to be friends again, she thinks. She’s been biding her time, that’s all, until Anil grew up.

(Mary will later concede that she was wrong about Cecelia, that after being left to sink or swim in the flood of 1926, all Cecelia wants is to keep her distance from Mary’s family. Only later, in her seventh decade and as distant from herself as Cecelia ever was, will my grandmother admit that she might – just might – have made a mistake.)

‘I’ve something exciting to tell you,’ Cecelia giggles. The two girls sit down on the grassy hilltop. It’s nearly dark by now, and they can see the lights of Lipis below them. It’s market night, and the busy bazaar is glaring.

‘It’s about Rajan,’ Cecelia says, then adds carelessly, ‘Have you seen much of him?’

Mary shakes her head. These days Rajan’s a fully fledged doctor, a junior member of a government hospital across the valley. He’s a political firebrand, too, and he’s already spent a few nights in jail for protesting against laws that restrict rice cultivation to the Malays. Rajan doesn’t want to cultivate rice – he doesn’t know the first thing about it – but it’s the principle of the thing, he says. He’s big on principles, on equality of income and of opportunity. He’s told Mary all about this, leaning