Coinsão Pidade

Sitting at my window I see my neighbour toiling in his garden and I think ‘Oh another day of overseeing the carpenters, will it ever end? I smile; I know the answer, ‘Never’, for a house such as mine, demands attention, is a hard taskmaster indeed. I take it stoically; I love this house that takes up so much of my time, built by my Grandmother with little help from anyone, with debts mounting and four children to look after, it’s a house built with great sacrifice.

Silence, normally there is such a lot of banter, but today the three carpenters seem immersed in their own thoughts.

Santan, the head carpenter a puny man, bears the marks of his trade on his body with dignity, like a battered knight after a crusade, an ageing lion, a fleck of whitewash in his eye, on the roof of a church has left him blind in one eye, he now uses a clean white glass eye, eerie at first but you get used to it, limbs twisted from healed fractures and scars spread all over his frame.

But what really gets to you is his deafness. A conversation with him and Nazaré, the second in command leaves you depleted, for he too cannot hear a word. It is at such moments that John Chin comes in handy.

Now John Chin loves to enjoy life, always well dressed with an assortment of colourful T-shirts and hats he does look trendy a far cry from the other two in their old well worn clothes.

I can hear him entreating the other two ‘why don’t we go to the beach this Sunday’. No response from the other two.  ‘Ok he continues I will get the food’. No response. ‘What about a tiatr then’. Nothing, the two continue sawing oblivious.

You see Santan and Nazareth love to spend their Sundays at home with their wives. Santan adores his wife Petula and Nazaré, well Nazaré has AnMari a virago for a wife.

John too had a wife once upon a time; things were fine, they were building a house, until he found letters from her to another man.  ‘V 2 R 1’ she wrote to another, where shall we meet she said and just left John and the kids. So John is a sad and a lonely man despite the colourful T-shirts and the hats.

The silence except for some whistling from John Chin got to me; I sauntered towards the window next to a cupboard where Santan was working all set for a nice conversation, a little shouting here and there but what the hell…..

‘Santan…..And then Santan turns towards me, tears streaming down his face, sorrow on his face. Even the glass eye reflected sorrow ‘Santan what’s the matter, aren’t you feeling well?’

And Santan looks at me and says ‘she has disappeared…. ‘

‘Disappeared? Like a robot I seem to be repeating his words, ‘who has disappeared?’

‘Coinsão Pidade’

‘Coinsão Pidade?’

Yes, Coinsão Pidade’, my brother’s wife, my brother had abandoned her years ago but all of us love her, she is very much a part of our family’

I listen stupefied, ‘Petula and she had gone to visit my niece at the Medical College, on the way back Petula got down at her bus stop and Coinsão Pidade went on to check her field. After that there has been no sign of her. Her sons have searched every hospital and every morgue……’

My blood ran cold, but I was relieved too, nothing at the morgue there is hope then….Hope she has run off with someone, I think.

‘Is it true, Santan says, that there are some murders reported on the newspaper? We crowd around the paper. We have lit a dozens of candles at the foot of our altar. Please, please, please we entreat, please St. Anthony please…….

I take up the newspaper, yes there are around five bodies found in different parts;

Woman with a blue sari and red blouse aged about 25. I read, ‘No, no, this one is young,’ Coinsão Pidade is around 58. Good

Woman with T-shirt, no way. Relief.

Woman with no clothes, burnt beyond recognition, we breathe deeply, no marks of identification, aged around 35. No, no, this is not Coinsão Pidade, she is much older. We look at each other, it cannot be Coinsão Pidade, let it not be Coinsão Pidade……

Esmeralda, slinks in…..With a crooked, malicious smile she says, ‘Hey Santan, heard your sister-in-law has disappeared, is it true that she had withdrawn 20 thousand rupees from the Cofre at Majorda Church to give to one of her, you know………..’

Santan beyond all that looks at her, says nothing.

But I in a voice of great authority say, Esmeralda go to the kitchen immediately, no more talk and get tea for us all’. Esmeralda calls me from the kitchen, Psssst she says, ‘you are gullible, and you believe everything’ she mocks me with an air born of superior knowledge, some facts that I know nothing about.

‘Do you know her husband has left her’ ‘Yes’ ‘she knew men’ ‘who doesn’t’? Esmeralda glares’ ‘She withdrew 20 thousand and went off, went off with that young guy’;

‘Let it be, I pray, please let her go off with that young man’ let her be safe I beg St Anthony’.  We smile at each other, Esmeralda and I, ‘difficult I say to resist a younger man. Esmeralda glares, talk of men shock her, or at least she pretends to be shocked…..

                                                                                                II

‘Stop it you bitch, stop pulling my ear’, ‘I swear if you touch me once again, I will fucking knock your teeth in’

‘Arre, smart you are man Tyrone’ ‘when I touch you, in the night, you know where you don’t shout like this, no?’

‘Arre just shut up, I am really tired of you, Viola, tell me, you want the same treatment like that young woman in the blue sari, or what?’

‘SHUT UP, SHUT UP YOU TWO, I am tired of you and your love talk’

Both fall silent, both mortally scared of Chowdurry. Suddenly Viola sees a middle aged woman walking hurriedly in the gathering dusk, wearing a green and gold sari

‘Why are you stopping Tyrone, she is old, no good for sex man!’

‘Shut up you fucking bitch, CAN YOU NOT SEE THE BANGLES MAN’ you only think of sex’

‘Mãe, mãe, do you know where we can buy country chickens?’ Viola croons in a mellifluous voice

‘Country chickens, bai, uhmmm let me see, oh yes, Edosian has country chickens’

‘Mãe where does Edosian live’ ‘Close by?’

‘Not so close, well go straight and…’

‘Does she live close to you? We could drop you’

‘She does live close but……’

‘Come on Mãe, I am here, this is my husband and my brother in law, come on Mãe, get in’

‘Kill the fucking bitch, put the rope round her neck, strangle, see how the fucking bitch fights, the old bitch is strong, good she is still, bitch is now in heaven’

‘Let us have some fun with her! Ha ha lets go to the plateau have a beer, no? Then I will finish it, I feel so good, so horny, wheeeee’.

‘Let’s burn her body? I have never seen a body burning, wheeeee’

                                                                                                III

The next day very early Santan was at my door. ‘She has been found’ ‘Oh, oh, I say, I am so happy, really happy’

Santan looks at me tears in his eyes’ she was found in the morgue’ so badly burnt, so badly burnt that nobody could recognise her’

Oh no, oh no, no, no

‘Yes, her son recognised her by a fragment of her green and gold sari stuck to her back, rather burnt on to her back’

Oh, I just breathe in……

John Chin, the perennial optimist whispers to me ‘Look we asked that she be found and she was…..;’

I think should we have prayed let her be found alive, I don’t know …..

We all go for the funeral, the Church is full and the Vicar in his ponderous voice tells us, when someone in a village dies, a piece of you dies too….How true, everyone in a village is so connected, we share deep bonds unknowingly.

The coffin s sealed, we just say a tearful goodbye to Coinsão Pidade a woman who never deserved to die the way she did…..

Sometimes we talk of her and Esmeralda with her air superior knowledge says do you know those 20 thousand that Coinsão Pidade borrowed….I listen, after all we are human…..