The Nine-Chambered Heart

Copyright

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Janice Pariat 2018

Cover design and illustration Rashmi Gupta © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Janice Pariat asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008272562

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008272555

Version: 2018-07-26

Dedication

For the one who stayed the night

Epigraph

It is easy to love.

– Anaïs Nin

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

THE SAINT

THE BUTCHER

THE CARETAKER

THE UNDERTAKER

THE PROFESSOR

THE BUTCHER

THE FLORIST

THE CRUSADER

THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER

THE SAILOR

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Janice Pariat

About the Publisher

YOU ARE TWELVE, and you loathe me.

In my class, you refuse to paint, because you think your pictures are ugly. And I try and tell you, like every good teacher must, regardless of whether I believe it or not, that you’ll improve with practice. You disagree. It infuriates you that there’s something you can’t immediately do, like a maths sum, or a science experiment. This is art, I tell you, but I can see you’re a scientific artist. If there is such a thing.

The other children huddle around tables, painting and sketching in wild abandon. A few are truly accomplished. You are not one of them. Their hands move instinctively across canvas and paper, guided by some unseen spirit. Although I have a sorrowful feeling that this is the only time in their lives they will ‘do’ art. And that they will grow up and plunge into vocations that do not call for beauty.

Almost a year ago, on my first day here, in this small school, in this small town in the east of the country, I assigned the class to paint a tree.

‘What kind of tree?’ you asked.

‘Any kind,’ I replied.

‘But there are so many kinds of trees …’

‘I’m happy with any.’

That did not please you. And while you sat there undecided, the others dipped and dabbed, and I could tell that when you eventually tried, you were ashamed, even a little humiliated, that your tree looked like a green Popsicle on a stick. I made the mistake of coming round to your side of the table, and praising the girl to your right.

‘Look … how she’s allowed some sky to filter through the branches … That’s how it is, isn’t it? A tree is patchy. There are gaps between the leaves …’

You stared at me with something close to hatred.

It’s a look I grew accustomed to those first few months. Everything I said, whether to you or another student, seemed incendiary. You didn’t commit any overt misdemeanours, nothing I could throw you out of class or send you marching off to the headmaster for, which perhaps would have made it easier. Instead, it was a simmering, furtive mutiny. You did the barest minimum of work. Spending most of class time staring listlessly, excusing yourself to use the loo and not returning until just before the bell. You wouldn’t care to participate or answer questions, and anything I asked directly was met with a moody ‘I don’t know’.

In this way, we ploughed on through the year.

And even today, I get the same look of loathing. We’re painting a snowy landscape in class, and I glance at the picture you’ve made, and say sharply, ‘Have you ever seen pure white in nature?’

You frown. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean … snow is not white white, is it? There are shades of blue, and grey, and pink and yellow and purple even … the white wouldn’t show if it were only white.’

And then I make the biggest mistake of all. I touch up your painting. I dip the paintbrush in a bit of blue, black, and water, and spread it over your landscape.

A touch here, a stroke there. I have improved the picture but lost you.

From now on, you refuse to pick up a brush. Even on threat of punishment and failure.

You are the most stubborn child I know, and make me long for the days of corporal punishment.

Later, when I ask the class to hand in their assignments for grades, you submit a blank page.

‘What is this?’ I ask crossly.

‘White birds flying through white clouds.’

I give you an F. Then change it to a C. Rather than you failing, I have a feeling I’ve failed you.

We move on to other things, but you’re spectacularly unskilled at each. Your still life sketches are weak, your charcoals messy. I cannot allow you to touch oils because they’re expensive and I’ve been instructed to save them for the ‘best’ students in class. You’re mystified by acrylics, using them like watercolours, but they dry too fast and leave hard blotches of colour in the wrong places.

Maybe later, when I’ve been teaching for years, I’ll know how to deal with students like you. For now, I’m clueless.

I feel I’ve tried it all: threat, coercion, indifference, patience. I’ve spoken to your other teachers, and they can’t understand it either. You’re quiet and good in all their classes. Slightly scornful of chemistry, fond of literature, biology and history, and you’re intuitively skilled at maths. But about that I’m not surprised.

I really do feel I’ve lost you, until one day I ask if you’d like to play with paper.

‘And do what?’ You sound scornful of this too.

‘Well, we can make shapes for starters …’

You seem thoroughly unimpressed.

‘Have you heard of origami?’

Tentatively, you shake your head.

How much you must hate admitting not knowing something. I’m almost gleeful.

I hand you sheets of paper and a beginner’s How-To manual. I have a feeling you’d prefer this to taking instructions from me. You examine the pages, pick a pattern, lost in concentration. It’s remarkable. You’re marvellous at it. From your fingertips spring cranes and boxes, frogs and butterflies, crabs and flowers. Neat and intricate, the lines pressed and folded with industrious care and precision. They are exercises in exactitude. Each the same size and shape as the other. You sit in the corner of the classroom, patiently creasing, folding and lining them all up when they’re done. I want to tell you they’re beautiful, but I worry this might dissuade you instead, so I watch and do not offer praise.

After this, there’s a sea change.

You are the first to enter class, and the last to leave.

Your eyes follow me around, while I’m moving from one cluster of students to another and when someone walks up to my desk for help. You linger at the end, showing me all you’ve made that day, eager, if I’m not mistaken, for my approval.

At first, I’m not quite sure how to respond. Do I appear pleased? Do I ignore you now, in return? I think in my confusion, I do a bit of both, but this doesn’t deter you. If anything, it seems to make you even more determined. You catch me in corridors, and in the library, sometimes on the lawn, and initiate the most sweetly mundane conversation. We talk of the weather, and lunch, and whether I like cats or dogs.

‘Dogs,’ I say.

‘Cats,’ you say.

And everything I answer is followed by ‘why?’

Why do I prefer peas to potatoes? Why would I like to own a bicycle rather than a car? Why dogs? Why am I vegetarian? Why do I like dark chocolate? Why do I read poetry? When I turn the questions back at you, I find you pleasingly impulsive. You don’t take your time. You like beetroot for its colour. Cats for their eyes. White chocolate because it’s not quite chocolate. Poetry befuddles you. You reply from your gut. Everything, at this age, is instinct.

You show me test papers and essays, work you’ve been merited on. I praise you like I think a parent would. You aren’t that fond of sports, you tell me. Even though you’re made to run and throw and participate. You’re fond of music, but have no inclination to play an instrument. ‘I like to sing,’ you tell me shyly.

‘Sing me something.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that.’

We’re outside, walking down a path in the school grounds.

‘What would you like me to sing?’

‘Anything.’

You take a moment to choose, and start singing. So softly, I must lean in to listen. It’s an old song from the ’70s. I wonder how you know it. Maybe your parents play it at home, and you’ve grown up listening to it. It’s a song about a man making a phone call to somebody he loved, and who left him. It’s sweet and silly, and incongruous, coming from you, but you sing it to the end, and I applaud.

Once, you hand me a flower, a full, heavy magnolia blossom. It had fallen to the ground in the rain, and now lay in my hand, wetly glistening. Creamy pink, deepening in colour at the centre, palest at its waxy petal edges. I slip it into a bottle filled with water, and carry it home with me at the end of the day. I am thrilled by your attention, and also disconcerted. It is intense, like walking out into noonday sunlight. I’ve never been at the receiving end of something like this. And then I tell myself you are a child, that you cannot know better. Your feelings will turn this way and that, flitting from thing to thing, person to person. Soon enough you will tire of this, and someone else will fascinate you. But it doesn’t seem to wane, your affection, anytime soon.

I think perhaps it is better to push you away slightly, to be a little distant, less accessible. After all, we don’t want you doing something wayward. So I’m polite but more reserved. I duck into rooms if I see you coming down the corridor. I tell you I’m busy when you chance upon me in the library. I walk out of school with my other colleagues. I sit on the lawn with a book, preoccupied. You seem puzzled, though undeterred. But the more you clamour for my attention, the less I give you any. It’s a terrible dance, and I feel sick, but I don’t know what else to do.

On some days, I find paper cranes on my table, sometimes, a dragonfly.

At first I would collect them, placing them on a shelf like a disorderly, inanimate zoo. Now I try telling you that you could take them home to your parents to surprise and please them instead, but you look at me in silence. When I persist, eventually you say you can’t, and you walk away.

This disturbs me, but it isn’t something I can ask you about directly. At least not now. We haven’t built up that kind of trust. I wonder if we ever will. So I speak to the other teachers, the ones who have taught you longer, and ask if they know more about you and your life at home. There are several conjectures. Someone asks, aren’t you an orphan? Or the child of a single parent? No, say the others, they don’t think it’s like that at all, but there is something slightly out of the ordinary with your circumstances at home. Then your maths teacher speaks up, saying if he isn’t mistaken it’s not that you’ve lost your parents but that they live elsewhere, and so your home, at least during the school term, is with your grandparents. Not that you’ve been abandoned, he adds hastily, but your father works in another state, one with few if any, well-regarded schools. My heart goes out to you and your paper companions.

From then on, I am kinder.

You aren’t entirely unskilled at clay sculpture, but I’m more encouraging than I would have been.

‘That’s a fine cow,’ I say.

You look at me doubtfully. ‘It’s meant to be a horse.’

Hastily, I give a talk on how art lies in the eye of the beholder.

‘So it doesn’t matter what I’m trying to do?’ another student asks.

‘It does. But you cannot control how others choose to see.’

You stay back in class, hanging around until the others leave. I wonder why. I don’t think you’re about to ask me about the subjectivity of interpretation. You shuffle up to my desk, papers and books in hand. Your hair, usually braided in plaits, has come undone, your ribbon trailing down your arm. You are twelve, but your limbs seem at odds with your age, like they will settle only a decade later. You will be tall and beautiful, I’m sure, even if now you’re gangly and awkward and coltish. You glance at me, your eyes dark as paint.

‘Have you always wanted to do this?’

I ask what you mean.

‘This.’ You gesture around the room.

I lean back in my chair. No one has asked me this. At least not here. I could tell you many things. That of course it was a dream to work with children, to teach them about beauty, and how to make beautiful things. But I decide to tell you the truth.

‘No.’

You don’t seem surprised.

I look down at my hands, hold them up in front of me. ‘I wanted to be a pianist.’

‘Did you go to a music school?’

I nod. I did, for many years. I even began performing recitals here and there. Not much scope in this small town that we live in, so I would also give lessons at people’s homes, trying to save up to move to a big city.

‘Then what happened?’ Or in other words, get to the point, why was I here.

‘I was in an accident … I hurt my hands.’

With the cold pragmatism of a child, you look at me and say, ‘But you still paint.’

I tell you it is all I can do.

‘Oh,’ you say, and leave. Maybe there was no reason for me to have been honest. You’re a child. With limited understanding. What had I been hoping for? Sympathy? Concern?

I am left alone in the room, feeling, for some reason, decidedly silly.

In the next class, you are missing. And the next.

And even though I try and feign indifference, I’m concerned. What’s happened, I ask the others. What’s happened to you? A bronchial infection, apparently. One accompanied by a cough and high fever. I wrestle with myself, wanting to send you ‘get well’ wishes, yet wishing to keep a distance. I know your classmates have made cards for you, but I don’t jointly sign any of them. I don’t send enquiries from my side. In ten days you return, paler, wan, still coughing. You’ve lost weight. I make you a little clay flower, paint it red, and leave it at your corner. I do it for all my students who’ve been ill. You thank me at the end of class, and don’t linger like you usually do. It leaves me, uncomfortably, wondering why.

I find you quieter than usual.

You have stopped with the paper animals and clay figures, and instead are painting sheet after sheet of paper in deep, unvarying blue. Then orange. Then green. I joke that you’re an abstractionist, but you do not laugh.

One day, I catch you in the corridor and ask how you are.

You don’t look at me when you say you are fine.

‘I heard you’ve been unwell …’

‘Better now, thank you.’

‘Is anything the matter?’ I can’t help asking.

You shake your head, your eyes still fixed to the floor.

I want to say that you can tell me, that you have someone you can talk to. That I know you live in a house with two old people, that you might feel alone. But I don’t. I give you a perfunctory pat on the shoulder, and you’re on your way.

It’s odd, but I miss you staying back in class, chatting in your sharp, inquisitive way. I miss your singing, your flowers, your incessant questions, your attentiveness to everything I say, even the merest, most mundane instruction. I hope it might revive at the end of term. Especially when I make the announcement that we’re to hold an exhibition of all we’ve made over the past year. Most of the students are excited, whispering to each other, debating which of their works they’d like to display. Some have much to choose from. You look as though you haven’t even heard me.

I allow a few classes to pass before I ask you. That afternoon, you’ve lingered, unintentionally, because a sheaf of your painted papers fell to the floor, scattering like leaves.

‘Have you thought about it …?’

You stare up at me. Startled.

‘What you’d like to display … for the end-of-year exhibition …’

You still look blank. It’s exasperating.

‘Yes …’

‘Oh good. And …?’

‘I’m still thinking … I don’t know …’

I begin to make a few suggestions, and then stop. What am I doing? This is undoubtedly the best way to get you to not participate. ‘Well … let me know if you need any help …’

You nod, and shuffle out of the room.

One day, when I’ve given up on any hope of you returning to your old self, you stay back in class. I’m at my desk examining some paintings for our show.

‘What happened?’

I look at you, puzzled.

You come closer, clutching your books to your chest. You’ve never really recovered your weight since your illness, and your cheeks remain pale and hollow.

‘What do you mean?’

You gesture at the paintings.

‘I’m trying to choose frames …’ I begin.

‘No,’ you interrupt. ‘I mean your hands. What happened?’

I think I understand, but I don’t want to answer. You persist.

‘You told me you had an accident … and you couldn’t play the piano any more …’

‘I can still play,’ I say, and add, ‘But only a little.’

You stay silent, waiting for me to explain.

I push the paintings aside. ‘I got a job with a choir … wonderful bunch of young kids … voices like angels and all that. It wasn’t …’ I laugh. ‘We played mostly hymns, but it paid well and helped supplement my music lessons …’

You haven’t taken your eyes off me. I don’t know where to look, at you, at my hands. I settle for the window, where the late afternoon sun is streaming through and falling in patterns on the floor.

‘We were travelling … for a concert in a nearby town. All of us in a bus … it was raining … I must have dozed off … but I remember waking up to a lurch … a terrible crash … the bus crumpling like tin … and the seat in front of us suddenly pinning us back. If I hadn’t put my … put my arms between the boy next to me and the metal, I think he would’ve been crushed …’

‘You saved his life?’

‘That’s the thing … I’d like to think I did … but I don’t know.’

‘Your bones were broken?’

I nod. Grateful in a way for your stoic lack of emotion. By now most adults would be voicing profuse commiseration, and I would never know what to say to their ‘I’m sorry … I’m so sorry … that’s just terrible … what a tragedy …’ I’d usually end up awkwardly saying ‘thank you’ and resigning myself to silence.

‘Broken in several places …’ I hold up my left arm. ‘There’s a steel rod running through this one.’

‘Do you beep at airport security?’

I laugh, you laugh, and suddenly the room fills with light.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘Sometimes.’

Then you ask me something else no one has asked me before.

‘If you were in that bus, would you do it again? What you did.’

It takes me a moment to reply. ‘I’d like to say yes … but in truth, I’m not sure.’

You don’t seem disappointed. In fact, you nod briskly, as though this is a business conversation. I want to ask you several questions in turn, about you, your home. But this is akin to having a bird finally sit on your hands and peck at crumbs. Now is not the time to make sudden movements or loud noises and frighten it away.

As you walk out of the classroom, you turn back. ‘You know,’ you say, ‘I think you would.’

Soon enough it’s end of term, and we’re setting up the exhibition hall. You haven’t submitted anything. I’m disappointed, yes, but not immensely surprised. I can’t even use the line I do with the other kids – ‘Wouldn’t you want your parents to see your work and be proud of you?’ I’m not sure yours are coming. And I don’t want to hazard saying ‘grandparents’ instead. I don’t know why, but I feel it’s a delicate situation. Or at least I treat it so.

While the work is being put up, you hang around.

Because I think you expect it, I don’t ask you where your contribution is. I ask you what you think.

‘About?’

‘All this …’ I gesture around the room, filling up with paintings, sketches, sculpture.

‘I want to see what it looks like when it’s finished.’

And I find it hard to get another word out of you. But I see that you watch carefully, where everything is being placed. Right now I have no time to question why or wonder. This is my first event, it must be impressive, and it must somehow validate … something.

I leave late that evening, after all the children’s artworks have been put up. It’s looking, I think, quite lovely. What a pity you aren’t part of it. I’m tempted to place some of the paper figures you’ve gifted me in a corner, but desist. This is your choice and I must respect it. You did not feel involved enough in this class to wish to participate.

The next day, I arrive early at school and head to the exhibition hall. But someone else has been there earlier. Or that’s what the security guard tells me. ‘One of your students,’ he says. ‘Said she had your permission … special permission … to place something in the room. She had a lot of stuff with her …’

‘What do you mean?’ Panic pricks my chest. ‘Which student? What was she carrying?’

He shrugs. Clearly not comprehending why I would be worried. ‘Scissors … paper … art stuff like that …’

‘I didn’t give anyone permission to do anything.’

Finally, he seems a touch concerned. ‘You didn’t?’

I shake my head.

He fumbles with the door, unlocking it and drawing it open. We make our way briskly down the corridor.

In my head, I imagine everything in ruins. Paintings ripped out of their frames, shredded and sliced to strips. Canvas torn, sculpture thrown across the floor, smashed to pieces. I can barely conceal my anger. Who could have done this? And why? For a flickering moment I think of you, and force myself to discard the idea. I have no proof. And why would the first person I think of be you? Perhaps because of your sullenness, your plummeting moods, your aloofness. But you haven’t been that way all the time. You’ve never struck me as vindictive. Still, who knows? Children can be strange creatures. I try to shake it out of my head before we enter the hall. The security guard and I are silent.