An empty sex - the story of an affair that tasted wine. (Thiraatchai Manam Konda Poonai) by Pa. Thiruchenthalai

This is an English translation of “Thiratchai Manam Konda Poonai” a Tamil story written by  Thiruchenthalai, a promising face in Tamil literature. Translated by Saravanan. K. 

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The bunch of keys, dropped with a clink on the floor immersed in darkness, slid on it, and stopped near the leg of cot. She could feel the key bunch sparkling without opening her eyes amidst the heat still permeating in the darkness that had gathered thickly around her. Despising visuals, her eyes preferred to remain floated in darkness. It seemed that even the tiny sparkle from the key bunch could hurt that darkness. She was lying down, totally absorbed with the bliss of coition. Her reflexive hands gently stroked the remains of pleasure in the curves and bends of her body and made them fragrant. The image of his face looking into her eyes in orgasmic fits of ecstasy coupled with the bestial frenzy was still floating around in her memory. She relished bringing in the pleasant grudge found on his image, the one she hadn’t experienced so far, into her thoughts repeatedly. Each time she enjoyed savouring it, her fingers groped for a fleshy part of her body, pinched it gently treating it another body. ‘How much of a childlike passion one is able to witness in the craving of a male body that wants to cuddle her very tightly so as to melt her into nothing?’  Her eyes kept bringing in every expression, that he displayed being oblivious of himself during sex, into her thoughts in sequence.   

Cuddling his melting body, tight holds getting softer, she had kissed his face which seemed to have been born anew in sweat. His face carried a pleasing charm as if he was born in a plain. Lying in the dark, she wanted to remember that face again and again. At the same time she wanted to make it sure, repeatedly though, whether the traces of emptiness one would normally experience after two bodies mutually expressed their secrets, got reflected anywhere on that face. No…it wasn’t. There found nothing other than the pleasure of fulfilment. She was very happy but it equally concerned her if he had also gathered similar memories.

The sparks of lust they encountered whenever their bodies came to brush against each other in unexpected situations during their days of wait for this intimacy, had now become non-existent. With insensitivity towards immoral aspects of relationship remained absent, they were now impregnated with colours like strings of musical instruments.

She discovered his relationship like a tiny flower during her days of emptiness. It didn’t necessarily mean that she was wary of emptiness and its resultant loneliness. To be very sure, it could well be concluded that she, in fact, preferred to spend her loneliness which wouldn’t necessitate any conversations with anyone. Her husband too didn’t pay much of attention to her when she spent all her days, roaming anywhere she wanted as if sitting inside a water bubble. A sort of embitterment akin to a snow fall falling silently in night had brought in a mutual loneliness and distance between them. Both of them were passing their days as mute spectators staring at the furniture of their house like museum lizards roaming in the ceiling.

It wasn’t very certain if she had a desire of converting her mundane into something naughty by indulging in a new relationship. It was in one such day when she was fantasising as to what would happen in case of she having any such thing in life, he entered her life with ease as if entering through a window curtain.

Through that newly found relationship, which had just started unassumingly over some cups of coffee, they had crossed their set boundaries very quickly. Both of them liked the pleasure of teasing their body with the words they shared during their midnight chats after everyone slept. It was indeed a safe game. Wasn’t it? A game of deceiving the body with the help of wits and fantasy. But body is a stupid animal. It is very easy to set it aflame. But without leaving, at least, a deep bite of teeth on shoulder blade or clenching the suppleness of flesh like a fruit squeezed insensibly its savagery would never get subsided. At the end of this game of teasing, there comes a point where the body would throw away all its fetters. It is the time where every moral standard would surrender and pave its way.

To be very precise, he was not gifted with an aesthetic sensibility like her. His crude licentiousness was too much for the grandeur of her sensibility as the latter couldn’t stand against the former even a second. She was very much interested in the soft foreplays of love making. But he couldn’t endure it beyond a limit. At the end of all lengthy conversations, he would end up in manifesting his lust stemming out of him to swallow her up, without even trying to hide it. Even though she grew visibly uneasy at it, something invisible in her would assume mammoth proportion of pleasure before it got diminished.    

Their sexual encounter was quickest considering what any conventional assessment of instances a couple used to avoid before meeting each other on bed would tell. Like a parakeet picking up a rice grain along with finger at an opportune moment with its red beak while being played with truant fingers, an easy- going conversation which had started at some point had brought them together till bedroom today. She was aware of the distance she could roam around in places whose boundaries were not defined. Today she had lost her senses, stood submissive. A red beak had pulled the fingers inside.     

Kissing every inches of her nude body, intoxicated, he lay settled in the softness of her abdomen. While his words were coming out as mumbles like a colour powder being blown into air, his hands were busy fondling her buttocks. With an intense heaving of sighs of a python encircling a Chinese ceramic jar, his lips which kissed her everywhere indiscriminately were trying to open all the key holes of her body and thus attempting to release the beast lying suffocated inside her. 

She felt that her whole body seemed to be a petty wild twig wriggling, burning in the intense fire that had engulfed her. A usual guilt one faces while having sex with a stranger for the first time did question her and stopped her, painfully though. While her body was beseeching that the freedom of a twig was nothing other than getting burnt in fire, her innate restraints were violently pushing her body that was burning with desire, into the old rusty doors.

His hands were running through her hair as if they were trying to hold something. The lively pupils inside the closed eye lids were trying to see something clearly. Her face that blossomed and shrunk simultaneously was revealing the traces of her suffocation. The passionate longings that surged up around her were being crushed on their way before reaching her fully.   

With his body fully bathed in sweat, he was thrusting himself into her as if all his lust had taken its form into one in him. She found herself missing something, felt inadequate to match his fierceness and his animal like appearance.

She held his face and lifted it a bit. Having drunk the lust, his eyes were looking like that of an elephant. She sulked at being unable to find the answers of her quest in them. He pulled her towards him, pressed her against him violently, whispered, “You are a whore di…” and kissed her. She couldn’t get his words. Later she understood that they had torn her ribs with the sharpness of a blade. She was shocked a little. His lips were still busy kissing her with an undying lust. A new set of moist and hot feathers grew painfully out of her blood oozing ribs. He once again uttered the word, “whore” and bit her ear lobes. She heaved deep sighs from inside. She felt that something holding her tightly till now had got itself loosened and fallen down.

She laughed once aloud, very loudly. With the speed of a sharp arrow sufficient to kill a wild boar, she pushed him aside. All her restraints had become violent sounds now. She bit his lips, kissed them violently till she found a drop of blood from it. He felt that the face kissing him was a gleaming persona of some other woman. After a long spell, he put on his shirt and readied to leave as the room was still filled with the meaty odour.                   

With her eyes still closed, she was lying on the bed, nude, like messy desert sand. He kissed her gently on her forehead. He was waiting for her to speak a few immensely affectionate words about their sexual union. She didn’t open her eyes yet. Her lips mumbled something inaudibly with a mild grin on face. He felt his existence a petty ball of flesh in front of her pleasure in solitude.

He picked a small flower pot kept on the television, glanced it a second,  kept it at the same dusty mark from where it was taken, looked at her lying on bed once and smiled before leaving the room.

The house seemed to have been burdened with the secrets it wouldn’t be able to accommodate. She got up silently, gathered her dresses. She could feel minutely the warmth of sex that had filled in the room. She pondered for a while, smiling, if she could have got it more from him. She comforted herself that such trivial sacrifices were necessary as they would bring good to her at the time of any probable rift in an uncertain relationship in future. Such sacrifices would help her by offering a crude form of self-pity to make her feel moralistic, she felt. ‘Why do these black kittens arrive in so fast in search of rotten smell of pleasures that were born just a while ago?’- whining at it, she went into the bath room.

2

He was standing, glancing at the face of his car, waiting for the door to open after pressing the calling bell second time. Though the car was still hot and lively after its short journey, it radiated a smile hiding its fatigue.

She opened the door, calmly, and went inside without even a smile or a word, not expecting him to speak anything. He removed his beautiful slippers patiently, kept them neatly in the stand, collected the covers not yet opened and magazines about cars and entered home. She filled water in a glass, pushed it to the other end of the dining table where no one was sitting, sat by the table and threw a blank stare at somewhere. He was mildly surprised at it, entered his room and deftly cut the edges of envelops he had brought inside, took the papers out and read them nodding his head in affirmation.

The cover page of the monthly magazine carried the picture of a car which was recently launched. With a profound masculinity, it was standing against the backdrop of setting sun on a road. The evening rays of the sun falling on it were getting reflected lustrously. The untamed toughness and sturdy tyres gave it a regal lift up. Summing up in words, unlike the cars which compel one to crook his body as if to take refuge inside its cabin, this car looked like a young wild animal on which one could easily sit astride. His fingers were moving on the picture involuntarily.

She still kept looking at the tumbler which he hadn’t yet picked up. She pondered over why she behaved so rudely with him. His look with a mild surprise evoked an element of discomfort in her. ‘It was not normal…not normal’ – a voice feebly muttered inside her. Everything was already late by then. She tried to collect whether she smiled at him when she poured water in the glass. ‘If I had done it, there would have never been a more foolish act than that’. He would definitely reach the point of suspicion by traversing through the differences in behaviour. After all they were lizards roaming in their own way in the museum for a long time. Weren’t they?

Her nostrils were secretly trying to sniff out any possible remnants of fragrance that might have been left out in the air. Unable to ascertain whether it was there or not, she remained confused. It appeared that the items kept in the house were dying to tell him the truth. He kept the book he was holding on the table and went near to her with an amiable smile on his lips. His hands picked up the tumbler, reflexively. His eyes were examining her body as if it was new. She tried to bring down the signs of satisfaction her body was radiating. She couldn’t succeed in her attempt in doing that. The body below the neck is a peculiar type of animal. All her fully endowed body parts were revealing themselves with the exuberance of youthfulness- The satisfaction of having completed hunting a while ago. Other than that, the fulfilment resulted from the new hunt had generated a good amount of attractiveness in it. It was her face that grew distressed as it was failing miserably in controlling it.

He drank the water from the glass, and held one of her fingers casually. That small sized finger, sweaty and alive, was looking like her face in her youth. Had it been some other time, she would have pulled it back. That small jerk would have been enough to decapitate the passion built in him. But, she didn’t try doing that now. He gently pressed the fleshy part of her finger. It yielded into his palm as an extension of her angst. She felt that she had lost her power to pull her fingers back. It seemed that it was a bit of her mercy she showed on him in front of his sudden happiness which he hadn’t experienced so far. He was encouraged by her newly found passionate longing. He also felt that he had come to meet his young wife after a long time. The same fright; anxiety; her body movements like a small animal curling itself inward. He held her moist finger in his palm. Her face was pale and whenever the tip of her finger curled inward, he kept straightening it delicately. The plumpness of her finger had made it look like a miniature idol of a nude body.  

His touch was simply unbearable for her. Her vigil that nothing should make him suspect her had now metamorphosed into a fear; the fear which was ready to bribe anything to ensure that the suspicion did not arise. A gleam of lust usually seen in prostitutes had started reflecting on her body. He kissed the tip of her tender finger. She didn’t pull her finger back. When it was brought near to his lips, he crushed it tenderly and wiped away its dampness. Being crushed, the tip of her finger became red again as the blood flowed to the tip- a pinkish hue of lust. He glanced at her eyes which seemed to have recognized all his actions with a smile. The eyes which were boasting to attest all his actions did not carry any trace of her old sulking image. Making his hair disheveled she caressed it lovingly. She didn’t attempt to withdraw her finger from him. She pressed his neck softly as he bent forward towards that finger with a renewed vigour. 

Presuming the charm she exuded as her willing participation in action and craving more for the new taste he hadn’t come across earlier in her calling revealing her hidden elegance, he leaned against her plump, petite finger.

 His consciousness grew softened in their sexual intimacy that happened after a very long time. He fell asleep as he fondled the softer parts of her body.

….

He was holding a milky white colour kitten in his hands, tenderly stroking it. Its hair carrying the colour of boiling milk flowed like a milky river in his fingers. It tried to lick his body. The chillness from its lick on his fingers pierced him like a needle.

Closing his eyes, he tried to feel the life in that cat’s body. The rhythm of its heart beats was felt like a coherent writing in his fingers pressed against its abdomen. His fingers felt it as its language. Why this much of anxiety in this petite, soft body? His fingers stopped moving as an attempt of finding out the reason of cat’s anxiety and its mind which was trying to hide its hidden secrets from him. The pretensions of kitten increased to release itself from his clutch due to the great deal of discomfort his fingers caused. It sank its body more into his hands and tried to lick his body sticking out its tongue with its maximum efforts. It added the scent of grape into its ‘mewing’ in order to divert his attention of finding out the secrets.

His consciousness which couldn’t trace out the secrets of the kitten, had now found it fortuitously. The saliva, once chilly had now gone rancid. He found out its shrewdness of concealing itself by siting upon those secrets weighing nothing. Next moment he took off his fingers from its body. Its tender bones made him repugnant. Suddenly he threw it away on the floor. It landed on the floor without getting hurt. Without any visible fretfulness on its eyes, it stared at him.

There was no any tinge of truth in its every batting of eye lids and pupil moving with an ease of a kaleidoscope. No signs of humanity. The cat which made him shower his love more had now frightened him. Hiding his nudity, he was trying to chase it away. His penis, erect when he was holding it in hands, was now dangling without any shame. The cat glanced at his anxiety, teary eyes, and erect penis covered in his hands with an incomprehensible indifference.

…

He woke up suddenly.  A sound of light running into the dark. His wife was sleeping nearby. Body was full of sweat due to the shock of dream. He got up searching for the water jar. He drank water, glancing at his sleeping wife. Her hands he had kept aside away from him were holding the blanket thinking that they were still on his body. She was sleeping as her hair strands on face were flowing in the air. Her sleeping face was looking deeply calm and compassionate. 

She felt the signs of deep sleep in the calmness found on his broader back. She was also happy seeing him. She treated her newly found lust that day as a very significant aspect of redemption in her life that stood handicapped for long. She pondered over how could the lust which she preferred to consider merely as a medicine for that handicap, be mixed up with charm. Unable to make it out, she threw her leg happily on her husband’s body. Her state of being nude, with her leg on him gave her a look of an idol of a deity.

Without making sounds she groped in the dark, searching her mobile phone. She switched it on. He had sent innumerous short message as she expected. Some sweeter aspects which one would usually miss out while performing sex for the first time were reflecting as memorable regrets on the screen. His warm moan proved that his yearning for her body was still undying. It made her love herself intensely.

She imagined herself as a falls flowing down the hills. The new comer was like an herbal plant at the origin of falls. His memories and kisses had added fragrance to the water. This man, sleeping here, is bathing merrily as a lonely man in the falls flowing down with all its grace.

She sent a lot of ‘hearts’ with a smile, as reply to his messages.

“What doing?”

He came online suddenly.

“Mmm...Reading the messages you sent”

He then sent some ‘kisses’ one after the other. She too.

When he sent some alluring messages describing the youthfulness of her body and the secrets it was holding in it, she felt happy and told him about her intimate moments with her husband after very long time. In fact she wanted to convey that it was he who had given her that sheen. She seemed to have lost even the minimum amount of caution to hide things like that from him. She wanted to let him know that such description would make him feel more wanted in her life and his presence in her life was extremely powerful like an herbal plant that had deep rooted in her psyche.

A ‘smiley’ came from him. He started diverting the course of conversation into different directions. But she was still sending the messages describing every minute of intimate moments with her husband like pictures. She felt that she grew lighter as she had kept telling him about her encounter. She was trying to find out the reasons, yet incomprehensible to her, as to how she had developed a spark of lust hitherto unknown to her with her husband. Deeply contemplating those reasons as imprints between ‘she’ and her body, she kept sending messages to him. It was at that moment, the words, “You are a whore di….”were found reflecting on the mobile phone’s screen.

She read those words which let her loose in the depth of her privacy, again and again. She laughed at his ignorance- that, as he seemed to be still under the spell of that word and believing that still it was capable of producing flame like passion in both of them at the very mention of it.  He sent those words once again. This time, a mild grin with a gentle sulk appeared on her face. She sent him a toffee colour ‘heart’. Those words came again and again, first with anxiety, then with fierceness, then with tears, and then ended with helpless moans.

With her body lying without dresses, putting her legs on her husband sleeping near her, she kept sending ‘hearts’ as reply to his words very proudly, very calmly, very freely, with a smile and tears filled in her eyes.  

***Ended***

Translated from the Tamil by Saravanan. K

Source: “Thiratchai Manam Konda Poonai” a Tamil short story written by Pa. Thiruchanthalai. The story was published in Kalachuvadu Magazine (April 2021 issue). It has been translated with the permission of the author.