Skindeep

FEROCIOUS feminists will love this book. Almost all the positive characters in it are women: iron-willed matriarchs who guide the destiny of the family, intrepid horse-riders, and long-suffering slaves who stoically bear the brunt of male abuse. It is one such descendant of slavery, Esperanca,who unravels most of the stories of the wealthy de Miranda Flores family.

The narrative spans several generations and countries and begins with the protagonist, Pagan, a young, spiky woman returning to Goa from the United States to look after her dying grandmother, Dona Gabriela. But Pagan also has a dual agenda: a sudden urge to delve into her family roots and find her true self. In America, she confesses her "inability as a cross-cultural hybrid to figure out where I belong." Before leaving, she admonishes her boyfriend: "You deny your own roots, your heritage, the jungle beat of your half-Brazilian heart. You close your eyes to pain, to the outrageous misery in the world, to the atrocities committed every day by human beings against other human beings." Pagan leaves melting-pot, multicultural U.S. for provincial but glamorous Goa to discover her roots.

In Goa, Pagan finds not just her roots, but a virtual jungle of fabulous stories of her ancestors, as seen through the eyes of her black ayah, Esperanca. She discovers the many atrocities committed by an 18th Century ancestor, Dom Bernardo, a ruthless slave runner and killer, a sadist who humiliates his wife sexually, forcing her to do "unnatural things". But he is the one who establishes the family line and the grand estates and mansions. Barbaric Bernardo's brutality is offset by the women: a cavalcade of them, all breathtakingly beautiful and immensely courageous. His wife, Maria, though humiliated by him, is a sterling equestrienne, even riding bareback; their daughter - in reality the offspring of a Spanish priest who the pious Maria seduces - is the fabled Alma de Miranda Flores, an emerald-eyed Venus and daredevil horse-rider who single-handedly rescues the babies of her slave-ayah from the clutches of her monstrous husband. Such is the aversion to men, that Alma's husband, whom she adores, is not even given a name.

The monstrous male malaise is bequeathed to the present generation in the form of Pagan's uncle, Leandro, a wastrel, sponge and failed medical student, who seduces her mother Katie, a shallow American, while living off his brother Frank. Pagan's father, Frank, a Ph.D. in genetics, is the only positive male character in the book. But he is soon killed off in a plane crash. Even Pagan's grandfather, Gustav, is a shadowy figure, who, on his death, leaves the lion's share of the family estates to Leandro's sister, Livia. This in itself is highly improbable, as the grandmother, Dona Gabriela, who dotes on Leandro, is still very much alive at the time. But true to the distaff cause, Livia, educated in France and an accomplished pianist, "attracted people like a beacon."

The narrative takes some enterprising twists and turns, but its sheer implausibility in colonial Goa takes away much of its sheen. The problem begins with "Pagan" - the name itself, despite its ponderous symbolism, is preposterous, coming as it does from conventional parents. It is hard to imagine a generation chain of alluring, valiant women following one another like in some Amazonian beauty contest. Pagan is the offspring of converging cultures and races, but in the end her green eyes and delicate skin remain skindeep - no significant conclusion is drawn after all the tall stories of female heroism. Pagan herself, though spiky, is too cynical to be likeable. But the novel's most serious blemish is the tenuous little red herring the author so wilfully uses to misguide the reader on the final twist in the tale. The plausibility of the scenes in America where Leandro lives with his brother Frank, Katie and Pagan is completely lost after the revelations towards the end of the novel.

Far more credible - and likeable - is Mary Elizabeth Ward, Pagan's American grandmother, who comes all the way to Goa to take Pagan back to the U.S. In a fine chapter, the author describes how the diminutive but doughty Mary outwits the formidable Dona Gabriela in taking custody of the young girl. The scheming and partisan Dona Gabriela and the effete Leandro are expertly drawn: "She would violate a trust and then, in a dazzling array of verbal feints, cause the one who had been betrayed to feel foolish for making an issue of it... She wanted all [her children] to succeed, believing in the manner of all narcissists, that the successes of her children would reflect on her...". She is blind to the faults of her beloved Leandro who "literally could not conceive of anything he himself had not said or done." Pagan's justifiable contempt for him is complete when she describes him as a "big fat woman", "his mouth a ripe bright strawberry in mound of dough".

Mascarenhas keeps a watchful eye on the cat's-cradle-like narrative, but at one point there appears to be a slip when a character, Sister Marie Magdalene, inexplicably turns into "Sister Alma". More curiously, given the colonial background, there is not a single Portuguese character or mention of their magnanimity in gifting large estates, coats-of-arms and other titles and favours to their servile Goan faithfuls. Very odd that Pagan, acute observer that she is, does not uncover a single chivalrous and generous fidalgo.

MANOHAR SHETTY

Skin, Margaret Mascarenhas, Penguin Books, p. 257, Rs. 250.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Colonialism and healthcare
Next     : An attitude of the mind