“Adam…Adam….!, that lovelorn voice had the ring of delicate fingers playing on the Veena …it reminded one of heavenly bliss, of ethereal pleasures, lived and lost. The echoes of the call wafted in the air, filled the entire universe….”
It was the call of Lilith, the first woman God created in Eden, the first wife of Adam. God who created every animal in pairs, created man too male and female - Adam and Lilith. She was not created from him and for him, from his flesh and bones - but she was shaped out of mud, just like Adam.
When he tried to subjugate her, she walked away from him and out of paradise into the vast forlorn lands beyond the seas, ignoring the lashing of malicious tongues. Ages passed in that hostile land and she gave birth to several children but she kept thinking of Adam.
Laila Alex, in the title story of her book of stories, breathes life into a long eclipsed character in Jewish folklore.
Laila’s stories transport the readers to mysterious lands, introduce them to strange minds and bring them face to face with horrifying animals.
‘Daytime Nightmare’ tells the story of the dog of Carmelita, the Caribbean woman whom everyone believed to be a Voodoo priestess who made the spirits of human beings inhabit animal bodies. Carmelita was very possessive about her male dog but the dog quickly became friends with the narrator and often lay at her feet, looking strangely into her eyes.
When she slept, he tried to curl under her blanket; when she read out her verses and stories, he listened with rapt devotion. Once when Steve drew her into his arms, the dog jumped at him, barking wildly and snarling viciously. They tried to laugh it off but what happened later on… was that real? Late in the morning on a lazy holiday, when she pushed off the dog snugly sleeping by her side saying that Steve didn’t like him, it leaped into the air, and in a demonic frenzy felled her.
“Those hands that held me down – I swear, they were not those of a dog. After a moment, the dog left me on the floor and stood up on its hind legs – it had the figure of a man of full stature, tall and broad. When it heard the voice of Steve, it glared him. Steve stood riveted, frozen…the dog pounced upon him and clasped those hairy, iron hands around his neck. When even the last trace of life was squeezed out, it took off its hands, lifted his body like a bag of rags and swung it into the pool… I’m telling the truth; I saw it very clearly…”
Animals, especially cats and dogs are often potent, ominous presences in Laila’s stories. The ordinary world of Laila’s stories is strangely bizarre. Her words are distinctly polysemous, her language lucid, and sharp. The contours of the real, the imagined and the unnatural; the magical, the mysterious and the mundane; the soothing, the unsettling and the horrifying simply break barriers, blend and mix and make happen her spectacular world- sometimes shocking, sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes truly sublime.
A story begins, the action rises and reaches a climax but the next second, the whole edifice crumbles and the readers are baffled to find that the foundations lie elsewhere.
A mad man brought to the hospital talks and talks. His tired wife sits quiet even when he accuses that she neatly slits through the necks of animals. Finally after leaving him behind closed doors, when she languishes on the back seat of the car, she takes out the knife from her bag, runs her fingers along the blade lovingly and looks longingly at the throbbing vein on the neck of the driver….
The stories of Laila Alex are kaleidoscopic – at each look the pattern changes. Fresh formations appear, change and dissolve as the mundane, the whimsical and the divine neatly melt into oneness. Hers is truly a strange world of endless fancy.
(A fortnightly column on the many avatars of women in Malayalam literature.Sreedevi K. Nair is Associate Professor of English in NSS College for Women, Neeramankara, Thiruvananthapuram)
