Vivek Costa Pereira: Take That! PEDRO would always shout late evenings, after coming home, "Take that, and that... and that."
All the neighbours despised him and felt pity for his wife, Marie. Yet, every morning, the couple went about doing their work, almost normally. Pedro would work as a manual labourer, whenever called. Marie would go from house to house, selling vegetables. It was quite common for the neighbours to be overheard offering advice to Pedro to reduce his consumption of liquor, if not give up drinking altogether. They would ask Marie: "Is he getting too physical?" As usual, I was sitting at one of the corner tables at John's Bar, sipping my beer. Diagonally opposite me, the next table was occupied by Pedro, nursing his palm feny with coke and water. On the vacant chair by his side, he had kept a bottle wrapped in a plastic bag. Now, this had become a sort of a routine -- me sipping beer from my corner, and Pedro nursing feny from the opposite end of the room. He always came in with that bottle in a plastic bag. I never saw him ordering more than half a pint of palm feny. How could just half a pint of feny have such an effect on him? This was the million dollar question that bothered my curious mind for years together. "Today and now is the right time," I once said to myself. It was raining cats and dogs outside. The lights had failed; it was a pitch-dark night. I gathered courage, picked the glass with one hand and the beer bottle with the other. I moved as cautiously as a commando would to Pedro's table. I ordered another pint of palm feny for the man. Pedro, who was otherwise very reserved when it came to interacting with anyone, began to confide in me more and more with every extra sip that he was having just then. Finally, Pedro broke down and admitted that he was a hen-pecked husband. Sobbing, he said that Marie was very bossy at home with him, but timid with the neighbours. She would beat him with a stick every evening. The harder she thrashed him, the louder he would shout, "Take that!" When I asked about the bottle he brought with him, he said it was filled with plain water. When going home, he would put the plastic bag in his pocket and proudly exhibits the bottle in his hands. I reached him home that night and kept my bedroom window open. What a silent night it was, after years! Retiring to bed, I began to introspect on the masks I wear, and contemplated on the masks my acquaintances wear. The next morning, when Pedro was passing by, he appeared to have lost his usual self-confidence. When Marie came to sell vegetables, I noticed she had a black eye. -- Vivek Costa Pereira is originally from Raia, Goa, and now lives at Duler in Mapusa. He recently retired from Lourdes Convent, Saligão, where he was a popular teacher. He is an active participant of a Salcete Konkani group, SUGF on WhatsApp, where this story was first shared, and much appreciated. This is an excerpt from All Those Tales (Nellie Velho Pereira & FN, Eds). Goa,1556 ISBN 978-93-95795-65-4. 2024. Pp242. Rs500 (in Goa). See cover here: https://groups.google.com/g/goa-book-club/c/wkYAQ4D2VA0 or http://t.ly/kan08 If you'd like to join the Tell Your Story group that offers mentoring in writing, click on the WhatsApp link below https://chat.whatsapp.com/C5ge87N4WeJAW54oUXqnBO *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- Join a discussion on Goa-related issues by posting your comments on this or other issues via email to goa...@goanet.org See archives at http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/ *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-