life not to ejaculate. Balaji thought of Vishnu, of his Aunt Pavithra, of cricket matches. He closed his eyes and broke the skin of his lip with self-command. When he could bear it no longer, he finished with a great bellow. He opened his eyes and was only a little surprised to see blood on the sheets. Isa seemed overcome. Well, where there is some buying, there is also some selling, he thought. He kissed his bride’s forehead, shuffled off her body, put on a bathrobe and slippers, and went out to fetch chai for them from the rickety table in the JollyBoys lobby.
* * *
Isa knew what sex was, of course. Her parents and their expat friends had not been ones to euphemise during their sundowner conversations. But she hadn’t known that she would feel this way about it, dizzy with the debasement of it. Balaji started off slowly, pecking her lips, embarrassed by their morning breath. But in what seemed like no time at all, he was suddenly above her, hugely erect, crazed with restraint. A penned bull. That familiar resentment of his desire, the how could you? blazing in his eyes. Isa had never felt so beheld. He was awful. He was an animal…and she wanted him. Because, as it turned out, she was an animal too.
When he pushed himself into her, she could barely locate herself inside the flood of sensation. She closed her eyes as they rocked and bucked together. Behind the buzzing in her ears, she dimly heard Balaji choking on his own roars. The moment he pulled out, the rush of loss sharpened into pain and Isa opened her eyes and instinctively reached for him. His face was gentle and cowering. She smelled the room, her own tang rounding out his alkaline residue.
‘It is a little bit bloody, sorry-sorry.’ His caterpillar eyebrows writhed smugly.
‘Oh…yes, that makes sense,’ Isa managed.
Balaji grinned and heaved himself off her and went out to get them some tea. Raw and a little stunned, Isa turned on her side and breathed. So this was sex then. This would be marriage. Out of nowhere, it came to her: the car accident yesterday.
It had been late in the afternoon when they had come to a village, mud and thatch trickling into view on either side of the big tarmac road. The windscreen had been furred with dead insects and bird shit, but they’d both seen the drunk man at the same time. Isa could still recall the distinctive dance of the bicycle he’d been riding, the wobbling swoop of it into the road. It had happened suddenly: the bumper had made contact with the bicycle and the man had flown off it, landing awkwardly on the road, with a terrible sound.
Isa had screamed as the car had skidded off the road, tumbling into the pebbly dirt, the car nuzzling into some scrub before it had jolted to a halt. They had breathed a moment. Big brave Balaji had jumped out, telling her to stay inside. Isa, frozen anyway, had stared through the windscreen as the dust drifted right – or was the car drifting left? Up through the haze she had watched as her husband rose, a body in his arms…
Isa shivered and pulled the thin sheets up over her body – they were still chilly with sweat. Balaji came back into the room with two steaming mugs and set them on the side table. She sat up and leaned back against the wall.
‘Do you think that man will be okay?’ she asked. ‘The bicycle man. From yesterday.’
‘Oh, yes-yes-yes, only a broken leg,’ he tutted, nestling in next to her.
‘You don’t think he will come begging for money?’
‘He’d better not,’ he snorted. ‘We left more kwacha than he’s ever seen in his whole life.’
Balaji put his arm around her and she smelled the heady nutty scent of his armpit. She looked up at him and let him kiss her, waves of sick desire swallowing her worries. Within minutes, they were at it again, their mugs of tea cooling beside them. It was implacable, this sex, this marvellous, strenuous sex between Isa and Balaji. It would never cease, even as they underwent the general turmoil and fade of a long marriage. This was both a gift and a curse.
1997
Every family is a war but some are more civil than others. The first front in the war of Isa’s new family was the Battle of the Mosquito Net. It appeared one