The Way Madmen Smell
by Babitha Marina Justin
The presence of a couple of madmen in the family blessed me. One was a granduncle, and I will call him Magnus. I met my granduncle just once, but the impression of the meeting stayed for a lifetime. Magnus came visiting for the first and last time when I was six years old. He almost came tumbling from the hills, smelly, deranged, and furious. I cannot describe it with accuracy; I have only hazy memories. But believe me, I can still smell him. I can recall the memory of his stench with precision. I have a train full of memories related to smells, with compartments dedicated to happy, sad, embarrassing, shocking, grievous, and shameful ones. Shameful and embarrassing odours outweighed others, and next came sad and shocking ones, and no matter much I tried to forget them, I could not ignore the ways of the olfactory world.
When Magnus came home in his dirty and torn overcoat that trailed the road, that formed part of a memory that was associated with one of the most pungent and embarrassing smells in my life. I flared my nostrils to find what precisely the stench was. I could smell a dead rat and a mad dog, with decayed fish entrails, offending my entire being and dignity, which was swathed in a six-year-old body. I can also remember a considerable uproar of kids and street dogs barking and snapping at someone when Magnus descended from hell.
“What's that smell?” Mariamma, my grandmother, wrinkled her nose and sniffed hard.
Everything looked filthy and intimidating about the man who looked and smelled like a heap of garbage. He appeared at our gate with matted dreadlocks and an unbearable brownness, escorted by a group of booing kids. The children accompanying him made a ruckus by drumming on empty tins and swishing cycle chains, and the dogs snarled as if they were competing to bite off a chunk from the human form.
Magnus tried to shoo off the kids, but they hovered around, mocking and pelting pebbles at him. None of the pebbles dared to hit him. When he stopped in front of our house, I hid behind Mariamma. My neighbours came out of their homes, complaining about the smell.
“Jonah? Where is my nephew, Jonah?” The kids around him mimicked, tittered, and catcalled. I sank behind Mariamma.
“Not here,” Mariamma spoke to him harshly from behind the turquoise-tinted door.
Magnus growled: “I’m hungry; give me some food.”
He mopped the steps with his big fat palms and sat his big buttocks on the steps. He wore a torn black coat, and he was sweating through the many layers of dirty, torn sweaters he wore inside. Mariamma almost retched; she tied a thorthu on her face. He wore tattered shoes through which nasty cat-poop smelling socks stuck out.
Mariamma pulled out a chipped plate that was about to be thrown away, and she served dollops of rice and heaped it with the previous day's curries from the refrigerator. She didn’t even bother to heat them up.
“I want fish and chicken,” he moaned like a child.
“No chicken today.” Mariamma was rude.
“Thooo! Who wants to eat the cold grass and tuber you serve? You old hag, give me some fish at least.” He spat a splutter of rice and curries on the steps.
Mariamma shuddered. She felt humiliated being on the receiving end of the madman's fury; the boys around him dropped dead silent. No one dared to call my grandmother an old woman on her face. Selvi, the maid, looked away and rummaged the fridge and ferreted out some fish gravy and offered Magnus, turning her face away with disdain. Magnus splattered food all over and ate avariciously. I heard my grandmother puke in the kitchen garden. He washed his hands with the water meant for drinking, and he laid himself out like a smelly, sunning whale on the veranda and snored. The boys started to leave after having watched the spectacle. My grandmother beckoned me to the kitchen and gave me ten rupees and asked me to hand it over to the madman.
“Is he a madman?” I asked my grandmother in astonishment.
“What else is he? Can’t you figure it out?”
I trembled. I had never seen or smelt a madman in my life. Madness smelt horrible. I was scared, and I hesitated to go near him. I thought of tiptoeing to him to place the money near him. When I walked cautiously towards him, he started from his sleep and sat up. I had almost come near him, and I was trapped. He called me to him, and I could not breathe. He extended his gnarled arms with black, overgrown talon-like nails and touched my cheek.
“What is your name, Jonah's daughter?” His mouth smelled of sewage.
“Maria,” I said, holding my breath.
“Magdalena or Mother of God?” He laughed, displaying his charcoal mouth. I knew I was about to faint, and I stopped breathing.
“Come, child, I will teach you a song,” and he reached out to me.
I trembled and felt a warm trickle ooze between my legs, forming a puddle of shame. Perhaps the old man changed his mind. He got up and started after snatching ten rupees from me. All the neighbouring boys who had remained stared at him. They had seen me pee in my pants. The old man staggered on his feet, sang a beautiful song in a high octave, and faded away, but his stench lingered in the house for days and days together.
After Mad Magnus left, my grandmother told me that my father's family was full of madmen because they married their cousins like pigs and rabbits. She said marrying cousins was sinful. The same blood clotted in the brain when children were born, and they became mandabudhis: mentally disabled kids. She also told me that Magnus was once a bright child. He was afflicted by smallpox when he was tiny and because my father's people were "uncivilised," they tied him up in the cattle-shed and left him there to die. Magnus survived with scars and ran away from his house as an ugly and deformed man. He had nowhere to go but to join a seminary, and he returned a madman after many years. When he came back, mad and ugly, he had learned eighteen languages. He could also sing like an angel. Though his smell disgusted me, this piece of information was new, and I was impressed. Magnus spoke eighteen languages like a parrot; this overawed me.
Many years later, I was teaching at a university, and I struggled with the only three languages I knew. Deep down, I was proud that I had a granduncle who knew eighteen languages. Sometimes, I boasted to my children about this but never told them about the madness part. Madness reminded me of the smell. I was by then married and well-settled into an upper-middle-class family of Hindus, who accepted me into their house with some initial hiccups. For me, getting away from my religion was a kind of tearing myself away from my past. The routine of litanies and church goings had turned me into a defiant agnostic. Because of the strict imposition of church going, I stopped going to church altogether when I moved out of my house at eighteen. At twenty-one, I went to a university and then, my ambition had no bounds. I travelled for research all over the country. During one of those travels, I met my husband, and we decided to spend the rest of our lives together.
Mariamma, who was still alive, was not very happy about it. She said such liaisons would deprive me of a place in heaven. I knew that this would indeed rob me of some space in the family vault in the church graveyard. We had bought a family vault for 150 years. The funeral insight calculated that at least five to six generations could be buried there without any hassles. I knew that they lost out on the youngest of the third generation, and I boasted that I had booked myself in a crematorium in advance, which was cheaper, hygienic, and eco-friendly. Mariamma and my mother disapproved of my actions from within. But they didn't reprimand me. My father, who was unfazed, used to grumble when I was out of his earshot. Once I heard him say that perhaps Magnus's ghost remains in the family, especially in the youngest offspring. I hadn't thought of Magnus after his death a few years after I met him, but all of a sudden, I was curious to know more about him. However, the memory of his stench overpowered me, and I choked at the thought of it.
I came to know Magnus, the priest and the man, through Brother Joseph. I was a Ph.D. student in philosophy, and I was invited to a seminary, two thousand miles from my university to hold a series of lectures on the metaphysics of faith. I was curious to know how modern-day seminaries were. I was quite surprised, too, because usually, the church had enough teaching and learning resources within its precincts.
The seminary was near the sea, and it was one of the cleanest places I had ever seen, with its well-trimmed Mughal style gardens and palms and its luscious fruit orchards. There was an assortment of exotic fruits from Thailand and Malaysia, and I saw rambutan, dragon fruit, and litchi trees being grown all over the yard. I strolled endlessly, sometimes plucking a couple of exceptionally swollen guava fruits and munching on their tender, juicy flesh. There was no fallen leaf on the ground, as the maali in the courtyard worked fastidiously at keeping the place almost picturesque. I was a bit exasperated thinking of how the garden was groomed and manicured to such heights of cleanliness, and I missed red, yellow, and burnt umber shades on the ground.
A young priest, who chaperoned me, took me to the hall of fame, where hung the photographs of all the priests, including the Bishops and Rectors of the seminary, in chronological order. I noticed a dark anteroom attached to the Hall of Fame.
“What is that room all about?” I was curious about the Gothic darkness and mystery of the hidden room.
The young priest laughed and spoke to me in a heavily accented stage whisper. “There are photographs of laicised priests.”
“Laicised?”
“Defrocked, I mean. Either they left the congregation or got expelled from the priesthood.”
“May I take a look at the lost paradise?” I was curious.
The young priest hesitated for a while, and then he took me to the anteroom, which was dark and dingy and roomier than I expected. Riddled with photographs of the rebel priests, I ran my eyes over the walls.
“Did they run away with nuns or laywomen?”
“That's not the case with many priests; the church expelled some for heresy and bigotry. Some for exorcism without permission from the Vatican, and some for Satan worship. Some learned too many languages and became mad…” The priest lowered his voice then.
I nodded and fixed my eyes on a familiar face framed on the wall. A sepia-tinted photo of Magnus hung there. I could not believe my luck. The photo was titled: Father Magnanimous Innocent Abraham, laicised in 1969.
“This is someone I know,” I said, and then hesitated, sensing a familiar stench I always associated with Magnus.
“You mean, you have had a defrocked priest in your family? Not an honour, I say.” The priest started chuckling at his joke. I wasn't laughing, and I was curious to know more about Magnus.
“There is a directory of priests; it's classified information, though.”
I met the Rector in the evening to know if I could have access to the classified information on Magnus.
“He left many years back, and is perhaps dead by now,” the Rector spoke reflectively.
“Yes, he died in 1990.”
I rummaged through Magnus's file. Born as Magnanimous Innocent Abraham in 1929 in Poonjar, Kerala, and ordained to the church in 1949, Father Magnanimous was laicised in 1969 and left the congregation of Disciples of Joseph and Mary in May 1970. Present Whereabouts, unknown.
That was all. No wonder the Rector had been so casual about Magnus's so-called classified files.
I walked towards the room allotted to me in the convent, which was a few miles away from the seminary. The young priest, Brother Joseph, walked back with me. He sensed my disappointment.
Over the next two days, we had such vigorous training and discussion sessions that I came to my room very late. I could not meet Brother Joseph during that time as well. On the third day, he came rushing to me when I had an egg and bread for breakfast.
“Praise the Lord, Brother,” I hollered at him, expressing my delight meeting him after a couple of days.
“I have news for you,” he sat down near me and pecked on the French fries on my plate without asking me. I found that gesture quite endearing.
“What is that?”
“You need to pay me for that piece of information.”
“How do I do that?”
“Easy, you just have to sneak in some forbidden journal papers for me from JSTOR.”
“Yes, of course. I will do anything for you.” I batted my eyelids.
“Listen, there's an old cook in the seminary, your granduncle's contemporary. He knows all the gossip of the seminary for sixty years.”
“That's amazing, and that's the bit of oral history that I had wanted to listen to.”
That evening, Brother Joseph took me to the Rector's kitchen to meet this old, shrivelled man. He tied his flaxen hair in a bun, and his leathery-brown skin wrinkled like the bark of an old tree. His ancient eyes twinkled when he saw me.
“Father Magnanimous' grandniece.” I shook hands with him, and he glinted a twinkle that was mirrored by my eyes as well.
“Listen,” he instructed Brother Joseph and me to sit on a wooden table with wooden stump stools and served us some strong tea spiced with ginger.
There was a hearth burning in the kitchen, and he said he used to double it up like an oven before the nuns started baking cakes for the priests.
“Your granduncle came here as a runaway at sixteen, and I, too, was of the same age. He was a bright boy, and he learned tongues like no other. He knew twelve languages; did you know?”
“Yes, my grandmother told me.” She had exaggerated, but twelve languages were astonishing enough.
“He never spoke about his family, but here, he found a family of his own, and he was much loved, ‘til…”
“‘Til?”
“I don't remember the rumours of those days, but it was here, right here in the kitchen, he was found mad and rumbling one night.”
“Why here?” I gaped.
He paused for a while, shuffled his feet, and got up. He picked up a few capsicums and onions from the vegetable rack, peeled, washed, and diced them into perfect squares. He placed a tawa on the charcoal stove, and poured some oil, and tossed onions and capsicum into the sizzling oil. I observed him as he stir-fried the onions effortlessly like a prayer. Then he cracked some eggs into the tawa and added a dollop of butter.
Brother Joseph and I waited for a while with a crackling of wild suspense in the air. In between, I felt Brother Joseph's eyes on me as we waited for the old cook to continue with his story.
The cook, Vincent, (Brother Joseph whispered his name to me, and while he did that, I felt his warm breath on my ears) came back with two plates of fluffy omelettes and a loaf of freshly baked bread. Then he hobbled to the cellar and came back with a bottle of communion wine.
“This is the best in the country,” he said, and he opened the bottle with a pop.
The food was delicious, and the smell of wine lingered like heaven, and Vincent, the old cook, sat down and he poured the wine into Austrian wine glasses.
I took a sip, and Brother Joseph, though he was reluctant for a while, got a nod from Cook Vincent and he started sipping the wine. Warmth trickled down my spine, and I felt quite conscious of the fact that Brother Joseph glanced at me mistily whenever I started talking to Old Vincent.
“I don't know what exactly happened to him. They even suppressed all rumours.”
I felt the warmth of the wine slowly turn to an inexplicable chill.
“He used to join me in the kitchen with Sr. Philo. She was an apprentice cook; they had some sparks flying between them. One day, Philo disappeared. He went mad searching for her, and they had to shut him up in a secret chamber. He used to howl from there in the darkness. One night, I bundled his clothes and food; managed to collect some money and broke the lock of his room and set him free. I asked him to run away to any place he wanted.”
“Without even thanking me, he disappeared into the darkness, and afterward, we have never heard from him.”
“And Sr. Philo? How did she disappear?”
“They came to know about Magnus and Philo. And Philo had an abortion and was sent to another nunnery. Or that's what I heard. She, too, disappeared.”
I sat there frozen; all I knew about my great grand uncle was his stench and love for languages. Of course, I remembered his voice.
Old Vincent said it was time for him to retire and he hobbled out of the kitchen. Brother Joseph looked at me, and I could see the fire from the hearth dancing in his eyes. He reached out to my shoulders and held me close, "Sorry, I didn't know this would end painfully for you." It was not painful. It was heart-wrenching. I closed my eyes and snuggled to his warmth. The next thing I could remember was the warmth of his lips on my face, mopping my tears away. I could only feel the heat of the fire spread from my belly down to my groins. I saw Philo and Magnus in the dimly lit kitchen, exchanging their secrets. I do not know what came over me; all I wanted that night was him, and through him, I also wanted to know Magnus.
While kissing me, he said, “This is what learning languages are all about for us. We learn its carnal pleasures right here.” Passion crackled and spurted in the corner. I knew what Magnus and Philo felt, nurturing their fire in a dark and oppressive world.
Brother Joseph murmured, “lo thaalan il nessyoono, elo fasson men beesho.”
We woke up from each other's embrace in the middle of the night, and as I dressed, Brother Joseph apologised. He offered to drop me at the convent, but sensing the risk, I declined it. I was also carried away by a wave of guilt.
“Your uncle Magnus learned too many languages. They will drive you mad if you learn too many.”
“Who will drive you mad?” I wanted to know too many answers at the same time. I was afraid for Brother Joseph for a minute. He walked away silently without answering.
When I walked into the darkness, I smelled the stench of guilt, sex, and madness. It felt just as rotten as Magnus. The smell of Bread and Wine and a whiff of Brother Joseph's sweat which lingered on my body and hair overpowered me.
I knew that it was time for me to forget Magnus's stench. Certain madmen smelled like food and sweat, too. Kitchens precipitated the smell; sometimes, they put them out.
I, too, have inhaled the forbidden smell.
When Magnus came home in his dirty and torn overcoat that trailed the road, that formed part of a memory that was associated with one of the most pungent and embarrassing smells in my life. I flared my nostrils to find what precisely the stench was. I could smell a dead rat and a mad dog, with decayed fish entrails, offending my entire being and dignity, which was swathed in a six-year-old body. I can also remember a considerable uproar of kids and street dogs barking and snapping at someone when Magnus descended from hell.
“What's that smell?” Mariamma, my grandmother, wrinkled her nose and sniffed hard.
Everything looked filthy and intimidating about the man who looked and smelled like a heap of garbage. He appeared at our gate with matted dreadlocks and an unbearable brownness, escorted by a group of booing kids. The children accompanying him made a ruckus by drumming on empty tins and swishing cycle chains, and the dogs snarled as if they were competing to bite off a chunk from the human form.
Magnus tried to shoo off the kids, but they hovered around, mocking and pelting pebbles at him. None of the pebbles dared to hit him. When he stopped in front of our house, I hid behind Mariamma. My neighbours came out of their homes, complaining about the smell.
“Jonah? Where is my nephew, Jonah?” The kids around him mimicked, tittered, and catcalled. I sank behind Mariamma.
“Not here,” Mariamma spoke to him harshly from behind the turquoise-tinted door.
Magnus growled: “I’m hungry; give me some food.”
He mopped the steps with his big fat palms and sat his big buttocks on the steps. He wore a torn black coat, and he was sweating through the many layers of dirty, torn sweaters he wore inside. Mariamma almost retched; she tied a thorthu on her face. He wore tattered shoes through which nasty cat-poop smelling socks stuck out.
Mariamma pulled out a chipped plate that was about to be thrown away, and she served dollops of rice and heaped it with the previous day's curries from the refrigerator. She didn’t even bother to heat them up.
“I want fish and chicken,” he moaned like a child.
“No chicken today.” Mariamma was rude.
“Thooo! Who wants to eat the cold grass and tuber you serve? You old hag, give me some fish at least.” He spat a splutter of rice and curries on the steps.
Mariamma shuddered. She felt humiliated being on the receiving end of the madman's fury; the boys around him dropped dead silent. No one dared to call my grandmother an old woman on her face. Selvi, the maid, looked away and rummaged the fridge and ferreted out some fish gravy and offered Magnus, turning her face away with disdain. Magnus splattered food all over and ate avariciously. I heard my grandmother puke in the kitchen garden. He washed his hands with the water meant for drinking, and he laid himself out like a smelly, sunning whale on the veranda and snored. The boys started to leave after having watched the spectacle. My grandmother beckoned me to the kitchen and gave me ten rupees and asked me to hand it over to the madman.
“Is he a madman?” I asked my grandmother in astonishment.
“What else is he? Can’t you figure it out?”
I trembled. I had never seen or smelt a madman in my life. Madness smelt horrible. I was scared, and I hesitated to go near him. I thought of tiptoeing to him to place the money near him. When I walked cautiously towards him, he started from his sleep and sat up. I had almost come near him, and I was trapped. He called me to him, and I could not breathe. He extended his gnarled arms with black, overgrown talon-like nails and touched my cheek.
“What is your name, Jonah's daughter?” His mouth smelled of sewage.
“Maria,” I said, holding my breath.
“Magdalena or Mother of God?” He laughed, displaying his charcoal mouth. I knew I was about to faint, and I stopped breathing.
“Come, child, I will teach you a song,” and he reached out to me.
I trembled and felt a warm trickle ooze between my legs, forming a puddle of shame. Perhaps the old man changed his mind. He got up and started after snatching ten rupees from me. All the neighbouring boys who had remained stared at him. They had seen me pee in my pants. The old man staggered on his feet, sang a beautiful song in a high octave, and faded away, but his stench lingered in the house for days and days together.
After Mad Magnus left, my grandmother told me that my father's family was full of madmen because they married their cousins like pigs and rabbits. She said marrying cousins was sinful. The same blood clotted in the brain when children were born, and they became mandabudhis: mentally disabled kids. She also told me that Magnus was once a bright child. He was afflicted by smallpox when he was tiny and because my father's people were "uncivilised," they tied him up in the cattle-shed and left him there to die. Magnus survived with scars and ran away from his house as an ugly and deformed man. He had nowhere to go but to join a seminary, and he returned a madman after many years. When he came back, mad and ugly, he had learned eighteen languages. He could also sing like an angel. Though his smell disgusted me, this piece of information was new, and I was impressed. Magnus spoke eighteen languages like a parrot; this overawed me.
Many years later, I was teaching at a university, and I struggled with the only three languages I knew. Deep down, I was proud that I had a granduncle who knew eighteen languages. Sometimes, I boasted to my children about this but never told them about the madness part. Madness reminded me of the smell. I was by then married and well-settled into an upper-middle-class family of Hindus, who accepted me into their house with some initial hiccups. For me, getting away from my religion was a kind of tearing myself away from my past. The routine of litanies and church goings had turned me into a defiant agnostic. Because of the strict imposition of church going, I stopped going to church altogether when I moved out of my house at eighteen. At twenty-one, I went to a university and then, my ambition had no bounds. I travelled for research all over the country. During one of those travels, I met my husband, and we decided to spend the rest of our lives together.
Mariamma, who was still alive, was not very happy about it. She said such liaisons would deprive me of a place in heaven. I knew that this would indeed rob me of some space in the family vault in the church graveyard. We had bought a family vault for 150 years. The funeral insight calculated that at least five to six generations could be buried there without any hassles. I knew that they lost out on the youngest of the third generation, and I boasted that I had booked myself in a crematorium in advance, which was cheaper, hygienic, and eco-friendly. Mariamma and my mother disapproved of my actions from within. But they didn't reprimand me. My father, who was unfazed, used to grumble when I was out of his earshot. Once I heard him say that perhaps Magnus's ghost remains in the family, especially in the youngest offspring. I hadn't thought of Magnus after his death a few years after I met him, but all of a sudden, I was curious to know more about him. However, the memory of his stench overpowered me, and I choked at the thought of it.
I came to know Magnus, the priest and the man, through Brother Joseph. I was a Ph.D. student in philosophy, and I was invited to a seminary, two thousand miles from my university to hold a series of lectures on the metaphysics of faith. I was curious to know how modern-day seminaries were. I was quite surprised, too, because usually, the church had enough teaching and learning resources within its precincts.
The seminary was near the sea, and it was one of the cleanest places I had ever seen, with its well-trimmed Mughal style gardens and palms and its luscious fruit orchards. There was an assortment of exotic fruits from Thailand and Malaysia, and I saw rambutan, dragon fruit, and litchi trees being grown all over the yard. I strolled endlessly, sometimes plucking a couple of exceptionally swollen guava fruits and munching on their tender, juicy flesh. There was no fallen leaf on the ground, as the maali in the courtyard worked fastidiously at keeping the place almost picturesque. I was a bit exasperated thinking of how the garden was groomed and manicured to such heights of cleanliness, and I missed red, yellow, and burnt umber shades on the ground.
A young priest, who chaperoned me, took me to the hall of fame, where hung the photographs of all the priests, including the Bishops and Rectors of the seminary, in chronological order. I noticed a dark anteroom attached to the Hall of Fame.
“What is that room all about?” I was curious about the Gothic darkness and mystery of the hidden room.
The young priest laughed and spoke to me in a heavily accented stage whisper. “There are photographs of laicised priests.”
“Laicised?”
“Defrocked, I mean. Either they left the congregation or got expelled from the priesthood.”
“May I take a look at the lost paradise?” I was curious.
The young priest hesitated for a while, and then he took me to the anteroom, which was dark and dingy and roomier than I expected. Riddled with photographs of the rebel priests, I ran my eyes over the walls.
“Did they run away with nuns or laywomen?”
“That's not the case with many priests; the church expelled some for heresy and bigotry. Some for exorcism without permission from the Vatican, and some for Satan worship. Some learned too many languages and became mad…” The priest lowered his voice then.
I nodded and fixed my eyes on a familiar face framed on the wall. A sepia-tinted photo of Magnus hung there. I could not believe my luck. The photo was titled: Father Magnanimous Innocent Abraham, laicised in 1969.
“This is someone I know,” I said, and then hesitated, sensing a familiar stench I always associated with Magnus.
“You mean, you have had a defrocked priest in your family? Not an honour, I say.” The priest started chuckling at his joke. I wasn't laughing, and I was curious to know more about Magnus.
“There is a directory of priests; it's classified information, though.”
I met the Rector in the evening to know if I could have access to the classified information on Magnus.
“He left many years back, and is perhaps dead by now,” the Rector spoke reflectively.
“Yes, he died in 1990.”
I rummaged through Magnus's file. Born as Magnanimous Innocent Abraham in 1929 in Poonjar, Kerala, and ordained to the church in 1949, Father Magnanimous was laicised in 1969 and left the congregation of Disciples of Joseph and Mary in May 1970. Present Whereabouts, unknown.
That was all. No wonder the Rector had been so casual about Magnus's so-called classified files.
I walked towards the room allotted to me in the convent, which was a few miles away from the seminary. The young priest, Brother Joseph, walked back with me. He sensed my disappointment.
Over the next two days, we had such vigorous training and discussion sessions that I came to my room very late. I could not meet Brother Joseph during that time as well. On the third day, he came rushing to me when I had an egg and bread for breakfast.
“Praise the Lord, Brother,” I hollered at him, expressing my delight meeting him after a couple of days.
“I have news for you,” he sat down near me and pecked on the French fries on my plate without asking me. I found that gesture quite endearing.
“What is that?”
“You need to pay me for that piece of information.”
“How do I do that?”
“Easy, you just have to sneak in some forbidden journal papers for me from JSTOR.”
“Yes, of course. I will do anything for you.” I batted my eyelids.
“Listen, there's an old cook in the seminary, your granduncle's contemporary. He knows all the gossip of the seminary for sixty years.”
“That's amazing, and that's the bit of oral history that I had wanted to listen to.”
That evening, Brother Joseph took me to the Rector's kitchen to meet this old, shrivelled man. He tied his flaxen hair in a bun, and his leathery-brown skin wrinkled like the bark of an old tree. His ancient eyes twinkled when he saw me.
“Father Magnanimous' grandniece.” I shook hands with him, and he glinted a twinkle that was mirrored by my eyes as well.
“Listen,” he instructed Brother Joseph and me to sit on a wooden table with wooden stump stools and served us some strong tea spiced with ginger.
There was a hearth burning in the kitchen, and he said he used to double it up like an oven before the nuns started baking cakes for the priests.
“Your granduncle came here as a runaway at sixteen, and I, too, was of the same age. He was a bright boy, and he learned tongues like no other. He knew twelve languages; did you know?”
“Yes, my grandmother told me.” She had exaggerated, but twelve languages were astonishing enough.
“He never spoke about his family, but here, he found a family of his own, and he was much loved, ‘til…”
“‘Til?”
“I don't remember the rumours of those days, but it was here, right here in the kitchen, he was found mad and rumbling one night.”
“Why here?” I gaped.
He paused for a while, shuffled his feet, and got up. He picked up a few capsicums and onions from the vegetable rack, peeled, washed, and diced them into perfect squares. He placed a tawa on the charcoal stove, and poured some oil, and tossed onions and capsicum into the sizzling oil. I observed him as he stir-fried the onions effortlessly like a prayer. Then he cracked some eggs into the tawa and added a dollop of butter.
Brother Joseph and I waited for a while with a crackling of wild suspense in the air. In between, I felt Brother Joseph's eyes on me as we waited for the old cook to continue with his story.
The cook, Vincent, (Brother Joseph whispered his name to me, and while he did that, I felt his warm breath on my ears) came back with two plates of fluffy omelettes and a loaf of freshly baked bread. Then he hobbled to the cellar and came back with a bottle of communion wine.
“This is the best in the country,” he said, and he opened the bottle with a pop.
The food was delicious, and the smell of wine lingered like heaven, and Vincent, the old cook, sat down and he poured the wine into Austrian wine glasses.
I took a sip, and Brother Joseph, though he was reluctant for a while, got a nod from Cook Vincent and he started sipping the wine. Warmth trickled down my spine, and I felt quite conscious of the fact that Brother Joseph glanced at me mistily whenever I started talking to Old Vincent.
“I don't know what exactly happened to him. They even suppressed all rumours.”
I felt the warmth of the wine slowly turn to an inexplicable chill.
“He used to join me in the kitchen with Sr. Philo. She was an apprentice cook; they had some sparks flying between them. One day, Philo disappeared. He went mad searching for her, and they had to shut him up in a secret chamber. He used to howl from there in the darkness. One night, I bundled his clothes and food; managed to collect some money and broke the lock of his room and set him free. I asked him to run away to any place he wanted.”
“Without even thanking me, he disappeared into the darkness, and afterward, we have never heard from him.”
“And Sr. Philo? How did she disappear?”
“They came to know about Magnus and Philo. And Philo had an abortion and was sent to another nunnery. Or that's what I heard. She, too, disappeared.”
I sat there frozen; all I knew about my great grand uncle was his stench and love for languages. Of course, I remembered his voice.
Old Vincent said it was time for him to retire and he hobbled out of the kitchen. Brother Joseph looked at me, and I could see the fire from the hearth dancing in his eyes. He reached out to my shoulders and held me close, "Sorry, I didn't know this would end painfully for you." It was not painful. It was heart-wrenching. I closed my eyes and snuggled to his warmth. The next thing I could remember was the warmth of his lips on my face, mopping my tears away. I could only feel the heat of the fire spread from my belly down to my groins. I saw Philo and Magnus in the dimly lit kitchen, exchanging their secrets. I do not know what came over me; all I wanted that night was him, and through him, I also wanted to know Magnus.
While kissing me, he said, “This is what learning languages are all about for us. We learn its carnal pleasures right here.” Passion crackled and spurted in the corner. I knew what Magnus and Philo felt, nurturing their fire in a dark and oppressive world.
Brother Joseph murmured, “lo thaalan il nessyoono, elo fasson men beesho.”
We woke up from each other's embrace in the middle of the night, and as I dressed, Brother Joseph apologised. He offered to drop me at the convent, but sensing the risk, I declined it. I was also carried away by a wave of guilt.
“Your uncle Magnus learned too many languages. They will drive you mad if you learn too many.”
“Who will drive you mad?” I wanted to know too many answers at the same time. I was afraid for Brother Joseph for a minute. He walked away silently without answering.
When I walked into the darkness, I smelled the stench of guilt, sex, and madness. It felt just as rotten as Magnus. The smell of Bread and Wine and a whiff of Brother Joseph's sweat which lingered on my body and hair overpowered me.
I knew that it was time for me to forget Magnus's stench. Certain madmen smelled like food and sweat, too. Kitchens precipitated the smell; sometimes, they put them out.
I, too, have inhaled the forbidden smell.
Babitha Marina Justin is an Associate Professor in English, a poet, and an artist. She is a 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee, and her poems and short stories have appeared in many journals like Eclectica, Esthetic Apostle, The Paragon Press, Fulcrum, The Scriblerus, Trampset, Constellations, etc. She published two collections of poems and she is about to debut as a novelist with Sandpaper Memories (2020).